Hickory Dickory Dock

‘Of course, Elizabeth.’

Mrs Hubbard was rather surprised. Elizabeth Johnston was a girl from the West Indies who was studying law. She was a hard worker, ambitious, who kept very much to herself. She had always seemed particularly well balanced and competent, and Mrs Hubbard had always regarded her as one of the most satisfactory students in the hostel.

She was perfectly controlled now, but Mrs Hubbard caught the slight tremor in her voice although the dark features were quite impassive.

‘Is something the matter?’

‘Yes. Will you come with me to my room, please?’

‘Just a moment.’ Mrs Hubbard threw off her coat and gloves and then followed the girl out of the room and up the next flight of stairs. The girl had a room on the top floor. She opened the door and went across to a table near the window.

‘Here are the notes of my work,’ she said. ‘This represents several months of hard study. You see what has been done?’

Mrs Hubbard caught her breath with a slight gasp.

Ink had been spilled on the table. It had run all over the papers, soaking them through. Mrs Hubbard touched it with her fingertip. It was still wet.

She said, knowing the question to be foolish as she asked it:

‘You didn’t spill the ink yourself?’

‘No. It was done whilst I was out.’

‘Mrs Biggs, do you think—’

Mrs Biggs was the cleaning woman who looked after the top-floor bedrooms.

‘It was not Mrs Biggs. It was not even my own ink. That is here on the shelf by my bed. It has not been touched. It was done by someone who brought ink here and did it deliberately.’

Mrs Hubbard was shocked.

‘What a very wicked—and cruel thing to do.’

‘Yes, it is a bad thing.’

The girl spoke quietly, but Mrs Hubbard did not make the mistake of underrating her feelings.

‘Well, Elizabeth, I hardly know what to say. I am shocked, badly shocked, and I shall do my utmost to find out who did this wicked malicious thing. You’ve no ideas yourself as to that?’

The girl replied at once.

‘This is green ink, you saw that.’

‘Yes, I noticed that.’

‘It is not very common, this green ink. I know one person here who uses it. Nigel Chapman.’

‘Nigel? Do you think Nigel would do a thing like that?’

‘I should not have thought so—no. But he writes his letters and his notes with green ink.’

‘I shall have to ask a lot of questions. I’m very sorry, Elizabeth, that such a thing should happen in this house and I can only tell you that I shall do my best to get to the bottom of it.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Hubbard. There have been—other things, have there not?’

‘Yes—er—yes.’

Mrs Hubbard left the room and started towards the stairs. But she stopped suddenly before proceeding down and instead went along the passage to a door at the end of the corridor. She knocked and the voice of Miss Sally Finch bade her enter.

The room was a pleasant one and Sally Finch herself, a cheerful redhead, was a pleasant person.

She was writing on a pad and looked up with a bulging cheek. She held out an open box of sweets and said indistinctly:

‘Candy from home. Have some.’

‘Thank you, Sally. Not just now. I’m rather upset.’ She paused. ‘Have you heard what’s happened to Elizabeth Johnston?’

‘What’s happened to Black Bess?’

The nickname was an affectionate one and had been accepted as such by the girl herself.

Mrs Hubbard described what had happened. Sally showed every sign of sympathetic anger.

‘I’ll say that’s a mean thing to do. I wouldn’t believe anyone would do a thing like that to our Bess. Everybody likes her. She’s quiet and doesn’t get around much, or join in, but I’m sure there’s no one who dislikes her.’

‘That’s what I should have said.’

‘Well, it’s all of a piece, isn’t it, with the other things? That’s why—’

‘That’s why what?’ Mrs Hubbard asked as the girl stopped abruptly.

Sally said slowly:

‘That’s why I’m getting out of here. Did Mrs Nick tell you?’

‘Yes. She was very upset about it. Seemed to think you hadn’t given her the real reason.’

‘Well, I didn’t. No point in making her go up in smoke. You know what she’s like. But that’s the reason, right enough. I just don’t like what’s going on here. It was odd losing my shoe, and then Valerie’s scarf being all cut to bits and Len’s rucksack…it wasn’t so much things being pinched—after all, that may happen any time—it’s not nice but it’s roughly normal—but this other isn’t.’ She paused for a moment, smiling, and then suddenly grinned. ‘Akibombo’s scared,’ she said. ‘He’s always very superior and civilised—but there’s a good old West African belief in magic very close to the surface.’

‘Tchah!’ said Mrs Hubbard crossly. ‘I’ve no patience with superstitious nonsense. Just some ordinary human being making a nuisance of themselves. That’s all there is to it.’

Sally’s mouth curved up in a wide cat-like grin.

‘The emphasis,’ she said, ‘is on ordinary. I’ve a sort of feeling that there’s a person in this house who isn’t ordinary!’

Mrs Hubbard went on down the stairs. She turned into the students’ common-room on the ground floor. There were four people in the room. Valerie Hobhouse, prone on a sofa with her narrow, elegant feet stuck up over the arm of it; Nigel Chapman sitting at a table with a heavy book open in front of him; Patricia Lane leaning against the mantelpiece, and a girl in a mackintosh who had just come in and who was pulling off a woolly cap as Mrs Hubbard entered. She was a stocky, fair girl with brown eyes set wide apart and a mouth that was usually just a little open so that she seemed perpetually startled.

Valerie, removing a cigarette from her mouth, said in a lazy, drawling voice: