Janie turns Detective
Honor being safely in her father's charge, we must leave her there for
the present, and return to Chessington, to see what was happening in
the meantime at St. Chad's.
Janie's slumbers had been quiet and undisturbed until half-past six,
when she woke with a start, feeling almost ashamed of herself for being
able to sleep when her friend was in trouble. She got up at once, and
peeped round the curtain into the other cubicle, only to discover, too
late, that the bird had flown. She looked on the dressing-table to see
whether a note might have been left, but to her disappointment there
was nothing. Honor had vanished mysteriously, leaving not the least
sign or clue behind her. Where had she gone? Janie could scarcely
venture a guess. Such a daring scheme as a return to Ireland did not
even suggest itself to her less enterprising mind. Perhaps, she
thought, Honor might have set out to try to find the man Blake, and ask
him to come and show the Jubilee sovereign to Miss Maitland; but this
seemed so at variance with her determination of last night that Janie
could hardly consider it probable. She wondered if it were her duty to
go and tell Miss Maitland immediately, but came to the conclusion that,
as the bell would ring in a few minutes, she might put off giving the
information until she had dressed.
Her news naturally caused the greatest consternation at head-quarters.
Steps were taken at once to institute a search for the runaway. Miss
Cavendish communicated with the police, who, exactly as Honor had
anticipated, enquired at the railway station and the pier at Dunscar,
in case she had taken the train or the steamer; and caused the high
roads to be watched. It did not occur to anybody that she would have
ventured on such an undertaking as to cross the moors, and she had the
advantage of several hours' start, so that, from her point of view, her
plan was a success.
"You should have come to me instantly, Janie, when you made the
discovery that she was gone," said Miss Maitland reproachfully. "We
have lost at least three-quarters of an hour through your delay."
Poor Janie burst into tears. It had been very hard to be obliged to
reveal the fact of her room-mate's flight at all. She felt that,
utterly against her will, she had the whole time been the principal
witness in Honor's disfavour, and that every word she had spoken had
helped to confirm unjust suspicion. She would have made an attempt to
plead her friend's cause if Miss Maitland had looked at all
encouraging, but the mistress was anxious to waste no further time, and
dismissed her summarily from the room.
Janie had taken the affair as much to heart as if the disgrace were her
own. It seemed so particularly unfortunate that it should have
happened, because, since their talk at St. Kolgan's Abbey, she had
thought that Honor was making increased efforts, and that Miss Maitland
had noticed and approved the change. Now all this advance appeared to
be swept away, and in the opinion of both teachers and girls her friend
was not fit to remain any longer on the roll of Chessington.
Although the Chaddites tried to keep their shame hushed up, the news
leaked out somehow, and very soon spread through the entire College,
where it instantly became the one absorbing topic of conversation.
Owing to her prowess at cricket, and her friendly, amusing ways, Honor
had won more notice than most new girls among her two hundred
schoolfellows; but, in spite of her undoubted popularity, she was
universally judged to be guilty. The general argument was that the
money was missing, that somebody must have taken it, that Honor was
known to have needed it desperately, and that her action in running
away showed above everything that she dared not stay to have the matter
investigated.
Janie thought that no day had ever been so long. The hours seemed
absolutely interminable. Her lessons had been badly prepared the night
before, and won for her a reproof from Miss Farrar; and her thoughts
were so constantly occupied with wondering where Honor had fled that
she could scarcely attend to the work in class, and often answered at
random. Her head was aching badly, and her eyes were sore with crying,
neither of which was conducive to good memory, or lucid explanations;
so she was not surprised to find at the end of the morning that her
record was the worst she had had during the whole term.
The afternoon was cool after the rain of the previous evening, and
games were once more in full swing. Dearly as she would have liked to
shirk her part in them, Janie was not allowed to absent herself; but
she played so badly that she drew Miss Young's scorn on her head, to
say nothing of the wrath of the Chaddites.
"You missed two catches--simply dropped them straight out of your
hands! You're an absolute butter-fingers!" exclaimed Chatty Burns
indignantly.
Janie was too crushed by utter misery to mind this extra straw. She
retired thankfully to the pavilion as soon as she was allowed, feeling
that missed catches or schoolmates' scoldings were of small importance
in the present state of general misfortune.
"If I could only find out who took the sovereign!" she thought. "Honor
certainly did not, so somebody else must have. Who? That's the
question. I wish I were an amateur detective, like the clever people
one reads about in magazines. They just get a clue, and find it all out
so easily, while the police are on quite a wrong tack. The chief thing
seems to be to make a beginning, and I don't know in the least where to
start."
Neither tea nor preparation brought her any nearer to solving the
difficulty. After supper she went into the garden, taking her
work-basket and crochet with her. She was in the lowest of spirits, and
blinked away some surreptitious tears. Weeping was not fashionable at
St. Chad's, being classed as "Early Victorian", and she wished to hide
her red eyes from the other girls; for this reason she hurried down the
long gravel path behind the rows of peas and beans, and found a snug
place by the tomato house, where there was a convenient wheelbarrow to
sit upon. She had not been there more than five minutes when, to her
surprise, she was joined by Lettice Talbot.
"I've been hunting for you everywhere, Janie!" announced Lettice. "I
shouldn't have found you now, only I caught a glimpse of your pink hair
ribbon through a vista of pea-sticks. Is there room for two on this
barrow? Thanks; I'll sit down then. Look here! I want to tell you how
glad I am that you stuck up for Honor last night. I know Maisie and all
the rest think she took that wretched sovereign, but I declare I don't.
Poor old Paddy! I'm certain she never could; I would as soon have done
it myself."
"I'm so thankful to hear you say this," exclaimed Janie. "I was afraid
I was the only one who believed in her."
"A few of our set are beginning to come round; Ruth Latimer is
certainly wavering, and so is Pauline Reynolds. But naturally they all
say: 'If Honor didn't take it, who did?'"
"That's exactly what I should like to find out," sighed Janie.
"Miss Maitland is absolutely certain that she left it on her table, and
that it was gone when she came back within a quarter of an hour; also,
that it hadn't fallen down anywhere in the room," said Lettice, with
the air of a judge weighing evidence. "Where is it, then?"
"I've thought and thought," replied Janie, puckering up her forehead,
"but I can't get any nearer. If we could prove, now, that someone else
had been in Miss Maitland's room, it might quite alter the case."
"Why, what an idiot I am!" exclaimed Lettice, suddenly bouncing up from
the wheelbarrow.
"What's the matter?"
"It's only just occurred to me! I suppose a really clever person would
have thought of it at once. I'm afraid my brains don't work very fast.
Oh, what a jubilee!"
"Lettice Talbot! Have you gone mad?"
"Not quite, but a little in that direction."
"Do explain yourself!"
"Well, you recollect when Honor climbed up to the window? We all went
into the house afterwards, and then I ran back to fetch Maisie's
work-basket. I saw a girl climb down the lime tree, and run away into
the bushes."
"Are you sure?"
"I could not be mistaken."
"Then this is most extremely important."
"I know it is. I can't imagine how I never remembered it before. They
may well call me 'Scatterbrains' at home! I certainly shouldn't have
done for a barrister, if I'd been a boy."
"Could you tell who it was?"
"No, I wasn't near enough. I only saw her for a moment. If I had caught
a glimpse of her face, it might have been of some use; but everybody
wears the same kind of blue skirt and white blouse at Chessington, so
it's quite impossible to recognize any particular girl when you see
nothing but her back."
"Unless you could find somebody else who happened to have seen her
too."
"No one else was there at the time."
"We must make enquiries," said Janie excitedly. "It really seems a
clue. We won't leave a stone unturned, if we can help it."
"I should be very glad to get poor Paddy out of trouble," replied
Lettice. "The slur on our house will be just the same, though,
whichever Chaddite may be the culprit. It's only moving the disgrace
from one person to another."
"We must see that the blame is put on to the right pair of shoulders,
though; it's not fair for Honor to bear it unjustly."
"Indeed it isn't. What would be the best way to begin?"
"We need a witness. I wonder if Johnson was about at the time, and
noticed anything?"
"A good idea! We'll go and find him. I believe I saw him just now,
shutting up the greenhouse."
After a rather lengthy search, the girls at last discovered the old
gardener putting away his tools in the potting shed.
"Johnson, please, we want to ask you a question," began Janie. "Were
you near St. Chad's at nine o'clock on the night before last; and did
you happen to see anyone climbing the lime tree that stands close to
the house?"
Johnson stroked his chin reflectively.
"It couldn't have been last night," he replied, after a few moments'
consideration. "I was in Dunscar then. It must 'a been the night afore
that. Aye; I did see one of you young ladies go up that lime tree. I
remember it, because she climbed that smart you'd have thought she was
a boy. In at the window she gets, and I watches her and thinks it's
well to have young limbs. It's not much climbing you'll do when you're
nigh sixty, and stiff in the joints with rheumatism besides!"
"What was she like?" enquired Janie eagerly.
"Had she long, dark hair?" added Lettice.
"Nay, it was fair hair. There was a light in the room, so as she comes
back through the window I sees her as plain as I sees you now. I knows
her in a minute. It was the young lady as every Sunday morning pesters
my life out of me to cut her a rose for her buttonhole: Miss Taylor, I
think she's called."
"Flossie!" exclaimed Janie. "I know she always begs for roses."
"Then it was Flossie!" said Lettice. "I had an uneasy feeling in the
back of my mind all the time that it was she--it looked like her
figure. It seemed too bad to suspect her, though, when I had absolutely
no proof."
"There can be little doubt about it now."
"Shall we go straight to Miss Maitland, at once?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to ask Flossie
herself about it. She may be able to explain it; and, at any rate, I
think we ought to warn her before we say anything, and then we shan't
seem to have told tales behind her back."
"She doesn't deserve any consideration," grumbled Lettice.
Janie's conscience, however, required her to be scrupulously fair. She
could not bear to take an advantage, even of one who must be shielding
herself at the expense of another.
"We'll give her a chance," she decided emphatically.
The next step evidently was to search for Flossie. She was not in the
garden, but after a diligent quest through the house they eventually
found her in her own cubicle, engaged in the meritorious occupation of
tidying her drawers. It was an unpleasant task for the two girls to
voice their suspicions, but one that nevertheless had to be done.
Somewhat to their surprise, Flossie sat down on the edge of her bed,
and burst out crying.
"Oh, I knew it would come! I knew it would!" she sobbed. "What am I to
do? Oh, I've been so wretched all day! I believe I'm quite glad it has
come out at last."
"Flossie, did you take that sovereign?" asked Janie.
"Yes--no--at least--yes! Only, I didn't know I was taking it!" groaned
Flossie, trying in vain to find her handkerchief, and mopping her eyes
in desperation with a corner of the sheet instead.
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you. Oh, it's such a relief to tell somebody! Of course, I
was there when Honor climbed up the lime tree, and after you had all
run indoors I thought it would be fun to see if I could go up too. It
was quite easy, and I jumped through the window without any difficulty.
There was nobody in the study, but the electric light was turned on. I
walked over to the writing-table, and I remember noticing the sovereign
lying at the corner, on the top of a pile of letters. There were ever
so many papers strewn about, and some of them were our house conduct
reports for the term, which Miss Maitland was evidently just beginning
to fill in. I was so anxious to see if mine was there that I stretched
over and took some of them in my hand, to look at them. Then I thought
I heard a step in the passage, and I didn't want to be caught, so I
popped them quickly back, and went down the tree a good deal faster
than I had gone up. I took off my blouse as usual that night, and put
it away in my middle drawer, and next day I wore a clean one. Then this
morning, when I was dressing, I looked at the first blouse, to see if
it were really soiled and ready for the laundry. To my horror, out
tumbled a sovereign on to the floor! I can only suppose it must have
slipped inside my turnover cuff, when I reached across the table; I
certainly hadn't the least idea it was there. I couldn't think what to
do! I hoped I might be able to smuggle it back on to the table, and
I've been watching all day, but there has never been the slightest
opportunity to go into the study. I didn't dare to tell Miss Maitland,
from fear she would think I'd taken it on purpose. She wouldn't believe
Honor, so I thought she wouldn't believe me either. Oh! isn't it all
dreadful?"
"It is indeed," said Janie; "especially as Honor has had to bear the
blame. It isn't the first time she has acted scapegoat for you!"
"I know what you mean," sobbed Flossie. "Vivian thought it was she who
shammed ghost that night when I played a trick upon Evelyn Fletcher. I
didn't intend to get Honor into trouble. I was very sorry about it;
still, what could I do?"
"Do! Why, you ought to have told Vivian at once. Any girl with a spark
of honour would have known that."
"You'd better make a clean breast of everything now," suggested
Lettice.
"I daren't! I daren't!" cried Flossie, in an agony of alarm.
"I don't believe you need be afraid of Miss Maitland," said Janie.
"You've only taken the sovereign by accident. She would be far more
angry with you for not owning up."
"If you don't tell her, I shall go to her myself," threatened Lettice.
It was dreadfully difficult to screw Flossie's courage up to the
required point. She declared she could not and would not make the
necessary confession.
"I'll write to my mother to send for me to go home, and it can come out
after I'm gone," she declared.
Lettice lost her temper and indulged in hard words, which, so far from
altering Flossie's decision, only made her more obstinately determined.
Fortunately, Janie had greater patience.
"I'm sure you'll be brave enough to do it for Honor's sake," she said.
"You'll feel far happier and more comfortable when it's over. I know
it's hard, but it's right, and we shall all think so much better of you
afterwards than if you shirked telling, and went home. You could hardly
come back again here if you did that. Be a true Chaddite, and remember
our house motto: 'Strive for the highest'. I'll go with you to Miss
Maitland, if you like."
In the end, Janie's counsel prevailed, and Flossie, very tearful and
apprehensive, allowed herself to be led to the study, to return the
sovereign and explain how it came into her possession. Miss Maitland
proved kindness itself. She was immensely relieved to find that the
whole affair was due to a mischance, and that none of her girls had
been capable of committing a dishonest act. It wiped a blot from St.
Chad's, and restored the house to its former high standing.
"If we could only find Honor Fitzgerald," she declared, "my mind would
be at rest."