She meant to get to the bottom of the mystery somehow, but so far she had not found much reward for her searching. When the governors had arrived on their monthly visit to the schools, and had come to lunch with the girls, she had invited the unsuspecting gentlemen into her private room, and had led the talk to the days of the past, and then had put a few searching questions about the tragedy of Amelia Herschstein, asking who she was, and how it came about that such an accident occurred. To her surprise she found they resented her questioning, and her attempts to get information drew a blank every time.
Then she took her courage in her hands, and faced the three gentlemen squarely. “The fact is,” she said, speaking in a low tone, “I am up against a situation which fairly baffles me. If you had been willing to talk to me about this affair of the tragic fate of the poor girl, I might not have troubled you with my worries, or at least not until I had settled them. I have found that Amelia is said to walk in the upper passage where the studies are. This has the one good effect of making the Sixth Form girls very ready to go to bed at night. But I find that the mistresses do not take so much pleasure as formerly in their private sitting-room, which is, as you know, also on that passage. Then a week or two ago a girl, alone in a study up there, was frightened by the sensation of something coming; she saw the handle of the door turn, and the door come gently open for a little way. I am sorry to say she did not stay to see what would happen next, but bolted downstairs to the dorm as fast as she could go. The strange part of the affair was that there was found among that girl’s books next morning a torn old book, a key to the Latin just then being studied by the Form, and the name inside the book, written in faded ink across the inside of the cover, was Amelia Herschstein.”
“Whew!” The exclamation came from the most formal looking of the governors, and taking out his handkerchief he hurriedly mopped his face as if he was very warm indeed.
“You understand now why I am anxious to know all there is to be known about the tragedy.” The Head looked from one to the other of the three gentlemen as she spoke, and she noted that they seemed very much upset.
“It was a case which landed the school in heavy trouble,” said the formal man, after a glance at the other two as if asking their consent to speak. “It was proved pretty clearly from things which came out at the inquest, and what the soldier afterwards admitted, that it was not because she had fallen in love with him that Amelia arranged meetings and talks with this soldier. She was trying to get from him details of a government invention on which he had been working before he came to Beckworth Camp. Now, a love affair of that sort was bad enough for the reputation of the school, but can you not see how infinitely worse a thing of this kind will prove?”
“Indeed I can.” The Head was frankly sympathetic now, and she was taking back some of the hard thoughts she had cherished against the unoffending governors.
“It was proved, too, that the father of Amelia had been in the German Secret Service,” went on the formal man. “Consideration for the feelings of the bereaved parents stopped the authorities from taking further proceedings. The soldier, a promising young fellow, and badly smitten by the young lady who was trying to make a tool of him, was sent to India at his own request, and was killed in a border skirmish a few months later. You understand now how it is we do not care even among ourselves to talk of the affair.”
“I do understand,” the Head replied. “But what you have told me does not throw any light on the mystery of how that book came to be with Dorothy Sedgewick’s things in the No. 1 study.”
“It only points to the probability of some of Amelia’s kin being in the school, and if that is found to be the case they will have to go, and at once.” The formal man shut his mouth with a snap as if it were a rat trap, and the Head nodded in complete understanding.
“Yes, they would certainly have to go,” she said, and then she deftly turned the talk into other channels; and being a wise, as well as a very clever woman, she saw to it that the cloud was chased from their faces before they went away.