Goodbye, Ms. Chips Read online

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  ALSO IN THE ELLIE HASKELL SERIES BY DOROTHY CANNELL

  Praise for Dorothy Cannell’s WITHERING HEIGHTS

  MORE FROM MINOTAUR BOOKS

  SHE SHOOTS TO CONQUER

  Copyright Page

  For Mariah Moore, who likes dogs and cats; Von-she, who likes basketball; and Olivia, who likes being the baby sister. With love from Granna.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my friend Barbara Cansfield White,

  who graciously loaned me her computer so I could

  finish the manuscript.

  1

  “Ellie, the headmistress wants to see you.”

  Words to strike terror in the heart of any inmate of St. Roberta’s boarding school for girls who has failed to turn in her Latin prep, left out London when drawing a map of England, or—worse yet—prowled the ruins of the medieval convent at dead of night. Naturally I shuddered, even though I was now a grown woman and the speaker was my dear friend Dorcas Critchley, who had arrived unexpectedly a half hour before.

  The school I had attended as a pupil was now her place of employment. Upon the retirement of Ms. Chips at the end of the previous school year, Dorcas had assumed the post of games mistress and now had the dubious pleasure of chivying a bunch of girls in bottle-green shorts and mustard-yellow shirts to victory on the playing field. My being a St. Roberta’s old girl was a coincidence, and Dorcas had very sensibly not asked me for a personal reference. Ms. Chips, who undoubtedly still had the headmistress’s ear, could not be expected to remember me with enthusiasm, given that the only ball I had ever managed to lob in lacrosse had whacked her squarely on the nose—breaking it, so Matron had informed me icily, in at least three places.

  Haunted by this memory and its outcome, I now sought solace from my surroundings. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon early in June, and Dorcas and I sat in white wicker chairs on the back lawn of my home, Merlin’s Court. Its fantastical castle turrets poked cheerfully into the pure blue sky, daring a dark cloud to show a malignant face. The miniature moat collected only sanguine shadows. The garden’s gently sloping lawns were shaded by beech trees and interspersed with flower beds bursting with riotous color. The air was perfumed with roses. Indoors were my wonderful husband, Ben, and our three adorable children. Given this heaping helping of life’s bounty, only an ingrate would not respond to Dorcas’s astonishing announcement with an interested smile.

  “Why on earth would Mrs. Battle want to see me?” I endeavored to sound cheerfully intrigued. “Surely it can’t be to find out why I never joined the Old Girls’ Association.”

  “Nothing to fear in that regard, Ellie,” Dorcas reassured me.

  “Oh, goodie!”

  “Am here as her emissary. Something nasty occurred at old Roberta’s. Shocking business! Threatens blight on our outstanding reputation. Ghastly for Mrs. Battle! Blasted all to pieces, as you might expect! Hands trembled the other day when mounting the dais to take assembly.”

  “To everything there is a season.” The words hopped out of my mouth. Dorcas raised an inquiring eyebrow, and I looked at the table between our chairs, but no pot of tea and plate of biscuits had magically appeared to put me in a better frame of mind. “Sorry,” I said. “I was remembering how I quivered and quaked when the Battle-ax caught me wearing my uniform cardigan back to front, for a change.”

  “Frightfully sorry to put you in a spot. Should have remembered your saying you don’t have fond memories of school.” Dorcas’s gaze faltered. Some people might consider her plain, with her thin face, sharp features, and short ginger hair clipped back from her brow. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing about her, from the serviceable tweed jacket and slacks to the argyle socks. My mind went back ten years to our first meeting, shortly after Ben and I had inherited Merlin’s Court from an elderly relative of mine. Our good fortune had not gone down well with members of the family who had hoped to find themselves on easy street when the old man finally pegged it. Sadly, we were forced to the lamentable conclusion that one of them wanted us out of the house—and into the graveyard. But Dorcas had been there for us every step of the way until the villain was unmasked and the danger removed. Over the course of the following years she had been a frequent much-loved visitor, always spending Christmas and Easter with us. Knowing a warm welcome awaited her, she also enjoyed making impromptu visits such as this one. I was horrified at the thought of hurting her feelings.

  “I’m the one who should be sorry. I’ve been behaving like an insensitive wretch.” I leaned toward her. “This business, whatever it is, has you seriously upset. I thought you weren’t your usual chirpy self when you arrived, and now I can see shadows under your eyes. You haven’t been sleeping properly.”

  “Perfectly fit, never better. Can still skim the high bar and land upright.”

  “Forget the brave front.” I wagged a finger at her. “What evil stalks the hallowed halls of St. Roberta’s?”

  “Don’t know how to break it to you.” My friend reached into her trouser pocket for a handkerchief the size of a small tablecloth.

  “Just say it, Dorcas, dear.”

  “A sports cup has been stolen from the trophy case in the assembly hall.”

  “Is that all? I was afraid a bunch of first formers, fed up with shepherd’s pie, had murdered the cook.”

  “Ellie, it was the Loverly Cup!”

  I thought she was stammering. “The lovely … ?”

  “Loverly. Awarded annually by Lady Loverly of the Hall at Upper Swan-Upping to the winner of the area schools’ lacrosse championship match. For the past nine years, St. Roberta’s has won it handily. Sadly, not in the cards this time. Disappointing season.” Dorcas sucked in a breath and blew tremulously into the handkerchief. “Blame myself. Failed to rouse the old fighting school spirit. Offered to resign.”

  Preferable, I thought fondly, to donning a kimono and falling on her lacrosse stick. What she needed at this moment was a strong cup of tea, but alas, the wrought-iron table remained bare. I decided against nipping into the house and brewing a pot in favor of offering immediate comfort.

  “Dorcas, it sounds like a schoolgirl prank to me.”

  “That’s what Mrs. Battle is hoping. But worried stiff the matter could turn out to be more serious.”

  “Such as?”

  “Evil plot to ruin St. Roberta’s stainless reputation.”

  Masterminded, I supposed, by a shadowy figure with an eye patch and a hollow cough who would prove to be the recently dismissed French mistress. “When was the cup taken?”

  “This past Monday.”

  A vital question loomed. “How long before it must be handed over to the new lacrosse champions?”

  “End of the month. Last week of term.”

  “I gather the Battle-ax is against involving the authorities?”

  “Can’t say I blame her. Police cars screeching down the drive, sirens wailing?” Dorcas paled visibly. “No keeping that hullabaloo from the Board of Governo
rs and the parents. Could be the end of good old Roberta’s.”

  Although this seemed to me to be going overboard, I made soothing noises in the manner of a brook attempting to calm the troubled sea. Had she been a different sort, Dorcas would have whacked me or at least told me to stuff the platitudes.

  “Hard enough these days to keep any school going without a scandal. Mrs. Battle brightened when I reported your great success as private investigator.”

  An unpleasant apprehension seized me. “You said she wanted to meet with me, but this sounds as though more than a nip in and out of her office will be entailed. To unmask the Cup Culprit, I’d have to stay at or near school for days on end—possibly weeks!” My mind shut down at the horror of it.

  “Asking a lot of you, I know.”

  I reminded myself sternly that I was supposedly a grown-up—wife, mother, part-time interior designer. I remembered my parents had sold their souls to their bank manager, unhappily named Mr. Shark, in return for an overdraft the size of the national debt in order to pay my school fees. My courage still failed me. “Dorcas, I don’t think I’m up to this.”

  She misunderstood me. “Know you think yourself an amateur. Modest, always have been; one of the things I admire most. But if anyone can solve the mystery, it’s you.”

  Ignobly I sought an out. “Thank you, Dorcas, but I don’t handle cases on my own. I usually work in tandem with Mrs. Malloy.”

  Even as I spoke these words, a woman with jet-black hair highlighted by two inches of white roots crossed the courtyard at last, carrying a tea tray. Here was my trusty household helper and partner in the sleuthing business. It must be added that she made an imposing figure. Her generous contours were presently displayed to full advantage in a forest-green taffeta dress. Glittering brooches planted here and there suggested she was descended from the czars of Russia. Hopefully she’d never be forced to flee a revolution, her high heels being unsuited to successful escape down a dark alley. I worried about the tea tray; one misstep and there would go a perfectly good teapot and assorted crockery, to say nothing of the cucumber sandwiches and jam tarts.

  Dorcas likewise perceived the possibility of imminent disaster. Leaping to her feet as if in response to a starting pistol, she had the tray on a table before I could blink.

  “Well, that was good of you, Miss Critchley!” Mrs. Malloy landed in a chair. Her rouged face cracked as she produced a purple-lipsticked smile. “For a minute I thought I was back to me old rugby days, about to be tackled to the ground by sixteen stone of solid muscle.”

  Bless the woman! Being a romantic she is given to these flights of fancy, and doubtless the scene continued to play out in her mind. The team captain would announce between gasping breaths that he was in actual fact the deposed king of Ruritania; if she didn’t think him too bold, he would sweep her off to his flat after the match and deflower her at his leisure.

  Dorcas took the cup of tea I passed her and apologized to Mrs. Malloy for startling her. “Sorry! Not thinking clearly. Lot on my mind, I’m afraid.” My heart ached, she looked so despondent. She gave much and asked little in return. Would it really kill me to help her out in her hour of need? Biting into a sandwich, I attempted to garner strength.

  “It’s me that is sorry, Miss C,” protested Mrs. Malloy magnanimously. “I could see the moment you arrived this afternoon as you was down in the dumps. It worried me sufficient that I couldn’t concentrate on me dusting or work up the enthusiasm to sort out the toy cupboard. What that good woman needs, I said to Mr. Haskell, is a decent cup of tea. And with himself playing Monopoly with the children like he does most Saturday afternoons, I got the kettle going and nipped to it.”

  “Good of you, Mrs. Malloy. Can’t say how much I appreciate … .” Out came the handkerchief, with noisy results.

  I wasn’t equally impressed with Mrs. M’s slavish devotion to duty. When last I’d seen her, she’d been on the drawing room sofa with her feet up, reading The Lamentable Affair at Latchings while the dust and toy cupboard went unlamented. This, however, was not the moment to play the heavy-handed employer. Much good it would have done me anyway. From the start of our relationship, it has been unclear whether Mrs. Malloy or I rule the roost in domestic matters. Not that it matters. She is above all things a staunch ally when the chips are down.

  “Dorcas is here on her headmistress’s behalf,” I explained. “The Battle-ax wants to see me.”

  “Forget to finish the fourth form, Mrs. H?”

  I smiled dutifully at this quip. “Mrs. Battle was indeed at the helm when I was at St. Roberta’s, though I doubt she would remember me without some nudging. No, a sports cup has been stolen. The hope is that I … we,” I added quickly, “can recover it before its loss has to be made public.” I went on to explain that it was soon to be handed on to another school. Meanwhile, Dorcas sat in sad contemplation of her argyle socks.

  “Is it very valuable, this cup?” The thrilled expression on Mrs. Malloy’s face suggested she was indulging her imagination again. Did she picture a goblet studded with jewels sufficient to ransom Richard the Lionhearted from the bunch of miffed Turks or whoever had locked him up in a moldering stronghold? A just fate, I had always thought, for a man who had gone jaunting off to the Crusades, leaving his brother John to tick off the barons and make life difficult for Robin Hood. “Gold?” breathed Mrs. Malloy.

  “Silver cup,” replied Dorcas, “but bound to be valuable. Work of Hester Bateman.”

  “Who?”

  “The queen of eighteenth-century silversmiths. A friend of mine paid a hundred pounds for one teaspoon with her hallmark.” Having demolished more than my share of sandwiches in a desperate attempt at building up my defenses, I was feeling a smidge more cheerful. “Lady Loverly doesn’t stint with her trophy giving.”

  “Lady who?” Mrs. Malloy held out her teacup for a refill.

  “Loverly. A woman, if I remember correctly, who wore horrific hats and seemed to have twice the usual number of teeth. Middle-aged, which would make her elderly now, after nearly twenty years. Goodness! It’s amazing to think it’s been that long. I left St. Roberta’s when I was fifteen. None of its girls could have been happier to go home and burn that hideous uniform than I!”

  “What then, Mrs. H? Parents get you a governess?”

  “Art school.”

  Dorcas continued to study her argyle socks. I could tell from her hunched posture that, sympathetic as she generally was to my feelings, she was shocked by my lack of loyalty to St. Roberta’s. It came to me then, with an anguished pang, that I could not bring myself to tell her why I was so averse to returning there. A woman of her unfaltering integrity could not but condemn my failure to have spoken out and saved a fellow schoolgirl from unjust disciplinary action when I knew her to be innocent of the charge against her.

  It seemed to me that the bright-blue sky paled as I turned my gaze away from Dorcas and Mrs. Malloy. Pretty, immensely popular, thoroughly nice Philippa Boswell had been stripped of the captainship of the lacrosse team and told that she would not be named head girl at the start of the new school year as had been anticipated. The entire school was stunned, the pupils disbelieving. But the accusation—of absenting herself from the school building without leave to conduct an assignation beyond the grounds with a member of the male species—had stood. The Board of Governors, with the bulldoggish Mr. Bumbleton at the helm, congratulated themselves that an example had been made; my heart had broken for Philippa—but in silence.

  She left St. Roberta’s at the end of that summer term, announcing that she had decided not to return for the sixth form. One class behind her, I exited when she did, having persuaded my parents to let me attend a local art school. I’d kept my dark secret ever since, even from Ben. Not because he would have recoiled in horror and taken to sleeping in the guest bedroom, but because the thought of my confessional words making ugly contact with the air made my heart hammer and beads of sweat form on my brow. It was no consolation that Philippa
could not have known I might have spoken up to spare her the shame and disappointment she had endured.

  I now drew a ragged breath and listened to Mrs. Malloy.

  “Does this Lady Loverly know the cup is missing?” she was asking Dorcas.

  “Bound to. Got a goddaughter in the fourth form: Carolyn Fisher-Jones. Wouldn’t be cricket to expect the girl to keep mum. Sensible fourteen-year-old. Good deal of poise for her age. Would look at home on a decent horse. Classmate and close chums this term with Matron’s great-niece, Gillian Parker. Matie’s been in a real tizz about this business. Worried about how it will go down with Ms. Chips.” Dorcas re-produced the handkerchief. “Fast friends since their own schooldays at Billbury Academy in Devon.”

  “Chips?” Mrs. Malloy refilled our teacups. “Is that a nickname? Tip of the hat to the beloved schoolmaster in—?”

  “In the tenderly tearful Goodbye, Mr. Chips?” I had loved both the book and the movie. “It’s her own name. Not even an abbreviation. Dorcas”—I turned to her—“what has been her reaction to the cup’s disappearance?”

  “Haven’t heard, but bound to have taken it on the chin. That sort of woman.”

  Mrs. Malloy reached for the last cucumber sandwich. “I thought she’d retired and you’d taken her place, Miss Critchley.”

  “Right enough,” responded Dorcas, “but still around. Does dorm duty if needed. Bought a house nearby in Upper Swan-Upping.”

  “Blimey! Is that where the school is?” Mrs. M raised a painted eyebrow.

  “Mile or so distant. St. Roberta’s is on the far edge of Lower Swan-Upping before open country takes over. Bridle paths, lovers’ lanes, woodlands, fields. Not surprising Ms. Chips chose to stay in the area. Keen hiker. Matron worries she overdoes it. Not the outdoorsy type herself. Bad experience. Got lost on the moors as a girl.”

  “Always best to get right away when making a new start,” opined Mrs. Malloy. “Like I just said to Mr. Haskell when he had to sell off a bunch of hotels to pay Tam for landing on Park Place, it don’t do to cling to the past. Shake the dice and move on. So he did and collected two hundred pounds for passing Go.”