"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, it's 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."
"Teh!" said Mrs. Hubbard crossly. "I've no patience with superstitious nonsense. Just some ordinary human beings 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: "Hullo, Ma, have you administered soothing syrup to the old devil, our revered proprietress?"
Patricia Lane said: "Has she been on the war path?"
"And how!" said Valerie and chuckled.
"Something very unpleasant has happened," said Mrs. Hubbard. "Nigel, I want you to help me."
"Me, Ma'am?" Nigel looked up at her and shut his book. His thin, malicious face was suddenly illumined by a mischievous but surprisingly sweet smile. "What have I done?"
"Nothing, I hope," said Mrs. Hubbard. "But ink has been deliberately and maliciously spilt all over Elizabeth Johnston's notes and it's green ink. You write with green ink, Nigel." He stared at her, his smile disappearing.
