Miss Burrows would have been the first to come up. She had also been the last to leave, and was the person who knew best where the paint pots had been put. Would she have wrecked her own job, any more than Miss Lydgate would have wrecked her own proofs? How far was that psychological premise sound? One would surely damage anything in the world, except one’s own work. But on the other hand, if one were cunning enough to see that people would think exactly that, then one would promptly take the precaution of seeing that one’s own work did suffer.
Harriet moved slowly about the Library. There was a big splash of paint on the parquet. And at the edge of it-oh, yes! it would be very useful to hunt the place over for paint-stained clothes. But here was evidence that the culprit had worn no slippers. Why should she have worn anything? The radiators on this floor were working at full blast, and a complete absence of clothing would be not merely politic out comfortable.
And how had the person got away? Neither Miss Hudson (if she was to be trusted) nor Harriet had met anyone on the way up. But there had been plenty of time for escape, after the lights were put out. A stealthy figure creeping away under the Hall archway could not have been seen from the far side of the Old Quad. Or, if it came to that, there might quite well have been somebody lurking in the Hall while Harriet and Miss Hudson were talking in the passage.
“I’ve mucked it a bit,” said Harriet. “I ought to have turned on the Hall lights to make sure.”
Miss Barton re-entered with the Dean, who took one look round and said “Mercy!” She looked like a stout little mandarin, with her long red pigtail and quilted blue dressing-gown sprawled over with green-and-scarlet dragons. “What idiots we were not to expect it. Of course, the obvious thing! If we’d only thought about it, Miss Burrows could have locked up before she went. And what do we do now?”
“My first reaction,” said Harriet, “is turpentine. And the second is Padgett.”
“My dear, you are perfectly right. Padgett will cope. He always does. Like charity, he never fails. What a mercy you people spotted what was going on. As soon as we get these disgusting inscriptions cleaned off, we can put on a coat of quick-drying distemper or something, or paper the wall over and-goodness! I don’t know where the turpentine will come from unless the painters have left a lot. It’ll need a young bath. But Padgett will manage.”
“I’ll run over and get him,” said Harriet “and at the same time I’ll collar Miss Burrows. We’ll have to get these books back into place. What’s the time? Five to four. I think it can be done all right. Will you hold the fort till I come back?”
“Yes. Oh, and you’ll find the main door open now. I had an extra key, fortunately. A beautiful plated key-all ready for Lord Oakapple. But we’ll have to get a locksmith to the other door, unless the builders have a spare.”
The most remarkable thing about that remarkable morning was the imperturbability of Padgett. He answered Harriet’s summons attired in a handsome pair of striped pyjamas, and received her instructions with monumental stolidity.
“The Dean is sorry to say, Padgett, that somebody has been playing some very disagreeable tricks in the New Library.”
“Have they indeed, miss?”
“The whole place has been turned upside down, and some very vulgar words and pictures scrawled on the wall.”
“Very unfortunate, miss, that is.”
“In brown paint.”
“That’s awkward, miss.”
“It will have to be cleaned at once, before anybody sees it.”
“Very good, miss.”
“And then we shall have to get hold of the decorators or somebody to paper or wash it over before the Chancellor arrives.”
“Very good, miss.”
“Do you think you can manage it, Padgett?”
“Just you leave it to me, miss.”
Harriet’s next job was to collect Miss Burrows, who received the news with loud expressions of annoyance.
“How loathsome! And do you mean to say all those books have got to be done again? Now? Oh, lord, yes-I suppose there’s no help for it. What a blessing I hadn’t put the Folio Chaucer and the other valuables in the show-cases. Lord!”
The Librarian scrambled out of bed. Harriet looked at her feet. They were quite clean. But there was an odd smell in the bedroom. She traced it after a moment or two to the neighborhood of the permanent basin.
“I say-is that turps?”.
“Yes,” replied Miss Burrows, struggling into her stockings. “I brought it across from the library. I got paint on my hands when I moved those pots and things.”
“I wish you’d lend it me. We had to scramble in through the window over a wet radiator.”
“Yes, rather.”
Harriet went out, puzzled. Why should Miss Burrows have bothered to bring the can over to the New Quad, when she could have cleaned off the paint on the spot? But, she could well understand that if anyone had wanted to remove paint from her feet after being disturbed in the middle of a piece of to work, there might have been nothing for it but to snatch up the can and bolt for it.
Then she had another idea. The culprit could not have left the Library with her feet bare. She would have put on her slippers again. If you put paint-stained feet into slippers, the slippers ought to show signs of it.
She went back to her own room and dressed. Then she returned to the New Quad. Miss Burrows had gone. Her bedroom slippers lay by the bed. Harriet examined them minutely, inside and out, but they were quite free from paint. On her way back again, Harriet overtook Padgett. He was walking sedately across the lawn, carrying a large can of turpentine in each hand.
“Where did you rake that up, Padgett, so early in the morning?”
“Well, miss, Mullins went on his motor-bike and knocked up a chap he knows what lives over his own oil-shop, miss.”
As simple as that.
Some time later, Harriet and the Dean, decorously robed and gowned, found themselves passing along the East side of Queen Elizabeth Building in the wake of Padgett and the decorators’ foreman.
“Young ladies,” Padgett was heard to say, “will ’ave their larks, same as young gentlemen.”
“When I was a lad,” replied the foreman, “young ladies was young ladies. And young gentlemen was young gentlemen. If you get my meaning.”
“Wot this country wants,” said Padgett, “is a ’Itler.”
“That’s right,” said the foreman. “Keep the girls at ’ome. Funny kind o’ job you got ’ere, mate. Wot was you, afore you took to keepin’ a ’en ’ouse?”
“Assistant camel ’and at the Zoo. Very interesting job it was, too.”
“Wot made you chuck it?”
“Blood-poison. I was bit in the arm,” said Padgett “by a female.”
“Ah!” said the foreman decorator.
By the time Lord Oakapple arrived, the Library presented nothing unseemly to the eye, beyond a certain dampness and streakiness in its upper parts, where the new paper was drying unevenly. The glass had been swept up and the paint stains cleaned from the floor; twenty photographs of classical statuary had been unearthed from a store-cupboard to replace the Colosseum and the Parthenon; the books were back on their shelves, and the showcases duly displayed the Chaucer Folio, the Shakespeare First Quarto, the three Kelmscott Morrises, the autographed copy of The Man of Property, and the embroidered glove belonging to the Countess of Shrewsbury. The Dean hovered about the Chancellor like a hen with one chick, in a martyrdom of nervous apprehension lest some indelicate missive should drop from his table-napkin or flutter out unexpectedly from the folds of his robes; and when, in the Senior Common Room after lunch, he took out a bunch of notes from his pocket and riffled them over with a puzzled frown, the tension became so acute that she nearly dropped the sugar-basin. It turned out, however, that he had merely mislaid a Greek quotation. The Warden, though the history of the Library was known to her, displayed her usual serene poise.