‘That seems a little odd, doesn’t it?’ said Kelsey. ‘That she should feel like that about the gymnasium, I mean. As though it were her private property, as though she were afraid of people finding something she had hidden there.’ He made the faint feeler tentatively, but Angèle Blanche merely laughed.

‘Hide something there—what could you hide in a place like that? Do you think she hides her love letters there? I am sure she has never had a love letter written to her! The other mistresses, they are at least polite. Miss Chadwick, she is old-fashioned and she fusses. Miss Vansittart, she is very nice, grande dame, sympathetic. Miss Rich, she is a little crazy I think, but friendly. And the younger mistresses are quite pleasant.’

Angèle Blanche was dismissed after a few more unimportant questions.

‘Touchy,’ said Bond. ‘All the French are touchy.’

‘All the same, it’s interesting,’ said Kelsey. ‘Miss Springer didn’t like people prowling about her gymnasium—Sports Pavilion—I don’t know what to call the thing. Now why?’

‘Perhaps she thought the Frenchwoman was spying on her,’ suggested Bond.

‘Well, but why should she think so? I mean, ought it to have mattered to her that Angèle Blanche should spy on her unless there was something she was afraid of Angèle Blanche finding out?

‘Who have we got left?’ he added.

‘The two junior mistresses, Miss Blake and Miss Rowan, and Miss Bulstrode’s secretary.’

Miss Blake was young and earnest with a round good-natured face. She taught Botany and Physics. She had nothing much to say that could help. She had seen very little of Miss Springer and had no idea of what could have led to her death.

Miss Rowan, as befitted one who held a degree in psychology, had views to express. It was highly probable, she said, that Miss Springer had committed suicide.

Inspector Kelsey raised his eyebrows.

‘Why should she? Was she unhappy in any way?’

‘She was aggressive,’ said Miss Rowan, leaning forward and peering eagerly through her thick lenses. ‘Very aggressive. I consider that significant. It was a defence mechanism, to conceal a feeling of inferiority.’

‘Everything I’ve heard so far,’ said Inspector Kelsey, ‘points to her being very sure of herself.’

‘Too sure of herself,’ said Miss Rowan darkly. ‘And several of the things she said bear out my assumption.’

‘Such as?’

‘She hinted at people being “not what they seemed”. She mentioned that at the last school where she was employed, she had “unmasked” someone. The Headmistress, however, had been prejudiced, and refused to listen to what she had found out. Several of the other mistresses, too, had been what she called “against her”.

‘You see what that means, Inspector?’ Miss Rowan nearly fell off her chair as she leaned forward excitedly. Strands of lank dark hair fell forward across her face. ‘The beginnings of a persecution complex.’

Inspector Kelsey said politely that Miss Rowan might be correct in her assumptions, but that he couldn’t accept the theory of suicide, unless Miss Rowan could explain how Miss Springer had managed to shoot herself from a distance of at least four feet away, and had also been able to make the pistol disappear into thin air afterwards.