Ethel Rigby was the girl who was paler and prettier than the others; she had a drooping kind of grace, a meek, rather repressed manner. She was backward for her age and at fourteen was roughly the equal of – though being daily outpaced by – the dark-haired boy, Sydney Baines, who was almost twelve. Because they were working at the same sums and were friendlily disposed to one another, their desks stood side by side, and as Audrey Head passed on her way to her own desk. Miss Mayfield’s gaze rested for a second on Ethel’s. The thought that went through her head was that now Sydney would master Simple Interest and leave Ethel entirely behind. But that thought dwindled. Sydney was looking at Miss Mayfield with a peculiar expression, as though he were trying to suppress a hiccup or a belch. His face seemed to swell and darken; then, aware that he was under observation, he took out a handkerchief of such dazzling whiteness that it might have been part of an advertisement for a washing powder, held it to his face and coughed. And you, thought Miss Mayfield, will be the next to have ‘a cowd’, sitting next Ethel.

At twelve o’clock, as usual, everybody except the one girl and one boy whose turn it was to act as waitress and waiter in the canteen went out to play in the yard. The school dinner which Canon Thorby provided – somewhat unnecessarily, Miss Mayfield thought, since most of the pupils were within, ten minutes’ walk of their homes – was cooked in one of the big redundant kitchens at the Rectory by a woman specially engaged for the purpose, and brought through a connecting doorway on a trolley. Miss Mayfield, who had taken the school dinner in Alchester, had often wondered during her fortnight in Walwyk whether the children realized how lucky they were; the food was superb, everything of the very best and carefully prepared. The waiter and the waitress set the tables; Miss Mayfield and Miss Benson dished up; two girls then washed the dishes, and a boy rolled back the trolley. Dinnertime was twelve-thirty, so there was a half-hour which could be spent in marking or preparation for the afternoon lessons.

On this morning Miss Mayfield was marking; and lifting the next book from the pile, she found herself looking down upon a piece of paper, lined paper, obviously torn from an exercise book. On it, written in a squarish, back-sloping hand, were the words ‘Ethel Rigby’s granny treat her something crool.’

Miss Mayfield stared down at the sentence. She had a sharply photographic memory and knew immediately that the writing was not the natural handwriting of any one of her seventeen pupils. A disguised hand. And it was difficult to reconcile the correct placing of the apostrophe with the misspelling of a simple word like ‘cruel’.