Murder in the map room by Freda Bream

Author:Freda Bream
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

12

TO each form at Cottersfield College was assigned one particular teacher and one particular room. The teacher was hoped to be a parent figure to whom the pupils of that form could run with their little problems and confide their childish hopes and fears. He kept their register, wrote their term reports and was censured for their misconduct. The room was a home base. Although both teachers and pupils moved about the school for various subjects, it was in the formroom that the roll was called, meetings were held, and lunch eaten on days when it was too wet to sit in the playground. It was hoped pupils would take a pride in their room, decorate it, cherish it and compete eagerly for a half-holiday awarded each term to the form whose room had presented the best overall appearance, in the view of the inspecting committee of Miss Harkness, Mr. Bayne and Mrs. Adams. Mrs. Adams was included because she was Head of Homecraft, trained in interior decorating and therefore presumably well qualified to decide the most attractive way in which one could arrange thirty-eight desks, one table and a wastepaper-basket.

The results of this practice were not entirely what had been hoped for. At the beginning of each year third forms showed some interest, even bringing flowers in jam pots and pinning travel posters on the walls. Then the novelty wore off and, as for winning a half holiday, they soon learned they could take one of those whenever they felt like it.

To the teachers, however, a form room was useful, because they could hold class detentions in there, store material and use it as a place of retreat in which to complete marking without being interrupted or distracted by the noisy chatter of the workrooms or staffroom. So normally Jean Melrose would have respected the privacy of another teacher and not entered A6 that Friday lunch hour. The door was closed and as she walked by she saw, through the glass panel, that Jocelyn Tumber was at the table. It was not until she had passed on that she began to wonder why Jocelyn had been sitting with her head in her hands, with four shoeboxes in front of her on the table. Even to a girl with Jocelyn’s sense of fashion, it could hardly be a matter of despair if she could not find a pair of shoes to her liking. Jean turned round, walked back, knocked on the door of A6 and entered.

Jocelyn looked up at her dully. Her eyes were red-rimmed.

“Is anything wrong?” asked Jean. “You looked so dejected.”

“Wrong? Huh!” and the “huh” conveyed a wealth of meaning.

Jean looked at the boxes. “Oh, photographs. Were you just looking at photographs? I’m sorry. You had your head in your hands and I thought …”

“I’ve held every beastly negative up to the light, Jean, and I’ve looked at every wretched print. Mountains! Shots of the High Street, family groups, seaside rocks, sprays of flowers. The swine!”

“Who?”

“That old beast Magner.

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