Part 13 (1/2)

'There's a man!' one of the girls shrieked. 'There's a man in the garden!'

'He looked in at the window!' a second girl added, not quite so upset now that she was out in the corridor.

'It gave us a horrible fright,' the third girl said, visibly shaken.

There were now other girls in the corridor who had heard the screams and hurried out of the study and the other sitting rooms.

One of the sixth formers stepped forward to take charge. 'Is he still there?' she asked the girls.

'I don't know we just ran out of the room.'

'Come on,' the older girl briskly instructed two of her friends. 'Let's tell Mrs K and go and find out what's happening.'

Amy and Gina ran after the group of girls heading for the front door.

'There's a man in the gardens!' one of the sixth formers called out to the Neb as she came out of her sitting room to see what was going on. 'We're going out to have a look,' the girl went on.

'A man in the gardens?' the Neb repeated; then, having digested the news, she started issuing brisk instructions of her own. 'No!' she barked at once. 'No one's going into the gardens without me! Katie, you dial 999 and alert the police! We can't have intruders lurking about the grounds.'

The housemistress went back into her sitting room and came out armed with a large golfing umbrella. Then, followed by a posse of girls, she threw open the front door and stepped out.

It was dark outside, velvety black. There was a streetlight but it was more than a hundred metres away from the house, beyond the large garden.

'Follow me and we'll do a clockwise tour right round the grounds. Follow me!' Mrs Knebworth barked again. 'We can't have people wandering off on their own. We must stick together.'

Through the dark garden they went, but it was empty. If someone had been there, then they had now well and truly gone.

'Where was he spotted?' Mrs Knebworth asked.

'Outside the Year Four common room,' came the reply.

'Let's take a look,' she commanded.

Beneath the common-room window was the proof that the three girls in the room had not been mistaken. In the newly dug earth was a clear footprint.

Caitlin, one of the Sixth Formers, had had the presence of mind to bring out a little pocket torch and she shone it down onto the earth. 'It's a big footprint,' she commented. 'Definitely a guy's.'

'Looks like a trainer,' someone else said, bending down to get a closer look.

'So he could sneak in quietly, then run away quickly,' the Neb concluded. 'The coward!' she added fiercely.

Not one of the girls doubted that if the prowler were to suddenly appear in the garden before them, Mrs K would knock him down with her golfing umbrella, which was very comforting. There was no need to be nervous when the boarding house and all its inhabitants were protected by a fearsome Edinburgh battleaxe like their housemistress.

Just then they heard a car pulling into the driveway and saw the flash of blue lights on the gra.s.s. The police had arrived on the other side of the building.

'OK inside, everyone,' Mrs Knebworth instructed them. 'I'd better take the officers to the scene of the crime. Upper Fifths!' she added. 'It's after nine thirty straight upstairs to your dorms.'

Back in the Iris dorm, Amy had to let Min and Gina know what bad news the prowler was.

'It's not just that it's creepy having some guy wandering around looking in the windows,' she began, turning her back to them as she undressed. 'Don't be surprised if the Neb really does her nut about it. What I'm worried about is if she now thinks she has an excuse to cancel the party-'

Just then there came a sharp rap at the door.

'Here she is,' Amy hissed. 'Come to give us our goodnight kiss.'

The door opened with a slow creak and then the housemistress came into the room.

The Neb got straight to the point of her visit. 'If anyone knows anything about the person who was in the grounds this evening, they'd better come and tell me as soon as possible. Any delay will just make things much worse. The police are involved, so if anyone has even a suspicion, they'd better come to me as soon as possible.'

She added the most crucial, not to mention devastating, bit of information almost as an afterthought: 'After all this, I can't allow boys to come to the Halloween party. We'll just have to make our own fun.'

Chapter Twenty-three.

Mrs Parker was sitting on her table in front of the cla.s.s. She'd perched her reading gla.s.ses on her nose and seemed to be looking though the papers scattered across the top of the desk for something in particular.

'OK . . . time to stop writing, girls,' she announced. 'I'd like you to finish off whatever you've not managed in cla.s.s as your homework for tonight. Now, there are just a few minutes before the bell, so I wanted to make an early announcement about the drama compet.i.tion.'

Several expectant faces looked up quickly.

'The four plays have been chosen from the ninety-five entries we received from girls right through the senior school. Mrs Bannerman will announce the winners at a.s.sembly tomorrow those whose plays will be performed by each house but I just thought you might like to know that one of them is by someone in this cla.s.s.' Mrs Parker smiled at the group in front of her.

'Oh no!' Amy whispered under her breath at Gina. 'What are we going to do? Are we going to tell her that Penny's been cheating?'

Gina was gripping the pen in her hand so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

'Don't worry, you don't have to-' Amy began, but she was interrupted by Miss Parker's announcement: 'Gina Peterson, well done! Your one-act play, Seeing Scarlett, was an absolute delight.'

As applause broke out in the cla.s.s, both Gina and Amy looked at one another in astonishment. Amy was totally amazed that Gina had never even mentioned she was entering. Gina just couldn't believe that all her secret hard work completed in the study room stints after her homework had paid off.

'That's brilliant!' Min told her. 'I wondered why you were spending almost as much time in the study as me.'

'You are a dark horse, Gina Peterson,' Amy teased.

'Penny?' Mrs Parker was asking, and Amy and Gina glanced quickly at one another. Had the B-H really dared hand in her copied play? 'I was surprised you didn't enter,' the teacher went on. 'I'd have thought you'd have come up with something good.'

Penny glared furiously in Amy and Gina's direction before replying: 'Well . . . I tried but I just couldn't come up with something really . . .'

'Original?' Amy chipped in.

In the afternoon Amy spotted Rosie in the dining room in a little huddle of Year Fours.

For half an hour after school, the dining room and part of the kitchen were opened up to the boarders so they could make themselves enough toast and tea to keep them going until supper at six thirty.

'Rosie?' Amy began.