Spying on Miss Muller (14 page)

“Is anybody there?” I was poised for flight on one foot like the statue of the Greek god with wings on his ankles. “Who... who is it?”

“It's Greta Ludowski.” A flashlight came on, the beam fixing itself to me. “I knew it was you, Jessie,” Greta said.

“What are you doing?” I couldn't make sense out of why she was in Long Parlor after lights-out. My head seemed full of fuzz.

She turned out the flashlight and the dark was blacker than ever. “I'm going to sleep here... or not sleep,” Greta said.

“You can't.”

“I can. Nobody will know. Nobody will see me here on this black sofa. You would not have seen me if I hadn't allowed it. I will be back in my bed in the morning.”

I fumbled for reasons. “You'll be in trouble if you're caught. And you'll freeze.”

“I don't worry about trouble and I brought the blanket from my bed. Besides, I have slept in worse places.”

“You're...” I stopped, knowing suddenly why she was here.

“Yes, I'm waiting for Miss Müller to go to bed and then to come back out. She will not leave Snow White tonight without me seeing her.”

I heard the squeak of the sofa as she lay down again. Was my nail file tight in her hand, at the ready?

“You had a phone call? It was bad news?” Greta asked.

“Yes. My cousin has been taken prisoner by the Germans.”

“I am sorry, but be grateful he is not dead,” she said.

I folded my hanky thicker. “That smell is really awful. Maureen was an idiot to use the stuff.”

“Yes. It bothers me, too. I would be fine in here if I didn't have to breathe.”

Was she making a joke? No, Greta Ludowski didn't make jokes.

There was more squeaking on the sofa and I knew somehow that she had turned her back to me, that she'd said all she was going to say.

“Well, good night,” I said. “I'll be listening for Miss Müller too.”

“It doesn't matter if you do or not,” Greta said. “I will take care of her.”

I
T WAS DARK
in the dorm, too, the light from the bathroom making a blueness in the space between the cubies. A faint glow hung above my room... the torch lamp. The smell was everywhere. It wasn't keeping Maureen awake, though. Her snores thumped and dwindled, thumped and dwindled. I tried to tiptoe in case Ada and Lizzie Mag were asleep too, but it wasn't easy to tiptoe in wedgies.

Girl boarders were not allowed to walk barefoot or in socks or stockings. “Shoes or slippers at all times,” Old Rose said. It was in case of verrucas. Old Rose said verrucas thrived on the soles of feet. They were hard as lentils, and walking on them was like walking on gravel for the rest of your life, because there was no known cure, and worst of all, verrucas had hair growing out of them.

My father said there was no such thing and no such word. Old Rose was just scaring us out of going barefoot. It worked. Mention verrucas and Maureen had a conniption fit. They were the terror of her life. “Imagine,” she said, propping a foot up on her dresser and examining it carefully in the mirror, “imagine Charles Boyer or Alan Ladd taking off your satin slipper so he can drink champagne from it. He tenderly lifts your little foot in his hand and begins to kiss it, and here's this great big hairy thing sprouting out of the bottom. Wouldn't you die?”

“As dead as a kipper,” Ada agreed.

Now I tiptoed as quietly as I could in wedgies. Ten seconds after I got to my cubie, Lizzie Mag came in. Her hair was in its neat row of pin curls and her face shone with Pond's cold cream.

Ada arrived two seconds later. She had a little farther to come.

“What did Old Rose say about the letter?” Lizzie Mag asked. “Are you in terrible trouble, Jess?” “We're sending that sneak Carol Murchison to Coventry for telling,” Ada said. “Nobody in the whole of the fourth form is going to as much as speak to her for a fortnight.”

I bit my lips. “It wasn't about the letter,” I said, and I told them about Bryan. I'd begun sniffling again, though I didn't want to because sniffling brought the awful smell all the way to the top of my nose and just about made me choke.

“We should kill Maureen for making this smell,” I muttered. I reached for my towel and wiped my eyes. When I took my hanky out for a blow, it was too damp and crumby to use. Ada pulled some sheets of Alveara toilet paper from her pajama pocket. It was the worst toilet paper in the world, dark brown and hard, so rough Ada said she once used it to sand down a splintery place on her dresser. She hoarded it for getting the mud off her shoes, and Maureen used it to smooth the skin on her legs. We called it “the last resort” because most of the time we brought our own toilet paper rolls from home.

“I'm okay,” I sniffled, and used the sleeve of my good Alice blue frock to dab gently at what remained of my nose after blowing it on the last resort.

“I'm awful sorry about Bryan,” Lizzie Mag said. “Oh, poor Jessie.”

Ada gritted her little square teeth. “I'm sorry too. Those rotten Huns. The bad is in them, as big as a bull.”

I nodded.

Then I told them about Greta on watch in Long Parlor.

Lizzie Mag gave a little shiver. “Will she stay there every night till Miss Müller goes out again?”

“I suppose.”

Ada jerked her thumb at Maureen's cubie. “That one whined and yelped and said she couldn't get over being responsible for the smell, and she swore she wouldn't sleep a wink, what with the smell and her bad conscience. She's either sleeping or she's playing piggie in her gas mask again.”

“Jess,” Lizzie Mag said, “I know you said you'd do first turn watching Miss Müller tonight, but I'll take your place. You don't need to be awake and thinking about Bry.”

“That's okay.” I smiled at Lizard. “I don't think I'll sleep anyway.”

“I've got
Lady Chatterley's Lover,”
Ada said. “Jack lent it to me after tea. We should all read it, he says. He says it'll change our innocence forever. Keep your fingers crossed that he's right.” Ada turned to me. “You can borrow it first for tonight, Jess. I can lend you my flashlight—the batteries are great.”

“It's okay. Thanks.”

We froze at a sudden sound outside. “Dicks!” Ada whispered. “It's Miss Müller.” We heard her footsteps getting closer.

“Oh, Jess, she's coming to your room,” Lizard said. She and Ada ducked behind my door.

“Jessie?” Miss Müller opened the door a few inches. “You are not yet undressed? I understand you had sad news tonight.”

“Yes.”

Safe in her hiding place, Ada made devil's horns above her head.

“I am very sorry.” Miss Müller's voice was absolutely empty. She wasn't sorry at all. Bryan was just another British soldier out of the way. One less to fight against her precious Germans.

Maybe I wouldn't have said what I said if Ada and Lizzie Mag hadn't been there listening. If Ada hadn't been waggling her devil horns. But maybe I would have said it anyway, thinking of how Miss Müller wasn't really a bit sorry about Bryan.

“Please don't tell me how
we
take
you
Germans prisoner too,” I said. “But we treat our prisoners well. You beat them and whip them and starve them... and probably even
torture
them.” I couldn't stand what I was imagining. Bry. Bry being tortured.

Miss Müller put her hand to her forehead. “Good night,” she said. “I am going to bed too.” The door closed.

Ada waved her fist triumphantly as she came out of her hiding place. “Smashing,” she said. “You told her.”

“We'd better go,” Lizard said softly. “Unless you want me to stay with you for a while, Jessie. I will if you want.”

There was a new sound outside, a sort of dull plop. Then Miss Müller screamed and there was a rush of loud words in German, the most awful wailing kind of words I had ever heard.

Maureen's snores stopped, but they started again, like a drumbeat as the three of us rushed across the dorm to Miss Müller's room.

The smell was awful. Worse now, a hundred times worse.

The door was wide open. Miss Müller stood just inside. Something foul was spattered on her shoulder and down the front of her blue suit. The something was pale yellow and orange and black and oozing.

“Oh, boke!” Ada reeled back. “Oh, stinko, boko!”

Miss Müller's back was to us but I could see her in the dresser mirror, see the frozen, disbelieving look on her face. “It is too much,” she whispered. “Too much.”

I bit on my thumb. “What is it?”

“Holy Christmas,” Ada said, semi-recovered. “It's the chicken and the egg.”

“It's all over her.”

Lizard took a step toward Miss Müller, but Ada caught her arm and pulled her back.

“Look at the chicken—it's on her shoulder,” Ada said. “It looks exactly like a dried-up dead mouse.”

It was. It did. My stomach heaved.

Miss Müller stood the way the mannequins stand in the window of Robinson Cleavers department store, her head stiff, her hands held out at her sides, palms up.

“Oh, Miss Müller. How awful.” Lizard pushed past Ada. “Give me some of the last resort, Ada.” Lizard doesn't speak loudly, but somehow she has the kind of voice you obey.

“Lizzie Mag, you are a dope,” Ada said, but she fished a wad of last resort from her pajama pocket and Lizard peeled off a piece and covered the dried-up chicken with it and pouched it into the paper. She took another piece and dabbed up the glob that was stuck in Miss Müller's hair. Ada and I watched.

Miss Müller spoke in a stream of spaced-out words, as if each one was separated from the next by a hyphen. “You-girls-get-back-to-bed. Your-trick-worked.”

“We didn't do it,” I said.

Ada squinted up. “It must have been balanced on the top of the door; the door probably wasn't closed all the way, and when you opened it...”

“Go-now,” Miss Müller said, no part of her moving. I don't think even her lips moved. “Each-to-her-own-cubicle-please.”

We went. Lizzie Mag still had the two pieces of toilet paper, one of them with the dead chicken inside. She ran to the bathroom and flushed it.

I got undressed and into my pajamas. I was shaking and cold and miserable. Ian's letter was still in my dressing-gown pocket, and I got out of bed again and slipped it under my pillow. Maybe it would help to make me feel better, but I didn't think even that could.

I reached for my bottle of Evening in Paris cologne and sprinkled a little around to disguise the smell, which was unbelievable, especially now that I knew what it was. Then I switched off the torch lamp and lay back. My head was jammed with thoughts... of Bryan, of Miss Müller, of Old Rose, of Greta. Had she come to the dorm to watch during the commotion? If she had, she'd stayed well back. She'd be very pleased about the egg. Her dark eyes had probably sparkled with delight.

Oh, cripes. Miss Müller was leaving her room. My heart pounded and I got out of bed so fast I almost tripped. I eased open the door and peered out. She was going toward the bathroom in her dressing gown, walking in the slant of blue light, carrying her towel and soap dish. Of course she'd have to wash, wouldn't she?

Lizzie Mag's head popped up over the cubie wall, and when I stood on my dresser top I saw Ada was up on her dresser, too. “She's gone to the bathroom,” Lizard said. “Do you think it was Greta put the egg on her door?”

“Good job if she did,” Ada said, and Maureen's snore went hrrrumph in agreement.

“I think it was Hillary Walker,” I told them. “She and the little maid Sarah Neely were talking at tea. I thought Hillary was up to something. I'm sure she got Sarah to get the egg for her.”

“You mean little Hillary Walker thought of this? Hillary Walker, the first former?” Ada hit her forehead with her hand. “Gee, we should write and tell King George about her. She should get the Order of the British Empire, at least.”

“It was a rotten thing to do,” Lizzie Mag said quietly.

“You're too softhearted, Lizard,” Ada told her.

“I didn't have a chance to tell you how nice Old Rose was to me tonight,” I said to change the subject. “She even hugged me.”

“In the grip of the lowland gorilla,” Ada said.

“No, she was very...” I stopped. “Does it seem as if Miss Müller's been in the bathroom a long time? She couldn't have slipped away to do more of her spy stuff, could she? Through Cinderella? Or Sleeping Beauty?” I slid down from my dresser and into the dorm.

Ada and Lizzie crowded behind me. “Should we waken Mo?” Ada asked.

“Let's check first,” I said.

We went silent as snakes, but we didn't have to. The gurgle of the never-ending lavatory system seemed louder tonight, and it would have covered just about anything.

I was first, and I stopped the other two with a warning hand.

The bathroom was awash in its usual cold blue light that left the ceiling dark with cobwebs and shadows. The tubs had been filled earlier with their icy water in case of incendiary bombs. Miss Müller sat, facing away from us, in one of the tubs.

Usually there was a big wooden-handled scrub brush hanging on the side wall. We were supposed to use it and the bar of harsh Monkey Brand soap that sat with it to wash the dirty ring off the tub when we finished bathing. Miss Müller had the brush and the soap in the bath with her. She sat in icy water up to her waist, scrubbing herself. Even from here I could see the red streaks the brush bristles had left on her shoulders and back. The scene was like a painting by some weird modern artist, a painting filled with horror and despair.

We turned and ran.

A
DA AND LIZZIE MAG
and I stood in the dorm. Lizzie Mag was trembling. “Poor Miss Müller,” she whispered.