Len, as instructed, watched carefully for an opportunity to speak to Copper. She did not want to simply drop on the girl and carry her off for a chat. Copper, Len hazarded, must be feeling rather uncomfortable herself at the moment. The prefect knew that Miss Annersley had told the girl as much she herself knew about the danger in which Flavia stood, and Len believed that Flavia was quick enough to realise that Val's disappearance could potentially have some connection with her situation.
This possibility increased by the time that three days had passed, and still there was no word or sign from Val. Both Staff and Prefects became anxious, and Miss Annersley looked increasingly drawn from the strain and anxiety. Mrs Gardiner had also been told and- as might have been expected- had taken the news badly.
Len, thinking deeply about Val and Leonie and her own scholarship work managed to leave most of her Literature notes in the library yet again and consequently found herself unable to work. With a muttered exclamation, she closed the cupboard door in the Prefect's Room and made for the door.
"Where are you off too now?" Margot Maynard demanded.
Like Con, Len's constant disappearances had not escaped her notice, and Len looked about her in a hunted fashion. Her sisters were becoming a nuisance. It was perfectly plain that she must tell them both something, at some stage- but how, and when, without breaking confidence?
Then again, Len thought rather gloomily as she explained about the notes, it was quite likely that they both had laran anyway and so were just being tactful. Or, with a private grin as she left the room at last, maybe not. Tact was not, and never had been, Margot's strong suit.
Poor Con had always been labelled the tactless one, but the triplets themselves knew that with her it was not tactlessness- simply a habit of occasionally blurting out her thoughts. As Len had pointed out once, Con was no more tactless than anyone else- it was simply that she was quieter than the others, so her lapses were more noticeable.
By this time, Len was approaching the library door, and it was ajar. Through it, voices could be heard, and Len's eyebrows rose. Silence in the library was strictly observed, and it was highly unlikely that Fifth or Sixth Formers would abuse their privilege of working there in this fashion. The prefect was just about to enter in a blaze of righteous indignation, when she finally realised what the conversation was about. Len slowed down, just a little, to confirm her own suspicions before making her move.
"-asked Peter, do you think?" asked a voice that Len recognised as being Copper's.
"Well, we've settled that," Len heard Jack Lambert declare, a propos of nothing as far as the prefect was concerned. "You snap out of this mad idea that you're to blame!" Jack carried on, and Len gave a grin of satisfaction. This was the opening she had been waiting for.
As soon as Jack had finished saying, "..what about going and finding someone to give them our latest?" Len opened the door wider, looking her most prefectorial, and spoke as coldly as she could.
"And what, may I ask, do you two think you're doing here at this hour?"
The two Middles turned guiltily, and Len continued. "I thought this was prep for you? And why are you in the Junior Library? You can't," she went on sternly, "have come to look up something. The reference books are right at the other end of the place."
Before so very long, Len knew exactly what Jack and Copper had been discussing- namely, the fact that Val had been in the habit of slipping off to visit her elder brother Peter in the San when things got on top of her- and she realised that the girls had hit on a possible solution to one of the things that had puzzled Len and Leonie.
For all Len knew, it probably concerned the Head and the rest of the Staff, and she knew they would eventually turn their attention to that aspect of the matter, but Len also knew that the Head's main worry at this point in time was to get Val back as soon as possible, and preferably unharmed. Leonie, without that responsibility, but with one of her own, had also wondered if she was underestimating Luisa Aldaran, and that possibility worried her very much. This news would be a relief to her too.
In the meantime, the first person to tell was unquestionably Miss Annersley, so Len led Copper and Jack to the Study, only to find that room deserted. To Len's dismay, Miss Dene was also out, but a flash of laran told her where Miss Annersley most probably was.
Therefore, with a coolness that left both Jack and Copper bereft of breath, Len marched back into the Study and up to the phone that was a private line between the School and Freudesheim. Before long she had finished explaining to her mother, and Mrs Maynard promptly promised to escort the Head back to School immediately.
"Is she coming?" Jack demanded restlessly when Len finally hung up.
"Miss Annersley is at home, and Mamma is bringing her over now," the prefect told her firmly. "Now, Copper, d'you want Jack to stay or will we throw her out?" A grin tacked onto the end of her question removed any sting, and Jack grinned back at her favourite Sixth Former.
"If she wants to stay, I don't mind," Copper told Len with equal firmness, and Len nodded in response. Jack's presence could complicate Len's own plans for getting Flavia by herself, but after the role Jack had played in helping Copper clarify her thoughts, Len did not want to be the one to throw her out.
"If Auntie Hilda doesn't want her, she'll say so!" she concluded at last, just as she heard the Head and her mother enter by the French window in the salon.
"Here they are!" Len hissed to the other girls. "Keep calm and don't try to say everything at once!"
"Well, here we are!" was Joey's characteristically breezy greeting as she followed her friend into the room. "What was so important you wanted us at once, Len?"
Len turned from her mother to the Head, and noted with compassion the dark circles under the older woman's eyes.
-It will be OK, Auntie Hilda, she telegraphed mentally.
Miss Annersley, apparently not noticing that the girl had not spoken, smiled at her. Neither realised that Copper was looking at Len with a puzzled expression in her eyes, but by then Jack had taken the initiative and had launched into the tale of their deductions, with Copper chipping in occasionally.
"Well, that's certainly helpful," Joey announced when Jack had finished. "At least we know how they got hold of her. I don't mind telling you, Hilda, that that was something both Jack and I wondered about. However, I have to admit, I'm afraid, that I really don't see how it helps us to find Val and bring her back." She spoke gently as she ended the sentence, noting how the faces of both Jack and Copper fell.
Miss Annersley sighed. "No; I'm afraid you're right there, but as Mrs Maynard says, you've certainly given us a possible solution to one aspect of the matter. Well done! And now, Jack, I think you'd better go back to prep. I want to have a quick word with Flavia and then I'll send her after you. Off you go!"
With no choice but no obey, Jack hurriedly executed her version of a curtsey and vanished with a quick glance to Flavia that made Len suppress a grin. It was perfectly obvious that Jack meant to get Flavia alone later and get the rest of the story from her, and as Len met the amused look in her mother's eyes, she knew that Joey knew it too.
-Leonie said Mamma has laran, Len mused, but she had no further time to think, for Miss Annersley was speaking to Copper.
"We can't know yet how they finally did it," she said. "I know you have been forbidden to speak to strangers, Flavia. Now I forbid you speaking to anyone not belonging to the school. You understand?"
"Yes," Copper said, her voice only just remaining steady.
"Then run along upstairs and change for the evening, both of you. Prep, Flavia? Do what you can at evening prep and anything you can't do shall be excused for once."
Flavia scuttled on the word, but Len opened her mouth to speak. She caught a look in the Head's eye- not to speak of her own mother's grimaces behind that lady- and shut her mouth again with an audible click. Seeing no help for it, Len dropped her regulation curtsy and left the room, only just overhearing Miss Annersley's heartfelt: "Thank God for so slight a clue! Joey, ring up Jack and-"
The Head's voice faded into the distance as Len blocked the scene in the study from her mind, and concentrated instead on snaffling Copper before that young lady could disappear up the stairs.
-Hang on a minute, Copper! Len thought urgently towards the younger girl, as much to test her as anything else.
Flavia, up ahead, stopped dead and turned round to face Len who had come up behind her.
"Did you call me?" she asked.
"Sort of," was the laconic reply. "What did you hear?"
Copper eyed Len as if she thought that the prefect had gone ever so slightly off her rocker. "I just heard you say 'hang on a minute'. What else would you have said?"
Len looked at the grey green eyes that were level with her shoulder.
"Think carefully," she said softly. "What did you hear?"
Still puzzled, Copper stood and thought for a moment. Len, watching her, could have told even without laran when realisation dawned, for the Fourth Former's clear skin suddenly drained of colour, and Len reached out a supporting arm.
"It's OK," she said reassuringly. "You're not mad, and neither am I. Come and sit down for a minute."
"You didn't say anything, did you?" Copper whispered.
"Not aloud. I-I called to your mind," Len confessed.
Copper jumped up. "You're making that up!"
"I'm not, I swear," Len promised, despite the fact that in normal circumstances a Middle would be rebuked sharply for speaking with such rudeness to a prefect. But this, as Len well knew, was not a normal circumstance. "What did you think I said?" she persisted now.
Copper bit her lip. "Y-you didn't say anything," she said defiantly. "I-I heard you coming down the corridor, that's all."
"Then how did you know I'd told you to 'hang on a minute'?"
Realising she had defeated her own argument, Copper looked frantically about her for escape. It was given to her in the shape and sound of the bell, and she left Len without a word or backward glance.
Len stared after her, feeling a failure.
-I have failed, Leonie, she thought. You trusted me to handle this and I have failed! Now Copper will never be tested for laran, or accept it if she has it.
-Oh, she has it, returned the Keeper's mental voice. I can hear her outrage, and so I am sure, can any other telepath in the building or nearby.
-Poor Mamma and Auntie Hilda then! Len returned, attempting a weak joke.
-They will sense it but not know the cause, Leonie returned seriously. In the meantime, we must find a way to accustom Flavia to mental contact.
-But how? demanded Len despairingly.
-I do not know, but the chance will come.
Leonie broke the contact at that point, and Len made her way back to the prefect's room so obviously wrapped deep in her own private world that not even her sisters dared to question her.
