We sat in the pub. The Outsider was using the darts board to keep up her skills with a crossbow, and Lady Arcos was sitting on her husband's knee polishing her tommy-gun.
"What happened?" Scruff asked me. I smiled.
"Emily helped Sir Richard's servants clear a secret tunnel that ran from his cellar to the Baron's. We decided that we had to confront him. I didn't want him dead..."
"But he was warned," Sir Richard looked lovingly into his wife's eyes. "Ah, dear Sam, do you know why I love you?"
"Yeah, 'cos I'm cute," she replied.
"Well, yes, but also because you're the only girl I know who can look cute and deadly at the same time."
"What about the school?" Scruff asked. "I made friends there."
"With a little investment it could be made into a proper school," Sir Richard answered. "No, it just so happens I've got contacts in America who'd be willing to finance it. After I remind them of the photographs our dear granddaughter Samantha took of them, anyhow. It amazes me how people like that can be so careless!"
"And you'll buy the school?"
"Good heavens, no! No, I've got a charitable trust for things like that!"
"They teach forgery and burglary there," Scruff pointed out.
"Splendid! Wonderful life skills, lass. Now, more beer. Landlord! Beer! This glass is empty, it's a scandal! And don't tell me you perishers have run out of beer! It's intolerable, man, intolerable! What's a pub without beer? It's like a baboon without fleas, a cess-pool without cess...
I smiled at Scruff, who was lying in front of the fire, now back in school uniform.
"How's Scruff?"
"Great," she replied happily.
THE END
of 'The School for Scruff'
BUT
The Girl in Grey will be back
in
THE PRIORY OF DEATH
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