Spying on Miss Muller by Eve Bunting Page A

waiting.”
    I held fast. “How did Nadine know it was the ghost she saw?”
    â€œShe was all in black and she was floating. Nadine told Nursie and Nursie said she was just having a bad dream. And gave her chamomile tea.”
    I felt the hairs on my neck prickle. Marjorie was everybody’s bad dream.
    Hillary had pulled her arm free.
    â€œWhen was this?” I caught the girdle of her tunic and held fast. The girdle was like a sash, only thinner and longer.
    â€œLet go,” Hillary bleated.
    Flash joined in. “You’d better let her go or I’m going to get Nursie.”
    â€œWhen was this?” I repeated.
    â€œSt. Patrick’s Day. The cup final was on and Nadine didn’t get to go. It was that night.”
    I let the girdle loose, and Hillary gave me an offended look and fixed her tunic pleats. “Honestly, you’re really horrible, Jessie. Even if you did spit wash my neck.”
    â€œHurry up in there,” I said. “I want to get to assembly.”
    But I was thinking. St. Patrick’s Day was two months ago. Something had happened that night. I tried to think back and then I remembered. There’d been a fire, a big one, down on the docks. Explosions, too. It had all been in the paper. Saboteurs—Fifth Column, they’d said. Munitions were stored there and somebody had pinpointed where they were. A spy.
    A ghost had gone up the stairs that night. Nadine had seen her. It could have been the ghost of Marjorie—a shadow floating. I closed my eyes tight and heard my heartbeats strumming in my ears. A black dressing gown, black slippers, the black staircase. It could have been Marjorie. Or it could have been someone else. I hated to think so, but I knew it could have.

Chapter Seven

    â€œS IGN IN, JESSIE,” Nursie told me as soon as I opened the door. “How are the intestines this morning?”
    â€œVery well, thank you, Nursie.” I wrote my name in her big book. “I don’t think I need—”
    â€œPut the date, too, Jessie,” she said over her shoulder as she went to her glass case and shook three milk of magnesia pills into her hand. Sometimes she gave us the liquid stuff in the blue bottle. It was like thick cream and was guaranteed to put you off our smelly milk for a week at least. Today she gave me the pills, which she said tasted like peppermint. She was joking.
    I munched them with my front teeth, trying not to spread the chalk flavor. “Now, Jess, I don’t want you to get yourself worked up worrying about another air raid,” Nursie said. “The Germans have a lot more on their minds right now than bothering with us. There’s terrible fighting in France, you know. The Jerries and our boys are having it out. Last night was just to let us know they haven’t forgotten we’re here.”
    â€œMy cousin Bryan’s in France,” I told her. “It’s awful scary to think he’s in such a dangerous place.”
    Nursie gave me a look. “How do you know he’s in France? That’s classified information. Loose talk costs lives.”
    â€œI know. Bryan would never talk loose. He sent us an air letter. It was all cut up by the censors. But we can tell by the BBC news that that’s where all the fighting is.”
    Nursie turned back to lock the glass cupboard, and I pulled my stockings up tighter, which is something I did every time I got the chance. The most embarrassing thing was to have a space between the top of your stocking and the elastic of your knickers. Girls pointed and shouted, “Gaps! Gaps!” And you couldn’t start fiddling around to fix them in the middle of the quad or someplace like that.
    â€œIs there another girl waiting outside?” Nursie asked.
    â€œNo. I’m the last.”
    She patted my shoulder. “Don’t you worry about your cousin, now. The British have ships waiting in case our boys have to get out in a