Bulstronk leaves and disappears

Miss Trunchbull’s departure becomes a disappearance when the acting headmaster finds Het Rode Huis empty of its former occupant and learns that her clothes and shoes are gone. The search confirms that she has left without explanation; the consequences soon reach beyond the school, as Miss Honey is recognized as the house’s legal owner and the school receives a new headmaster.

Departure and growing concern

Later that day, word spread through the school that Miss Trunchbull had recovered. She marched out looking deathly pale, her lips pressed tightly together. The report gives her departure a strikingly physical aspect, but offers no explanation for what had happened or what she intended to do next. Her silence leaves the school with an abrupt absence rather than a farewell or a settled account.

She did not appear at school the following morning. At midday, the acting headmaster called her home to ask whether she was ill, but nobody answered. The unanswered call turned an unexplained departure into a practical concern: the school could not establish where its former head was or why she was absent. After school, the acting headmaster went to investigate in person.

The empty house

Miss Trunchbull lived at Het Rode Huis, a pleasant brick country house in the woods beyond the hills. The acting headmaster rang the bell and received no answer; he knocked, then called out, still without response. When he rattled the door, he discovered that it was unlocked and went inside. The sequence makes the house itself the next source of evidence: no one responds, yet there is no locked threshold to prevent the search.

Inside, the house was completely silent and vacant, although its furniture remained. The acting headmaster climbed to the large bedroom. At first, everything there seemed normal, but opening drawers and looking in cupboards disclosed what had changed: all the clothes, underwear, and shoes were gone. The contrast between furnishings left in place and personal belongings removed makes the absence legible without revealing Miss Trunchbull’s destination. The acting headmaster concluded that she had run away and returned to inform the school board that its head had disappeared. The house offered evidence of departure, not an explanation of it.

The house and Miss Honey’s inheritance

Two days later, a registered letter from a local notary brought a separate revelation. Miss Honey’s late father’s will had, in mysterious circumstances, suddenly come to light. It established that, since her father’s death, Miss Honey had legally owned a property at the edge of the village known as Het Rode Huis, which had until recently been occupied by Miss Trunchbull. The will also left Miss Honey her father’s savings, which had remained safely in the bank. The disappearance thus coincided with the disclosure that Miss Trunchbull had been living in a house that belonged by law to Miss Honey.

The notary asked Miss Honey to visit his office promptly so that the house and money could be transferred into her name. She did so, and within three weeks moved into Het Rode Huis, the home where she had grown up. The furnishings and paintings from her earlier life were still there. What the acting headmaster had found as an emptied residence therefore became, for Miss Honey, a recovered home: Miss Trunchbull’s absence made it possible for the property to pass into the hands of its rightful owner.

Consequences for the school

Miss Trunchbull’s disappearance also ended her rule at the school. Once it was clear that she was gone for good, the capable acting headmaster was appointed to lead it. The change is presented as a consequence of her absence, while the episode leaves the circumstances of that absence unexplained; the school can move forward without knowing where she went.

Not long afterward, Matilda was transferred to the highest class. Her new teacher, Miss Gimpy, quickly discovered that Matilda was indeed as clever as Miss Honey had said. The disappearance therefore accompanies changes in both the school’s leadership and Matilda’s placement. Alongside Miss Honey’s return to her childhood home, those changes make Miss Trunchbull’s departure a decisive break in the arrangements that had governed the school and the house, even though the narrative supplies no account of her life after she leaves.