The Lies of Fair Ladies (39 page)

"Schuller,"
Gunge boomed. "Keep that drive clear. More vehicles coming. How many
entrances?"

"Schuller,"
I muttered darkly, hurrying off. I'd give him Schuller. Made me sound like a
Transylvanian cobbler from a Disney cartoon. I fiddled with my pathetic little
Woolworth hand torch, stumbled off among rosebushes while the guard followed
Gunge to the action.

A couple of minutes
among the bushes watching the consternation develop, and I returned, knocked on
the van's side, three long, one short.

"I'm ready,
Lovejoy." Luna slid into the driver's seat. She was in a policewoman's
uniform, so fetching it made me wonder for a second about fetishes, uniforms,
leather buckles.

"You look
terrific, Lune. I'm off, then. Got my bag?"

She passed it. My
ordinary clothes. "Lovejoy. Be careful."

But I was already
eeling through the black night, falling over. Why didn't roots grow down, for
God's sake? Roots are supposed to.

The side of the
mansion seemed a mile long. A security bloke came round the far end as I
reached there. I talked into a bleeper, like I imagined firemen do, and barked
a question about how many entrances. He hesitated, told me five. I told him to
open the kitchen door, not let anyone else in.

"Understand?"
I shouted, professional in a hurry.

"Right." He
unlocked the door. "What the hell's going on?"

"Any signs of
the oil fire?" I rasped, wishing I could go octaves down like Gunge.
"Straight ahead to the main hallway?"

"Oil? Er, I
think so. Fire? There's no—"

"No lights. Fire
risks, lights. Close it after me."

I snapped an order,
meet the senior officer at the front, and was inside and free. So he'd never
even been inside, this security man. I trotted after my torch beam.

Kitchens revolt me. I
mean, they say even a cabbage screams. This one shone, chrome and steel on
black. Marble floor. I stepped round the inner door, switched my lamp off,
listened. The suspicious sod was hesitating out there. I could hear him,
shuffling on the gravel. A torchlight shone in, roamed about a bit. Then he
moved off. His sort gets on your nerves. I could feel the blighter thinking he
should have demanded my pass.

Boots are problems.
Socks are almost as difficult. Slippy on wood floors, fine on carpets. Outside
came the distant hullabaloo of order, counterorder, disorder. Inside, somebody
came downstairs, a woman's light tread.

"What is
it?" a woman's voice called. Nobody I knew.

"The fire
station." Another, distant. "Is there a fire?"

By the kitchen door
was a wall cupboard, the sort you keep brooms in. I pulled the door, lifting it
for possible squeaks, and stepped inside. But what excuse can a hidden fireman
offer? I was soaked, enough sweat to put the bloody fire out without hose pipes.

Then the stentorian
voice I knew. My favorite dollop broker. She must be a vision in curlers.
"Who heard a fire alarm?"

Five or six female
voices denied hearing a thing. A man's boots clumped. A fire officer shouting,
who was in authority.

A general search, I
was done for. A walk-in freezer at the far end of the kitchen? No, ta. I'd seen
too many mafia films to hide there. I could always nip out into the garden.
What if the suspicious security man was lurking among the hydrangeas, the
swine? I'd have to brazen it out, join the real firemen—except had Sandy's
widow got the garb right? One wrong epaulette and I'd be exposed as a
fraudster—

"You check,
lady." The fire officer was disappointed the entire place wasn't going up
in flames. "I'll run smoke tests."

"Is that
necessary? You can see quite clearly—"

"Regulations."
He wanted tea with a dash of Glenfiddich.

"I run the test.
Chief?" some hopeful bloke asked, concealed lust in his voice. I imagined
a bevy of beauties on the staircase in fetching disarray, and swallowed. At
least he could see them. I was stuck in a cupboard.

"I'll do it,
Polkinghorn. Outside. Check the roof."

Mutters of reluctant
obedience, the low thunder of boots.

The voices receded. I
risked opening the door slightly. Light fell obliquely in from the corridor.
Silence. I wavered, put my boots on. I should have asked Gunge where they did
smoke tests. Upstairs? Stairwells? I realized with a shock that I was
silhouetted in the doorway, tiptoed out of the kitchen. Three steps up, I was
in the hall, where I’d first met the dollop broker, among the stacked lentils
and jerseys.

Dejection set in.
Sweating, cursing, quivering, I stood like a lemon. The plan seemed so simple:
Get in, wait until quiet night sanded everybody's eyes, then find Connie. But
with fourteen birds wafting about could they possibly keep a fifteenth
imprisoned?

The question I hated:
Was Connie still alive? Voices returned. I ducked under the stairs, a small
cupboard with meters, gas, electricity. Wires everywhere. A couple of metal
boxes hummed steadily. I kept well away, scrunged into a ball, switched my
torch off, prayed.

". . . country
vandals ought to be tackled by the government." The grumbling fire
officer.

“I agree,'' graveled
Miss R. "Flogging too good for them. None of my girls ever ..."

"We’ll check
again in the morning ..."

"I blame the
parents ..."

Talk, farewells,
doors slamming, men distantly calling, engines starting. I prayed Gunge and
Luna had got away, that Luna had done her rehearsed little act with the
gateman. I was just congratulating myself when shock struck.

The women's voices
approached. Lights in the hallway clicked on. More voices. Sets of feet slapped
by—slippers. The kitchen lights. Somebody filled a kettle, women talking. If I
hadn't moved to under the stairs I'd have been caught. I almost fainted. Killed
by a dozen birds in their private mansion.

"Right. Post
mortem."

The dollop broker
clapped hands. Somebody said Mary and Eliza weren't here yet. They were shouted
for, somebody finally going to fetch them. Cups clinked, saucers rattled.
Midnight feast in the dorm.

"Versions,
everybody."

"I think I heard
the sirens first. Miss Reynolds," a voice offered. "I called
Maria."

"I answered the
security gateman's phone. Miss Reynolds. Fire engines had already entered the
drive, and a police van. They ignored his signals to halt."

"Norma. You're D
site supervisor tonight. Any action?''

"None."
Norma was crisp. I imagined her in jodhpurs, riding crop and waisted tan
jacket. Mustn't get on the wrong side of old Norma.

"Carol."
Saying Carol's name was the nearest Miss Reynolds would ever come to cooing.
"You checked the electronics?"

"Nil for person
activity. Miss Reynolds."

The signal for relief
all round. Except the mention of electronics was worrying. I didn't want
anybody probing my nook. Talk began, a few mild quips about the firemen's
expressions, vandals who thought it funny to phone the fire brigade.

"We'll double
Norma's watch. Patricia's next on call."

Patricia groaned, but
accepted her duty. They moved out. Miss Reynolds calling for two to come back
this instant and clear away. She scolded them all upstairs—just because they
were a business partnership didn't mean the Sampney Ladies Academy encouraged
slatternly behavior. . . . Sounds diminished, leaving me solitude.

D sites. D for dollop
sites? Where constant nocturnal supervision was required? Very likely.
Electronic surveillance, rotas of vigilants from within the mansion, not mere
security hirelings. The gatehouse could be left to men, never part of the
dollop broker syndicate.

It was simple.
Headmistress, her school going into liquidation, has a ready-made team. Maybe
their adoring daddies brought in the first dollops. Educated, socially elegant.
And eminently trainable. Who would suspect a schoolhouse of being involved in
international roguery? Playing host to the revenue of great robberies, storage
of antiques filched from museums and country houses. Poor old Prammie Joe had
died because he realized the Cornish Place stuff wasn't going abroad on the
Thames barges, but somewhere inland. Here, in fact. But whose dollop was it?
The killer's, that's who.

Which left the
problem of Connie. She'd presumably been to this school. Wasn't that what
Luna'd said, back in the van? And so had some other birds who were now into
antiques. But some must be nurses, teachers, politicians. So?

Barefoot time. I got
my socks off, edged out of the cubbyhole, bumping my head with a blasphemy as I
stood erect too quickly. Gloaming coming from the distant front door's side
panels, but not enough to move by. A door slammed upstairs, some bird calling
sorry. Silence.

Houses are queer
places. Not only that. This was female, a nest of those unattainables. One on
her lone's pretty formidable. But fourteen? Benign, the house seemed to be
smiling, we ladies are caring, sweet. You have nothing to fear, Lovejoy. Oh,
aye, I thought sardonically. That chestnut. Then why was I trembling, sweat
maddening me down every sloping surface I possessed? I stood a second, moved
across the spacious cold floor. Stairs curving up, me giving the bottom step a
wide berth. I’m clumsy at the best of times. A door at the far side, shown by a
single click of my torch. The damned thing blinded me. I got there, turned the
handle. My boots were hung round my neck, instinct bringing them the safest
way. I halted—what the hell had I done with the bag, my mufti clothes? Christ.
I’d left it outside in the bushes somewhere. Or inside the broom closet? I
heard a faint sound that scared me witless. It was me moaning in alarm.

Then I sussed myself.
Typical. Four whole minutes I’d been standing in the semi-dark, hand on the
doorknob of this mystery room, about to go in and discover . . . what? Connie
hanging, dead? Thoughts are only deceits, ways of avoiding doing. I stepped
inside quickly. Not a sound. Closed the door after me. Darkness, wholesale. No
windows, no light. Not even a wash of nightglow from a curtain edge. I fumbled
the torch in my hand, and felt a faint reverberation. The place was vast,
paneled. Only spacious cathedrals and banqueting halls do that. I switched it
on.

Vast was right. For a
country mansion, that is. Width, distance, length, a roof of lovely rafters.
The paneled walls receded. It could have been an assembly hall, a decorated
gymnasium. I guessed it once doubled as the dining room as well, in the way of
private schools.

But it felt cold.
Parquet flooring, polished. Round the dark oak-paneled walls were photographs.
I moved forward, careful not to crash on my bum to bring the bevy down on me.
The wall photographs showed schoolgirls by the dozen, the score, the hundred.
Colored, then black and white, then sepias. I inspected one—a daguerreotype, I
could swear. The place was a mausoleum, the record of the Sampney Young Ladies
Academy over the years. I shivered, cold. Nothing to cause a draught in the
silent place. But it felt . . . tomblike. A shrine. Nothing living, except a
vase of flowers on a central table—by Ince, I felt, smiling. It deserved
better. A luscious mahogany dining table like that should have been living with
people, not stuck here in this sepulture.

Now, you can't trust
pictures—whether paintings, photos, or engravings. I mean, in 1644 our
first-ever illustrated newspaper, the Mercurius Civicus, published engravings
of Prince Rupert and his sworn enemy Sir Thomas Fairfax—different issues, same
portrait. It turned up later as Prince Maurice, et al. No, pictures aren't
trustworthy.

How old would Connie
be? From her deception about that barmy astrophysics, I worked out a possible
date, started along the lines of photographs. Maharajahs' daughters were among
the fresh faces, African nobility. It was weird, seeing the dress styles evolve
through the decades, right from 1840-something. Hockey matches, cumbersome
skirts for tennis, punting in impossible but lovely high-neck, long-sleeved
blouses properly covering every inch of forearm. Straw hats. One sad Indian
girl wearing a black armband on Speech Day, bravely trying to smile, learning
the Stiff Upper Lip first go, God help the poor little lass. Except she was
long passed on.

The faces came
closer. Now war time, a group of girls laughing fit to burst in Women's Land
Army uniforms. One rolling up her sleeves, about to blow up a barrage balloon.
Girls falling about as a mistress tried to stay sternly in control as shy
soldiers manned their antiaircraft gun, crocodiles of Sampney Young Ladies
filing past. VE Day, clownish celebrations. Long trestled tables on lawns, this
mansion in the background, strolling dignitaries taking tea and cake.

Years moved nearer. I
inched down the panels, flashing and peering. Brighter photographs, hints of
variation in dress. A scarf here, a watch there. School plays, tableaux of
improbable history. Scenes from Empire eased into Commonwealth. Faster changes
as educational theories tumbled, to balls learning up into the current
shambles. Lines of girls depressed at computers. Nervy teachers trying to look
jocular at Last Day celebrations. Diploma lists.