The Lies of Fair Ladies (40 page)

My breathing felt
funny. I was getting close. I knew it. The girls were modern now, dates recent.
Bicycles, a motorcycle even. Sleeker motors parked by this mansion, now
captioned "Big School House.'' Foundation ceremonies, blokes in chains of
office, improbable gleaming spades and sham trowels, breaking the sod, laying
foundation stones.

Plays, even dances,
standards tumbling as the years rattled numbers. One long school photograph.
Miss Reynolds the headmistress looking moronic in a mortarboard and gown.
Democracy wasn't going to raise its head at her Young Ladies Academy. Then the
shortening. The school dwindled, few from overseas. The school uniform looked
archaic. Biology laboratory's closure. Miss Reynolds smiling defiance at the
camera. The last sixth form physics class. Chemistry no more, as costly
subjects bit the dust. One bright spot as the Academy launched a Grand Joint
Venture

with somewhere else—a
stiffly segregated arrangement of imitation smiles as two groups of school
governors learnt the cruelties of double-entry accounting. Then the end game,
desperate Sampney Goes It Alone photographs. One sad spurt of hope as a new
boathouse was donated by a new up-and-coming local politician. Good old Oliver
Carstairs! Luna not with him—before they were married? Hardly. She'd mentioned
some troublesome daughter, wouldn't work or go to college.

The This Year's
Intake pictures ended. The Academy dwindled, down to the last pained
photograph. Jennifer Calamy, happy to be the smallest. It hurt—not that I loved
my school; I hated the damned place. But these lasses and their teachers didn't
seem to. Are all school photographs frauds? Dated some six years previous. Miss
Reynolds, chin raised, among her charges. I could tell she'd determined to punish
society for the degradation suffered by her beloved Academy. Her expression was
no longer defiance. It was cold, aimed. Aimed out there, at the horrid world
that had shredded her dream time. At us. And us was anyone.

That final year was
something. Parties, merriment, a veritable Waterloo Ball of devil-may-careness.
And the ending, motors arriving, girls tearful on steps, parents shaking hands.
A final check-donation ceremony but this time amid piles of packing cases,
stacks of books, desks balanced. The hallway. A vigorous local politician,
electioneering even as the crew ejected. Ubiquitous old Oliver.

The photographs ended
in Favorite Memories. The last of the girls. Girls looking up from desks in
bright sunlight, so lovelily young they pulled at your heart. The last team
match, hockey, lacrosse. A dash of craziness at tiddly winks, an illicit dorm
party with—gasp at madcap naughtiness!—two bottles of beer and a bra on show,
girls rolling in the aisles with laughter. Then one photograph I stared at closer.

A fancy dress party,
with faces I knew. Connie Hopkins, close to tears, in a witch's cloak, pointed
hat, astride a broomstick. Cassandra Clark, more mature, in a tricorn hat and
gentleman's frock coat, white flat cravat on black. Cromwellian, a Puritan? And
a tiny girl, an executioner with an axe. In that getup, was it Jenny Calamy? I
peered at the names below the picture. Difficult with a torch, small lettering.
E. C. Clark must be Cassandra. C. A. Hopkins the witch. Yes, J. E. F. Calamy.

How long I stood
there I don't know. But now there wasn't any point in staying. Nor even, I
realized, in keeping quiet. I only needed to know one thing now. I could go.
Time Cradhead and

Drinkwater earned
their cost-of-living-adjusted monies. I walked away, switched the lights on.
The place shrank, became sadder, unthreatening in the harsh glim.

Across the hallway,
me putting the lights on as I went. God, but the lunacy of storing all those
dated schoolbooks, desks, struck me more than ever as I made the kitchen and
found more switches. What did Miss R. hope to do, reopen the Academy with her
ill-gotten gains? My bag wasn't in the broom cupboard. Sod it. I must have left
it outside. You can't depend on things.

And, I noted
bitterly, the bloody tea they'd brewed was cleared away. The biscuit barrels
were sealed inside a glass-fronted press. I was really narked. Typical selfish
women. No thought of an intruder happening by during the owl hours and feeling
hungry. Oh no. I clattered the kettle, got it going, but the bloody tea was
locked, and I can't make coffee to save my life. But there was a radio, and a
smoke alarm. A smoldering hankie takes only seconds to do. Wake up, idlers.

They came at me
mob-handed. By then I was sitting on one of their crummy stools, whistling
along with the golden oldies. The fire alarm was shrilling its intermittent
bat-squeaks. It set off others through the building.

"Anybody got the
key to the grub?" I asked them while they stared. Miss Reynolds shoved
through.

I was right. She was
a fantastic sight. A nightgown big enough for four. No curlers, but perfection
shouldn't be ruined. The girls were gorgeous, but threatening. Being a
barefooted fireman saved me.

"Wait,
please." I counted them.

One or two had
rounders bats, I saw uncomfortably. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I'd reached the
total. Still no Cassandra Clark. No Connie, because she was being tortured,
chained to a chair elsewhere. No Jenny Calamy. And of course no Veil—too poor
to have shared in their exalted upbringing.

No more theories.

"Thank you,
ladies," I said. "Could you call the police, Maria?" I didn't
know which one she was, but I sounded as if I did. "And waken those idlers
at the gatehouse, will you, love?"

The kettle shrilled
piercingly, adding to the din from the wireless and the smoke alarms. I'd be
glad to get home.

Thirty-Four

They gave me more
than tea and a wad, as it happened. It was like being in a beautiful
assembly—it was being. The police still hadn't been called. Maria quelled the
vigilantes outside by a terse call. No fire brigade. No blue lamps blinked on
the lawns. It was three in the morning. Four sorts of cake on a silver
gadrooned tray. I felt a hobo gone royal.

Miss Reynolds was
holding forth in her private drawing room. She looked wrapped in a linen
shroud. "You see, Lovejoy, we give an essential service.''

The girls murmured,
nodding. I liked Maria. She could nod to me any time she liked.

"Yes, I see
that," I said, to general relief. "We're looking after a dollop of
yours, for heaven's sake!" "And I'm glad. Miss Reynolds. After seeing
your organization. Cast iron. I'm very pleased."

More satisfied
smiles. Only one lass yawned, and she'd tried not to. Infected, I yawned as
well.

"The point is,
Lovejoy, we manage well. On our own." The silence hung. Heads moved,
paused in mid nod. "We don't need partners."

No dollop broker ever
starves. They take virtually no risks. Company fronts, banks in Jersey or the
Isle of Man, and they live the life of Riley. People with stolen goods have
simply nowhere else to go. If a thief wants to be safe from arrest, he has to
use a dolloper. Or take the staggering chance of burying the loot under his
pal's shed. And we all know what happens to loot stashed with friends, right?
It vanishes, along with the friends.

Something in my
expression must have showed, because there was a faint stir. Any other time I
would have sat mesmerized to watch so many birds stir, but I hadn't long. Forty
hours since Connie went missing. I—no, Connie—had few hours left.

''We know how you
antique dealers see us, Lovejoy." Miss Reynolds was all prim. "But
somebody has to maintain standards. Morality is preserved here at Sampney
Academy. We're proud to—"

"I need a
phone," I interrupted, to show whose side I was on.

Miss Reynolds nodded.
I was given one from a wall compartment.

"Gunge? You
there?" I went even redder, because he'd just answered. I'm hopeless on
phones. Only Italians and Yanks have telephone skills. Genetics, I daresay.

"Found
Connie?" the receiver rumbled. My hand vibrated.

"I think I know
where she is. Gunge. The place near the Priory ruins. Upstairs. In the
massage—"

"Marvella's?
Where are you?" I heard Luna demanding, let me speak to him this instant
and all that.

"Where you left
me." I fixed Miss Reynolds. "Connie Hopkins isn't here. I've not
searched, but—"

"What if she
is?" Deep voices have more threat, haven't they?

"Then I'm
wrong." Blood drained from my face. All very well for me to be wrong.
Connie would die. "Am I, Miss Reynolds?"

Her face looked
genuine. The girls' responses seemed so. One or two were asking each other
questions, tilting their heads like they do when confidential.

"Connie Hopkins?
No, Lovejoy. Is she why you're here?" She interrogated her lasses with
sharp glances. They all looked back, shaking heads, wanting to ask what was
going on.

"Everybody says
no. Gunge." Just me, trying to spread the responsibility. "Go now."

The phone burred. I
looked about. I was sick of my fireman's uniform. I'd taken my helmet off. I
didn't know whether to wait for Gunge to rescue Connie, or to get going myself.
If this lot was having me on—

The doorbell went,
one long peal. Again. Miss Reynolds gave an imperious flick of a finger. A lass
scampered off, nightdress billowing about her form, making me swallow.

''Listen,'' I told
her. "I need a lift. Can I have a motor?"

"To what
purpose?" Miss Reynolds was a bargainer.

To the purpose of
stopping one of your illustrious young ladies horribly murdering another of
your I.Y.L. I thought it, but could not say.

"Evening,
all." Cradhead entered briskly, doing the thick copper joke. "Bit
much even for you, Lovejoy."

He meant so many
birds. I was up, beaming.

"Can you drive
fast, Craddie? We've a way to go."

"Fast as I like.
Evening, ladies."

Miss Reynolds came
after, her bulk darkening the hallway. "Lovejoy. You will keep us
informed, won't you? This establishment always has prided itself on the welfare
of its young ladies. We shouldn't want anything untoward—"

My hate suddenly
broke. I turned, thrust my face at hers. She recoiled, actually lifted her arm
to ward off a blow. I never swung it.

"I just don't
believe you never saw the plight of little Connie Hopkins in your rotten
school," I heard myself say. "Or realized the horror Cassandra Clark
was planning. Keep your fucking standards. Headmistress. Find out what happens
any way you can."

Cradhead was alone, I
saw. An unmarked motorcar. He set a siren going somehow, me saying left, head
for town.

"Anything to
tell me, Lovejoy?" he asked conversationally as he roared and braked,
battling the narrow lanes with swift gear changes. "Seeing you've told the
whole school."

We were on the trunk
road before I recovered enough to think. "Do us a favor. Tell them not to
nick Gunge's van for speeding."

He called on a squawk
box. "Description?"

Whoops. I cleared my
throat, looked at the speeding night. "Sort of Bill box, actually. Blue
light."

He inhaled, gathered
himself. "It's a phony police van, lads. Let it through. Follow—" He
glanced at me for confirmation. "Do not detain."

I asked if this
frigging wheelbarrow couldn't go any faster. He set his mouth in a thin line
and drove on, grimmer than before.

The town seemed
derelict, empty. But that was only night's hand, cold over everything. The
traffic lights, changing for no traffic to obey, always gives me the spooks.
And that part of town, one of the

oldest, never was
Piccadilly. Like I said, it's got old buildings antedating the Tudors.

No light in the upper
story where Marvella held her rejuvenation clinics, or what, while her pal's
snake eyes stared.

"She has a
snake," I told Cradhead. "Watch out."

"Snake snake,
old chap?" he asked.

"Real. It's
enormous. In a cage."

Gunge had barely
arrived. He was trying the door. Two Old Bill cars were winking blue
fractiousness, five or six uniformed bobbies milling uncertainly. They hadn't
been told what brain cells to use—always assuming, of course. They're taught to
surge to no effect in basic training. They stared at me, a barefooted fireman
in part of a uniform.

"Break it,
lads," Craddie said.

Neurones chugged into
life on command: Break it.

They leapt and
crushed the door in, stood back with pride as me and Cradhead bounded up the
stairs after Gunge's massive bulk ripped on and through. He was so worked up he
didn't put the lights on. I did, knowing where the switches were. Cradhead
noticed that, said nothing. The constabulary came thundering after.

"Phew.
Christ."

The stench was
appalling. Nothing in the sparse outer room. Nothing really in the massage
room, the long upper story with its beams and plain ancient walls. I was struck
by the curious resemblance to the chapel-like form of the place.