The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (43 page)

‘Looking aces, kid,’ Kali said.

She wore a crimson sari with gold trim. Her nose-stud was a ruby. Her other jewellery was a choker of black pearls and a diadem with a snarling, fanged face – emblem of the Demon.

Emma wore plainclothes, with a WAP tiepin. She was so excited by the reunion her hands were a blur… she rarely showed off her physical speed, concentrating instead on the other aspect of her Ability that had suited her for her profession.

Charlotte Knowles’ book about Emma was called
The Quick-Thinking Inspector Naisbitt
. Given a puzzle or a room full of clues, she could make lightning connections and have a workable hypothesis in her mind before the first fingerprint was lifted. Amy knew it frustrated Emma that she had to wait for everyone else to catch up before she could get on with the job.

‘I left a message with your service,’ said Emma. ‘I’d have come down from London with you…’

‘I was in…’

She really shouldn’t say.

‘Copenhagen,’ deduced Emma, ‘near the Tivoli, in the red-light district. You brought out a rabbi and his wife and daughters. The middle daughter is the one the Navy wanted. An Unusual. Something like what’s-her-name, Imogen Ames. A brain-peeper. She’ll be with a recording angel in Whitehall now, giving names, addresses and lists.’

‘Still in the loop, eh?’ said Kali. ‘Light Fingers keeps an ear to the ground.’

‘No, she
thought it through
,’ said Amy.

‘You’re wearing the coat you wore on the trip,’ said Emma. ‘Coats tell stories.’

Emma was too impatient to explain in detail how she knew what she knew. Amy was too polite to mention it was the
youngest
of the rabbi’s daughters who had drawn battle plans out of a German clerk’s head. Anna Taub wasn’t quite like Ames either. She didn’t just
read
thoughts, she sucked them out. What she knew, the clerk no longer did. The process was painful too, but there was a war on and this was important.

‘She’s already told me stuff that’d get her throat cut if she tried her jazz where it wasn’t wanted,’ said Kali. ‘And my outfit’s fresh on today.’

Amy took her coat off and draped it over a chair.

Kali saluted her uniform.

‘Don’t the WRNS have a Fightin’ Fluke already?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Amy. ‘Jenny Wren. She’s an unsinkable Unusual. I’m not.’

‘Shouldn’t you hang your lid in the WAAF?’

‘I dislike flying… in aeroplanes,’ said Amy, smiling. ‘Besides, it’s not as if I spend much time at sea. I’m seconded on the hush-hush to…’

‘Be like Dad,’ interrupted Emma. ‘Loose lips sink ships. Ranee Kali’s an enemy of the Empire, remember.’

‘I’m the enemy of
every
empire.’

‘Except your own.’

‘The Kali-Yuga isn’t an empire, Em. It’s a
movement
. A philosophical venture. A little bit of a religion, maybe – but not too much. It’s just a thing, you know. An
our thing
thing. I don’t hear any complaints when I mix it with the
Japanese
Empire. Or the Nutzi Nazis… have I told you how much I hate them mugs? Heel-clickin’ heels and goose-steppin’ gooseberries. Know what they remind me of?’

Emma and Amy did.

‘What’s said in Headmistress’s study stays here,’ said Amy. ‘That’s always been the Drearcliff way.’

Dr Swan raised her glass in approval. She was proud of her cygnets, even when they bickered in front of her.

With the world of nations you could find on maps again locked in a Great War, the underworlds were also in flux. Territories were abandoned or occupied, unlikely alliances were formed and old partnerships riven. Interests quietly shepherded over centuries ticked over even as spectacular battles settled nothing very much. The Kali-Yuga was likely to come out of this turmoil as the dominant factor in the secret cabals which ran much that was illegal and more that was dangerous around the globe.

Did Kali ever wear her father’s old Red Flame hood? She was adept in the mastermind’s practice of getting other people to fight her battles for her. Amy was sure the tip-off which set Emma on the trail of the unutterably vile Stepan Volkoff came from Kali. The Master of Mutilation was now clapped up in the Mausoleum, shunned by even the worst of the other inmates. No one complained about that, but the Kali-Yuga benefited from Volkoff’s downfall by taking over his profitable Archipelago of Atrocities.

Amy looked around the room, again and again.

The big book was here – chained to a lectern, under a glass case. Its secrets must have faded from Knowles’ mind by now. The cupboard that was the entrance to the maze inside the walls was newly varnished. Amy trusted the fireman’s pole was polished. The sound of the ticking clocks and other apparatus was the same.

Only the Moth Club were different, really… and if she closed her eyes, they were still Thirds.

Amy had another tingle moment.

‘What ho, fillies,’ boomed a familiar voice.

‘You came,’ Amy exclaimed, turning.

‘Couldn’t miss this… reunion of the reprobates.’

The last of the four stood in the doorway, posed in dramatic flared trenchcoat, lilac dress and black beret.

Lady Serafine Walmergrave, Codename: Seraph.

Her oldest friend – Amy had met her a full hour before she was introduced to Kali and Emma. Having shared tiny cells with stockings hanging from the bedposts for three years, they had still roomed together (in Lamb’s Conduit Street) when they first moved to London. Amy had stuck by Serafine when she was wrung out and vindictive after Clovis threw her over for the little marchioness, then put up with the ups and downs of her tempestuous love life. She had held Serafine’s head over the bucket when she was in a despairing swoon over gallant Captain Geoffrey Jeperson, who was never going to notice her (until he did). She frankly told her friend what she thought – leading to a two-month freeze dissolved with tears when Serafine admitted Amy was right – while she arbitrarily experimented with treating the gall. Capt. appallingly by running off to Gretna Green with Roddy Poulton-Jones. When Serafine came to her senses at the last moment, she telephoned Amy, who flew up to Scotland and rescued her from the altar. It was hard to go through all that – plus a great deal more comedy and tragedy – and remain impressed with someone, but Amy was astonished by and proud of what Codename: Seraph had done for British Intelligence. Without her efforts, the country would be occupied territory, its capital city Birmingham (renamed Hitlerdorf) and the King bolted into an automaton exoskeleton with a mechanical sieg-heiling arm. So long as secrets stayed secret, there would not be a biographical film called
The Woman Who Won the War
– with Deborah Kerr or Googie Withers – but there jolly well ought to be.

Seraph sauntered into the room.

Another habitué of the shadow world, her name was on the members list of Britain’s least-known intelligence and investigative outfit, the Diogenes Club. You could be clapped in the Tower of London for even knowing where she bought her hats. Even Jonathan was wary of the Diogenes Club, dwellers in deeper darks even than Dr Shade. Serafine had been put up for membership by one of their old teachers, Catriona Kaye, and seconded – with superhuman decency, under the circumstances – by Captain Jeperson.

After Mrs Edwards reclaimed her rightful place, it turned out Miss Kaye had been at Drearcliff to keep an eye on Dr Swan’s cygnets. She had been scouting for long-term potential recruits. Amy, Kat Brown (Olympic javelin Silver, 1936), Lu Lamarcroft and Venetia Laurence had done odd jobs for the crown under the aegis of the Diogenes Club, but only Seraph earned full membership.

Dr Auchmuty, the librarian, had also been looking to recruit girls for unusual endeavours, but on a mercenary basis. Her employment agency specialised in adventuresses, seductresses, assassins and deceptively decorative body guards. She had placed the De’Ath Sisters, Bizou and Angela, with the Haghi Circle in Berlin. Doc Och had also made overtures to Gould and Marsh, but they hadn’t been interested.

The others pounced on Seraph. They linked arms and jumped.

‘Ants in your pants,’ said Seraph… who then ducked to avoid the general head-sloshage that came her way.

‘Ouch, ouch, pax pax,’ she said.

‘Not one of my favourite memories,’ said Emma.

‘In spades, sister…’

‘I’ve not thought of that… of Rayne… in… how many years?’ said Amy. ‘Not since…’

She found it hard to concentrate, to fit memories together.

It was like looking through to the Back Here from the Purple. Paule had said you could skip ahead in the playscript or riffle backwards, but you never saw the whole thing properly.

So much had happened… so much.

‘It ended down below, on that pirate ship,’ said Light Fingers.

‘Sea-raider,’ corrected Amy.

‘The
Johanna Pike
,’ said Frecks.

Seraph wore a plain necklace of silver links. Amy realised they were unpicked from her uncle’s coif. Much more stylish and practical than the balaclava, but… just as effective?

‘We stopped the Hooded Conspiracy,’ said Amy. ‘All of us in the Remove…’

Knowles was a writer now, like her father – though she concentrated on true-life crime. She had been ‘Stargazy’ at
Girls’ Paper
before paper shortage killed the publication. Aconita Gould was whatever you called a lady laird. A lairdess? No, probably just a lady. A strike team of German saboteurs who recently landed near Inverglourie Glen with orders to blow up coastal defences were found badly scratched and blubbing on the beach, so Amy knew Gould was contributing to the war effort. Thorn and Frost, on parole, were undergoing tests at a weather research station in Sutton Mallet, to see whether their Abilities had military application. From what she knew of the army’s Unusuals division, Amy thought they’d be better off in jail. Laurence was tucked under Seraph’s wing, travelling between neutral territories with pockets full of experimental fuses and crown jewels. Lamarcroft was in Burma, serving in the Regiment of the Damned. General Flitcroft took anyone tough enough into their ranks, no questions asked, even if they wore petticoats. The Japanese, apparently, were terrified of Lieutenant Lamarcroft, V.C., and called her the Tall Demon Archer Lady. She was still looking for her battlefield.

The others of the Remove, Amy wasn’t sure of… Harper, Dyall, Paquignet, Palgraive. She hoped they’d found places

…even thinking of Dyall made her lose track of things and ponder gaps in her memory… and she was even more discomfited when Palgraive’s smile crossed her mind. There had been a
scene
with Palgraive and Rayne, she knew, but the details were lost in violet haze…

The Purple, again…

‘Paquignet’s at Kew Gardens,’ said Emma. ‘Superintendent Bright had her in for questioning on the Strangling Vine Case. She didn’t do it, though. Some Aztec Nazi cult was behind that.’

Amy didn’t even bother to ask her friend how she had known what she was thinking.

‘Did you see that gangster picture Jan Marsh made with Humphrey Bogart?’ said Kali. ‘Who’d a thunk?’

‘You have picture palaces in the Hindu Kush?’ Seraph asked.

‘We have motion picture
studios
,’ said Kali. ‘We could throw over all the smuggling, blackmail, gambling and jewel-snatching and make more dough legit with musical pictures.’

‘But you won’t?’ said Emma.

Kali shrugged. ‘Where’d be the giggles without deviltry and daring? You’d be out of a job, for a start. It’s not like you can stay home and bake cakes…’

Emma laughed.

A not-always-happy girl, Emma Naisbitt had become a serious, purposeful woman… but Kali could always make her smile. Amy was sad for a moment, because she couldn’t.

This was why the whole Moth Club was needed.

Amy’s antennae buzzed.

She had to resist an urge to touch her forehead, to make sure her feelers hadn’t sprouted. Her back itched too, where once… long ago and in another place… she had grown real wings.

Her friends’ faces wavered. Layers peeled away and she saw them as girls.

It was as if they had returned after years away but only minutes had passed.

‘Dr Swan,’ she said. ‘Something’s always bothered me…’

Headmistress nodded, allowing her to ask a question.

‘Rayne… why did you let her go so far?’

Dr Swan angled her head to one side but said nothing.

‘You knew what she could do… what she was. You knew about the Runnel and the Flute, and Professor Rayne, and the Other Ones, and the Purple… Mauve Mary and Mr Bainter and Kali’s father. You knew what was happening in School, but you left us to deal with it. Us. The Moth Club. The Remove. Everything you had worked for, all the girls you had invested so much time and effort in… you let it all be at hazard. Just… why?’

Headmistress’s eyes opened wider and purple light reflected.

‘I think you have answered your own question, Thomsett,’ said Dr Swan. ‘I have always had confidence in my cygnets.’

Amy was a little queasy – she remembered that, too, from the rise of the Black Skirts, the ways that Rayne and all her works had made her sick.

‘It was an exam?’ said Emma. ‘An exercise?’

‘And you passed.’

Amy was still appalled. At the time, and all these years on, it hadn’t seemed like anything you could call educational. More than just the school had been put in danger.

It had very nearly been the day the sun rose purple.

The Black Skirts might now rule the world, ants swarming over the face of the globe.

And they might all be dead or changed or lost in the ranks.

But Headmistress always had confidence in them.

Her Unusuals had proved themselves. The Remove had come together, even flukes among flukes like Harper and Dyall, and had learned how much more effective they were playing as a team, finding Applications in their complementary Abilities, helping each other overcome handicaps, embracing and celebrating their unique natures.

Afterwards, Amy hadn’t cared what Mother thought of her –
she could fly
.

Light Fingers stopped worrying about what Ordinaries thought or her parents said and came to her own decisions.