Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Vampire Menace

by Olga Wojtas

  “Quite right too,” I said.

  “They tried to pressurise me by sabotaging the cheese festival.”

  “I don’t think they did,” said Madeleine.

  “Of course they did,” said the mayor. “Why else would they have hidden all the cheese? If it hadn’t been for Madame Maque, there would have been no celebrations, and the villagers would have risen up against me.”

  “Yes, your jacket would definitely have been on a shoogly peg,” I said.

  “What?” said Madeleine.

  “What?” said the mayor.

  “It’s just an expression,” I said, “indicating that your job is insecure.”

  “I think that was merely a side effect, rather than the purpose,” said Madeleine. “You said they don’t know how to make the brandy. They’re such fools, I don’t think they know how to make the cheese either. With the amount of milk the children have been taking to the morgue, there should have been enough cheese to feed the whole of France.” She snapped her fingers. “And of course! That explains why the forest is out of bounds. They don’t want anyone else crushing the sangliers.”

  I froze at her words. Even though I had heard it from the children, I had tried to tell myself that somehow I had misunderstood.

  “Crushing the wild boar?” I asked, hoping she would contradict me.

  “Exactly. It’s a delicate manoeuvre, getting the liquid out. All those little hands are just perfect.”

  “But why do they need the bl – the liquid?” I persisted, repeating the euphemism.

  “That’s what gives the cheese its beautiful red veins and its unique flavour,” said the mayor. “And without it, the brandy would just be boring and clear – but the liquid from the sangliers gives it a beautiful pink colour.”

  I felt quite nauseous at the thought of cheese and brandy laced with blood.

  “I’m sure I’m right,” said Madeleine. “The Jeans haven’t hidden the cheese; they’ve gone into hiding themselves because they haven’t managed to make any. If they wanted the crowd to turn on you and depose you, wouldn’t they have come to watch?”

  The mayor rubbed his eyes. “You may be right about the cheese. But as for the brandy, they gave me a final ultimatum of this evening.” He turned to me. “And thanks to you, Madame Maque, my mind is made up.”

  “Thanks to me?”

  “Yes, the poem, about your Scottish king murdering the snail people.”

  “That’s not quite–” I began.

  “The Jeans have said they will kill me tonight unless I give them the recipe. But if I give them the recipe, there’s nothing to stop them killing me anyway. My decision is made. When I die, the recipe dies with me.”

  Eleven

  “Never say die,” I said. “Go home and get ready for the concert this evening.”

  “But–”

  “The concert this evening,” I repeated firmly. “It will take place as billed. We’ll meet you at seven thirty outside the front door of the town hall. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  The mayor, looking both attractively louche and nobly optimistic, took his leave.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Madeleine.

  “Not me, us,” I said.

  She snorted. “Not me. I’m not getting involved.”

  “What would your beloved Sylvain think of that attitude? Does he go out in the morning telling himself he’s not going to get involved?”

  “He’s a police officer,” she snapped. “I’m not.”

  “You’re a police officer’s wife,” I retorted. That newspaper headline appeared again before my eyes: “Schoolteacher’s Wife Wins Mastermind.” I hoped Miss Blaine wouldn’t find out.

  But the politically incorrect marital link worked. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  I was already formulating a plan. “Do you know who Mary Garden is?”

  “Of course,” said Madeleine. “She’s Debussy’s muse.”

  “Do you know anything about her?”

  “She’s young and she’s English.”

  I glared at her. “Scottish.”

  She didn’t speak but that shrug was a definite “whatever”.

  “Do you know what she looks like?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Does anyone else here know anything about her?”

  “Of course not. Sans-Soleil is not cultured like Sans-Saucisse.”

  “In that case, I’m going to be Mary Garden, and you’re going to be my accompanist.”

  “You?” The incredulity in her voice was really quite insulting.

  “Yes, me. I sing a bit.”

  She gave a sarcastic laugh. “How fortunate that nobody here knows anything about Mademoiselle Garden. Imagine if they had been attracted by the chance of hearing a celebrated diva and found instead a woman who could sing a bit.”

  It would be immodest to tell her I was being modest. She didn’t know about the standing ovation for my solo performance of “Ca’ the Yowes” at the school concert.

  “Also,” she said, “they all know you, so how can you pretend to be someone else?”

  “I not only sing a bit, I also act a bit. And I’m going to be in costume. Do you have a spare bed sheet and some thread?”

  Presently, I was installed in front of the treadle sewing machine. I had learned to sew on a very similar one in primary school, and it struck me that they should be reintroduced since not only are they eco-friendly, requiring no electricity, but they also give the feet and calves a good workout. I began creating a dramatic robe.

  Meanwhile, Madeleine was leafing through her stack of music to find suitable songs. She started to play and I started to sing along.

  She stopped abruptly. “You know it?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Verlaine’s ‘Clair de Lune’, set by Debussy.”

  She harrumphed. Then she said, “You might as well come and see which ones you want to sing.”

  I compiled an excellent programme of Debussy songs, entirely appropriate for a Mary Garden performance, and Madeleine practised them while I put the finishing touches to my costume.

  “I’ll just try it on,” I said, slipping out of my suit and underskirts.

  Madeleine gave a shriek. “Mother of God! Are you a demimondaine?”

  “I most certainly am not,” I said. “I’m from Morningside, which is the acme of respectability.”

  “Respectability? When you’re not wearing drawers?”

  I was wearing extremely respectable M&S high-waisted full briefs. But to Madeleine, they must look like a dental-floss thong.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “The sheet isn’t see-through.”

  “You’re not going out dressed like that,” she declared, sounding exactly like my mother in the 1970s. She went out of the room and returned with a spare pair of bloomers, but it became apparent that they were slightly too snug for me.

  “You can’t even get your leg in them,” she said accusingly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said “I’ll stick with my own underwear. No one will know.”

  “I’ll know,” she said grimly.

  I had some offcuts from the bed sheet, and before I knew it, I was being obliged to make myself some knee-length lingerie with a drawstring and lace trimmings. It was beyond me that such a baggy and shapeless garment could cause such excitement among the elderly gents of Sans-Soleil.

  She looked at me critically once I had added my new flowing robe. “You still look like you.”

  “I’m going to use my watercolours as make-up,” I said. “But what I really need is something on my head. Mary Garden wears all sorts of exotic headdresses.”

  Madeleine grabbed one of the sheets of music. “Here, this lyric of Leconte de Lisle – ‘Crowned with thyme and marjoram’ – we’ll crown you with thyme and marjoram.”

  “Do we have any?” I asked cautiously. “I thought this area wasn’t great for herbs.”

  “Of course we don’t have any. But that means nobody
here has ever seen them – they don’t know what thyme and marjoram look like.”

  She picked up some discarded music and started ripping it up.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “What do you think you’re doing?” Admittedly, it wasn’t a book, but I still can’t bear to see misuse of printed paper.

  “I’m making thyme and marjoram,” she snapped. “Stop complaining. You need to be disguised, don’t you?”

  She was trying to sound brisk and businesslike but I’m very sensitive to nuance, and I realised she was as distressed as I get when I find a borrower’s been folding over the edge of a page rather than using a bookmark.

  I put my hand on hers. “Thank you,” I said. And I meant it.

  That faint tingle again, but still not enough to be the subject of my mission. Miss Blaine was getting on a bit. She must have forgotten to give me the key information about my mission. She had better hurry up and remember, given that I would have to leave the next day.

  I gave a howl of pain and took off my DMs so that I could nurse my big toe.

  “Gout?” said Madeleine. “You English eat too much roast beef.”

  I didn’t even bother to correct her. She was sacrificing her beloved music for me. She was transforming the pages into flowers and leaves, and once she had a pile of them, she got two darning needles and more thread.

  “Sew,” she said.

  We created a monochrome frondescence of blossom and leaves to drape round my head and frame my face.

  “It’s great,” I said, “but I’m not sure that it’s going to stay on.”

  “Your fascinator,” she said. She put my head torch on top of our handiwork, then skilfully arranged swathes of music over it.

  “OK, that works,” I said. “Now take it off.”

  She stared at me.

  “I can’t walk through the village like this, can I?” I said. “And people will see me coming out of your house and work out that it’s me. I’m going to go behind the town hall, change there, and then meet you and the mayor at the front door at seven thirty.”

  “How will you walk through the village without being seen in the first place?” she demanded.

  “I have a technique. I become unobtrusive. All I need is a basket to carry my costume in.”

  “I’ll come with you,” she said. “You need me to paint your face.”

  She was right. I was adept at putting on stage make-up, but using watercolours was a different proposition, especially when Miss Blaine hadn’t equipped me with a pocket mirror. I needed Madeleine, but there was no way I could have her with me. Her undulations affected the menfolk of Sans-Soleil so considerably that I suspected they might still be felt through wood, bricks and wood. As we headed for the back of the town hall, I didn’t want dozens of doors opening to sighs of “Ah, Madeleine!”

  “I’ll manage on my own,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “That’s the best way. When you walk around you’re a bit … obvious.”

  She looked at me with a degree of her previous loathing. Then she picked up a shawl and tied it on as a headscarf. Her shoulders slumped and her bosom became concave rather than convex. She walked across the room without a hint of an undulation.

  “Oh, you’re good,” I said.

  “I know.” It was said without the slightest conceit. She was simply stating a fact. “I had to teach myself to be unnoticeable when I started looking for my Sylvain. Before that, it was ‘Oh, Madeleine, let me carry your basket’, ‘What luck, Madeleine, just the direction I’m going’, ‘You can’t remain a widow for ever, Madeleine.’ Fools!”

  I was reminded of Glenda Jackson on The Morecambe & Wise Show: “All men are fools, and what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got.” Madeleine, whom I had dismissed as someone interested only in making an impression, was capable of giving the impression that she had no beauty at all.

  “I’ve looked for him everywhere,” she muttered. “I’ve covered every centimetre of that forest, I’ve been along every road, path and track. And he’s nowhere to be found.”

  The tremor in her voice suggested that she was close to tears.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “At least you know he’s not in the graveyard.”

  She gaped at me, and I suddenly realised that with all the excitement of the Olympics, I had completely forgotten to tell her.

  “When I went out last night, I exhumed his grave,” I explained. “The coffin was there all right, but it was full of cheese. Cheese with bottles of hooch in it, which is how I worked out what the mayor was up to.”

  She flung her arms round my neck. “Thank you! Oh, thank you! He’s alive! My Sylvain’s alive!”

  “Of course he is,” I said, managing to free myself from the unexpected embrace. “You’ve always said so.”

  “I wasn’t sure,” she faltered. “Sometimes, in the bleakness of the night, I fear my love for him may not have been strong enough, that he might have left me, and I wouldn’t know.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t leave you,” I said heartily. “You’re good-looking, you play the piano well, your vegetable tian is really tasty.”

  “I didn’t mean leave me for someone else,” she snapped. “I meant die.”

  That was embarrassing. “I’m sure he’s fine,” I said. “He’s probably in a grotte somewhere.”

  “But why hasn’t he come home?” she burst out.

  “I’m sure there’s a good reason,” I soothed. “Especially since we’re both certain he wouldn’t leave you for someone else. Tell you what, let’s get this concert out of the way, then we can go and look for him together. I’ve got my fascinator to help light the way. OK? Now, we need some water to energise the pigment in the watercolours. Do you have something we could carry it in?”

  She went and fetched a battered leather-covered water bottle with a strap. “My Sylvain’s,” she said brokenly. “He brought it with him when he came to my village, and refilled it at our village well. His beloved lips have touched it, as have mine.”

  “Lovely,” I said, hoping she had rinsed it thoroughly.

  We put my costume, the watercolours, the water bottle and the sheet music in Madeleine’s wicker basket and, unobtrusive and unobserved, reached the back of the town hall, bypassing the hordes of villagers going in the front door. With difficulty, we eased ourselves past the screen of conifers, and by luck rather than judgment found a tiny path leading to a solid wooden door secured with half a dozen locks and padlocks.

  Madeleine gave a sudden shiver and looked all around her.

  “Oh!” she said. “I thought … no, it’s nothing … it doesn’t matter.”

  I quickly changed into my flowing robe and got out the watercolours.

  “I want something dramatic,” I said. “Black eye liner, blue eyeshadow, carmine lips, bit of rouge on the cheekbones. If it looks too red, dab a bit of green on top to tone it down.”

  Madeleine set to work with the brushes and eventually decided I looked sufficiently dramatic. She sorted out my paper coronet, securing it with the head torch. I prepared to go, but Madeleine pointed down at my feet.

  “They’ll recognise your boots.”

  I took them off and gingerly followed her to the front door. There was no sign of the mayor.

  “He knew we were meeting outside, didn’t he?” I asked. “You heard me say that?”

  Shrug.

  “Maybe he’s waiting for us inside,” I said, pushing the door open.

  The town hall was packed, and everyone turned to look at us. There was still no sign of the mayor, but I couldn’t delay. I raised my arms high.

  “Good evening, Sans-Soleil!” I called.

  There was utter silence as the villagers continued to stare at me.

  “I said,” I said, raising my voice still further, “‘Good evening, Sans-Soleil!’”

  I made encouraging circles with my hands until there were some scattered mutters of “Good evening”.

  Nodding from left to right, I processed up the cent
re aisle and onto the stage, followed by Madeleine, who took her place at the piano, putting the first song on the music stand.

  “It’s a genuine pleasure to be with you all tonight,” I said. “For those of you who haven’t seen me in Paris, I am Mary Garden…” I paused for an ovation which never came. “And let us have a generous round of applause for the lovely Madeleine…” I was forced to pause not only for the clapping but also the sigh. “… who has agreed to be my accompanist. I shall perform a series of songs written by the eminent composer Claude Debussy. The first features lyrics by the Parnassian poet Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle, beginning with the beautiful words ‘crowned with thyme and marjoram.’” I indicated my headdress and nodded to Madeleine to begin playing.

  There was a puzzled muttering from the audience as I sang. When I finished and bowed, one or two people clapped, but that was it.

  “You’re supposed to be a dancer,” called an elderly man. “Let’s see a bit of leg.”

  There was excited muttering from the men and rustling disapproval from the women. They had completely misinterpreted the posters. For a moment, I forgot I was Mary Garden and turned into my default prefect persona. “I am not a dancer, I am a singer,” I said, fixing him with a gimlet eye. “Sit quietly and listen.”

  He subsided, and they all sat quietly and listened while I sang songs about the snow-coloured butterflies, the twilight falling on the sea, and the woodland covered in frost.

  “Thank you, thank you, you’re too kind,” I said, even though only about half of the audience were applauding. “And now a charming song that Debussy has based on the Spanish dance, the seguidilla, entitled ‘A Tight Petticoat on the Hips’.”

  “That’s more like it!” shouted the elderly man. I was about to do the gimlet eye thing again, but Madeleine was already playing the opening chords and I had to start singing. It was quite a catchy number, and the audience were soon clapping along.

  When I finished, another elderly man bellowed, “Dance! Dance!” The men all took up the cry, with an obbligato of tutting and the occasional “Disgraceful!” from the women.