by Susan Thomas
---oOo---
Anne added Mr Davenport to her list and began quietly finding out about her three suspects: Mr Davenport, Miss Dunwoody and Miss Wynne-Jones. She was frustrated by the fact that they seemed to live boringly blameless lives. Mr Davenport was writing a text book for undergraduate Classics' students and that, together with school activities and duties, kept him fully occupied. Miss Dunwoody not only ran the school drama club and put on all the productions, but also ran a village drama group and staged their productions. Miss Wynne-Jones was, unbelievably, a local magistrate which was hard for the school to work around, but it did, and Anne really couldn't see her as a cocaine smuggler.
She made a list of every member of staff, even including the part-time cleaners, and went through them all. Not one single person stood out. There was something against each one being a crafty smuggler and besides she hadn't got a clue where the cocaine, if indeed there was any, would be stored. She sneaked around searching attics, storerooms and outdoor sheds and got nothing but cobwebs and frustrations. She hated the thought of simply giving up, but her position in the school was getting embarrassing. Miss Derbyshire wanted her to captain the hockey team; Mr Davenport wanted her to read a poem he had written in Latin for the Carol Service; and Miss Dunwoody wanted her to play Lady Macbeth in a school production. If she really had been a schoolgirl she would have been delighted, but any day now she could be pulled out. She decided on one last attempt to see if she could spot something.
She warned Sam she would be out a long time, and dressed in dark clothing, she sneaked down the back stairs and walked across the school grounds. She positioned herself on the path that led from the boathouse to the school and waited. She waited a long time. If there was any smuggling, tonight would be the night: the moon was full and the tide high, enabling anyone with a boat to slip in quietly and hand over the drugs before slipping away again into night. But nobody came down the path or returned. All was as quiet as the grave. At three in the morning a tired Anne gave up and returned to the school. The only light on was in poor old Chaplain Whiston's small house… probably another late night visiting the sick on behalf of the local vicar.
As soon as she got onto the corridor where her room was, she knew something was wrong. Her room light was on, her house mistress was standing just inside and Sam was sitting up in bed looking both stubborn and terrified.
"Well, who is he?" Her house mistress, not normally an angry person, sounded furious.
"What do you mean?"
Anne's tired mind wondered if Sam had revealed her identity.
"This boy you've sneaked off to see. What a foolish girl you are Martin. You'll end in trouble you know."
Anne cast a quick glance at Sam who shook her head. Sam had not told on her. Bless the girl, she would probably get a caning for this but she had said nothing.
Anne was cold and tired but she pulled herself upright and said in a calm voice, "I'm afraid I must respectfully decline to answer that question, Miss."
"Right, girl. Get your night things and come with me to the infirmary. Tomorrow you will be seeing Dr Hardcourt."
Anne flopped into one of the beds in the infirmary with relief. She was tired. The school day was busy and full and to add to that she had been out in the cold for hours. In spite of the trouble she was in she fell asleep and was awoken by Matron at a luxurious eight o'clock. Matron was a plump woman with a kindly manner, who told Anne that she was having her breakfast with her after which she must get washed and into her school uniform ready to see Dr Hardcourt at ten.
"You know my dear you are a silly girl. No boy is worth it. If you get a bun in the oven, you'll not see him for love nor money, and there you will be with a baby at your age. What would your poor father say?"
Anne didn't know where to begin with this level of misunderstanding. She wondered if she should just confess all and escape but her stubborn side was dissatisfied. She was sure Superintendent Craig was right, and if she revealed herself it might send the smuggler scuttling to cover his or her tracks. This was the ideal place for a cocaine smuggler. It dawned on her that if a boat had come in last night, she had been in the wrong place. She should have been down by the boat house. Perhaps it wasn't stored in the school but nearby, and the culprit returned to the school by another route. However, if she said nothing she was in for a terrible caning. She remembered that Sam said Dr Hardcourt caned really hard and on the bare bottom. As she showered (the water luxuriously warmer than the usual showers) she ran her hands over her smooth bottom. If she said nothing she was going to have painful welts. Could she take it? Of course she could! She had taken a knife off that thug in her first week on duty... she knew she could do this, however unpleasant and painful it might be.
At ten o'clock matron marched her into Dr Hardcourt who sat behind his desk looking like a High Court judge. Miss Drake-Harrington, his deputy, stood beside him looking as if she had a very bad smell directly under her nostrils. Anne nearly giggled when she realised that it looked as if the deputy thought Dr Hardcourt was smelly.
"Now then Martin," said Dr Hardcourt. He sounded very severe. "This is a most serious matter. You have left the school in the middle of the night to see a boy, or worse still, a man. That alone is bad enough but there is a very real possibility that a girl behaving like that could... er..." He glanced at his deputy for help.
"The headmaster is worried you could be with child. We need to know who this boy or man is. We must put a stop to it Martin... for your sake as well as the schools."
"I have done nothing wrong, Dr Hardcourt. Well, of course, I did leave the school, but outside of that I did nothing wrong and I assure you I am not pregnant."
The two teachers flinched at Anne's use of the word pregnant. "If you did not see a member of the opposite sex what did you do?"
"I must respectfully decline to answer that question. However, I was not having sexual intercourse."
The teachers flinched again at Anne's forthright language and went into a whispered conversation before Dr Hardcourt spoke again. "Martin, I don't wish to do this, but I fear I must speak with your father."
Anne smiled as her real father had been dead for years and the man that delivered her to the school most certainly wouldn't want to be contacted. He was only doing a favour for a friend.
"That will be difficult sir. My father is in Peru walking the Inca Trail. I doubt he is anywhere near a telephone." She was amazed at her inventiveness.
Dr Hardcourt frowned. "Very well Martin. Tell me now what you were doing. If you do not, then I must cane you most severely, and that will not be the end of the matter."
"I'm sorry sir, I must respectfully decline to answer that question."
"Very well. Miss Drake-Harrington, will you see to it that Martin is made ready. I will leave you for a short while."
Anne felt her stomach lurch. This was terrible. She had found being slippered on the bare bottom by Sergeant Peters bad enough, but this was worse. At least she had really done something wrong to earn her slippering and the humiliation that went with it. How could she bare herself in front of these two and take a severe caning? She wanted to reveal who she was and escape this. Superintendent Craig couldn't expect her to do this, could he? She knew the men had a strange attitude to women in the force but surely he wouldn't expect her to take this.
"Martin!"
Anne pulled out of the whirlpool of her thoughts and looked at the deputy head in surprise. Had the woman been talking to her?
"Did you say something, Miss?"
"Yes Martin. Quite a lot of 'somethings' as a matter of fact. I can see that you are having second thoughts. Do you wish to tell me what you were doing?"
"No, Miss. I'm sorry. I really wasn't with a man, or a boy come to that, but I can't tell you what I was doing."
"Then you will be punished severely. Please remove your blazer, skirt and underskirt."
Anne felt her face got hot with embarrassment. There was something about the cold formality
of this that seemed worse than the spanking from Sgt Peters. She removed her blazer and hung it on a peg pointed out to her. Then she undid her skirt and stepped out of it. The deputy head took it from her and laid it most carefully across the back of a chair. Her underskirt followed and she stood in her knickers feeling terribly embarrassed.
"Now then Martin, I want you to bend right over Dr Hardcourt's desk and stretch your hands out to the other side. I will call the headmaster in and then I will lower your knickers. I shall come and hold your hands throughout your punishment. That is to avoid any unseemly attempts to delay or prevent the caning. Make no mistake Martin, this will be painful. Even now you can mitigate your punishment by making a full revelation about what you were doing."
Anne felt a deep resentment as she bent across the table. To her it seemed outrageous that a male head could beat a teenage girl on the bare bottom whether Miss Drake-Harrington was present or not. If she wasn't sure that Superintendent Craig was right she wouldn't take this; she was doing this out of duty just as the women of the Special Operations Executive risked torture during the war. She heard the deputy open the door and say in a most respectful voice, "We are ready for you now headmaster."
As the deputy's footsteps came back towards her, Anne's' heart began to race. This was hideously frightening. She felt the deputy head's hands on her waist and the fingers hooked into the waist band of her knickers. Her face went first hot, and then stone cold, and back to hot again, as she felt her knickers drawn right down to her knees. Her blouse was lifted and rolled up onto her back and she felt the chill of exposure on her bottom.
Miss Drake-Harrington came round again and, sitting down, gripped Anne's hands in a vice like grip. Anne sensed, rather than heard, Dr Hardcourt enter the room, and her face burned with the embarrassment of her exposure. There came the chilling sound of a cane being swished through the air and her heart rate increased for the punishment was about to start. The cold cane rested on her bottom... so chill against her warm skin. There was a flurry of movement and then a vicious blow across the centre of her bottom. It felt as if it went deep down into her and then the pain hit. Such pain. It was so intense it filled her whole mind. She shrieked out and pulled so violently she freed herself from the hands that gripped her and shot upright, scrabbling to clutch her bottom.
"Disgraceful," the sharp tongue of the deputy hissed. "A St Agnes girl takes her punishments bravely."
Anne had heard a great many foul put downs since becoming a WPC and they all sprang to mind, but she held them all in, and glared at Miss Drake-Harrington before bending over the table once again. There came another flurry of movement and again a vicious blow across the centre of her bottom. Anne shrieked again, indifferent to the deputy, but apart from a violent wriggle of her bottom, kept in place. Now there were two deeply throbbing lines across her bottom which seemed a thousand times more sensitive than usual.
The sound of the third stroke seemed to fill the whole room and was followed another shriek from Anne. The pain was too much for stoicism and she burst into tears. A stray thought entered her brain that Sam had been right... she no longer cared about her exposure to Dr Hardcourt... the pain of her caning was just so great.
Crack! The cane buried itself low down in the tender flesh where Anne's bottom and thighs merged. The extraordinarily sharp intenseness of the stroke had her writhing in position while Miss Drake-Harrington struggled to hold her hands.
The deputy whispered across the desk, "Martin, you can be excused further punishment at six strokes if you declare what you were doing."
Anne looked at the woman opposite with contempt. "Isn't that called torture? Tell all and we'll stop hurting you."
She got a ferocious look in return but then the fifth stroke struck and Anne could no longer see for her eyes were so filled with tears. As each fresh stroke cracked down hard on her bottom she shrieked and writhed. Her mind was unable to comprehend how painful this caning was. It seemed eternal as if there was only an endless series of blows and her shrieking herself hoarse. Then she knew Miss Drake-Harrington had let go of her hands but she couldn't think why. Her bottom throbbed and pulsed with hot burning lines of pain and finally she realised her caning was over.
The deputy helped her to dress. It was not a kindly act but an impatient and critical one as if having to be helped after such a beating was a sign of weakness. Anne was taken to the infirmary where Matron made her take off her skirt, underskirt and knickers all over again. This was with good purpose though. She placed a cold wet towel on Anne's poor striped bottom. It was surprising how much it relieved the fierce throbbing heat of her welts. She also gave her hot sweet tea and some biscuits and was generally sympathetic. She clearly didn't believe Anne hadn't been with a boy because she gave her some condoms and told her how to put them on her 'young man'.
Soon Sam joined her. She had been given six on her bare bottom by the House Mistress and, although not as severe a punishment as Anne's, she too got Matron's cold wet towels, tea and sympathy. Their sentence was to be gated for two weeks and when not in class confined to the infirmary. At the end of the two weeks Anne had to tell what she was doing or face another caning. As it turned out, being in the infirmary was no punishment. No girl was sick at present and Matron liked having them around. The beds were softer, the shower warmer and at bedtime Matron made cocoa and provided buns.
A week after her caning Anne was with other girls walking across the Quadrangle toward her Latin lesson. Her welts had gone down but were now painful bruises which she noticed every time she sat down or stood up. The other girls regarded her with awe. She had a boyfriend, had sex with him and taken a caning rather than reveal his identity. They desperately wanted to ask her lots of questions but teachers quickly intervened if they tried.
As she walked a black Wolseley car pulled up and to her surprise Superintendent Craig got out. He spotted her and called out, "You, girl. Yes, you. Take me to the headmaster if you please."
Anne obeyed and as soon as they were out of earshot of the other girls he hissed at her. "You've not left anything at the dead letter box. I was worried. What's going on?"
"I got caught outside and am gated and confined to the infirmary when not in class. They think I'm having an affair with a boy. I have to say what I was up to next week or else."
"Damn. Are you prepared to carry on?"
"Yes sir."
"Right, since Hardcourt is in the clear I'd best take him into my confidence."
Superintendent Craig made short work of the School Secretary and, with Anne in tow, marched into Dr Hardcourt's office. The Headmaster told Anne she might go and was surprised when his visitor asked that she stay.
"The fact is, Headmaster, that I owe you an apology."
"Why?"
"Anne Martin is not a schoolgirl. She is not even sixteen. She is a WPC working for me."
Dr Hardcourt went pale. Anne knew exactly what he was thinking and it was about the twelve terrible strokes of the cane he had given her. She stepped back a little, so Superintendent Craig couldn't see her, put her finger to her lips and shook her head. She didn't want that to be gossiped about for she'd never live it down.
Dr Hardcourt was shocked at the suspicions held by the police about his school but agreed to cooperate fully in every way. He thought quickly, and came up with the idea that Anne had revealed the name of the imaginary boy, who had now been packed off to relatives in Kenya. Anne and Sam could go back to their room and Anne would be free to search as she would. Superintendent Craig shook his hand, thanked Anne and left. Anne was left with the headmaster.
"Look Martin, I feel terrible about caning you. I really ought to confess to your superiors you know. Surely you ought to get an award or something?"
"I'd rather you didn't sir. If that got out, the men would tease me unmercifully."
"Very well. I'll explain to Miss Wynne-Jones that you have been with me and I'll sort out everything else. I have one question though… why am I not a suspect?"
"You were, but I followed you one night. I borrowed cook's bike and saw where you went and who you met." Dr Hardcourt went white. "Don't worry sir. I didn't report what I saw and I won't. I think to reveal it after I discovered it by accident would be unfair. Anyway I don't see the harm."
Dr Hardcourt was movingly grateful and Anne knew she'd made a friend for life. In the evening Anne sat depressed in her room. She had no suspects and no clue as to what, if anything, was going on. She sat looking down the staff list she had made and the notes that she had written beside each one. She could see nothing wrong with her conclusions. None of these people could possibly be cocaine smugglers.
"What you doing Anne?" asked Sam.
"It's a list of all the staff members and why they can't be who I am looking for."
"May I look?"
Anne couldn't really insult Sam by refusing. After all the girl had even taken a nasty caning rather than reveal what she knew. She handed over the list. Sam scanned it quickly and nodded every now and then until finally she looked up.
"You've missed someone out."
"Really? Who?"
"Chaplain Whiston."
Anne sat in stunned silence. The Chaplain! How could she have been so stupid? Of course he was a member of staff. Not only that, he was always out at night, supposedly visiting the sick, but what a wonderful cover for sometimes going down to the beach to receive cocaine. Thinking about it, she recalled that there had been a light in his house the night she had watched the path. Since the chapel and his house were set apart somewhat he could have come back from the boat house on a path she wasn't watching. The chapel was older than the school. It dated back to the original medieval house no longer standing. There would be lots of hiding places there and she hadn't searched it.
