The Lies of Fair Ladies

by Jonathan Gash

  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."<
br />
  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.

  "That's where she held her."

  One chair, plain wood, still with its auction number on it. Ordure, excrement, urine stained the poor old thing. Quite good, just mid-seventeenth century, when chair-making became a craft separate from village joinery. Basically a chair in medieval joinery style, panel back with a carved crest, flat seat, plain front legs neatly turned. Its arm supports were missing. I saw those, crudely sawn off and chucked against the wall. Chain links trailed to new iron rings set in the wall. Sampney taught its young ladies all manner of skills. Maybe she'd practiced, I thought queasily. On what? On whom?

  "Lovejoy?" Cradhead asked, wondering.

  "She kept Connie here, chained. Forty-eight hours was her goal. I knocked some time since, no answer."

  "Search the place, lads," Cradhead called. The uniforms plodded downstairs, meeting another load coming up. He exclaimed in exasperation. "Well, Lovejoy?"

  Consecrated. This place was not a church exactly, but a Meeting

  House. I was looking at it. A prerequisite. The Witch-Finder General used holiness like a net. Was this the selfsame holy place where the witch trials were held? I didn't know enough to be certain. But the door to this upstairs hall was original. And that horrible chunk anciently cut out of it, like a cat flap, clumsily repaired with wrong beechwood by some nerk. For the familiar, the gremlin spirit that accompanies a witch. That's why Veil had gone, maybe knowing something evil was about to happen. Maybe her message to me was a kind of warning.

  "The Priory, Craddie." The one place left. "She's there."

  "Why?"

  Because Connie would be too ill, after over forty hours chained to a chair in her own filth, maybe maimed or battered, to walk anywhere. Had her kidnapper helpers? Like, say. Acker Kirwin, who'd killed Connie's business partner Rye at the mill? I wasn't sure. I was already clattering downstairs, thrashing my way through the useless Plod in Gunge's wake. I said nothing. Forty-four hours. Four left. It would be dawn when Connie died.

  "Jake!" I yelled, tearing across the narrow street into the ruins. "Jake! It's me, Lovejoy!"

  Like an idiot I'd forgotten my torch. I realized I was still barefoot when the churchyard path started hacking my feet. I've a brain like lightning. Gunge crashed ahead. Somebody running with me among the old overgrown gravestones shone a lamp. Others took up the cue. Somebody with sense rushed along the street to the main Priory gate, and now shone torches into the steep ruins from there. Cromwell's men, Fairfax and his lot, had crunched this religious foundation in the Great Civil War. It had stayed crunched.

  "Go right. Gunge," I called, still yelling for Jake.

  But the fire was out, cold some time. No Jake, presumably wanting a quiet night, or starting off early to notch another trudge to Norwich.

  "Lovejoy?" Gunge, tears a-trickle, looking at me. "What've they done with her?"

  "Wait."

  A plodmobile, its driver brighter than the rest, drove in from the street below. Its beam heads shown through the elder and birch. Surreal. Browns, creams, russets of the gaunt ruins stretched into the night sky. Scrubby little shrubs clung to the mortar, hung over the toothy remains of arches. Pillars always stay last, don't they? Eighteenth-century gravestones, several dozen. Connie could be in any one. Or not. Could we search them all, underground vaults, in, what, three hours? It had been an enormous priory, supporting scores of religious. They'd had fish pools for Fridays, two wells . . .

  Wells. I looked up, astonished to discover rain teeming on my upturned face, oblique light catching the drops as they came at me out of the night sky. Wells. I wish I’d asked Therla's friend Josh more, fought the library harder for a book about the Witch-Finder. I’d had time, once. No time now.

  In the old days, they'd caught the poor old crones, the so-say witches. Strapped them to a chair. Tortured, as a matter of course. Kept them awake. Extracted confessions. Then, forty-eight hours later, they'd ''swum" them. Float equaled guilt. Drown, innocence. Water. You needed water.

  "She's here. Gunge. In a well. Or in the fish pools."

  "Fish pools are dry here, sir. The wells aren't."

  I stared at the tall constable. Cradhead asking him details.

  "I come painting here, sir," the constable said, embarrassed. "The fish pools dry four or five times a year. Like now."

  "Lovejoy. What wells?"

  "The abbots had wells. The Colne's half a mile off, downhill."

  Cradhead started calling orders. Uniforms rushed off. More cars came, more lights. Somebody rigged up spotlights—in the wrong places, of course. Gunge was like a mad thing, tearing aside the great gravestones, anything that possibly might be a well covering, blubbering in panic that infected us all. The tall constable came with me.

  We wasted an hour. They'd put out a call for Elizabeth Cassandra Clark, but that only warns miscreants
to get the hell out. Some hopes. Wet through, worn out, I found myself at Jake's cold fire.

  And finally began to think. Jake usually seemed to camp hereabouts. Never up slope. Never down slope, below the last level of wall. Yet he'd be just as well hidden there as here—and he could use the old crumbled Priory as a windbreak for his sack tent. Yet he camped here. I borrowed the copper's flashlamp.

  The ashes of a good dozen fires, Jake style, were within twenty feet. Why?

  Because he forever brewed up. Find a tramp, find a brew. For which you need water. If fish pools dried often, you'd need a well. Shopkeepers on the street wouldn't give a tramp like Jake the time of day, let alone fill his billy can.

  "Here, Craddie," I yelled. Within yards of where I was.

  You go in rings, make circles to search. It was a patch cleared of vegetation that gave it away. A gravestone about six feet long by three wide in the undergrowth, covered loosely by brambles. I hauled them aside. They came easily, which is something brambles never, ever do. They cling and rip your hands. I once rescued a blackbird in my own bramble-riddled hedge from a cat. The blackbird flew off without a word of thanks. I got cut to blazes.

  A patch of earth, a crescent, scoured clean of vegetation. Pure dark earth. I tried shoving it, calling, "Connie? Connie?" Then pulling. I tried knocking on it. Tramps must be tough, if they do this all the time. I was having another go when I got lifted, literally lifted and lobbed aside. Gunge bent, grabbed the stone and flipped it over, nearly driving the constable into the ground like a tent peg.

  "Lights! Lights!" Cradhead was shouting.

  Big size twelves crushed the earth about my face. I peered over the edge of the well, down. Down into the face of Connie, alive, looking up.

  "Lovejoy?"

  Inaudible. She was trying to croak out my name, but only managed to move her lips. She was tied to something in a sitting position, maybe on a stool, hands behind her back. Her hair was matted about her face. She was breast-deep in water. A dead rat floated by her shoulder.