The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Most of the Staff – and not a few of the Fifths and Sixths – looked as if they’d spent the night at a cockfight in an opium den followed by an orgy in a gin-house, then come straight to the Chapel without going to bed. The unscratchable Gryce might have looked fresh from eight hours of innocent sleep, but Crowninshield and Buller showed a satisfying collection of cuts and bruises. Paule was distracted, as usual. Did she even properly notice what happened outside the Purple, or even remember what she’d said last night?

  ‘She won’t be got rid of till the third dawn.’

  If Paule meant the third dawn after Kali’s abduction, that would be first thing Monday. Tomorrow morning! In a terror spasm, Amy envisioned a scimitar held up to catch the sun’s first rays and Kali’s lovely neck stretched on a chopping block.

  Miss Dryden’s straining organ rose in a crescendo, giving the Reverend Mr Bainter his cue. The chaplain had to hide behind a curtain while Staff and Girls took their pews. He emerged, wearing a peculiar tricorn mitre with candle-tassles which burned like slow fuses and smelled like Kali’s joss cigarettes.

  With his hair-slickum, cheek-powder and a lotion which whiffed powerfully of aniseed, Ponce Bainter took to the pulpit like an ageing prima donna to the stage. Amy had thought all clergymen orthodox, respectable and slightly dull. Bainter was more than slightly dull, given to prefacing and concluding sermons with droning Tibetan chants, but was far from orthodox and, as all the girls were certain, quite the reverse of respectable. He seldom mentioned Our Lord Jesus Christ, an important figure in the sermons Amy had heard elsewhere. His vestments and altar cloths were embroidered with symbols not found in other churches – mediaeval scientific implements, monocular starfish, bipedal goats, wavy lines, the constellation of the Plough and snarly faced moons. The upside-down woman on the wheel, as represented on the school badge, featured heavily.

  The text for today’s sermon was the school motto, A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi. Amy, incapable of concentrating on Bainter’s windy talk, still didn’t find out where the wolves came into it.

  Mentally, she wrestled with a different text, ‘Oh, she’s Rapunzel, waiting.’

  Amy was stumped as to what Paule could have meant. Kali didn’t have particularly long hair or (so far as Amy knew) a devoted swain intent on spiriting her off. Some wet girls whispered she’d eloped with Ivor Novello, but that was tommyrot. Kali detested matinee idols, and preferred a mug with a snub-nosed ‘gat’ in his fist to a gent with a high-pitched serenade. Now, if Lon Chaney were walking around North Somerset on his knees, snarling insults, then Kali might have been tempted… Kali was a princess, but Rapunzel was practically the only fairy-tale heroine Amy could think of who wasn’t. Technically, Rapunzel probably became a princess after the story was over – provided the prince who climbed up her hair did the decent thing and married her. Wondering why Miss Kaye obviously skipped passages in reading aloud to the form, Amy had looked up the original Brothers Grimm; in that, the prince caddishly got Rapunzel preggers and was blinded for it. Rapunzel was famously a prisoner in a tower, so maybe Paule meant Kali was being held captive. Rapunzel’s gaoler was her stepmother, but Kali’s father went through wives so rapidly no stepmother stuck around long enough to plot against her.

  ‘You, Amy Thomsett, Desdemona Third,’ shouted Bainter, raising his voice, pointing a finger. Girls edged away, putting clear space between them and Amy.

  Had Ponce known she wasn’t paying attention? If so, why single her out? If anyone in Chapel wasn’t thinking of something other than the sermon, it would have been a miracle.

  ‘Answer the Question!’

  Amy ummed. She had no idea what the Question was.

  ‘“With a precipice in front and wolves behind, what would you do?”’ rasped Frecks out of the side of her mouth.

  Amy said the first thing that came into her mind.

  All School tittered, except Ponce – whose eyes bulged with fury.

  Amy caught herself. She had said ‘I’d float over the precipice…’

  Dr Swan, eyes firmly shut throughout Bainter’s sermon, blinked alert and clapped once, silencing laughter.

  ‘…the wolves would rush over the edge,’ continued Amy, hoping she could claim she was trying to be funny, ‘and be dashed to death on the jagged rocks below.’

  ‘And you, Thomsett, where would you be?’

  ‘Ah, away with the fairies?’

  Thunderous laughter. A note was passed along the pew and pressed into Amy’s hand.

  She looked. It read MAJOR INFRACTION, R. Wyke (Mrs).

  XIV: At the Heel

  CLEANING THE HEEL wasn’t quite as frightful as advertised. It was done with toothbrushes, but Infractors didn’t have to use their own. Stout-bristled specimens were provided. Buckets of water and carbolic soap were also involved. Amy had imagined toiling alone, perhaps with hobbling weights, but reported to the Quad after Chapel to find herself in with a shower from all Forms and Houses. These miscreants had either clocked up enough Minor Infractions to qualify for the punishment or – like Amy, convicted of Impertinence in Chapel – gone for the High Jump and got caught in a Major.

  School Rules decreed that a Major Infraction automatically got you the Heel, but – in a rare, merciful touch – obliterated outstanding Stains like the four Minors Amy had in her book, so you started fresh next week. Anyone with five Black Notches who wanted to do something appalling might find it almost worth the throw. Unity Crawford of Viola, known to all as ‘Vanity’, was here for pouring red ink on the dress shirt of a girl who had beaten her to the role of Lucas Cleeve, male lead in the Arthur Wing Pinero Players’ production of The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith. Polly ‘Perky’ Palgraive was here because her constant smile irritated the Witches so much they piled Minors on her in the hope of wiping it away. She was cheerful, if glassy-eyed. Amy remembered what Paule had said about the maggot in her brain and decided to start cleaning at the opposite end. The anarchist Hannah Absalom – who mortified a different monarch, plutocrat, churchman or politician every Monday – was up on her regular Major. She set grimly to scraping ‘Death to President Zog of Albania!’ off the Heel, cleaning the canvas for next week’s message of terror.

  This week, the Heel was supervised by Miss Kaye. She brought a lawn-chair and a book, and let the girls get to it. She had a hamper and promised lemonade at the end of the job. Amy gathered they were lucky. When Fossil was in charge, she stood over Infractors with her Bunsen burner tube and added extra encouragement if the pace slackened.

  Still, this was a pestiferous bother.

  Every moment she was here, scraping grime out from under Achilles’s marble toenails, she wasn’t looking for Kali. If Paule were right, the Moth Club had to find – and rescue – their cell-mate before sun-up tomorrow.

  It was done inside an hour. Miss Kaye inspected the Heel, deemed it suitably spotless, and gave the girls – Infractors no longer, their records clean as the marble – lemonade. Absalom refused hers on political grounds.

  Miss Kaye – Acting Mrs Edwards – wasn’t like other teachers. She wasn’t here for life, so lacked the cowed, cringing attitude even termagants like Fossil had around Dr Swan. She had read out ‘Rapunzel’, albeit in edited form – so she might have an idea.

  Amy asked, ‘Why would anyone say Kali Chattopadhyay was “like Rapunzel, waiting”?’

  Miss Kaye was surprised.

  ‘Chattopadhyay’s hair isn’t long,’ she said, touching her own trimmed bob. ‘And she didn’t wait. She took off. If found, she’ll be scrubbing the Heel all term. Headmistress takes a dim view of absconders. Though she’s been in less of a bate about Chattopadhyay than Ferrers III last term. Funny, that. When Ferrers III went over the wall, the Chief Constable was summoned, notices put in the papers, the countryside combed by search parties and the truant tracked by private detectives to a boarding house in Torquay. I’d have thought a Kafiristani princess an even greater loss. But there’s been little fuss.’

  Was Dr Swan tryi
ng to avoid bad publicity?

  ‘Kali’s father happens to be in Birmingham on business,’ continued Miss Kaye. ‘Buying rifles from Webley and Scott, I believe. He is due to pay a call on School tomorrow. That will, I imagine, be an uncomfortable occasion. Parents don’t generally take it kindly when their daughters go missing.’

  Vanity snorted. She had the full set of parents, but still played the orphan. She acted up fearfully in the forlorn hope of getting attention. Amy suspected Vanity regretted not thinking of running away, preferably in disguise, to become the centre of a whirlwind of speculation. If she scarpered now, she’d be accused of imitating Kali – a severe blow to her reputation as an ‘original’. Of course, it wouldn’t be plagiarism. Kali had not, despite what Inchfawn swore, gone off on her own accord. She’d been snatched!

  ‘But why “Rapunzel, waiting”?’

  Miss Kaye shrugged, not casually. Her eyes showed lively interest. There were some – well, Smudge, inevitably – who said she was a spy. Frecks, who knew about the espionage game, said Oxenford wasn’t as far off as usual about Miss Kaye. There were ‘tells’, apparently. After last night, Amy wondered if Smudge wasn’t imaginative enough – her fictions paled beside the unexaggerated truth of Dora Paule and the Purple. From now on, she might believe the girl on principle. The verdict was that Miss Kaye was at Drearcliff for some purpose beyond filling in for Mrs Edwards. Amy felt she could trust the temporary teacher in a way she couldn’t trust Headmistress or Ponce Bainter or Miss Borrodale.

  ‘Rapunzel sat in her tower, waiting for her prince to call “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair”,’ said Miss Kaye. ‘The story seems to have gone beyond that in Chattopadhyay’s case. Her prince has already come and spirited her off.’

  ‘But, Miss, it wasn’t like that. I saw hooded men take her away. Against her will.’

  Miss Kaye’s eyes narrowed. Amy could tell Miss Kaye had no reason not to believe her and maybe more than reason to doubt Inchfawn’s story.

  ‘When Rapunzel was waiting, she was in a tower,’ said Miss Kaye. ‘With no way in but an upper window.’

  Amy had to concentrate hard to keep on the ground.

  That was it! The tower! Kali was being held in the tower. The broken tower on the beach, surrounded by ‘Danger’ and ‘Keep Out’ signs. What better place to keep a prisoner?

  She must tell the Moth Club.

  XV: A Meeting of the Moth Club

  WHILE AMY WAS taking her punishment in the Quad, the rest of the Moth Club had not been idle. Returning to their cell, she found Light Fingers picking twigs out of her Sunday pinafore and Frecks in a state of high excitement.

  ‘After Chapel, we spotted Crowninshield and her homunculus of a sister sneaking off grounds,’ Frecks explained. ‘Light Fingers tailed them. She can dog a person’s tracks without being seen. Useful knack if you can come by it. There’s a secret way through the wall, hidden by ivy. Which is nice to know. No more braving the glass spikes.’

  Light Fingers had worn her Large Dark Prominent domino, but not the full Moth Club get-up.

  ‘They took a hamper down to the beach,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Contraband from the kitchens.’

  ‘You’ll never guess where they were headed!’ declared Frecks.

  ‘I bet I can,’ said Amy. ‘The tower!’

  Frecks and Light Fingers presented studies in bugging eyes and open mouths.

  ‘Good gravy, Thomsett,’ said Frecks, ‘how the diddle did you tumble?’

  Amy hadn’t told her chums about the Purple, not to keep a secret but because she didn’t think she could explain without seeming potty. Floating and gills and hummingbird hands fell within the accepted realms of Drearcliff strangeness, but Paule’s peculiarity was excessive even by School standards.

  ‘Someone mentioned Rapunzel,’ Amy said weakly.

  ‘Ah-hah,’ said Frecks. ‘She of the upstairs dungeon. The mists clear!’

  ‘When the weird sisters got to the tower, a rope ladder was let down from an upper window,’ said Light Fingers. ‘There’s no other way in. The hamper was hooked to the ladder and pulled up. I didn’t see who was doing the pulling…’

  ‘It must have been the Hooded Conspirators,’ enthused Frecks. ‘If they’ve got Kali, she’s in the tower!’

  ‘Crumpets,’ exclaimed Amy.

  ‘I don’t see why they haven’t spirited her away or done her in,’ said Frecks. ‘They’re running a fearful risk sticking close to School. Perhaps Kali’s being held for ransom and Swan’s keeping mum?’

  ‘Miss Kaye said Mr Chattopadhyay is coming down tomorrow. Perhaps he’s bringing a princess’s price with him. Kali’s weight in gold coins or blood rubies.’

  ‘I wouldn’t cross Kali’s dad,’ said Frecks. ‘He’s not the sort to take Hooded Conspiracies with a song and a philosophical laugh. He’s the sort who hunts down enemies and garrottes them, their children, their parents, their friends and their pets. Come tomorrow, I shouldn’t care to be a white mouse owned by the sweetheart of a cousin of a Hooded Conspirator!’

  ‘We can’t wait for tomorrow,’ said Amy. ‘Mr Chattopadhyay will be too late. Even if he takes the earliest train from Birmingham, Joxer won’t get him to School till well after dawn. And that’s when Kali will be got rid of. The third dawn!’

  ‘How do you know this?’ asked Light Fingers.

  ‘I feel it in my moth antennae,’ Amy explained. ‘Really, I do. You’ll have to take it on trust.’

  That hung there in the cell for the briefest flicker.

  ‘Good enough for me,’ said Frecks. ‘The word of a Moth Club girl is not to be doubted!’

  Frecks stuck out her paw, which Amy gripped. Light Fingers grasped their enlocked hands.

  It was already getting dark. Girls were drifting towards the Refectory.

  ‘We can’t hare off now,’ said Frecks. ‘If we’re marked absent at Supper they’ll raise the whole School after us. It’ll be torture sitting and eating as if nothing were amiss, but we’ve got to be valiant. After nosh, we fly!’

  XVI: An Upstairs Dungeon

  THE MOON WAS just past full, the night sky clear. Wet shingles shimmered and tidal pools reflected constellations as the Moth Club – in full costume – crept towards the tower.

  Being off School Grounds at any time was a Major Infraction. At this hour it was probably cause for expulsion and disgrace. Their cots were stuffed with pillows, in case Wicked Wyke sprang one of her occasional inspections.

  ‘Should we call “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair”?’ ventured Frecks. ‘Might give Kali heart to know rescue is at hand.’

  Amy – Kentish Glory – shook her head. Stealth was the order of the evening.

  The three girls blithely passed Danger! and Keep Out! signs, and climbed the rocks and rubble piled around the base of the broken tower. The footing was unsure. Rubbery, slippery seaweed-coated broken, tilted surfaces. Deceptive pools were populated by scuttling crustaceans with angry eyes on stalks. Up close, there was more of the tower than Amy had thought. What had sheared away with the crumbling cliff was the top of a fortified lookout post, built when Somerset expected invading Welsh warriors any minute. They would have had names like Dai the Dreadful, Evans the Eviscerator and Bloodthirsty Blodwyn.

  Like Rapunzel’s upstairs dungeon, the tower had no ground-level entrance – and no windows for the first thirty feet or so. Leaning inland at a greater angle than the Tower of Pisa, it was a wonder the remnant hadn’t completely collapsed. Smudge claimed it had been shored up in olden days and used as a lookout post by Cap’n Belzybub, the masked raider who once reddened these waters with the blood of innocent sailors.

  Light Fingers indicated the window from which the rope ladder had been lowered. It was near the top.

  It was down to Kentish Glory to swarm the tower.

  Looking at the window, she made herself light. She floated up two or three feet in a spurt and bumped against the inclining stone wall. Her friends winced in sympathy, but she held
her tongue.

  The wall was rough enough to afford handholds every few feet. The way was too crumbly and irregular for mountaineering, but she was a floater not a climber. She pulled herself up, careful not to get too far from the wall. She angled her body to avoid scraping her legs. It was like swimming through air. The cloak-wings helped her manoeuvre. Could she ever use them to fly properly? A strong wind blew. She had to be wary of being caught by a gust and borne off into open air.

  She had a moment to realise she’d never floated this far off the ground before. Then, near the window, the urgency of her mission overcame other concerns.

  She heard voices inside the tower. The shock made her suddenly heavier. Gravity tugged and she slithered down a few yards, then flattened against the wall, sticking like a moth, cloak spread around her. It took all her concentration to stay light and hold her position.

  The talk was in a language she didn’t know. Eastern gabble, she thought. Mr Chattopadhyay had many enemies in his home country, especially former in-laws. Could this be a revenge plan? Using the bandit rajah’s daughter to lure him to a spot where he could be assassinated. If someone else killed her father, Kali would be furious.

  Amy inched up towards the window. Rather than pop her head over the sill, she climbed beside the opening and listened. The conversation stalled. She detected dim light from inside the tower.

  Then, she surged up the final few feet and reached the broken battlements. She hopped over, and made herself heavy enough to put her feet on what turned out to be the rotted timbers of a platform-like roof. Creaking wood began to give way under her. She had to float again, taking her weight off the unsafe roof, and gripped the secure stone. She sat in a gap in the battlements and listened. Her racket had not alerted the Hooded Conspirators.

  She looked down and waved. Frecks and Light Fingers – Willow Ermine and Large Dark Prominent – waved back…

  …when Kali was in the Moth Club, what name would she take? Amy hadn’t looked up the moths of Kafiristan, but suspected they were exotic species.