Charlotte Says

by Alex Bell

  “Good God,” he said softly. He glanced at me then and said, “Are you all right? Do you need to sit down? Here, have this chair.”

  “Oh Henry, stop fussing, I’m not going to faint,” I said impatiently. “I need you to help me deal with this. The cat must be taken away and disposed of before the girls see it. Estella knows it’s dead so you’d better tell Cassie that the cat got shut in here and died – but perhaps we could say that it ate some rat poison or something?” I ran my hands through my hair. “And then … and then I don’t know. Should we inform Miss Grayson or just clean this up ourselves?”

  Henry gazed at the room for a moment. “Don’t say anything to Miss Grayson,” he said at last. “She’ll put Estella in Solitary again. Her health isn’t good and it’s freezing outside. Perhaps we can talk to her and try to get to the bottom of why she did it.”

  “We don’t know for sure that it was Estella,” I pointed out.

  Henry gave me a startled look. “Who else would it be?” he said. “Besides, didn’t you say you saw her out of bed last night and then back here this morning?”

  “Yes, but it just seems so extreme,” I said. “Why on earth would she do such a thing?”

  Henry sighed. “Estella is a very troubled little girl,” he said, “but Miss Grayson isn’t the type to make allowances. I’ll tell you all about it later, Mim, but you’d better go to class or you’ll be late. I’ll deal with this.” He gestured at the room. “Come and find me during morning break.”

  It was almost time for lessons to start and I was secretly grateful to have an excuse to leave Henry to clear up the mess. I made my way downstairs, arriving just as Miss Grayson rang the bell for the start of class.

  The hours seemed to drag by. I kept a close eye on Estella but she was unusually quiet and didn’t misbehave in any way whatsoever. She kept her head down over her desk, focusing on her lessons with a fierce concentration and not making eye contact with anyone.

  At break time I went to look for Henry, searching all over the place before finally finding him in the kitchen. He had his arms wrapped round Cassie, who was crying quietly, her face pressed against his shoulder. Henry had obviously told her about Whiskers. I noticed a distinct lack of actual tears, for all the noise she was making with those sobs. Resentment rose up in me at once. It was a ferocious feeling, an emotion with claws, and I was astonished at the intensity of it. It seemed especially ridiculous given that Cassie was barely more than a child and yet, the feeling was so painful that I could almost have doubled over where I stood.

  I did no such thing, of course, but remained rigidly upright, through pride as much as anything. Henry saw me over Cassie’s shoulder and gave me a helpless look. I had no choice but to leave them to it and return to the icy schoolyard, where I was just in time to break up a squabble between Alice and Georgia. Alice was in floods of tears because, she said, Georgia had called her a bad word.

  “It wasn’t me!” Georgia protested indignantly. “It was the Frozen Charlottes!”

  “For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed. “If I hear one more of you blame your behaviour on the dolls I’m going to quite lose my temper.”

  The bell rang for class and everyone filed back into the school. After lunch, the girls poured back out to play in the snow and I tracked down Henry outside. As the only man about the place, I knew that he sometimes did odd jobs in the grounds and when I found him he was on his knees, repairing part of the wire cage of the chicken coop. Fortunately it was a safe-enough distance away from everyone that we were able to talk openly.

  “Did you … get rid of Whiskers?” I asked.

  Henry glanced up and nodded. “I cleaned up the blood in the toy room, too,” he said.

  “Thank you. So, tell me about Estella. I find it difficult to believe that a little girl could have done something so violent.”

  Henry sighed. “Someone did it, old thing,” he said. “It’s not as if the dolls could be responsible, is it?”

  I thought of what Estella had said about them but said nothing.

  “Estella isn’t like the rest of the girls here,” Henry went on. “The others all come from impoverished backgrounds, or even the streets, but Estella’s parents were – are – very wealthy.”

  “If her parents are wealthy then couldn’t they have sent her to a nicer school than this?”

  “Of course,” Henry replied. “But, you see, they simply choose not to. They don’t care about her.”

  “How can they not care about their own daughter?” I asked.

  Henry hammered the last nail in the chicken coop then straightened up, brushing the dirt off his hands. “There was an accident,” he said. “Her brother died. Estella was there.”

  “How did it happen?” I asked.

  “They were ice skating,” Henry said, his breath smoking before him in the cold. “But the ice was too thin and her brother, I think his name was John, fell through and got trapped beneath.”

  “That’s hardly Estella’s fault,” I said, already feeling indignant on her behalf. “She’s only a child – there’s nothing she could have done.”

  “The problem wasn’t that he fell through the ice,” Henry said. “The problem was that Estella didn’t fetch help.”

  “She was probably terrified,” I said. “Perhaps she froze and didn’t know what to do.”

  Henry shook his head. “She went back to the house, you see,” he said. “And when her mother asked her where John was, she said that he was in his bedroom.”

  I frowned. “Perhaps she thought she’d get in trouble if she told the truth?”

  Henry gave an unhappy shrug. “Who knows what was going on in her mind, Mim? But the fact is that if she’d fetched help then John might have been saved. As it was, they didn’t find him until hours later and, by that time, he’d long since drowned. It seems like Estella’s compulsive lying began around then and she also started having these terrible fits where she would destroy everything she could get her hands on, throwing vases and plates and suchlike. They had to keep confining her to her room. On one occasion it seems she threw her pet budgie against the wall and, well, cracked his skull open. Her parents didn’t know what to do with her any more. So they sent her here.”

  “How do you know all this about her?” I asked.

  “Miss Grayson has said things from time to time,” Henry said. “And Cassie saw a letter from her parents lying on Miss Grayson’s desk once. I think Cassie is a little spooked by Estella, to be honest. She even told me once that she thought Estella might have pushed her brother through the ice on purpose.”

  “Cassie shouldn’t have been poking about in private letters,” I said, more sharply than I’d meant to. “Or allow her imagination to get the better of her.”

  Henry sighed. “Estella is a lost, unhappy little soul,” he said. “But she doesn’t make things any easier for herself. She’s always misbehaving and getting punished for something or other. Just last summer she made up some wild ghost story about the servants’ staircase and now the other girls are terrified to go near it. She even managed to frighten Cassie and Hannah. Perhaps Estella does it for attention.” He gave me a troubled look. “But this business with Whiskers is … it’s unlike anything she’s done here before.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” I said. “If we tell Miss Grayson then she’ll probably flog her or something, and I don’t think that’s going to help.”

  “I agree with you,” Henry said. He gave me a sudden smile. “If there’s a way to help Estella then we’ll work it out between us, I’m sure.”

  I got another chance to speak with Henry straight after the lunch break when the girls had their drawing lesson. Henry said the snowy weather was too beautiful to waste, and had them bundle up in their cloaks and boots to work outside for a little while. He told them each to pick something to draw – an iced spider web or a frosty window or whatever else they liked. They were to make a rough sketch and then complete their drawings from the comparative warmth of
the classroom.

  As the girls worked, I wandered around overseeing them for a bit and then noticed Estella sitting on the low brick wall that surrounded the vegetable patch, staring up at the second floor of the school. I went over and crouched down by her side. Her drawing pad lay blank and untouched on her lap.

  “Are you going to draw the school?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You’re looking at it very intently,” I pressed.

  Estella turned her gaze on me. “There was a Frozen Charlotte doll,” she said. “Just now. At the window.”

  “Which window?”

  “It was at the toy room window first,” she said, staring up at the school again. “Then it went away from there and then it was suddenly in the dormitory window and then your bedroom window, miss. It’s running around up there, I think, peering out from all the different rooms.”

  “Estella,” I said in my gentlest voice, “dolls don’t move around on their own.”

  She looked back at me. “But how else could it appear at the windows?” she asked. “We’re all out here.”

  I glanced up at the school and, just for the merest fraction of a moment, it seemed like a little white blur appeared on the inside of my bedroom window and then jerked back.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked again but the window was dark and empty. There was nothing there. I shook my head firmly. That white blur had probably been a snowflake – the snow was coming down again heavily now.

  As I turned away, Estella said, “I suppose it could be Miss Grayson playing with the dolls. She does that sometimes after everyone else has gone to sleep. One time I went upstairs to the toy room in the middle of the night and she was rocking back and forth on the rocking horse.”

  “I find that very hard to believe, Estella.”

  Looking back at the school, she said, “Another time, she’d placed all the teddy bears around a blanket and they were having a picnic. She was talking to them and the bears were talking back to her in squeaky voices she put on herself. That’s why she confiscates all the toys. Because she wants to play with them.”

  I leaned a little closer to her. “Estella, look at me,” I said. When she met my gaze I continued, “Tell me honestly. Is that really true?”

  Estella was silent for a long moment. “If I say it’s not true then I’m calling myself a liar,” she said. “And if I say it’s true then you’ll call me a liar anyway.”

  “Let’s get inside, girls,” Henry was calling. “Before we’re lost in a blizzard.”

  I sighed. “Come on,” I said to Estella. “Let’s think of something nice to draw.”

  Stamping the snow from our boots, we piled into the empty classroom. A little fire burned in the fireplace, barely more than a single coal smouldering sullenly. The girls took their seats at the individual desks and started work on their drawings. I went to put some more coal on the fire but found the coal shuttle had been locked. What a horrid old harpy Miss Grayson was. She was such a penny-pincher that I even wondered whether perhaps she scraped a little off the top for her own pleasure. Although what on earth she might spend her money on I had no idea.

  Fortunately Miss Grayson had little interest in drawing lessons. She thought it rather a waste of the girls’ time, since it was only ladies from better families who had the leisure for such things in their adult life. Making pretty sketches was beyond the remit of housemaids. The girls enjoyed the class, though – particularly Martha, who was a very talented artist, especially since Henry allowed her to use her left hand.

  Towards the end of the lesson I walked around the desks to see what the girls had drawn. Most had chosen things they’d seen in the garden. Estella’s drawing, however, was different – a very basic sketch with straight, slashed lines. It showed a lake with a floating stick figure lying horizontally beneath the surface. On the far bank stood another stick man. In the foreground of the drawing was a stick-figure girl, gazing towards the person on the bank.

  “Would you like to tell me about your drawing?” I asked, crouching down beside her.

  “That’s my brother, John, under the ice.” She pointed at the horizontal figure. “And that’s John at the side of the lake. After he’d drowned. Talking to me.”

  I glanced at her but she didn’t return my look. Her concentration was on the drawing as she energetically scribbled in the outline of dark, looming trees surrounding the lake.

  After the lesson, I made my way to Miss Grayson’s study and knocked on the door. When she called for me to enter, I opened the door and stepped inside. I had been in there before when I had taken the key to the luggage room but I hadn’t had the chance to properly examine it on that occasion. It was a plain enough room, with a desk and dark wooden cabinets lining the walls. These were closed and locked, and I couldn’t help wondering what they might contain.

  Miss Grayson was sitting at her desk. When she looked up at me, her mouth was as pinched and serious as always, and I simply could not imagine her running around the schoolhouse playing with dolls while we’d all been engaged outside. Estella was, after all, a compulsive liar. It was how she’d ended up at the school in the first place.

  “Yes?” the schoolmistress said. “Can I help you with something, Miss Black?”

  “I wondered if I might have the key to the toy room?” I said.

  “For what purpose?”

  “It’s just that Henry mentioned seeing the light go on and off in there a few times last night,” I said. “I think the girls might have been in there playing with the dolls’ house. I thought that if the room was kept locked then they wouldn’t be tempted to wander about when they ought to be in bed.”

  I’d hoped that my puritanical approach might be the best way of achieving my aims and, indeed, Miss Grayson looked almost approving as she said, “Very sound. Yes, you may take the key. In fact, take the dormitory key as well. And if they insist on running about the place after lights out then I suggest you lock them in. They’ll learn soon enough.”

  She took two keys from the drawer of her desk, put them on to the same ring and handed it over to me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Whiteladies – Six months earlier

  Determined to speak to Redwing, I made my way down the stairs, searching out light switches and flicking them on as I went. I was not yet properly familiar with Whiteladies, and the house felt strange and still and too quiet in the darkness. The grandfather clock in the entrance hall gave its slow, low tick tock as I walked past, into a corridor that branched off from the main entrance. I was fairly sure this led to Redwing’s study and saw that one of the doors had a thin strip of light shining out from underneath it.

  I paused outside, hesitating, wondering whether I should go inside or not. When I put my ear to the door I couldn’t hear any noise from within. Making up my mind, I raised my hand and knocked.

  Redwing’s mellow voice called at once for me to enter. I took a deep breath, grasped the handle and turned it.

  The door swung open to reveal Redwing’s study, a room I had not yet been into. It was a dark, wood-panelled, elegant space with a lot of deep red leather, glowing paraffin lamps and wing-backed armchairs. The walls were lined with bookshelves and the remains of a fire smouldered in the grate. A big walnut desk dominated the room and this was covered in a large pile of pristine white paper, a box of Frozen Charlotte dolls positioned nearby. Edward Redwing was sitting in the chair behind the desk, a pen held loosely in his hand, the nib slowly releasing an ink spot on to the white paper.

  It looked like he’d been running his hands through his hair – dark strands of it had come loose from their Macassar oil slick, falling down around his face.

  “Is something wrong, Jemima?” he asked, staring at me with bloodshot eyes.

  My gaze fell on the umbrella stand behind his desk, in which sat his rosewood cane. The expression on the hawk’s face was horribly cruel and those ruby eyes seemed to glare at me.

  “I-I’d like to talk to you, p
lease.”

  I immediately hated myself for the stammer, as well as the ‘please’.

  Redwing blinked slowly, then said, “It’s very late.

  I’m astonished that you are still up. Can’t it wait until morning?”

  I almost wavered and returned to bed then, but forced myself to gather together the scraps of my courage. “Actually, no,” I said. “It cannot wait another moment, sir.”

  “Well,” Redwing said, laying down his pen. “That does sound serious.” A slight smile hovered at the edge of his mouth and I could tell he thought he was indulging a child as he gestured towards the chair on the other side of the desk and said, “You’d better sit down.”

  I wanted to insist on standing but didn’t know how to do it without sounding churlish, so I took the chair, perching right on the edge. My eyes kept sliding back to the hawk cane propped in the corner. I longed to turn it to face the wall so those ruby-red eyes would stop looking at me.

  “Were you … writing a letter?” I asked, gesturing at the sheaf of blank paper.

  I had no interest at all in Redwing’s correspondence but merely asked the question to buy myself some time.

  Redwing glanced at the paper and said, “I thought I would try a spot of automatic writing but I’m afraid that, so far, my efforts have not been particularly productive.”

  “Automatic writing?”

  “I first heard about it at the Ghost Club,” Redwing said, leaning back in his chair. “It involves putting oneself into a trance and then inviting spirits to use you as a vessel to communicate.” He looked down at the papers. “I thought I might reach Vanessa this way but so far I have not been successful, as you can see.”

  I frowned. “But … is that not dangerous? My grandmother always said you should never invite spirits to take over your body. Anything could be waiting and listening – not just ghosts but ghouls and dark spirits. Even demons, which are the most dangerous of—”