The Outcast Girls

by Alys Clare

  ‘I’m pleased,’ Lily says. She adds tentatively, ‘Is Green Dormitory a pleasant place?’ And are you happy in it? is what she really wants to know.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Marigold says fervently. ‘We comfort and reassure each other when we get scared, and we all look after Chandra because she’s Indian and she gets very homesick, so we try to cheer her up and give her things from our tuck boxes if we have stuff to spare and we let her read out huge extracts from the long letters her mother sends her, only they’re in her own language and she’s not very good at quick translation so it gets a bit tedious actually, and we care about each other, we’re like a group of sisters.’

  When we get scared.

  Now why, Lily wonders uneasily, do these young girls get scared?

  It is something she must think about, for these words come as no surprise.

  Marigold’s mention of correspondence from home reminds Lily of what Marigold said about letters from her own mother, and how she failed to respond to Marigold’s specific questions. There had been something about a jade tiger called Claud …

  ‘I expect you all receive letters and parcels,’ she says.

  Marigold shrugs. ‘A few,’ she admits grudgingly. Then, her voice slightly brighter, ‘I’m not sure who she is, but there’s someone who leaves things for me with the kitchen maid. Food parcels, with things like Victoria sponges and rock cakes. They’re not much good but it’s nice of her. I think she knows my family,’ she adds offhandedly.

  ‘That must make you feel special. Does it not?’ she prompts when Marigold doesn’t reply.

  Marigold is picking at a frayed edge of the blanket and merely nods.

  Lily recalls Marigold’s behaviour yesterday. She is wondering how to encourage her to talk about whatever is worrying her when abruptly Marigold bursts out, ‘They came to England, Father and Mother!’

  ‘They – but I thought it was a long time since you had seen them?’ But then she has a sudden memory of Matron mentioning a visit in the previous September.

  ‘I know, I wanted to tell you because I knew that’s what you thought, and you’ve been very kind to me and it felt bad to let you believe an untruth, but I— Oh, Nurse, it’s awful, and I know I’ve probably got in a muddle and I’ve misunderstood and I’m being stupid – people always think I’m stupid because of how I talk and how I walk, but I’m not, I’m not, and—’

  She pauses for breath, and Lily reaches for her hand. Taking advantage of the temporary cessation of Marigold’s distressed outpourings, she says quietly, ‘I don’t think you are anything of the sort, Marigold. I think you are a particularly intelligent and astute girl, and I am quite sure someone as clever as you knows what astute means.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marigold mutters. She sniffs, and wipes her nose on her woolly glove.

  ‘Now that we have established that,’ Lily goes on, ‘I shall add that I perceive you are distressed, that something has happened that disturbs you, and that you are wondering whether this something is real or in your imagination. If it is the latter, then you will feel foolish mentioning it. If the former, you will feel guilty if you do not share it with someone who may be able to help.’

  Marigold is looking at her wide-eyed. ‘How did you know?’ she breathes. ‘That’s exactly how I feel!’

  Lily smiles modestly. ‘Experience,’ she replies. Then, still holding Marigold’s hand, she says, ‘You can tell me if you like, although of course you don’t have to.’

  Marigold shoots her a swift glance. ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you ever since I met you. I felt you were – that you would—’ She stops, her cheeks reddening in embarrassment.

  Lily gives her a moment to recover her composure.

  Then Lily says calmly, ‘Sometimes just speaking our worries to another person helps us to see them for what they really are.’

  Marigold is silent for some time. Then she says in a rush, ‘They came to England, Daddy and Mother, last autumn. I have three younger brothers, Roger, Raymond and Rafe, and a little sister called Rosemary but she’s still a baby. Roger was seven last year and it was time he went to a good preparatory school’ – Lily hears the voice of a parent in the child’s words – ‘and they brought him to England to go to Daddy’s old school, and when they’d done that they came here to see me, but it was a very short visit indeed although that truly wasn’t their fault as they had to hurry to catch their boat and I’m sure they’d have liked it to have been longer and Daddy said it was a shame it was so brief and it would have been simply marvellous if it could have been longer because we haven’t seen each other since I was sent away from India when I was nearly four to come here to be treated for my leg and my lip and everything and – and—’ But her tears are overcoming her and she cannot go on.

  Lily lets go of the small hand and instead puts her arm round Marigold, drawing her close. Responding instantly to the gesture, Marigold turns into Lily’s chest and buries her face, her body shaking with her sobs.

  Presently Lily says, ‘It is so painful, and I understand, and indeed it is a pity that they could not have spared more time, but sadly ships sail when they want to and not when—’

  But Marigold is struggling to sit up, pushing tear-damp hair out of her eyes, staring up at Lily with an expression of deep distress.

  ‘Oh, but you don’t understand!’ she cries wildly.

  ‘Then tell me,’ Lily says quietly.

  Marigold gulps a couple of times. ‘Do you remember, yesterday I said about Mother not responding to things I said?’

  ‘I do. She didn’t answer when you referred to Claud and when he was going to kiss you.’

  ‘That was just a silly, babyish game,’ Marigold says dismissively. ‘But it’s what it means that’s important! Oh, oh, don’t you see?’

  ‘I—’

  But Marigold is into her stride now. ‘She doesn’t respond when I try to play the Claud game with her in our letters just like she never responds to everything else, to all the little things I remember from when I was very small, and they think I don’t realize, they think I’m just being silly like they’re always saying I am, and childish, and that I can’t possibly remember so clearly from back then because I was only an infant and far too young to understand, and now they think I can’t possibly have noticed, not in a million billion years, because I’m stupid’ – she spits out the hated word – ‘and I don’t count.’

  Feeling a chill around her heart, Lily says very softly, ‘What do they think you haven’t noticed, Marigold?’

  For some moments Marigold sits staring up at her, as if even now, having gone so far, she can’t quite bring herself to reveal what it is that is distressing her so profoundly. But then she straightens up, squares her small shoulders and says, ‘I do not believe that woman is my mother.’

  After a couple of changes of train, Felix is finally ejected onto the small platform of a minute station far out in the lonely chill of the north somewhere between Forres and Nairn, early on Sunday morning. The air is biting, the sky high above is pale blue and mist partially obscures the landscape. He has spent a long and uncomfortable night, he has managed at most an hour and a half of sleep, he is stiff and very hungry and he is wondering why on earth he is here and what exactly he hopes to achieve.

  A wizened, shrivelled clerk takes his ticket, and Felix wonders if he always looks like that or if he has been shrunk by the intense cold. In answer to Felix’s query concerning Findhorn Hall, he stares blankly and silently for some moments before jerking his head to the right. Then he disappears back inside his booth and slams the door. Felix hears the sound of a bolt being shot.

  Reflecting on his warm and open-hearted welcome to Scotland, he pulls his scarf up over his nose and mouth – the air feels like ice – and trudges on his way.

  In the Sabbath quiet he heads off down the narrow little lane, which is hardly more than a track, its surface compacted mud with two deep, parallel indentations where wheels run. There is sea to his right and before him the lin
e of a stream or small river snaking its way down from the higher ground inland. An enormous house looms up out of the sea fret ahead and to the right, and as he draws nearer he makes out a stone wall high enough that not even a tall man could see over it, in a fine state of repair. The track converges with the line of the wall, and presently he comes to a pair of strong iron gates.

  Beside the right-hand gatepost there is a letter box – this house is obviously important enough to have its own – and set into the same gatepost is a neat rectangle of slate into which is incised Findhorn Hall.

  The gates are locked. Felix peers through the bars and sees a well-tended drive leading to the semicircular opening in front of the huge house, which is a monstrosity in dark stone with towers and turrets, battlements and buttresses. There is a carriage porch in the middle of the front wall, and Felix can just make out a pair of stout doors, black-painted and banded with iron.

  Smoke issues from several of the chimneys and muffled sounds of early morning activity carry on the still air, the sharp edges dulled in the mist. Clearly there is somebody at home …

  He waits, uncertain. There is a heavy black-painted iron bell pull beside the gates, which would undoubtedly summon someone to see who he is and what he wants. But what will he say in reply? I’m a private investigator and I’m here to ask exactly what sort of madness affects Cameron MacKilliver and what significance, if any, there is to the fact that he and his brother are members of the Band of Angels and the Band of Angels support a girls’ school in the Fens where girls have gone missing and two women have been killed?

  Any manservant worth the cost of his employ, Felix reflects, would refuse him entry at best and give him a good kicking for his temerity at worst.

  He hears the sound of a pony and trap, and someone is whistling cheerfully. Turning, he watches as a red-faced man, well wrapped up and wearing a huge knitted hat, pulls up the pony, jumps down and unloads a crate of groceries.

  ‘Good morning!’ Felix says, mildly surprised that there is a delivery on a Sunday. The inhabitants of Findhorn Hall must be good customers. ‘Are you going in?’ The man laughs shortly. ‘Not me. The dogs will be out. I leave the deliveries here’ – he indicates a low wooden platform beside the gates – ‘and someone comes out for them.’

  ‘Dogs?’ Felix echoes.

  ‘Aye. Couple of wolfhounds and a mastiff.’

  ‘They don’t like visitors, then?’

  The man gives him a slightly suspicious look. ‘They like those they invite well enough, but that’s the reason they don’t welcome the uninvited ones,’ he explains after a moment. Leaning closer, he says, ‘Lords and dukes and the like, you understand. Even royalty, on occasion. Good fishing, and the moorland’s fine for deer and grouse.’ He climbs back on to the trap. ‘No guests just now, and the brothers are from home,’ he adds, jerking his thumb at the crate he has just deposited. ‘I’d be leaving three or four times that much if they were in residence.’ He eyes Felix uncertainly for a further moment, then says, ‘You could ask up at Covesea Abbey, up the road there.’ He points. ‘Someone might help you, the Stirlings and the MacKillivers being long acquainted.’

  Then he slaps the reins on the pony’s backside and they trot away.

  Felix is still staring up at Findhorn Hall. The idea of a houseful of servants in a house where the masters are absent is tantalizing, but Felix has no excuse for demanding entry and asking intrusive questions and he knows he’d receive short shrift. Berating himself for coming so far on nothing more than an impulse, he sets off down the track towards the stone bridge he can see ahead where it crosses the river.

  From the summit of the bridge’s hump he spots another house, to his left and inland from the small clutch of dwellings that huddle round a little harbour over to the right. This too is a sizeable building, set in open parkland into which the surrounding moorland is making steady encroachments, and he assumes it is Covesea Abbey. Home of the Stirling family … The name is familiar, and he knows he has heard it recently. He decides to let his mind work away on puzzling out where this was without any conscious help from him, and carries on walking. Coming to a bifurcation in the track, he follows the delivery man’s advice, takes the left-hand fork and heads towards the big house.

  He can see even from a hundred yards away that this house has not been cared for in the way that Findhorn Hall has. Approaching, he wonders if anything at all in the way of maintenance has been done for years. The drive is full of stringy grass and weeds, and there are deep potholes filled with half-frozen puddles. The house is infested with ivy, there is a hole in the roof, and the few visible patches of stonework are darkly stained where water from leaking gutters has penetrated. Gates lie open between the remnants of what was once a fence and one is almost off its hinges.

  There is a rotting wooden board hanging from the right-hand gate. Felix makes out most of the letters of Covesea Abbey.

  The building is too dilapidated, and its outlines too fudged by ivy, to detect if it really was once an abbey, or whether a newer construction was erected after the demise of the religious foundation. Encouraged by the wide-open gates, hoping the delivery man was right and someone here really will help, Felix walks on determinedly to the battered old front door.

  There is no bell pull here, only a heavy iron knocker that has all but seized up. Felix manages to raise it, creating a shower of rust, and he bangs it down on the ancient wood a couple of times. He waits, listening, and presently hears brisk footsteps. The door is opened – the creak it makes rises to a high-pitched sound that pains the ears – and a man stares out at him. He is in late middle age, lean, with the ruddy tan of a life spent outdoors, and dressed in heavy tweeds.

  ‘Mr – er, Mr Stirling?’ Felix asks.

  The man gives a short, harsh laugh that contains absolutely no humour. ‘No Mister Stirling here for more than half a century,’ he replies. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I planned to call at Findhorn Hall, but I’m told neither of the MacKilliver twins are there, and—’

  ‘Doubt they’d have let you in even if they were,’ the man interrupts. ‘Not royal or a government minister, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Felix admits.

  ‘Then they’d have no time for you.’ The man is assessing him, the lively blue eyes keen and not entirely unfriendly. ‘Not that the fact diminishes you in my view, I might add.’ He is still staring, clearly coming to a decision. Abruptly he opens the door more widely to the accompaniment of another ear-flinching screech and says, ‘The kettle’s on the hob. You look half frozen so you’d better come away in.’

  Felix, who can no longer feel his feet and is sure several dewdrops have been falling off the end of his icy nose, gratefully accepts.

  ‘Angus Leckie,’ the lean man says, holding out a ham of a hand. Felix shakes it, then obeys the curt nod and sits down in a chair beside the range.

  ‘Felix Wilbraham.’ He removes a World’s End Bureau card from his inside pocket.

  Angus Leckie interrupts his tea-making, holding the card at arm’s length. ‘A private investigation bureau,’ he murmurs. ‘And you’re looking to talk to the MacKillivers?’

  Felix, sensing both a stirring of interest and a possible ally – the remark about royalty and government ministers is definitely encouraging – grins and says, ‘I’d rather talk about them than to them.’

  Angus Leckie gives a guffaw and his stern face relaxes. ‘Then you have washed up at the right place, for the Stirlings and the MacKillivers have ties of friendship that go back a long way, and—’

  ‘Stirlings!’ Felix exclaims. He has suddenly remembered why the name is familiar: Stirling’s is the London club of which the Band of Angels are all members and where they meet.

  ‘Stirling, aye, that’s right, that’s the family name.’ Angus Leckie looks puzzled and more than a little irritated.

  ‘Sorry, please go on,’ Felix says.

  But his interruption seems to have acted as a warning to Angus, who doesn�
�t meet his eyes as he pours out two large mugs of tea. He puts one down beside Felix, then opens a cupboard and takes out a bottle of whisky, adding a generous slug to his own mug and raising his eyebrows enquiringly at Felix, who nods.

  After they have both taken several thoughtful sips, Felix ventures, ‘You live alone here?’

  Angus grunts. ‘No. I caretake, if that is the word. I come in several mornings a week – including on the Sabbath, when I’ve a mind to do something other than go to the service at the kirk – when I light the range, I make sure the roof hasn’t fallen in, I sweep up the dead birds and the vermin that have found a way in and cannot get out again.’ He sighs deeply. ‘I lodge with my widowed sister down by the harbour, and I would not live here at Covesea if they paid me twice the pittance they do. When they remember,’ he adds bitterly.

  ‘You must—’ Felix begins.

  ‘I was gillie here, you understand,’ Angus goes on, not apparently having noticed, ‘years back, when Miss Adeline’s husband William Featherwood looked after the land, and since he went I perform the same role for the MacKilliver estate, pandering to the rich whenever they deign to favour us by a mass slaughter of our wildlife.’ He takes another mouthful of tea, grimaces and adds a further generous slug of whisky.

  Felix wonders if this is his first mug of whisky-laced tea and rather doubts it. Thinking carefully, reckoning he has just one chance to get his companion to open up and keen to give the right prompt, he says after a moment, ‘You said just now there hasn’t been a Mr Stirling for some time. No male heirs?’

  ‘No there are not!’ Angus replies. ‘Old Hector Stirling married a beauty, but he should have gone for a breeder and not a fragile little flower like her. Or that’s what my auntie used to say, and she knew, you see, because she was housekeeper here at Covesea and not a lot passed her by.’ His eyes slide out of focus as he stares back into the past.

  Felix sends up a silent prayer of gratitude for having been provided with a natural and garrulous gossip, and one, moreover, who appears to have a deep-seated grudge against his employers.