The Outcast Girls

by Alys Clare

  ‘Miss Dickie told Matron I’d caught my foot in the worn patch of drugget.’

  He looks at her, eyebrows raised. ‘Is there a worn patch of drugget?’

  ‘Yes, there are several, but I wouldn’t have said there was one where I fell.’ Before he can comment she goes on, ‘And in addition, consider these two factors: as well as the cut on my forehead, I have a huge and rather sore bump on the back of my head, and there is also this.’ Nobody has entered the carriage at the various stops since Waterloo and it is empty except for the two of them, so she raises her skirt and unlaces her boot to reveal her left shin. ‘You can’t see it properly through the stocking, but can you make out an indentation?’

  He is looking decidedly embarrassed. ‘Er—’

  She tuts in impatience. ‘Oh, really Felix, it’s an ankle. Oh, all right, a lower leg, but there’s no need to be coy. Here.’ She grabs his hand and puts his fingers on the deep dent in her shin. ‘Feel it now?’

  ‘Yes.’ He has already withdrawn his fingers and is sitting primly upright, hands folded in his lap like a spinster aunt. She tries to suppress a laugh and fails, and reluctantly he laughs with her. ‘That must hurt,’ he says.

  ‘It did. It does.’

  ‘Trip wire?’

  ‘I imagine so, yes.’

  ‘But why was it there and who put it there?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and it has to be Miss Dickie. And she must have hit me on the back of the head, because it’s physically impossible to fall and bang your head simultaneously at the front and the back.’

  ‘But how did she know someone would be snooping about outside the dormitories?’

  ‘One answer is that she’s been wary of me from the start. Another is that the trip wire wasn’t specifically for me, but for anyone who was where they weren’t meant to be.’

  ‘And why weren’t they meant to be there?’ he asks. ‘Why was Miss Dickie being so careful? Why was it she who turned up to tend you when you fell?’

  ‘And why was she so determined to get me right away from the dormitories? I sensed even at the time that she was tense with anxiety, and it certainly wasn’t out of concern for me.’

  They look at each other, and she reads the same profound suspicion in his eyes that is tearing through her.

  And at last, and perhaps far too late, she recalls Miss Long’s agonized face and her pretty mouth shaping the words Look in your little bag.

  ‘Oh!’ she gasps.

  She drags at the strings that hold the bag closed, sticks her hand inside, frantically feels around—

  —and there is a piece of paper, folded very small.

  She extracts it, tearing the corner, unfolds it, spreads it out, and with Felix leaning against her reading over her shoulder, sees written in Georgiana’s neat hand the chilling message: Another girl missing in the night; from Green Dormitory and rumour has it that it is Marigold Dunbar-Lea.

  In the first horrified instant, what Lily notices most is that even in an extremity of anxiety, Miss Long has used a semi-colon.

  Felix says into the shocked silence, ‘Do you know this girl?’

  ‘Yes.’ The single word is almost a sob. ‘Oh, why didn’t I stop to listen to Miss Long? I should have—’

  But he interrupts, quite forcefully. ‘Lily, what difference would it have made?’ he demands. ‘We were already leaving, we’ve reached this point as quickly as we could, and stopping to hear what Georgiana Long had to tell you would have only served to delay us, besides which she obviously didn’t want to talk openly in front of that fierce-looking matron, which was why she put the note in your bag.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right …’

  ‘I am right.’

  But suddenly she sits up very straight and says, ‘Where are we? Why are we here? Where are we going?’ She can hear the panic in her voice and is cross with herself for her weakness.

  He seems to understand, for he touches her hand, and his is warm. ‘What would you like first?’ he says with a smile, but it’s a rhetorical question because already he is answering. ‘This train is taking us to Portsmouth, we’re somewhere in Hampshire and I think we’ll reach our destination in half an hour or so. We’re going there because of what I discovered in Scotland.’

  ‘Scotland?’ He nods. ‘You’ve been to Scotland?’

  ‘I have. To be precise, to the Moray Firth, where the MacKilliver brothers have their ancestral home.’

  ‘The MacKilliver brothers who are founder members of the Band of Angels who fund Shardlowes School?’

  ‘Those are the ones. Their estate is called Findhorn Hall, and next to it is a very dilapidated place that is owned by the Stirling family.’

  He is looking at her expectantly, and she realizes she is meant to perceive some significance in this fact. She shakes her head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well, you’re still recovering,’ he says charitably. ‘Stirling’s is the name of the London club where the Band of Angels meet.’

  ‘So it is!’ she breathes. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I met an informative, resentful and indiscreet man who looks after the Stirling house – it’s called Covesea Abbey, and it has seen better days – and he was angry about having to care for a place the owners don’t give a fig about and where they rarely, if ever, bother to visit, and that combined with most of a bottle of whisky led to him telling me a lot that I’m sure he’ll now be regretting. If he remembers.’

  ‘And what he told you is linked to Shardlowes School?’

  He sighs heavily. ‘I am very afraid it is.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He looks at her. ‘It’s not good,’ he warns.

  ‘Felix, I already know it’s not good,’ she says sharply.

  She closes her eyes as he begins to speak.

  Presently she opens her eyes again and turns to him.

  ‘You still have not explained why we are going to Portsmouth. Yes I know it’s where Esme Sullivan went,’ she goes on before he can interrupt, ‘so I presume that she discovered the same link to the town that you did – perhaps she overheard something – and—’

  ‘It’s also where Miss Long’s predecessor Genevieve Swanson was going,’ he says darkly, ‘or at least it’s fair to assume so since she fell from the Portsmouth train.’

  ‘So she found out too,’ Lily whispers. ‘But why? Why were they going there, and why are we?’

  He looks at her for a moment and she thinks he looks uncertain.

  ‘Because I’m fairly sure I know where the missing girls are being taken.’

  ‘You – but why didn’t you say so straight away?’ She is half out of her seat. ‘We have to get there, we need to look for them, to find Marigold before—’ But she can’t even think about that, never mind put it into words.

  Felix takes her hands and gently but firmly sits her down again. ‘We are going there, Lily, as fast as we can.’ She starts to protest but he doesn’t let her speak. ‘I learned from the caretaker at Covesea Abbey that the Stirlings have pretty much died out. The old woman had siblings but only one is still alive.’ Now the uncertainty is back in his face, and he looks almost furtive …

  ‘I made an assumption, Lily,’ he says after a brief pause, ‘a wrong assumption.’ Before she can demand whether his mistake is important and if so if it can be put right, he rushes on. ‘Violetta da Rosa told me that Cameron MacKilliver suffers from periodic bouts of insanity, that he is a recluse and shuts himself away at Findhorn Hall, that from time to time he is treated by doctors who specialize in cases such as his, and that the only other time he leaves his ancestral home is when he goes to stay with an old childhood friend.’

  ‘I don’t see how—’ she begins.

  ‘Please, Lily, let me finish!’ he pleads, and she nods. ‘I took childhood friend to mean school friend, and I thought this old friend was a man. Then when I learned from Angus Leckie – that’s the name of the caretaker – that the last surviving Stirling is a woman called Hortensia, I didn’t conne
ct her with Cameron and I was barely listening.’

  ‘Surely—’ But she can see he hasn’t finished. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Lily, everything Angus said about Hortensia Stirling couldn’t have been more relevant. Every small detail becomes absolutely relevant when you understand that Hortensia Stirling and Cameron MacKilliver were playmates from when they were very young, and have remained close friends to this day.’

  ‘It’s – he goes to stay with a woman?’ All that Lily has learned concerning Cameron MacKilliver surely makes this extremely unlikely, but Felix is nodding.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what he does.’ He smiles grimly. ‘But it is most certainly not a sexual relationship.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because neither of them is – er, is like most people,’ he says delicately. ‘Cameron, according to a friend of Violetta’s who knows him quite well, has always been odd, and this friend reckons something went amiss in Cameron’s early years, perhaps to do with witnessing his mother’s travails in the childbed and the trauma of losing babies and infants. Anyway, Cameron liked to play with dolls and he never developed the usual interest in women. He has never married and has no children, and in all likelihood has never – er, hasn’t—’

  ‘Has never had sexual intercourse,’ Lily supplies.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘So did he and this Hortensia Stirling play with their dolls together?’

  ‘No, far from it, because according to Angus and his tittle-tattle, Hortensia knew her parents would have preferred a son and became a tomboy. She was headstrong and brave, and I imagine she and Cameron each turned into the other, if you see what I mean, and—’

  ‘She was the boy and he was the girl,’ Lily suggests.

  ‘Yes. They would have gone their separate ways in time, although during the years when Cameron was sent away to school no doubt they always resumed their closeness during the holidays.’

  Lily is thinking very hard. It is not easy, for it makes her head ache and she is aware that her mind is not operating with its usual fluidity. It is taking her longer than it usually does to form connections and to make sense of all that Felix is telling her.

  But it is with some confidence that she breaks her silence by saying, ‘She bought a house in Portsmouth, didn’t she?’

  Felix mimes applause. ‘Very nearly. She lives in Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight.’

  ‘The Isle of Wight … That’s the other side of the Solent, isn’t it? You take a ferry from Portsmouth?’

  ‘It is and you do. I think – I’m reasonably sure – that it’s where Cameron MacKilliver will be.’ The doubt has crept back into his expression. ‘That his old friend Hortensia’s house is where he goes when he needs to creep away.’ He makes a violent gesture. ‘If I’m right, that is, and that it is indeed he who is behind the disappearances, and I haven’t got the whole thing wrong and we’re haring off in completely the wrong direction and all the time he’s hidden himself in some ruin of a barn in deepest rural Cambridgeshire and that poor little child is—’

  But, ‘Stop,’ Lily says very forcefully, putting a firm hand on his. ‘Felix, we are where we are because you have very good reason for bringing us here. Would it have been better to stay at Shardlowes or return to Hob’s Court, worrying ourselves silly over what was the most sensible thing to do? Isn’t it far, far wiser to use all the available information, arrive at a logically deduced conclusion and have the courage to act upon it?’ He doesn’t reply, so she says urgently, ‘It is, Felix, it is, and that’s what we’re doing!’

  He raises anguished eyes to hers. ‘What if I’m wrong?’

  Several possible replies run through her head. In the end she just says, ‘I don’t believe you are.’

  SEVENTEEN

  The train puffs and pants at the end of its run, which is the station at Portsmouth harbour, and Felix and Lily hurry along the platform to emerge into a stiff breeze off the Solent.

  ‘Look, over there,’ Lily says anxiously, pointing, ‘there’s a sign saying ferries to the Isle of Wight and one’s just tying up so if we hurry we can—’

  But Felix moves swiftly to stand right in front of her, blocking her way, and he knows he’s far too big for her to shift. He looks down into her pale face, the bandage just visible under the sheltering brim of her nurse’s black bonnet. Deliberately he cuts off the thought of what she has been through over the last twelve hours. ‘When did you last eat?’ he asks sternly.

  ‘Oh—’ She shakes her head impatiently and winces with pain. ‘Er – yesterday. I had cheese on toast in the evening.’

  ‘Just as I thought,’ he says. ‘I’m starving, even though I had breakfast of a sort on the train from the north, so before we do anything else we’re going to fortify ourselves with good food and, with any luck, strong drink.’

  He sees every step in her inner struggle, but thankfully her nurse’s good sense wins and she nods curtly.

  ‘Very well, then,’ she says with obvious reluctance, ‘but we must be extremely quick and I’m not at all sure strong drink’s a good idea.’ She gives him a stern look.

  ‘I wasn’t serious about the drink.’

  ‘Oh.’

  It is perhaps twenty minutes later, they have each wolfed down two rather solid cold beef sandwiches with horseradish sauce and a slice of Victoria sponge and drunk a large mug of tea, and, trying not very successfully to suppress a burp, Felix is elbowing a way through the crowds on the pier to where a ferry is preparing to leave. The man on the barrier starts to give the usual lecture about last-minute arrivals not only risking their own safety but delaying the departure and causing inconvenience to other passengers, but Felix glares at him and mutters, ‘Criminal investigation, very urgent,’ and the man subsides, contenting himself with yelling, ‘Well, don’t do it again!’ after their departing backs.

  The wind is far more evident out on the water and it is carrying spiteful little drops of freezing rain that come in regular flurries, so Felix leads the way into the saloon. But it is very crowded, there is a stink of unwashed clothes and malodorous bodies, at least three men are smoking very strong tobacco in their pipes and somebody has been sick, so they go out again, this time on to the leeward side of the ferry, and stand close together for warmth, leaning against the side of the saloon.

  ‘Do you know exactly where we have to go?’ Lily asks, not for the first time.

  ‘I do,’ he assures her. Putting rather more confidence than he is feeling into his voice, he continues, ‘We disembark at Ryde, then take the train down to Brading, Sandown, Shanklin and round Boniface Down to Ventnor. Or possibly under Boniface Down, since I gather there’s an impressive tunnel.’ He sees her sudden frown – he was half expecting it since he knows full well a detailed itinerary was not what she wanted – and says, ‘It’s only a dozen miles or so, we’ll be there in no time.’

  That is pretty much a guess, but her frown has eased, which is the main thing. ‘And you know where the house is?’

  ‘Yes.’ Felix recalls how, having settled the sleeping Angus Leckie, he had tiptoed through the dank and depressing rooms of Covesea Abbey until he found what appeared to be a study, with about a thousand books slowly mouldering on the shelves, a strong smell of mice and a huge roll-top desk, its lid halfway open, in which he had found what he sought: a leather-bound mould-covered address book. ‘I have the location and it’ll be easy to find, the address is The Esplanade.’

  She nods again. She starts to speak, hesitates, then whispers, ‘And if it’s true that it really is Marigold – well, whoever it is, naturally – do you think she’ll still …’ But she doesn’t go on.

  He knows exactly what she was going to say. He reaches out for her hand, but does not comment.

  And in silence they watch as the Isle of Wight steadily draws closer.

  The journey down to Ventnor might indeed have been not much over a dozen miles, but the train takes a long time over its stops and starts, and minutes turn into an hour,
an hour and a quarter. They dive into the Boniface tunnel and the dark underworld takes them in, great billows of sooty, smelly smoke sneaking in through the tiny opening at the top of the carriage window.

  Then they are in Ventnor, and Felix grabs Lily’s arm as they hurry out of the station.

  He is putting on an act for her, for in truth he has no idea of the geography of the town and his earlier confident assurance is starting to look a little thin.

  But in fact locating the house is easy.

  They stride through the little town and all at once a gap appears between two buildings; a narrow, twisting road leading downwards … to the sea. They turn to the left, to the right, left again, and there on the right is the most extraordinary house. It is perhaps four or five storeys high, it has gables and turrets, and it is set against the rocky cliff face that rises up behind it, so that the first floor at the front is the ground floor at the rear. The sturdy front door with its iron knocker in the shape of a dragon is down at the lowest level, beneath an ornate and showy porch, but Felix notices that a path leads up to the back of the house, ascending a short flight of stone steps before ending in a gate giving on to what looks like a little garden. A low door is set in the side of the house.

  So there is, then, he observes silently, another access to the upper floors.

  He and Lily race on down the steep road, cross over and stride over the little forecourt to the door. He raises the dragon knocker, bangs it hard once, twice, three times. After a pause of perhaps ten seconds that feels very much longer, the door opens and an elderly man, stooped and grey and dressed all in black, says creakily, ‘Yes?’

  Felix is about to speak, but Lily forestalls him. Holding out one of the World’s End Bureau cards, which the old man holds at arm’s length to read, she says with quiet authority, ‘I am Lily Raynor, proprietor of the Bureau, and this is my associate Felix Wilbraham. We are here on a matter of extreme urgency and we must speak to Miss Hortensia Stirling.’

  The old man is beginning to shake his head even as she is talking. ‘Oh, dear lady, I’m afraid you will have to come back tomorrow, or even the day after,’ he says with the utmost courtesy, ‘for the Mistress does not like to be taken by surprise, and in any case she always rests in the afternoon and could not possibly see you now.’ His rheumy, pale blue eyes widen in dismay at the very idea.