by Anne Digby
‘You –’ Rebecca swallowed hard. There could only be one explanation! ‘You went in my room today and took my stole! While Court House was empty. While we were over in the dining hall, having tea!’
‘Yes.’
‘When you drove me to the taxi office you had it in the car with you – hidden somewhere. You’d just been in and got it! And that’s it – you’re wearing it now. The one I’m wearing –’ She ran her fingers through the fringes, still stupefied. ‘The one I’m wearing is yours. It was your stole that was left in the taxi.’
‘That’s correct, Rebecca.’
The stereo was still playing at full volume.
Hot tears welled up in Rebecca’s eyes. ‘Then you were the hoaxer, all along!’
She wanted to hear Pippa deny it, but Pippa was silent.
Rebecca kept shaking her head. She was dumbfounded.
‘If somebody like you can’t be trusted,’ she said, ‘then who –?’
‘Rebecca!’ Gently Pippa put an arm round Rebecca’s shoulders. She was close to tears herself. Really, the strain of it all had been too much! ‘For goodness’ sake don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry about!’
Suddenly Rebecca heard somebody else’s voice.
Annie Lorrimer had been standing outside the door for a full minute, horror struck. Now she stepped into the room.
She looked awful.
‘It’s no good, is it?’ she said. ‘It didn’t work, after all. I think I’d better go and see Miss Welbeck.’
‘Annie – you’ll lose everything!’ said Pippa, in anguish.
‘Maybe I deserve to,’ she said.
Annie! Annie Lorrimer was the hoaxer!
What a story Rebecca had to tell the others!
Pippa had bought the dress in the Easter holidays, for her last Commem Ball, but finding out that Rebecca had the identical dress, she’d sadly packed her own away. It would be too unkind to Rebecca to wear it now!
It was the kid’s first Commem – her first good dress, maybe. She probably thought it was unique.
Pippa had wanted to send hers home, but Annie begged her not to. She loved going to parties and borrowing Pippa’s dresses when she got tired of her own. Maybe she could wear it just once, at some occasion out of school.
Like one of those forbidden parties at The Lodge.
She’d been to those parties before and never been caught.
But the one she borrowed the dress for and went to this term was nearly a disaster. She’d quarrelled with her boyfriend at the party and he’d gone off with someone else. Leaving her without a lift back to school. Then trouble had broken out, trouble that Miss Welbeck might get to hear about! Annie knew she had to get back to school quickly! She’d run to the phone box at the top of town and rung through to Parkinson, hoping to get hold of Pippa who would then come and fetch her in the car. But Miss Welbeck, of all people, had answered the phone!
Alerted by a phone call from Mrs Tarkus, who insisted that a Trebizon girl was involved in a fracas at a party in the town, the Principal had come hotfoot to the Upper Sixth boarding house intending to check and see if someone was missing.
Hearing Miss Welbeck’s voice on the phone, Annie was panic-stricken!
She had to have a good testimonial from Miss Welbeck this term. Her whole future depended on it! In desperation, almost giggling with fear, she’d disguised her voice and pretended she was ringing from Court House – some Middle School kid – about to run away!
Anything to draw Miss Welbeck away from Parkinson. And it had worked!
Then, thank goodness, that empty taxi had come by and she’d grabbed it. The driver had prattled on to her about tennis, of all things, but she’d been much too fraught to bother about that!
She’d no idea he took her to be Rebecca Mason who only the previous evening had worn the very same outfit and been in the very same taxi.
The cab driver had been a good sport; he’d dropped her behind some trees and she’d threaded her way through them, silently on foot, just in time to see Miss Welbeck driving away from her private house, in the direction of Court! The coast was clear!
Five minutes later, she was home and dry, safely tucked up in bed.
Afterwards, it never occurred to her that she’d left the stole in the taxi. She was convinced she’d left it at The Lodge. She and Pippa had driven down there the next day, to try and recover it. But it had gone. It looked as though someone at the party must have pinched it.
‘So Annie Lorrimer was the hoaxer! But what you haven’t explained to us yet, Rebecca,’ said Tish, ‘is the business of the fire alert.’
It was Wednesday afternoon and they were all sunning themselves in the sand dunes, down in Trebizon Bay.
‘I’m just coming to that,’ said Rebecca. ‘It’s rather complicated.’
‘Get on with it, then!’ said Sue. ‘We’re all agog.’
‘Well, you see. Miss Welbeck had seen Pippa’s new dress, right at the beginning of term. She’d been over in Pippa’s room, giving her some coaching. She’d admired it and Pippa had explained about me having exactly the same dress and how she wouldn’t be able to wear it much.’
‘Ah, Pippa is so sweet – yes?’ said Mara.
‘Very,’ nodded Rebecca. ‘Now the point is that when this Mrs Tarkus rang up and complained that night, she described what the girl was wearing. It sounded horribly like Pippa’s dress to Miss Welbeck –’
‘Or yours!’ butted in Tish.
‘Ah, but Rebecca’s just Third Year, so it was Pippa she thought of first!’ said Sue. ‘That right, Rebecca? So she made a beeline for Parkinson, to try and find Pippa –?’
‘Right,’ nodded Rebecca. ‘But then the funny phone call came through and so she forgot all about looking for Pippa that night. She nipped back home and got her car and came over to Court House instead. And when she got here, she was more interested in me, and the fact that I was wide awake and in my dressing gown, when I should have been fast asleep.’
‘So it could have been you, at the party. Just got back!’ exclaimed Margot.
Rebecca nodded.
‘But the more Miss Welbeck thought about it, the more convinced she became that it wasn’t me Mrs Tarkus saw. The hoax tied in too neatly. If I’d been to the party I’d hardly have wanted to draw her over to Court House. But if Pippa had been she’d have wanted to draw Miss Welbeck away from Parkinson!’
‘Logical!’ nodded Sue, eagerly. ‘But you still haven’t told us where the fire alarm fits in!’
‘Give me a chance!’ laughed Rebecca.
She picked up a handful of sand and let the grains run through her fingers. The other five were holding tight to their breath.
‘For three horrible days Miss Welbeck thought it must be Pippa and waited for her to come and own up. She was terribly shocked and upset because she thought it was so out of character. Finally she called Pippa over to her study and accused her point-blank of going to the party. Pippa just flatly denied it and then –’
‘What?’
‘The fire alarm went off!’
They all gasped.
‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ exclaimed Tish. ‘So Pippa was in with Miss Welbeck when that happened – and it was Annie I saw waiting downstairs! She knew Pippa was upstairs, at that very moment, getting the blame –’
‘And she knew Pippa would never give her away!’ put in Rebecca.
‘So she did it?’ said Tish. Expressively, she banged her elbow into the sand. ‘Bust the fire panel and set the bell ringing! A second hoax!’
‘She’d been going through agonies!’ said Rebecca. ‘It was the only thing she could think of to put Pippa in the clear. And it worked! Miss Welbeck actually apologized to Pippa for misjudging her. After that Pippa should have been able to breathe a sigh of relief and forget the whole wretched business. But she couldn’t. She just got more and more miserable . . .’
‘Because Miss Welbeck stopped suspecting her, and started suspecting you, instead?’ finished
Mara. ‘It was the only explanation left to her? You could have made that phone call, after all, even though it was a silly thing to do . . . after a party like that, you might have been silly enough for anything?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Rebecca.
‘She as good as told Tish you were the culprit,’ remembered Elf.
But Tish shook her head.
‘No, I’m sure she didn’t really mean it. I never got the feeling she really thought it was Rebecca. She was just playing some sort of game.’
‘Oh, but she did really think it was me,’ protested Rebecca. ‘She told Pippa she did!’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Tish, with sudden insight. ‘And what could have been a better game to play than that?’
Tish was right. Miss Welbeck had suspected Pippa all along, not Rebecca. The only time she’d really wondered about Rebecca was immediately after the fire hoax. Pippa could hardly have been responsible for that!
But grilling Tish Anderson had removed any doubts about Rebecca – and it had also thrown up a clue. Tish had seen a senior girl near the fire alarm. One of Pippa’s friends in the Upper Sixth, perhaps, trying to get her out of trouble?
If that were so, Miss Welbeck was sure she knew how to make Pippa confess. Let her see that young Rebecca Mason, a completely innocent person, was at some stage going to have to take the blame! Oh, yes, that should upset Pippa right enough . . . and it did!
But the expected confession had never come.
So Miss Welbeck was completely at a loss. Had Mrs Tarkus got the description of the dress all wrong? She’d got things wrong before. Was the timing of the two hoaxes just extraordinary coincidence? Were they unconnected happenings . . . two thoroughly stupid pranks, the second inspired by the first, perhaps . . . now best forgotten?
And then, on Tuesday evening, Annie Lorrimer had walked into her study and made a full confession.
The Principal simply couldn’t get over it.
‘The last person I would ever have suspected,’ she confided in Miss Gates later. ‘Annie! So quiet. A model pupil, all the way up the school. Hard working, a dedicated musician, serious, sensible . . .’
‘It’s the quiet ones who sometimes break out in the most unexpected ways, Madeleine. What on earth are you going to do? Those master classes of hers, in Japan. Will you write the testimonial she needs?’
‘I’ve already written it. It was posted a week ago.’
‘Then –?’
‘I shall rescind it, of course, Evelyn.’
Miss Gates was aghast.
‘Must you? She wants this, more than anything in the world! There’s nothing else she wants out of life, you know.’
‘The evidence suggests otherwise,’ commented Miss Welbeck.
There was a heavy, contemplative silence.
Finally, Miss Gates asked –
‘And Pippa? Will she be punished?’
‘Whatever for?’ said the principal. ‘Hasn’t she had enough punishment?’
She started to pour some coffee and at last her stern expression softened.
‘I’m so completely and utterly relieved that the culprit wasn’t Pippa,’ she said.
She took her cup and crossed the room to a deep, comfortable chair by the open window. Summer scents from her garden wafted in.
‘Let’s hope we can settle down to the normal business of term now. I’ll make an announcement about the summer camp this week – you know, the one Pegasus are going to run here. They’ve asked if any of our girls would like to stay on and help. Some of the children are quite small.’
With the abrupt change of subject the Principal had made her feelings clear. The matter of the hoaxes had been resolved and the chapter was now closed.
‘I daresay there’ll be no shortage of volunteers,’ said Miss Gates.
FOURTEEN
Commemoration
It was hot, blisteringly hot. It was the last Saturday in June. It was Commem Day. In the morning the whole school had attended a special service in hall, to honour the person who had founded Trebizon, way back in the misty past. This evening, for Third Years and upwards, there would be the Commem Ball.
But now it was the afternoon and the final of the inter-schools cup was taking place. Trebizon vs. Helenbury. Trebizon had to win – they must! Rows of anxious faces, pressed against the wire netting all around south courts, were willing it – praying for it!
But Helenbury’s two coachloads of supporters were cheering – cheering ecstatically! Trebizon’s supporters were close to despair. They were groaning. The umpire called out the score:
‘Game to Helenbury. Helenbury lead five games to four in the final set.’
‘Come on, Rebecca!’ somebody called feebly. ‘It’s all up to you!’
In a blur Rebecca walked up to the umpire’s chair and sank down on the bench beside it. Time for a break, thank goodness – time to change ends. She was gasping for breath as Miss Darling handed her a drink. Gazing around she realised in horror that all the other courts were empty now.
‘We won two of the singles – and lost three.’
A shiver of tension ran through Rebecca.
‘So it’s four matches all and this is the decider!’
And Rebecca was 4–5 down in the final set!
No wonder Helenbury was cheering! No wonder Trebizon was subdued.
Because it was the cup final there were nine matches in all – three doubles and six singles. Trebizon had come out of the doubles section well – two matches to one. Poor Eddie Burton had tennis elbow: Pippa and Rebecca had been partners again! They’d hit top form together, especially the way they’d managed to outwit, between them, the giantess of the Helenbury team, a girl called Sophie Smith. They’d defeated Sophie and her partner in two straight sets. Rebecca’s five friends had cheered themselves hoarse during the match.
But now, in the singles section, Rebecca had to face Sophie alone. They were both ranked number five in their respective teams, so drawn against each other. What a match it was proving to be!
Sophie Smith was a big girl, with hitting power to match.
She’d taken a while to settle down and Rebecca had won the first set 6–4.
In the second set, Sophie had reversed that score, gradually beginning to grind Rebecca down with her strong service and powerful drives off the forehand and backhand.
Now, in the final set, each game had gone with service. But although the rallies were still long and exhausting, Sophie was gaining the upper hand, holding her service each time more convincingly than Rebecca was holding hers. And Rebecca was tired. So very, very tired!
If only it weren’t so hot. If only the sun would go away!
‘Take her service now, Sophie!’ shouted a Helenbury supporter.
‘We want the cup!’ bayed the whole crowd of them. And then they started to chant it, over and over again.
Rebecca’s legs felt rubbery as she stood up and arched her aching back. If she lost the next game, they’d have the cup all right! She felt hopeless. She hadn’t anything left! Even if she held her service, she’d have to go on and break Sophie’s and then still win the next game . . .
Then she heard Pippa’s voice, clear and bell-like –
‘Give us an “R” –’
‘R!’ roared the Trebizon crowd, drowning out everything else.
‘Give us an “E” –’
‘E!’
Rebecca walked up to the other end to begin serving. They were just finishing.
‘– And who’s going to win?’ called Pippa.
‘REBECCA!’ came the deafening response.
And she did. 7–5.
Afterwards, Rebecca was mobbed. Miss Willis thumped her on the back. Pippa hugged her. Tish and Co rushed at her like excited labradors and nearly knocked her over. And Miss Darling definitely smiled at her! Then when Mrs Seabrook, the county tennis scout, presented the huge glittering silver cup to the Trebizon captain – Kate immediately thrust it into her arms!
‘You have it,
Rebecca!’
Rebecca was carried shoulder high off the court, holding the cup aloft. She was marched over to the now famous cedar tree and paraded round and round it like a lucky mascot until, laughing with joy and aching with tiredness, she begged to be put down. She leaned against its massive trunk for a few moments, drinking in the cool shade.
At the tennis tea, her opponent said, with a rueful smile:
‘How you lifted your game like that, I’ll just never know!’
Afterwards Mrs Seabrook drew her to one side.
‘I’m going to see to it that you turn out for the county Under-14s before the summer’s out!’
In that moment, Rebecca’s pleasure reached new heights. Thank you – Pippa! She knew that Pippa’s last memories of Trebizon would be less unhappy now. But to be at the receiving end of such unexpected and joyful news for herself was an added delight. A bonus!
The same afternoon, as Tish had predicted he would, Robbie won the Garth College tennis cup for the third year running. The stage was set for a very happy evening all round.
Rebecca looked lovely in the dress and stole. Everybody said so. It helped, because she suddenly felt shy and nervous when Robbie arrived to escort her to the Commem Ball. He was carrying some roses.
‘This time the flowers really are for you,’ he said, with a sheepish smile, remembering a past episode.
They both laughed.
And after that, everything was all right.
The Commem Ball had an atmosphere all its own. There were games with prizes as well as dancing to an excellent professional band. Outside it was still light; it was mid-summer and the sun set very late. Supper was served in the quadrangle gardens – all sorts of delicious savoury snacks and strawberries and cream to end up with. Then, in the balmy June dusk, a group came out to sing madrigals. Sue and Mara and Margot were amongst them – they’d been rehearsing for a month.
As she stood beside Robbie and listened to those sweet, Elizabethan songs, little shivers ran up and down Rebecca’s spine, and a feeling of sadness, too. Pippa was leaving in the morning!
Towards the end of the evening, Pippa came up to her.