The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

Knowles’ eyes looked about to burst.

  It had never occurred to Amy that her Abilities might have ill-effects. She’d never even had a nosebleed. What Knowles said about her mother was troubling. You couldn’t fend off brain aneurysm with extra helpings of carrots or long walks in the fresh air. In less trying times, she might have suffered a spasm of hypochondriac worry. Now she had too much on her mind to get worked up about the ill-effects of getting worked up about things. Nevertheless, she would ask Kali to explain the calming practices of Eastern religion. After a busy week’s banditry, Mr Chattopadhyay sat cross-legged on a mat and hummed for hours – then sprang up refreshed, feeling not at all sorry about the villages he’d plundered.

  ‘Why did you send for us?’ said Frecks, getting to the point.

  ‘I sent for you?’ said Knowles, brows knit. ‘Yes, I did. Paid Gifford a ha’penny to deliver the message. That girl knows the value of every service. She’ll go far…’

  ‘Unless someone catches her,’ said Light Fingers.

  ‘Anyway…’ prompted Frecks.

  ‘Anyway, yes, anyway… Moria Kratides. Who knows – and shares – our secrets. Our new Form Mistress. An interesting sort – unusual, but not strictly an Unusual. Though the definition is blurry. Her antecedents, known and unknown, are remarkable. Her presence as a beak is a mystery—’

  ‘You’re telling us,’ said Kali.

  ‘Yes, I am. It’s what I asked you here for. To tell you… Now, where was I? Steeped in crime. That’s her background. Miss Kratides’ records are sealed in Dr Swan’s files, but she has a drawer to herself. Stuffed with infractions, I’ll be bound. From her first day at Drearcliff Grange to the last. I hear she stole a copy of the School Rules and marked off each as she broke it. Her placings were never poor, though. Fourth or fifth in most subjects. Top in Cookery one term, when the rest of her year got food poisoning and didn’t complete the exam. Lost down the sewer in the Great Game. Rotten at cricket and netball too. No one trusted her and she wouldn’t trust others. Fatal drawback in team games. Better at pursuits like archery and orienteering. Rock-climbing, javelin, fencing. Not stupid, obviously, but wilful. No school loves a wilful girl. She didn’t make it easy for herself, or anyone else in her lessons – including the teachers. Know who her mother was? No reason you should, though the name comes up a lot in these…’

  Knowles indicated her pile of crime books.

  She turned over pages until she found a photographic plate. A woman, in profile. Amy recognised the original of Miss Kratides’ brooch. A strong family resemblance – though the mother had even more masses of black hair and a longer nose. The caption on the plate was ‘Fig 7: Sophy Kratides, Graustark, 1895’.

  ‘Same last name as the daughter,’ said Light Fingers. ‘No husband?’

  ‘Having a baby on the, ah, wrong side of the blanket is the least of Kratides’ mother’s… I was going to say “indiscretions”, but in point of fact she’s been extremely discreet most of her life.’

  ‘She looks wilful,’ said Frecks. ‘A woman with decided views.’

  ‘That’s sharp, Walmergrave. Views, yes. Decidedly decided. A woman of her times, but in advance of them also. You’ve heard Wicked Wyke or Miss Dryden harp on about being Suffragettes and the inroads women have made in this young century. The Vote is just the start of it. The Law, Parliament, the police forces, business and trade… even the Army and Navy and the Church. Petticoat pioneers have secured positions in all these fields where once men were unchallenged. Inevitably, some equally determined women have made careers in crime.’

  Kali whistled. ‘Miss Kratides’ Ma was… what, a purse-snatcher? She roll drunks or cosh cabbies?’

  ‘Nothing so, ah, street-level. Before the turn of the century, Sophy Kratides was the first European woman to earn a living as an assassin for hire. Not as a domestic poisoner or cheesewire-under-the-pillow seductress, either. She’s a long-range rifle shot and up-close knife woman. In one of these Strands, there a story about how she started as a naïve heiress, who fell prey to a pair of English rogues. These nancy boys talked her out of her boodle and gassed her brother to death. Which she did not take well. The villains got gutted in a hotel room. Either Sophy did it herself or got them to do it to each other. After taking personal revenge, she got the taste for blood. She usually did away with folk nobody much missed. Arch-Dukes, snitches and swindlers she killed for high fees. Brutal husbands, fathers and slavers she went after gratis. She liked to leave men who hurt women alive, but not whole. It’s a surprise she let a fellow near enough to get in the family way.’

  ‘So who is Miss Kratides’ father?’ asked Amy.

  Knowles smiled and shrugged. ‘Sophy’s never said… and she’s not a person anyone presses for answers. She knocked around with tantalising possibles, though. In America, she learned gunfighting from a cove with either too many or too few names and hunted outlaws for bounty. In London, she was a member of the Moriarty Mob. After the Prof got shoved over that waterfall, she knocked about with his Number Two, Sebastian Moran. They got into all sorts of scrapes. Remember Johnny Barlowe, who broke the bank at Monte Carlo? Sophy and Moran robbed him. Then lost all the winnings to a confidence man who never showed the same face twice. Colonel Clay. You have to watch those types closely…’

  As Amy knew all too well. Incidentally, Clay… Wax… a connection, perhaps? Malleable materials. Fitting for a face changer.

  ‘In Paris,’ Knowles went on, ‘Sophy was with the Opera Ghost Agency, working under Erik de Boscherville. Also known as the Phantom. I wondered whether he might be Miss Kratides’ father. That half-frozen face of hers could be inherited. Erik was supposed to be hideous. My favourite candidate, though, is Basher Moran. Getting on in years when Sophy got up the duff, but a notorious skirt-chaser… and dishy in his prison photographs. Women loved a man with moustaches like jug handles back then.’

  ‘Such a remarkable woman’s daughter must have better prospects than drumming times tables into the skulls of we sorry Dims,’ said Frecks. ‘With her pedigree, shouldn’t she be tunnelling into the Bank of England or impersonating a Russian princess?’

  ‘She’s not set us Maths prep,’ said Amy.

  ‘I’m not certain what sort of prep these secrets are,’ said Light Fingers. ‘We’re learning, I’m sure – but not things which come up in examinations.’

  ‘But she is teaching us lessons,’ said Amy.

  ‘Yeah – and how,’ said Kali. ‘Maybe we’re not seeing her square. Maybe there’s a point to this.’

  ‘If she’s at all like her mother, a sharp point – aimed precisely,’ said Knowles.

  Amy’s back itched again.

  ‘What was it you said about the rogues who took Sophy for a fool?’ said Amy. ‘She might have got them to kill each other? Moria used to make trouble in lessons by setting off fights. She’d pass notes and girls found they had bones to pick. They were too angry to think about who dug up the bones. Is this prep just that on a bigger scale? Does Miss Kratides expect us all to murder each other over whispers? Devlin going numb all over… or your father thinking up ways to murder you… or me being afraid of the Broken Doll.’

  Knowles was brought up short.

  ‘Who said anything about a Broken Doll?’

  IX: The Real Spook-Spotters

  AFTER SUNDAY DINNER, most of the school pursued activities that involved sitting or lying down. The leather chicken was followed by the heaviest plum duff known to science. Charlie Chaplin would play to pained groans. Laughing at the Little Tramp on a stomach full of Drearcliff din-din was not recommended. Even the sport maniacs of Goneril weren’t up to a cross-country run.

  Some Ariels volunteered for extra helpings because the more they ate, the easier it was to sick up. They aspired to flapper fashions wearable only by pinch-waisted, hipless, breastless sylphs. Amy thought there was something wrong with competitive purging, but Banks, Lowen and Vigo – prime advocates of the craze – swore they attained a higher state of consciousn
ess while bent over a lavatory puking. Chastity Banks claimed that at her emptiest she saw violet skies and mauve mountains. Vomiting was not an enviable Ability, though – even if a girl could, say, spew acid or retch gold coins.

  Knowles didn’t trot along to the Refec with the Moth Club. Whips would infract her for dodging Chapel. They’d agreed to reconvene at the invalid Devlin’s bedside. More was to be said of the Broken Doll. Amy anticipated that with a mixture of eagerness and dread. Deaf to the jollities whizzing around the Desdemona table, she imagined a cracked china face in her helping of duff. Mean currant eyes stared out from a mask of stodge. Frecks and Kali put mysteries out of mind while stuffing their faces, and bantered with un-Removed girls. Light Fingers was quieter, more thoughtful – but, then again, she always was. She spirited bread rolls and an apple from the table and wrapped them in a handkerchief – provisions for Miss Memory. Amy deliberately squashed evil currants with a spoon.

  After Dinner, the Moth Club split up and made their separate ways to the meet.

  Kali suggested they shake off tails. Their classmates were out and about, trying to unearth each other’s secrets. Outside the Refec, Light Fingers zig-zagged away on a rapid tour of the grounds. Amy spotted Frost and Harper dogging her, but knew they’d soon give up. Larry, as ever, was peeping round a wall, eyes like neon fog-lamps. Amy turned to nudge Frecks, but she’d slipped away. Kali began bending, stretching and kicking the air, drawing a small crowd. With most eager eyes on Kali, Amy pantomimed a ‘drat I’ve forgotten something’ finger snap and doubled back into the Refec, thinking hard about an imaginary book left on her table. She nipped through the kitchen-side door, which led to an alley that happened to come out just next to the Infirmary.

  She ran smack into Susannah Thorn, loitering by the swill bins, puffing on a cigarette. The Fifth only smoked so she could show off by lighting up without a match. Amy hadn’t had much to do with Thorn this year. She was usually in a huddle with Frost. Thanks to the estrangement of firelighter and icemaker, Thorn was making do with Fleur Paquignet as a fill-in bosom companion. More comfortable with plants than people, Paquignet held an unlit ciggy as if no one had ever shown her which end to stick in her mouth.

  ‘Hello, Amy,’ said Paquignet.

  Amy couldn’t remember the Ariel Unusual ever using her first name. She was a Fifth, and Fifths didn’t address Fourths familiarly. Even in the Remove.

  Everyone had changed. Was it down to Miss Kratides?

  Would Paquignet blame her for not telling what she knew about Laurence?

  It was hard to imagine Green Thumbs blaming anyone for anything. Plants don’t blame. They accept. They live with seasons and weather.

  ‘Hello, Fleur,’ said Amy.

  ‘Have you noticed she’s shot up,’ said Thorn. ‘Someone’s been watering her.’

  Paquignet smiled. The expression struck Amy as artificial. Not an obvious sham, like Palgraive’s impersonation of a living girl. But wrong.

  Now it was mentioned, Paquignet was taller this term.

  Flowers liked moths. Bees get all the credit, but night pollination is almost entirely down to moths.

  Paquignet’s smile reminded her that some flowers ate moths.

  Thorn stubbed her smoke out on the wall and flicked the dogend into a bin.

  ‘Come on, Goosegog,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to the picture show. Maybe Mary Pickford will get thrown in a lake by orphans. She’s been simpering for an age and could do with a dunking.’

  Thorn beetled off and Paquignet followed. As she left, she gave Amy a wave – to be continued…

  Thorn and Paquignet out of sight, Amy walked past the bins to the Infirmary. She was the last of the Moth Club to arrive. Knowles had been with Devlin for a while.

  Nurse Humphreys briskly welcomed the visitors. Leaving them to cheer up her patient, she retreated to her office to spend an hour with a racing form and her spirit guides. Humph was Nellie Pugh’s most loyal customer, and always either flush or skint – depending on how her nags were running at Taunton. A devout believer in her Abilities as a spirit medium, she got tips by communing with champions long since departed (after a brief, unpleasant stop-off at the knackers’ yard) for the Elysian paddock. Silver Blaze, the Wessex Cup winner, rapped race and jockey numbers with spectral hoofs.

  ‘I’ve solved that mystery,’ said Stretch. ‘The kitchen is next door and a ventilation grille means someone with a crafty ear can listen in to the Infirmary Office. Nellie knocks on the pipes with a horseshoe. She gives Nurse wrong steers two-thirds of the time, with enough solid gen to give the ninny a win whenever she gets depressed and thinks of packing in the gambling lark. One for the Hoax File.’

  When dedicated investigators Knowles and Devlin ran the Hypatia Hall Psychical Investigation Soc, they kept two files – Hoax and Haunting. One much fatter than the other. Both neglected now. Gwendolyn Nobbs, new President of the Spook-Spotters, was a mean-spirited japestress who stocked the Soc with sheet-wearing cronies. Their chief activity was devising cruel frauds to perpetuate on the gullible.

  The Moth Club and Knowles sat on chairs around Devlin’s bed. Knowles did her best to eat her smuggled lunch quietly. Stretch’s foot-long feet poked out from the blankets at the end of her bed. She was pulled long and thin like a prisoner on the rack in a Punch cartoon. Without thinking, she tugged her chin into a potato shape. Another casualty of Villa DeVille who was not yet her old self.

  When she thought Devlin wouldn’t notice, Light Fingers stuck a pencil in her arm.

  No reaction.

  So the numbness was confirmed.

  ‘I’ll be up and about again in no time,’ said Stretch.

  ‘Of course you will,’ said Knowles.

  Only two other beds in the Infirmary were occupied. Millie Trundleclough, a Goneril Second, was laid up with her latest sporting injury. With more pluck than sense, she was forever barging into rucks and getting something sprained, bruised or skinned. At the far end of the room, Kathleen Vaughn wheezed in a curtained bed, felled by a mystery illness. Devlin said Vaughn had eaten soap, with an eye on being cast as Malingering Marguerite when the Viola Players put on Camille. She was a devotee of the Stanislavski Method.

  Two more visitors arrived. Little and Speke. With a clacking of finger-things, Speke pulled a card out of her sleeve and gave it to Knowles.

  If she closed her eyes, Amy could hear Speke’s playing.

  Te-tum-te-tum-titty-tum-titty-tum…

  If she opened them, she could see the girl’s crab-hands.

  Amy was disturbed by Speke’s Attributes and ashamed of her reaction. She couldn’t suppress her instinctive revulsion. Speke wasn’t Harper or Palgraive – who gave everybody the creeps. So far as Amy could tell, the Second was a kind, bright, decent girl… It was just her hands…

  She tried to concentrate on the girl’s bland, shiny face.

  Little was happy to be invited anywhere. She sat on an empty bed, which bowed and strained. Speke was curious.

  ‘You know this mob,’ said Knowles. ‘They sit at the back, in a square.’

  ‘The Butterfly Brigade,’ said Little, flapping her huge arms.

  ‘Generally, we go by the Moth Club,’ admitted Frecks.

  ‘I’m Harriet and this is Gillian,’ said Speke.

  ‘This is about the Broken Doll,’ said Knowles.

  Little stopped flapping and sat quietly, frightened.

  Speke’s hands writhed and clattered in her lap.

  ‘My second secret is… She is right to be afraid of the Broken Doll,’ said Speke.

  ‘That’s my first,’ admitted Amy.

  ‘I don’t want to tell mine,’ said the Second. ‘If that’s all right.’

  Amy and Frecks exchanged looks. They had wondered about the kind of secrets no one would want to share.

  You could use your Talent to heal the sick – but won’t.

  Was that Speke’s first secret? Could her crab-hands take away pain and suffering?

  ‘S
ome girl shaves,’ said Little, fright forgot, giggling.

  ‘That’s her second secret,’ said Speke. ‘An easy one. What’s her name – the Scots doggie girl?’

  ‘Gould,’ said Amy. ‘Aconita Gould.’

  Little growled and giggled at the same time.

  ‘She shaves… like a man. She has stubble.’

  ‘I doubt she just shaves her face,’ said Light Fingers.

  ‘My first secret is nothingish… You don’t think your name is half as funny as others do.’

  Speke shrugged sadly.

  ‘I’m used to it,’ said Little. ‘Sometimes when girls make fun, I don’t see the joke. It gets boring after a while. Besides, names don’t mean anything. They’re just names. You don’t pick them.’

  ‘Little has a big heart,’ said Speke kindly.

  ‘And everything else,’ said Devlin, slightly spoiling it though Little didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘May I ask a question?’ said Speke.

  ‘Of course,’ said Knowles. ‘We’re not beaks and this isn’t class.’

  Speke asked, ‘Are you afraid of the Broken Doll?’

  ‘I don’t even know who or what the Broken Doll is,’ said Amy.

  ‘But are you afraid of her? Like the secret says.’

  ‘The secret doesn’t say that, though.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Speke, one hand climbing over the other, fingertips scrittering on carapace. ‘It says you are right to be afraid of the Broken Doll. Which means we all should be, doesn’t it? The Broken Doll isn’t just frightening, but dangerous.’

  Amy realised something. She was not a fearless paladin. Unmitigated courage was foolish. Trundleclough was fearless, and look where that got her. Amy was afraid of being hurt or being responsible for others getting hurt. She was afraid of Stephen Swift and Nightcap, and Wrong ’Uns in general. She was afraid of Count DeVille’s cloak, and the things inside her it had woken. She was afraid of Larry’s pocket, and what it had done to Poll Sparks. She was afraid of floating off in her sleep and freezing or gasping her last in the upper atmosphere.

  But – despite seeing a face in a dream or in pudding – she wasn’t afraid of the Broken Doll. Not really. Not yet.