The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  ‘Another boy!’ said Gifford. ‘A dreamy one!’

  ‘Hear that,’ Kali snapped at Wax. ‘You’re a back number.’ Wax shrugged.

  Amy noticed Frecks being ostentatiously diffident.

  ‘You knew,’ Amy accused her friend.

  ‘I might have had a postcard,’ Frecks admitted.

  Light Fingers whirred her hands to make a passage through the crowd. The Moth Club followed her to the driveway.

  Geoffrey Jeperson stood by the charabanc, shaking hands with Dr Swan.

  ‘The gallant Capt,’ said Wax.

  Jeperson caught sight of Frecks and smiled wider.

  There was a mass outbreak of sighing and semi-swooning. Wax’s moon was eclipsed by this bright star. Jeperson wore crisp, baggy Humble College cricket whites. He tossed his cap to the crowd like a bride bunging a bouquet in the general direction of a foaming pack of envious bridesmaids. Berthaiume II – who retained her numeral, though her older sister passed out years ago – snatched the thing and hung it on Pendill’s head.

  ‘You’ll have competition,’ Amy told Frecks.

  Frecks snorted. ‘Much you know, young Glory. This toby is in my pocket. It’s just a question of whether I want to give the gruesome object mantelpiece space.’

  Jeperson was waving at Frecks now. A thicket of girls pressed around him.

  Frecks didn’t seem that fussed. Which showed she was serious.

  ‘The others are coming out now,’ said Devlin, who’d stuck her neck out to get a better view. ‘They’re… not boys.’

  No one was so rude as to groan, but the crowd’s interest cooled.

  Girls drifted away. A phalanx of whips frog-marched Jeperson to their hut – where he would be plied with cream tea and have rules against fraternisation impressed upon him in no uncertain terms. That had happened to Wax. It would go double for a more glamorous fellow. For the moment, the newcomer needed the protection. Frecks smirked the smirk of a fellowess who has an assignation after supper and is confident enough in her co-assignatee to be half an hour late to the designated secluded area and claim the trifling appointment had almost slipped her mind.

  Dr Swan moved on to greet a dumpy, dithery middle-aged woman. She must be a chaperone. Amy would have bet her charges ran rings around her.

  ‘Know who that is?’ said Knowles. ‘Lobelia Draycott.’

  Amy saw the dumpiness and ditheriness were a pose. Anyone who tried to run a ring around her would trip over a scythe.

  Miss Kratides was presented to the Dragon of the Disapproved School.

  With dread, Amy looked at the open door of the charabanc.

  A three-girl crocodile marched down the steps.

  Primrose Quell. Aurelia Avalon. Stephen Swift.

  They wore immaculate Draycott’s uniforms, with shining arrow-pins in their berets. They had matching tight smiles. Quell was back at Drearcliff Grange. Nightcap was in line – but for how long? Miss Steps was here for a rematch. They all saw Amy at once. The tight smiles grew tighter.

  The Break Bell rang.

  ‘Back to the salt mines,’ said Frecks.

  ‘You know those girls,’ said Light Fingers.

  Amy nodded. ‘New chums,’ she said. ‘New challenges.’

  Coda II:

  Thirteen Years Later – the Mausoleum

  THE MAUSOLEUM – pronounced ‘mouse-o-lay-um’ not ‘maws-o-lee-um’ for no reason she could ever determine – appeared to be a Tudor manor. It stood in the middle of Egdon Heath, a thousand acres of iron-red bracken unclaimed by Devon or Dorset. Architecturally, it was unremarkable – but the location was perverse. Manor houses, as a rule, are built on natural or artificial elevations, so the nobs can look down on the surrounding countryside and the yokels therein. The Mausoleum, however, skulked at the bottom of a depression. Its chimneys barely poked above the level of the very flat landscape. Millennia before the Undertaking posted their ‘Keep Out’ signs, Egdon Heath was a shunned place. The dent in the land was an ancient meteor crater, ringed with standing stones. The Mausoleum was prison, museum, menagerie and oubliette. Here, Great Britain kept things – and people – it wasn’t safe to keep anywhere else.

  The Rolls-Royce cruised along a cart track. Amy would have to get the car serviced and cleaned before returning it to Jonathan. She could have borrowed the autogiro, but needed to arrive in something more impressive to pass muster with the Undertakers. The ShadowShark drove like a dream, but she wasn’t in a mood to enjoy it.

  ‘You’ve been in a fret all morning,’ said Emma, who was curled up in the passenger seat.

  Amy shrugged at the wheel. Her old friend was right.

  This was not a place she cared to visit or even think about. If she offended the wrong people, she would be added to the Mausoleum Collection – with ribbons over her wings and a silver pin through her breastbone. The Undertaking barely tolerated Kentish Glory and she’d never warmed to them. Taking up with Jonathan made her unpopular in certain circles. Dr Shade was the least clubbable of paladins.

  Emma – Inspector Naisbitt of the Women’s Auxiliary Police – spoke up for her, and she had been entered in the Shadow Chronicle, which was the equivalent of being ‘mentioned in despatches’ in their line of work. She had served with distinction in the Weird War. For the moment, that kept the ‘men in black crepe’ off her case. No butterfly nets and killing jar for her yet.

  ‘They’d let you in without me to hold your hand,’ said Emma. ‘They asked you, remember?’

  ‘Somebody asked for me. It’s not the same.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  She might not need Emma to get into the Mausoleum. She might need her to get out again.

  They seemed to have been driving across the heath for a long time.

  ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with…’

  ‘B,’ said Amy. ‘Bracken!’

  ‘You are a mind-reader.’

  ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with…’

  ‘S,’ said Emma. ‘Sky!’

  ‘I was going to say C…’

  ‘Clouds! Same difference.’

  The journey was so desolate pub cricket was out. They hadn’t passed a sign that didn’t warn them not to go any further on pain of dire consequences in half an hour.

  ‘Do birds eat bracken?’

  ‘Not if they don’t want to be poisoned. Some moth larvae like the stuff… the Map-Winged Swift, for instance.’

  ‘Always moths, eh?’

  Amy was used to being teased. She’d never grown out of moths.

  She had too little time to cultivate a proper secret identity, but ‘Amanda Thomsett’ was becoming moderately well-known in lepidopterist circles. She was proud of her articles in The Entomologist’s Record and Journal of Variation. ‘Rannoch Looper – Is it Breeding in Sussex?’, ‘In Search of the Blind Peacock – an Aberrant Form of Inachis Io’ and ‘Winter Damselfly in Glamorgan’.

  ‘What I was getting at, though,’ said Emma, ‘is whether birds eating your bracken would be a problem.’

  ‘I imagine there’s enough bracken hereabouts to spare.’

  ‘Thought so. Then why are there so many scarecrows?’

  They had passed several – flapping black coats and pierced top hats, shirts and britches stuffed with straw.

  ‘It’s a retirement plan,’ Amy suggested. ‘When one of the Undertakers goes to his or her just reward, they hang him up to watch over the path.’

  Amy and Emma laughed.

  Light Fingers – not a handle much heard these days – was still her best Unusual friend or Unusual best friend. She was glad Scotland Yard could spare Emma for this outing.

  The ShadowShark was a step up from good old Rattletrap.

  She thought about the circumstances of the summons.

  ‘It’ll never be over,’ Amy said.

  ‘Sentences to the Mausoleum are for life,’ said Emma. ‘Even longer, in some cases. No one – and nothing – has ever escaped. This case i
s wrapped up and you don’t need to worry any more. Whatever she’s done, it’s finished. The Broken Doll is a common or garden criminal…’

  Amy snorted.

  ‘Yes,’ Emma insisted, ‘she is. She’s not a Talent. Never has been. I don’t know why she’s here and not Holloway. She’s not Colonel Zenf or Billy Beetle. That’s not to say she’s not formidable. Or dangerous. But, you know, I was always disappointed in her crimes. She had folk quaking in their britches with the masks and costumes and toys and tricks. I think she was always more interested in frightening people than anything else. All she really did was run a disreputable nightclub, steal a few jewels, and print her own money. After the fanfare, I expected her to replace the cabinet with life-like electric mannequins or dissolve the Rock of Gibraltar like an Alka-Seltzer. Not water drinks and rob trains…’

  ‘Steal trains whole. They still haven’t found them.’

  ‘They found the drivers, guards and passengers.’

  ‘Who were no wiser. It’s an unsolved mystery.’

  ‘You can ask her to explain her workings-out. She always used to do that to us. “I know how I know the answer – I want to know how you know it.”’

  Amy could still hear that.

  ‘Did you ever go to the Broken Doll’s House?’ Emma asked.

  Amy shook her head.

  ‘We raided it last year. Oversized furniture. “Hostesses” dressed as dollies. The clientele – all rich, all men, all ghastly – liked to be put in oversize cribs and be “played with”. Naughty boys could be spanked by Nanny, for a fat fee. Oh, the Doll collected snapshots. For her blackmail portfolio, we presume. The detail they get with infrared plates is remarkable. You wouldn’t want to look at the pics. I’ve not been back to a church since I saw the Archbishop in his big nappy. Guess who was stood outside as bouncer? Gillian Little. A foot taller with a pinny the size of a circus tent. Same hairdo, with all the curls. Like a gargantuan Shirley Temple. Funny how we Old Girls turn up, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m not sure the common or garden crookery is the whole story,’ said Amy. ‘I think it’s another cracked mask. It’s what we’re supposed to see. A distraction from what she’s really been up to.’

  ‘Should I check the Prime Minister for a winding-key in his back?’

  Ahead, Amy saw the standing stones – shadows long in the late afternoon.

  ‘Nearly there,’ she said.

  ‘Does it annoy you that she wasn’t even your special friend?’ asked Emma. ‘I know you crossed swords a time or two, but she fixated on Ghost Lantern Girl. The Shad Chron has pages about their spats.’

  Grace Ki was one of the stranger paladins. A professional dancer – chorus girl, basically – who inherited the skills of the women who were Ghost Lantern Girl before her. Their spirits were bound to her lantern. So long as it burned, she was proficient as a boxer, sharpshooter, justicer, chef, calligraphist, gambler and a dozen other specialty acts. A one-woman war party. She finally brought in the Broken Doll.

  Emma was right. The crimes of the Doll were too petty for Kentish Glory.

  Jonathan wasn’t interested either. Dr Shade had other concerns.

  ‘Any word on Doctor Eismond?’ asked Emma.

  ‘I have the report Lottie Knowles sent you. Something will have to be done. The man can’t hide in the German Embassy forever.’

  Werner Eismond was supposedly a long-lived retainer of the Ziss family. He had special responsibility for their Miscellany, which filled half a dozen chateaux scattered across Europe. The family collected rooms, reproduced in every detail with all the original fittings – and sometimes inhabitants – intact. Charlotte Knowles said the idea was not to own physical things, but to own events that took place in the rooms. Births, marriages, deaths. The theatre box where Lincoln was shot. The drab lodging where Mary Kelly was cut to pieces. The cabinet where Faust conjured Mephisto. The asylum cell of the Marquis de Sade, complete with his polished bones. Interested parties – including the Diogenes Club of London, the Opera Ghost Agency of Paris and Mr John Bronze of Harlem, New York – believed Eismond the true head of the Ziss Family. He, or someone with his name and face, had cultivated the line since the fifteenth century, amassing one of the great fortunes of Europe. What transpired in the basements of Zisshofs from Amsterdam to Bucharest was done in his name. Whispering Heike was the least of it.

  Jonathan took the Eismond-Ziss case personally.

  Recently, the Ziss Miscellany had added many more outlandish items – as if the Devil were on a shopping spree with God’s chequebook. The last time that damned cloak came back, it was snapped up by agents of Dr Eismond and shipped to Frankfurt in a coffin sealed with garlic. Amy couldn’t say she was sorry that particular rag was off the market. Eismond often sought things owners were reluctant to part with. Some collectors were so attached to curious works of art – not just tattoos – that surgical operations were required for a change in ownership.

  Eismond hired a cat burglar to scale the Tower of Big Ben and break into Dr Shade’s Laboratory. Siam Slim got his tail clipped for the impertinence, but several of Jonathan’s souvenirs went missing. Miss Memory – on the retainer of the Diogenes Club, who took an interest in such things – reported that the loot was in the Embassy along with other stolen goods Eismond was preparing to smuggle out of the country. Dr Shade wouldn’t recognise diplomatic immunity. He’d declare war on Hitler to get his baubles back. In that conflict, Amy would not bet on the Nazis.

  The Eismond-Ziss shopping list must include several prizes kept in the Mausoleum – not that any were for sale or any thief could be persuaded to try to lift them. They’d get more than a tail lopped off if they tried.

  The Rolls passed between megaliths.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Emma redundantly.

  Men with long black overcoats, bowler hats and dark glasses raised shotguns.

  ‘This season, it’s black again,’ said Amy.

  Emma laughed.

  Amy rolled down the window.

  An Undertaker ambled over. A woman with her left arm in a black silk sling.

  Amy recognised her. She’d known what the girl did after passing out but was still surprised to see Shrimp Harper in dark glasses and a black hat. It suited her better than mauve.

  ‘Miss… Aitch?’

  No smile – not that Amy would have expected one.

  ‘Arre,’ said the Undertaker, like a pirate. ‘Mrs Arre.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Amy.

  No flicker of emotion. They bled it out when you signed up. When they did the thing to your eyes that made the glasses necessary. Amy remembered the Undertaking was never in the Great Game. They were the linesmen, referees and blowers of the final whistle. They totted up the scores and ruled on fouls. They didn’t play. They didn’t care who won or lost.

  ‘It’s been a while,’ she said to Mrs Arre.

  ‘Jackie,’ said Emma, leaning over and waving very fast.

  ‘Inspector Naisbitt,’ she acknowledged, touching her bowler brim.

  ‘You’ve pranged your arm,’ said Emma. ‘Nothing serious, I hope.’

  ‘Mr Arre had an altercation with one of the… resident items. I’ve made him better. You remember how it works.’

  When Harper took away someone’s hurt or illness, she experienced symptoms – felt pain – but sustained no lasting harm. She healed from injuries which would lay a person up for weeks in a few days. Very uncomfortable days.

  ‘Are you all right, Jackie?’ Emma asked sincerely.

  ‘I’m useful here, Inspector. That’s all we can ask.’

  Amy wondered how frequently Mrs Arre bore Mr Arre’s burdens. She had an idea it was often.

  ‘You know who’s asked to see me?’ Amy said.

  Mrs Arre nodded.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Quiet. We like quiet.’

  Mrs Arre waved them through. The ShadowShark purred down the gentle incline towards the manor house.

  ‘Funny how things tur
n out,’ said Emma.

  ‘Funny for some,’ said Amy.

  ‘Remember what a horror Shrimp was… until, well, until Aurelia Avalon and Noxiter Hume made her look like a kitten…’

  Amy shuddered at the names.

  She parked in the shadow of the Mausoleum. It was gloomy in the crater.

  Mr Eye, the Warden, was waiting in the library. He did not care for visitors. Once an item was added to the Collection, it should pass from view. Not only should it never be seen again, it should never be thought of. He shut doors with nails not keys. Amy didn’t know why this request, of all he must receive, had been approved. His charges must howl in vain for all sorts of things.

  Emma was happy to be out of the car. If cooped up for more than an hour, she got itchy. It was her Talent, manifesting unhelpfully. If she put her hands in her pockets over and over again, as she did when she got the fidgets, she could set fire to her uniform. She more often thought fast than ran quickly these days, but was still a speedy little thing.

  Her friend was also still curious enough to want to poke about the Mausoleum. She’d like to make sure the items Dr Eismond would love to get his black gloves on were safely behind silver bars. Isidore Persano’s worm unknown to science. The heads of Don Felipe Molina and Sir Timothy ffolliott. The Angel Down Changeling. The sarcophagus of Queen Tera. The Clohessy diadem. The Amersham aelopile. The sole unpulped copy of Vol 2, No 11 of British Pluck Magazine, containing the interview with the Mystic Maharajah where he Said Things That Should Not Have Seen Print.

  Amy understood Emma’s concern but was impatient to hurry to the main attraction.

  ‘The Broken Doll is quite comfortable,’ Mr Eye explained. ‘She has a private room. There is no lash or wheel here. We are not Dartmoor. Those who need to feed are fed well. Guests can order books from the library. Even gramophone records. Within limits.’

  ‘And she wants to see me,’ Amy prompted.

  ‘She said she wanted you here.’

  ‘That’s not the same thing.’

  Emma’s ears pricked. She looked at an opening door.

  An Undertaker came in – the old-fashioned top hat that denoted seniority tucked under his arm – and told Mr Eye a fire was spreading on the bracken. There was nothing to be worried about.