The Outcast Girls

by Alys Clare

  ‘We love you, Violetta!’ a man shouts, and the cry is taken up all round the theatre. Several bouquets are thrown on to the stage, and with grace Violetta picks them up, pressing some roses to her face with an expression of delight. ‘They’re mine!’ yells a man two rows in front of Felix, turning round to those sitting nearby with a triumphant expression, as if the audience’s darling having selected his flowers for close attention somehow marks him out as someone special.

  The applause fades away as it becomes clear Violetta is not going to return a fourth time, and presently the theatre begins to empty until Felix is sitting there alone. He is about to go and see if Violetta is ready to leave when he hears hurried footsteps from behind him and, turning, sees her approaching. ‘Come on, I want my tea, I’m spitting feathers,’ she says, and, standing up, he offers his arm and escorts her out of the theatre and on to the street.

  ‘Now, I’ve been asking questions on your behalf,’ Violetta says as soon as they are seated in the discreet and charming little tea room she has brought him to and she has ordered tea and cakes, ‘so get out your notebook and your little silver pencil and listen.’

  ‘Questions about what?’ he says, obeying.

  She leans closer and says very quietly, ‘The MacKilliver twins, or, to be precise, Cameron MacKilliver.’

  ‘Go on.’ He suspects that she has something good for him; there is a strong sense of excitement thrumming through her.

  ‘I’ve been talking to Old Turnip-Head – Freddie – again. It was at a party on Wednesday night, after the show, and—’

  ‘It was lucky you bumped into him,’ Felix interrupts.

  She sends him a scathing look. ‘Luck had nothing to do with it, young Felix,’ she says. ‘I made sure he’d be there. The party was thrown by a good friend of mine and I suggested she invite Turnip-Head and she said good idea because he’s on his own at present and she always has a pretty protégée or two around in need of a rich benefactor.’

  It is his turn to give her a meaningful look, but she shrugs. ‘Oh, come on, you know how it works,’ she says sharply. ‘Men like Freddie Fanshawe-Turnbull prey on lovely girls young enough to be their daughters or granddaughters – although Freddie’s not nearly as bad as some, he doesn’t lust after children – so why shouldn’t the girls get something out of it?’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant, I—’ But Felix isn’t sure he can explain his sudden sense of revulsion. In fact it seems to be the very ways of the world that dismay him and that is far too big a topic for a teatime conversation. Besides his companion has important information for him. ‘Sorry. Please, go on.’

  ‘I cornered Freddie and we embarked on one of those long, rambling chats that people who’ve known each other for years enjoy, catching up with what they’ve been up to, exchanging news of mutual friends, and I made sure to keep his glass topped up. By the time I steered us round to the MacKillivers, it seemed like a natural next step in the conversation and he didn’t suspect a thing when I pressed him.’

  ‘What do you mean, pressed him?’

  ‘About Cameron. Mortimer’s the twin who is Freddie’s chum – they’ve been friends for years, and as I told you before, Freddie regularly goes up to Findhorn Hall for shooting and fishing – and being so close to the one implies knowledge of the other. Cameron shuts himself away at Findhorn Hall but he also—’

  ‘He also goes to stay with an old schoolfellow. Yes, you told me that before too.’

  She gives a nod of approval. ‘Glad to know you were paying attention. It was that very friend I was pumping Freddie about, and it appears that this man’s family’s estate was close by Findhorn Hall and the two of them, him and Cameron, spent much of their early childhood on boyish larks together and renewed the adventures each time they came home for the school holidays. It sounds from what Freddie said as though they were both misfits – as I mentioned before, Cameron was odd from the start – so in all likelihood they suited each other well.’

  Felix is interested, but he cannot see the relevance of Cameron MacKilliver’s boyhood to the missing girls and the two dead women. Except, of course – and he recognizes that it is an important and surely significant exception – that Cameron is a member of the Band of Angels, who are patrons of Shardlowes School. He returns his full attention to Violetta.

  And he sees instantly that, astute woman that she is, she has noticed the moment’s absence. ‘It is relevant, trust me,’ she says softly.

  He smiles. ‘Sorry. Please, continue.’

  ‘From what Freddie was saying – or muttering, because he was well into his cups by this time and he’d lowered his voice as well, which you’ll understand in a moment – it sounds as if there have been incidents up near the MacKilliver ancestral home.’ She pauses – she is an actress after all, Felix reminds himself – then says, ‘Whispers concerning young girls. Rumours of people being paid to keep quiet.’ She taps a finger to the side of her nose.

  ‘What?’ Felix hisses. ‘Recently? But surely this should be reported and—’

  ‘Hush!’ she hisses back, the short syllable accompanied by a dig in the ribs from her sharp elbow. ‘No, of course not recently – this was years ago, and Freddie said it was all muttered tales and rumours spread behind the closed door of village hovels. He says there was no truth in them, or if there was it amounted to no more than a pair of randy young lads pushing themselves too far on village girls.’

  ‘So why are you telling me?’ he demands crossly.

  She glances to left and right, but the people at nearby tables are intent on their own conversations, and the noise level is in any case too loud for easy eavesdropping. ‘Because there’s something wrong with Cameron,’ she whispers. ‘The other place he goes when he’s not at Findhorn Hall is to see a doctor, who—’

  ‘A doctor who understands men like him.’ The memory of her voice speaking those words sounds clear in his head. ‘Yes. What did you mean by that? What sort of doctor?’

  ‘One for the mentally ill,’ she says quietly. ‘The place where poor old Cameron is sent when his madness overcomes him is a lunatic asylum.’

  ‘Good grief,’ Felix whispers back, fighting his fear and revulsion. In common, he suspects, with almost everyone else, he has a horror of mental illness.

  Violetta glances at him. ‘Treatment has advanced of late,’ she says coolly. ‘It’s not naked idiots fighting their chains in their filthy cells for the Sunday entertainment of gawping visitors like the Bedlam of old, you know.’ Her tone is harsh.

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ he agrees, although in truth he has no idea what goes on behind an asylum’s forbidding walls. Then, his curiosity overcoming him, he asks, ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Freddie’s not sure,’ she replies, calmer again now. ‘I told you how he – Cameron – used to play with dolls?’ Felix nods. ‘Well, Freddie reckons something in Cameron stopped at that age – when he was obsessed by his dollies – and that it’s to do with losing the little baby sister.’

  ‘And being an unwilling witness to his mother’s childbearing and grief,’ Felix murmurs.

  Violetta looks at him in surprise. ‘Yes,’ she agrees. She raises her eyebrows in a silent question.

  ‘It’s what I thought when you told me before,’ he replies. ‘If Cameron was close to his mother, he’d be sad for her and probably very frightened, yet not understand why she was in such profound distress.’ Then abruptly he adds, ‘But hundreds – thousands – of children go through the same experiences and they don’t all turn into lunatics.’

  ‘Cameron’s not a lunatic in the strict sense of the word,’ she corrects him, ‘because his moods are not dependent on the moon.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ he grumbles.

  She sighs. ‘I do. From what Freddie knows – which isn’t much, but I suspect Mortimer confides in him when it all becomes too much to bear alone – Cameron descends into a state where he believes he has to save people. At such times he sees growing up as
some sort of expulsion from the childhood paradise, and he becomes very agitated and distressed, crying out that he’s been singled out to save them, to keep them from the horrors and the perils that await in the adult world.’

  ‘He has never married, has he?’

  ‘No.’ She smiles sadly. ‘I very much doubt he has even kissed a woman in a sexual way since those putative boyhood fumblings – if indeed there was any truth in the rumours – nor even held a pretty white hand.’

  ‘But he’s not—’ Felix hesitates.

  She looks at him again. ‘No. Not that either, although there has always been talk about—’ Abruptly she shuts her mouth.

  ‘About Mortimer?’ Felix suggests. ‘But you said he’d been married?’

  She gives him look that says eloquently that he is being naive and, judging by the way she turns her head away and does not speak, he thinks he’s guessed right and that Mortimer MacKilliver is rumoured to prefer his own sex.

  Breaking quite a long silence, Felix says, ‘My instincts tell me that the nature of Cameron MacKilliver’s state of mind – of his sickness – must be connected to what is going on at Shardlowes School.’

  Violetta nods. ‘I feel the same way. But how can it be?’ she adds. ‘It’s not as if the Band of Angels have anything to do with the schools they help to fund, other than stumping up the money. Cameron has probably never been to Shardlowes in his life, nor any of the other schools, and it’s doubtful he even attends the Band’s meetings unless he really has to. In fact,’ she concludes, ‘other than increasingly rare visits here to London, spells in the asylum and going to stay with his old boyhood friend, he doesn’t engage in life outside Findhorn Hall at all.’ She turns to Felix, the frustration evident in her face.

  Felix nods absently. He is thinking hard, and the conclusion to which he is rapidly arriving is not welcome at all for it involves going away again, and considerably further than to the south coast, at the very time when, for some reason he’s not sure he wants to explore, his concerns for Lily’s safety are rapidly multiplying.

  She’s in a sedate girls’ boarding school, he tells himself, what harm can she possibly come to?

  She’s there for a purpose and she’s good at her job, the other part of his mind replies, which means she’ll be asking questions, trying to find things out, and a girl and a woman have already been killed for doing just that.

  But Lily is neither a seventeen-year-old girl nor a frightened middle-aged spinster English teacher, he protests. She is astute, she knows how to be careful, she—

  She almost died in the course of your last major case, the relentless voice in his head says, and it is loud in its triumph.

  He feels a soft, warm hand take hold of his and squeeze it. ‘You’re worried about her, aren’t you?’ Violetta says softly. ‘That boss of yours?’

  ‘Yes.’ There’s no point denying it as Violetta seems able to read his thoughts.

  ‘Then get on with doing what you have to do,’ Violetta says firmly, ‘but not before you warn her.’

  ‘Warn her of what?’ he asks helplessly. ‘I don’t know!’

  She nods her understanding. ‘Just tell her to take more care?’ she suggests. ‘Say she’s putting herself in danger by making enquiries?’

  ‘She knows that already,’ he says.

  ‘Tell her again,’ Violetta says relentlessly. ‘It’s your duty, young Felix.’ Her velvety brown eyes on him are compassionate. She adds softly, ‘You’ll never forgive yourself if anything happens to her.’

  Afternoon is turning to evening when he emerges from the tea room: alone, for Violetta understands his sudden urgency and sends him on his way with an admirable lack of fuss, shooing him out and saying she’ll see to the bill.

  He makes his way as fast as he can back to Chelsea. But his destination is not the World’s End Bureau’s office and he runs straight past the end of Hob’s Court and down to the river.

  He’s not sure the object of his flying mission will be there; not even sure how to go about finding him. But it’s vital he does, so as his racing feet thunder along the towpath he says a silent prayer. The prayer is not answered as definitively as he’d have liked, but he is able to leave a message, and the man who undertakes to deliver it appears calmly confident that he will find the intended recipient in the fairly near future.

  Felix wishes fiercely (and for reasons he really doesn’t want to think about) that he didn’t have to be doing this; that he could carry out the task himself. But he knows it will take too long; that giving in and doing what he so much wants to do will mean a long delay, and some deep instinct tells him there is no time for delay. Besides, what would be his excuse for turning up? He would risk revealing the truth, and she would be furious …

  Felix races back the way he has come, calls briefly at Kinver Street and within not much over an hour he is on the night train departing from King’s Cross.

  THIRTEEN

  Lily is heavy-eyed on Saturday morning, still shaken by the trauma of returning to her past and what happened there. It is not solely the horror with which she was threatened, she reflects miserably as she washes and dresses, but also her shame, for in her panic and fear she thought only to save herself and she ran away.

  She cannot bear to think what has happened to the exquisitely beautiful Manda.

  She goes through the first of her morning duties with barely half the required attention, only pulled back to herself when Matron rebukes her sharply for almost dropping the tea tray, not having put it down on to Matron’s crowded little bedside table with enough care.

  ‘Not sickening too, are you?’ Matron demands, pausing to cough. ‘Can’t have you abed too, Nurse, so you’d better not be.’

  ‘I am well, Matron,’ Lily replies.

  Matron is still staring at her, eyes narrowed critically. ‘You don’t look it,’ she remarks.

  That has nothing to do with sickening for a cold, Lily thinks. ‘How are you today, Matron?’ she says, deflecting Matron’s attention from herself.

  ‘I thought I was better, but this cough still troubles me,’ Matron replies. Lily, close to her as she straightens the bedclothes, can hear the phlegm bubbling in Matron’s chest.

  ‘I will bring another bowl of hot water and inhalant,’ Lily says.

  It will help to ease the congestion, she thinks. At least she hopes so, for if not Matron may well develop pneumonia, and then—

  Don’t think about that, she tells herself sternly. Not yet.

  She spends a busy morning treating a steady stream of girls with cold symptoms, but none is as unwell as Matron. Just before lunch she is surprised to receive a visit from Miss Carmichael.

  ‘I apologize for not having come to see you before, Nurse,’ the headmistress says, her eyes sweeping round the treatment room as if hunting for signs of laziness or neglect. Lily, who has just finished tidying and knows the room is immaculate, stands with her hands folded, waiting to see what Miss Carmichael wants.

  ‘You have had a busy week,’ she says presently. ‘The school does not usually have so many patients for our Matron and her assistant to treat.’

  ‘I prefer to be busy,’ Lily replies.

  Miss Carmichael nods. ‘Quite.’ Then, barely pausing for breath, she goes on, ‘I do not know if you are aware of this, for tomorrow is the first Sunday you will be spending with us, but it is customary for Matron’s assistant to attend church with the school before seeing to any patients who cannot wait until Monday. We take seriously the Lord’s admonition to keep holy the Sabbath Day.’ She gives a little nod of self-congratulation. ‘However, after luncheon it is also our custom to take a short time for ourselves, and accordingly you may have the afternoon off.’ She is looking at Lily as if expecting her to sink to her knees in gratitude, but Lily refrains, simply nodding her understanding.

  ‘Should you wish to leave School,’ Miss Carmichael goes on, ‘Eddy and the trap are at your disposal, allowing of course for any arrangements already made with h
im by myself and Miss Dickie and the teaching staff.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lily echoes faintly.

  Miss Carmichael sends her a cold look, then turns and walks stiffly off down the passage.

  Saturday afternoon passes slowly and Lily reflects on the perversity of life: just when she would like to be rushed off her feet so she doesn’t have time to think, she has nothing to do.

  The day is very cold, but the sun is shining and so she sets out for a walk. Several girls are out in the grounds, playing a hectic game on a broad lawn under Miss Blytheway’s supervision, and there is a lot of laughter. Noticing a little pavilion set further along the path, Lily strolls up to it.

  She is not the only occupant: Marigold Dunbar-Lea is sitting inside, legs tucked under her, a thick cloak pulled tightly around her, its hood covering her bright hair, and snuggled under a heavy woollen rug.

  ‘I cannot run and join in, Nurse,’ she greets Lily, ‘but I do like to watch.’

  ‘What is the game?’ Lily asks, sitting down beside her.

  ‘It’s called Wave-me-Free, and you have to go and hide, and when the person who is the Catcher catches you, you have to go to that tree’ – she points to a magnificent oak tree, the width of its vast trunk suggesting great age – ‘until one of the other Hiders comes out of hiding and waves to you, and then you can go and hide again too, only of course the Hider waving to you mustn’t be seen by the Catcher or they have to stand by the tree. See?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lily watches the girls out on the lawn, who are red-cheeked and panting, shrieking and laughing as they pop out of the bushes and the shrubbery, trying to wave before they are seen. Miss Blytheway is dashing around and laughing as enthusiastically as any of her pupils, and Lily admires her for making the daily exercise such fun.

  Presently she turns to Marigold. ‘How is your foot today?’

  ‘Better, thank you Nurse,’ Marigold replies. ‘The cream you used really helped, and as you told me, I put more on this morning.’ She grins. ‘The other girls wanted some because they all love the scent!’