The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (7 page)

‘Sticky crumpets!’ exclaimed Amy.

The one who had shot at them was definitely not a girl. He had a red tuft on the forehead of his hood, a badge of leadership. It looked like a flame. Was it the symbol of a secret society? He took careful aim at Smudge and she shut her mouth.

Had she been wrong about the scarcity of smugglers hereabouts? From their outfits, this mob were up to no good. The hoods suggested
organised
illegality. They reminded her of Les Vampires or the bands of desperate minions employed by wicked uncles to abduct soppy heiresses.

Kali gave a battle yell and charged.

Amy’s heart clutched and she was sure her friend would be shot. She swung her rifle, which left her hands and cartwheeled through the air until it smacked against a hooded head. A torrent of frightful masculine swearing poured forth.

Kali went for the leader, who sidestepped her charge and cold-cocked her with his pistol butt. She dropped her knife.

Two others caught the stunned girl and bound her with ropes. They were as practised as Crowninshield II.

With his gun, the leader indicated that Amy and the others should not interfere.

The prisoner was dragged, a deadweight, along the beach. The fellow Amy had beaned was still angry, but his leader indicated they shouldn’t stick around. They had what they’d come for.

Kali.

‘You can’t do that, you bounders,’ Amy shouted.

They didn’t reply and kept on doing it.

‘You won’t get away with this,’ she added.

She didn’t sound convincing to herself.

The hooded men moved quickly. They were nearly out of sight beyond a cliff outcrop. Amy picked up the old, wet cricket ball and bowled it at the leader’s head. She made the ball light as it left her hand, then let it recover its weight as it flew long and straight. She had tried this before.

The hooded leader turned to look back and was struck between the eyes.

‘
Thrown
, Amy,’ applauded Smudge.

The hood must have protected the leader, for he didn’t fall down dead. He shook a fist back at the girls. Amy picked up stones. The leader made a sign to a minion, and the shotgun was discharged in their general direction. Pellets pattered on the beach. Then, the gunman took careful aim with the other barrel. Reluctantly, Amy dropped the rocks.

The abductors hustled away.

As soon as they were round the curve, Amy would follow, keeping close to the cliff, hiding, floating if need be. She could not let smugglers take her friend.

Smudge grabbed her arm, holding her back.

‘They’ll shoot you,’ she said.

‘I don’t care,’ said Amy.

‘They might shoot Kali,’ Smudge argued.

‘If they went to the trouble of tying her up and carting her off, I should say not,’ Amy reasoned. ‘Her father has enemies. The kidnappers probably intend to ransom her.’

‘It could be Ponce’s white slavers,’ put in Smudge. ‘Not that Kali’s white, but, you know, for her I expect they’d make an exception… She’s jolly saleable, I should say.’

‘I don’t care what colour she is,’ said Amy. ‘She’s a Desdemona of Drearcliff. We can’t let her be snatched without a fight.’

Amy broke free of Smudge.

‘I wish Miss Borrodale were here,’ said Inchfawn.

Then, suddenly, she was.

‘You girls,’ said Fossil, ‘War’s over. You’re casualties.’

S
MUDGE TOLD THE
story first, which was a disaster.

After confirming that Kali hadn’t turned up back at School, Miss Borrodale took Amy, Smudge and Inchfawn to Headmistress’s study. Dr Swan asked Keys to sit in on the interview. Small chairs were brought in for the girls.

‘Chattopadhyay is missing,’ stated Dr Swan. ‘Tell me what you know.’

In a gush, Smudge got out her version of what happened on the beach. She had most of it straight, but embellished details. Instead of a sewn-on red patch in the shape of a flame, Smudge said the leader’s hood was actually on fire. She claimed the abductors had popped out of foxholes on the beach – which might have been true, but sounded silly.

The tide was in now, so any evidence – spent shotgun pellets, for instance – was underwater.

Smudge wasn’t believed.

Amy calmly confirmed most of the story and insisted the police be called at once. The country must be searched, trains stopped, roads blocked, airfields shut down. It was vital action be taken now.

Dr Swan and Fossil exchanged
looks
. Amy was still a new girl to them. They now thought she was following the errant path of Smudge Oxenford into realms of faerie, flight and fancy.

The spotlight fell on Inchfawn.

Surely, the grown-ups would have to believe three girls telling the same story!

Inchfawn took off her glasses and cleaned them with a hankie.

‘Kali ran off,’ said Inchfawn. ‘She talked about it, then she did it. She said she could get back to School without us. She said we were
baggage
.’

Headmistress’s eyes nearly closed.

Any girl who knew Kali could tell this was rot, but Amy understood that – to the tiny mind of a grown-up – Inchfawn’s version sounded more believable than a wild romance of hooded villains. Especially if the primary source was the School’s most famous Exaggerator. Smudge invoked smugglers, white slavers, anarchists, spies and members of secret orders of demon-worshipping monks so often that patience with her had run dry.

Amy had a spurt of pity for the Exaggerator. At last she had a true story of crime and terror to recount, but her previous yarns rendered it worthless. Amy felt only cold contempt for Inchfawn. She wanted to slap her, but knew it would make the drip seem even more like the put-upon truth-teller in a nest of verminous fibbers.

Headmistress asked Fossil to escort Inchfawn to Old House, where she was to clean herself up for supper. A-tremble at being entrusted to her idol, Inchfawn ignored Amy’s thumb-through-the-fist sign. The traitor couldn’t cling to Miss Borrodale’s skirt forever. Eventually, she must answer for her crimes.

Amy and Smudge remained with Headmistress.

‘It is a serious matter to voice untruths in this study,’ said Dr Swan. ‘Even in the cause of protecting a House Sister.’

Now it looked even worse. Kali had run off like a sneak and her friends were lying to cover up.

‘Do you have anything to add to your account of this afternoon’s incident?’

Amy and Smudge did not.

‘Very well,’ said Headmistress. ‘This matter will be resumed.’

‘Aren’t you going to call Scotland Yard?’ asked Smudge.

‘We make our own laws at Drearcliff,’ said Dr Swan softly. ‘Keys will find Chattopadhyay.’

Keys nodded. She had a waterproof cape to hand and was set to go out in search of the missing girl. At least something was being done, though it was scant comfort.

Dr Swan considered the girls, drummed her lacquered nails on her desk, and said, ‘You are dismissed.’

‘
K
EYS WON
’
T FIND
Kali,’ declared Frecks. ‘The old trout knows School better than anyone, but hasn’t been off grounds this century. When she was a Sixth, she was engaged to a young officer. He only went off and got beheaded at Khartoum with General Gordon. Keys took a vow not to leave Drearcliff Grange. Graduated from Girl to Staff and stayed put. Wants to be buried in the cricket pitch. Under the crease.’

‘Could hardly make it any lumpier,’ Amy commented.

Frecks and Light Fingers tittered at the drollery, then remembered how grave things were.

They were in their cell. Amy had told her friends all.

‘Keys has been scouring the school for sign of ffolliott-Absent for two years and is no closer to laying a hand on her.’

‘Surely, ffolliott absented herself?’ Amy said. ‘Isn’t she on the Riviera?’

‘Did you hear that from Smudge?’ asked Frecks.

‘Well, yes.’

‘…
quod erat demonstr.
, eh? Smudge told
me
that ffolliott-Absent went in a burnoose to trail after Lawrence in the desert, having been fired up with Mohammedanism by anonymous postcards from a sheik. Yes, Smudge said the postcards were both anonymous
and
from a sheik. She meant an anonymous sheik, I suppose. Wherever Enid ffolliott is, I doubt she’s in this. It’s not like sardines, where each disappearee crams in with the last until there are more of them than the stay-behinds. Whatever has become of ffolliott-Absent is of a different order of strangeness to Kali’s abduction.’

‘The kidnappers will have Kali in an aeroplane by now,’ ventured Light Fingers. ‘Or a sealed train carriage. She’ll be bundled up like an invalid. Bound to have been drugged too.’

Amy wasn’t sure about the theory.

‘I don’t know why,’ she said, ‘but I believe Kali hasn’t been taken far away,
yet
. The hooded men were only after
her
. If they were white slavers, wouldn’t they have taken all of us?’

‘I doubt even the most depraved oriental potentate would offer cushion-space to Inchfawn,’ said Frecks. ‘She’d have to be a Special Bonus Offer, thrown in with better quality merchandise.’

‘She wasn’t much use in the pinch,’ admitted Amy. ‘Poor girl.’

‘I wouldn’t “poor girl” Inchfawn,’ said Frecks. ‘That one has a sly, cunning streak. And a mercenary nature. Brain-peeping Ames always shied clear of her. Just like Six to turn yellow in a pickle.’

‘Funny thing, though,’ mused Light Fingers. ‘I was in Inchfawn’s tent when we went hiking last year. We got early tea every day because we were first to pitch camp. Inchfawn was a whizz at map-reading. I’m puzzled she should have lost the knack. Her brother’s watch works like a compass.’

Amy snapped her fingers. ‘Crumpets!’ she exclaimed. ‘
Her brother’s watch!
’

‘Do tell,’ urged Frecks.

‘She snuck a look at the watch just before the hooded men appeared out of nowhere. As if she were waiting for them! We wouldn’t have been on the beach at all if it weren’t for her mucking up with the map… So how did they know where to find us?’

The three girls goggled at each other. Inchfawn was in with the abductors!

‘It’s a Hooded Conspiracy!’ declared Frecks. ‘I knew it in my bones!’

Amy found such malignancy difficult to credit, but it solved the riddle of why Inchfawn had fibbed to Headmistress.

‘What a cow-bag!’ said Light Fingers.

Frecks knotted a dressing-gown cord.

‘Kali showed me how to do this,’ she said. ‘Put a florin in the knot, to give weight. Hey presto – Thuggee strangling tool! Justice will be swift. Show no mercy.’

Frecks snapped the cord, which twanged like a bowstring.

‘
Whoah, Nellie
,’ said Amy. ‘Let’s not go off half-cocked. Yes, Inchfawn’s in on a terrible, terrible crime. But knowing she’s in it opens the door a crack. We were at a loss. Now we have a
clue
. If we play this cleverly, we’ve a chance at doing what we know Keys can’t. Find Kali and get her back…’

‘…and see off those dastards in the hoods and all their drippy minions.’

‘
Minions?
’ Light Fingers asked Frecks.

‘It won’t be just Six. If they’ve signed her up to the Hooded Conspiracy, who knows how many other girls – teachers, even – are in it? Could go all the way up to High Table. Might even be a pinch of truth in what Smudge says about Ponce Bainter. On principle, we can’t trust anyone outside this cell until they prove themselves. Smudge is probably sound, from what you say, Amy. Can’t see what earthly use she might be, though. It’s down to we three. We must apply ourselves – use our Abilities. Without Kali, we’re the Forus no longer. To go up against the Hooded Conspiracy, we must form a conspiracy – a secret society – of our own. Now, what should we call it? The League of Avenging Justice? The Three Good Girls?’

‘The Scarlet Slippers?’ suggested Light Fingers.

Amy had it. ‘The Moth Club.’

The others looked at her, puzzled and a little disappointed.

‘The Moth Club?’ exclaimed Frecks, in disbelief.

‘All those other names
sound
like secret societies,’ Amy explained. ‘The Moth Club doesn’t…’

‘It sounds
boring
,’ said Light Fingers.

‘Moths are
not
boring,’ said Amy, a little stung. ‘But, I admit, my enthusiasm isn’t generally shared. If we talk about Moth Club doings, people will yawn and not think any more of it. Only we’ll know it’s important. That’s a super way to keep a society secret.’

Frecks saw sense. ‘The Moth Club it is!’

‘I liked The Scarlet Slippers,’ said Light Fingers, weakly.

‘We’ll have another society called that,’ said Frecks kindly. ‘A pretend secret to cover up the real one. A good name should not go to waste.’

Amy felt a sense of purpose. After the worrying, dizzying helplessness of the afternoon, it was a relief, almost an intoxicant.

Something was being done.

Now they had a name, the Moth Club needed a charter. Amy turned her Book of Moths upside down, and opened the blank last page. She fetched out pen and ink and wrote ‘the purpose of the Moth Club is to study moths in their habitats, to list and sketch any species found on the grounds of Drearcliff Grange School, to defend the honour of moths against the calumnies of the supporters of trivial butterflies and to take steps to prevent the wanton murder of moths by certain boys who stalk them with poison and kill them in jars for the empty achievement of building a collection of dead things.’

‘Phew,’ said Light Fingers.

Amy pressed pink blotting paper to the page. She held it up and saw the charter in mirror-writing.

‘That’s the
official
story,’ said Amy. ‘Now, pass me that pencil.’

Pressing firmly, writing between the lines of the previous passage, she wrote ‘the true purpose of the Moth Club is to oppose the Hooded Conspiracy, no matter who their agents or masters might be, to rescue Princess Kali Chattopadhyay from their vile clutches and return her to safety. We vow not to rest until this purpose has been achieved, and that none of the undersigned shall betray her cell-sisters on pain of death by strangulation. We shall triumph.’