The Glass Bird Girl (19 page)

A Piece of the Puzzle

E
die stood staring at the empty road, soaked and shivering. Edith the Brave, who wasn't afraid of anyone, had saved herself and let Anastasia down.

An owl screeched through her despair. She could not afford to give up now. She alone knew where the kidnap party was headed. For a moment she thought wildly of trying to hitch a lift to the ferry, but she knew she would never get there in time. The ferry they were booked to travel on was leaving that night. She must get to the village and alert the police, but her strength was ebbing.

She didn't dare go along the lane, imagining that the car might be lying in wait for her round a bend. She would have to double back through the wood, past the tower, then skirt along the edge of the park. She stumbled on, stopping only now and again to catch her breath,
slumped against a tree. She wondered how long it would take a search party to find her in the woods, and how far, by then, Anastasia would have been taken. It was Miss Fotheringay who was booked to travel with her to Ostend; Edie wondered, vaguely, whether Miss Winifred would be going too.

Thinking of Miss Fotheringay she had a sudden, delirious vision of the little bedroom in the West Tower, where she had slept under a warm duvet. She closed her eyes as other memories crowded her mind . . . of the hot water running in the bath . . . of Miss Fotheringay's mother, of her father, and of their voices floating up to her through the open window.

Christmas
, Edie remembered confusedly . . . they had been talking about Christmas.

‘
I hope you're still coming to France, dear . . . have you booked your ticket?
'

Edie had an image of the Fotheringays sitting around a long table, with candles and presents, and holly, and light flickering from the fire. She thought of Mr Fotheringay's kind, wrinkled face, and wondered if he knew his daughter was a kidnapper.

The voices rang on, hazily . . .

‘
Yes, yes, I'm coming . . . I must check my new passport . . . it still hasn't arrived . . . they said it had been signed for . . . there must have been some mistake . . . some mistake . . .
'

Edie was in sight of the tower now, but she stopped as a thought flashed with sudden clarity through her fevered brain.
Some mistake . . .
Could Edie have been the one mistaken? Could Miss Winifred have intercepted
Miss Fotheringay's passport? Her mind raced wildly through the fragments of evidence she had found, the strange conversations she had overheard. Her mother . . . what had Miss Fotheringay done to her mother? She was too weak to make sense of it all, but whichever turn her thoughts took, her mind kept veering back to Miss Fotheringay's passport. Why hadn't Edie seen it before? Miss Fotheringay had been duped.

She must reach her. But how? Her legs were buckling beneath her, and she knew she would never make it back to the school.

As she stood peering through the trees another muddled image played before her, of Miss Fotheringay standing by her bedroom window, pointing to the tower over the treetops, and showing her the old ship's light. ‘
Do you know how to make the SOS signal, Edith? Always useful to know. Three short flashes . . .
' Edie knew what she must do.

She dragged herself inside the tower and up the stairs. Miss Fotheringay's flashlight was lying where Anastasia had left it, on the floor beside the chest. It felt as heavy as a concrete slab when Edie picked it up.

She could no longer stand. She dropped to her knees and crawled up the final flight of stairs until she reached the small wooden gallery at the top of the tower. When she pushed open the shutters the sky had cleared. She peered beyond the woods, across the park, and in the moonlight saw the dim silhouette of the school and a prick of light coming from a window in the West Tower.
Miss Fotheringay must be awake – but would she see? With a shaking hand, she pushed the light out of the window, and flashed it three times . . . three short, three long, three short . . .

Miss Fotheringay slept through her alarm. She was woken at half past seven by the telephone ringing beside her bed.

‘Caroline? It's Janet Greyling here. I'm sorry to call so early but I wanted to fill you in on Doctor Browning. I'm in the hospital all day and thought I might not get a chance.'

‘Not early at all,' Miss Fotheringay said blearily, getting out of bed with the telephone clutched under her chin.

‘Did Miss Winifred say where she picked him up?'

‘N-no,' Miss Fotheringay replied cagily, detecting something ominous in her friend's enquiry. ‘But she assured me he was highly regarded in his field—'

‘Well, I don't know where she got that from. I can find no record of a Doctor Browning on the medical register and the clinic you mentioned was closed two years ago.'

Miss Fotheringay turned, frowning, to the window, as the memory of her disturbed night came back to her. She had drifted in and out of sleep, her anxieties about Edith Wilson accompanied by the sound of a raging storm. But then something else had woken her . . . she remembered walking to the window and peering out into a black, motionless night. The storm, she supposed, had been a dream . . . there had been nothing stirring in
the deep void of darkness, only the distant, rhythmic flicker of a light . . .

‘Thank you, Janet,' she said, her mouth hardening. ‘I will follow this up with Miss Winifred.'

Miss Fotheringay dressed quickly, driven by a confused sense of urgency. She must find Miss Winifred at once, and challenge her about Dr Browning. And then Edith, she must deal with Edith.

As she emerged into the corridor she saw Matron hurrying towards her, looking unusually harassed. ‘And how is your charge this morning?' Miss Fotheringay asked, trying to sound calmer than she felt.

‘She isn't,' Matron replied.

‘What?'

‘I mean, she's gone. Vamoosed. I looked in on her at seven and thought I'd let her sleep on, but when I went back a few minutes ago I found the bed was empty – pillows under the blankets, Headmistress, oldest trick in the book.'

‘You mean—'

‘She won't have gone far. She was coming down with a fever last night, wasn't fit to walk across the courtyard when I tucked her in. I'll get the doctor out as soon as we find her. It's the flu, or worse if you ask me.'

‘Worse?'

Matron nodded. ‘She dozed off for a bit before supper and when she woke she was all in a muddle – rambling on about this and that. Delirious, I'd say, though she was better when she'd had some soup.'

‘What was she saying?' Miss Fotheringay asked.

Matron looked vague. ‘Just repeating names for the most of it . . . Babka, that's her grandmother, I think. And her mother . . .
She knew my mother
– that's what she kept saying, but I couldn't get out of her what she meant.

‘Then she started off on a madcap kidnap story. Must have been some book she'd been reading, but she woke up thinking Anastasia was in danger.
Don't let them take her away . . .
Poor child. She didn't know if she was coming or going.'

They were interrupted by Miss Mannering, looking unusually flushed.

‘Anastasia's gone,' she said.

‘
Anastasia?
' Matron repeated stupidly.

‘Run away, by the looks of it,' Miss Mannering confirmed.

Miss Fotheringay looked momentarily blank, as if struggling to take this in. ‘Have you seen Miss Winifred?' she asked.

‘No show,' Miss Mannering replied. ‘And she hasn't rung in. I'd better go and take charge of the lower school. But meanwhile—'

‘Wait – Diana,' Miss Fotheringay said. ‘Matron says Edith is missing too.'

Miss Mannering's face froze.

‘So they weren't joking after all,' Matron murmured – then coloured as both mistresses turned to her sharply.

‘What do you mean exactly?' Miss Fotheringay asked.

Matron shifted uncomfortably. ‘Nothing . . . it's just . . . well, I don't know, do I, but it is true that Anastasia
came to see Edith last night—'

‘Came to see her?' Miss Mannering demanded. ‘Why didn't you tell us?'

‘I'm telling you now,' Matron said tartly, but her tone changed when she saw the headmistress's expression. ‘Anastasia said to Edith to meet in the hall when the clock struck nine, which I took to be a joke,' she volunteered, ‘but in the light of current developments perhaps it wasn't.'

‘We'd better call the police straightaway,' Miss Mannering said briskly. ‘They will want to talk to you—'

‘I'll thank you for not treating me like a criminal,' Matron retorted. ‘It's Miss Winifred they should talk to, she's the one—' Matron stopped.

‘The one who what?' Miss Fotheringay asked, throwing her deputy a warning glance.

Matron shrugged. ‘She's the one who likes to go through other people's post.'

Miss Winifred's rooms in the East Tower had been deserted, drawers left open, coat hangers slung in haste across the unmade bed. The head of Lower School would not be coming back.

It was Miss Mannering who called the police and assisted as the search began, first pointing out the gaping window in the staff cloakroom.

Miss Fotheringay meanwhile had set out by herself for Helen's tower. As she hurried across the frosted courtyard she thought again of the rhythmic flashing of the light in the night, and her pace quickened.

The day had dawned clear and still. There was no breath of wind, and a pale cloak of white sunlight had spread across the park. But there was debris in the drive – some bits of broken boarding and tarpaulin sheets, flung out by the gale; and a rowan tree had been uprooted in the field. Miss Fotheringay had not dreamt it; the storm had been real.

As she entered the woods she broke into a run, haunted by a sudden image of Edith and Anastasia sitting in the back of a featureless car, being driven across an unknown landscape, towards an unknown place.

The tower door was swinging open when she arrived. When she entered she saw the shattered glass from the broken window and a sodden overcoat flung across the sofa. Then she saw muddy black footprints, and followed them up the stairs.

She found Edie lying on the floor of the gallery, curled up in a filthy, shivering ball. When Miss Fotheringay knelt down beside her the child started and raised a face blackened with soot, fever-bright eyes wild with fear. Miss Fotheringay took off her coat and tried to wrap it round her, but Edie pushed her away with a shriek.

‘It's all right, Edith, I'm—' Miss Fotheringay began, but Edie was shaking her head, her eyes darting violently.

‘The ship . . .' she said, through chattering teeth. ‘They're taking her on a ship . . . from Ramsgate . . .' Trembling, she reached into her pocket and pressed the ferry tickets into Miss Fotheringay's hand.

Matron Takes Charge

‘
Y
ou should take a break, Headmistress,' Matron said, busying herself around the bed.

Miss Fotheringay continued to gaze at the patient, and made no reply.

‘Temperature's gone down a little,' Matron muttered, holding the thermometer up to the light.

Miss Fotheringay raised an exhausted, enquiring face. Her expression had none of its usual authority – in the sickroom, Matron's rule was absolute.

‘Thirty-nine,' Matron announced, making a note on her chart. ‘I reckon she'll live another day. But as for you . . .' Matron stretched out a fat arm to replace the file on the shelf above the bed, then turned to Miss Fotheringay and looked at her critically. ‘You'll forgive my saying it, Headmistress, but you have a duty to look after yourself.
I've got enough on my plate nursing young Miss Wilson here – I don't want a second invalid on my hands.'

Miss Fotheringay accepted this rebuke with a weak smile. It was three days since Edith had been discovered, feverish, in the tower. She had pneumonia. Every night since the girl had come back from hospital, the headmistress had kept a vigil by her bed, holding the thin hand that lay pale and motionless on the stiff cotton covers, snatching fitful bursts of sleep in the high-backed chair.

This morning she had gone straight from the sickroom to assembly, without even changing her clothes. At first she had tried to delegate the running of the school to Miss Mannering. But the deputy headmistress had been firm: ‘Edith Wilson is not dying, and nor is she the only pupil in this school. The girls are over-excited, Caroline. They need you to steer them back to normality.'

But Miss Fotheringay sensed she was no longer at the helm. Since the news of Miss Winifred's arrest at Ramsgate it seemed as though every girl had become part of a secretive, whispering huddle. Caroline Fotheringay walked among her pupils with a feeling of eerie detachment, as though she herself were the object of their curiosity. She was always glad when evening came and she could return to Edie's bedside.

‘You don't think she'll wake up again soon?' she asked anxiously.

‘If she does I'll call you,' Matron replied.

‘Do you know what happened at the deathbed of
Lenin's mother-in-law?' Miss Fotheringay asked, slowly gathering her things.

‘I don't think I do,' Matron replied.

‘His wife had sat up with her mother for several nights and Lenin offered to relieve her. The wife agreed to sleep, so long as Lenin promised to wake her if her mother should need her. The next morning the wife woke up and said, “How's Mother?” and Lenin said, “Mother's dead”. The wife said, “Why didn't you wake me?” and Lenin said, “She didn't need you.”'

Matron looked bemused. ‘That's a funny story to bring up now,' she said.

‘It's just a funny story full stop. Forget I told it.'

But Matron would not forget. She had always been rather in awe of the head. Now she was coming to see her as something of a card.

Miss Fotheringay stood up and walked a little stiffly to the door. But as she was letting herself out she heard a croak from the bed and turned round to see that Edie had opened her eyes.

‘What day is it?' the child asked weakly, looking about her in surprise.

Miss Fotheringay made to return to her chair, but Matron raised a cautioning hand. ‘Let me talk to her,' she murmured. ‘You know how confused she becomes around you.'

Miss Fotheringay could not deny it. Several times already Edie had opened her eyes to find her sitting by the bed, and her pale face had flooded with apparent relief before she had turned away, in seeming
remembrance of some shadow.

‘It's Sunday,' Matron said, leaning over to straighten her sheets. ‘Now what would you be after me getting you, dear?'

‘Sunday!' Edie repeated, jerking herself upright and looking around her wildly. ‘But Anastasia . . .'

She did not appear to take in Miss Fotheringay, who was standing inside the door, biting her finger, willing herself not to speak.

‘I'm after telling you that already, dear, Anastasia's here, back at school, safe and well – and all thanks to you,' Matron said cheerfully, as if reporting on the weather.

‘But . . . if she's here, then why . . . why
isn't
she here?' Edie stammered.

‘Are we saying that we would like to
see
Anastasia?'

‘But that
is
what I said,' murmured Edie in a confused, querulous voice. ‘Isn't it?'

‘She's out having lunch with her father but I'll make sure she comes to see you as soon as she's back.'

Edie looked momentarily reassured.

‘Now then,' Matron went on, encouraged, ‘if you're up to it, I've got Miss Fotheringay here to see you.' She gestured to Miss Fotheringay as she spoke. But Edie sank back on the pillow and pulled the covers over her head.

When Miss Fotheringay returned to her study her telephone was flashing with messages. She listened to them with her pen idle in her hand; there was nothing that
couldn't wait. But then a familiar drawl made her fist clench.

‘Caro? Is it naughty to call you that? . . . Your secretary didn't seem to like it – Miss Fotheringay this, Miss Fotheringay that – but I'm afraid I can't get all trembly about a headmistress at my age. I understand my niece is in bed but out of danger. Good . . . I just wanted to say that I've talked to my doctor and he advised that she's much better off staying at school . . . madness to move her, he said, until she's completely—'

Miss Fotheringay stabbed the machine into silence. She knew that she would have to deal with Sophia Fairlight sooner rather than later. First, though, she had to persuade Edith to talk to her. She was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by the tall, upright form of Prince Stolonov.

‘I took the liberty . . .' he began, with a slight bow.

‘Please,' Miss Fotheringay said, rising from her desk with an apprehensive smile. The prince had already phoned her angrily. Had the school vetted Miss Winifred's job application more closely, he had said, they would have discovered that she was going under an assumed identity. Her real name was May Senior, and she had once briefly been employed in Prince Stolonov's Paris office, before one of his security team had discovered that she had a previous conviction for fraud. Miss Fotheringay's contrition had been sincere. But even so, she was in no mood for another reprimand. ‘Is Anastasia well?'

The prince gave a wry smile. ‘She seems completely
recovered from her adventure – well enough to harangue her old papa over lunch. I have come to you, Miss Fotheringay, with an apology. Anastasia was horrified to hear that I had accused you of carelessness. She points out that I was the negligent one, not believing my own daughter's story.'

Miss Fotheringay looked relieved. ‘Your anger was perfectly understandable. I am sure that in your position I—'

The prince waved his hand dismissively. ‘Anastasia and Edith are safe. Miss Winifred and her accomplice are in the hands of the police. And you have assured me that you will never again send a girl to see a doctor, real or so-called, without informing her parents. For now there is no more to be said. But I think we are at least agreed on one thing – that the girl Edith deserves a medal.'

Miss Fotheringay looked at him questioningly. Charles had arrived with the prince on the day Anastasia was found, and they had explained to her how Edith had come to be placed in the school. They had told the story without apology – like two proud schoolboys recounting how they had won a game. They seemed to feel vindicated by the fact that Edith had done such a good job. ‘I'd employ her again,' Charles had joked. Miss Fotheringay had said nothing.

‘But I suspect she is not especially interested in medals,' the prince went on ponderously, ‘and while I believe that Ansti has made her a present of a little trinket I left with her – a glass bird – I would like to give
some more practical mark of my appreciation.

‘Anastasia, of course, never thinks of the practical details of school fees. She is not aware that I am responsible for Edith's.'

‘Nor was I until this week,' said Miss Fotheringay. ‘The funds were transferred from Mr Rodriguez's bank account.'

The prince shrugged, showing a hint of impatience. ‘It's a small matter, but the point is I should like to make it a permanent arrangement. We can't have her leaving now – Anastasia would be distraught.'

Miss Fotheringay had been privately concerned that the prince might insist Anastasia return to Knight's Haddon next term with a private bodyguard – an arrangement she felt all the girls would find unsettling. But so far he had made no mention of it. And when Anastasia's mother had descended on the school a few days earlier, the subject of future security arrangements had not arisen. She had stayed long enough only to take her daughter out to tea and cross swords with the prince, before hurtling back to Yorkshire in a storm of accusations.

‘You can't keep Edith here as Anastasia's bodyguard,' she said bluntly.

The prince laughed. ‘I don't think either of them would want that. I have no hidden agenda, Miss Fotheringay – just a desire to keep Edith here as Anastasia's friend. And I am hoping that there won't be any further need for private arrangements of that kind.' He paused, and looked at her with a hint of challenge:
‘My security team has had all your remaining staff thoroughly vetted. Including yourself.'

Miss Fotheringay inclined her head. Her expression was inscrutable. ‘It is a generous offer,' she said after a pause.

‘It is the least I can do,' the prince insisted. ‘And you will ensure that I remain anonymous as her benefactor?'

‘I think that can be arranged.'

‘But you still seem uncertain. You think her guardian might not agree?'

‘Sophia Fairlight? Oh, no – she'll be delighted,' Miss Fotheringay said. ‘It's more—'

The prince looked at her expectantly. ‘More?'

‘It's Edith,' she said. ‘First I have to make sure that she wants to stay.'