"Disgusting!" exclaimed Miriam Hancock lightly as she examined the photographs Emma Twist handed her. It had taken Hardwick most of the day to produce the prints, but they were well worth waiting for. The headmistress went through them as if shuffling cards, and having glimpsed each one viewed them a second time, more slowly and with greater concentration. "Disgusting but marvellous. Exactly the kind of thing I need. Who is that grotesque old hag wearing the strap-on?"
Emma didn't need to look. "She's a local slattern with no scruples. Don't worry about her saying anything, I have complete control of her."
Matron moved behind Miriam and peered at the photographs over her shoulder. "Are you sure Diana didn't know what was happening? She looks fully awake in some of these pictures."
Emma smiled. "She does look lively and alert, doesn't she? But she was full of the barbiturate you provided and totally unconscious the whole time."
"Then how...?"
"You know what a poseur she is, always getting her photographs in the Conde Naste type magazines. Hardwick is a dab-hand at photography, so I got him to superimpose some magazine images onto a few of the close-ups to jolly the scenes up. That may be a bit cheeky, but the coat-of-arms on the bed-head is real enough and you know how people love to think the worse. Everyone but herself will take it that she is revelling in the worse kind of gutter-slut orgy."
Matron shook her head. "You're playing a dangerous game. Diana could have you thrown into jail if she knew about them."
Miriam's face tightened. "The photographs are vile enough to deter her from legal action. She may be innocent to everything, but she couldn't endure the ignominy of having to present such things as evidence in a court-of-law. Even though they're fiction they would taint her precious public image more than she could bear, and without doubt copies of them would soon filter through to be published in some scurrilous pornographic magazine somewhere. In fact I would arrange that matter myself."
"They'll go into a bank vault for the time being. The only copies I will send out for the moment will be to the lady herself, under confidential cover and with a brief note telling her to call off her lawyers and keep her nose out of other peoples business. She'll realise who the message is from, and what it means."
A sudden look of concern crossed her face as she scanned the pictures a third time. "That dreadful crone is stretching Diana wide enough to park a car. It looks extremely gynaecological and rather vulgar, I trust she wasn't injured in any way."
"Of course not, unless you consider Lulabelle's generous string of semen across her nostrils to be bodily harm."
Miriam slipped the photographs into a large manila envelope and handed it to matron. They represented something more than simple triumph over an adversary, they stood for security of status and the sanctity of her beloved house. To everyone else a house was just a building, a thing with four walls, a roof and a door, but to Miriam Hancock Fairyfield Grange symbolised something ethereal that was far removed from the mundane.
"Right now there are things of more direct importance," the headmistress rumbled, "The Historic Buildings Commission are refusing to list the Grange as a top grade historical site, the bastards, so no money in grants from them, and the Inland Revenue are questioning my accounts. Unfortunately both are departments I have no influence with."
A skill for spending money came to Miriam Hancock as easily as swimming came to a fish, but acquiring enough of it always seemed to be a problem.
"Compose a letter to all parents and guardians, matron," she suddenly said in a flurry of passion. "Explain that the cost of pony-trekking and boating have risen sharply, and if they wish their young people to continue benefiting from such weekend activities their monthly allowance must be increased by - erm, twenty pounds." She sighed heavily, oblivious to the fiction she'd just improvised. "Money, money. Everything is expense."
The financial burden of operating her school always preyed on Miriam Hancock's mind, and along with major headaches she had to contend with a constant rash of smaller ones. "There is more bad news," matron replied, "Our stock of oestrogen has all but run out and our usual supplier refuses to provide any more."
The headmistress accepted that news calmly. "I foresaw this may happen soon, so I've already taken steps to rectify things. At least with this matter I can be reasonably optimistic."
"I hope you haven't called me out on a wild goose chase Miss Hancock," Doctor Arkwright huffed grumpily when Miriam greeted him an hour later. "I'm a busy man and I've enough sick people in the village to see without trailing about making house-calls to places ten miles out."
Looking suitably stressed Miriam led the way up the stairs. "I employ a wonderful matron who excels in dealing with skinned knuckles and sprained ankles, but she's helplessness when it comes to infections. She'd convinced Fifi may have contracted chickenpox, and since that is contagious I rejected the idea of taking her into Peasmarsh. Instead isolated her in my guest room. That was sensible, wasn't it? After all I do have a duty of care to the young people under my hand as well as concern for the community at large."
She took the doctor up to a room on the second floor landing, and the man peered round the door at the young person sitting up in the bed inside. A girl. It was Fifi. He wore only a lace-frilled bed jacket closed at the front by a single tie of ribbon. "Do you have a rash anywhere?" he asked briskly.
Fifi shook his head. The doctor went across and thumbed each of his eyes wide and glared into them, then pulling his mouth open he peered down into his throat. Not trying to hide the fact he was irritated and that his examination was cursory, he turned and took a couple of items from the bag he carried with him, then pushed a thermometer under Fifi's tongue.