When I returned to my bedroom after lunch I opened the door of the dolls’ house to retrieve the Frozen Charlotte, only to find that she had moved. She was no longer in the living room where I had placed her. At first, I thought she’d disappeared altogether but then I spotted her in Edward Redwing’s study. She was lying on the floor in front of the desk, covered in a curtain, like a dead body in a shroud. Only her hands were visible, sticking up straight in front of her as if she was clawing for air.
One of the girls must have been in here playing. My mind instantly went to Estella. Of all the pupils, she was the naughtiest and the only one bold enough to come into my room like that. I glanced around, half expecting to see her hiding under the bed or sneaking out of the door, but the place was empty.
I turned back to the dolls’ house, picked the curtain off the Frozen Charlotte and carefully slid it back on to the tiny rail. Then I noticed that the cane had moved, too. Someone had put it on the desk in Redwing’s study.
Unlike all the other rooms, the study was not quite the same as the real one. The horse’s skull was missing from the wall and in its place there was a stag’s head, which I assumed was what had been there when Vanessa was alive, before Redwing had taken a rifle down to the stable and put a bullet in her beloved horse’s brain.
I took the Frozen Charlotte and put her in the dining room, lying her down on the rug in front of the fire. It felt wrong somehow to leave her in Redwing’s study.
I didn’t particularly want the dolls’ house – or to be reminded of Whiteladies. It was probably worth quite a lot of money and I supposed I could have sold it, but remembering how Bess had cried over her teddy I decided to give it to the girls instead.
I left my room and was about to go downstairs when I heard a girl humming to herself in the room next door to mine. Miss Grayson insisted on calling this the toy room although, in reality, it held precious few toys. There was a morose-looking rocking horse, a broken Jack-in-the-box and a few incomplete sewing kits.
The tune the girl was humming was one my mother used to sing for me when I was little. It was the ‘Fair Charlotte’ ballad – the story of the vain girl who froze to death in her finery.
Such a dreadful night I never saw,
The reins I scarce can hold.
Fair Charlotte, shivering faintly said,
I am exceedingly cold…
The girls were all supposed to read from their Bibles for half an hour after lunch and I knew Miss Grayson would be cross if she found one of the pupils up here so I pushed open the toy room door and stepped inside. Bess was sitting by herself in the middle of the floor. She had her back to me and was hunched over something, slicing at it with a pair of scissors.
“Bess, what are you doing in here?” I said. “You’re supposed to be downstairs with the others.”
She didn’t reply or turn round, but continued humming that irritating little tune and snipping away with the scissors. I wondered whether she might be making a dress for one of the Frozen Charlottes.
I recalled that was why the dolls came unclothed and remembered how my mother had given me scraps of fabric to make little dresses for my own Frozen Charlotte.
I strode past Bess and then gasped. She wasn’t making a dress. She was cutting up George, her teddy bear. Stuffing spilled out on to the floor as she calmly snipped off his ear and then slashed at his face, a button eye coming loose to roll along the floorboards.
“Bess, what are you doing?” I cried.
She finally looked up at me and I saw there were tears in her eyes. “The Frozen Charlottes told me to do it,” she whispered. “They don’t like the other toys.”
“Give me those,” I said, snatching the scissors away from her. “Now go downstairs and join the others before Miss Grayson notices you’re missing.”
With one last look at her teddy bear, Bess left the room. I put the scissors back in the supply cupboard with the sewing kits and then bent down to gather up the scraps of bear. She had done a thorough job – George was nothing more than a sad collection of fur and fluff. There was no chance he could be repaired so I disposed of the scraps before making my way downstairs, still shaking my head over Bess’s extraordinary behaviour. Just last night she’d seemed so desperate to retrieve George from the luggage room and yet hours later she was cutting him into shreds.
After checking that Bess really had joined the other girls, I made my way to Miss Grayson’s study and told her that I’d received a dolls’ house from my late step-father’s estate, which I would like to donate to the school. I could see Miss Grayson didn’t much care for the idea of the girls having such a thing – perhaps she thought it would make them spoiled – but she seemed unable to come up with an objection so the house was duly placed in the toy room.
When I went to bed later, my mind was full of Whiteladies and Redwing and the agony of not knowing what had happened that night. So I was awake around midnight to hear the quiet creak of the floorboards as someone walked past my room. Thinking one of the girls must be wandering around out there, I got up, lit a candle and stepped into the corridor.
There was indeed a girl there, wearing a long, white nightdress, with fair hair spilling down her back. Then she turned round and I saw it was Estella. Her eyes were huge in the gloom and the dark circles round them looked like bruises.
“What are you doing out of bed?” I asked her quietly. “Did you have another nightmare?”
Estella shook her head. “It’s the dolls,” she said. “They’re whispering together in the toy room. Can’t you hear them?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“The dolls are bad,” Estella insisted. “Whiskers can sense it, too. He was in there earlier, hissing at them.”
“Whiskers is a silly old cat,” I said. “I wouldn’t pay any attention to him.”
“But, miss, they are talking! Talking about something terrible—”
“Estella! This is no time for games. Go back to bed, please.”
She gave me a black look but returned to the dormitory. Once she’d gone I paused in the corridor, listening. The school was quite silent.
I shook my head and went back to bed.
The next morning I awoke early and glanced out of the window to see that the school was still surrounded by snow, with fresh flakes falling. I thought it looked ever so pretty and was feeling in rather a good mood as I went downstairs.
As an assistant mistress, I sensed it wasn’t quite my place to be in the kitchen, but I was desperate for a cup of tea and, at this time of the day, the kitchen was the only room in the entire school that would be halfway warm. Besides, I knew that Henry often spent time in there and if it was all right for the drawing master to do so then surely it would be all right for me, too. Indeed, when I walked in Henry was already there, lounging in one of the chairs by the fire, Murphy at his feet. Cassie was perched on the arm of his chair in what she clearly felt was a fetching manner. She was giggling in an over-thetop way at something Henry had said and I realized at once that she was sweet on him.
I felt a powerful flash of jealousy that took me by surprise. But what had I expected? Henry was wonderful. Of course other girls would be interested in him. I could not expect him to sit around pining for me forever. Still, he could do so much better than a giggling fool like Cassie.
After the frank conversation we’d had in my bedroom the night before, I was a little nervous about seeing Henry again but, as soon as he saw me, he grinned and beckoned me over, pushing out the other chair. Cassie narrowed her eyes as I sat down in it.
“The cottage was freezing last night,” Henry said, referring to the single-storey dwelling on the grounds that he occupied. “I thought I’d come in to warm up.”
Mrs String and Hannah both ignored me but Cassie got up and made a great show of fetching me a cup of tea. I would’ve liked to have thrown it straight back in her face. She was clearly only trying to seem kind in order to impress Henry. I’d known other girls like this in my time and the two-facedness was the thing that always vexed me the most.
“Miss Black, have you seen Whiskers?” Cassie asked, simpering a little as she pressed the teacup into my hands.
“Please,” I said in my sweetest voice, forcing a smile, “do call me Jemima.” Two could play at that game, after all.
“Jemima, then,” Cassie said. “He’s usually here first thing in the morning yowling for his milk, you see, but I haven’t seen him today. And I’m ever so fond of him.”
Fond enough to kick him outside the kitchen the other day? I longed to say.
“He’s probably out hunting,” Henry told her.
“Not in this weather,” Cassie replied. “Whiskers absolutely hates the snow.” She put on a worried face. “Oh dear, I wonder where he could be?”
She glanced at Henry and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. This show of concern was obviously more for his benefit than for the cat’s.
“Estella mentioned seeing him in the toy room yesterday,” I said. “Perhaps he got shut in there. I’ll take a look after breakfast. The girls were in and out of there looking at the dolls’ house all evening.”
“Dolls’ house?” Henry repeated.
“The one the solicitor sent,” I said. “It was no use to me so I thought the girls may as well have it.”
“That was jolly decent of you, Mim,” Henry exclaimed. “It looked terribly expensive. Still, it explains all the activity last night.”
“Activity?” I looked at him.
“Yes, I noticed it from the cottage. Several times I saw the lights turning on and off in the toy room after bedtime.”
I frowned, unsure. Had the girls been sneaking in there to play? They would have had to pass my room first and I was certain I would have heard them. There was no more time to wonder about it just then, though, because the school was waking up.
I snatched a piece of toast from a plate and ate it as I walked out. It was meanly scraped with the merest hint of butter and felt too dry in my mouth – I found myself having to force it down. I followed the girls into the hall, noticing as I did so that Estella looked unusually tired, as if she’d hardly slept at all. Perhaps she hadn’t stayed in her bed after I’d sent her there, but had gone to the toy room later on?
Before I could ponder it any further, there was the sudden smash of breaking crockery. I looked over to see Felicity pick up a plate and then, very deliberately, throw it straight on the floor, where it shattered alongside the first one.
Miss Grayson was by her side in an instant, demanding an explanation. Everyone had gone quiet and I distinctly heard Felicity say that the Frozen Charlottes had told her to do it.
The schoolmistress reacted with predictable anger and Felicity received a whipped palm for her lie.
Using the commotion as an excuse to slip away, I went back upstairs and walked down the corridor. When I opened the toy-room door, I half expected Whiskers to come shooting out between my legs, meowing in loud, indignant protest, but the room was silent. I pushed the door open all the way but couldn’t properly make out the interior – the sun wouldn’t rise for at least another half hour. My hand found the gaslight on the wall and I heard the hiss of air as it ignited.
I saw the scissors first, the blades red and glistening on the floor at my feet. Suddenly the room was too quiet. I felt like there were a hundred pairs of eyes staring at me, willing me to look up, waiting for my reaction.
Slowly I raised my head. When I’d left the room the previous day, the dolls had been tucked away in the toy chest but now every single one of them was out. The broken ones lay in neat lines by the chest, but the complete dolls were standing with their little china feet balanced on the wooden floorboards, hands stretched out in front of them. Every one of them faced towards the door, as if they’d been waiting for someone to walk in.
But that wasn’t all. The contents of the sewing kits had been emptied out across the floor. I saw a second pair of bloody scissors by the windowsill and a third by the toy chest. And the blood was not only on the scissors. It was smeared across the floorboards, too. It was on the walls. It was on the frozen windowpanes.
So one of the girls had been in here, playing with the dolls. There were doll-sized footprints in the blood on the floor, and tiny handprints in the blood on the walls and on the windows. When I looked more closely at the Frozen Charlottes I saw that many of them had dried blood staining their white fingers or peeling in rust-coloured flakes from their feet. I swallowed, my heart beating too hard against my ribs. Where had all that blood come from?
My eye fell on the toy chest and I noticed that the lid was closed. Being careful not to step in the blood, I walked over and opened it.
I had never been at all squeamish and the sight of blood didn’t normally bother me in the least, but I couldn’t help gasping.
I had found what was left of Whiskers.
For a long moment as I stared down at the dead cat I simply didn’t know what to do. Should I inform Miss Grayson? Or quietly dispose of the body and clean up the blood before anyone could find out what had happened?
Children could be cruel sometimes but this was the most shocking violence. My main thought was that the girls mustn’t see Whiskers. The cat was not merely dead, it had been butchered. It was the work of a deranged mind. Surely none of the girls could be capable of something like this?
“Let’s play a game…”
I whirled round, expecting to see one of the girls, but the room was empty. When I hurried over to the door, however, I found Estella out in the corridor. She looked up at me, her face pale in the early morning light.
“The cat’s dead, isn’t it?” she said.
Slowly I nodded. “Did you come back up here after I sent you to bed last night?” I asked.
The little girl held my gaze. “I wanted to see what the dolls were doing,” she said.
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Estella, this is extremely serious. Did you … did you hurt Whiskers?”
“It wasn’t me,” Estella said, staring straight at me. “It was the dolls.”