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Introduction....
When Norman tired of the public trailing through his stately home and the money he was paying his ex-wives, his thoughts turned to whether Freddie’s abduction and slave trading business might help him out.
For another tale featuring Freddie’s Mediterranean activities, see: The Legacy of Priam.
Chapter 1: Belvedere College For Young Ladies
Belvedere College aimed to ensure that all its students would be able to conduct themselves as ladies once they left its portals. However, some high-spirited members of the senior year were determined to learn all they could of less ladylike pursuits. Alcohol was a continual problem for, though it was legal for the 18-year-olds to be drinking, the College took the firm view that no lady was ever seen to be the worse for drink. The senior year girls didn’t really agree.
“Are you sure it’s down here?”
“Yes, that new girl, Christy, was bragging about it last night.”
“A case of vodka! That’s going to be a hell of a dorm party!”
“You’d better believe it. Come on, it’s behind the shed, she said.”
Lucy Amory and Jill Pascoe crept slowly around the back of the Science block. They were feeling their way in the dark, reluctant to use a torch in case they were seen from the main School building. Two black-clad men did not have the same constraint on their movements. Night vision goggles gave them a clear view of the two young women as they edged their way towards their prize. They noted with satisfaction that the girls had just as rebellious an attitude to their college uniforms; skirts shorter than regulation and blouses rather tighter than would be considered ladylike were favoured by the girls of the senior year and these were no exception.
“You keep watch, and I’ll see what I can find, Lucy,” Jill said as she slid into the gap between the Science block and the small shed that the school’s groundsman used.
Lucy stood peering into the dark while, unknown to her, one of the men slid closer to her. A slight rustle was the only warning she had. It was while she was puzzling what the sound might mean that a gloved hand clamped a sickly smelling cloth over her mouth and nose, while an arm reached around her body and dragged her back against her assailant’s chest. As consciousness ebbed away, Lucy heard the calls of her friend, “Lucy? Lucy? Lummmm!!” as she, too, fell victim to the intruders.
Chapter 2: Hamblingham Hall
“The long gallery at Hamblingham Hall is one of the finest examples of Tudor architecture in the south-west of England and holds an extensive gallery of portraits of the scions of the St John-Ferris family from the time of the Hall’s construction to the present day. Works by Holbein, Gainsborough, and, more recently, Millais, Gertler and Peter Blake depict the history of the family and, at the same time, present a cavalcade of the best of portraiture.” Freddie Clegg looked up from the guidebook to the array of gilt-framed oil paintings that lined the high-ceilinged room, with its twisting, uneven timber floor. It wasn’t hard to imagine, Freddie thought, earlier times with the St John-Ferris family parading in this airy, well-lit room. Now, though, the Barbour -wearing, Ugg-booted, bucolic set of National Trust members elbowing their way through the house would be the last thing that any of the earlier householders would have welcomed.
“Makes you sick, doesn’t it?” A tall, thin, bespectacled man hooked a teasel — a small spiky dried plant head intended to prevent visitors using the furniture — from of one of the gallery’s seats and sat himself down on the faded, velvet-covered seat. One of the Trust’s room guardians, busily chatting to visitors at the other end of the room, scowled at him but said nothing. “It used to be a home, now it’s just something for tourists to gawk at.” Norman St John-Ferris cradled his chin in his hands and stared past Freddie at a small family group, the mother pointing at one of the paintings.
“You’re not letting the fact that it used to be your home colour your judgement?” Freddie had known Norman since his early twenties. He’d watched as Norman had worked his way through three unsuitable wives, each sapping the St John-Ferris estate as settlements in acrimonious divorces marked the conclusion of each union. Finally, Norman had to let the Hall go to the National Trust. They let him live on in a small suite of rooms in one corner of the building but, as Norman said, it wasn’t the same.
“I feel like a vampire; I can only come out after dark. When the sun has fled the sky and the last of them,” he nodded towards a woman tugging a reluctant child in her wake, “has gone, then I can emerge.”
© 2011 Freddie Clegg
All characters fictitious
No re-posting without permission
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