Questions and Answers by Mark Danelaw
The first part: Introduction, can be found here.
It was a long slow walk back to the classrooms. As predicted Annabelle was late, but she wasn’t going to rush. Each step was agony on her arse, each line of the cane a surge of fire that dug deep into the glutinous maximus. She could put that in her report, she almost laughed.
‘I was proceeding about my business in the course of an investigation when I was encountered by a suspect. In order to retain the secrecy operation I allowed my glutinous maximus to be engaged by a length of calamus rotang,’ accurate, boring and obscure for most of the flat footed morons back at the factory. Guardian would get it and he would laugh. Then he would make her write it out in English.
‘I was caught on a reccie and had my bare bottom caned more times than I could count and it made me cry like a little girl. Then I was standing to face the wall with my bottom hanging in the breeze where anyone could see,’ Oh they are so going to laugh.
The trouble was it was no laughing matter, not just then. It hurt, it really hurt and there was absolutely not a chance in hell that she would be able to sit down for class. Annabelle felt like crying again.
‘The whole thing’s daft, I don’t know why, you have to laugh or else you cry,’ the refrain ran through her head.
Annabelle figured that late was late; she might even miss the class and be punished just as much. However, she wasn’t going to risk that. She did risk going to the cloak room and pulling down her pants in front of a mirror.
Annabelle never knew there were so many colours red. There were too many red lines to count and the colours, well they ran from dark puffy pink to angry crimson that was a thin layer of skin away from bleeding. The angry raw leaning to purple were all on her right buttock, mostly well-spaced, but closer together on the under curves of her bottom towards her thighs, just where they would make sitting difficult.
She pulled out several paper towels and ran them under the tap to soak them. Then with a sigh of small relief she pressed them gently to her bum. She probably wouldn’t be able to sit down for days.
Looking in the mirror she met her own eyes and then looked away and down at the sink. She was cowed little thing now and she sobbed. Then with a rugby psych she looked up and fixed her gaze like steel. “I can do this,” she told herself. Not at all sure she could “Oh well onwards and upwards.”
When she finally got to class Sarah Carmichael said, “You’re late.”
“Yes sorry Miss I was…” Annabelle began her rehearsed excuse.
“I know why you are late, see me afterwards, now sit down if you can,” Carmichael dismissed her, “See me afterwards.”
The class just laughed, a dozen girls who all knew and had all been there, taking a moment’s small comfort in it being someone else’s turn. Annabelle had had worse, much, much worse and she almost laughed herself; until she tried to sit down.
***
Rachel Denton and Lucy Horton-Grange hurried into Helen Holt’s office lest they be seen. Holt had been about to curse their reckless indiscretion, but Rachel outranked her and anyway she was more concerned by the rumour.
“What is this about a new girl breaking into the admin office last night?” Helen demanded to know. She looked from Lucy to Rachel with a supressed concern etched on her face.
“It is probably nothing, a game of some kind,” Rachel responded, “But she did seem to be looking for something…”
Rachel looked at Lucy for a clue but the young teacher just shook her head, “I don’t know the girl, it could be just a prank.”
“What were you doing there?” Helen asked Rachel.
The deputy head drew her mouth into a sharp line and hesitated. Maybe she had panicked and now she felt a fool. “Margaret has had access to the financial records restricted. I can still see them, but it shows she is watching and… well I wanted to check, I have the key and I thought if no one is about at night then I could have a look without revealing my interest. There was a hiccup in the last transaction…”
Helen wanted to scream, ‘now you tell me,’ instead she merely said, “Oh? Anything we should know about?”
“Nothing serious, nothing at all, but… well we moved the money… that is… Elspeth did, some of it anyway… to that off-shore thingy… apparently a component of the fee is a percentage of the money moved?” Rachel had no idea what she was talking about, Elspeth hadn’t really explained.
“So?” Helen didn’t like the sound of this.
“Well the interest rate or the exchange rate, whatever, it changed and the transfer fee was short so they sent it back. We fixed it… just a small fee but… well now there is a rather unaccounted for blip in the financial record. Elspeth said she can fix it…” Rachel wished she had left it all to Elspeth but someone in the financial records room on the day there was a problem looked like too much of a coincidence.
Lucy Horton-Grange loved all of this, she grinned, “So big money moved to Cayman Islands or Geneva?”
Helen frowned and considered the angles. “Shush,” she said, “Any problem from yesterday would not have been in the current records… it won’t appear at all, it is in our account, not the school’s…?”
“No, but I wanted to see what else we missed, what Margaret might have noticed,” Rachel explained, “You know, why she suddenly restricted access to the records.”
“Can’t that Ducky girl tell you?” Helen said.
“Ducky would tell Margaret anything, she is bound to mention that I asked,” Rachel told her.
“Look, leave it a couple of days and then go and look again,” Helen suggested.
Rachel nodded, “We had better go before some see us all here.”
“Well quite,” Helen sighed, wondering if perhaps they shouldn’t have come in the first place.
***
Carmichael dismissed Annabelle with a scolding and a single demerit. The detective had lost count of how many demerits she was on just then, but she was pretty sure that once she had seen Holt she would be on double detention at least, and everyone said that that was hell.
Still she had resolved to see the housemistress anyway when she received a summons from a monitor. “Oh joy,” she sighed.
It was a long miserable walk up to Helen Holt’s office and depressingly Annabelle already knew the way. The fusty musty stairs reeked of shame and generations well caned young women all competing with wood polish and heavy stale curtain material.
It did not help that every step of the way caused Annabelle’s freshly caned bottom to flare and throb; the cutting lines of the headmistress’s rattan still slicing away on the underside of her arse, a permanent reminder that from now on sitting down was a privilege.
At the turn at the top of the stairs she heard and then saw the house mistress’s door open and people emerging. On some instinct Annabelle hung back and stepped into a recessed window obscured by long heavy curtains. As she brushed against the material the musty smell surged in her nostrils. There she decided to wait and watch.
Rachel Denton and another teacher, Lucy Horton-Grange, she remembered, one of the very new teachers, were leaving the housemistress’s study as Annabelle arrived. This could have appeared just an ordinary encounter on any day of the week somehow felt off to the detective. She had been a close party to many a criminal conspiracy, small time crooks furtive evasions and people who really did not want to be seen. This chance encounter had her every police officer instinct screaming foul and she had absolutely no idea why.
Annabelle already had a feel for how the school was run and the deputy head going to see a housemistress rather than the other way around did not fit. The presence of a very junior teacher at a meeting of senior staff was very strange too… Annabelle ran scenarios for the combination and came up blank.
It was her job to be suspicious and she knew it was probably nothing, but she decided to file the incident away for further consideration anyway. In any case it was time to face the music.
Holt’s door was threshold Annabelle wasn’t ready to cross, but she sighed and knocked anyway.
There was a very long pause before the woman inside called out, “Come.”
Annabelle thought herself into character and entered.
Helen Holt stood looking out the window with her back to the door as if forlornly waiting for some long lost lover.
“You wanted to see me Miss?” the undercover detective said.
“I did,” the housemistress answered as she turned to regard the wayward student with a neutral smile.
Annabelle returned the smile and waited for more.
“You decided to visit the administration building last night,” Holt came straight to the point.
“Yes Miss,” Annabelle decided to play a very straight bat as a real student might. The headmistress had already given her an explanation, if she did but know it, and the quick-thinking policewoman had had time to work it up to plausible.
“You were looking for something perhaps?” Helen sounded as if the answer was of supreme unimportance. There was too much indifference in her manner and the fact that she had ducked the obvious question, why, and assumed an agenda pointed at her own fears. It was a tell; and now Annabelle was certain of it.
“Yes,” Annabelle shrugged.
Helen swallowed as it were she who was in hot water. “Oh and what was that?” she managed to sound nonchalant enough.
It must be amateur night, Annabelle thought. “Proof that I was there, something that could only have come from the office,” she said and shrugged.
“How… what do you mean?” the housemistress was genuinely confused.
“Well otherwise how would the others know that I actually did it?” Annabelle spoke as if it were obvious.
“Did what, what others?” the housemistress sounded wary.
“Got into the office of course,” Annabelle replied, “I mean I can’t tell about the others, Miss, not their names or anything really, can I now?” she spoke as if the Helen was a little bit dim, “Obviously.”
“It was a dare?” the housemistress sounded relieved, too relieved.
“Yes Miss,” the detective knew that answers people arrived at themselves were much more readily believed.
Helen Holt was on much safer ground now and she composed herself. She crossed the room to the cabinet where Annabelle knew she kept canes. “It is completely unacceptable behaviour,” she said.
“Yes Miss,” Annabelle’s relief that her cover story had been believed so readily was very short lived. Her arse was a throb of welts and her tummy turned summersaults, this was going to be bad, and she knew it.
“You have to be punished girl,” the housemistress told her.
Annabelle didn’t answer, could not answer, her heart was racing and her mouth was much too dry. Then she made an effort to work up some spit and managed, “Begging your pardon Miss, the headmistress already caned me.”
“I bet she did,” Helen Holt smiled as a crocodile.
“She gave me three demerits,” Annabelle said in a very strained voice. She might have cried and she wondered if begging might help, “Miss Carmichael gave me another… for… um being late, b-because of the caning… and…”
“Incredible,” the housemistress said, “With the three I am going to give you that might be a school record: eight by my count; two consecutive Saturday detentions and one demerit away from a third.”
Annabelle raised her hand like she might in class. “I could always do dirty jobs Miss or run 10 times around the playing field,” she offered.
“Oh I do so hate comedians,” the housemistress sighed.
***
Annabelle was bent across the desk with bare arse pointed at the housemistress now chuckling at the ravaged state of her backside from the headmistress’s caning.
“My, that is quite a bill you paid,” Helen Holt laughed openly. The little bitch had given her a scare; she had thought that someone was on to something. “Ordinarily I would say you were cooked, but you let our House down and that calls for recompense.”
“Yes Miss,” Annabelle felt a surge of heat to her face and tightness in her tummy that was somewhere between familiar undercover dread and a wild anticipation. It may turn out to be a red herring, a stupid side quest, but she was on to something. The woman was up to mischief; her copper’s nose was screaming it.
“Now that pert little bottom of yours has probably had enough cane strokes for a while, at least until Saturday detention, oh won’t that be fun? So I have something else that won’t break you… quite; and will teach you a thorough lesson.”
“Yes Miss,” Annabelle steeled herself, this was her at the hands of a torturous thug and she was about to turn tables, this is what she…
The paddle was two feet long and consisted of two pieces of thin teak hinged under leather. It had some heft, but no rough or sharp edges and a whole lot of give. It was this that interrupted Annabelle’s train of thought. A sudden a searing blast that reignited the cane lines and added a whole layer of pain all of its own.
Annabelle screamed: a clean, clear, honest sound that might have been heard all the way to the nick.
“Quite effective isn’t it?” the housemistress said with relish.
Annabelle didn’t answer; she was too busy gasping for air.
The next paddle fall burned worse, a layer of pain upon layer and the tramlines screamed their protest. Annabelle, who had been ready and determined to be defiant, screamed again. This was awful, and she couldn’t speak or think of anything but her searing bottom.
“Oh you are not so cocky and confident now are you?” Helen Holt said and then added a swat.
With supreme effort Annabelle held back a scream and instead gurgled as she swallowed the pain. Layer upon layer upon layer now, like her bottom was a cap over deep cuts from the cane and that humbled relic was now set on fire.
“P-please I…” there were tears too, not sobbing, just involuntary and free flowing tears that run down the side of her nose.
“You haven’t been here long my girl and already you are causing trouble, dares and pranks, we are not impressed,” the housemistress told her, “Find another way to get popularity.”
The paddle landed again hard across her backside and before she could even brace herself or process another swat came and an off guard Annabelle had to scream.
“Please, please I’m sorry,” Annabelle begged. Her mind wrote the report, ‘On the occasion of receiving corporal punishment given in response to my reconnoitring of the administration office I was spanked on my bare bottom with a paddle and not only cried like a baby, but I begged too.’
“Sorry you were caught,” Helen Holt sighed; she was back in her element and wondered how she had ever been concerned about this brat. The paddled the proffered arse again.
Annabelle had given up stoicism for lent, for all time probably and just yelled. Her bottom ached and burned at the same time; she could swear she could feel the skin lifting in a blister.
Swats came one after the other, not fast, but steady and very, very hard. The housemistress hadn’t counted but they were well into double figures. She landed one more swat and told Annabelle to stand up.
The completely broken and sobbing undercover detective could scarce move and just bawled into the desk top.
The housemistress waited, just for a minute before telling her to rise more sharply.
Annabelle heaved herself up and her bottom flared with the movement as she staggered to her feet.
“Go and face the wall and put your hands on your head as I complete the paperwork,” Holt said.
Annabelle obeyed. In that moment she might have quit, this was too much, worse than the gangs. Instead of a hero of law enforcement she was just a bawling little brat with a very sore bottom. It would be a highly edited version that went into her report when she finally made it.
The story continues in Suspects and Suspicions.
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