Miss Budgie trembled. “Are you threatening me?”
“No. I believe I’m asking a question.”
Miss Budgie hesitated. “I’m not trying to make waves. It’s just that Mr. McTavish … well … he makes it hard for me to do my work.”
“Well you make it hard for me to do my work. I have a school to run, Miss Budgie. I haven’t time for tattletales. If you are unable to do your job without vilifying your colleagues, I shall find someone who can. I expect a letter of apology on my desk by this afternoon.”
Miss Bentwhistle’s decision to betray her staff for Mr. McTavish was not the result of romantic infatuation. Rather, the charges implied that she had employed a lecher, a lapse in judgment that threw into question her moral discernment. In light of this, the headmistress saw the accusations for what they were — an attack against her person.
There was also every chance that the little backstabbers were delusional. Mr. McTavish’s essence was undeniable, and it would not in the least surprise her if Miss Budgie and her conspirators had picked up the scent and were indulging themselves in lurid sexual fantasies. Was she to sacrifice Mr. McTavish to satisfy a coven of sexually obsessed deviants?
In any case, even if the Academy janitor had been indiscreet, what of it? Men are well-known to be slaves to their dangly bits, especially men of common breeding. As members of the fairer sex, it was up to his detractors to comport themselves so as to discourage propositions. Why, if anyone was to blame, it was they! The trollops must be punished! And they were — Miss Budgie was humiliated in front of her students for allegedly stealing chalk from the office supply cabinet.
Still, Miss Bentwhistle fretted about the charges. At last, she confided them to her handyman. He denied them outright, allowing that at most he may have given his accusers a well-intentioned smile, which they no doubt misunderstood on account of his facial paralysis. Miss Bentwhistle stroked his sweet, beleaguered brow. Poor Mr. McTavish. How she would comfort him tonight.
It occurred to her that, having saved his skin, she had him in her debt.
A remembrance of this debt was at the forefront of Miss Bentwhistle’s mind as she completed the reconstruction of her face. At this morning’s confrontation, she’d call upon Mr. McTavish to force his daughter to recant the miracle. Miss Bentwhistle knew that nothing short of a denial would keep this scandal from her door.
After all, what kind of headmistress employs a publicity hound who claims to raise the dead? How could she discipline her students if she couldn’t control her staff? Toss in a Pentecostal freak show and Miss Bentwhistle’s head reeled with nightmares of a convoy of limousines emptying the Academy of its young ladies. Then what? The Academy collapsed, her debts unpaid, and her family name disgraced, it would be a mere hop, skip, and a jump to the poorhouse.
It was the vision of that grim future that had caused Miss Bentwhistle’s explosion of tears. She’d seen herself shacked up in the hobo jungle at the outskirts of town, a sad old derelict with nary a penny to wash her drawers. Imagined herself shuffling up for a ladle of broth at the St. James soup kitchen, cowering before Mrs. Herbert C. Wallace, Reverend Mandible, and the rest.
Well, it wasn’t going to happen. As God was her witness, by the time she’d finished with the McTavishes, Mary Mabel would be on her knees. She’d issue a public proclamation that the Beeford boy was never dead, but merely stunned; she’d seen him move and helped him to his feet. She was a young woman wronged by fabrications of the press, an innocent whose life within the halls of the Bentwhistle Academy had taught her to place integrity, honour, and dignity before all else.
There was, of course, the awkward detail of the death certificate, but that was small potatoes. Dr. Hammond wouldn’t admit to signing death certificates for the living; it would scare away his clientele. Besides, it wasn’t in London’s interest to have its hospital seen as a happy-go-lucky loony bin shipping healthy out-of-towners to the morgue; that would be bad for tourism. In the end, the death certificate was just a piece of paper waiting to be misplaced by an underpaid clerk.
She made her way to the wardrobe. Selecting a frock was easy; she’d been wearing black since her father’s death. The decision, a sly cost-cutting measure, had proven good for business, a constant allusion to the Horatio Algernon Bentwhistle Memorial Fund. “Funerals provide such a dignified excuse to pass the hat,” she observed.
All that was left was to steady her nerves. Miss Bentwhistle took two tablespoons of laudanum, a homebrew she concocted from the lifetime supply of opium she’d found in her father’s effects. (He’d acquired it during his tenure as chairman of the Middlesex County Hospital Association. When the drug was outlawed, he’d generously overseen its disposal from the county’s repositories.)
Miss Bentwhistle washed the laudanum down with a glug of brandy, the smell of alcohol contained by a peppermint drop, and glanced at her watch. Nine o’clock. Battle stations. She stood in front of the mirror and repeated the mantra “I am a Bentwhistle, I am a Bentwhistle, I am a Bentwhistle.” With that, the regal barge navigated to the door and floated forth to rendezvous with destiny.
In the Lion’s Den
The instant Timmy Beeford resuscitated, the assembled Pentecostals erupted with whoops of joy, cartwheels, and grand huzzahs for Jesus.
“We’d best be off,” Mary Mabel whispered to Brewster. She grabbed him by the arm, and made for the door.
“Wait!” Mrs. Wertz called after. “We have to celebrate!”
“I’d love to,” Mary Mabel sang over her shoulder, “but I have to be up at four.”
In bed, Mary Mabel couldn’t sleep for the silly grin on her face. Her mama’d had a reason to send her to the bridge: it was to get her to the hospital to save that boy. She gave thanks and promised to follow her mama’s guidance forever.
Soon it was time to rise and shine. By five the stove was stoked, the tables set. By six, milk, porridge, and scrambled eggs were on the serving trays. By seven, she’d ladled breakfast to the Academy’s young delinquents. And by eight, she was up to her elbows in dirty dishes, when the porter arrived. “You’re to report to Miss B. immediately.”
“She’ll have to wait or there’ll be no clean plates for lunch.”
“Don’t worry about that. Miss Budgie’s been assigned the wash-up before her morning class.”
Mary Mabel couldn’t figure what could be so important. It hadn’t occurred to her that her miracle might have altered her relations with the world. Not that there hadn’t been warnings. On the way home, her papa had gaped like a goldfish, and Miss B.’s young ladies had lined up for breakfast as slack-jawed as a row of pithed frogs. Still, it wasn’t until she hit the office that she realized the enormity of things.
Two police officers were hauling off a scruffy man in a trench coat. The secretary, Miss Dolly Pigeon, a wizened rat terrier with small breasts and big hips, was beside herself. “You’re the cause of this!” she yipped at the girl. “I hope you’re satisfied!”
“Are you her?” the man demanded as he was dragged out. “Are you Mary Mabel McTavish?”
“Who’s he? How did he know my name?”
“He’s from the Free Press. There’s more at the gates.”
Before Mary Mabel could think, her papa barrelled through the door. “Look at the trouble you’ve got us into!”
“Shut your traps,” Miss Pigeon ordered. “To the Bench!”
The Bench was a church pew retrieved from St. James. Hard and unforgiving, it was the Academy’s version of the stocks. The pair waited an eternity before the headmistress sailed in, a copy of the morning’s paper tucked beneath her arm. “How are we this morning, Miss Pigeon?”
“As might be expected.”
“Quite