A Catholic Education.

Ah, now this is where our heroine enters the picture, and encounters possible England's only saxophone-playing Chilean who is a constable in the Hartsetshire Constabulary...

            As Garth and Iolo left the station and took the only taxi in the village to the Hall, a young woman of just over five feet in height with a slender build struggled out of the station carrying a large and over-full suitcase.

            'Can I help you with that, miss?' asked the station porter.

            The young woman looked him up and down: at least sixty, with long white whiskers and the gleaming pate of a bald head shining out from under the peak of his cap, which was pushed back on his head to enable him to scratch it when people asked questions. All porters do this when asked questions: it seems casual enough, but in fact takes months of training. He was only an inch or two taller than her but looked much frailer.

            'No,' she said, shaking her head slowly, 'I don't think you'd better.' She looked around the forecourt and grabbed him by the arm as he turned to go. 'I need to get to a place called Hangover Hall. Any chance of a taxi round here, mush?'

            The porter screwed up his face and sucked in his false teeth. She knew they were false as she could see them move around inside his mouth, like a ferret dancing around his cheeks.

            She looked away. 'I take it that means there isn't one,' she said without looking back at him.

            'Well, yes and no.'

            She was puzzled. 'Yes and no?'

            'Yes.'

            'You mean there is a taxi?'

            'Yes and no.'

            She sighed heavily. Just as it had looked as though she were getting somewhere... she began again.

            'Is there a taxi in this village?'

            The old man nodded.

            'Could you get it for me?'

            He nodded again.

            'Can you get it for me now?'

            He shook his head.

            'Why not?', she asked in an exasperated tone.

            ' 'Cause there's only one taxi, and that's just gone up to the Hall as it is.' He pointed in the direction of the rapidly disappearing vehicle. As Diana watched, it mounted a hill and vanished over the other side. 'Now if you'd been quicker, and hadn't asked me,' the old man continued, 'you might have been able to share it.'

            The young woman did not deign to reply. Instead, she gave the old man a look that made him wince, and picked up her case. Without another word she set off to follow the same route as the taxi. It was her intention to stride off into the distance with pride and hauteur: something she was prevented from doing by the weight of the case, which dragged her to one side, and made her hauteur nothing more than a totter from side-to-side.

            And when she reached the brow of the hill, she turned to look back: the old man had long since gone. All that grandeur and effort wasted. She sat down on her case and blew out her cheeks.

            'That's what you get for being stubborn, girl,' she muttered to herself.

            But stubbornness had always been Diana Duckworthy's problem. When she was a girl at school, she had always been behind in lessons due to her stubbornness: when she got something wrong, she stuck to her guns and maintained that she was right - even when she knew that she wasn't. She would never give in.

            Of course, this went against her when she left school and tried to make her way in the workplace. Take for instance her first job, as a packer of meat pies. A strict vegetarian, her stubborn insistence on spreading the message had led to those purchasing Grimble & Hall's best quality steak and kidney pies getting a carrot in the box instead of a pie, and a short tract on the joys of vegetarianism.

            She left when the company went into liquidation.

            From there she had moved into office work, learning all the while to temper her stubbornness and curb her tendency to explode when crossed. One over-amorous businessman had found this out to his cost when he took her to Brighton for a weekend 'conference'. Diana - who was as pretty as she was small - had believed him, despite the whispering around the office. She had continued to believe him up to the point when he locked the door of his hotel room and tried to whisper in her ear less-than-sweet somethings.

            The aerodynamic properties of a portable typewriter are not that great: this is possibly just as well, for if the machine had connected with the boss' head our heroine would currently be languishing in Holloway Prison awaiting trial. As it was, it made an interesting mess of a large chunk of plastered wall, and while Diana slept soundly in the bed of the only suite he had booked, her erstwhile boss - she had resigned as the typewriter left her hands - cowered on the balcony, shivering in the light summer drizzle that blew in off the sea.

            So it was that Diana had found herself looking for another job. She had been to several agencies, but they had looked at her record and tutted as one body. The pattern was predictable: she would enter and seat herself, presenting what references she had. A brief chat would be fine, as she seemed a personable young woman, with a wide and varied experience. She chatted easily, as she had an equally personable and open nature. Any business in those days would consider her an asset, as she was pretty, with strawberry blonde hair cut in a bob, wide hazel eyes, and a pert nose over cupid bow lips.

            Despite her inherent streak of rebellion, she always managed to hold her tongue when the men or women who ran the agencies stated this. Diana's mother and father were committed socialists, supporters of the first Labour government and still working for its return - though not under that idiot Ramsay MacDonald, whose photograph acted as her father's dartboard. Although she was too young to remember them, being only nineteen, her heroines were the Pankhursts, leaders of the Suffragette movement and political activists. Diana's own politics were strictly personal, and she balked at having her looks used as a yardstick for her character - as the man on the balcony at Brighton could only too well attest.

            But, having overcome this hurdle, she would always fall at the last. Whoever was interviewing her would read the references, and their face would cloud over.

            'Ah, well... there is a depression still on, y'know,' they would say, 'but we'll see what we can do.'

            'We'll see what we can do' was obviously agency-speak for 'Aargh – a troublemaker - go away.' Diana was getting exceptionally good at reading the signs.

            So, it was with some surprise on her part that the 'Handi-work (Employment)' agency of Clerkenwell Square handed her a card. Dumbstruck, she read the details:-

            'Secretary wanted for inventor and philosopher. Own rooms in Tudor/Georgian Hall set in rolling Sussex countryside. £650 per anum, three weeks holiday.'

            'Good money,' she said slowly, thinking all the time what the catch could be.

            'It is, isn't it,' replied Mister Handi-work. And it was for 1932. He continued, with his manner of a jollity that seemed entirely strained. 'I understand he wants free-thinking people working for him. I think you fit the bill.' He smiled at her.

            Diana narrowed her eyes. 'I'll give it a go,' she said carefully. What did free-thinking mean? She had visions of the likes of HG Wells expounding free love and having a quick grope behind the desk. If that's what it meant...

            'Excellent, excellent,' beamed Mister Handi-work, ushering her out of the door. 'I'll get in touch with them, and let you know the details. You won't regret it.'

            As Diana made her puzzled way to catch a number 38 bus home, Mister Handi-Work punched the air and yelled in excitement. Two awkward clients matched in one go: if he had a secretary himself, he would have kissed her. As it was, he made do with a jig of exaltation around his desk. Then, when he had calmed down, he sat behind his desk and picked up the phone.

            'Operator? Give me Withering Halt 123.'

            As he waited for the connection, he thought of the five secretaries he had previously supplied to Sir George Gently-Blowing.

            One was still in an asylum.

            Two refused to work ever again and had taken to the music halls as a double act.

            One was making a successful living in America writing pulp science fiction for some chap named Gernsback, or something like that.

            And one seemed to have vanished altogether, without a trace.

            Diana knew none of this as she sat on her case at the brow of the hill. When the taxi returned towards the station, she hailed it and was driven the remaining two and a half miles to the Hall.

            As she alighted, she was greeted by a strange sight: a fully uniformed policeman ran across the gravel drive honking wildly into a tenor saxophone.