It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 1
"Hi Sam. Have you got a minute?" Sam Dixon had finished his coffee in the Student Common Room, and been just about to leave for his next lecture. He turned to see Charley Hawkins, the sexiest girl at Seacombe University, actually smiling at him.
His heart gave a little lurch at the thought of her asking if he had a minute. When he'd first seen her, he'd have given her as long as she wanted, but after the incident during Freshers' week, he was rather more cautious.
"What is it?"
"Do you remember me saying you looked like one of my relatives?"
***
Did he? As part of the Freshers' introduction for new students, the Students' Union had organised a tour of Seacombe. Obviously, that had included visiting the best student watering holes – ie pubs. They had been a group of ten or so students sitting at a table, sipping their first drinks together and sussing each other out. At least, most of the girls were looking at most of the boys, and most of the boys were looking at just one girl, with her bulging breasts and long blonde hair; Charley Hawkins.
"Where are you from?" one of the boys asked her.
"Size," she appeared to answer.
"Huge," he answered, which drew a chuckle from a few of them.
"Not size," she snapped, "SIGHS."
When everyone looked rather nonplussed, unable to see the difference between the two words, she added rather crossly, "Seacombe Independent Girls High School – it's the only decent girls' school around here. I thought everyone would know it."
The girl sitting next to Sam, who had been getting frustrated at the attention being given to the tart with big tits, said, "Well, it's hardly Cheltenham Ladies College, is it?"
That brought an bigger round of laughter, especially from most of the girls, who'd been thinking exactly the same thing.
Charley looked at her and quipped, "Oh no, it's much better than that," which drew a round of laughter from the boys.
Not wishing to lose her temporary advantage, Charley had nodded at Sam and said, "You remind me of one of my relatives."
"Oh?" he'd responded.
"My great-aunt," she'd replied, which drew a big laugh from everyone, except Sam, who politely grinned. "She not only looked like you," she added, "she was called Sam as well."
"We'll have to call you Charley's Aunt," one of the guys quipped, and Sam's university nickname – usually abbreviated to Aunty – was decided.
***
"I remember," he said to Charley. "You said I was like your great-aunt. I've been called Aunty ever since."
"Sorry," Charley said. "It seemed something funny to say at the time. I didn't realise that would happen." As though she actually cared, she thought.
As though she actually cared, he thought. "What did you want me for?" he asked. He was under no illusions she was going to demand his body for a night of passionate sex.
"I want your body," she said. Seeing his mouth drop open, she added, "No. Not that way. I mean I want you to do me a favour."
He shrugged. "I'm a bit busy at the moment." He wasn't actually but he owned her no favours. "What was it you wanted?"
"It's the start of the Easter holidays a week on Friday. You should have time for what I want you to do." Inferring, Sam thought, that he had nothing to do in the holidays. So what did he care if she was right?
"I want you to play the part of my great-aunt," she continued.
He shook his head. "I don't think that's for me." He made to stand up and move away.
"I'll make it worth your while," she said. Seeing the look on his face, she snapped, "I told you, not that way. I mean I'll pay you. How does a hundred pounds, sound?"
It sounded ridiculous, actually. It was clearly some kind of trick to make him look stupid, and he wasn't having any of it. He shook his head, and said with a smile, "Sorry, I wouldn't do it for five hundred."
"That's a pity," she said, opening her handbag, "because five hundred pounds is the limit of what I was prepared to offer. Are you sure you don't want to reconsider?" She tossed a bundle of fifty pound banknotes onto the coffee table. It had a white paper label around it which declared £500.
***
"Tell me again what you want me to do."
They were in his room in the student hostel block nearby. After Sam had stared at the bundle of banknotes for a few seconds, Charley had scooped it up and put it back in her handbag and suggested they adjourn there.
"My great-aunt is no longer with us, so on Saturday my great-grandfather is having a few drinks at his house in Seacombe in memory of her name. I suggested to him that it would be rather nice to have someone taking her part, and he agreed."
"So you want me to dress up as your great-aunt and go to this memorial do, to represent her? Sounds a bit weird."
"My great-grandfather thought it was a good idea, so we're all going along with his wishes. It's his money, by the way, paying for it."
"How long will it take?"
"You'll need to prepare for it so I suggest we start Friday evening. My grandfather normally lives in London, so his house here will be empty. We can stay there. The drinks start at seven-thirty on Saturday and there'll be a meal as well. You'll be expected to be there until the end of the evening, which will mean staying another night."
"If I was to do it, it would have to be a secret between us. I don't want it broadcasting over the campus that I dressed up as your aunt."
"Don't worry," she said, "I'm not going to tell anyone."
"So you'll pay me five hundred pounds for just over a day's work?"
"That's the deal."
Hell! Even if the story did leak out, it would be worth it for five hundred pounds. "And you'll pay it all now?" He'd trust her as far as he could throw her.
"Half now; half after you've done it."
"It's a deal," he said.
***
FRIDAY
"How long has she been dead?" Sam asked after Charley had picked him up from the university in her Ford Fiesta, the following Friday afternoon. "Your great-aunt, I mean."
"We don't know that she's actually dead," Charley said. "She simply disappeared and she was never seen again."
"That's horrible when something like that happens," Sam said. "Did she leave children behind?"
"Oh, no, she wasn't married. It was her parents – my great-grandparents – who suffered. My great-grandmother committed suicide a few months later and my great-grandfather never really got over it."
"How long ago did it happen?"
"Tomorrow is the forty-eighth anniversary."
There was a moment's silence as Sam did the sums. "But that takes it back to the 1960s. She could only have been a girl or a young woman at most."
"She was seventeen," Charley said.
"Seventeen! Seventeen! But that changes everything. I thought I was taking on the part of an elderly woman, not some 1960s dolly bird. Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Precisely because I thought you'd have this type of reaction."
"You mean you tricked me into it?"
"I never indicated she was any age; if you don't properly consider the possibilities, that's your problem."
"I've changed my mind. I won't do it."
"Don't be silly, Sam. Not only are you in no position to return the £250 deposit I gave you, but also, when you accepted the money it created a contract between us. If you were to drop out at this stage, you'd be in breach of contract, and you could be sued for far more than the money I've given you so far."
"But I can't pretend to be a dolly bird."
"She wasn't that pretty. As I said, her face is almost identical to yours."
"What about her body?"
"There are ways around that, which I have in the boot of the car. I'll show you as soon as we get to the house"
With that, Sam had to be satisfied, but he fumed all the way there.
"I thought the house was in Seacombe," he belatedly said, after he realised they weren't heading towards Seacombe.
"It's rather a big house, set in one of the villages, nearby."
***
A mansion, he'd have called it. But then, if someone was prepared to pay a student five hundred pounds for pretending to be a long-missing daughter, then he should have realised he was no pauper.
"Did you say he lives somewhere else most of the time?"
"After his wife committed suicide, my great-grandfather closed down the house. He and his son, Edward, went to live in London, keeping this house as a shrine to his missing daughter. My mother's just waiting for him to pop his clogs so she can sell off this mausoleum for housing development."
"That's not very nice," Sam protested.
Charley ignored him as she stopped the car in front of the impressive main entrance and got out.
"Help me carry these things into the house," she said, going round to the boot. She picked up a few light plastic bags, leaving him to carry in some large, heavy boxes.
"What have you got in here?" he asked. "A sliced-up body?"
"That's quite a good description," she said, as she unlocked the door and entered the house. It was dark inside, and Sam almost bumped into her as she suddenly stopped, searching for a light switch. After switching the hall lights on, she said, "That's Aunty Samantha. It's a lovely painting, don't you think?"
She stepped aside and Sam saw a life-sized painting of a young woman, throwing back her head and laughing, revelling in the pure exhibitionism of the moment. She was wearing a tight-fitting, long blue dress with a low-cut top which exposed her beautiful breasts. Even more alluring was the curve of the dress around her hips and thighs, with the dress flaring out from the knees, giving her the appearance of a mermaid – a very happy mermaid.
"It was painted after she disappeared," Charley continued, "from a photograph taken by a friend when she first tried on the dress.
"Apparently," Charley continued, "she went out with the friend to buy a dress for her debutante presentation. Her friend convinced her to try this one on and she felt so good in it, she bought it. Her mother was furious. It was hardly the normal kind of dress debs wore for such occasions. But it was the 1960s, and the fashion industry was tearing up all the rules."
"Did they still have debutantes in the 1960s?" Sam asked. "I thought they ended before then."
"The queen ended it as a royal occasion in the late 1950s, but the well-heeled families kept the tradition going for several years, using lesser members of the peerage. In this case, it was Lady Bottomly of Seacombe who dignified the occasion. Incidentally, the girl who went with Samantha to buy the dress later married Lady Bottomly's son, so she is the current Lady Bottomly. She's agreed to officiate for your debut tomorrow night."
There was a short silence as the words sank in. "My debut? Tomorrow night? What do you mean?"
"I told you. This is what it is all about. It's forty-eight years, almost to the day, since Samantha disappeared in the afternoon before her debutante presentation. In her memory, her great-grandfather is holding the presentation she never had."
"But you never told me that," Sam protested. "And you're expecting me to wear that dress and look like THAT!"
"Nothing to worry about," Charley said. "I'm pretty certain we'll get it to fit."
"You're crazy," Sam said. "I look nothing like that. I shall just look stupid. I can't do it."
"Don't worry," Charley said. "We SIGHS girls are well used to converting boys into very passable girls, although this is slightly different from normal."
"Normal! There's nothing normal about this. And what do you mean, I'm different to normal? How many boys have you converted into girls?"
"Not me personally, but I've talked to several girls who have. And it's Samantha's dress which makes it unusual, because it fits so tightly around the hips and thighs – it means we have to pad out your thighs rather than just your hips and bum."
"I don't understand what you're talking about. Never mind her hips, what about her breasts? I don't know whether you've noticed, but I don't have breasts."
"No," Charley said, "but I've brought a pair in this box."
She took one of the heavy boxes from Sam and placed it onto the hall table, so she could open it. "What do you think of these?" she asked.
Sam's heart leapt into his mouth at the sight of a pair of large breasts in the box, which looked as though they had just been surgically removed from some poor woman.
"It's all right," Charley said. "The breasts may look real, but they're not. They're built into a garment that's a kind of a flesh-coloured crop-top, called a Bustlet. In the other box is a Hiplet which pads out the hips and thighs.
"And," she continued with a smirk, "it gives you a vagina, as well." She grinned even harder as he furiously blushed.
"First thing," she said, "is to remove all the hair from your body, then we can give you your girly curves. Tomorrow morning, I have a hairdresser coming to the house, and she'll give you hair extensions and style your hair. In the afternoon, a beautician will do your nails and show you how to make up your face. Now, can you see why I offered you five hundred pounds?"
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 2
SATURDAY
By three pm the next day, Sam – or Samantha as Charley was insisting he now be called – was staring transfixed into the mirror. He was gorgeous! Or at least, the girl he'd turned into was gorgeous. If he carefully stared at his face, he could vaguely recognise his own somewhere, but a blink of the eye and his face transformed back into Samantha's. But he could hardly keep his eyes on his face when just below were the most fantastic pair of knockers he had ever seen – and they were on his chest! Why would any boy fancy a bitch like Charley Hawkins, just because she had a nice pair of tits, when he could have a pair of his own which were even better? Because these products were a well-kept secret, that was why.
The curve of his hips and thighs beneath his narrow waist was so feminine, even more so than the huge jugs. Of course, one of the other things Charley hadn't mentioned was the Playtex girdle which he had to wear in order to fit into the dress.
"Of course you're going to have to reduce the size of that beer-belly," she had scorned, although to be fair, if he had a beer-belly, he would never have fitted into the dress, girdle or no girdle. The girdle was unbelievably small, and it had taken ages for Charley to pull up the zip, compressing his stomach into little more than the thickness of a broomstick – or that's how it felt. But now Sam was looking in the mirror, any amount of discomfort would have been worth it
Even his voice had gone up in pitch, after Charley had insisted he swallow a pill which seemed to burn out his throat, but which left him with a voice like a canary – OK, not quite a canary, but certainly nothing like his own.
"Hello darling," said the frail and elderly voice. "How are you getting on with things? Oh!"
Sam turned sharply round to face the elderly man who had entered the room. "Hello," he said, "I'm…"
"Samantha!" the man exclaimed. "Oh, Samantha, I've waited so long for this moment." He moved forward and threw his arms around Sam, repeating, over and over, "Oh, Samantha! Oh, Samantha!"
"Don't be stupid, GG," Charley came bustling back into the room. "You know this isn't really Samantha at all. It's a boy we're employing to take her part for tonight." Sam presumed that GG was a childhood name for great-grandfather - an acronym that made sense.
"I know, I know. I simply never believed she – he, whatever – could look so like my Samantha."
Whilst GG had been talking to Charley, he had not taken his eyes off Sam. "You're so incredibly like her. It's as though..."
His eyes widened, and Sam saw hope suddenly appear in them.
"Your grandmothers," GG said. "Do you have pictures of your grandmothers?"
"Don't be silly, GG," Charley said. "I told you Sam couldn't possibly be descended from Samantha. He comes from Yorkshire." Clearly, the possibility that a relation of hers should come from Yorkshire was unthinkable.
"I'm pretty certain that both of my grandmothers were born and bred in Yorkshire," Sam said sympathetically, adding, "I'm afraid my maternal grandmother died last year, but I could probably find her memorial picture on Facebook, as well as a photo of my paternal grandmother."
"Oh, yes, please," GG said.
"Do we have to do this now?" Charley interrupted. "I want Samantha to practice her elocution a little more. You can see she has a long way to go."
"I think she sounds great as she is," GG said. "She is taking Samantha's part, not trying to replace her."
Sam realised that in his conversation with GG, he'd forgotten all about the carefully contrived elocution of the rain in Spain which Charley had made him repeat over and over. Instead, he'd reverted to his native Yorkshire dialect, with a girlish voice.
"But she can do it if she tries." Charley said to GG. "It will..."
Sam interrupted her. "It will only take a few minutes to show the pictures to GG, er Mr… erm?" He wasn't certain what he should call GG.
GG smiled and said, "You'd better start calling me Daddy. I know it will sound a bit strange at first, but let's get the strangeness out of the way before this evening's presentation. I'd really love you to show me your Facebook pages straightaway."
So Sam got his smartphone and quickly brought up pictures of his two grandmothers. GG's disappointment at seeing they were clearly not his daughter was heart-breaking to Sam, if not to Charley.
"Of course it wasn't going to be her," she scoffed. "Samantha would hardly have gone to Yorkshire."
"But Daddy had to check," Sam protested, earning a smile of appreciation from GG, partly for calling him Daddy, but also for taking his side against Charley.
"So now can we get back to improving Samantha's dreadful accent?" Charley asked.
"That's more of a fatherly duty," GG said. "Come on, Samantha, let's walk in the garden, like we used to do all those years ago, and we can practice your accent whilst we talk."
"Yes, Daddy," Sam said.
"Not in that dress," Charley said. "Take it off and you can put my spare tracksuit back on."
***
It had felt incredibly strange uttering that very first, "Daddy." After all, he'd always called his own father, "Dad," and he'd never heard anyone use the term, Daddy, other than in books and on TV. To use it on an unknown elderly man felt - well, yes, it felt perverted, like the man was his sugar daddy. But then GG had given him that complicit smile, and any feeling that he was still Sam dissolved away. For the next few hours, he was going to be GG's daughter, reunited with her father after some kind of time warp in which he had aged and she had not.
"I'm afraid the garden has run wild since you were last here, Samantha," GG said.
"It's been so long ago, my memory is rather hazy," he responded. They smiled at each other, and he added, "Why don't you show me around - where I used to play hide and seek or rounders."
"Oh, God, Samantha," he said. "I've waited forty-eight years for this moment."
Sam took his arm and said, "Then let's not waste a moment."
***
Sam had always been far closer to his mother than his father. It was her second marriage and she already had a two-year-old child. Surprisingly, his dad seemed to get on better with his stepson, Sam's half-brother, Peter, than he did with Sam. He seemed to spend all his time in their younger years teaching him how to kick a football and play cricket, and as they grew older, how to carve wood or repair cars. Much to his father's disgust, Sam had never taken an interest in any of those things, preferring tennis to football, and wanting to drive cars rather than mending them. When his father died of a heart attack, Sam bitterly regretted not having spent more time with him.
So it seemed really nice, walking along and chatting to his new, make-believe father, who told him about the real Samantha, and asked him about the real Sam. By unspoken agreement, they both avoided any talk about things which identified his gender, but that really was not too difficult, as it seemed Samantha was a bit of a tomboy, and had enjoyed many of the things which Sam also enjoyed. Time simply flew by, and it was all too soon when Charley interrupted their conversation.
"Are you going to chatter away all day? The guests will be arriving in less than an hour, and Samantha has to get dressed again."
Sam gave GG a smile, and said, "I suppose she's right. I'd better go."
"I know you're staying the night," GG said, "but would you like to stay on for the rest of Sunday. I… Well, there's something I'd like to show you, and…"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, GG, Samantha has to get changed."
Sam smiled at GG again, and said, "I'd love to stay tomorrow, although I have to leave in the afternoon to get the train to Sheffield, where my family live."
"I shan't be able to give you a lift to the station," Charley said. "I'm meeting my boy friend tomorrow. I've wasted enough time with this memorial, as it is."
"A lift is no problem," GG said. "Now you'd better get dressed and I'm looking forward to seeing you later."
***
The house, which had been deserted when they had arrived the previous evening, was now frenetic with activity. In the main hall, caterers had installed several tables with white tablecloths and sparkling silver cutlery, and there were dozens of waiting staff scurrying about.
There were also several members of the family strolling around as though they owned the place. Charley greeted them and told them that the stand-in (Sam) had been lazing about and now she (Charley) had to get her dressed. The relatives looked at Sam simply as the hired help, and took as little notice of him as they did of the serving staff, busy with their preparations.
So Sam and Charley went back upstairs to the bedroom they had been using as a changing room all day.
***
"Ladies and gentlemen," the toastmaster proclaimed, "Miss Samantha Harper, presented by her father, Sir George Harper."
"Sir? I didn't know you were a sir," Sam said to GG, as they stated to process towards the top table. "You kept that quiet."
He grinned back at her and said, "You don't know your own father very well, do you?"
But they had reached the top table and GG bowed to Lady Bottomly, and said in a loud voice, "My Lady, may I present my daughter, Miss Samantha Harper, who, being of sound and loyal principles, I commend to you."
Lady Bottomly was an old biddy who looked positively ancient. Difficult to credit that she had been contemporary friends with the young girl whom Sam was portraying.
Sam had practised the curtsey, several times with Charley, who had explained that a conventional curtsey, with that tight-fitting dress, would be impossible. Instead, she simply put her right foot behind the left, held the side of her skirt and bent her knees slightly, before standing back up.
Lady Bottomly smirked at her curtsey in a not-unfriendly manner, and said, "I welcome you to our society of gentlemen and gentlewomen. May you enjoy a long and fruitful life."
As Sam and her father stepped backwards in the grovelling manner so much enjoyed by the aristocracy, the toastmaster was introducing the next 'girl' to be presented, Christine Walters. Sam and GG moved to face each other on opposite sides of the aisle to allow Christine and her 'father' to pass between them and be presented to Lady Bottomly.
Charley had explained that the debutante presentation was to be as close as possible to the one originally planned, where possible using the same people who would have taken part. In this case, Christine Walters, the 'girl' to be presented, was in her late sixties, and since her actual father was dead, she was being presented by her grandson, Matthew Thompson. The irony of the event caused a ripple of amusement to pass amongst the twenty or so people who were observing the presentation.
A total of six 'girls' were being presented and it split half and half amongst originals and younger people standing in for them. When they had all been presented, the music started, and GG and Samantha led the way to the dance floor to briefly dance together.
Thankfully, the short demonstration dance by the six 'girls' and their presenters did not lead onto a general dance session – presumably because of the senior years of many of those involved. Instead, the toastmaster had bid them to take their places at the table for dinner, and GG had been placed next to Lady Bottomly with Sam on his other side. It meant GG had to talk to Lady Bottomly which left Sam open to conversation from Christine Walters' grandson next to him, who dearly wanted to get to know 'her' better. Fortunately, the male Sam was in no danger of recognition, since the boy was not at Seacombe University but at Oxford, a fact he conveyed in considerably less than the twenty-eight minutes normally allowed by Oxbridge students for such declarations of superiority.
For the first time in his life, Sam realised what it was like to be a girl with some jerk staring down your cleavage – it felt great! In fact, he couldn't stop a smile reaching his lips every time he noticed; unfortunately, this only caused the boy to try all the harder to get to know Samantha better.
Eventually, GG turned to Sam and said, "Lady Bottomly is telling me I must go and attend to my guests, but I think that really, she wants to talk to you. You and she were great friends, all those years ago." GG stood up and started moving along the table, talking to other guests as he went. Fortunately, the first guest he spoke to was the boy next to him, so Sam was able to slide up one seat towards Lady Bottomly and greet her with, "Good evening, Lady Bottomly."
"I never expected you to look quite so like the real Samantha," Lady Bottomly said. "How did they find you?"
"It was just coincidence," Sam said. "Charley, who I suppose is my make-believe great niece, saw me and recognised the similarity to the painting. She told Sir George who decided to hold this memorial debutante presentation."
"Are you certain there's no family connection," Lady Bottomly asked. Sam realised there was more than a slight interest behind her question.
"I've shown Sir George photographs of my real grandmothers, and he could see neither of them were the real Samantha," Sam said. He paused and then added, "You were good friends, weren't you? It was you who took the photograph which was turned into the painting."
She smiled. "In those days, of course, you had to finish the roll of film and then get it developed. With the trauma of Samantha's disappearance, I forgot I'd taken that photo. She'd been missing for several weeks before I had it developed. It so captured her as a person, but then..." She paused, searching for words. "...well, so do you."
She reached out and took Sam's hand and gave it a squeeze. "I can see why Sir George wanted to see photographs of your grandmothers. It's so tempting to believe that Samantha lives on in you as a grandchild."
"Then you don't believe she, herself, is still alive?"
She shook her head. "I know she'd have made contact, sooner or later. But then, I never believed she'd been abducted. Maybe she went off with some boy."
"Why don't you believe she was abducted?"
"The timing was too tight. The police thought the same, actually. It happened on Easter Saturday, the afternoon of her debutante presentation. It was going to be held at this house, as it was today. Samantha's mother, Mary, popped out to the shops at about two-thirty leaving Samantha alone in the house. I arrived here about two-forty-five, and Samantha had gone. Could anyone have taken her against her will in fifteen minutes? Knowing Samantha, she'd have put up a good fight. There'd have been some signs of a struggle. But she'd simply disappeared, leaving the dress you're wearing on the bed."
"Had she packed a suitcase?"
Lady Bottomly shook her head. "She had a lot of clothes – a result of all those shopping trips with me – so it was difficult to tell, but she certainly hadn't taken any of her favourite outfits and there didn't seem to be a suitcase missing from the house."
"Presumably she had a boyfriend?"
Lady Bottomly smiled. "It was more that we had boys who were friends. There were a group of seven of us – three girls, Samantha, Christine Walters and me, and four boys: Barry Jones, Steve Baines, Tony Thompson and Samantha's elder brother, Edward. Often we'd go out as a group, but sometimes as dates, although more often that was just Christine and me. Samantha would occasionally come on a date with us, with Barry or Steve as a partner. But none of us stuck to one boy; we’d chop and change.
"And share experiences afterwards," she smiled as she reminisced. "You have to remember we were young girls in a changing era. We had miniskirts up to our buttocks, the pill had just been invented, AIDS hadn't, and VD was something that only the working classes got (in our dreams, anyway)."
Sam smiled back at her. "You said Samantha didn't come out on dates with you as often as Christine. Perhaps she had someone special who wasn't part of your group?"
"No," Lady Bottomly dismissed, "she wouldn't do that. Incidentally, I understand you're staying the night here with Sir George?"
The change of subject took Sam by surprise. "Well, the rest of the family are here as well."
"I think you'll find the rest of the family are all staying at the Grand Hotel, except Charley who has her own accommodation in Seacombe. The plumbing here hasn't been changed since 1966, when Sir George closed it down, so they prefer more modern facilities."
"Oh." Sam was surprised. "Well, it will just be Sir George and me, then."
"Yes."
The innuendo shook Sam. "Look, he's treating me like the daughter he lost all those years ago. I'm sure he has no plans to attempt anything else."
"Firstly, you are not actually his daughter, and secondly…"
"Secondly?" Sam prompted.
"Well, secondly…" She hesitated, and then it seemed to Sam she changed her mind about what she had been going to say. "Well secondly, it seems that often the closer that men get to death, the more they want to ensure the survival of their genes. Look, I'm just suggesting you keep your door locked tonight, all right?"
"Yes," Sam said. "Thanks for the advice as a friend." He hesitated a second and then added, "You were very close friends, weren't you?"
She nodded. "Yes, we were very good friends, and I would dearly like to find out what happened to her, even now. I despise her father, but I came here tonight because I wanted to remember Samantha as she was. You have helped enormously with that, so I thank you. I think it's time I retired now." She stood up and said, "Goodnight," before leaving the table.
Her departure served as a signal for others in the room to do the same, most of them saying their goodbyes and giving their thanks to GG. Sam stayed seated where he was, content to finish his glass of wine and mull over the conversation with Lady Bottomly.
So he was taken by surprise when Charley bent down in front of him to frantically whisper, "I won't say a word about who you are, if you don't tell Mummy who planted the idea of the presentation into GG's mind." Then she was standing up and turning round and saying in a loud voice, "Mummy, this is Sam, who is playing the part of Samantha."
Sam looked up to see a woman bearing down on them. She looked dressed fit for a royal presentation, in a white brocade suit with hat which made her look divine – if only she had been smiling. Instead, she looked incredibly annoyed. He automatically struggled to his feet, and then wondered whether it was something a woman should do when another comes up to speak. He was to discover very quickly that it didn't really matter whether he stood or sat.
"I don't care who you are, or how you managed to look so similar to my aunt. I don't even care how you managed to get to see Sir George and con him into organising this presentation. But what I do care is that when this event ends, you promptly remove yourself from this house and from our lives."
"Er," Sam started to say, "well…"
"Ah, Geraldine," GG said, suddenly appearing beside her, "I see you've met Sam. Isn't it wonderful how much she resembles Samantha? But I'm afraid she is no relation of ours – I've already checked. That presumably is what you wanted to find out, wasn't it?"
"Well, that was partly it," Charley's mother confessed. "But I feel uncomfortable with her looking so similar to the real Samantha. I was asking Sam to remove herself as soon as she has finished her role here."
GG smiled at Sam. "Since you never knew the real Samantha, I don't see how you can feel uncomfortable with her. In any case, I've asked her to stay on for another day. It's quite nice having her around the place. You don't mind, do you?"
Charley's mother sniffed at him and said, "It's not my decision, but you know I think it's about time you went to live in a home."
GG smiled, "And you know, Geraldine, they'll have to carry me there, feet first."
Another sniff from Geraldine and she turned on her heel and walked away, with Charley following behind.
"It's strange," GG quietly said, "how all that side of our family: your brother, Edward; Geraldine, my granddaughter; and Charley, my great-granddaughter, all take after my wife, Mary. Even when you and Edward were children, I always loved spending time with you and had to force myself to spend time with Edward." He shrugged. "I'd better get back to saying farewell to my guests."
***
Finally, the guests had all left and the caterers were clearing the last of the tables, and then folding them up and stacking them in a corner of the room.
GG, having finished his hosting duties returned to Sam and said, "Come upstairs with me. There's something I want to show you. Something I haven't shown to anyone in a long time."
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 3
"Come upstairs with me," GG said. "There's something I want to show you. Something I haven't shown to anyone in a long time."
He laughed at the expression on Sam's face. "Not that, you stupid idiot. I can't think of you as anything other than my daughter, so you'd be quite safe with me, even if I wasn't long past it. Take my arm and help me upstairs."
At the top of the grand staircase, they turned to the left and walked just a few yards along the open landing before they came to a door. There was a sign on the door: "No admission under any circumstances without prior approval from Sir George Harper."
GG took a key from his pocket and held it poised for a moment. "This is your bedroom," he said. "I came in here last week with Charley to remove the dress you're wearing tonight. Apart from that, I've hardly been in here in forty-eight years."
"Are you sure you want to go in there now?" Sam asked.
"I couldn't do it without you, Samantha. Come on. Take the key of your room and let's go inside."
Sam took the key he proffered, inserted it in the lock and turned it. He turned the door handle and pushed it open. It was pitch black inside.
"You'll find the light switch on the left," GG said, pushing Sam into the room ahead of him.
Sam found the switch and flicked the lights on, and then turned to view the room.
An interior designer would probably have gasped in horror at the eclectic mix of colours, but apart from the sheer size, it would probably hold no surprises for parents of most teenagers. There were Beatles, Stones and Kinks pictures on the walls, with a four-poster bed with faded pink drapes, in the centre – Sam guessed that at some time it had probably been modelled on Barbie Doll's bedroom. The dressing table was covered with all kinds of bottles of makeup, and near the window was a table bearing a record player, a record still in place on the turntable.
"The dress you're wearing was left sprawled over the bed just there." GG pointed towards the foot of the bed. "My housekeeper comes in here occasionally to get rid of the cobwebs and the dust, but she's under strict instructions to replace anything she moves.
"Not so much Miss Haversham," he continued almost apologetically to Sam. "More that I wanted Samantha to feel perfectly at home as soon as she returned. Only she never did – until now."
"And I do feel at home," Sam said. "That's what you're saying, isn't it? You want me to spend the night here? You want me to be your Samantha for the next day."
"You obviously have your own arrangements for the Easter holidays, and I mustn't intrude on that but yes, if you would be my Samantha for the next twenty-four hours, that would be wonderful."
Sam smiled. "OK, Daddy," he said.
***
GG left him, saying he was going to watch TV for a while, and suggesting he come downstairs when he was ready for bed and they could have a hot chocolate drink together.
But first, Sam had to undress, clean the makeup off his face and find some pyjamas to wear.
He reached behind and found the zip to his dress, and then carefully pulled it down. Pulling it down was far easier than the battle they'd had to do it up. Sam had been convinced they were going to ruin the dress, but Charley was determined he was going to fit into it, whatever. Once the zip was released, the dress fell away from the upper part of his body, releasing his bra-less breasts to bob and jiggle about in a most erotic way.
He'd had little time to examine them in the last twenty-four hours. He thought Charley had found them as disconcerting as he had, for as soon as she had pulled the Bustlet over his head and down his body, and wiped away the remnants of the red gel used to reduce perspiration, than she was making him put on a bra and the shapeless track suit top he'd worn for most of the intervening period.
The same went when he'd got into the Hiplet, which he'd done in the privacy of the bathroom, although Charley had come in at the end and yanked the gusset of the garment firmly between his legs, causing his testicles to be crushed with eye-watering pain. But as soon as she'd wiped away the excess gel, she'd made him put on some panties and the tracksuit bottoms, and he'd worn the tracksuit almost continuously – which included sleeping overnight in it – until it was time to try on the dress, shortly before GG had arrived.
Charley had drilled him mercilessly in all kinds of aspects of being a woman for the best part of twenty-four hours. It had started with him wearing high-heels – at least, they felt high, although Charley pointed out they were barely an inch. However, the heels were pointed so he was tottering about on them as though they had been four-inches high.
She had made him walk, with just the right amount of sway in his hips so that he looked female without appearing a tart. He'd learnt to sit down and stand up gracefully and then they had gone onto dance lessons. Sam had never done any ballroom dancing in his life, so he had to be shown how to perform some basic steps for his presentation dance with GG.
When he had got to the point where every muscle in his feet and legs were on fire and he sat down and flatly refused to get up again, Charley had switched to voice coaching.
Sam had fallen asleep some time after his one hundredth rain in Spain, and had not awoken until Charley was shaking him awake, to tell him the hairdresser would be arriving shortly.
So now he was at last on his own, he had time to watch with fascination the way his breasts bobbled about on his chest. Not just watch – there was some clever system involving touch-sensitive material on the skin of the Bustlet, combined with tiny electrodes against his own skin, which meant he could feel his breasts moving around. It was highly sensual, and had his own genitals not been strapped firmly beneath the Hiplet, he'd have been playing with himself.
As it was, he had the problem of easing the tight-fitting dress down over his wide hips, and every time he twisted left or right, to try to see the best way of achieving that, his tits came bouncing around to obstruct his view. Eventually, he had to ease the dress more by feel than by actually looking at it, and hoping it didn't split as he pulled it over the widest part of his hips.
At last, the dress was off and he could now pull down the Playtex girdle which had been squeezing in his stomach for several hours. But even after he'd undone the zip, it was still as tight as the dress. However, he didn't worry so much about tearing it, so he could use brute force to pull it over his hips.
He did consider briefly pulling off the Bustlet and Hiplet, to allow his skin to breathe, but then remembered he was going down later to have hot chocolate with GG, so decided he'd do it when he finally came to bed.
Being an old house, which hadn't been updated since the 1960s, there was no en-suite bathroom, so Sam had to put on the pink dressing gown hanging on the back of the door before going across the corridor to one of the house bathrooms to remove his makeup.
Ten minutes later, he was back in the bedroom and he realised he had to make a choice of nightwear. His natural instinct was to find the plainest pair of pyjamas he could and wear those, but a brief inspection of the chests of drawers revealed that Samantha did not do plain. Besides, he reasoned, he was doing his best for GG to do as Samantha would do.
With that in mind, he made a decision. He walked over to the bed, pulled back the pillow to reveal a baby doll nightdress set in a shade of pink which matched the dressing gown. Clearly, this was what Samantha had worn the night before she had disappeared. This was how GG would have seen her, either that evening or the next morning. He gulped a little and then slipped on the top, which was of a semi-sheer material, and the tiny matching panties. However, with the dressing gown on top, he felt almost respectable, and he left the room to go downstairs.
***
"Hello darling," GG said, looking up from the TV and smiling at Sam, as he entered the room. "You're wearing the dressing gown Samantha wore the very last time I saw her. That's so nice of you. Thank you."
"Is that all right?" Sam asked. "I wasn't certain." He hesitated a little and said, "If ever I do anything wrong – misunderstand what you want – then don't be upset. I can understand what you must be going through, even now."
"Samantha. It's so lovely seeing you in that dressing gown and knowing that tomorrow, I'll see you again, wearing some of your lovely clothes. Don't worry about me. People have been telling me I need closure, when all I really wanted was to have a bit more time with my daughter."
Sam smiled and nodded towards the TV. "What are you watching on TV?"
"It's the old James Bond movie. Do you fancy that hot chocolate now?"
"That sounds a great idea," Sam said. "Would you like me to make it?"
GG grinned. "That's what Samantha always did. From about the age of ten, she always made hot chocolate for the pair of us."
"Then you stay watching James Bond and I'll go and make it."
***
"Here's your chocolate," he said.
GG looked around. "Thanks darling." He took the mug from her and then noticed the other mug she was holding. "Be careful with that mug. The handle is cracked and…"
Whether it was Sam's sudden jerk as he noticed the cracked handle, or whether it was going to happen anyway, the mug suddenly separated from the handle and hot chocolate cascaded down Sam's dressing gown.
"Ouch!" he said, quickly pulling off the dressing gown before the hot liquid scalded his legs. He bundled the dressing gown up into a ball to avoid it dripping everywhere and took it back into the kitchen. At home, he'd have immediately popped it into the automatic washing machine, but here there was only an old twin tub. He put the dressing gown into a bowl in the sink and ran hot water over it, rinsing it out until the water was clear.
"Sorry about that," he said to GG, as he returned to the lounge with a freshly made mug of chocolate – this time in a more robust mug. "I think I've managed to get it all out. I'm sure it will come up as good as new when it's properly washed."
"Don't worry," GG said. "It was nothing special, and Samantha was always having accidents like that. And she also had no inhibitions when it came to prancing about the house half naked." He nodded towards Sam's pyjamas, and he suddenly realised he was only wearing the baby dolls.
"Oh, my God. I'm so sorry."
GG laughed. "I realise all your feminine bits are make-believe anyway, but everything looks remarkably realistic."
Sam looked down, and started to giggle. "It does, doesn't it?" His giggle turned into laughter and soon GG was laughing too.
When they eventually stopped, GG said, "I haven't laughed like that in forty-eight years. Thanks, Samantha, for everything. Now since none of what I can see is real, do you want to come and sit down here, next to me, like my other Samantha used to."
So Sam sat down next to GG, who put his arm around Sam and said again, "Thank you, for making an old man happy."
Sam didn't feel like a boy normally would at being in that situation. Somehow, it felt all right, and he snuggled down next to GG. "I'm so glad," he said. He felt very comfortable like that.
***
"Samantha. Samantha, darling. Wake up, it's time to go to bed."
Sam jerked awake. How long had he been asleep? "I'm sorry, I must have dropped off," he muttered.
"For the last hour, you've been snoring just like Samantha used to," GG said with a smile. "Now, let's put you to bed." He stood up and held out his hand for Sam to take. When Sam stood up, he pulled him towards the staircase, and then up the stairs and into Samantha's bedroom, where he swept back the bed sheets. "Into bed, young lady," he said. "And sleep well, darling."
"Goodnight, Daddy," Sam said. Then he fell straight to sleep.
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 4
EASTER SUNDAY
"Any thoughts on what you want to do, today?" GG asked.
They were in the kitchen having a leisurely breakfast. Sam had put on a bright yellow minidress, with matching high-heeled shoes, and had been feeling very conspicuous. Samantha, it seemed, had enjoyed looking conspicuous as she had a lot of bright yellow clothes.
"Not really," Sam answered. "I thought I'd leave it up to you."
"It's a nice day," GG said. "After all that rain we've had recently, it would be good to get out somewhere for a walk." He thought for a moment and said, "We could leave the car at the Smugglers Rest pub and then walk along the river bank – the river's tidal at that point and a delightful walk. Then, we return to the pub for lunch. How does that sound?"
"It sounds great," Sam said, "but I didn't know you had a car here. Do you still drive?"
"I'm still licensed to drive," GG said, "but I tend to avoid it. I got a lift here yesterday. I was suggesting we take your car, especially since you've put on one of your dresses which exactly co-ordinate with it."
For an instant, Sam was about to reply that he didn't have a car, but then he realised GG was talking about Samantha's car."
"I have a car?" he gasped.
"That's all right, isn't it?" GG asked. "You have passed your test?"
"Yes but…" Sam struggled for words, "I'm not insured, or anything. And is Samantha's… that is my car still drivable?"
"We can sort out the insurance with a phone call after breakfast," GG said. "And yes, the car is still drivable. I've always made certain that all of your things are regularly serviced, ready for when you return home."
"Right," Sam said, not wanting to ask what type of car Samantha owned.
***
It was a bright yellow Lotus Elan; the one with the headlamps which folded down flush with the wing when not in use. The kind of car which was beyond Sam's wildest dreams, but which a daughter of GG obviously took in her stride. GG was right that her minidress exactly matched the car. She felt so right in it; it was a shame that, still wearing her high-heels, she stalled the engine as they first set off.
"You're always doing that," GG said. "Just release the clutch more carefully.
She got it right the next time, and managed to drive to the pub, following GG's instructions, without a single accident.
***
"Lady Bottomly was telling me a little about the day I disappeared," Sam said. He had got used now to talking about Samantha as though he really was her.
They had parked the car at the Smugglers Rest and then walked along the wooded valley next to the tidal creek. After a just a few minutes' walk, Sam's ankles and legs ached like crazy, but GG had insisted they walk for what seemed like miles, but was probably more like a half mile before they turned around and retraced their steps to the pub. They'd had a delicious lunch sitting in the pub garden, overlooking the river.
GG snorted in response to Sam's statement, and said, "No doubt she told you she arrived at the house at two-forty-five."
"Yes, that's what she said," Sam said. "Was it not right?"
"Veronica Makepeace – that was Lady Bottomly's maiden name – and Christine Walters had been planning to meet up with you at our house at about three," GG said. "Immediately after lunch, you went upstairs to try on your dress. The problem was, you couldn't squeeze into it, no matter how hard you tried. Mary, your mother, came up and tried to help. Eventually, you started to get hysterical about it and Mary decided to drive into town and buy you a firm control girdle – which, incidentally was the garment you wore yesterday. Before she left home, she telephoned Veronica to give her a piece of her mind, since it was she who'd talked you into buying that dress. Mary told Veronica to come straight over and talk you out of your panic. That was at two-thirty. Veronica claims she arrived at two-forty-five, by which time, you had disappeared."
"Right," Sam said. "That's what Lady Bottomly told me."
"The problem," GG continued, "was that Christine Walters arrived at just after three. There was no sign of Veronica."
"Presumably Veronica was challenged about that?"
GG sniffed. "She said that she rang the doorbell and when you didn't answer, she assumed that, with the Lotus not being parked in front of the house where you invariably left it, you had driven across to see Christine. So Veronica did the same. When she got there, she found no car parked outside so she drove back to our house to find Christine waiting outside, and still no you."
"Where was the Lotus found?" Sam asked. "Didn't that provide a clue where she had gone?"
"The Lotus was in the garage," GG said. "Mary had made you put it there that morning, to allow more space for the guests to park when they arrived for the presentation. Mary got back from Seacombe at about half-three to find the two girls waiting on the doorstep, and that's when panic set in."
"Where were you all this time? I'd have thought you'd have been very involved in arranging my debutante presentation."
"I had a business meeting in London, first thing," GG said. "In those days, my company was called EPCC, the English Punch Card Company. I'd started out making computer card punchers and readers, but by that time, we were producing computers. We had a meeting that morning with a major client and I wanted Edward, who was in his final year at the London School of Economics, to meet everyone with a view to him joining the company as a junior partner. We had the meeting and then he and I got the twelve-thirty train from London which arrived at Seacombe at four-thirty.
"Mary was waiting at the ticket barrier to tell me you were missing. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to ask the ticket collector whether he'd seen you. He'd been on the barrier all afternoon and knew you by sight. He was positive you hadn't got on any train. We went straight to the bus station, and that was much more difficult to ascertain, although we subsequently spoke to the drivers of the three long-distance buses which had left that afternoon, and they were pretty sure you had not been on any of them. So, we had a missing daughter; her best friends didn't know where she was; her car was in the garage; and no sign she'd gone anywhere by public transport. We went to the police and..."
His words were interrupted by Sam's phone ringing. It was Charley.
"Hi Sam," she said, "are you catching the train to Yorkshire today?"
"Hi Charley. I thought I'd get the three-thirty train and change at Birmingham. It arrives in Sheffield about ten-thirty. Incidentally, last night you forgot to give me the rest of my pay."
"Don't worry about that. I wanted to tell you that I left that tracksuit you were wearing on Friday and Saturday for you to go home in."
"But why should I need that. I brought my rucksack with me to the house, so I can change into some clothes from that."
"Dumbo. They're hardly going to fit you with those boobs and hips."
"But I'll take those off and leave them in the house."
"Oh. Didn't I tell you?"
His heart gave a sudden lurch. "Tell me what?"
"The gel we used to prevent perspiration is semi-permanent. You have to wait until a layer of your skin is shed in ten to fifteen days before you can remove the Hiplet and Bustlet. I'm sure I told you."
"What! But I was planning to meet up with my mates in Sheffield. I can't go out with them like this."
"Never mind, I expect you'll have plenty of other offers. Remember, that vagina really works. I'll give you the rest of the money when I see you next term. Bye."
And she was gone.
"What am I going to do?" Sam muttered, at the same time wondering about the feeling of elation sweeping through him.
"She tricked you?" GG had picked up most of the conversation. "And now you can't go home to see your parents and your friends?"
Sam shook his head. "My mother and brother have gone on a two week holiday to Malta, anyway. I had the offer of going with them, but I needed to get on with some course work."
"But your father is still at home?"
Sam shook his head. "Dad died three years ago of heart disease."
"I'm sorry about that," GG said. "My son, Edward, died earlier this year. It feels so wrong to outlive your children. That's why, when Charley told me about a student at her university who looked just like Samantha, I agreed to go ahead with this memorial; to once again have a daughter for a few precious hours."
But then his voice lifted. "On the other hand, it looks as though my daughter is going to have to stay with me for another two weeks. Oh dear."
"You don't mind?"
"Do you?" GG retorted with a smile.
Sam didn't have to think; he didn't even have to reply, as the huge grin which had spread across his face did that for him. "I'd love to," he said.
"Something I would like you to do, though," GG said, "is to go over your own disappearance with a toothcomb. I still desperately hope the real Samantha is alive, even though my brain tells me she would have made contact sooner or later. But I'd like you to meet with as many people as you can who were around at the time. See whether you can find out where she is or at least, what happened to her. Will you do that for me?"
Sam nodded. "I'd love to. So, why don't you continue telling me what happened on the day?"
***
"I told you we went to the police station," GG continued, "and they weren't interested. No grounds for suspicion. You would probably turn up in a few days or a few weeks. I rang the chief constable, who I personally knew, and he put a rocket under them. They came, they investigated and came up with the same answer: no suspicious circumstances."
Sam said, "Lady Bottomly didn't believe I had been abducted either."
"Then why did you disappear like that?"
Sam paused; he needed to put this carefully, "I looked around my bedroom this morning. There were no birth pills there."
GG nodded. "Mary was Catholic; she wouldn't hear of you having them. We had several rows over it but Mary was immovable. It was always a bit of a fight between us: Mary insisted you should not have sex until you were married, whilst I wanted you to take proper precautions."
"But on that day I couldn't get into the dress which had fitted perfectly a few weeks before," Sam said. "I flew into a tantrum about it. Was that unusual for me?"
GG nodded. "Yes, it was unusual for you to get upset like that. You could laugh at almost anything; you never got hysterical."
"But I did that morning."
"It crossed my mind," GG said, "that Veronica had taken you some place where you could live out your pregnancy and then give birth. Veronica vehemently denied it and we also knew Veronica was back at the house by three, which allowed only fifteen minutes for her to take you somewhere and return. She hadn't dropped you at the railway station or the bus station, so it must have been somewhere local. Why didn't you reappear in six months' time?"
"Who would the father have been?"
"You did seem quite keen on Steve Baines, and you also went out with Barry Jones. It's worth saying that at the time, I talked with Steve and Barry, as did the police, and their denials seemed genuine enough. I know they'd both tried it on with you but had failed. Steve Baines was there last night, by the way, and he seemed fascinated by you. It would be worth looking him up and speaking with him."
"After what you've just told me, I'd also like to speak to Lady Bottomly again, as well as Christine Walters. And what about that other boy you mentioned – Barry Jones?"
"Barry died a few years ago of a heart attack," GG said. "And there are quite a few others like that. I know it's possible the person involved is dead, and we'll never find the answer."
"Well, we won't know unless we try," Sam said. "Shall we drive back to the house, now, and I can get on with seeing some of these people?"
***
"Hi Samantha."
The voice had come from behind him as he got out of the Lotus, after stopping by the front door of the house. He turned to see the boy he had been sitting next to at dinner the previous evening. The boy's eyes roved freely between Sam's breasts and his thighs. Too late, he wondered whether he had pulled down his skirt after getting out of the car, and realised he probably had not. He pointedly did so now, and the boy had the grace to look embarrassed.
"Hi…" he sought for his name "...Matthew," he said. "What brings you here?"
"Is that your car?" For a few seconds, Matthew's eyes wandered away from his breasts and legs and over to the Lotus, although they quickly reverted.
"Well…" For the first time, Sam had the chance to look at him properly. In Sam's native Sheffield, Matthew's good looks would immediately have labelled him as a raging queer; but in Sam's present position, he had to admit the term handsome was rather more appropriate.
"It's as good as hers," GG broke in, "all the time she is here being my daughter."
"Right," Matthew said, with an even bigger look of adulation in his eyes. "I was wondering if you wanted to go out somewhere with me. It's a nice afternoon."
"Thanks, but…"
"She'd love you to take her to see your grandmother," GG butted in again. "She was just saying how much she would like to speak with her."
"My grandmother?" Matthew was astonished. "What do you want to see her for?"
"Samantha," GG said, "why don't you explain to Matthew on the way? After all, it's not as though your little project has to be kept secret, is it?"
"Sorry, GG," Sam said. "I don't understand. Who is Matthew's grandmother?"
"Don't you remember? Mrs Christine Thompson, of course," GG said. "Born Christine Walters."
"Oh?" Sam said. "Then Christine married Tony Thompson, one of the gang of people I used to go out with?"
"A brilliant deduction, Holmes," GG said with a chuckle.
"OK," Sam said, turning to Matthew. "Shall we go?" He gave a careless wave towards the passenger seat, recently vacated by GG, whilst trying not to let the terror which was running through him show. It was one thing to do a little dance in front of an audience, quite another to get into a sports car with a young man who clearly had lecherous ambitions, whilst wearing a skirt so short it would continually reveal his panties, and with boobs which persisted on bouncing with every lurch of the Lotus's sports car suspension. But then he took a grip. He was not Sam Dixon, a boy dressed as a girl; he was Samantha Harper, a girl with a rich daddy who was not awed by some guy from Oxford who, he noted, drooled just as much as the students from his own university.
He opened the driver's door and remembered to use one hand to pull down his skirt as he got in. But of course, the Lotus was not designed as a limousine; it was impossible to get in modestly, for which Matthew appeared to be delighted.
"You'd better tell me which way to go," Sam said, and then wondered whether his words were capable of misinterpretation. Hell, it was difficult being a girl.
Matthew directed him to turn right out of the gateway.
"That's away from Seacombe, isn't it?" Sam asked.
"That's right. She lives in Kingsford; it's only about five minutes' drive away. Why?"
They started driving along the pretty B-class road, which twisted and turned before them.
"Is this the best road to get there?"
"It's the only road," Matthew said. "Now, are you going to explain why you want to see Grandma and why you're asking these strange questions?"
"Sir George has asked me to speak to people who were around at the time his daughter disappeared; see if I can get any better idea of what happened to her."
"Some hopes after all this time."
"I don't know," Sam said. "Maybe people will feel able to say things now they couldn't say then."
"Turn left at the next junction," Matthew instructed, "and then my grandma's house is just along there on the right-hand side."
***
"Samantha and I were best friends all through school," Christine said with a smile. "It's easy to think that in the Swinging Sixties, every teenager was perpetually on drugs and having orgies, but it wasn't like that."
Christine Thompson, nee Walters, had seemed delighted that Sam had called, and had bid her to come in and have a cup of tea. But when she had learnt that Sam wanted to talk about what had happened on the day Samantha had disappeared, she had told Matthew to go and feed the hens for a while.
"But why, Grandma? I'm interested in our family history."
"Because Samantha and I need to have girl talk," she had replied, adding with a grin, "and that means no boys."
So, Matthew had gone off to feed the hens, and Mrs Thompson – call me Christine – had started her girl talk.
"The two of us were really innocent, especially Samantha. She was quite a late developer and to be honest, not particularly pretty, so she didn't have the boys making rude comments from the age of thirteen, like I did. But she certainly made up for that later on. Her body started developing when she was sixteen, and wow, did it develop. Suddenly every boy was fancying her, but she still seemed to keep her innocence. Right up until the day she disappeared, she seemed like a gawky thirteen-year-old girl in the body of a seductress.
"We were both seventeen, then, and still at the Girls' Grammar School -- which became SIGHS later on – the Girls' Independent School. Being a girls-only school meant we could mostly ignore the boys, except that I was getting to the age where I didn't want to. Then Miss Makepeace – Veronica – joined the school as a student teacher. It was a bit of a funny arrangement since she was twenty and hadn't done any proper training. Apparently she'd dropped out – or been thrown out – of the college she was at, but she was an old girl of the school, so they found her a job. She told Samantha she was giving a dinner party, and invited her to balance up the sexes. Samantha asked if she could bring me along, as well, and Veronica said she could. Suddenly, Samantha and I were part of Veronica's group; it felt very grown up.
"There were three boys, all older than us, Steve Baines, Barry Jones and Tony, who I later married. Right from the start, I thought that Tony was incredibly handsome, but he only had eyes for Veronica. He was most dis-chuffed – and of course, I was delighted – when Samantha's elder brother, Edward, also joined our group since he, too, gloated over Veronica – it was all quite sickening. It was always Tony and Edward competing for Veronica, and neither were interested in me.
"Steve and Barry often asked Samantha and me on dates, and we'd usually go out as a foursome. I sometimes went with one or other on my own, but I don't think Samantha ever did. Actually, I always felt they were both rather frustrated with Samantha because her body was very sexy and she always seemed very friendly, but she never let it go further than that."
Seeing the twinkle in Sam's eyes, she added, "OK, I was rather more understanding of boys' needs, although I remained a virgin for ages, until the night of the orgy with Steve, Barry and Tony."
"You had an orgy?" Sam couldn't keep the surprise – almost shock – out of his voice. Here was this elderly lady confessing not just to having sex, but having an orgy!
She laughed at Sam's expression. "Don't you dare tell Matt. He'd never be able to look me in the eye again. The important point was that Samantha wasn't there when we had our orgy. Afterwards – well Tony had hardly noticed me before and suddenly he couldn't get enough of me. So Tony and I became an item, and I didn't see as much of Samantha after that, but I presumed she was still a virgin right up to the time she disappeared. Then, of course, all kinds of theories were going around."
"So what was your favourite theory?" Sam asked.
"Her mother thought she'd been abducted," Christine said, "but I think that was more because she was a Catholic and reluctant to consider the more likely option that she was pregnant. What I thought…" She paused for a second – for effect rather than anything else, Sam felt. "What I thought was that Veronica had whizzed her off to a back-street abortionist - abortion was illegal in those days. Veronica was missing, you know, for about fifteen minutes just after Samantha's mother had gone off to the shops. Veronica gave some cock and bull story about going round to my house, but we'd have met her on the way, if that was the case, as my dad was driving me over there."
"If she had an abortion," Sam asked, "why didn't she come home afterwards?"
"She died, of course," Christine said. "The abortionists had to get rid of her body, so they probably got one of the local fishermen to drop a weighted sack out at sea."
It seemed a bit far-fetched to Sam, so he decided to try a new tack. "If she was pregnant, who do you think the father was?"
For the first time, Christine looked almost shifty. "Oh, that would be telling."
"Do you think it was Steve or Barry?"
Christine's face relaxed a little and she said, "They both denied it, and I kind of believed them. For one thing, if one of them had succeeded with Samantha three months earlier, they'd have been different towards her. No, I'm quite certain they hadn't had sex with her."
"Then who else could it have been?" Sam asked.
"All I'm saying," Christine said, the shifty look returning to her face, "is that she and her father always seemed very close."
"Sir George?" Sam couldn't believe his ears. "But he loved his daughter. He'd never do that."
"Fifty years ago, it was unthinkable, but now we know it happens all the time. There was always something creepy about the way he doted on her. Men didn't do that in those days."
"It doesn't make him a paedophile, though," Sam said.
"Has he tried it on with you, yet?"
"No."
"It's only because he's old and past it. You mark my words. It was his baby."
***
"Well, who'd have thought it," Matthew said after they had set off from the house, "my grandma having an orgy with three blokes, including that randy old sod, Steve Baines."
"You were listening in," Sam accused.
"Course I was," he amicably agreed. "Girl talk, my foot. Anyway, I wanted to find out what Grandma knew about Samantha's disappearance." He chuckled. "Local fishermen dropping a weighted sack into the sea – I think she's losing her marbles."
"It sounded like she'd always believed that," Sam said. "Given there was no record of Samantha travelling away from the area, it's at least worth considering."
"There are buses and trains," Matthew pointed out.
"Sir George checked those straightaway," Sam said, and went on to tell him about the events on that afternoon, half a century before.
"It's a shame," Matthew said when she had finished, "that Sir George has an alibi with his son, otherwise we'd be able to point the finger clearly at him."
"I don't believe Sir George would do that," Sam said.
"You have to keep an open mind," Matthew said. "I was listening in on your conversation with Lady Bottomly last night," Matthew added. "She was dropping hints about Sir George being a pervert. I bet she thought he'd put his daughter up the duff."
"She thought Samantha had gone off with a boyfriend," Sam said.
"Presumably, Sir George hasn't tried anything on with you, yet?"
"No he has not," Sam crossly said. "He wouldn't do that. You've got it all wrong."
"You don't understand men," Matthew said. "Any man will try it on with any fanciable woman, regardless of who it is."
Sam sniffed, but his scorn was rather undone as a lorry driver whistled down at him from his cab as they waited at a roundabout. Sam couldn't help grinning. If only he and Matthew knew what was beneath.
"See what I mean?" Matthew said. "By the way, I assume you were intending to come into Seacombe with me?"
"What?" Sam suddenly realised he'd been driving without noticing where he was going.
Matthew laughed at her surprise. "We can have a walk around and I'll show you the sights of Seacombe."
Sam was about to refuse, but then he thought, why not? "OK," he said. "I guess you deserve that for taking me over to see your grandma."
"Great," Matthew said, grinning without embarrassment down at her thighs, where her matching yellow panties were on full display.
***
As soon as they had parked, Sam rang GG and made certain he was all right if he didn't return straightaway. "I could buy some food whilst I'm here for dinner and bring it back," she said.
"Don't worry about that," GG said. "I've had the freezer stocked with convenience meals. I'm perfectly capable of microwaving something. Stay out and have fun with a boy, like you always used to."
As Sam terminated the call, he realised from the grin on Matthew's face, that he'd overheard GG's words.
Sam had only rarely been into Seacombe since arriving at the university the previous autumn; it had never impressed him as a place to go, other than to buy stuff not available on the university campus. But that day, it seemed so much more fun, seeing it with Matt. Nothing funny about that, he told himself. It's only like having a good mate who you go around with; except that this mate kept giving him sidelong looks, and occasionally taking his hand and tugging him over to see things. "This is Seacombe's oldest building", or, "This the coaching inn where the stage coach used to arrive and depart." And maybe he'd slip an arm around Sam's shoulder; sure it was a bit funny, but in a way it was nice and, since he was acting the part of a girl, it was perfectly all right to behave as any girl would.
"Why don't we stop and have tea, somewhere," Matt suggested. "Then since you don't have to get back, we could have something to eat later on. How does that sound?"
"I haven't got any money on me," Sam realised with a jolt.
Matt laughed. "Then it's on me, as long as you don't want to go anywhere posh. The Grand Hotel is definitely out."
Sam smiled. It was nice having a friend like Matt. "Thanks," he said. "I'd like that."
***
"It's Samantha, isn't it? Or do you have another name?"
Sam turned to face the voice which had come from behind him. He vaguely recognised one of the older women from the previous evening as another of the 'girls' who'd been presented to Lady Bottomly.
"Samantha is fine," he said. "I know you were at the presentation last night but I'm afraid I don't remember your name."
"It's Doreen," she said. "Doreen McCallum." She gesticulated to the family besides her. "This is my son, Bruce, who presented me last night, Rebecca his wife, and my lovely grandchildren."
She rattled off their names so fast that neither Sam nor Matt could take them in, but they smiled and made appropriate greetings.
"You're clearly related to the original Samantha," Doreen continued. "What branch of the family are you from?"
Sam shook his head. "I'm not," he said. "But Sir George's great-granddaughter, Charley, recognised the similarity between me and Samantha's painting. Hence my involvement last night."
"From your dress today, you're clearly continuing in the part of my friend of fifty years ago."
"I was intending to go home this afternoon, but the holiday plans fell through, and Sir George was more than happy for me to continue in my role. He wants me to find out what happened to his daughter."
Doreen snorted. "That's just like him. It's common knowledge what happened to her and he still won't accept it."
"When you say common knowledge..." Sam ventured.
"Why, she was arrested as a spy, of course."
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 5
"When you say common knowledge..." Sam ventured.
"Why, she was arrested as a spy, of course, Doreen McCallum said."
She smiled at the look of astonishment on both their faces and said, "Bruce and Rebecca are going home later this afternoon, so you'll forgive me if I spend that precious time with them. We could meet up tomorrow, if you wish? How does lunch sound?"
***
The rest of the afternoon with Matt was great – for a time. They went in the waxworks and the heritage museum, and walked along the pier. It was there they met GG's granddaughter, Geraldine Hawkins. If Sam had seen her coming, he'd have avoided her, but she caught him by surprise, even more so when she smiled a greeting.
"Ah, Samantha. How are you?"
"I'm fine, thank you, Mrs Hawkins. This is Matthew Thompson. He was at the presentation last night."
"Call me Geraldine, please. Yes, I know Matt. I wanted to apologise for my show of bad temper last night. The fact is…" She hesitated. "Look, do you think we could go somewhere and talk? Have you had afternoon tea yet?"
"We were going to go in the café here on the pier," Matthew said.
"Oh, that's no good," Geraldine said. "The Grand is only a few minutes' walk. Let's go there. Then we can have a proper tea."
Matthew exchanged a submissive glance with Sam, and they obediently followed her.
***
Afternoon tea at the Grand Hotel comprised sandwiches, cakes, scones and tea. If Sam had devoured half of what was placed before him, he'd never have got into Samantha's clothes again.
After a few minutes' small talk, Geraldine got around to the main issue. "Samantha, I know you're only trying to help GG, but you did say you were returning home today. Clearly, you're not going to do so now."
Sam took a deep breath. GG had said there was nothing secret about his assignment, but he was still cautious about what he said. "There was a problem with my return home, and GG has asked me to stay on for a while."
"How much?"
"Sorry?" Sam stuttered, although he thought he knew exactly what Geraldine was asking.
"How much money do you want to leave Seacombe and to stay out of our lives for ever?"
"It's not a question of money."
"One thousand pounds."
"It really isn't."
"Five thousand."
"I'm sorry."
"Ten thousand, and that's my final offer."
Ten thousand pounds was exceptionally appealing. Matthew obviously felt the same, for he said, "That's a very generous offer, Geraldine. I'm sure Samantha could do a lot of things with that kind of cash."
Strangely, Matthew's words had the opposite effect to their intention. Yes, there were plenty of things he could do with ten thousand pounds, but over the last twenty four hours, he felt he'd been doing something that cash couldn't buy. He'd enjoyed playing the part of Samantha more than he could remember enjoying anything before. Of course, he recognised part of this was because he revelled in taking the part of an attractive girl. But more than that, he had really delighted in being with GG and making him smile in a way he'd never made his own dad smile.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But I don't want your money."
"You're crazy, "Matthew said.
"You're a little gold-digging slut," Geraldine said. "Do you think you're going to marry him? Well I can tell you, Sir George has promised me he won't alter his will whatever happens. Even if he were to get married, there'd be a pre-nuptial agreement to keep the original will as it is."
"I have absolutely no intention of marrying him," Sam protested, adding with a grin, "after all, he's old enough to be my great-grandfather."
"Why don't you sleep on it," Matthew said, and with that they uneasily parted.
***
If anything, Matt was even more fun after that rather unpleasant interlude than before. There was a small amusement park at the one end of the promenade and they went on the dodgems, Matt tried his strength with a hammer, they both went on the gun range and Matt won a teddy-bear which he gave to Sam.
Afterwards, they went into a pub and had a great meal together. Sam refused alcohol, on the basis he was driving, but Matt had a lager – something which lowered him slightly in Sam's opinion since he was a real ale fan.
Finally, Sam was dropping Matt off at his grandmother's house, where he was staying, with a promise they meet up again before Matt went home to his parents.
Of course, Sam should not have been surprised when Matt gently cupped Sam's chin in his hands and lowered his lips to Sam's, but he was. He was even more surprised that rather than it being something horrible, it was wonderful and set his heart beating like crazy.
"Good night, Samantha," Matt said.
"Good night, Matt," Sam said. He had enough presence of mind not to stall the car as he set off.
***
"Hi, darling," GG called as Sam entered the lounge where he was seated in front of the TV. "How was your afternoon with Matthew?"
"It was quite nice, actually," Sam admitted. "We had fun together."
"I knew you would," GG said. "Much better than spending all afternoon with an old codger like me. Did he kiss you?"
The question took Sam by surprise, and he found himself blushing. "That's none of your business," he said.
"That means he did," GG retorted. "You were always like that about your boyfriends. Is he a good kisser?"
"That's none of your business," Sam repeated and, wanting to change the subject said, "I spoke to Lady Bottomly last night, Christine Walters today, and I also briefly spoke with Doreen McCallum. It seems to me they all appear quite genuine but they all have different ideas. I thought there'd be some commonality of response, but every one is wildly different."
"That's the problem with any investigation," GG said. "Even when the police interview witnesses immediately after a crime or an accident, they all have different things to say; fifty years on, it's bound to be even worse. Remember that our memories can be highly selective about what they remember. Everyone has their pet theories and with time, people remember the facts which support that, and forget the ones which don't. It's no easy task I have set you. Don't worry if you can't come up with a solution."
"I'll do my very best, GG," Sam said, adding, "We bumped into Geraldine on the pier."
"Geraldine!" GG was astonished. "On the pier? I bet it's the first time she's been there. She must have seen you going on and followed you. How much did she offer?"
Sam couldn't help his mouth gaping open, and GG laughed. "Geraldine is so predictable. She's terrified I'm going to marry someone and deny her my inheritance. So how much did she offer?"
"Ten thousand pounds."
"Ten thousand?" He gave Sam a careful look. "Does this mean you've come to say goodbye?"
"I told her I didn't want her money and she called me a gold-digging slut."
GG chortled. "She always did have a way with words. What she doesn't appreciate is that the last laugh will be on me."
"You mean you're not leaving her your estate?"
"Oh no. She knows the basis of my will which I made shortly after Mary died, and is quite simple: my estate is divided equally between my two children; if either is deceased at the time I die, it is shared equally between their children, and so on. Only if a legator dies without issue does the money revert to a brother or sister. So Geraldine is assuming that Samantha will be declared dead shortly after my own death, and that Samantha's share will revert to Edward's side of the family."
"So, with her father being dead," Sam summarised, "she gets the lot. Which I guess is a lot of dosh."
GG nodded. "My Mayfair penthouse, which Geraldine would love to live in, plus a reasonable amount of dosh, as you say. But this house and its grounds have been declared suitable for housing development, so it's worth an absolute fortune."
"But you said you were having the last laugh."
GG grinned. "If you can laugh from the grave - I doubt it - but what Geraldine doesn't know is that the will also stipulates that if the whereabouts of Samantha are not known at the time of my death, this house and the half of the estate due to Samantha will be put into trust for ten years, in the hope that she will be found."
"So she has to wait ten years to get hold of the fortune. That would be frustrating."
"Even more frustrating would be for you to find Samantha, or at least an heir," GG said. "Then she'd only get half of my estate. So you had better work on it."
"Yes, Daddy."
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 6
MONDAY
"I went to Seacombe Secondary Modern, rather than the snotty Girls' Grammar School," Doreen said, "so I didn't know Samantha until we met on a CND coach going to the Aldermaston march. That was in 1963, the last of the Aldermaston marches, and we became instant friends. Amazingly, so did our mothers who were like chalk and cheese, and they were always going round to each other's houses for tea, whilst we were at school."
"So you were all in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament?" Sam asked.
They had met up in a fish and chip café in Seacombe for lunch, and he was already regretting wearing another minidress, and having to endure the leering looks he was getting from most of the male clientele.
"Not Sir George, obviously," Doreen said.
"Why obviously?"
"Didn't you know about his company?"
Sam cast his mind back to the previous lunch time. "Er, EPCC – The English Punch Card Company?"
"They became Epic Computers by then, and they had a contract with the Ministry of Defence to supply computers for the Polaris submarines."
"So he was supplying equipment for Britain's nuclear deterrent," Sam said, "whilst his wife and daughter were in CND. That must have been embarrassing."
"He kept quiet about his company's involvement to his family, and probably vice-versa, until one evening Samantha quite innocently looked for a pen in his briefcase and found an MOD contract there. The shit hit the fan."
"When was this in relation to her disappearance?" Sam asked.
"A couple of weeks before," Doreen said. "Samantha was livid, whilst he took the line that she had been quite happy enjoying the money he got from contract, including that lovely little Lotus that you arrived in just now." They both glanced outside to where it was parked at the kerb opposite.
"Obviously, Samantha told all her CND friends, and that must have got back through the Special Branch spy they had in every CND group." Her eyes took on rather a glazed look as she added, "You can't believe it now, but the establishment was terrified by a load of harmless pacifists in duffel coats.
"Anyway," Doreen continued, "they obviously regarded Samantha as a security risk, and were terrified she was going to make some kind of announcement at the debutante presentation. They got Sir George and Edward out of the way on the day, and as soon as Mrs Harper went into town, they knocked on the door and arrested her. Samantha would have gone quietly, thinking that a few words from Daddy and she'd be released. Of course she didn't realise that was the end of her life."
"Was there a trial?"
"Who knows? If there was, it was all held in camera. It was obviously imperative that Sir George knew nothing about it, as everyone was aware how he doted on Samantha. If he realised what had happened to her, he'd have torn up the Polaris contract and to hell with the consequences. Which meant that the first Polaris submarine would be delayed and Britain would be under a continued threat from the Russians – in their eyes.
"Of course, we all told him what had happened and he thought we were just mischief-making at an incredibly sensitive time."
"So what do you think happened to Samantha?"
"She was either secretly imprisoned for life, or she was executed."
"But you don't have any evidence of this," Sam said.
"That's what Sir George said, of course, but don't forget that meeting set up on the Saturday morning was with the MOD civil servants. Can you possibly imagine civil servants meeting on a weekend? With it being the same day as Samantha's presentation, Sir George must have tried like crazy to delay the meeting but they wouldn't let him."
"Or perhaps," Sam suggested, "there was some important problem with the Epic computer which had to be resolved?"
"That's just what Sir George said," Doreen replied. "He just refused to see the truth."
***
That evening, Sam told GG about Doreen's ideas, and asked for his reaction.
He shrugged. "Fifty years ago, I thought it was all poppycock. We British simply didn't behave like Doreen was suggesting. I thought she was out of her mind."
"And now?" Sam asked.
GG shook his head. "I don't know. There have been too many guilty secrets discovered over the years. Now, we all know that is exactly how the establishment would behave. Did they behave that way to my daughter? I hope to God they did not. Being raped and murdered by a sex maniac would be preferable to that. But, whatever it is, I really hope you get to the bottom of it. It's time for closure."
He hesitated for a second and then said, "I have a confession to make. It was my idea to prevent you going back to your family for Easter. I asked Charley if there was any way she could delay you and she came up with this idea of a special gel. I know it was underhand, but I'll make certain you're recompensed."
Sam smiled and walked over to him. "You know, I thought yesterday that you didn't seem at all surprised about me being stuck like this for a couple of weeks. Any innocent person would have been asking questions and demanding to speak to Charley and telling her to sort it out.
"Am I mad at you?" Sam continued. He leant over and gave GG a kiss on the cheek. "Being here is a hundred times better than being at home in an empty house, with nothing to do except boring course work. So thank you, Daddy, for making this happen for me." He gave GG a kiss on his other cheek.
"What I would like to know, though," Sam continued, "is why you had a debutante presentation for Samantha in the first place. The queen had ceased the ceremony a decade previously; the sixties were all about what was fashionable then, rather than looking back to the fifties; and you don't appear to me someone who is wedded to outdated traditions. So why did you hold it?"
"A good question," GG replied. "I think Veronica Makepeace originally suggested it to Samantha. She'd had one a couple of years previously, before she went to college and it had been great. So Samantha took up the idea and I went along with it, simply as a good excuse for a party."
"On Saturday," Sam said, "three of the 'girls' being presented were clearly contemporaries of Samantha; I've met Christine Walters and Doreen McCallum but I can't even think what the third one looks like. Who was she?"
GG snorted. "So often people grow up in the image that goes with their names. The third debutante was Mildred Brown. Mary knew her mother, Maureen, through the church, and she insisted that Mildred be invited. I think Samantha had probably met her a few times at Catechism classes – that's the Catholic equivalent of Sunday School ¬¬- although she didn't go to them for long."
"This was at the Catholic Church in Seacombe?" Sam asked.
"That's right," GG said. "St Joseph's. Maureen Brown used to be the cleaner there, so Mary was perpetually meeting her, and often her daughter was there as well, which is why Mary invited her to the debutante presentation. Maureen retired years ago and Mildred took over her job. If you wanted to speak with Mildred, going to the church would be the easiest way to find her, since she's there every morning."
Sam nodded and said, "Perhaps I'll go over there tomorrow morning."
"It might be better if you're going to church," GG said, nodding down at her dress, "to wear clothes which are a little less revealing. I know Samantha didn't really do modest clothes, but you could probably find something with a higher neckline, and perhaps a hat?"
"OK," Sam smiled. The things girls had to continually think about.
"Incidentally," GG said, "I've ordered a credit card for you. It's a company card so I can get it in your new name without having to produce ID. It should make buying things a lot easier. It will probably arrive sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a couple of hundred pounds to be going on with. You're on expenses now, so let me know when it's about to run out. OK?"
"Well…" Sam was embarrassed at taking money, but GG was rich and Sam was working for him, "Thank you. That's really helpful.
"There is someone else I would like to see," he continued. "Steve Baines. Do you know how I can contact him?"
"He's an estate agent," GG said. "So it's anybody's guess where you'll find him. Even if he's supposedly at work, there's little guarantee you'll find him in the office. Best thing is to give him a ring at Peacock and Baines, the estate agents, and arrange an appointment. Before you meet him…" He tailed off, leaving his statement unfinished.
"Before I meet him?"
"There's something you should know about him, Barry Jones and you," GG said. "Something I haven't told anyone before."
Sam's interest was piqued. Something GG had never told to anyone? "What is it?"
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 7
"There's something you should know about Steve Baines, Barry Jones and you," GG said. "Something I haven't told anyone before."
Sam's interest was piqued. Something GG had never told to anyone? "What is it?"
"It was about three months before you disappeared. I'd got back late from London to find the house deserted, which wasn't unusual. You and Edward were regularly out with your friends, and Mary would often be over at Jenny McCallum's house - that's Doreen's mother. It had been a long day, and I decided to have a nice, relaxing, hot bath. I think I probably nodded off for a few minutes.
"I was awoken by the sound of your voice, and it was clear you were either drunk or on something else. And you were in our bedroom, rather than your own, and just as clearly, you were getting into our bed, accompanied by Jones and Baines. Had you not been high, I don't know how I'd have reacted. As it was, you clearly weren't fit to make your own decisions and I guessed that those two had got you like that in order to have sex with you. I put on a dressing gown, and threw Jones and Baines out of the house. Not quite physically, but almost. When I got back to my bedroom, you'd left and I could hear you crying in your own bedroom. I knocked on the door and you told me to go away, which I did. The point is…" GG broke off.
"Well, the point is that from what I overheard Baines and Jones saying before I interrupted, it was quite clear that was going to be a first for them."
TUESDAY
"Samantha, I just couldn't believe it when I cast eyes on you," Steve Baines said. "You are so like your grandmother. She was incredibly sexy, as well."
Sam decided to ignore that remark. "I told you on the phone that Sir George has asked me to talk to people who knew the real Samantha to try to find out what happened to her."
Steve shook his head. "He never gives up, does he?"
"If it was your daughter, would you?"
He nodded. "Fair point. But most parents seem to learn to live with it after a few years. He never did. Perhaps it's guilt."
"Guilt? About what?"
He shrugged. "Bringing up a daughter like that, if for nothing else."
"How do you mean?"
"Look, it's easy, looking back, to think that the 1960s were great times, and I suppose they were – if you managed to adapt to them. But we'd all been brought up in the straitlaced 1950s, taught about what was right and what was wrong. Then we get to our late teens, and someone tore up the entire rule book." He smiled. "I remember Barry and I were convinced we were the last male virgins on earth. You'd see fourteen-year-old pop stars who'd had more sex than we had. We both fell head over heels in love with Veronica Makepeace, and she seemed quite interested in us. The problem was, it was always the three of us together and that's a crowd. Later on, Tony Thompson became another of those infatuated by her."
He grinned at Sam. "Seeing Veronica now, you can't believe how fantastic she used to look. I'm afraid she hasn't worn well." He didn't actually add, "Unlike me," but from the way he visibly preened, Sam could see he thought it.
"So there we were, three guys and one girl, and certainly we guys were getting mighty frustrated.
"Then Veronica introduced Samantha and Christine and the dynamics changed. Barry and I could see we were never going to get anywhere with Veronica, so we switched our attentions. Tony obviously thought he was in, but then Samantha's brother, Edward, appeared, and he was equally hooked on Veronica. Meanwhile, things seemed to be going great with Samantha and Christine. Christine was prettier, and more world-wisely, whilst Samantha had the bigger... well, you know, which certainly turned me on.
"Problem was, after months of dating them, we were all still virgins, and Barry and I were going up the wall. I mean, why get your daughter to dress like a sex siren if you're also telling her to keep her legs firmly closed?"
It was a question to which Steve patently hoped that Sam would answer. Instead, he smiled, he hoped enigmatically, and said, "You were saying."
"Well, one evening, all of us except Christine were round at Tony's house, and Tony produces these purple hearts. Us four guys all pop some, and then amazingly, even Samantha does the same. We're all feeling incredibly relaxed but really up for it. Of course, that leaves Veronica standing out from the crowd. We're all trying to persuade her to take some, but she says, 'Edward, my parents are away. Why don't you and I go back to my place?' It was obvious what she wanted. Next day, they only announced their engagement, lucky bugger."
He shrugged philosophically and added, "Barry and I weren't at all surprised but Tony was upset as he so wanted it to have been him. But then, he was more upset by what happened that same evening, for with Veronica and Edward gone, it left Samantha alone with us three guys, all feeling ready to explode. But Samantha really disliked Tony so she says to us two, 'Steve, Barry. My parents are away, as well. Why don’t the three of us go back to my place?'
"So we leave poor old Tony, who'd supplied the purple hearts, on his own and looking mightily pissed and go back to Samantha's house. We really thought our luck had changed. We got Samantha undressed and were getting her into bed, when in marched her father who is monumentally livid. Says he's going to call the police for attempted rape and drugging a minor.
"He put the fear of God into us and we were out of there pronto, and once more feeling mighty frustrated. So we decide to go back to Tony's and his purple hearts, and on the way, we picked up Christine from her house. And that was the start of a real night to remember, and a relationship that went on for years."
***
"Hello. You must be Mildred Brown?"
The thin, plainly dressed woman jumped, clearly startled by Sam's presence and turned around to face him. He smiled at her, but it was returned with a downturn of the thin mouth and a hostile look. Cleary, Mildred Brown disapproved. Sam did a retake; he was wearing a dress which, although a mini, was one of the more respectable of Samantha's wardrobe, with a high neckline and matching hat. A dress in which, GG had confirmed, Samantha would attend church. He removed his hat, feeling that perhaps he looked a little too formal for the rather scruffy woman before him.
"What do you want?"
"I'm Sam Dixon. I stood in for Samantha at the…"
"I know who you are. What do you want?"
"Sir George has asked me to go through the last days of Samantha's life before she disappeared, with a view to finding out what happened to her. You knew her. I wondered if you could help?"
"We hated each other. She was a brazen slut, and always laughing at me; scorning and ridiculing me."
"Oh." It was the first time anyone had talked of Samantha being anything other than a pleasant and fun person to be with. "What kinds of things did she say to you?"
"Well, for instance," Mildred said, "a week before the debutante presentation, we had to do a rehearsal, just to make certain everything went smoothly on the day – as though it mattered. I didn't want to have anything to do with the stupid idea, but my mum made me; said we'd been personally invited by Mrs Harper so it would be rude to refuse. Besides, Mrs Harper gave my mum a hundred pounds to buy me a dress to wear – a hundred pounds on a dress! Can you imagine that? Anyway, we borrowed my cousin's wedding dress and paid a friend a few pounds to alter it to my size. We would had to have given back the money if we didn't go through with it." She stopped, clearly still pleased that she and her mother had made such a profit out of Mrs Harper.
"You were saying about the rehearsal," Sam prompted.
"Well, it was all happening at their house near Kingsford, and it would have taken ages to get there by bus, so Samantha said that she'll come over and pick me up – which of course, was just an excuse to show off her stupid sports car."
Sam thought it was actually a friendly gesture, but he let it pass as Mildred was now in full flow.
"Of course, she had to have the top down, and of course, she was wearing her usual tarty clothes, revealing her bosom and her legs. It was hardly a surprise when we stopped at a set of traffic lights in the town centre and two workmen looked down at her and one of them said to the other, 'We must have come to Arizona by mistake. I've always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.' He was staring at her breasts, of course. The other man said, 'It's no mistake. I'd love to go into that valley.' Samantha just laughed and shouted, 'In your dreams,' as she drove off from the traffic lights, squealing her tyres, of course."
Having endured plenty of comments about the size of his breasts over the last few days, Sam admired Samantha's bravado just as much as Mildred despised it.
"Then," Mildred continued, "as though the men hadn't already made the point obvious, she said to me, 'I think they've grown larger recently. What do you think?' "
"What I thought," Mildred went on, "was that if she wore a proper blouse and bra, she could have made her breasts far less obvious than exposing them like peaches on a greengrocer's shelf, and that her comment to me was clearly designed to show how much bigger her breasts were than my own."
Fifty years on, it was impossible to say with any certainty what Mildred would have looked like as teenager, but Sam guessed her breasts had been almost as small then as they were now. Easy to see how a girl would become envious – no, jealous – of such a well-endowed contemporary who attracted men like wasps around a jam jar. A salutatory lesson for Sam, with his newly acquired large breasts.
"I have to say," Sam said, "that I have found wearing Samantha's clothes incredibly strange."
"But you're doing it," Mildred said. "I could never wear clothes like that when I was your age, even if I had the figure."
"I thought you looked very attractive at the debutante presentation on Saturday," Sam said. "Was that dress you wore the same one you were intending to wear all those years ago?"
"Oh, no," she replied. "Sir George wanted to get as many people as possible along to the memorial presentation, so he arranged that everyone could hire a costume and he would pick up the bill. I got the most expensive one I could find. After all, he's loaded so we have to screw him for as much as we can."
Mildred's tight-fisted attitude was common of so many people and Sam always found it depressing. "Getting back to the original debutante presentation," he said, deciding to change the subject, "was the rehearsal the last time you saw Samantha?"
"I couldn't get away from it quickly enough," Mildred said. "All those snooty girls from the girls' grammar school - and their parents. I certainly didn't want to meet up with Samantha or anyone else before I was forced to. I was delighted when she disappeared in time for Mrs Harper to cancel the ceremony."
Her words left a silence between them which dragged on for several seconds.
"Well, obviously," Mildred said, clearly wishing she had not used those words, "I'm not glad she disappeared, but it was convenient she did it when she did."
"What do you think happened to her?"
"There's only one outcome for girls like that."
"You think she was pregnant?"
"It was only later I realised the significance of her remark about her breasts growing," Mildred said with a smirk, "but it's obvious, isn't it?"
"Who do you think the father was?"
"There were obviously so many contenders," Mildred said, "it would be impossible to tell."
"Presumably," Sam said, "she came here to see the priest…" he'd been about to add for confession, but Mildred broke in.
"How dare you? I can assure you that Father Wigley was an honourable man. He would never…"
"Is there a problem," said a male voice from behind them.
Sam turned to see a priest staring at him in a rather formidable way.
"I was asking," Sam said, "about a girl who attended services at this church with her mother, almost fifty years ago, and who subsequently disappeared."
"I hope you're not suggesting there was a connection between the two," the priest said.
"Well, I wasn't." Sam emphasised the 'wasn't'. "But I am a little surprised at how I came here with a simple question, only to find people are assuming I am making some kind of an accusation."
"Then I apologise," the priest said. "I am Father Roberts. Please come to my office and we can discuss your enquiry."
He led the way into a rather large but shabbily furnished office, to one side of the main church. "Now, perhaps you had better start again with your query."
So Sam told him about Samantha's disappearance, and that many people, Mildred included, believed that Samantha had been pregnant. "If she was pregnant," Sam said, "and she came to the church for help, what advice would she have been given?"
"I really cannot say what Father Wigley would have advised fifty years ago. Nowadays, we have a helpline I would have contacted and handed the issue over to them."
"Are there not church records you could look up to see if she did come here for help?" Sam asked.
"I can assure you, young lady, that all such records are held in strictest confidence. They are not available to any passing person to satisfy their curiosity."
"I am acting on behalf of the girl's father," Sam said.
"I cannot help you," Father Roberts said. "Good day."
***
"You probably don't remember me," the elderly lady said with a smile, as Sam left the church. "I was simply one of the hangers-on last Saturday, come to see my daughter have her debutante presentation at last. I'm Maureen Brown, Mildred's mother."
As they shook hands, Sam could see the resemblance between mother and daughter but, in spite of her extra years, Maureen's face had a liveliness to it which had been lacking in Mildred.
"I do remember you, actually," Sam said, "but I found the whole event overwhelming. I'd been thrown into it at the last minute with no time to get accustomed to the idea, let alone remember everyone's name. Did you enjoy the evening?"
"Lovely meal, and all that free wine," Maureen said. "Mind, at my age, I can't take much. I just wish that the original presentation had gone ahead as planned. Perhaps some young man there might have taken a shine to Mildred and her life would have been completely different. And I'll always wonder what happened to that young girl."
"Do you have any idea?"
"You're so much like her, you know. You're obviously related."
"I don't think that's possible," Sam said. "Sir George has looked at photographs of my two grandmothers and he's convinced that neither is his Samantha."
"Photographs prove nothing," Maureen said. "A lot of things can happen in fifty years that you wouldn't even have been aware of. Divorce, death, adoption. You mark my words, you're her granddaughter."
She hesitated a little before continuing. "Mildred rang me to say you were 'snooping around', as she put it. Asking questions about Father Wigley. Now I've spoken to you, I can understand why. You may look like Samantha, but you've got Father Wigley's voice; if you're not his granddaughter, I'll eat my hat."
"My voice?" For a moment, Sam wondered whether he'd forgotten to take his voice tablet, and his voice had reverted to his normal male tones, but no, as he mentally relayed his words, he realised that his Samantha voice was now natural to him.
"Oh, obviously, he had a lot deeper voice than you, but anyone who knew him would immediately recognise it. That's what startled Mildred just now, when you first spoke."
"You think that Father Wigley made Samantha pregnant?"
Maureen shrugged. "A man, even a priest, has his needs. Let's say that there have been a number of allegations made about Father Wigley that the Church is earnestly denying. I seem to remember Samantha gave up Catechism classes quite suddenly."
"Did Mildred not have an explanation?"
"She said Samantha just found them too boring, which is quite likely. On the other hand…" She let the innuendo hang in the air.
"Whilst you're here," she went on, "come and see your great-grandmother's grave. She's buried just around the corner."
"But I thought Mary Harper committed suicide," Sam said, having by now given up trying to insist he was not her descendant. "Surely, she was not allowed a Christian burial?"
"The Coroner is usually quite understanding about such matters," Maureen said. She led the way to a simple grave and stood by it, whilst Sam joined her and stared down at the gravestone. Could this possibly be the grave of his great-grandmother?
"Mary Harper," the inscription read. "Born 15 February, 1928. Died 3rd October, 1966. RIP."
***
Sam's mother rang him that evening from Malta. "Hello, love? How are you?"
"I'm fine, Mum."
"Your voice sounds very strange."
"I've had a bit of a cold. I think it's gone to my larynx."
"I told you that you should have come with us to Malta. It's lovely sunshine here. We're sitting on a terrace overlooking the sea, and we'll be eating soon."
"So will I, Mum. I'm going to microwave something."
"Oh you poor thing. But aren't you at home? I rang there first, and the answering machine came on."
"I've stayed in Seacombe for a few days extra. It's a bit difficult to explain, but…"
"I thought you said you had to vacate your college room in the holidays so they could use it for conferences… Oh, I bet you're staying with a pretty girl, aren't you?"
Sam grinned. "Well, I have become rather inseparable from one, actually. She's called Samantha."
"What's she like?"
"Don't be nosy. But Mum, there's something I wanted to ask you. Was Dad adopted?"
"Your dad? Adopted? No, of course not."
"Are you certain? I mean, sometimes people keep that sort of thing quiet. Do you think I could ask Nan?"
"Don't you dare. You know how easily she gets upset by just little things. If there was any truth in what you're saying, it would probably kill her off. Anyway, why have you suddenly got interested in this?"
"This girl I was talking about, Mum, well her face is almost identical to mine. Everybody's saying we must be related and it's quite embarrassing really."
"Mmm." For once, his mother sounded quite thoughtful. "I can see what you mean. I know that your grandpapa and Nan were married for a long time before they had Tom. Can't you find out through the Registrar of Births and Deaths?"
"Maybe," Sam said. "But with Dad no longer being alive, it's bound to make it more complicated, and it will probably take for ever."
"OK, well, I don't know what to suggest, but whatever you do, you mustn't ask your Nan. Promise me."
"I promise I won't ask her about Dad," Sam said.
As Sam ended the call, GG asked him, "Everything all right?"
Sam shrugged. "You probably heard most of it. I asked Mum about the possibility of Dad being adopted, and she didn't know anything and forbid me from talking to Nan."
"So you think adoption might be a possibility?" The hope in GG's voice made Sam feel quite emotional.
"I was speaking the absolute truth when I said that everyone I meet seems to feel that I must be Samantha's granddaughter; except that is, for Doreen McCall, who thinks Samantha is either in prison or has been executed."
Sam hesitated and then said, "Look, I think I need to go up to Sheffield for a few days and do some digging. The problem is… well, it's going to be difficult if I stay in my own home. Neighbours are either going to think a strange woman has broken into the house, or they're going to realise that it's really me, and I don't know which is worse."
"Then stay in a hotel," GG said. "Take the Lotus, then you'll have no problems getting about whilst you're up there. Incidentally, your new credit card came today, so there'll be no problem with paying the bills."
"Is that all right?" Sam asked, rather embarrassed at the cost involved.
"It's got a ten thousand pound credit limit on it," GG said, "so it should be. The only thing is I'd be happier if you took someone with you, and I'm a bit elderly to make that kind of journey. Why not ask Matthew if he'd like to accompany you?"
"Matt! But he'll get the wrong impression."
"Then tell him what the right impression is. Book single rooms and tell him that's the deal."
Sam was suddenly aware he had a stupid grin over his face, and hurriedly changed it to a grimace. But he could see GG was smiling at him, and knew he hadn't been fooled.
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 8
"Thanks for asking me to come with you," Matt said.
"I thought it would be more fun if you did," Sam said. "I've never driven this far before, and certainly never driven this car in a lot of traffic. Did you manage to borrow a road atlas? Somehow I think the 1960s' version in this car wouldn't be very useful, as the M1 appears to end at Rugby."
"Better than that," Matt said, "I've borrowed a satnav. I thought it would be a bit of a waste to use this car on the motorways, so I've set the satnav to use mainly B-roads. It should be a great drive."
"All B-roads? Are you certain that's a good idea?"
"Course it is. It'll make it into a really pleasant drive."
***
As they drove through the Cotswolds, Sam had to concede that Matt had been right. Beautiful undulating hills and pretty, unspoilt villages. They stopped for a coffee break in Bourton-on-the-water, and sat admiring the stream running through the centre of the village.
"Isn't it gorgeous?" Matt asked.
"It's impossible to imagine the contrast," Sam said, "between this paradise and the crowded, dirty, noisy city we'll be in this evening."
"It's not turned twelve, yet," Matt said. "We could cancel the hotel booking in Sheffield and stay a few days here. GG doesn't have to know. We could simply tell him you were unsuccessful.
"It would be fun, here," he continued, "just the two of us and there's no compulsion about anything. We could tour the area, go to a few museums, go to a few nice pubs. What do you say?"
Sam looked around the pretty village, and then back at the incredibly handsome Matt. It was an extremely tempting idea.
"But I want to find the answer," Sam said. "Come on, drink up your coffee and let's hit the road."
***
"Matt," Sam said, some time later, "we've been driving for almost four hours and we're still thirty miles from Birmingham, and we've been thirty miles from Birmingham for the last hour."
"Well of course we're not going through Birmingham," Matt agreed. "We need to skirt it."
"Are we going to stop somewhere soon and have some lunch?"
"Well, I don't think there's going to be anywhere suitable for another hour or so."
"Matt, I can't drive for another hour without food and drink. Set the satnav to find the nearest restaurant."
"Em," Matt said. "I'm not really certain how to."
Sam stopped the car at the side of the road and said. "Hand it over, I'll set it."
"No," Matt said, "you're a girl. You won't know how to work one of these."
"Since I'm a girl," Sam said, "I'll know how to slap your face, so stop being sexist and give me the satnav."
Five minutes later, they were on route to the nearest motorway, via a restaurant. They would be in Sheffield in less than two hours travelling time, although Sam planned to extend that by having a nice leisurely lunch in the restaurant.
***
"It's a really nice hotel," Matt said, over dinner that evening, "but why are we not staying in your house."
"I've told you before," Sam said. "Sir George insisted I come with you because he was under the mistaken impression you'd be of assistance, and I wasn't going to set the neighbours' tongues wagging by staying at my house with you when my parents are away."
"It's not 1966 now," Matt said. "People simply accept that everyone is having sex."
"Then they'd be under a misconception," Sam said. "Now, I want to make an early start tomorrow morning, so we can start back to Seacombe as soon as we can – and we're not exploring the byways this time."
"Fair point," Matt admitted. "Only…" he hesitated for a second. "Only it was nice driving through those lovely roads in a beautiful sports car, the sun shining down on us, with a stunning, sexy girl besides me."
"You're stupid," Sam said, and for some reason he moved his face closer so that Matt could kiss him.
As they broke apart, the waitress, who had clearly been waiting for her moment, said, "Do you mind if I clear your plates?"
"Oh, of course not," Matt apologised, going a deep shade of red, which Sam thought was rather nice.
Sam had to admit that he was feeling incredibly confused about the way his feelings for Matt were developing. Perhaps he was playing the part of Samantha a bit too well. On the other hand, it was exceptionally nice being a girl with a boyfriend like Matt. "So how many convents did you manage to locate on the internet?" he asked Matt to change the subject, whilst trying not to grin at him too much.
"No many," Matt admitted. "There are four within a reasonable drive of here. Then, there's one in Doncaster and one in Chesterfield. I know they are a bit of a trek but I'm sure Father Wigley would know of them."
"You may not know it," the waitress broke in, "but there's the Convent of the Virgin Mary just a short walk away from here."
"Really?" Sam was astonished. He'd lived in Sheffield all his life and thought he knew most of the city quite well. The hotel where they were staying was quite new, an attempt to redevelop the rather sordid industrial district, totally dilapidated after the demise of the steel industry. His idea of a convent did not extend to it being anywhere near here.
"They always kept this one quiet," the waitress explained. "I was one of the last girls to have a baby there, back in the early 1990s. We girls called it the Convent of Immaculate Conception."
"You believed you had an immaculate conception?" Sam asked, trying to get a grip on what she was saying.
"It must have been immaculate," the waitress said. "The only man I'd been with was a priest, and they always remain chaste."
"Oh," Matt said. "You mean…"
"She had an immaculate conception," Sam said, smiling sweetly at the waitress. That lined up with Mildred's mother's suspicions that it was Father Wigley who had made Samantha pregnant.
"We could walk round there when we’ve finished dinner if you like," Matt suggested. "Just to have a look. I don't expect they welcome visitors at this time of evening."
The waitress gave them directions and after dinner they strolled round there, arm in very comfortable arm. The dismal building, set between disused, boarded-up factories, didn't look as though it had ever welcomed anyone, no matter what time of day. A pair of dirty black steel doors were set in a dirty brick wall, with no windows at ground level, but a few narrow windows with bars at the upper levels. It looked like a prison. A small dirty sign said that visitors should ring and wait, with no promise that anyone would ever open the door.
Sam looked at Matt, and Matt looked back at her. "A nice Christian welcome, I would say," Sam said, his face breaking into a grin. "But please, please let this not be the place where Samantha ended her days."
"Amen," Matt agreed.
"Let's go back to the hotel now and get an early night," Sam suggested.
"Now there's a great idea," Matt said
"I meant so we could get off to an early start," Sam said. It really was difficult being a girl when everything one said was taken the wrong way."
"Early to bed, early to rise," Matt said, a lecherous look appearing on his face.
Sam refused to comment.
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 9 - REVELATIONS
THURSDAY
Sam was just about to go down to breakfast when his phone rang.
"Hi, it's Matt."
"Hi Matt, I'm just on my way down to breakfast. Are you running late?"
"That's the problem, I'm running all the time. I think I probably have Norovirus, or something like it. I certainly can't go out today."
"Matt! I'm so sorry. How bad are you? Do you want me to come and give you some TLC?"
"It's probably better if I see as few people as possible."
"You're right," Sam agreed. "I'm afraid you're going to have a boring few days whilst I explore the convents of Yorkshire."
"I think it's quite possible you'll come down with the same virus," Matt said, "I think you should stay here in the hotel, rather than spreading it around."
"I haven't any sign of it yet," Sam said. "Of course, it's possibly your kiss last night gave me rather more than expected, but I can't stay in communicado just because it might happen. I'll go over to the Convent of Immaculate Conception, this morning. I can then start on the others after lunch."
"I really don't think that's wise," Matt said. "You could come down with it at any minute."
***
The problem was that when someone suggests something like that, you keep thinking it might come true. So although Sam went to the toilet after breakfast, as soon as he'd left the hotel he started worrying he might suddenly need to go again. He made an abrupt about turn, almost bumping into a group of school boys, clearly playing truant, who jeered at his modest – but still short – skirt, as well as two evil-looking guys who'd obviously been staring at his wobbling buttocks, and retraced his steps to the hotel.
But after sitting on the toilet seat for a few minutes, he knew that he was not yet experiencing the symptoms of Norovirus. As he walked back across the hotel foyer, he toyed with the idea of having another coffee before he left. And that's when he saw Matt.
The very same Matt who, an hour earlier was in the throes of Norovirus, was now breakfasting on fried bacon, mushrooms and egg, and had several slices of toast piled up on the table, awaiting his attention.
He was deeply immersed in a phone call, so Sam had no problem approaching the table without him noticing.
"I really think we shouldn't go that far," he was saying when he caught sight of Sam. His mouth dropped open, and Sam was able to pluck the phone out of his hand without resistance.
"...you failed to distract her in the Cotswolds," Geraldine was saying, "you failed to direct her to the little 'car accident' I'd arranged. You even failed with this stupid Norovirus stunt. Just remember that if Charley is fool enough to marry you, it will be your fortune too, so you can stop whingeing. It's all done through a private detective so it's not traceable back to us. Just a little beating up, just enough to teach the evil little..."
Sam disconnected the call. "So, you're planning to marry Charley," he said to Matt. Strangely, it was that which hurt more than anything, even though Sam had hardly been honest about his own situation.
Matt shrugged. "I've asked her several times. I think eventually she'll accept."
"Does she know what you're up to?"
"Hell! No. Charley mustn't find out."
"Mustn't find out that you connived with her mother to set thugs on me? They were following me just now, weren't they?"
"That had nothing to do with me."
Sam was stll clutching Matt's phone. He flicked through the call records. "You called Geraldine just after nine, which was about the time I left the hotel. Did you watch me leave through your bedroom window?"
Matt shrugged. "So I told Geraldine. I didn't know what she was going to do about it."
"You've spoken to her several times," Sam continued as he perused the call records, "including a call from her on Sunday before you came to pick me up, and in the afternoon just before we went on the pier. No wonder she 'accidentally' bumped into us."
"I suppose it's too late to say sorry?"
"Sorry! Those two guys were going to beat the hell out of me, perhaps slash my face, and you want to say sorry. Just pack your bags and get out of here. I never want to see you again."
"Can I have my phone back?"
"What, so you can make more arrangements with Geraldine to have me beaten up? No chance. I'll give it to Charley when I see her next."
"But how do I get home?" he whined.
"You can walk, or you can stay in Sheffield for life. It's your choice."
***
"I was worried Geraldine might do something stupid," GG said after Sam had telephoned him and told him what he had discovered. "That was the reason I suggested you take Matthew with you, little realising he was the viper in the bosom.
"The stupid, greedy girl," he continued. "How could she set a bunch of thugs onto another woman? I shall ring her now and tell her that if anything happens to you, then she is out of the will, and so is Charley if she marries Matthew."
"What should I do, GG?" Sam asked.
"Stay in the hotel and see the manager and tell him some thugs have been employed to beat you up. Ask him to keep his staff alert to anyone roaming the hotel. I think you'll be safe outside within a few hours, but you can't be too careful. Come home tomorrow, first thing."
"Yes, GG."
***
"Good morning," Sam said to the nun who had promptly opened one of the metal gates in response to his ring. Rather than wasting the rest of the day, Sam had decided to get a taxi to the Convent of Immaculate Conception.
"And a fine good day to you, too," came the reply in such a broad Irish accent, Sam half expected her to finish with a "Begorra."
"Will you be coming in to join us?" the nun continued, pulling the gate wide to reveal a sunlit courtyard. "I'm Sister Mary. I'm afraid our Mother Superior is taking her prayers at the moment. But you're welcome to enter and look around our humble convent."
"Er, right. Thank you," Sam said, stepping through the gate.
Sister Mary slammed the gate shut, cutting off all sounds of the noisy city outside.
"This is delightful," Sam said, looking around the courtyard, full of potted plants and shrubs, many already in flower.
"That it is," Sister Mary said. "That it is."
"I'm trying to find out details…" Sam commenced.
"You'll need to talk to the Mother Superior," Sister Mary said. "I'm sure she'll do her best to help you. In the meantime, would you like some refreshments?"
"Will the Mother Superior be long?" Sam asked.
"It's difficult to know. It might be an hour, or it could be much longer."
"Much longer?" Sam said, "But I don't…"
"That's all right, madam. You're not intruding. In fact, we're always pleased to see visitors. I'll go and get some refreshments for you." Further comments were rendered redundant, as she disappeared through a door to one side of the entrance he had just come through.
Sam wondered around the courtyard, examining the three-storey cloistered buildings which ran around the courtyard on three sides, with the fourth side occupied by a chapel. I take it back, he thought, about not wanting Samantha to have been here. It's lovely.
Sister Mary returned carrying a tray with some glasses and a pitcher of what looked like home-made lemonade. She placed it down on a table and bade him to sit down and enjoy the lemonade.
"Who could have thought," Sam said, sipping the delicious drink, "that such a beautiful place could be here, amongst all this industrialisation?"
"It was here before the industrialisation," Sister Mary said. "The stones were laid down in..." and she commenced on a long history of the convent.
"I'm certain that," Sam said, jumping in when she temporarily paused for breath, "if Samantha Harper did come here, she'd have found it a wonderful place."
He had said the words wondering whether he would see any reaction to Samantha's name. He was not disappointed.
"Samantha Harper!" Sister Mary gasped. "You're looking for news of Samantha Harper?"
"Her father is still trying to find out what happened to her," Sam said, "and I suspect she may have been my grandmother. You obviously knew her."
"I arrived here on Maundy Thursday, 1966, just two days before she did. As she stepped through that metal door from the street, the setting sun lit up her hair and gave her a halo. It was a sign.
"We struck up a natural bond, being new girls together, but everybody loved her. It broke all our hearts when she died."
"Then she is long dead?" Sam asked.
"I think the Mother Superior won't be long now," Sister Mary said.
***
Two hours later, Sam was on the road back to Seacombe. Most of that time had been spent waiting for Mother Superior to arrive, but it had been well worth it.
Of course, it still hadn't explained the question of how Samantha had arrived there in the first place – and who the father was. It was easy to assume it was Father Wigley, but Sam had his own ideas about that. Firstly, he needed to speak with Lady Bottomly again.
It turned into a hunt for Charley's Aunt, who had disappeared almost fifty years ago.
Author's Note: This is a light-hearted, cross-dressing mystery story, written in my normal style, which I hope you enjoy. It does contain references to adult themes, and some of its characters have little sympathy with the Catholic Church. Please don't read if you feel this will upset you.
CHAPTER 10 – DENOUEMENT
FRIDAY
"Samantha, how nice to see you. I was hoping you would visit me before you returned home."
Sam returned her smile, feeling perhaps that Lady Bottomly did not smile very frequently. "We didn't get chance to speak for very long on Saturday. Sir George has asked me to stay on for a few more days."
She gave him a careful look. "Has he tried anything on with you, yet?"
"I've told you; he's not like that. But he has asked me to go over Samantha's disappearance - see if I can find out what happened to her."
"I didn't know the answer to her disappearance then; I certainly can't help you now. But please come in and we'll take tea."
Ten minutes later, a housekeeper had brought tea into the sitting room and Sam moved the conversation away from the small talk and onto the reason he was there.
"At the time, it appeared almost everyone except her mother believed she was pregnant," he said. "But you were her best friend. Samantha actually told you she was pregnant, didn't she?"
Lady Bottomly sighed and then nodded. "Yes, she did, but she made me promise not to tell anyone."
"Christine Walters believed," Sam continued, "that Samantha died at the hands of back-street abortionists, who later disposed of her body. She must have suggested that to you at the time, Lady Bottomly."
"She was talking rubbish," Lady Bottomly said.
"You know that for a fact," Sam said, making his stab in the dark, "because that was where you went on that fateful afternoon, wasn't it? You found Samantha missing and guessed she might be having an abortion. You went round to the local back-street abortionist so as to be with your best friend during that horrible experience."
Lady Bottomly reluctantly nodded. "Yes," she said. "I'd been pressing Samantha to have an abortion, but her stupid Catholic religion thought it a sin. I found out who the local abortionist was and offered Samantha the money for it, but still she wouldn't have it. That Saturday, I thought she'd at last seen sense, but when I went round to the abortionist, she wasn't there. So I know no more than anyone else about where Samantha went, or how she disappeared."
"But you could have told Sir George she was pregnant, and put him out of his misery," Sam said.
"I promised I wouldn't tell."
"There was another reason why you wouldn't tell, wasn't there?" Sam said. "Of course, with most people accepting she was pregnant, the question then turned into, 'Who's the father?'"
Lady Bottomly shrugged agreement.
"People did their sums," he continued, "and came up with the time when the three boys and Samantha got high on drugs. Given that she'd been behaving like a good Catholic girl prior to that, it would seem logical that she had unprotected sex that evening whilst she was high. You thought that, didn't you, Lady Bottomly?"
"I thought it highly likely."
"But you didn't believe that either Steve or Barry were the father?"
Lady Bottomly shook her head. "Their behaviour towards Samantha would have been completely different after that event. It wasn't either of them who was the father."
"I suspect everyone else did the same calculation," Sam said. "They also came to the conclusion that neither Steve nor Barry was the father. So in their minds, that left only one person who had the opportunity that evening to impregnate Samantha. Her father."
Lady Bottomly shrugged and added, "So you got there at last."
"But before accepting that as a solution," Sam said, "we need to step back a little, to the real reason why you invited Samantha into your group."
"What do you mean?" Lady Bottomly quickly asked.
"It was the start of the Spring term at the Girls' Grammar School when you arrived back in Seacombe. Everyone thought you were incredibly pretty and all the guys lusted over you. Clearly, with your beauty, you enjoyed playing the field and didn't want to be tied down to one boy. When Samantha first met you, you had three boyfriends, all vying for your attention, and you enjoyed that. So why did you invite Samantha and Christine, girls who were much younger than you and your crowd, to your dinner party and consequently into your life?"
"I wanted to even up the sexes for my dinner party," Lady Bottomly said.
"But you subsequently brought Edward into the group so that once again it was unbalanced with two boys competing against each other for you. Then, one evening you chose Edward. You told him in front of everyone that your parents were away, and asked him to take you home. The next day, you were engaged to be married."
"For a time," Lady Bottomly said. "After a while, I broke it off with him in order to marry James Bottomly."
"Well known for being a boring old bachelor with a title."
"Maybe he was, but I don't see what that's got to do with anything."
"I mean," Sam said, "that you surrounded yourself with men for a reason very different from that which people were meant to think; to shield you from the public scrutiny of what your true feelings were. You invited Samantha to your dinner party because you had fallen in love with her."
Lady Bottomly gave a gasp, and then opened her mouth to deny it, but the words never came out. Instead she closed it again and paused, considering. "If you say anything outside of this room then I'll sue you for defamation," she said. "But so what? It's never been a crime for women to fall in love with other women – even to have sex with them."
"So when you were sent down from university…"
Lady Bottomly gave him a grin, the first for ages. "I was caught performing 'unnatural acts'," she said. "It would be laughed about now, but in those days it shocked everyone from the Vice-Chancellor downwards."
"Yet the Head of the Girls' Grammar School was perfectly happy to accept you as a member of staff at the school?"
Another grin. "I knew Miss Lavender, the Headmistress, used to lust over me whilst I was still at school. She never tried anything on with me, or any of the other girls, as far as I was aware. But when I came back from university, I, er… Well, you could say I seduced her. The job was her way of keeping me close. And you're absolutely right, I surrounded myself with men so no one would have a clue what my real inclinations were.
"But then I saw Samantha at school and she was the prettiest, most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I just had to get to know her better, hence the invite to the dinner party. She was so incredibly naïve, and her mother had imbued in her not to have sex with any man before marriage. The idea of having sex with a woman had clearly never occurred to either her or her mother, but my powers of seduction were well rehearsed by that time. Oh boy, did we have great sex. Even now, I can remember those precious few months together." She smiled, not at Sam, but into the distance, reliving the long-distant past. "And it all remained under cover because we were continually going out with the boys, seemingly just playing hard-to-get.
"But as I asked just now," she continued, "so what? It makes no difference to anything."
"It makes a difference to one very important thing," Sam said.
"I don't think so."
"It makes a difference to what happened on that evening when the others were taking purple hearts and you suggested that Edward came back to your house. The next day, you were engaged, and everyone thought that Edward had stayed the night with you. But that wasn't the case, was it? You simply used Edward to get you out of a drugs session, and when he took you home, you shut the door in his face."
"I thought the boys were being stupid taking the purple hearts, but when Samantha popped some as well, I knew exactly what she was going to do. She'd been saying for ages she didn't want to remain in the closet, whereas I thought coming out would be a disaster for both of us. Popping the purple hearts was her way of saying, 'Let's show the boys what we are really like'.
"The silly idiot. Did she not realise that two lesbians performing in front of four very randy boys was courting disaster? Grabbing hold of Edward and asking him to take me home was the best I could think of to avoid a catastrophe. On the way out, I whispered to Samantha to do the same. I thought she'd realise I wasn't going to do anything with Edward. When I heard the next day that Steve and Barry had collected Christine and gone back to see Tony for some more purple hearts, and what turned into an orgy, I breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like I'd not only avoided our exposure as lesbians, but also protected Samantha's virginity. Of course, I realised some weeks later what a mistake I'd made, although Samantha always insisted the pregnancy was not my fault – it had been her decision to pop the purple hearts, and everything had happened as a result of that. But what's Edward got to do with this?"
"It meant that an incredibly frustrated Edward could hardly go back to Tony Thompson's house since he'd be the laughing stock. So he went home. I suspect the timing was just right that when he entered the house, he could hear his father shouting at Steve and Barry. Not wishing to get involved, he stepped into the lounge as he heard them coming down the stairs. When Sir George went outside to show them off the property, he went upstairs to find Samantha. Then he had sex with her."
"Edward had sex with his sister?" Lady Bottomly said. "But that's an incredible idea."
"No more incredible than Sir George doing the same," Sam said.
"But he didn't like his sister very much," Lady Bottomly said.
"After that night, he'd want to distance himself from her," Sam said. "But when he got back to the house that evening, high on the purple hearts and sexually frustrated by your actions, he found Samantha drugged out of her mind and ready for sex. He probably didn't think twice about it. I guess that he took her back to her bedroom whilst Sir George was still downstairs, and then had sex with her. We shall never know whether Samantha willingly cooperated, or was raped. We only know she was deeply ashamed afterwards and couldn't tell anyone about it, although she obviously dropped some hints which were taken the wrong way by everyone, except her father."
"When Edward rang me next morning," Lady Bottomly said, "he obviously wanted people to believe he'd been there all night. That fitted in nicely with my pretence so I went along with it, just as I went along with our 'engagement'. But this is all only a theory, just as likely as Sir George being the father. You can't prove anything."
"That's where you're wrong," Sam said. "When Mary Harper died, Sir George closed down the house almost overnight. That house is like the Marie Celeste. This morning I found hairbrushes for all four of the family. I also brought back with me one of my father's hairbrushes, after stopping by at my house, yesterday. I'm pretty certain the DNA on them is going to prove that I am the granddaughter of Samantha and Edward, not Samantha and Sir George."
Slowly, Lady Bottomly nodded agreement.
***
"Before we start," Sam said, "I have to give you some bad news, GG. I'm afraid that your daughter, the real Samantha Harper, died whilst giving birth at the Convent of the Virgin Mary in Sheffield, on the third of October, 1966."
GG sat very still for a minute, whilst a tear ran down his cheek. Then he took out a tissue and blew his nose. He looked at Sam and asked, "And the baby?"
"Was my father," Sam said.
GG gasped with delight, and then positively leapt to his feet and bounded across to Sam and hugged him.
"Let's sit down again," Sam said, and when they had done so, he recommenced. "I told you that first evening that everyone I spoke to seemed to have different opinions about what happened to Samantha. That was the same for virtually every conversation I had for the rest of this week. But if you swept away the detail of what they said and looked at what was generally agreed, I came up with two commonly held views.
"The first," Sam continued, "was that most people thought that Samantha disappeared because she was pregnant. The second was that I was so similar to Samantha that we must be related, and that I was most likely her granddaughter. That still doesn’t tell us who the father was, or how Samantha got to Sheffield. But Maureen Brown unknowingly gave me a clue when I went to St Joseph's, which it took me some time to work out. She told me that I talked the same way as Father Wigley used to, and she assumed that meant I was Father Wigley's grandchild.
"Of course, speech is not an inherited behaviour, but depends upon the environment in which a person grows up. I grew up in Sheffield, so could that mean that Father Wigley was also from Sheffield? If so, was it possible he still had links with the area, and that when a pregnant girl needed to get away somewhere, he would send her to a convent in Sheffield?
"The fact that I was not only from Sheffield and bore a remarkable resemblance to Samantha, but also that my father was born at exactly the right time – October 1966 – was too strong a coincidence to ignore. It was pure luck that I managed to find the Convent of the Virgin Mary since it wasn't listed anywhere. Apparently, it was the convent where the Catholic Church sent all the most sensitive of pregnant girls, such as those impregnated by so-called celibate priests."
"But how did she get to Sheffield? We checked the trains and long distance buses. Did someone drive her there?"
"I suspected the answer when you first told me about Samantha's disappearance," Sam said, "and something one of the Sisters told me confirmed it. She said that when Samantha came through the door from the street, the setting sun made a halo around her head. Given that the train journey alone is seven hours from Seacombe to Sheffield, there's no way that Samantha could have left home at two-thirty and got to the convent before sunset at this time of the year. The reason you couldn't find what happened to Samantha on that Easter Saturday afternoon was because she didn't disappear in the afternoon, she left in the morning."
"What are you talking about?" GG said. "Mary was with her all morning."
"I believe that the incident with the dress not fitting occurred first thing on Saturday morning," Sam said. "Mary realised Samantha was pregnant and took her to Father Wigley at St Joseph's. He suggested the Convent of the Virgin Mary at Sheffield. Mary helped Samantha pack a small bag and took her to the station that morning. It was easy to telephone Veronica Makepeace in the early afternoon and pretend the event had only just happened. Waiting for you and Edward at the station was a blinder; it ensured you would ask the ticket collector if he had seen Samantha, when she knew the ticket collectors changed duty at midday."
"But why would she do that?"
"I'll come to that in a minute," Sam said, "but I can tell you the convent was a delightful place, and everyone there loved Samantha. They would be happy for you to visit them and see her grave.
"But why didn't they tell me when she died?"
"I'm afraid," Sam said, "that after Samantha died, the convent telephoned this house and told your wife."
"Mary knew? That's impossible." GG could not believe what Sam was telling him, but then his whole body shuddered and he said, "Samantha died on the third of October? Oh God! The third of October!"
"Was the day when your wife committed suicide," Sam said.
"She knew," GG said. "She knew that Samantha had died having a baby but she never told me. How could she do that? Why couldn't she at least put it in her suicide note? And why commit suicide, anyway? We had lost a daughter but gained a grandson."
"I'm afraid," Sam said, "that Mary believed you were the father of Samantha's child. She thought that you should never see the child."
"That's obscene," GG angrily said. "How could I ever do that to Samantha? Why would Mary even suspect such a thing?"
"Samantha never told anyone who the father was," Sam said. "But probably from her attitude, Mary suspected it was a close family member. I'm afraid many people independently came to the same conclusion."
"Of course it wasn't a close family member. There was only me and…"
"And Edward." Sam finished the sentence for him. "That evening when Samantha was drugged and you threw out Steve Baines and Barry Jones, everyone believed Edward spent the night with Veronica Makepeace. But Lady Bottomly told me this morning that was not the case. He would have returned home just as you were throwing them out. I think he avoided the confrontation and went upstairs to see Samantha. He helped her back to her room and then had sex with her."
"Damn him! If only Samantha had told me," GG said, clenching his fists and shaking his head from side to side, "I'd have…"
"I think that was the very reason why she didn't tell you," Sam said. "Because she loved you and she didn't want you to get into trouble for what you might do. She thought it better to go away, have the baby and then return. Unfortunately, she died giving birth to my father.
"Life was cruel enough to you and Mary," Sam hesitantly continued. "The only way I can ameliorate it is to say that I am here now, and I will try to be an excellent great-grandson to you."
"More than a great-grandson," GG said. "I want you to continue to be a 'great' daughter. Will you do that?"
Sam smiled and gave him a hug. "Of course, Daddy." He rested his head against GG's shoulder. After a few seconds, he felt GG shaking. He looked at him, expecting him to be crying. Instead, he was laughing. "What is it?" Sam asked.
"Oh, I've just had a thought about my will," GG said.
"It wasn't because of your will that I..." Sam started to say.
"Don't be stupid," GG said. "I think you said that your half-brother was from your mother's side rather than your father. That means that, through your father, you will inherit all of Samantha's half-share of my estate.
"Not only that," he continued before Sam could speak, "since Edward had two children rather than one, his estate will be shared equally between Geraldine and yourself. So you'll get three-quarters of my estate and Geraldine, who was looking forward to getting her hands on it all, will only get one quarter. Oh dear."
He started to laugh again, and Sam couldn't help but join in.