Bright Young Things Read online

  Cynthia nodded. A great many strings had been pulled to allow this to happen and Cynthia had willingly footed the bill. The girl from the car, once mistaken for Faun Moran, now had a final resting place.

  The funeral had been a small affair. Mickey and Belle, Henry and his sister and Pat and Violet, two young women he had come to admire.

  ‘Did you ever discover what happened to the photographs?’ Cynthia asked curiously. ‘From the crash site?’

  ‘Mickey did. He spent some time looking through the files of various investigations that Shelton had worked on and it seems that in a fit of pique the man had muddled evidence and no doubt destroyed more before he left under his self-made cloud. There will be a disciplinary hearing. But those particular photographs still have not turned up. It’s likely they never will.’

  ‘That’s appalling, Henry.’

  ‘It is, and most likely it would not have been discovered if Faun Moran had not suddenly reappeared.’

  Cynthia gripped his arm sympathetically. ‘It all turned out well,’ she said.

  ‘And how is your brother?’ Henry asked Violet as they walked from the grave.

  ‘Improving with every day. I think a weight of guilt was lifted, but then replaced by another, less definable sense of responsibility. But he is coming to terms with the idea that he was the dupe in this and there was nothing he could have done. I hope he will be home again before the summer. I’m planning a trip abroad, Paris, perhaps and I’d like to take him with me. Our father approves; I think he’s hoping to keep the pair of us out of mischief.’

  ‘In Paris?’

  ‘Well, maybe just out of the public eye. We all owe you a great debt, Henry.’

  He shook his head. ‘I think I made rather a mess of things, at least at first.’

  They reached her car and paused. ‘What makes someone do what they did? I can’t understand it. They must have known that it was wrong, morally degenerate and yet they seem not to have given a damn.’

  ‘Perhaps some men are simply born that way. Though I do believe that alone neither Vic Mullins nor Ben Caxton would have gone so far. They seemed to feed, one from the other, to support a common purpose. An evil purpose, certainly.’

  ‘Well, I hope I never understand,’ Violet said emphatically. ‘I don’t want to be able to comprehend the minds of people who can treat others with such cruelty. And poor Faun was not the only victim, was she?’

  ‘It would seem not. They claim that there were others, but there’s no proof we can lay hands on. It might just all be talk. Caxton speaks about their activities as a game, a challenge. I’ve no doubt they derived all kinds of amusement from having Mullins come and make his statement and send us skittering about like mice, just to withdraw it again.’

  It still rankled, this feeling that they had just been used like toys in another’s game. But, Henry thought, that didn’t really matter when offered up against the suffering of Faun Moran and the other women. And he had no doubt but there were other women.

  And one day, he promised, he would discover all of their names.