It is raining when the plane touches down. The quartet of girls who spill out of the plane, yawning widely, might be mistaken for school friends as they collect their bags and lie, smiling, to the official who stamps their passports and asks their purpose in visiting the United Kingdom. A man in a tweed suit with a printed sign is waiting for them and escorts them to an estate wagon, where a hamper of sandwiches is waiting. They eat as he drives them into the country. An hour passes, then another. By the time they arrive, it is getting dark and the girls are cramped and jet-lagged. They stagger out of the car to stand in front of a mansion—or at least it seems like a mansion to them.
The house is a Victorian monstrosity of red brick surrounded by gardens and a big lawn that rolls down to the cliffs. It is scruffy, from the worn brick paths to the streaky windows of the glasshouse attached to one side. The trim could use a lick of paint, and the brass door knocker is black with grime.
But the door opens and none of that matters. She is standing in the doorway, looking them over with the air of a general inspecting her troops. Constance Halliday. Code name Shepherdess. They do not know yet the full extent of her legend. They will learn her story in pieces, and what they will hear is as much myth as truth. She wears her thin white hair closely cropped to her scalp and she walks with a stick, not for balance, but for hitting recruits who don’t move fast enough.
As a young woman, she studied Classics at Cambridge and would have taken a First if women had been allowed degrees. Her brother, Major Halliday, has told each of the girls about the Furies, Constance’s squad of all-female operatives, and how they died—parachuting into Germany as Nazi sharpshooters picked them off in midair. He has told them Constance survived, but he never mentions she was injured in the drop. Upon being captured, she was sent to Ravensbrück, where her broken leg was set badly. She escaped from the camp, walking halfway across Europe on it before it was fully mended, and her limp is a badge of honor to others, but to her it is a reminder of everything she has had taken from her. When Churchill singled her out for honors, she returned her letter of commendation in pieces with a pithy note in blue pencil about his collective failures.
Her time as a founding member of the Board of Directors at the Museum bored her. She put herself back into the field within months, spending three decades training the best assassins in the business—all of them men. It is her idea to freshen up the talent pool by finding a group of young women to train together. A series of small strokes has slowed her, and she realizes properly that she is growing old. For the first time, Constance Halliday takes stock of her life, and it occurs to her that she would like to leave a legacy to her own sex. She misses the Furies, the camaraderie of women at war. It takes three years for her brother to find her exactly the right sort of young women to train, but she believes they will be worth the wait. They will be the last and best thing she ever does—a fitting coda to the Furies. She will make avenging goddesses of them, killing machines who will fulfill a very special destiny.
But she says none of this when she meets her quartet. She has read their files until the pages are soft and blurred, but this is the first time she has seen them in person. She stares at them through cold blue eyes until finally she gives a single nod and motions for them to follow her inside. The house isn’t much warmer than the driveway, but at least it isn’t wet. There is a fire burning in the drawing room and she leads them in, making them stand while she circles slowly before coming to stillness in front of the fireplace.
“Welcome to Benscombe Hall. If you are here, it is because we have seen something in you. It is entirely possible that we are wrong,” she says, her eyes pitiless. “But we have been doing this a very long time and we might just be right. Project Sphinx is a very special undertaking, the first chance for a squad of female operatives to be trained together under the auspices of our organization. You will not let us down.”
It isn’t a question, and the temperature in the room seems to drop about twenty degrees while she talks.
“There are those in the Museum who believe a group of women cannot be trained effectively to do our work. I believe that you can. You can, and you will. Women are every bit as capable of killing as men. And you have advantages that men do not. You are all attractive young women, and your appearance means men underestimate you. You will use this to your advantage.”
She pauses to eye Mary Alice’s impressive decolletage with a raised eyebrow. “Some of your advantages are more apparent than others, but amongst the four of you, there is something to appeal to most tastes. You, for instance,” she says, pointing her walking stick at Helen, “you have an icy, Jacqueline Kennedy quality. Very refined. And you,” she says, gesturing to Natalie, “are gamine, like Audrey Hepburn.” Helen and Nat exchange quick smiles. Constance Halliday moves on to Mary Alice. “I think I need not enumerate your charms, my dear,” she says. “That sort of overripe body was very popular in the 1950s and there are still many men who prefer it to—” She motions vaguely to Billie, who stares coolly back. Constance Halliday wraps both hands around the top of her walking stick. The cane is dark, reddish wood, and the silver head is some kind of bird with eyes made of black glass beads.
“No, you do not have the obvious appeal of Miss Tuttle,” she says with a nod to Mary Alice. Billie is impressed that their mentor knows their names without asking, but she realizes there must be reports on each of them, files with all sorts of information, and that makes her uncomfortable.
Constance Halliday cocks her head as she studies Billie. “No, a less emphatic sort of attractiveness than Miss Tuttle,” she repeats, “but you look like the sort of young woman who enjoys sex. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Men will sniff that out and it will be quite useful. They have a sixth sense for earthiness. But mind you don’t let it get out of hand,” she says severely. “Sex is a weapon, Miss Webster. Do not permit it to be used against you.”
She steps back. “Your rooms are upstairs—you will share. Go and put your things away and wash up for dinner. I will see you in the dining room in quarter of an hour.”
The foursome retrieve their bags from the front hall and carry them upstairs. Without much discussion, Mary Alice and Billie take one room while Helen and Natalie take the other. The rooms are simple, with twin beds and plain wool coverlets. There isn’t much in the way of furniture, and the rooms are clearly meant to share a decrepit old bathroom in the hallway.
Mary Alice kicks off her shoes and flops down on her bed. “I love this place. Helen says it’s just like something straight out of Winnie-the-Pooh or The Wind in the Willows. And Miss Halliday is a pip. I like her.”
“Well, she didn’t just call you a slut, so I get that.”
Mary Alice laughs. “I suppose that’s your superpower. Natalie and Helen can be the cool debutantes, playing hard to get, while you and I . . .” She pauses and does a sort of shimmy that would be fairly obscene if she were not wearing a bra.
After they wash, they go downstairs, ready for their first etiquette lessons. Miss Halliday sits them down for a formal dinner at a table heavy with silver and china. Helen looks completely at ease, but Natalie picks up a fingerbowl and pokes at the lemon slice floating on the water.
“What kind of soup is this?” she demands. “It looks like hot water.”
“Because it is hot water, Miss Schuyler,” Miss Halliday tells her. She sits on the front third of her chair, back straight as a ramrod as she perches like a hawk, looking at them with raptor eyes. “Your assignments will take you into all manner of company around the world, including into the highest diplomatic circles. You will be prepared to conduct yourselves appropriately,” she says, daring them to object. “My code name is Shepherdess because my aptitude is in looking after people, assessing their abilities and making certain they are cultivated. It is my task to prepare you, to anticipate dangers and make certain nothing takes you by surprise. My last squad with the SOE were the Furies, characters out of mythology. Do you know who the Furies were?” she demands, looking around the table.