“Yes, they were,” said Simone. “We used to practically live in Patternost’s room.”

“So you and your sisters all went to the same school?”

“They’re not really my sisters,” she said. “They’re like my sisters, like the sisters I never had. We met at school.”

“What was the name of the school?” If I had the school then I could probably track all three of their identities.

“Cosgrove Hall,” said Simone. “It was just outside Hastings.”

“Nice school?”

“It was perfectly all right, I suppose,” said Simone. “The masters weren’t too beastly to us and it had its own riding stable and Miss Patternost—I mustn’t forget her. She was very taken with Elisabeth Welch. ‘Stormy Weather,’ that was her favorite. She used to make us lie on the carpet—she had a lovely Oriental carpet, from Persia I think—and make pictures in our minds.”

I asked what kind of records and Simone said that it was nearly always jazz, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and of course Billie Holiday. Miss Patternost told the girls that jazz was the Negro’s great contribution to world culture and that as far as she was concerned they could eat as many missionaries as they wanted, as long as they continued to produce such beautiful music. After all, said Miss Patternost, the various societies were churning out hundreds of missionaries every week but there was only one Louis Armstrong.

I knew from my own dad’s collection that some of those disks would have been hard to get on the right side of the pond. When I asked where they came from, Simone told me about Sadie, Miss Patternost’s woman friend.

“Did she have a surname?”

Simone stopped pulling my shirt out of my trousers. “Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“I’m a policeman,” I said. “We’re born curious.”

Simone said that as far as she and any of the other girls knew, Miss Patternost’s friend Sadie was always just called “Sadie.”

“That’s how Miss Patternost used to introduce her,” she said.

It was never divulged what it was Sadie did, but the girls deduced from hints dropped in conversation that she worked in the movies in Hollywood and that she and Miss Patternost had been engaged in a passionate correspondence for over fifteen years. Every month or so, in addition to the almost daily letters, a package would arrive wrapped in brown paper and strong twine and marked HANDLE WITH CARE. These were the precious records on Vocalion, Okeh, and Gennett. Once a year Sadie would arrive, always just before the Easter hols, and ensconce herself in Miss Patternost’s rooms, and there would be much playing of jazz records until the wee small hours of the morning. It was a scandal, said the girls of the lower sixth. But Simone, Peggy, and Cherie didn’t care.

“Crushed beetles,” said Simone suddenly.