The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place Read online

  “That one was the most horrid one to write,” Dour Elinor muttered, dropping it in the letterbox. “Kitty made me redo it twice. She said my writing wasn’t alluring enough.”

  “Disgusting,” Pocked Louise said.

  “But necessary,” added Smooth Kitty.

  “And wonderfully scandalous,” said Disgraceful Mary Jane.

  Elinor was unappeased. “How does one make ‘Thank you for the elephant’ sound alluring, I’d like to know?”

  Each letter had informed its recipient that Mrs. Plackett was beginning to mend, and feeling much better now. Kitty thought this advisable, so that Mrs. Plackett’s sudden appearance at tomorrow’s strawberry social did not attract too much unwelcome comment.

  A postman met them in passing as they left the post office, and tipped his hat.

  “Morning, young ladies,” he said. “So sorry to hear about Mrs. Plackett’s nephew ailing.”

  They curtseyed in mute surprise, but the street all around them was too crowded now to discuss. They made their way to High Street. Over the rooftops of the Market Street lodgings and shops loomed grand Ely Cathedral—a friendly silhouette from a distance but almost terrifying in its ponderous bulk up close. Saint Etheldreda was its patron saint and founder, and their own school, as with so many other institutions in the city of Ely, was named for her.

  “The Cathedral of the Maiden Saint,” Pocked Louise murmured.

  Dear Roberta bowed her head. “May she deliver us maidens from our present troubles.”

  Stout Alice patted Roberta’s back. “We need all the help we can get.”

  “Young ladies,” said a voice from behind them. They turned to see a woman dressed in a stately mauve jacket and skirt, with a peacock-green blouse, nodding graciously toward them. “Will you be so kind, my dear young ladies, as to convey to your headmistress Mrs. Groutley-Ball’s best wishes and concerns regarding her brother and nephew?”

  They nodded mutely. Mrs. Groutley-Ball did likewise and moved on down the street.

  “What in heaven’s name is going on?” whispered Disgraceful Mary Jane.

  “Miss Fringle, I think,” Stout Alice replied. “She wouldn’t miss a chance to tell a living soul about the calamities at Constance Plackett’s house.”

  Smooth Kitty’s mouth was set in a grim line. “I don’t like it,” she said. “It does our cause no favors. The fewer people mindful of our affairs, the better.”

  “Then we should move to London,” Pocked Louise said, “for there’s no escaping everyone knowing your affairs in Ely.”

  Their next errand was far from pleasant. They made their way down High Street to Saint Mary’s Street, where they passed their own parish church. Reverend Rumsey waved good morning to them from the rectory window by raising his glass in the air. From Saint Mary’s Street they turned onto Cromwell Avenue, where the lord protector himself once lived. In a little row of dwellings, they found the number that marked where Amanda Barnes lived with her mother.

  Smooth Kitty jingled the bell. Nothing happened.

  A little boy rolling a hoop watched them from some distance up the street. He looked like a youth with a high opinion of no one.

  They waited, and were just about to leave, when Kitty thought she heard something from within. It was a slow, shuffling, scraping sound.

  The door creaked open, and there stood a very elderly woman indeed. Her white hair was pulled back off her face into a wispy bun. Her face drooped in folds of wrinkled skin, and her tired, careworn eyes took in the sight of the young ladies without any show of welcome.

  “Mrs. Barnes?” Smooth Kitty began. “Does Amanda Barnes live here?”

  Mrs. Barnes nodded once.

  Smooth Kitty held out an envelope. “Then may we leave this for her?” The old lady made no move to take it. “It contains her letter of reference, and her upcoming month’s pay.”

  Still the old woman stared blearily at them, without any gesture toward accepting the envelope.

  “It’s got money in it,” Disgraceful Mary Jane added loudly.

  Stout Alice elbowed Mary Jane. Slowly, the woman took the envelope.

  Kitty curtseyed, and the other young ladies followed suit. Then they hurried back down Cromwell Street toward Saint Mary’s. The surly youth sent his hoop flying along the road after them. Pocked Louise heard it rattle, turned, and caught it before it struck Dour Elinor.

  “I say!” she cried, glaring at the young miscreant. “What do you mean by this?”

  The boy sauntered over and plucked the hoop from Pocked Louise. “Stuck-up prigs, sacking my aunt,” he said. “My brother Jimmy told me all about it. He’s what delivers your groceries. Every week she fusses over the order. Makes Jimmy bring it to her so she can check if the foodstuffs is fine enough for you lot. There’s nothing she hain’t done for that school. Mam said so. And this is the thanks she gets.” He scrunched up his freckled nose in a scowl laced with all the malice his eight-year-old face could hold, and stuck out his tongue.

  “Stick your tongue out and somebody’ll chop it off,” snapped Disgraceful Mary Jane.

  “Stop,” Stout Alice murmured. “Let be.” To the youth she said, “Good morning, young lad,” then turned and walked away.

  Once clear of Cromwell Street, everyone breathed easier. They headed back to Market Street, prepared to fill their baskets with groceries.

  “Let’s not go to our usual shop,” Pocked Louise suggested. “I don’t think I’m ready to meet the wrath of another of Barnes’s nephews just yet.”

  “You don’t think it was the grocer, or his butcher man, who poisoned the veal, do you?” Dull Martha inquired. Poison and veal were subjects the poor girl still could not shake from her troubled mind.

  “I considered that,” Pocked Louise replied. “But if the poison had originated with the grocer’s butcher, there’d be corpses all over town, and we’ve heard no death knells ring.”

  “Was Mrs. Plackett behind in her food bill?” Dour Elinor asked.

  They found a grocer where no Barneses were employed. The proprietor, a smiling man with a shiny bald dome and red suspenders, asked to be remembered to Mrs. Plackett, and wished her a speedy recovery.

  “Good Lord,” Kitty gasped, when finally they left the store laden with cans, boxes, and paper packages, including dogs’ meat. “Did somebody advertise our troubles in the newspaper?”

  “It’s Miss Fringle, I tell you,” Stout Alice repeated. “Sprained ankle or no, she’d canvass the town with any gossip.”

  “Next, my friend the chemist,” said Pocked Louise. “Elinor needs better cosmetics for … you-know-what.”

  “Is he really your friend?” Dull Martha inquired.

  Pocked Louise smiled. “No. He just operates my favorite store in town.”

  They entered the chemist’s shop and set down their baskets. Kitty’s eyes roved aimlessly over the rows upon straight rows of shining bottles, each with their neatly pasted labels. Odors of potent and heady chemicals, mingled with perfumes and caramel sweets, struck her nostrils.

  Elinor, Louise, and Alice shopped for cosmetic supplies together, but it was Elinor who led the purchases. “These grease paints will do nicely,” she said. “We need cold cream and stage putty.”

  “Putting on a drama pageant, ladies?” Mr. Buckley, the chemist, greeted them.

  Elinor ignored his question. “Do you have any Vaseline?”

  Mr. Buckley looked pleased to be asked. “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said, reaching for a small gray bottle. “Been hearing all sorts of marvelous claims about this in the journals. Cures a multitude of skin problems, they say.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane, Dear Roberta, and Dull Martha wandered off to explore a display of perfumes and face creams, leaving Kitty standing by the counter. Her mind was too preoccupied to notice a customer enter the shop and stand beside her at the counter.

  Mr. Buckley left the young ladies to greet the newcomer. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Bicarbonate of s
oda, please,” the stranger said.

  “A tin or packets?”

  Kitty glanced at the customer. He was a young man dressed in a tan linen coat and a gray John Bull top hat, with a shocking bow tie of violet silk. His face and hands were unusually browned by the sun, and he spoke with an accent she couldn’t place.

  “Packets, I suppose,” the young man said. He caught sight of Kitty watching him and tipped the brim of his hat in her direction. Kitty quickly looked away.

  Mr. Buckley handed the customer his packets of powder and collected payment. “Rather young to suffer indigestion, aren’t you?” he observed with a smile.

  The customer returned the smile. “They’re for my mother.” He jingled his change in his palm then placed two halfpennies back on the counter. “Ha’penny caramels, if I may.”

  Mr. Buckley fished two caramels out of a tall glass jar and handed them to the customer. He unwrapped the wax paper off of one and popped it into his mouth. Then, with a wink and another tip of his hat, he dropped the other into Smooth Kitty’s grocery basket and left the shop.

  The bell on the door had stopped jingling long before Kitty stopped staring after him.

  “Aren’t you going to eat it?” Mr. Buckley polished his glass countertop. His eyes twinkled at Kitty. “Mrs. Buckley made that batch fresh this morning.”

  Kitty fished the sweet from her basket and eyed it suspiciously. It felt wrong, somehow, to eat the sweet. As though eating it would sanction the stranger’s forward behavior.

  But he was gone, and the caramel felt soft and pliant between her fingers.

  And anyway, the young man was much too well-mannered and well-dressed to be a scoundrel. It was only a spontaneous burst of generosity, she decided, not flirtation.

  She slipped the caramel into her mouth. Rich, buttery sweetness oozed across her tongue.

  “Next time Mamma sends me my allowance I’m coming back for this cologne.” Disgraceful Mary Jane reappeared at Kitty’s side, nearly causing her to choke on her candy. “By the by, who was that young man you were talking with? What did he want with you?”

  Kitty struggled to conceal her chewing and keep her face blank. “Nufink.”

  Elinor, Alice, and Louise returned to the counter with their final items.

  “Will this be all?” the chemist asked. He tallied up their purchases, and Smooth Kitty, who held the purse, stepped forward to pay. Mr. Buckley counted out her change. “You’re the young ladies from the school out on Prickwillow, aren’t you?”

  Kitty swallowed her caramel. “That’s right.” Now for the condolences for Mrs. Plackett.

  “How’s your carpet beetle problem?”

  Kitty blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your carpet beetle problem.”

  Kitty turned to Pocked Louise for help. That girl nodded thoughtfully. “Now you mention it, I do believe Barnes mentioned carpet beetles vexing her. I haven’t noticed them.”

  “Must be the preparation I made her did its job. You ladies have a good day, now. Oughtn’t you to be at your studies?”

  The girls looked to Kitty to answer this awkward question.

  “Mrs. Plackett believes it’s useful for us to take field trips from time to time to practice our, er, arithmetic in the shops,” she said.

  Mr. Buckley nodded. “There’s sense in that. Good day to you.”

  As they walked along Nutholt Lane toward Prickwillow Road, Kitty sucked caramel from her teeth and puzzled over the peculiar young man. Why her? Why would he single her out like that? Most likely it was not a particular compliment for her. He probably bought sweets for young ladies every day of the week.

  Pocked Louise also occupied herself with thoughts of the stranger. What an odd coincidence that the very same person who had come looking for the school the day before should appear in the apothecary shop. Was he following them? Should she tell the others? She bit her lip. She would need to confess to withholding his appearance yesterday. No need, she decided. But she didn’t trust him. He had just the sort of good looks a dangerous scoundrel would have. Maybe even a poisoner. They’d met him in a chemist’s shop, after all … Louise wrote “strange young man” in her list of suspects in the notebook she’d begun to carry.

  The girls were nearly to the junction of Nutholt Lane and Prickwillow Road when their attention was captured by a loud, insistent tapping. They looked about and saw the stooped figure of Admiral Lockwood, with his shoulders draped in a shawl, rapping at his windowpane and gesturing urgently at them.

  “What on earth?” Dour Elinor asked. “Does he think we’re trespassing?”

  They waited uncertainly on the street outside Admiral Lockwood’s tall, dark Gothic house. The other windows were shuttered and still. The man himself had withdrawn from his window, and the girls began to feel rather silly standing there for no purpose.

  Finally the front door creaked open, and an ancient servant in a dignified black suit that hung off his gaunt bones stood in the doorway.

  “Young ladies,” he croaked, “Admiral Lockwood requests you do him the honor of stopping into his parlor for a moment for some lemonade.”

  The girls looked at one another.

  “Hadn’t we ought to decline?” whispered Dear Roberta. “Young ladies venturing unchaperoned into a man’s house?” She shuddered. “And such a frightful looking house!”

  “Rubbish,” Disgraceful Mary Jane whispered. “He’s as old as Methuselah. He can’t harm us. Rich as Croesus, too. I’ll drink his lemonade. Let’s go.”

  “Besides,” Pocked Louise said, “we may learn something. Admiral Lockwood is on my Possible Suspects list.”

  Dear Roberta squeaked. “Isn’t that all the more reason not to go?” she cried. “What if he poisons our lemonade?”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane snorted. “And what, exactly, would he do with seven girl corpses? There’s safety in numbers, girls. Let’s go.”

  Mary Jane led the way up the steps and into the dark bowels of the house. The others followed, clutching their grocery baskets as though they might offer some protection.

  The house was cool and dark, paneled everywhere with black walnut. The servant bid them leave their baskets in the entryway, then showed them into a study where Admiral Lockwood stood with one gnarled hand gripping the head of a carved cane. The study was filled to bursting with grotesque statues from foreign lands, including, Elinor noted, several made from ebony. They saw curios and coins under dusty domes of glass. Ships in bottles lined the mantelpiece, and a massive anchor hung on the wall. A globe by Admiral Lockwood’s side, and sextants, maps, and compasses scattered about on tables gave the impression that the admiral was planning an imminent voyage. A lifeboat with oars even hung from the high-beamed ceiling, right over the chair where Dull Martha sat, which made her very anxious. Pocked Louise took in the navigational volumes and the scientific instruments with great interest, yet for all this nautical atmosphere, the room had the dolorous grimness of a mausoleum.

  “What a lovely room,” Dour Elinor said. She, at least, felt right at home.

  Disgraceful Mary Jane curtseyed for the admiral, and the others followed.

  “Won’t you sit down?” the admiral said. “Young ladies enjoy sweets, don’t they?” He reached for a silver box on a table with a hand tremulous with age. “These are chocolate candies from Switzerland. Mr. Nestlé’s company makes them.” He held out the box toward Stout Alice.

  Alice hesitated, then dismissed her worries. She took a chocolate and bit into it. It was soft and waxy-smooth. Then it melted on her tongue. Sweet ambrosia! Bonbons of the gods!

  “I’ve had chocolate candies before,” Disgraceful Mary Jane said. “At my cousin’s coming-out party. They’re divine.” She helped herself to a piece. “Mmm. Thank you, Admiral.”

  He nodded, obviously pleased. “Take more. My lads at the shipping office keep me supplied with all the chocolate I could wish.” He leaned forward and whispered, conspiratorially, “Your headmistress is exceptionally f
ond of chocolate.”

  Dear Roberta felt her face blush hot. So it was true! The old admiral was linked somehow to Mrs. Plackett. She shivered. She would never understand old people.

  Smooth Kitty polished off her chocolate square. “It’s delicious! Absolutely marvelous!”

  The admiral turned to face her. “Right you are, young lady. Tell me, what is your name?”

  “Katherine Heaton,” Kitty replied.

  “Well, Miss Katherine,” he said, “the world is full of delicious foods and fruits and wines; flowers and perfumes and incense; spices and ointments and medicines; jewels and ores and wonders, as would boggle the mind. I’ve seen it all. Sunsets over the Caribbean, moonrise in the Congo, the Northern Lights in the Arctic Sea. I’ve seen tribes shoot tiny poison darts no bigger than a dragonfly and deadly enough to kill an elephant.”

  Pocked Louise jolted upright at the word poison. Kitty reacted more to elephant.

  “I’ve seen the rice fields of China, ankle deep in water, and prettier than springtime. I’ve seen silk factories, temples, and treasure palaces studded with rubies and sapphires. Greater riches than England’s banks can hold. But don’t think I haven’t brought some back with me!”

  Alice decided she liked Admiral Lockwood very much. Her own grandmamma was a widow. If she could have chosen a grandfather, she would choose this one.

  The admiral thumped his cane. “And why should a man not be permitted to share his treasures with a companion, a woman of mature sense, who likes to hear his tales, someone to pass the long hours with, and eat his chocolate, I’d like to know?”

  “May I eat some more chocolate?” Dull Martha asked.

  The admiral looked extremely pleased. “Help yourself.”

  He sat and gazed at each of the girls in turn, leaving them feeling somewhat self-conscious, but not altogether awkward. The servant appeared in the doorway, staggering a bit under the weight of a tray bearing eight tall glasses of lemonade. Chunks of ice bobbed in each glass. Ice in May! Admiral Lockwood was rich indeed.

  “Come in, Jeffers,” the admiral called, and the servant tottered in and served them. The lemonade seemed tart after the chocolate, but it was so wonderfully cold, none of the girls cared. He returned soon after with biscuits and crackers with cheese. The admiral, whose girth suggested he availed himself often of these midmorning repasts, urged the girls to eat their fill, and beamed at them as they did so.