The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place Read online

  “How on earth is it so wretchedly difficult to bury something!” Mary Jane fumed. “We’d have an easier time of it wrestling living persons into a grave.”

  “Hush,” Smooth Kitty whispered. “Footsteps! And talking. Someone’s come to the house.”

  “All we can do is trust Alice, and hurry,” Mary Jane whispered. “That’s the way, Roberta Dear! Wedge this rock on top of Mr. Godding, won’t you, and then we can pour on the manure.”

  “They look like pupae,” Dour Elinor noted. “I’m sure that’s what Louise would say if she were here. Let’s hope they don’t hatch into gigantic insects.”

  “Really, Elinor!” Mary Jane rolled her eyes. “The things you say!”

  They finished wedging the bodies into a position that seemed likely to stay below ground at last, then they dumped an avalanche of manure over the shrouded bodies. Dear Roberta gagged into her handkerchief, but Dull Martha didn’t seem to mind. “It smells wholesome,” she said. “Like ponies.”

  “Rest in peace, Headmistress,” Dear Roberta said, bowing her head for a moment.

  “Very touching, and befitting the occasion.” Disgraceful Mary Jane patted Dear Roberta on the back. “And rest in peace, Her Ugly Rude Brother.”

  “Oh, oh, oh.” Dear Roberta began to moan. Her breathing accelerated anxiously.

  “What’s the matter?” Smooth Kitty cried. She recognized a faint was afoot.

  Mary Jane rolled her eyes. “Not again. And not now, for the love of Mike!”

  “It occurs to me,” Dear Roberta said between panting breaths, “that it’s not a very Christian thing we’re doing, burying them in this way.”

  No one spoke. Glances shifted from side to side until all eyes rested expectantly upon Kitty. This, she felt, was a test of her leadership.

  “That’s true, Roberta,” she said. “It isn’t.”

  “Ohhhhh,” wailed that conscience-stricken young lady. “I knew it!”

  “But,” Kitty went on firmly, “their heavenly reward is in no way linked to their burial. Think of all the poor sailors who die at sea.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane nodded encouragingly. Keep going, Kit.

  “Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding have … burst the confines of this mortal prison,” Kitty continued, extracting some use from one of Reverend Rumsey’s tedious sermons. “And we are brought to this unhappy pass through no fault of our own. We didn’t kill them.” Kitty glanced around the group to see what private thoughts, if any, this statement revealed. “So we shall pray for them, and from this point on, we shall reform ourselves and turn over a new leaf. I feel confident that fate will never present to us such a morbid dilemma again. No more bodies shall we ever bury in this garden.”

  “I should hope not,” muttered Disgraceful Mary Jane.

  Kitty coughed disapprovingly.

  “All right, Roberta?”

  Dear Roberta’s mournful expression softened slightly. She took a deep, sniffling breath, and finally nodded.

  Feeling the worst of the danger was behind them, Kitty, who had stayed well away from the manure, left the other girls to smooth over the mound, and risked peeping around the corner of the house. She ran back to the girls. “That young law clerk—what’s his name, Murphy?—he was just here, talking to Alice,” she whispered. “And Amanda Barnes is coming up the road.”

  “Eugh, do you mean that wet salamander of a clerk?” Disgraceful Mary Jane shuddered visibly. “Poor Alice. She has suffered much for us all.”

  “Why can’t people leave us alone?” Dour Elinor muttered. “Suddenly we’re a tourist attraction.”

  “Let’s pray Louise returns swiftly with a tree for us to plant,” Kitty said. “Everyone hurry in and clean up. You smell like stables, I’m sure. I’ll go help Alice deal with Amanda Barnes.”

  “Good luck,” Disgraceful Mary Jane said. “I have a feeling she’ll be harder to dispose of than Mr. Godding.”

  * * *

  “Morning, Miss Alice.” Amanda Barnes’s voice drifted across the driveway to where Stout Alice stood, still quivering inwardly at the recollection of Leland Murphy’s words. The clerk had fled the moment Alice headed toward the house, so she deemed it safe to turn about and greet the daily woman. She slipped her handful of legal papers behind her back.

  “Oh. Good morning, Barnes,” she said. “I trust you are well this morning?”

  “Well enough, thank you,” Barnes replied. “Bit of a headache, but at my age sleep isn’t what it once was.” Though shot with a few streaks of gray, the bulk of her thick hair was still butter-blond. Alice had wondered more than once why a woman so pleasant looking, who had always been in service with respectable families and cooked as well as any housekeeper in Ely, had never married.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Stout Alice replied mechanically, then saw an opening. “Would you have any wish to return home and rest?”

  “Oh, no, no, no matter in the slightest. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “I’m sure Mrs. Plackett wouldn’t mind,” pressed Alice.

  “Then you’re far more sure than I am.” Barnes cocked her head to one side. “Was that the young law clerk I just saw hurrying away from here?” She waited for Alice to reply, then rightly took Alice’s awkward silence for a yes. “I wonder what could have rousted him out of bed so early. Lawyers drink the night away and sleep in late, or so my sister tells me. She’s in service to a chamber of barristers in London. How they smoke!” A new thought seemed to strike her. “Or did the young clerk come to see you?” She winked. “It’s awfully early in the morning for him to have come a-courting.”

  “Courting!” Alice wondered if her voice was too shrill, or her cheeks too red. “What a thing to say, Barnes.”

  The daily woman eyed the door to the house. “Never mind me, Miss Alice,” she said. “I’m all chatter. Not a word I say is worth worrying about. I’m sure the young gentleman had some perfectly ordinary papers for Mrs. Plackett.”

  Alice felt the papers clutched in her hidden hand. It seemed silly to her now to have hidden them—that’s the kind of folly a guilty conscience leads one to, she thought—but having done so she balked at displaying the papers now. “No, no papers.”

  Barnes waggled her eyebrows. “Then I stand by my other theory that it’s you the young gentleman found a reason to visit. Oh, come now, Miss Alice! I’m only teasing. If you’ll excuse me, it’s time I tend to the kitchen and set its affairs to rights.”

  Alice’s mind jolted back to her original mission—to keep Amanda Barnes away from the house for as long as possible. If she’d had any plans for how to accomplish this great feat, her conversation with Leland Murphy had wiped them clean from her head.

  She clutched the housekeeper’s arm. “The kitchen will keep,” Alice said breathlessly. “Miss Barnes. Do tell me. How is your mother?”

  The expression on Barnes’s face could not have been more startled if Stout Alice’s head had chosen that moment to fly off her shoulders. “My mother, Miss Alice?”

  Alice gulped and wished her mouth weren’t so painfully dry. “Yes. Your mother.”

  “Well,” Barnes began, still eyeing Alice strangely. The truth was, the students at Saint Etheldreda’s School never inquired after Barnes’s mother. Whether the school’s domestic even had a mother was not a subject of general conversational interest. “Well, Miss Alice, my mother is well enough. Much the same as ever.”

  Stout Alice would not be put off so easily. Each moment she prolonged this conversation helped the girls finish their digging. Having remembered the mother, Alice now clung to her like a life-saver in choppy waters. “Didn’t you tell Mrs. Plackett, just a few days ago, that you were worried about an ill turn in your mother’s health?”

  Barnes blinked. “Did I?”

  “Yes,” Alice cried, warming to her theme. “Yes, I remember. Mrs. Plackett said, ‘What’s the matter with you, Barnes? You’re moping around here like the walking dead. You burned the toast, and you haven’t put your bac
k into your chores all day long.’ And you said, ‘Pardon me, Mrs. Plackett. I do apologize, and I’ll set it to rights. It’s just that my poor mother has caught a touch of the rheumatism, and she won’t eat like she should. It pains her to get about the house, and I worry about her so.’”

  Barnes peered at Stout Alice through narrowed eyes. “That’s quite a memory you’ve got, Miss Alice.”

  Alice blushed. “Well, naturally, I was concerned for her.”

  “And a knack for voices, too. You sounded just like Mistress there for a moment. Well, I expect I was worried that day, but Mother’s getting well on in years, and her rheumatism—it’s been coming on for a while now. Mrs. Plackett, well, we both know that now and then she can be, shall we say…”

  “Say no more, Barnes,” Alice said loftily. “I understand you, but let us not speak of her in words we might later regret.”

  Barnes looked at Alice strangely, then shrugged. “I suppose. Given her moods, though, I’d best not keep her waiting. If you’ll excuse me…”

  Alice, who, for both girth and courage, was called Stout with good reason, could see she faced a formidable opponent in Barnes. Though she had run out of weapons, she had not run out of will to fight. “Come with me to the henhouse, Barnes,” she said desperately. “Let’s see if the latest chicks have hatched.”

  Barnes’s mouth hung open. She stared at Alice, completely incredulous. “Chicks, Miss?”

  Indeed! Chicks? Alice gulped and plowed onward—a habit that was becoming painfully familiar.

  “Yes, chicks! Don’t you love chicks? Most already have hatched, but there was a biddy sitting on a nest two days ago. I always say there’s nothing in all this world so divine as a sweet, downy, fluffy, tiny, adorable, precious little chick. Like little puffs of … butter. Sunshine. Butter-colored sunshine. Don’t you think so, Barnes?”

  Imbecile! Alice thought. You’re gibbering. Barnes will see through this charade. No one takes their domestic to see new baby chicks.

  “Chicks are nice enough, Miss Alice, but work won’t wait, will it?” Barnes’s tone was that of an adult speaking to a child or a person lacking some of their wits. “My workday doesn’t end till all the chores are done, and I do need to get home to Mother, so if you’d just let me go in and get started, so I can get back home before midnight, after taking care of you all, I’d be obliged to you.”

  To Stout Alice’s immense relief, Smooth Kitty emerged from around the corner of the house, heading purposefully in their direction.

  “Good morning, Barnes!” Smooth Kitty hailed the daily woman with unusual enthusiasm, and parked her body where it obstructed Barnes’s access to the door. “How was your Sunday?”

  “Good morning, Miss Katherine. It was a Sunday much like any other. And yours? You had your weekly dinner party with Mrs. Plackett’s brother?”

  “Yes, dinner, yes, and then a birthday party for Mr. Godding later on,” Kitty replied. “It was quite an exciting evening for us all.”

  “Was it Mr. Godding’s birthday, then? I wonder why Mrs. Plackett never asked me to bake a cake?” Barnes looked genuinely put out, as though this lack of cake requests was a personal slight upon her baking skill. “And it was a surprise party, you said? That must have been a surprise indeed for Mr. Godding. I’m not sure I’d be glad of a surprise party. I heard once of a man who died of shock when all the guests jumped out and surprised him. He was probably elderly, but all the same. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’d best get on with my work. A party means dishes, and I wouldn’t want Mrs. Plackett to accuse me of shirking, out here visiting with you young ladies. And you’ll need to get on with your lessons before long, won’t you?”

  Stout Alice began to feel a headache boring against her temples.

  Smooth Kitty pressed her arms against the doorjambs, forming a friendly barricade.

  “Lessons have been canceled for today,” she said. “Mrs. Plackett has taken to her bed. She’s unwell.”

  The change in Barnes’s expression was immediate. “Heart trouble? Bad milk? Something she ate? Fainting spells? Bunions?”

  “A tragedy in the family,” Kitty replied. Stout Alice marveled at her convincing performance. There might turn out to be two Lady Macbeths at Saint Etheldreda’s. “Poor young Julius has … pneu—”

  “Malaria,” Stout Alice supplied.

  “Malaria.” Smooth Kitty skipped no beats. “Mr. Godding has departed for London to sail out on the earliest ship bound for the Indies. Mrs. Plackett is prostrated. Utterly prostrated by concern for her brother and her…”

  “Nephew.” These details of pedigree were fresher in Stout Alice’s mind after the morning’s pillow-top tête-à-tête with Miss Fringle.

  “Nephew. Naturally Mrs. Plackett is in no position to teach lessons, nor will she wish to be disturbed by housework noises, so she has asked us to pay your day’s wages but to excuse you from your duties.” Here Kitty pulled money from her pocket and counted out a shilling and thruppence. All eyes watched her count, for even in anxious moments, metallic money has its hypnotic appeal. Alice thought she saw Kitty frown at the money left in her palm, then close her hand quickly. She held out Barnes’s wages, but the daily woman ignored them.

  “My land!” Barnes declared. “What a turn of events! A nephew ailing in the colonies. No wonder Mrs. Plackett’s in shock. And Mr. Godding, gone off like that so quickly, without even time to pack.” Deep furrows of concern creased the daily woman’s forehead. “I just can’t picture him gallivanting off so suddenly. He scarcely seems the type.”

  “I see what you mean,” Kitty said sagely. “It was a stirring moment, after Mr. Godding read the telegram. ‘Constance,’ he said, ‘I must be off at once, and brook no delay. I will be at young Julius’s side as soon as I can. He is the last to carry the Godding name into futurity, and I must go render any assistance that I may.’”

  Stout Alice began to fear Kitty was taking her performance a bit too far. Still, Barnes seemed to hang upon her every word.

  “The last to carry the Godding name. He said that, did he?” Miss Barnes reached into her pockets for a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “That was noble of him, then, wasn’t it? Of course, if Mr. Godding were ever to marry, young Julius needn’t be the last, but that’s none of my affair.”

  “Mrs. Plackett worried about her brother’s safety,” Kitty went on, “but Mr. Godding declared that he’d give no sway to cowardice or womanly fears. He would not shirk his family duty to his dead brother’s only living son.”

  Amanda Barnes blew her nose with great emotion. “Well, that’s very good of him,” she said, “even if it is uncommon sudden.” She tucked her handkerchief back into her pocket, and pushed the proffered money back toward Smooth Kitty. “I won’t take money from Mrs. Plackett like this without working to earn it,” she said. “You know how she is with her economies. If she paid me now for no labor, I’ll wager she’d regret it later. I’ll just tiptoe inside and make up some soup, and some tea, for Mrs. Plackett. She’ll want nourishment eventually, and I can tidy up as quiet as a ghost.”

  Barnes started toward Smooth Kitty as if determined to march straight through her. Kitty blocked her move with a forward thrust of the money.

  “Dear Barnes! You are too, too good, and far too generous of heart. But I must insist, I really must. Mrs. Plackett herself was quite vehement. She says you deserve a bit of a holiday.”

  “She said that?”

  Kitty gulped. Considering Mrs. Plackett’s usual demeanor toward her hired help, perhaps she was stretching belief too far.

  “We girls can tend to all that’s needful today. We shall keep a quiet vigil in the parlor, studying our lesson books and remembering our headmistress, her brother, and her … nephew in our prayers.”

  Smooth Kitty bowed her head in a touching display of pious concern. Stout Alice followed suit, counting heartbeats and waiting for Barnes to leave, for the love of heaven. But still the daily woman hesitated. Never had a tenacious work ethic prov
ed so irritating.

  Finally Barnes curtseyed in acquiescence. “Well enough, Miss Katherine,” she said. “If Mrs. Plackett insists, I’ll take my holiday. But first let me just nip inside for a pan of mine I left here last week. I need it for a recipe for my poor mother.”

  “Tell me what it looks like, and I’ll get it for you,” Alice exclaimed, too eagerly.

  Barnes cocked her head to one side. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you girls were trying to keep me out of the house,” she said. “Remember, I was a girl once myself. You’re not up to any mischief while your headmistress is unwell, are you?”

  “None in the slightest!” Stout Alice exclaimed.

  “Really, Barnes.” Smooth Kitty looked quietly affronted. “At a time like this, what an insinuation.”

  Amanda Barnes bowed her head. “I apologize. There I go again, not thinking before I speak. Oh! And here’s another thing I didn’t think of.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a large, thick, folded hank of cloth. “Mrs. Rumsey asked me to bring this to you. It’s three yards of linen for your strawberry social tablecloth.”

  Smooth Kitty reached for the fabric. It felt silky beneath her hands. “Thank you, Miss Barnes. We’ll have to make hasty work of it, but we shall do our best. Good morning to you.”

  Amanda turned to leave, then halted. “Is there hope the young nephew will recover?”

  “Precious little,” Kitty replied. “He’s said to be a weakly child. His constitution is feeble.” She sniffed tragically. “We fear the worst. Poor Mrs. Plackett.”

  There was an awful pause. They waited. Barnes’s shoes were rooted to the gravel of Saint Etheldreda’s driveway. Stout Alice could see no end to this terrible impasse. She began to understand why her grandmother complained so often about dealing with hired help.

  “Yoo-hoooo!”

  A voice came bellowing from down the road, approaching Saint Etheldreda’s at a rapid clip.

  “Yoo-hoooo, I say! Alice! Kitty! Look what I’ve found!”

  The shock of surprise zipping up Kitty’s spine was positively electric. It was little Pocked Louise, dragging—or being dragged by—something on a string, waving what looked like a stick in the air, and galloping like a schoolboy.