The Truth About Verity Sparks (12 page)

A handkerchief was pressed into my hand. I blew into it, and straightened my shoulders.

“Verity, why didn’t you tell me this?” asked the Professor.

“You never asked.”

The Professor winced ever so slightly. But it was true. All he’d been interested in was his blessed experiments, not me.

“I’m sorry, Verity.” He stared at his polished boots for a few seconds before he met my eye. “Harriet would be ashamed of me. She would have asked you about your family. She would have been kinder to you than I have been.”

Harriet was the Professor’s wife, who’d passed on three years ago. Judith had told me a bit about her. She sounded like she’d been very clever and very kind. The Professor blew his nose very loudly, and handed the lucky piece back to me.

“Did your mother tell you anything about this medallion, Verity?”

“No, she gave it me just before she died. I’ve kept it all this time.” I held up the battered little piece. “I haven’t got much to remember them by, you see.”

“So,” said Miss Lillingsworth. “Is it possible, Saddy, that you could find the identity of Verity’s real mother?”

“Ma
was
my real mother,” I said.

She gave me a sad smile. “Quite so, my dear.”

“Why can’t
you
help us to find Verity’s birth mother, Maria?” the Professor burst in. “Surely the token would be enough to accomplish some kind of a reading?”

“I have held it already,” she said. “I was receptive, and I received nothing clear. I sensed a long history, and many hands, and great sorrow. That is all.”

“What about you, Verity? Have you tried?”

I put the lucky piece on my palm and closed my hand and shut my eyes and waited. Nothing. Nothing at all.

“It is clearly a case for the Confidential Agents,” said Miss Lillingsworth. “Or for …” She turned to the Professor and whispered something in his ear. He turned to me with a serious expression on his face.

“That is for Verity to say,” he said.

“But of course, Saddy.”

“Verity, Maria would like you to go to a gathering with her.”

“What sort of gathering, if you please, ma’am?”

“A seance.”

Another word I didn’t know. I looked from her to the Professor.

“A seance is a meeting of people who are seeking to communicate with the departed,” he said. “Spiritualists believe that–”

SP broke in. “Please, Father. You promised.”

I looked from one to the other. What were they talking about?

SP turned to me. “A seance is a meeting with the dead.”

I said yes. But that night when I was lying sleepless in my bed I began to wish I hadn’t. This was getting in too deep. How many times had I longed for a word, just one loving word, from Ma since she’d passed? But when it came down to it, did I really want to speak to her? As far as I understood it, when you died you went up to heaven. And stayed there, “peacefully resting”, as it said on Ma’s gravestone. But Miss Lillingsworth seemed to think that dead people were all around us in some kind of spirit world. Just floating around. It didn’t seem right nor natural.

The seance was in a week’s time. I would have moped and fretted until then, and worn out the lucky piece with putting it on and off and staring at it as if it could talk. But that morning, the letters began.

The first one came from “a friend”.

Verity Sparks
,

Who do you think you are? Get back to the gutter where you belong or something bad will happen. That’s a promise
.

A friend

No address. It hadn’t been posted, either – no stamp – so someone must have come up to the house and put it in the letterbox. But who? Miss Charlotte came to mind. She was the only person I could think of who’d bear me a grudge, and since I didn’t care two hoots about her, I just screwed it up and put it in the rubbish where it belonged.

The next one came not to the Plush household, but to the Professor’s cousin, Mrs Honoria Dalrymple. We only knew what was in it because that afternoon at teatime there was the sound of a carriage coming down the drive.

“Who could that be?” asked the Professor, looking up from the anchovy toast. “Have you invited anyone to tea, my dears?”

Before any of us could answer there was a tremendous banging at the door, and instead of waiting to be let in, a tall red-haired woman rushed into the room, huffing and puffing like an engine.

“Sit down, dear Honoria,” said the Professor, pulling up a chair for her. “You look close to an apoplexy.”

“Explain this!” she cried, thrusting a letter at him. “It was hand-delivered this very morning, and I came as soon as I could.” She turned and stared at me with a most unfriendly expression on her face. “And this, I suppose, is the young person, Verity Sparks?” She said my name like a horse had done its business right under her nose. All I could do was stand and curtsey, while she stood there breathing heavily, one hand clutched to her huge bosom. “Read it, Saddington.”

Shaking his head, he began.

“Dear Mrs Dalrymple
,

I am writing to you as one who holds family honour dear, and does not like to see RESPECTABLE people imposed upon by GUTTERSNIPES who are only out to feather their own nests and ensnare innocent and well-meaning people into entanglements which may prove DETRIMENTAL to their reputations
.

Did you know that your cousin’s daughter, Miss Judith Plush, has as a constant companion AND LIVING IN THE SAME HOUSE, a common young person, Verity Sparks, who was until a very short while ago, a COMMON MILLINER’S APPRENTICE? She has WORMED her way into the Plush household. Your own reputation may even suffer from this UNFORTUNATE connection, and I cannot urge you too strongly, Mrs Dalrymple, to ACT!

Yours, a wellwisher
.

“Good Lord, Honoria,” said the Professor. “Is this a joke?”

“A joke! I think not.”

“If not, it’s a lot of nonsense.” He screwed up the letter and threw it across the room into the fire. “Now that’s out of the way,” he said, “sit down and have some tea. Anchovy toast?”

Mrs Dalrymple glared at him, and then glared even harder at me. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Saddington. When you wake up murdered in your beds, don’t come crying to me.”

I could hardly believe my ears. Me, a murderer? Mrs Dalrymple may have been a relative, but she’d gone a step too far. I opened my mouth to say something, but the Professor put his hand over mine and squeezed it gently, shaking his head.

“It’s not worth it,” he whispered.

Mrs Dalrymple was only just hitting her stride. “It is dangerous to reverse the natural order by elevating inferior persons. It is irreligious as well. But what can I expect from a godless
scientist
?” More manure under her nose. “At least I know I have done my duty.”

“What duty is that?” It was Mrs Morcom, coming in late for tea as usual. She looked coolly at Mrs Dalrymple and held out a red and orange hand.

“How are you, Honoria?” she said. “How’s that girl of yours? Have the pimples cleared up yet?”

Mrs Dalrymple ignored her. “Be it on your own heads,” were her parting words, and she turned on her heel and stalked out.

Mrs Morcom didn’t seem to care a fig about Mrs Dalrymple or her letter, but when the Professor told her about the proposed seance she got very angry. She said they should not interfere with me, and that all of this spiritualist stuff was rubbish and wrong. They had a big argument, and the next day she packed her bags and went off on a sketching trip to Cornwall.

“That woman is impossible,” spluttered the Professor after she marched out to the carriage, nose in the air, without so much as a wave goodbye. “If she thinks anyone will miss her, she’s mistaken.”

“I will,” said Judith.

“And so will Amy,” I said. I felt sorry for Mrs Morcom’s dog, looking at me all lost and lonely with her big brown eyes, and so I began to take the poor thing for afternoon walks.

The Plushes’ house, Mulberry Hill, is what they call a villa. The back of the property runs down to a little stream. There’s a bridge that crosses over it, and from there you can walk along a lane that leads past the back gardens of the other villas. It was a pretty walk, and it got me out of the house, and so I got into the habit of taking Amy out most afternoons.

I was standing on the bridge, daydreaming a bit while Amy snuffled in the leaf litter, when I heard a voice call out my name.

“Miss Sparks!” It was Ben O’Brien, the gardener’s boy, the one who bred the rats. He came panting up to me. “This come for you, miss,” he said, holding out an envelope.

“Who gave it to you?”

“An ole woman.”

“Did she say who she was?” Ben shook his head. “What did she look like?”

Ben shrugged. “Skinny. She had a shawl on.”

A skinny old woman in a shawl. Ben would never make a confidential inquiry agent. I thanked him and he ran off. “Verity” was written on the front in big round letters. I opened it.

Dear Verity
,

I am in truble. I need to see you. Dont com to me at madams, and dont tell anyone. I will mete you on the canal walk near St Johns church at five oclock on Wensday. Dont let me down
.

your
,

Beth

Guiltily, I realised that I’d scarcely given Beth a thought lately. I’d been at Mulberry Hill over two months now, and though at first I’d missed her and Cook and Madame and the other girls something fierce, gradually I’d got so used to my new life that I’d almost forgotten about the old. What with the kindness of the Plush family and my book-learning and of course my job helping with confidential inquiries, my days were full and – I thought I’d never say it – happy. Poor Beth. What could be the matter? She wanted me to meet her tomorrow, and I wasn’t going to let her down.

I called Amy. Even on this sunny afternoon, with the red and gold leaves fluttering from the trees and birds singing, I didn’t feel like walking any more. I tucked the letter in my pocket and went back to the house.

Wednesday was another warm day, but by half-past four, when I set out to the canal walk, the air was cooling and I was glad of my shawl. With Amy lolloping along beside me, it should have been another lovely walk through the leafy streets and lanes of St John’s Wood. But I was worried. What was the matter with Beth? More importantly, how could I help her? If she needed money, I could give her three pounds. It was a lot of money, but would it be enough?

I knew I was right on time, for I heard the bells as I crossed the road at the church corner. Amy and I walked through a shrubby kind of lane to the canal. A couple of elderly ladies with small dogs passed by, then a clergyman with a worried look. Then no one for quite a few minutes, until a couple of boys flashed past, running and shouting, and a couple more dog walkers. Then it was quiet again. Minutes passed, and I waited. Then a quarter of an hour. Still I waited. No Beth. Had I got the time wrong? Or the day or the place? I took the letter out of my pocket and re-read it. I had come at five o’clock. This was the canal walk, right near the church. Where was she?

“Amy!” Her bark was so sudden and so loud that I dropped the letter.

“You silly dog, barking at nothing,” I told her sternly. “Sit.” She sat down, trembling and whining, and then the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Someone was watching me. I knew it. I could
feel
it, and so could Amy. She strained at her leash. The lane behind me was dark and shadowy now, and the canal walk was deserted. There was a rustling noise in the bushes, and Amy barked again.

“Who’s there?” I called.

Nothing.

“WHO’S THERE?” I was gooseflesh all over, but I wasn’t going to show I was frightened. How dare someone lurk there trying to scare me? “This dog bites,” I called. “So you’d better come out and state your business or push off!”

Nothing. Just that feeling of eyes on me. I was close to bolting when I heard someone coming along the canal walk, whistling. From inside the thicket of shrubs and small trees, I heard the crunch of footsteps on twigs and the rustling of leaves. Amy strained forward, barking like mad, and then a voice called from behind me.