The Truth About Verity Sparks (22 page)

My hand crept to my neck. “The lucky piece.”

“Give it to me,” he ordered, holding out his hand.

I didn’t even think of refusing.

“Ah,” he said slowly, tracing the design with his forefinger. “I know that medallion well. It got me into a lot of trouble once. Isabella was silly and superstitious. She thought that if she wore this on the opening night, the opera would be a success. So I took it. I took it, and she was beside herself. How I laughed. But I wasn’t careful enough; I kept it. I hid it in my room and the old crow found it. I should have thrown it down a drain so it was lost forever.” He tossed it back to me. “Keep it. I’ve had my luck out of it. Thanks to Maxine and her sharp eyes, it led me to you.” He lowered his voice and, deep and smooth as black velvet, said slowly, “Miss Sparks, I presume?”

I began to tremble. That nightmare voice in the dark. Foreign, but not quite. A gentleman’s voice, and yet …

“It was you, not Dr Beale, who chased me that night after the seance.”

“Yes, Verity, it was. I wanted to talk to you.” He chuckled, and the sound of it nearly froze the marrow in my bones. He hadn’t wanted to talk to me. He’d wanted to kill me. And now he was going to finish the job.

“Alexander, no.” I tried to get out of the chair again but he hit me, hard, across the face.

“You need to understand,” he said. “This is something I must do. Don’t make it difficult.”

“Please …”

My chair was directly in front of Cleopatra’s case, and I hadn’t put the lid back on. I sensed rather than heard the movement of air and the slide of scales on scales. Unseen, behind me, Cleopatra was beginning to uncoil from her eggs and rise up out of the case. I felt her against my back. Her head was on my shoulder.

SP had warned me never to let Cleopatra get around my neck. Not that I would, of course, since she was a ruddy great python, not a fur stole. “She wouldn’t mean to,” he’d told me. “She doesn’t think you’re food – far too big – but she could squeeze too hard.” Remembering that, I ducked my head to one side, and stood up out of her way.

I know I did a faint the first time I met Cleopatra, but that was nothing compared to Alexander’s reaction. He jumped up. He clutched at his chest and made a noise like he was choking, forming words but not able to speak. He took a couple of steps backwards and stumbled on something.

I swear that when I came through the conservatory Antony was safely in his case. But there he was, all six feet of him, sliding across the floor of the studio behind Alexander. Alexander looked down at what he had tripped on and screamed. Then he ran. He ran back through the dark conservatory, knocking over the cane furniture and pots, crashing into the raised beds, crunching through the ferns. Then I heard another noise. It was glass being shattered and smashed to smithereens. Then a long, hoarse cry.

I remember stumbling through the conservatory. I saw the broken glass too late, and cut my feet, but at the time I scarcely felt pain. There was enough of a moon to see Alexander lying on the tiled floor. He was still alive then, clutching his hand to his chest and gasping for breath. I cradled him in my arms. What else could I do? He said only one thing before he died.

“Veroschka.”

I don’t remember anything else after that.

Judith told me what happened.

Kathleen died at dawn. The housekeeper made them a pot of tea and poured some brandy, and then Mr Savinov offered to escort Judith back home. She was near to dropping, for she’d had a hard few days and a long, long night.

It was a crisp morning. The dead leaves, powdered with frost, crackled under their feet, and early birds scattered and flew away as they passed. Judith drew deep, shuddering breaths as she walked, and Mr Savinov held her by the arm, repeating half to himself, half to her. “It will pass. It will pass.”

They were puzzled when they got to Mulberry Hill, for they found none of the servants were up. No fires had been lit. The gas jets were still burning in the hall.

“What’s this?” said Judith. It looked like red ink, or sealing wax. There were spots of it on the hall carpet, and on the stairs. And then more than spots, and smears of the stuff, long dribbles, and footprints. Mr Savinov kneeled and touched his fingertip into the red. He sniffed it.

“This is blood,” he said. Then, “Blood!” he shouted, and bounded up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time, calling my name.

I didn’t hear him, of course. They found me in my room, curled up in front of a dead fire, with blood on my feet where they had been cut by broken glass. They thought I was dead too.

It wasn’t till a fortnight later that I was able to sit up in bed for the first time. Judith plumped up my pillows and settled a shawl around my shoulders and SP put a pile of illustrated magazines beside me on the night table. The Professor brought in a bunch of hothouse roses and even Mrs Morcom (who said she couldn’t abide a sick room) peeped around the doorframe to say hello.

“Dr Raverat says that what with the shock, and being chilled to the bone, you’re lucky to have escaped with high fever and delirium,” said SP.

“And no permanent damage to the respiratory system, the heart or the brain,” the Professor added cheerily.

“And if you can’t remember anything for a time, Dr Raverat said not to worry. It’s nature’s way of healing, he said, with forgetfulness and rest.” Judith stroked my hand.

“I do remember up until Alexander …” I began, and stopped.

SP hesitated. “You may as well know now. It seems that Antony and Cleopatra frightened him so much that he ran through the conservatory and straight into the glass door. Pierre confirmed that Alexander was terrified of snakes. Apparently, he had a weak heart, and … well, he died of fright. There wasn’t a scratch on him.”

“What happened afterwards?” I asked.

Rather a lot, it seemed. For one thing, Mrs Morcom came home, accompanied by SP and the Professor. The only accident she’d had was meeting up with an old school friend she’d always disliked. The telegram from Penrose’s Hotel? There was no such place. The telegram was a trick of Alexander’s, to get the family away from the house.

Inspector Grade turned up with the butterflies we’d left at the police station, and the news that while Dr Beale had indeed written the poison-pen letters and stalked me, he’d been at a Phrenology Colloquium at Oxford University on the night of the seance. So that was Alexander too. But of course I already knew.

Doctor Raverat and the Inspector then worked out that the selection of treats – Dutch cocoa, sugared almonds and chocolate biscuits – which had been delivered to the Mulberry Hill servants, with a note of thanks from the Professor, were also a trick of Alexander’s. They were laced with Doctor Dearborn’s Relaxation Remedy – laudanum, in other words. Luckily for them, the dose was designed to make them sleep. Not so Miss Minnie. Alexander had intended the drugged macaroons to kill her, so she couldn’t give us the names of anyone who knew of the friendship between Mrs Vic and my mother.

“So the mystery is quite cleared up,” I said to the Plushes.

“As much as it will ever be,” said the Professor. “And Verity, my dear, there is someone waiting downstairs who would dearly love to see you. It is Pierre Savinov. May he come up?”

I nodded.

“We will leave you two together, then.”

Mr Savinov came into my room slowly, like an old man, and sat heavily on the chair by the bed. He took my hand.

“Thank God,” was all he could say for a long time. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he ignored them. “Thank God.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry about Alexander.”

“He is better off where he is. He can be at peace,” said Mr Savinov. And then he told me the last of the tale.

“Alexander – Lyosha, I called him – was always different,” he said. “Perhaps it was because he never had a mother or a real home. Anna – my first wife, poor soul – also had a weak heart. She died when he was a baby. After that we led a wandering sort of life, just the two of us. I sometimes think he was happier when we were poor. He was always passionately attached to me. I knew he was not happy when Isabella and I married. But when you came, he spent hours hanging over your cradle and smiling, singing, making faces. Isabella and I were so relieved. He called you Veroschka – that means ‘little Vera’. I was in Amsterdam on business at the time of the fire. He was so distressed that he could not save Isabella and the baby.”

Oh. So Mr Savinov did not know that Alexander had started the fire.

“You remember Madame Dumas? You met her at the seance. Maxine is her name. She told me the truth the day after Alexander’s death. I thought Maxine was my friend, but it seems Alexander had hired her to … to keep an eye on me.” He sighed. Poor Mr Savinov. “By profession, Maxine is, like our Professor Plush, an investigator. But without the integrity of that fine gentleman, alas.

“This is the story that Alexander told Maxine. I don’t know if it is true or not, and now I will never know. It was well known that Victoire had the second sight. She must have had some kind of premonition, for on the night of the fire she took you to be looked after by a friend, without telling Alexander. After the fire, she told him you were saved, but then … her accident.

“Alexander was ill when I returned from abroad. Brain fever, they called it. I thought I would lose him too. It was a terrible time. He lost his memory for a while, and when at last he regained it, he did not want to distress me by raising false hopes about the baby being alive.” He shrugged his shoulders. “At least that is what he told Maxine. For years he had been searching for you. You see, he needed to find you because you were the rightful heiress to Isabella’s money.”

This was news to me. “Money?”

He sighed. “The Parker Pork fortune. Isabella’s family were in the meat-packing business in Canada. I was doing well enough when we married, but when Isabella died, her inheritance came to me and I became very, very rich. Everything I owned – my money, Isabella’s money – would have been Alexander’s when I died. Oh, Alexander … He knew that somewhere in the world Vera Savinov was alive and the Parker Pork millions were hers, all right and tight, as you British would say. It seems that the thought of it ate away at him. Greed? That old jealousy of his? I cannot tell. It seems I did not know my son.”

Should I tell him the truth? Now was the time to do it. But somehow I couldn’t. Mr Savinov already knew his son was wicked. Surely, he did not need to know everything.

The moment passed, and he began talking about his wife, Isabella. My mother.

“Beautiful, talented, temperamental …” He was lost in thought for a few seconds. “She could have lived a life of a lady of fashion. But she had a voice, such a voice. Her talent could not be denied. She went to Paris and later Milan – that was where she had her first success, in
La Gioconda
. By then she’d changed her name to Isabella Savage – a better name for a diva than Penny Parker, no? Always her old nurse, the faithful Victoire, went with her. Her brother insisted.”

“Brother? Surely she had sisters? Six sisters? Wasn’t she the seventh daughter?”

“No. There was one brother, Hiram. What makes you think she had sisters?”

“This,” I said. I slipped the silk cord from around my neck and handed him the lucky piece and the ring.

“My mother’s wedding ring! Isabella and I always meant you to have it when you yourself …” He stared at it. Where was it taking him, I wondered? To happy times, to love and weddings, a little baby girl … “And the
amulette
! The lucky stars.”

I could hold back no longer. “Don’t you know that it’s the sign of the seventh – of the
septième étoile
– the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter? I have the gift, you see. Miss Lillingsworth is sure I must be one.”

“It was Victoire’s,” he said in a puzzled voice.

“Victoire’s?” All my castles in the air vanished into nothing. No aunts, no sisters, no cousins. No explanation for my itchy fingers.

“Yes,” he said. “It was a ritual with Isabella and Victoire, that she should always wear it hidden beneath her costume on the first night of a new opera.”