Verity Sparks, Lost and Found (11 page)

“It’s the fifty pounds that was taken from my room,” said Miss Deane.

“Damn and blast,” whispered the Colonel.

“What is going on?” demanded the Reverend McGurk. “Are these some impromptu theatricals?”

“Most peculiar,” the Dromes were saying to each other. “Almost like a brawl.”

Mrs Enderby-Smarke stamped her foot. “What is the meaning of this? Miss Deane, I demand that you tell me at once.”

I jiggled the basket and two other items fell out onto the carpet

“Oh!” Connie cried, scooping up her locket and clutching it to her chest.

“So you stole it, Jessie,” said Laura. “You horrid sneak.”

“You snake in the grass,” added Annabelle.

Grace finished up. “You little beast.”

“It must have been someone else,” said Jessie, desperately. “I swear to you, Mrs Enderby-Smarke, it wasn’t me. Someone else put them there to get me into trouble.” She was clutching at straws, and I was sure Mrs Enderby-Smarke would see through her. “Who knew where to look? Verity did. It must have been Verity.”

Mrs Enderby-Smarke took a deep breath. “Explain yourself, Verity.”

My silver chain, which had been caught up inside the basket, slithered to the floor.

“Are you telling me I stole my own chain, Jessie? Connie’s locket, Laura’s bracelet and the Colonel’s money?”

Jessie burst into tears, but for once Mrs Enderby-Smarke paid no attention. “The Colonel’s money?” She turned first to her husband and then to Miss Deane. “I thought you said it was your money.”

“No,” said Miss Deane. “It’s not. And it’s not really the Colonel’s either.”

“Miss Deane.” The Colonel turned red and then white. “Watch what you say, my girl, or else–”

“Or else what?” said Miss Deane. “You’ll kill my pet cocky?”

“What is going on? Reginald, I demand you tell me.”

“I think we must bid you all good evening,” said the Reverend, huffily, taking his wife’s arm and heading for the door. “We seem to have descended into farce. This is not the school for our Amelia. It’s a madhouse.”

“Most peculiar, most odd, most unsuitable,” muttered the Dromes. They made an exit too.

Daniel and Judith sat back on their sofa, enjoying the show.

“Mrs Enderby-Smarke,” said Miss Deane, “the Colonel has been taking money from your drawer in order to fund his gambling habit, and I have been acting as his runner.”

“Miss Deane,” growled the Colonel, warningly.

“You can’t threaten me,” said Miss Deane. “I’ll tell her myself. I’ve been acting as his runner because if I didn’t, he was going to tell you my secret. And my secret is …” Miss Deane blushed, and her voice quivered just a little as she said, “The reference I gave you was a year out of date. I was dismissed from my last situation.”

“I knew it.” Mrs Enderby-Smarke clutched at her chest. “I knew there was something unsavoury about you.”

“My employer treated her servants abominably. She beat her maid. She locked the boot boy in a cupboard. I told her what I thought of her–”

“Just like Dorothea in
The Heart of a Heroine
,” gasped Laura.

“How brave,” sighed Annabelle.

“–and she said it was none of my business. She slapped my face. So I slapped her back.”

“How daring!”

“How impertinent, how unladylike!” cried Mrs Enderby-Smarke. “Miss Deane, make arrangements to leave at once. You are dismissed.”

“You can’t dismiss me. I quit.”

“Enough of this.” Miss Judith’s voice was calm yet forceful. “Mrs Enderby-Smarke, we are leaving. And we are taking Verity and Connie with us.” She stood up in a dignified manner, swishing the train of her silk evening dress behind her. “Daniel, girls – are you ready?”

“We will send a man for their trunks tomorrow,” said Daniel, putting on his hat. “I believe they are already packed.”

“You can’t … you won’t get away with this. Consolata, I order you to stop. Right now. This very minute!”

“No,” said Connie. She put her arm through Daniel’s. “Not if you paid me.”

“Hello, hello, hello.” An unexpected visitor entered the room. Goodness knows how he got off his chain and into the house, but Lucifer, with his golden crest fully raised, toddled boldly past Mrs Enderby-Smarke and over to his mistress. She picked him up and he flapped onto her shoulder.

“What is the meaning of this?” thundered Mrs Enderby-Smarke. “Miss Deane, put that bird down immediately.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” panted Bridget, entering the room just a few seconds later. “I couldn’t catch him. An’ there’s a gentleman to see you, ma’am.”

SP, wearing a heavy travelling coat, appeared in the doorway.

“Mr Plush,” faltered Mrs Enderby-Smarke.

“I didn’t think you’d make it in time, old boy. Well done,” said Daniel, shaking his hand.

“Please excuse my attire, ladies,” SP said with a bow. “I had no time to change. We have just arrived in Melbourne on the Ballarat train.”

A thin, elderly lady, dressed all in black, appeared from behind him.

“Miss Smith!” Looking as if she might faint, Mrs Enderby-Smarke sat down heavily on the piano stool.

“The more the merrier,” said Daniel, taking his hat off. “Sit down again, Judith. I have a feeling the show’s not over.”

“And also Mr Cropper, who happens to be Mrs Morrison’s lawyer.” Here SP looked directly at Mrs Enderby-Smarke. “Mrs Morrison, as you will no doubt remember, is the owner of Hightop House Academy.”

“Now, see here,” blustered the Colonel. “You can’t come bursting in here, making wild accusations–”

“Yes, I can, Colonel,” said SP. He paused. “Though it would be more correct to call you
Mr
Enderby-Smarke, wouldn’t it?”

The Colonel went a strange greenish colour. He looked as if he might be sick.

“Oh no,” whispered Mrs Enderby-Smarke.

“Mr Cropper has some questions to ask you, madam.”

Mr Cropper, a tubby little man with a fussy manner, adjusted his spectacles and coughed before he began, “Let me see, let me see …” He took a piece of paper from his breast pocket. “First, there is the matter of forged signatures on various documents and bills of sale. Secondly, there is the embezzlement of funds belonging to Miss Smith from the Teachers’ and Governesses’ Pension Fund. Thirdly, you have fraudulently claimed …” His attention was distracted. “What is the matter with that young lady? Does she need help?”

Jessie lay on the carpet in the middle of the room. She was kicking, banging her fists, and howling. Alice hovered nearby, but Louisa and Jemima, brave at last, deliberately moved to the other side of the room.

“It wasn’t me,” Jessie was bawling. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t–”

Mr Cropper decided to ignore her tantrum. “As I was saying, madam, you have fraudulently claimed to be part-owner of this establishment when in fact Mrs Morrison merely authorised you to run it for her. These are very serious matters. Indeed, they are police matters, should Miss Smith and Mrs Morrison wish to lay charges.”

I thought Mrs Enderby-Smarke was going to have an apoplexy. She turned red as a beetroot. Her bosom heaved. Her eyes bulged.

“How dare you question my methods?” she spluttered. “I deny any wrongdoing whatsoever. Absolutely and completely!” She banged her hand on the piano for emphasis. Lucifer, disturbed by the noise, fluttered off Miss Deane’s shoulder and onto SP’s.

The Colonel put his hand on his wife’s arm. “The jig’s up, Betsy old girl. We’d better come clean, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Reginald.” Mrs Enderby-Smarke’s voice rose to a screech. “And if you were any kind of a man, you’d eject this riffraff from our drawing room right this minute!”

“With this leg?” said the Colonel. “You’ve got to be joking, Bet.”

“Go to hell,” said Lucifer, hopping up and down.

“Miss Deane, silence your bird!”

“Go to hell,” said Lucifer. “You’re a–”

“Lucifer!” cried Miss Deane. “Mind your manners.”

“A bloody old battleaxe!”

“Too true, old boy,” said the Colonel. “Battleaxe came in second last, and I’d put two pounds on her. For a cockatoo, you’re a fine judge of horseflesh.”

“What are you talking about? Is it racehorses? Reginald!” she shrieked. And then they were at it hammer and tongs. It was better than a Punch and Judy show.

“Let’s leave them to it,” whispered SP, and the rest of us tiptoed away.

“What a hullabaloo,” exclaimed Judith. She was lying on the sofa with a cup of hot cocoa in her hands. We were back at Alhambra, with Mrs Reilly, Kathleen and Mary-Kate fussing like mother hens over Connie and me.

“More like a melodrama,” said Daniel.

“No, a circus,” said SP.

“The look on Mrs Enderby-Smarke’s face when Lucifer told her what he thought of her – it was priceless,” said SP. “And what about Miss Jessie having a tantrum on the floor?”

“I almost felt sorry for her then,” I said.

“I didn’t,” came a quiet voice.

“I know, Connie,” I said, squeezing her hand. “But it’s over. You won’t have to go back there again. I’m sure when your aunts realise how unhappy you were, they’ll let you go back home to Riverbend.”

“Do you really think so?” Poor girl, she was quite dazed by the events of the evening. But at least she had her locket back. Even though it hung from the new ribbon donated by Grace Fanshawe, she was taking no chances and held it clutched in her hand.

“I’ll make sure of it,” said SP. “Even if I have to take you home myself.”

With a look of adoration on her face, Connie drank the rest of her cocoa and allowed Kathleen to lead her upstairs to bed.

Judith was tired after the evening’s performance, so our coachman drove her and Daniel back to Richmond. SP said he’d walk home, but he lingered for a while, stretched out on the hearthrug in front of the fire.

“That was quite a show you and Miss Deane put on for us tonight, Verity.”

I giggled. “It worked out very well, didn’t it? Thank you for arranging for Judith and Daniel to attend the soiree. Without knowing whether or not you would turn up, it was nice to have reinforcements.”

“It
was
perfect timing, if I do say so myself,” said SP, modestly. “The arrival of Miss Smith and the lawyer was really a masterstroke. But Verity, won’t you tell me how you discovered Jessie’s hiding place? I thought you’d lost your gift, that you were no longer a teleagtivist.”

I spread my fingers out and looked at them. I didn’t have itchy fingers to thank for my success this time. It was observation, and more than a little bit of intuition.

“The Professor always used to tell me that a person knows far more than they
think
they know. Some tiny things that you might notice, but think aren’t important, can turn out to be the vital elements that solve a case. Jessie not letting Laura get some blue silk – Jessie and Alice looking for the bracelet in the sewing baskets – Jessie snapping at Louisa when she offered to get her sewing basket out …”

“And the intuition part?”

“I kept thinking about the book Papa gave me. Remember? It’s a horrid thing about knitting and sewing and knotting and–”

“Stop, stop!” laughed SP.

“It was my mind trying to point my attention to the topic of handicrafts. But now
you
tell
me
– how did you find out about Mrs Enderby-Smarke?”

“It stood to reason, that if the Colonel – or Mr Enderby-Smarke, as I suppose we should call him now – was a little less than honest, then she was too. I had a hunch that it was all about greed – avarice, to be exact – and your assistance with those names was the key to it all. I was able to look up Reverend Smith in the Church of England Directory, hop on the Ballarat train and go straight to the vicarage. I was in luck, for Miss Smith was staying there with her brother. It seems Mrs Enderby-Smarke, by constantly remarking on her age, her failing memory and other infirmities, had convinced the poor lady she was too old to teach. She hustled Miss Smith out of the school and instructed the staff to say that Miss Smith was ill. Miss Smith was most interested in our inquiries, and allowed me to fetch her down to Melbourne and whisk her straight to the offices of Mr Cropper the lawyer. There we discovered that Mrs Enderby-Smarke had diddled Miss Smith out of her pension.”

“You see, I always said she was a money-grubbing snob. But how did you find out that Mrs Enderby-Smarke was impersonating Mrs Morrison’s cousin?”

“I didn’t,” said SP with a grin. “Reginald’s a fake Colonel, all right, but Mrs E-S is indeed Mrs Morrison’s cousin. Which just goes to show, you can’t choose your relatives. Now, Verity, it’s late, so I’d best be getting home to my humble abode. But there’s one more thing I need to discuss with you. I don’t think Pierre would approve of you living here without a chaperone.”

“Chaperone? Humph,” I snorted. “Hightop House was supposed to be all la-di-da and fancy etiquette and look how
that
turned out.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that kind of chaperone. I wondered if you would like to offer the position of governess to Miss Deane. I have a feeling that she might welcome a change of scene.”

“Miss Deane? Oh!” I clapped my hands together in delight. “That would be perfect.”