Verity Sparks, Lost and Found (27 page)

“Don’t tire yourself. Don’t talk.”

“I want to tell you. I can’t bear to keep it to myself any more. I’ve done a bad thing, miss.” She began to cry. They were weak, exhausted tears. I held her hand.

I said, “You can tell me later. I have to go and get help.”

“No, I want to. It was Mrs Honeydew. I … I did little jobs for her at Forest Edge and she paid me for them. I … I took the mail to her before I gave it to Mr Bobbs. She steamed it open and then after she read it, I took it back. Mostly, that is. Sometimes she kept the letters. She told me she wanted to keep an eye on Mr Alan. She was worried he was just after Mrs O’Day for her fortune, so I thought it wasn’t too bad, what I was doing. She paid me, and every bit helps. The money – it was for my mum.”

She lay back panting, and I hoped she would rest, but she started to speak again.

“But then – well, Mr Alan was in love, it stuck out a mile he wasn’t after her money. They got engaged and she had no call to read his letters any more. I started to wonder what she was up to. It was wrong of me, I know it was wrong – but I thought I could get a bit more money out of her. I opened one of Mr Alan’s letters to his brother to see what was in it and it said that he suspected Mrs Honeydew of horrible crimes. He’d found something in an old newspaper. A nurse that killed her employer and got away with it. Even though the name were different, he was convinced it was Mrs Honeydew. He was worried about Mrs O’Day – he thought Mrs Honeydew was drugging her – and the poor lady had some bee in her bonnet about being haunted …”

“So what did you do, Miriam?”

“I did another wrong thing. I should have made sure that letter got to Mr Andrew, but I thought I could get some more money out of her. So I hid the pages of the letter separately in the house, where she couldn’t get them, and I told her I knew all about her and I wanted some more money.”

“You blackmailed her?” Poor Miriam. It was never going to work, for Mrs Honeydew was far cleverer than she was.

“Yes. I did. And she started giving me money, each week, and then you and Miss Deane and Poppy came along, and she was in and out the house and she found the first envelope. Then I couldn’t find the second one and I didn’t know who had it. She said she did. Then I suppose she felt she had to get rid of me.”

“But how did she do it?”

“Oh, she can make you do things. She made me stick my arm on the iron once, to teach me a lesson. She can make you sleepwalk and steal things and … and …”

Mrs Honeydew, always smiling, so kind and serene … And all the time there was murder in her heart. How lucky for me that a gumtree broke my fall and ruined Mrs Honeydew’s plan.

Miriam’s head suddenly lolled sideways. Her eyes looked sunken. Had she fainted? I knew I needed to get help, or Miriam would surely die.

I looked around, trying to work out where we were. The Australian bush looked all the same to me. I was a city girl, after all. Yes, I thought, but how did you steer yourself around London all those years? Landmarks, that was how. There was always something to remember and recognise, a fountain or a church or a bridge. I looked around again, more carefully. Then I looked up. I could see the tree whose branch, sticking out at a right angle, had broken my fall, and the massive boulders all tumbled down the hillside like a child’s building blocks. At the top, there was a rocky ledge. Was that the lookout? Was it my landmark? If I was right, we weren’t far from Forest Edge.

I didn’t think I could climb back up through the rocks. Perhaps if I walked a little way along, I’d find an easier path.

“I’ll be back soon, Miriam,” I said. She heard me, because she murmured something. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. Before I set off, I tied Miriam’s apron to a tree near to where she lay. There was no use me getting help if I couldn’t find her again.

There was a narrow path, more like an animal track, leading along the base of the hillside. It was rough and rocky, edged with low prickly shrubs and dry grass. Clouds of brown and orange butterflies, disturbed by my passing, fluttered around me, and I would have been delighted by their beauty if my feet hadn’t hurt so much. They were so cut and grazed and bruised that every step was now agony. I gritted my teeth. I had to keep walking; Miriam’s life depended on me. My nightie snagged on a bush and ripped, and that gave me an idea. I tore another strip off the hem and wrapped it tightly around my right foot and ankle. Now my nightdress was now more like a smock, just reaching my knees and barely decent, but there was no time for modesty. I ripped off another strip and bound my other foot. I hobbled along for a few steps, and then froze. Was that a snake lying across my path? I laughed shakily when I realised it was only a stick. But it gave me another idea. I picked it up and used it to help me walk along. And if I should meet a snake, I could give it a whack too.

I don’t know how long I toiled along that path, or how far I got. But the sun was high in the sky when I heard something apart from crows and wind and the rustling of creatures in the undergrowth. It was a voice. A child’s voice, chattering away to someone. It must be a man, for I heard a deeper tone in reply. A man and a child out for a walk.

“Help!” I called. “I’m here. Help!”

And around the bend came Poppy.

“Blimey Joe and bend over backwards! He said yer was ’ere but I thought it was all rubbish.” She rushed up to me and nearly knocked me down with her hug. Then she turned and called out, “She’s ’ere!”

There was no answer.

“Hey! Hey, you! Where’ve yer gorn to?” She ran a little way back, but quickly returned. She shook her head. “Bloody hell, ’e’s gone and varnished.”

“Vanished? Who?

“The gent. The gent what led me ‘ere. ’E was tall and good-lookin’, wif yellow hair. Wearin’ a white shirt. A funny way o’ talkin’ – very la-di-da, ’e was, but nice.” Her sharp eyes turned to my bandages. “What yer done to yerself?”

“I’ve cut my feet,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter. Miriam’s back there in the bush. She fell off the lookout onto some rocks, and I think she’s broken some bones.”

“Looks like I’d better get movin’, eh? I’ll run back up an’ get the Bobbses an’ Miss Deane.”

“I’ll go and wait with Miriam,” I said. “Be as quick as you can, Poppy.”

“I’ll go like the bloomin’ wind,” she said. “An’ I’ll see if I can find that gent. ’Ow rude, not to say goodbye.” With a cheery wave of her hand she was gone.

A gent. Tall and good-looking. Fair-haired. It was Alexander. She had described Alexander. Alexander had walked along the bush track with Poppy and led her to me. I’d heard them chatting. I’d heard his voice.

I struggled back along the path. It wasn’t long until I saw Miriam’s white apron waving like a flag. I hadn’t got very far at all. Miriam was unconscious now, but I reached for her hand anyway.

Her hand. I relived the instant where, in a flash, I’d had a vision of that limp white hand and known where it was. As I scrambled down the rocks, my gift had returned. Out of the blue, with no warning. But why? How? I didn’t know, just as I didn’t know why I’d lost it in the first place. Perhaps I’d never know. I remembered something Miss Lillingsworth once said to me; “Life is not a problem to be studied or solved, it’s a mystery to be lived.” Somehow, mysteriously, I’d been chosen to save Miriam’s life. And Alexander had helped me.

I must have been very tired then, for I began to cry.

I don’t know who told Mrs Honeydew that Miriam, with a broken leg and arm, had been brought by stretcher up from the gully underneath the lookout. Perhaps Ellen told the baker’s boy, or one of the men who helped Mr Bobbs might have gossiped with Kitty or Dorrie. Miriam was brought back to Forest Edge in a terrible state. Mrs Gravenstein, who was an experienced nurse, came to advise on her care, and the doctor from Woodend was called. By the time I’d explained the whole story to Miss Deane, Mrs Honeydew had gone.

She’d taken Mrs O’Day’s diamond ring and the string of pearls, packed a small bag, walked down to Nettleton’s Livery Stables and asked to be driven to the station. From there she caught the train to Melbourne. After that, there was no more Bertha Honeydew. Perhaps there never had been.

A message was sent to the police, but the nearest station was in the township of Gisborne – miles away – and it would probably be a few days till they turned up. However Andrew Ross, unannounced, arrived around midday.

He was shocked at my appearance.

“They’re only scratches and scrapes,” I told him. “The one to worry about is Miriam.”

But she and I were forgotten as soon as he heard about Mrs Honeydew. For that was why he’d caught a train, on a Saturday morning, to Mount Macedon. He knew who and what she was.

“But I’m too late!” he moaned. He did a lot of moaning, mainly about what a fool he’d been and how could he have thought that Lavinia was a murderess. You know the sort of thing.

“How could I have? I must have been mad to suspect her. Poor Lavinia! How she has suffered.” He ran his hands through his hair and made it stick up on end. “How could I have been such a–”

“Yes, yes, you’ve been a fool,” said Miss Deane.

A bloomin’ idiot, I added silently.

“Why don’t we go over to Greystones after lunch, and you can tell her all about it,” said Miss Deane.

Miss Deane, Poppy and I drove over to Greystones with Mr Ross. As soon as we got through the door, Toby rushed up to Poppy and dragged her off to play without so much as a “good day” to the rest of us. I could hear his little piping voice as they disappeared down the hall together.

“That child needs a firm hand,” said Mr Ross.

“He needs a father,” said Miss Deane.

“Yes, he does.” Mr Ross stopped in his tracks and frowned, as if thinking hard.

“Shall we go in?” said Miss Deane.

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said. But he didn’t move. He put his hand to his forehead and sighed. “How can I face her? How can I–”

I’d had more than enough of this malarkey. “For Gawd’s sake, just go in!” I said, opening the door and giving him a push so that he stumbled into the room.

“Andrew!”

Mrs O’Day was lying on that sofa again, and in a flash he’d pulled up a chair next to her and had hold of her hand.

“Lavinia!”

“It’s been such a shock,” she quavered. “So hard to believe. I trusted her.”

Andrew brought her hand to his lips. “My dear, my dear,” he said, looking into her eyes. “How I wish I’d been here to look after you.”

“Oh, Andrew …” She dissolved into tears and I handed her a clean handkerchief.

There were more tears and kisses and handkerchiefs. Finally, we were able to get down to brass tacks, as the saying goes. Remember how Alan’s letter mentioned the reading room? It turned out that the reading room at the public library in Swanston Street was the key to the case.

Andrew was still stewing over the missing letter. Despising the whole Confidential Inquiry Agency as a pack of incompetents, he decided to continue the investigation himself. He followed up the mention of the library, and luckily one of the librarians remembered that, besides medicine, Alan Ross had had a passion for criminology. He regularly read the library’s back copies of the
London Police Gazette and Court Digest
. Sitting in silence, Andrew had flicked through page after page after page. And at last he struck gold. He told us what he found in the Summer 1875 issue.

“There was a report about a sensational trial. The accused was called Annie Cushing, but she was known as the Nasty Nightingale – that is a joke, you see,” he explained. Though Miss Deane and I were bright enough to understand, Mrs O’Day was clearly bewildered by almost everything. “A reference to Miss Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse. The long and short of it is that this Annie Cushing had been nurse companion to an elderly lady, who fell downstairs while sleepwalking and died. She left Annie a substantial legacy. Her nephew thought it was all very suspicious, especially since Annie’s former employer, an elderly gent, tripped into a fishpond and drowned. He too, left her money in his will.

“Anyway, the prosecution couldn’t make it stick. She was acquitted and was believed to have left the country.”