The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place

by Julie Berry

  Dour Elinor shaded her paper briskly with a charcoal. “Tell that to Parliament.”

  “You’re in an odd mood.”

  Dour Elinor shrugged. “I don’t much fancy a strawberry social. I have a queer feeling about it. Something ill will come of our going.”

  Pocked Louise, who placed no stock in queer feelings, harrumphed. “You’re a prognosticator now, are you?”

  “I have instincts,” Dour Elinor replied, quite unperturbed, “where death is concerned. Sunday morning, before Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding died, I had no appetite for breakfast, and I couldn’t focus on Reverend Rumsey’s sermon for persistent thoughts of the grave.”

  The tall, tight collar of Pocked Louise’s dress chafed at her neck. “I dread the social, too,” she said, “but not for any instinct other than avoiding tiresome spectacles intended to make us meet young men and parade us on display for older ones. Your instincts are pure piffle; no one concentrates on Reverend Rumsey’s sermons, and you never think of anything but death.”

  Dour Elinor cocked her head and examined her sketch from another angle. “Say what you will. Something bad will happen tonight.”

  “Yes.” Pocked Louise flexed her feet. “My toes will cramp in these wretched slippers.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane entered the room clutching a necklace. She skidded to a stop at the sight of Elinor and Louise on the sofa.

  “You’re wearing those frocks tonight?”

  Louise and Elinor exchanged commiserating looks.

  “And why shouldn’t we?” Pocked Louise asked. “They’re clean enough.”

  “Help me fasten this clasp.” Mary Jane swooped onto Pocked Louise’s lap so she could assist with the necklace. “Nobody wears dark gray drab to a springtime strawberry social.”

  “Mercy me, we forgot to wear our red dresses with yellow dots, and our matching green hats.” Louise finished buckling the necklace clasp. “Then we’d be strawberries for the social.”

  “Don’t be pert with me,” Mary Jane said loftily. “I’m only trying to help you be seen to best advantage tonight.”

  Pocked Louise sniffed. “My best advantage would be to avoid being seen entirely.”

  “Come, that’s no way to think,” scolded Disgraceful Mary Jane. “Just because your face is pocked, that doesn’t mean you must hide your candle under a bushel.”

  Louise sat, if possible, a little straighter. “I wasn’t worried about my pocks, thank you very much,” she said. “And don’t go misquoting scripture to me. Candle under a bushel, indeed!”

  Stout Alice wandered into the drawing room and sank onto a sofa. She clutched her forehead and moaned. “Ohhhh … don’t make me go through with this.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane, admiring and adjusting her curls in the mantelpiece mirror, shot her a disapproving look. “That’s not the spirit we want to see in our stalwart headmistress.”

  “Something awful’s going to happen,” said Stout Alice.

  “See? What did I tell you, Louise?” Dour Elinor looked extremely self-satisfied.

  “My song will be a dismal failure,” Alice went on.

  Pocked Louise wrinkled her nose at Dour Elinor. “It takes no powers of divination to know that Alice’s song will go badly, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Thanks much, Louise.” Stout Alice was too morose to take real offense. “Martha will have to play her pianoforte terribly loudly whilst I croak out my song. ‘’Tis not fine feathers make fine birds,’” she warbled, badly. “’Tis a singing voice, which I lack, and that will ruin all. Everyone will see through my disguise, and we’ll all be arrested for murder.”

  “Let’s not be so gloomy.” Disgraceful Mary Jane turned her attentions to Stout Alice’s hair, powdered to look like Mrs. Plackett’s. “Maybe only you will be arrested for murder, Alice, dear. Elinor, my lamb, run and fetch your paintbox. You need to get working on Alice’s wrinkles. And, Alice, I definitely suggest you wear your veil tonight.”

  “A widow in mourning wouldn’t go singing a peacock song at a social!”

  “Nevertheless,” Mary Jane insisted, “you’ll have to. Say it’s your anniversary, or your dear husband’s birthday, or some such thing.”

  “Has anybody seen Martha?” Pocked Louise inquired. “She left long ago to ask Henry Butts if he’d drive us to the social.”

  “I saw her come back,” said Dour Elinor. “She came into the house, but I don’t know where she’s gone.”

  “Oh, Lord, you don’t suppose he’s said no to her, do you?” Mary Jane cried. “Then we shall have to walk, and we’ll arrive all dusty.” Disgraceful Mary Jane went about calling for Martha, searching in and out of rooms, and the others followed. They found her curled in a stuffed chair in the parlor, clutching her knees.

  “I won’t go to the social,” she declared. “I’ll stay home with Aldous. Go without me.”

  “Hear, hear,” cried Pocked Louise. “I’ll stay and keep you company.”

  Mary Jane crouched beside Martha’s chair and slipped an arm around her neck. “Now, what’s all this?” she said. “What’s made you decide you can’t go?”

  Dull Martha was nearly swayed by Mary Jane’s tenderness, but when she recalled that Mary Jane represented all that she, Martha, was not—confident, sophisticated, fascinating, clever—she bit her lip and hunched down low in her chair.

  The doorbell rang, and Disgraceful Mary Jane heaved a sigh of vexation. “I’ll get it,” she said. “You stay here. Alice, you can’t be seen. Elinor’s not done your makeup yet.” She glided out into the corridor, where Smooth Kitty, having heard the doorbell, joined her from upstairs.

  In the parlor, Stout Alice sat opposite Dull Martha for a quiet moment. “If you stay, Martha, you can’t play the pianoforte for me, which means I couldn’t sing, and nothing in this world could make me happier. But I think you’d actually like to go tonight. So why so sad?”

  Martha sighed. “I just made an idiot of myself in front of Henry Butts.”

  Pocked Louise laughed. “Is that all? He does that in front of us on a daily basis.”

  Martha couldn’t forgive this slur. “He does not. Now he knows, and he must hate me.”

  Dour Elinor, who’d brought her paintbox with her, began rolling bits of actors’ putty between her palms to soften it. “Now he knows what?”

  Martha slid down lower in her chair and hid her face behind a plush velvet cushion. Her words were somehow both whisper and wail. “That I fancy him!”

  Stout Alice, who knew how unsympathetic Pocked Louise could be in matters of the heart, shot her scientific roommate a daggered look. “Martha, dear,” she said, “Henry Butts couldn’t possibly hate you, even if he suspects you fancy him. I’m sure he would find it extremely flattering to be noticed by such a charming young lady as yourself.”

  Dull Martha peeked up over the rims of her spectacles to gaze hopefully at Stout Alice. “Do you really think so?”

  “I’m sure Henry Butts is home right now,” Alice said, “getting himself all combed, and spiffing up for the social, thinking about the chance to visit with you there.” Alice smiled and swallowed the Leland Murphy–sized lump in her throat.

  “Did Henry agree to drive us?” Dour Elinor asked.

  Dull Martha paused. “I don’t know. I fled before I could hear his answer.”

  Stout Alice waved this concern away. “Of course he will. He’ll be over here like a puppy dog, well in advance of when we need to leave. So you’d best hurry with my makeup, Elinor.”

  “Speaking of puppy dogs,” Pocked Louise said, “has anyone seen Aldous? He chewed up Kitty’s slipper earlier, and she’s frightfully cross with me. As if I was the one to eat her shoe!”

  Her question was soon answered by a growl and a bark coming from the hallway, followed by a crash of something wooden, and a man’s voice uttering loud expletives wholly unsuited to the ears of delicate young ladies. Louise and Elinor hurried to investigate, while Alice, who could not yet be seen in public, stayed behind
with Martha.

  Louise and Elinor came upon a confused scene in the front doorway. A stout woman with brassy gray hair and an unfortunate straw hat decorated with wax grapes was scolding a man in workman’s clothes. Aldous had attached himself by the teeth to the trouser leg of the workman and was threatening to worry a chunk of fabric clean out of those trousers. The man, who had apparently dropped a wooden crate on the floor, kicked and shouted at Aldous, calling that exuberant little fellow all sorts of colorful names and attempting to extricate his trousers from the dog’s jaws. Smooth Kitty looked astonished; Disgraceful Mary Jane gazed on with amusement.

  “Don’t crush the wee dog, Jock,” the woman declared. “However much he may vex you.”

  “He’s a bloody devil!” shouted the workman whose name, apparently, was Jock. “A foul cur what ought to be dropped in the pond with a rock tied to its tail!”

  Pocked Louise hurried forward and snatched him up.

  “I beg your pardon,” Smooth Kitty said coldly. “The dog is only doing his duty and protecting us from strangers.”

  “I aren’t a stranger,” the man said. “I’ve worked for Mrs. Lally eleven years.”

  Mrs. Lally, for Jock obviously referred to the woman in the grape-festooned hat, saw no reason to correct Jock’s social graces at this moment. “Young misses,” she said, curtseying toward the girls, “are you sure your headmistress ain’t around for me to speak with? I hate leaving these belongings of her brother’s here without at least speaking to her.”

  Smooth Kitty shook her head. “I do apologize, but Mrs. Plackett stepped out for the afternoon.”

  Mrs. Lally’s grapes quivered. “Well, it’s most inconvenient of her. Not that anyone ever minds my convenience. It’s only because I’m a Christian woman that I bother bringing these things by, instead of selling them at top price to recoup my losses on that brother of hers.” The landlady peered from side to side, as though to catch some eavesdropper. “Other landlords would do it in two shakes, and the magistrate’d let ’em. Three months behind, he was! He assured me, just the last night I saw him, he told me his sister in Ely would float him out of his troubles. And doesn’t he up and vanish on me without a word or a farthing!”

  Little Aldous bared his teeth and growled at Mrs. Lally from the safety of Louise’s grasp. Louise’s mind churned with her own thoughts. From the look of it, Smooth Kitty had the same idea—this Mrs. Lally clearly expected Mrs. Plackett to pay up Mr. Godding’s rent, if only to preserve their family’s reputation. But the girls couldn’t spare money like that.

  “Mind you, I’m not the only one he owes money to,” Mrs. Lally went on. “Certain men’ve been coming around for weeks now, troubling the gentleman over his debts.” She leaned forward and whispered as though somehow they wouldn’t all hear. “He gambles!”

  The revelation failed to produce the shocked effect Mrs. Lally evidently hoped for. But she had heavier ammunition.

  “I for one am not so sure he went to India to help some precious nephew.”

  Remain calm, Kitty, that young lady told herself. “And why is that?”

  Mrs. Lally now found some of the satisfaction she’d come looking for, albeit not the monetary kind. “I think he went running from the debt collectors and the bookies.”

  Dour Elinor and Pocked Louise looked at each other for enlightenment.

  “I beg your pardon,” Smooth Kitty said at length. “I don’t know what that term means.”

  Mrs. Lally pursed her lips, evidently enjoying the worldly-wise knowledge she possessed that these higher-born, better educated young ladies did not. “Bookies. Bookmakers. The chaps that hold the betting books. At horseraces. Roulette. Brag tables. Gentlemen’s clubs.”

  Smooth Kitty began to feel a bit dizzy.

  “They’re smooth enough at first,” Mrs. Lally went on, “with their fancy gloves and nice mustaches. It’s when you don’t pay up that they take a different turn.”

  Finally some insight. “And you think Mr. Godding has fled from these … bookies? To avoid paying gambling debts?”

  The landlady shrugged. “Seems more in his nature than going off to help a nephew. What do you think?”

  Smooth Kitty began rapidly to lose patience with this woman. “I only know what my headmistress told me, and I have no reason to doubt her.”

  While this conversation took place, Pocked Louise balanced little Aldous on one hip, and fished in her pocket for her notebook and pencil. It wasn’t easy to write with a dog in her arms, but she managed to scrawl “bookies” on her list of suspects. If only she could learn their names!

  Smooth Kitty, meanwhile, had decided it was time to change the subject with these unwelcome guests. Money had she none, but hospitality must be observed.

  “Can I offer you something to eat or drink, Mrs. Lally? Mr., er, Jock?”

  “What’re you having?” Jock licked his lips.

  Mrs. Lally would have none of this distraction. “Know what else he does, Miss?”

  Smooth Kitty’s voice was as frosty and uninterested as she could possibly make it. “We scarcely knew—know our headmistress’s brother, never mind his private pastimes.”

  Mrs. Lally was undaunted. “He consorts with women!” Her glance fell upon Disgraceful Mary Jane. “Can you countenance such a thing, Miss?”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane swallowed a laugh. “Indeed, I’m shocked,” that young lady replied. “I can’t countenance a woman who would stoop to keeping company with him.”

  Mrs. Lally had begun to nod at what she expected Mary Jane would say. When she caught Mary Jane’s flippancy, her eyes narrowed.

  “And why is that, Miss?” she asked stiffly. “His habits may want correction, but he’s an agreeable gentleman. He makes quite a dashing figure.”

  Smooth Kitty began to realize why Mrs. Lally had allowed Mr. Godding to fall three months’ delinquent in his payments. For his charms! How repulsive. “Mr. Godding’s appearance is a matter of personal taste,” Kitty said, chastising Mary Jane for the landlady’s benefit.

  Color rose in Mrs. Lally’s cheeks. “I’m respectable, and I keep a decent house. Gentleman or no, I need none of that sort of thing about. Your headmistress, if she has any decency, should speak to her brother about his morals.”

  “Jilted lovers,” Pocked Louise wrote in her notebook. “Romantic hopefuls of either deceased party.”

  Smooth Kitty advanced toward the door, leaving Mrs. Lally no choice but to take a backward step toward it also. “I am sure this will be Mrs. Plackett’s first topic of conversation with her brother when next she sees him,” she said. For a moment Kitty pictured this joyful sibling confrontation taking place before Saint Peter at the pearly gates. “Mrs. Plackett would wish us to thank you for bringing Mr. Godding’s things here.”

  Mrs. Lally looked far from finished speaking, but the sound of wheels and hoofbeats on the gravel drive made her pause. It was only Henry Butts approaching in his freshly waxed cart, pulled by Merry, but the landlady looked caught, somehow, by this unexpected arrival.

  “Come on, Jock.” She yanked on his canvas sleeve. “We’ve said our piece. The missus ain’t home. No point in us waiting.” With that, she turned and marched out the door. After aiming a malevolent look in little Aldous’s direction, Jock ambled after. The grapes on Mrs. Lally’s hat bobbed as she climbed stiffly into her wagon.

  “A touch for money, if I ever saw one.” Pocked Louise stroked Aldous between the ears. “There’s our good little guard dog! She thought she could squeeze some rent out of Mrs. Plackett, didn’t she, Kitty?”

  Smooth Kitty watched their wagon drive away. “Oh, she’s owed it, I’m sure. But she’s not going to get it. Mr. Godding took his debts with him to … well, wherever he’s gone.” She smiled slyly. “Perhaps not to heaven, if his landlady’s reports are true.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane had already forgotten all about Mrs. Lally. “Look at that silly Henry Butts,” she said. “Red as an apple at the thought of squiring us all to the s
ocial. And look! He’s gone and done up the pony’s mane with flowers. If he thinks he’s going to pin a flower in my hair, he has another thing coming.”

  Pocked Louise and Dour Elinor exchanged a silent look.

  “Run and thank Henry for driving us,” Smooth Kitty told Mary Jane. “Try not to break his heart in the process. But tell him he’ll have to wait awhile. We’re nowhere near ready.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Soft twilight hung over Ely proper, and candles in village bedroom windows twinkled at the young ladies of Saint Etheldreda’s School for Young Ladies ninety minutes later as they bounced toward the Saint Mary’s church parish hall. The church bells began to chime eight o’clock, and the great cathedral’s deeper bells took up a competing bong, bong, bong.

  Stout Alice, disguised with putty, makeup, dress, and veil as Mrs. Plackett, sat swaying next to Henry Butts in the front seat of the cart, as her headmistress would have done. The night was cool, but Alice felt sweat dampening her underthings and pooling in her slippers. Just another misery to endure on this frightful night. Perspiration was her albatross. As her grandmamma often said, it came of overdoing it at meals and taking on too much flesh. But tonight, with performance anxiety flooding her with nausea, there was no danger of Stout Alice consuming even a morsel of strawberry tart. Not until she could get home, climb out of these dreadful clothes, and peel this ghastly putty off her face, would she even think of food.

  Wretched though she was, Alice had to admit that Dour Elinor, armed with her new tools of the makeup artist’s trade, had done wonders in transforming her into Mrs. Plackett. With putty she had built up Alice’s nose to precisely the headmistress’s distinctive shape. Elinor’s eye was unfailing, and her fingers nimble. Disgraceful Mary Jane declared the likeness so complete that Alice could dispense with the veil, at least during her vocal performance.

  Henry Butts said blessedly little on the way to town, for which silence Stout Alice was grateful. Henry would hardly be expected to maintain conversation with Widow Plackett, but Alice suspected his silence was due more to the terror he felt at escorting six handsome young ladies into town, than from any fear of their crotchety headmistress. The girls were, indeed, all looking uncommonly rosy tonight. Even Dour Elinor and Pocked Louise were forced to submit reluctantly to Disgraceful Mary Jane, who made what she called mandatory adjustments to their coiffures and added some ornaments from her own jewelry box to their somber clothes. Dear Roberta, Dull Martha, and Smooth Kitty were pretty as pie. All their bonnets were fetchingly done in pink and red ribbons. As for herself, nobody explained to Henry Butts that Alice was upstairs with a headache. Her presence wasn’t missed, a fact which only added to Alice’s gloom.