The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place

by Julie Berry

  Mrs. Godding ran for the kitchen. She was halfway there before anyone else had time to think. “Stay with the gentleman, Julius,” she called, and disappeared through the swinging door.

  Dr. Snelling, Constable Quill, and Reverend and Mrs. Rumsey followed after her. Stout Alice rose to do the same, but Pocked Louise restrained her. “Stay,” she said. “Please, Mrs. Plackett, stay here away from the commotion. So we can tend to you.”

  Kitty found Julius standing close by her. “Your mother is a marvel,” she said.

  “She was a nurse before she married,” he said. “Now she volunteers at a clinic, and acts as midwife to local women.”

  “Julius?” It was Miss Fringle speaking. “Your name is Julius?”

  Kitty’s stomach sank. Here it came.

  “It is,” Julius said. “Does anyone know where we might find a bedsheet?”

  Miss Fringle opened her mouth, and Kitty felt sure she would probe for a surname. The choir mistress paused, and closed her mouth. “I’ll ask Patricia for one,” she said, and limped off to find Mrs. Rumsey.

  The students from Saint Etheldreda’s School held a silent meeting. Dull Martha and Dear Roberta held each other’s arms tightly. Pocked Louise, Dour Elinor, and Disgraceful Mary Jane stood in a protective ring around Stout Alice’s chair. Mr. Albert Bly stood at Roberta’s side, ready to offer help, and Charles Bringhurst knelt down by Jeffers’s chair, speaking to him in a low voice, and offering him a handkerchief. Good old Funeral Charlie. Perhaps his nickname wasn’t such a joke after all. But it was time for them to leave. And yet, Amanda Barnes? What was happening? Would they all begin to fall like dominoes?

  “Good news, everyone!” Reverend Rumsey appeared from the kitchen door, followed by his wife, the doctor, and the constable. The vicar spoke. “Miss Barnes is well. She merely fainted. Shock weakened her momentarily. So I think we can dispel this notion of poison.”

  Dr. Snelling and Constable Quill exchanged glances, but said nothing.

  “I must go inquire after Barnes.” Stout Alice rose decisively. “She’s been in my employ these many years. I must know for myself that she is well.”

  Kitty could not stop Alice, so they trouped along after her and watched the scene from the kitchen door. They found Amanda Barnes lying upon the floor with a cushion propped under her head. Mrs. Godding, kneeling beside her, fanned her face with a dessert plate. Amanda’s skin was deathly pale. Her breath came in short, shallow pants. When she saw Alice, she covered her face with a trembling hand.

  “There, there,” said Mrs. Godding. “Everything will be all right. I’ll tend you until you’re feeling better.”

  Barnes spoke feebly. “Will the admiral be all right?”

  Mrs. Godding rocked back on her heels and gave the girls a look filled with caution. “Never mind the admiral,” she said. “He’s a tough old oak. Is he family?”

  Amanda Barnes shook her head. “I just felt so badly for him. I was in here spooning up trifle, and when I heard the word poison, I…”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Godding brushed Barnes’s damp blond hair off her forehead. “Now, you just worry about yourself. You need rest.”

  Barnes drew a deep breath. “You’re all kindness, ma’am.” She lowered her protective hand. “I don’t believe I know your name, begging your pardon.”

  Mrs. Godding handed her patient a cup of water. “No pardon needed,” she said. “You haven’t met me. I’m newly arrived from Bombay. My name is Elaine. Mrs. Geoffrey Godding.”

  Amanda Barnes blinked. She swallowed hard and struggled to sit up. Kitty felt Louise and Alice stiffen with shock.

  “No, not yet, dearie.” Mrs. Godding was cheerfully determined to keep her flat. “Too soon to be getting up just yet. Let’s let the place clear out first.”

  Kitty looked away. She couldn’t bring herself to face Barnes, or her classmates. She saw Dull Martha beckon to them from the parish hall, so she tugged Louise and Alice along after her.

  “Henry’s ready to take us home,” Martha said.

  CHAPTER 22

  Damp clouds obscured the stars, leaving the night sky black as ink as Henry Butts helped the girls down from his cart in front of Saint Etheldreda’s School for Young Ladies. Stout Alice thanked him for the ride, then Dull Martha thanked him half a dozen more times, until Pocked Louise dragged her indoors.

  Once inside, Kitty dropped her shawl and bonnet on the flagstone floor and shook her clenched fists before her face.

  “How could this have happened?” she cried aloud. “We never should have gone!”

  Kitty’s words echoed through the dark corridor. The girls filtered into the parlor, and Dour Elinor struck a match and lit a pair of candles. The noise, the sulphur smell, the jittering flames jarred Kitty. She gnawed on a knuckle and tried not to think.

  “What are you saying, Kitty?” Elinor inquired. “Are you saying Admiral Lockwood wouldn’t have died if we hadn’t gone tonight?”

  “Yes … no … yes!” Kitty groaned. “I mean, that part’s obvious, isn’t it? The attempt that was made on Mrs. Plackett killed him by mistake.”

  “You’re not saying we killed him, are you?” pressed Elinor.

  Kitty fumed. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “By mistake…” Pocked Louise repeated.

  “Yes, what about it?” Mary Jane snapped, but Louise didn’t answer.

  “Where are the brass candlesticks?” Elinor asked.

  “It feels drafty in here,” Dear Roberta ventured. “Let’s light a fire.”

  “I don’t simply mean the admiral, though that’s the worst of it,” Kitty said. “He’s gone, God rest his soul. I mean, everything else, too.” She sank down into a chair. Her body felt limp, utterly drained. “The song. Miss Fringle. Mary Jane’s snooping constable, and the wretched man at the train station. Alice in danger, God help us. Julius Godding, showing up.”

  “Ah, yes,” Mary Jane said. “Darling Julius.” She tossed her coat upon a chair. “After all these years away, he must pick tonight to appear. Would somebody please start at the beginning and tell me everything that happened?”

  “If you hadn’t been chasing after your policeman, and doing who-knows-what with him behind the curtain, you wouldn’t need to ask,” Pocked Louise said.

  “Aren’t you the saucy one tonight,” Mary Jane said.

  Her smugness rankled Pocked Louise. “I’m not saucy,” she cried. “I’m right. I don’t care how much older you are. I’ve got enough sense not to make a shameful spectacle of myself, and enough to know when my friends need me to stay close by and help, unlike some people.”

  “Pooh, pooh,” sneered Disgraceful Mary Jane with her nose high in the air. “I won’t be lectured by you. Mind your business, little girl.”

  Pocked Louise opened her mouth to blast Mary Jane with a retort, then felt her eyes sting. She hated, above all else, to be called little. She turned away quickly so Mary Jane couldn’t see her barb hit its mark.

  Kitty watched in dismay. After such a dreadful night, must they make matters worse with pointless bickering?

  A small, muffled sound reached her ears. She looked up to see Stout Alice bending over the fire, attempting to kindle a blaze. Her shoulders shook.

  Dull Martha noticed her too, and knelt beside her. “Let me start the fire, Alice, dear,” she said. “You’ve had a trying evening. But don’t cry. Your song wasn’t that bad.”

  “Oh.” The sound escaped Alice’s lips as a sob and a sigh, together. “I’m not upset about the song.” She sat on a divan and plied her handkerchief to her eyes.

  Kitty rose and sat down next to Alice. “Aren’t you?” she asked.

  Alice wiped her nose. “Maybe I am,” she said. “It was mortifying. But that isn’t the point.” They waited while her kerchief did its absorbent work. “Someone tried to kill me tonight. To kill me! And here you all are, squabbling like chickens.” She blew her nose. “Mercifully, I managed to survive, but a dear old man died in my place. I threw away my on
e and only chance to…”

  “To what?” inquired Disgraceful Mary Jane.

  Alice struggled to suppress another sob. “Never mind.” She shook her head. “None of it matters now.” She began to laugh bitterly through her tears.

  Poor Alice, thought Pocked Louise. Strain has made her lose her mind.

  “Do you want to know something?” Stout Alice asked the room. “I received a proposal of marriage tonight.”

  Smooth Kitty spoke without thinking. “From Leland Murphy?”

  Stout Alice shot her a withering look. Even in the dark room, Kitty felt its sting. Alice gestured toward her gray-powdered hair and makeup, and Kitty realized her horrible mistake.

  “Don’t be daft, Kitty!” cried Disgraceful Mary Jane. “Look how poor Alice has suffered! Don’t torment her with thoughts of Leland Murphy.” She patted Alice on the shoulder.

  Dour Elinor spoke up. “The proposal was from Admiral Lockwood.”

  “Oh, you heard?” Alice said. “I thought you were too busy talking to Funeral Charlie.”

  “Funeral Charlie!” Mary Jane threw her hands up in the air. “Someone, enlighten me quickly, before I pop.”

  “His name is Charles Bringhurst,” Dear Roberta said. “He is the particular friend of Mr. Albert Bly. They’re students at the Barton Theological College.”

  “Oh, hang the young men from the theological college!” Kitty flung down her gloves. “They could be archbishops for all we care. Young men are the last things we should be thinking about. Don’t you see the predicament we’re all in?”

  “You’re a fine one to talk.” Stout Alice glared at Smooth Kitty. “You spent plenty of time over in the picture gallery, chatting with your young stranger.”

  Kitty felt sick. Alice was right, and Kitty felt painfully just how much so. She had abandoned Alice to her dreadful masquerade, to that galling musical performance, and to dangers that were only now too apparent, while Kitty flitted and flirted—yes, flirted!—with a young man. That he turned out to be Darling Julius now seemed a fitting punishment for her crimes.

  Kitty found it hard to swallow, but she managed to do so, and spoke. “Alice,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to sing tonight. I’m sorry you had to go as Mrs. Plackett and not as yourself.” A look passed between them, and Kitty knew that Alice knew she understood why. “Your friend … Lucy … Lucy Morris inquired after your health and sent you … her best regards for a speedy recovery from your headache.”

  Alice nodded. Kitty could see she was mollified, partly. “Thank you for letting me know. That was very kind … of her.” She sighed.

  Kitty took a deep breath. “More than anything,” she continued, “a thousand times more, I’m sorry you came within range of…” Kitty tasted bitterly her hollow assurance to the girls that they would all keep Alice safe. “… within range of the poison.”

  Alice shuddered, then bit her lip. “It’s not your fault, Kitty. You were right. We never should have gone. I was a fool to say we would.”

  Kitty embraced Alice. “No, no, don’t say that,” she said. “No one could have foreseen this. Whether we’d walked into the trouble or not, trouble was on its way here. And,” she turned, “for shame, Mary Jane. Don’t vex Louise so.” Kitty was starting to feel rather like Mrs. Plackett herself. “You did pick a most unfortunate evening to misbehave.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane shrugged. “How was I to know everyone was guzzling poison?”

  The other girls stared pointedly at her.

  “Oh, all right,” Mary Jane said. She put on her dazzling smile for her youngest classmate. “Pax, Louise?”

  Pocked Louise stuck out her chin. “Pax,” she said, with a forgivable touch of stiff superiority, “though what you see in that oily constable, I’ll never know.”

  “Give it time, turtledove,” said Mary Jane. She seized Louise by the hand and pulled her onto the couch beside her to plaster a kiss on her cheek.

  “Ugh!” Pocked Louise cried, and wiped it off.

  Dull Martha’s questions could not wait for this tomfoolery to pass. “Does no one else find it peculiar,” she said, “that another Julius Godding should show up tonight at the social, when we’ve all been so interested in the one in India?”

  Kitty swallowed a groan. “Martha. Dear heart. It’s not another Julius Godding. He is the Julius Godding from India. It’s Mrs. Plackett’s nephew, come unexpectedly for a visit.”

  Dear Roberta took Martha’s hand. “So he isn’t a child.”

  “Only, perhaps,” Alice said, “in comparison with Miss Fringle. She’s the one who led us to picture him as young.”

  “He told me he hasn’t been in Ely in ages,” Kitty said.

  Pocked Louise rose and paced the floor. “He isn’t a child,” she repeated. “He stands to inherit all that Mrs. Plackett owns. And,” she said triumphantly, “he’s been here a few days.”

  Kitty watched her curiously. “What makes you say that, Louise?”

  Too late did Pocked Louise realize her mistake. She had no desire to confess to lying to the young man out by the road. “Well,” she said, “didn’t we see him yesterday in the chemist’s shop?”

  Kitty tapped her chin thoughtfully. Mr. Godding had said he’d ventured by Prickwillow Road a day earlier and spoken to another girl, one who told him it wasn’t a school. Could that have been Louise? “My sister…” she mused aloud.

  “That’s right, he was the fellow in the shop!” Disgraceful Mary Jane said. “I thought his face looked familiar.” She whacked Kitty with a sofa cushion. “You shameless thing. Always carrying on about me, while you’re setting up covert rendezvous with strange men you meet in shops!”

  “I did no such thing!” Kitty exclaimed. “Meeting him was pure chance.”

  Mary Jane winked at the others. “If you say so.”

  “Never mind that,” Louise cried. “Don’t you see? We don’t know exactly when he arrived in town, but almost certainly,” she swallowed, “it wasn’t yesterday.”

  “So?” inquired Alice. “What of it?”

  Louise waved her notebook triumphantly. “Until we can prove he wasn’t near Ely on Sunday, we must place Julius Godding at the top of our list of suspects.”

  “Oh!” Dear Roberta cried. “He’s so very young. With such nice tailoring, too.”

  Kitty felt as though she might be physically ill. Louise was right, and she knew it. But in that moment she hated her for saying it.

  “What do you think, Kitty?” Mary Jane inquired. “You spoke with him. Does he seem the murderous type?”

  “And what, exactly, is the murderous type?” Kitty attacked the ebony buttons lacing up her collar. “I didn’t see an ax in his back pocket, if that’s what you mean. But don’t you see? Murderer or no, he’s here now in Ely with his mother. Even if he’s the soul of charity, he’s here. He exposes our lie, and this will ruin all. It’s the worst thing that could possibly have happened tonight.”

  Dour Elinor shook her head. “Not the worst thing. We’ve been spared the worst thing.”

  Dear Roberta leaned her head against Stout Alice’s shoulder. “Admiral Lockwood wasn’t so fortunate.”

  Alice began to feel that looking as old and tired as Mrs. Plackett required no effort at all. She turned to Pocked Louise. “It was poison, wasn’t it, Louise? And only in my glass of punch?”

  Dull Martha’s lower lip quivered. Kitty gave her a stern look, lest she commence her poison hysterics again.

  Louise opened her handbag and pulled out a folded-up cloth napkin. She unfolded it to reveal a large red punch stain. “I’m not sure if this will be a large enough specimen to test, but I’ll try.”

  Kitty put her arm around Louise’s shoulder. “Good girl, Louise,” she said. “Quicker thinking than doctors or policemen any day.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Louise said. “I’m fairly certain it is poison, and I think Doctor Snelling knows it, too. He can probably recognize symptoms. Admiral Lockwood had the sam
e blotchy pinkness to his skin that Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding did. The spilled glass of punch had an almond smell, which would indicate cyanide.”

  Smooth Kitty suppressed an inner quivering that had come over her limbs. “I nearly drank that glass of punch,” she said, “when I sat in your empty chair, Alice.”

  Stout Alice dabbed gingerly at the makeup on her face. “Admiral Lockwood urged me to drink that punch,” she said, “right after I accepted his marriage proposal.”

  “What a mercy you didn’t drink it,” said Disgraceful Mary Jane. “Wait. You accepted him?”

  Alice looked up in surprise. “How could I not? He’s a wealthy man. I’d have to be a fool to refuse him.”

  Pocked Louise looked visibly wounded. “Are you that ready to leave us?”

  Smooth Kitty found she was no less stunned. “What about, er, Lucy Morris?”

  Dull Martha sat up. “What, is she engaged to Admiral Lockwood, too?”

  Stout Alice began to laugh. “You gooses. I didn’t accept his proposal. Mrs. Plackett did. She did because she would. Don’t you see? Of course she would. She’d take his money and send us packing back to our parents before you could say ‘Italian villa.’ So I had to say yes.”

  “At least he died happy,” said Dear Roberta.

  Stout Alice smiled a bit. “More than happy. I won’t tell you what he said to me after I said yes. It’s not decent to repeat. The wicked old salt.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane snickered. “Tell me later on, won’t you, love?”

  They sat together in the dark, each occupied by their own private worries. Red flickers from the fire danced with dark shadows across their faces. Despite the growing blaze, the room felt dank and chill.

  Dear Roberta shivered. “Brr! Stir the coals, please, Elinor? I just can’t seem to get warm.”

  Pocked Louise suddenly sat up straight. “Where’s Aldous?”

  The girls looked at each other in alarm. How could they have failed to notice? Usually the scamp would greet them barking at the door when they returned home. Louise began calling his name, while they all fanned out across the dark house to search for him.

  Each creak of the floorboards sounded ghostly in Roberta’s ears. She held on to the chair rail in the hallway for reassurance and made her way to the schoolroom. They’d stowed Mr. Godding’s crates of belongings in here. Now the tops were open, and Mr. Godding’s effects were strewn everywhere.