“You need to think, Miss,” I said. Ivy gave me a warning look, and I shot one back that I hoped said I know what I’m doing. “Did you see anything? Because someone thinks you did.” She may not have known the Whispers, but they’d known her.
Miss Jones’s eyes glazed over, as if she was trying to look back into the past. She drew little squiggles with her finger in the ash. “I don’t think so. It was so long ago. How could I remember?”
“Please try,” Ivy begged. And then something obviously occurred to her. “Did you talk to any of the girl’s friends on that day?” I saw what she was getting at. If the Whispers thought Miss Jones knew something, she must have blabbed to one of them.
“Yes, one of them … her name was Talia, I seem to remember. I was trying to comfort her. She couldn’t stop crying.”
I thought through the list of names on the wall. “Talia Yahalom?”
The librarian looked at me in shock. “Y-yes, come to think of it. How did you know that?”
“Doesn’t matter. What did you say to her?”
She breathed deeply. “Well, I don’t … It was so long ago. I said she shouldn’t cry, that it would all be all right. I said –” suddenly all the colour drained from her face – “I said the headmaster had done all he could to save her.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Why did you think that?”
“I woke early that morning, about six,” she started, her eyes glazed as she remembered the past. “I wanted to get to the library to read before lessons began. Out of a window I saw Mr Bartholomew, soaking wet, running away from the lake, towards the school. I thought it was strange, but continued on my way. It must have been an hour or so later that I emerged from reading to hear the terrible news about a girl being found drowned. I presumed that when I’d seen him earlier he had been returning to the school to raise the alarm, after … after wading in to try and save her!” She put her hand to her mouth. “That’s what I meant when I spoke to Talia!”
Miss Jones’s voice began to rise, as the cogs turned in her brain. The realisation had well and truly dawned. “But now I remember what he said in the assembly he called to announce the death. He said the caretaker had found the body at six o’clock – he didn’t mention being anywhere near the lake at all. But he had been! He had!” Her voice cracked, and the tears trickled down her face. “He didn’t try to save her, did he? She died because of him!”
I watched as Miss Jones burst into tears, and I felt sick. Sick with sadness and fear.
“You’re telling me,” she managed through sobs, “that he burned my library because of this? To cover up what he did by trying to destroy the newspaper archive?”
I nodded slowly. I wasn’t yet certain, but everything was pointing that way. “I’m so sorry, Miss.”
“Right,” said Scarlet. “Stay here, get on with the clean-up, and pretend you don’t remember a thing, and you should be all right.”
I frowned at her. Although I was glad she was suddenly taking charge of the situation, she couldn’t just order teachers around. “Scarlet …”
“No, Ivy, there’s no time for manners! This is important. Miss Jones, you can do that, can’t you?”
The librarian nodded, her face now streaked with tears.
“Good,” said Scarlet. “Because I’ve got a plan …”
I counted the minutes until our lessons ended, and the plan could be put into action.
Unfortunately, French was the last lesson of the day and Madame Boulanger was even less impressed with Scarlet’s speaking than Mrs Knight had been. She said that Scarlet was “making a mockery of the French language”. I felt it was a bit rich since I wasn’t sure if she was even really French. Sometimes her accent slipped and she sounded Welsh.
So I was left waiting outside the classroom while my twin had to stay behind, writing a page on why languages were to be taken seriously.
I stared out of the window, over the snow-covered courtyard and into the endless grounds. As I detached from the world, people began to swim through my head. Ariadne. Violet. Rose. Our mother. The Whispers. I would carry them along with me, for as long as it took to set them all free.
I was so lost in thought that I didn’t say a word when Scarlet finally left the classroom. There was no time to waste, and she had already wasted it. But that was Scarlet – it was impossible to make her toe the line. I wasn’t angry – this was too important for that. As soon as she was out, I set off in a brisk walk for the stairs.
“What are you doing?” she asked, grabbing my hand and pulling me back.
“I’m going. With you.”
“No. You can’t,” she said. “It could go badly wrong!”
“Why?”
She stood and faced me in the hallway, arms folded. A challenge. “I tried confronting a teacher before. You know the rest, or have you forgotten? I’m not letting you get involved.”
“That’s because you didn’t do it right!” I threw the newspaper back down. “You had no backup. It’s safer if we’re together.”
“You don’t know that!” She shoved me in the chest, and I stumbled backwards. “What if he locks you up? What if he kills you to keep you quiet?”
“He can’t get rid of both of us,” I snapped. “Father knows everything that happened before, he’d suspect immediately!”
Scarlet went silent. Then she said, quietly, “Would he?”
I stood, catching my breath.
And I saw Scarlet.
I saw right through her, her layers of fierceness peeling away to reveal everything underneath – fear, vulnerability, loneliness, abandonment. I’d been thinking about her the wrong way.
She was right; I had forgotten. I’d forgotten everything she’d been through, and began to see her just as my sister again, the constant friend and thorn in my side. I had absolutely no idea of the depths of what she’d felt, locked away in that asylum.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
You can’t erase the past. I had to learn that, and soon Mr Bartholomew would have to learn it too.
Scarlet was still coiled like a spring, and I knew I had to talk her round. This was our only chance. “I’ll protect you, and you’ll protect me. I promise.” An inkling of an idea formed, then. “We’ll tell Miss Finch. If anything goes wrong, she’ll know.”
Scarlet’s breathing steadied, but then she started to shake her head. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she muttered.
I held her by the arms. “If anyone can do this, it’s you. Do it for Ariadne and Violet and Rose and our mother and …”
She was still shaking her head, and I realised I was still getting it wrong.
“No, forget all of them,” I said.
She looked up.
“Do it for you.”
Ivy was right. Maybe I couldn’t find the courage to do it for ghosts I’d never met, in memory of my mother, for a new friend, for a girl I hated.
But what if it was about me? My pride? My misery?
I had suffered like these girls had suffered, and now someone was going to pay.
I stopped thinking about it, kept a lid on the fear that gnawed inside me. I took a deep breath. “Right,” I said. “We are going to find Miss Finch.”
We found her in the studio, exhausted from having just taught a class of first years. She was perched on her piano stool, her head between her knees. But however tired she was, her ears pricked up when we told her that we needed to talk to her.
Miss Finch was scared, I could tell. She said that she’d managed to smooth over the issue of finding out who Rose was by telling the other teachers that she would handle it, but it couldn’t be prolonged much further. And she said we needed to keep away from Mr Bartholomew, to stay away, stay quiet, stay out of trouble.
When I was sure no one was listening, I told her everything we’d found out, and what Miss Jones had witnessed. And we told her about the task we’d given Miss Jones. Miss Finch wasn’t happy that we were going to put ourselves in such danger
, but she was aghast at what we’d discovered and pledged to help in any way she could.
And so, with our insurance in place, we were ready. I sincerely hoped Mr Bartholomew was not ready for us.
Knock knock.
I clenched my stomach, fighting the urge to be sick. With that knock, there was no going back. The word ‘HEADMASTER’ loomed down at me from the door.
There was no answer. I looked at Ivy. Her face was a mask, and I could tell she was pretending not to be terrified.
Play your cards close to your chest. I repeated these words over and over to myself.
Knock knock.
I felt as though my heart were about to drop through my chest. He could still give us a caning, my mind warned, before I told it to shut up. He could—
The door opened.
Mr Bartholomew stood there, his face etched with a frown. “Students are not permitted to knock at my door … unless explicitly told to by a teacher.” He sounded like he was reading from the rulebook. I expected he was just about to reel off a punishment, but Ivy interrupted him.
“Sir, we need to talk to you. I think you’d prefer it if it was private.”
“How dare you presume to speak to me in this manner?” The expression on his wrinkled face was white-hot with fury.
Ivy frowned back, and I saw her defiance edge ahead of her fear. “Twenty-sixth of February, nineteen fourteen,” she said quietly.
The headmaster’s face went the colour of sour milk, like the drowned girl herself had appeared in front of him. He stepped back into the room, giving us an opening. We pushed our way into the office, vast, dark and stinking of pipe smoke. The door swung shut behind us.
“You shouldn’t be in here …” he started, but it set off his coughing, and he folded into a hunch.
“We’ve come to bargain,” I retorted, sounding braver than I felt.
“Bargain with what?” he growled. He shouldered past us to the blazing fireplace, fumbling for the poker.
“What we know,” I said. “You heard the date Ivy said. We know exactly what you did, sir. You thought you could just get away with it?”
He swung back to us, his grizzled frown turning into a snarl. “What do you think you know?” He had the poker in his hand, the tip red-hot, and he held it pointed towards me.
I was just going to tell it straight, but something flipped inside me. There was anger longing to escape, and suddenly I knew how we were going to get a reaction.
I made my face as blank as possible, and fixed my eyes to a space in thin air just to the left of Mr Bartholomew.
“You did it, sir. You sent me out there, to the lake. Told me it was for my own good. It was so cold and so dark, sir. I was frightened. I didn’t want to do it.” I spoke in a whisper, unearthly and strange.
“No,” he said, backing away, shaking his head. “No, you can’t …”
“You said it was a punishment, but it was more than that, wasn’t it? You wanted the control. You wouldn’t let me stop. But I couldn’t carry on, and the current pulled me under … you held me under, sir—”
“NO!” he roared and he thrust the poker towards me.
But Ivy darted in front of me, and grabbed it. I heard a sickening fizzle as the heat bit into her skin, but it was only for a moment – she wrenched it off him and threw it to the floor.
Mr Bartholomew dropped to his knees, and a coughing fit racked his body, the most dreadful I had heard. It sounded like it was scraping his lungs, pulling out his insides. He clutched at his chest.
We stood, and we watched him. Watched him choke and fight for his breath on the carpet.
“This is what you did to her,” said Ivy.
But it didn’t get that far. The fit passed, and he spat on the carpet, then wiped his mouth on his jacket sleeve. He dragged himself back, leaning against his desk, gasping for air. “What. Do. You. Want?”
“We want justice. We want you locked away for the crimes you’ve committed in this school over the years. We want to finish the work that the Whispers in the Walls began!”
“And we want Ariadne Flitworth reinstated,” Ivy demanded. “We know you started that fire to destroy the newspaper section! We heard you creeping around the library when Miss Jones helped us find the edition from the day the girl drowned. You must have realised that we were getting too close to the truth. We’re going to take the evidence of what you’ve done straight to the police!”
His eyes were streaming, his face haggard. “There is no evidence,” he growled. “That girl, she was disrespectful and badly behaved, just as you are. She needed to be taught a lesson. All of them needed to. I taught them a lesson they would never forget.” His fury radiated off him in waves.
“So you admit it?” I said, raising my voice. “You killed her?”
“I KILLED HER,” he roared, finally catching his breath. “AND I’LL KILL YOU TOO IF I GET THE CHANCE!”
Without a word, I walked over to the door and opened it.
And when the policeman stepped in, the look on Mr Bartholomew’s face was priceless.
We’d had Miss Jones call the village police and, after she’d explained everything, they’d come as quickly as they could. And, just as we’d hoped, they’d been able to listen as the headmaster confessed.
We stood back and watched as they led Mr Bartholomew away in handcuffs. His eyes were sunken, and he finally looked defeated. Scarlet gave him her fiercest, most defiant glare.
Miss Jones and Miss Finch were standing together in the corridor, both of them with worried expressions on their faces.
“We need to tell Violet and Rose that they’re safe!” I said.
Miss Finch nodded. “Come with me, I’ll take you to them.”
We made our way to the stairs. We pushed our way through a group of girls that were gathered there halfway up. Josephine and Ethel looked at us suspiciously. Violet had been their friend once. I wondered if they cared about her at all now.
Miss Finch had trouble climbing the stairs – she clung to the banister, and by the time we reached the first floor she was out of breath. “Go on ahead,” she said. “Find them. Come and get me if you need me.”
I looked at my twin. “Scarlet, my hand …”
We weren’t far from the bathrooms. “Run it under the cold water,” said Miss Finch, leaning back against the wall.
So as quick as I could, I shot into the bathrooms and turned a tap on. The water came out spluttering at first, but soon it was running clear. I held my hand under it. Bliss. The burn wasn’t too bad, and it wasn’t long before it was soothed.
Another girl was in there, and she gave me a sideways look, as if wondering what I was doing. “Spilt tea on it,” I said quickly. Where I would have got tea that was any hotter than lukewarm from at Rookwood, I had no idea, but she seemed placated by the explanation and turned away.
I ran back out again. Scarlet was waiting by the stairs. “Come on,” she said. And then, after a pause, she screwed up her face. “Sometimes even the witch needs rescuing.”
On the almost-empty top floor, we shouted Violet’s name, heard it echo off the walls. And as we reached one end, a response.
“We’re in here!”
The door was bolted from the outside. I slid it back and we threw the door open.
The room held some old chairs and tables – and the chairs held Violet and Rose.
“Did Miss Finch send you?” Violet sniffed. “How did you find us?”
“Mr Bartholomew has been arrested,” I said. “You’re free to go.”
“Really?” said Violet, standing up. She looked exhausted, dark shadows under her eyelids, the same soot-stained clothes she’d been wearing the night of the fire. An air of mistrust crept into her voice. “Are you sure? This isn’t some trick?”
“Not a trick,” I promised, before Scarlet could open her mouth and convince them otherwise. “Rose is safe, for now.”
Rose looked up from the chair, where she’d been rocking back and forth. Her express
ion said me?
I nodded to her. She looked at Violet – wanting to know that everything was okay, I supposed. Violet smiled back at her, and I think it was the first time I’d ever seen her look happy.
But then her expression turned to puzzlement. “So who started the fire?” she said.
“It was the headmaster,” I told her. “Though he didn’t actually confess to that part.”
She looked at me like I was mad. “Why would he set fire to his own school?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, and it really was.
“What do I do now?” Violet asked us. She looked like a lost little girl. Rose reached out and gently touched her hand.
“Well, you’ve got a room to yourself now,” said Scarlet. Violet seemed unfazed by this news. “Rose could stay there. Now that Mr Bartholomew is out of the picture, the teachers aren’t as likely to go along with his cover-ups.”
“We’ll work things out,” I assured them.
Slowly, Rose got to her feet, still clad in Penny’s clothes, now very tattered and smoke-damaged. She stepped towards us, and looked us in the eye.
“Thank you,” she said.
Violet and Rose returned to Violet’s room, Rose stepping into it daintily and cautiously as if she wasn’t quite sure if the floor was solid.
Miss Finch stood in the doorway with us, watching them.
“Please, Miss,” said Violet. “Can she really stay here? I don’t want her family to lock her away again.”
“I suppose,” said Miss Finch. Rose smiled pleasantly. “Until we find somewhere more suitable. At least it’s not the basement. I don’t know if she’ll be allowed in lessons, though. Perhaps she could help out in the stables.”
That raised a bigger grin from Rose. Suddenly, she pulled out a book from her cardigan pocket.
It had a pony on the cover.
I savoured my dinner that night. It was roast pork – or, well, Rookwood’s attempt at roast pork, anyway. But at least I was alive to taste it.
Rose was allowed to come to the dining hall, although most of the teachers couldn’t quite fathom why she was there. They made a place for her on the Evergreen table with Violet, and she wolfed down her food in the way you’d expect from someone who’d been half-starved for weeks.
The Whispers in the Walls (Scarlet and Ivy, Book 2) Page 16
