Verity Sparks and the Scarlet Hand

by Susan Green

  “You fancy yourself as a detective, Mr Leviny tells me,” sneered Mr Melmoth.

  SP didn’t allow his expression to change. “I will do whatever I can to help Miss Deane and Mrs Petrov.”

  Mr Melmoth’s lip curled. “What you can do is stay out of my way. I don’t want any interference from amateurs.”

  SP nodded. “I won’t interfere.” With Drucilla missing? I thought it wasn’t like him at all.

  “Very well.” With a contemptuous smile, Mr Melmoth turned away from SP and greeted me. “Good morning, miss. Please be seated.” Those were the first and last polite words I heard from him. He began firing questions like bullets from a gun. “How many of them?”

  “Three.”

  “Were they armed?”

  “No, I am definite they were not armed.”

  “How were they dressed?”

  I thought carefully. All the while Mr Melmoth tapped his fingers impatiently on the marble mantelpiece. Then he began to crack his knuckles.

  “Come on, come on,” he muttered. “It’s a simple question.”

  “They were dressed alike, in brown coats and broad-brimmed hats. No, that’s not right. One man was hatless. Their boots …” I always looked at feet, for the Professor had taught me the importance of footwear.

  Mr Melmoth cut me short. “Their boots are irrelevant. Masked?”

  “Yes, they had scarves–”

  “Scarves over their faces; yes, I know. Did you see their eyes? Hair?”

  “Well, one of them had light hair. His eyes were an odd colour, a kind of yellowish-brown, like a topaz.”

  “Very poetic, miss. The others?”

  “The man who took hold of Beauty was dark. The one who stayed on his horse had red hair and a bushy beard.”

  “Aha! All reports say that the leader of the gang was red-headed. He must have liked the colour.” He pointed to the red hand drawn on the note. “Well, he’ll be sorry.” He paced the length of the room with a self-satisfied smile on his face. “This will end badly for the Red Gauntlet and his gang.”

  “I’d like to ask a question, Mr Melmoth,” said SP. “Do you have any theories on why they kidnapped the two ladies? I mean to say–”

  Mr Melmoth had no intention of hearing anything SP had to say.

  “Well, it’s obvious. Or at least, it is if you know the case as intimately as I do.” Mr Melmoth was enjoying himself, showing off in front of SP. “Mistaken identity,” he said.

  SP and I were equally mystified.

  “Yes, yes, it’s quite obvious. The Gauntlet Gang knew that Mrs Leviny and Mrs Petrov were due to drive out in the buggy. Servants’ gossip is the obvious culprit – that Indian fella blabbed to someone, I’ll be bound. They thought your governess – Miss What’s-her-name – was Mrs Leviny.” Mr Melmoth’s tone was patronising. “You may not know that it was Mr Leviny’s offer of a reward that led to the break-up of the Red Gauntlet Gang.”

  “When was this, Mr Melmoth?” asked SP.

  Mr Melmoth didn’t like being questioned. “In the autumn of 1861,” he snapped. Then he smiled, if you could call it that, as if recalling a particularly pleasant memory. “I discovered that the gang was holed up in a cave to the north of Bendigo. With a large reward posted for the return of Mr Leviny’s silver cup, they began to mistrust each other. They quarrelled. Unfortunately, when the troopers surrounded their hide-out, they found that the birds had flown. Well, two birds out of the three. One of the gang was left.”

  “What did he say?” asked SP.

  “He said nothing,” said Mr Melmoth with obvious relish. “He was stone-cold dead. Throat cut from ear to ear. Honour among thieves? I think not. So now, at last, the Red Gauntlet is back. He wants money – and he wants revenge. And so do I.”

  SP thought for a few seconds and then scratched his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but …well, I don’t quite understand. If he wants revenge, why would he send the communication to Mr Petrov and not Mr Leviny?”

  That wiped the satisfied smile off the great detective’s face. He glared at SP. “No doubt for some twisted reason of his own,” he snapped. “It is widely known that the two men are friends. Perhaps, by ignoring Mr Leviny, the Red Gauntlet is trying to increase that poor man’s distress.”

  SP nodded slowly. “You may be right.”

  “I know I’m right. I have the information I need. My next step will be to stir things up. Get the cockroaches crawling out of the woodwork, so to speak. Will you ring for the servant, Mr Plush? I’ll go back to Mr Leviny’s now, but I’ll keep you informed about Miss … Miss Whatever-her-name-is. The governess.”

  “Miss Deane,” said SP in a quiet voice.

  “Yes, that’s her. And Mr Plush … keep out of it, won’t you?”

  Hannah came to the door with Mr Melmoth’s hat and coat. He snatched them from her – no thank you or good day – and hurried away.

  SP took a deep breath. He made a fist and then slowly uncurled his fingers. “What a toad of a man,” he said. “He is not only rude, he is incompetent. And stupid. Miss Whatever-her-name-is.”

  “SP, you’re not really going to stay out of the investigation?”

  “Hardly! But – this Red Gauntlet business – I’m not convinced. It was such a long time ago. How can he be so sure?”

  “That.” I pointed to the mantelpiece. The glove was still sitting where Papa had put it. “A red glove was the bushranger’s calling card. And this was on the seat of the phaeton when Harold found it.” I reached out and picked it up. Then everything went black.

  23

  RANSOM AND REVENGE

  A piece of paper with one word written on it. At least I thought it was a word, for the characters weren’t English. Were they Greek? Then the paper seemed to catch fire. It flamed up and in an instant nothing but grey ash was left.

  The ash whirled and scattered and blew away, and I was in a city street. There was a row of shops and houses, almost new, almost identical … except for the doors. They were all painted different colours: red, white, green … Ah, the green door; that was the important one. Its paint glistened. The brass doorplate and knob shone with polishing. A lady’s hand, clothed in a lilac-coloured glove, reached out for it.

  At the same time, a voice said something indistinct. It sounded like “Meet me at … at the line.”

  I was back in the drawing room, on the sofa. SP was fanning my face with a folded newspaper.

  “Did I faint?”

  “No, but I thought you might,” said SP. “Are you all right? You’re as white as a sheet.”

  I rubbed my eyes, trying come back to the here and now.

  “You’ve seen something, haven’t you? Not … not Drucilla?” For a few seconds he let the anguish show in his face.

  “No, not Drucilla.” I only wished it was. My vision seemed to have nothing to do with Drucilla or Helen.

  “Tell me what you heard and saw.” He was the professional detective again, scribbling notes in his little book.

  When I finished, he re-read what he’d written.

  “At the line – it could be a railway line, a boundary line, a telegraph wire … And what about the word written on the paper? You said it wasn’t English. Any idea which language?”

  “I thought perhaps it was Greek.”

  “I learned Greek at school – ancient Greek, and I hated it, but I would recognise it if I saw it. Can you reproduce it, do you think?”

  It took about five minutes of intense concentration. The moment I finished, I knew what it was. The script, not the word. “It’s Cyrillic, SP. Russian. I don’t know why I didn’t recognise it before. All we have to do is ask Papa.”

  “Ask Papa what?” Papa closed the door behind him as he came into the room.

  I picked up SP’s notebook. “This, Papa. It’s the best I could do from memory. Does this mean anything?”

  Papa stared at it, puzzled. “The letters are very badly formed, but …” He sounded out something that sounded like “mirst”. “In
Russian,” he said, “it means ‘revenge’.”

  The word seemed to reverberate around the room.

  “Revenge. And in Russian – which is Mr Petrov’s native language. We won’t tell Mr Melmoth about this,” said SP.

  Papa looked from me to SP and back again. “How did you come to write this, Verity? A vision? I thought so.” He sighed. “Then I agree. It is better to keep it to ourselves. Melmoth is a hard-headed sort of fellow. I doubt he would understand.”

  “Or even listen,” said SP. “I’ll tell you a thing or two about the great detective. He’s famous – or infamous – among the police force. His entire career relied on informers, spies and fizgigs – that is, criminals who entice people into wrongdoing in return for money. He solved a fair number of cases – on paper. The number of wrongful convictions can only be guessed at.”

  Papa looked bewildered. “But … but it was Ernö who called him in to help us. Ernö would not have anything to do with spies and … and fizgigs.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t,” SP reassured him. “He wouldn’t have known about Melmoth’s methods.” He began thinking out loud. “Let’s say that the kidnappers are out to punish Mr Leviny for something that happened twenty years ago, like Mr Melmoth says. So they snatch Drucilla, mistaking her for Mrs Leviny. And Mrs Petrov as well, in order to double the ransom. The ransom note is addressed not to Mr Leviny, but for some devious reason to Mr Petrov – and thus Verity sees the world ‘revenge’ in his native language, Russian …

  SP’s voice was fading.

  White hands with tapered fingers and a needle flashing in and out. Pink silk. A silver thimble …

  What was happening to me? I was having a vision while I was awake. A vision, just a couple of seconds, slipping in between two heartbeats. For they were Helen’s hands. Her pink rosebuds on white linen. What was important about the embroidery? In a flash I knew.

  “Her sewing bag, SP!”

  “How your mind does jump around, Verity – from revenge to sewing bags. What about it?”

  “She took it with her when we went out for the drive. And it wasn’t in the phaeton when Harold found it. One of the men must have taken it. Which is odd, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps they thought it contained something valuable,” suggested Papa.

  “They’ve probably ditched it somewhere,” said SP. He didn’t seem to think it was worth noting. “Go on, Verity. Describe the men.”

  As I talked, something else occurred to me. “It’s funny, SP, but I could tell that their boots were quite new. I tried to tell Melmoth, but he wasn’t interested. Their clothes were new too, but they were very dusty.”

  “Aha,” said Papa. “I am beginning to understand how to investigate. With this dust, they were disguising themselves?”

  “Perhaps,” said SP, still scribbling. Then he stopped. “We’re going around in circles, aren’t we? All these clues, and yet we’re nowhere. We’re stuck. We can do nothing until the kidnappers make their next move. Good Lord! What’s that?” He was looking through the French windows out into the garden.

  It was Mr Snow, the white peacock.

  “Look,” said Papa. “He knows we are watching him.”

  Mr Snow unfurled his tail and held it out behind him like a huge lacy fan. He turned slowly, all the better to display his magnificence. Yes, Papa was right. Mr Snow knew he had an audience.

  “We’ve been trying to catch him,” I said. “I’ll run and get some corn and see if I can lure him into the aviary.”

  You know the old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”? Well, Mr Snow was happy enough to peck at a trail of corn leading to the aviary, but do you think I could get him to go in? I captured two peahens but just as I was about to close the door on him, Mr Snow darted past me and fluttered up into a tree. He looked down at me with his round blue eyes.

  “You’re a bad, bad bird,” I said to him.

  I could have sworn he understood. He nodded so that the coronet of delicate white feathers on top of his head quivered.

  “Please come down, Mr Snow,” I pleaded.

  He hopped up to a higher branch.

  After lunch, Harold, SP and I went out again in the phaeton. We thoroughly searched the spot where Harold had found the abandoned vehicle. Then we stopped at the scene of the kidnapping.

  It all came flooding back. I had to force myself to take Harold’s hand and step down from the phaeton. I took a deep breath, told myself to be sensible, and joined SP and Harold at the scene of the crime.

  I knew what SP was after. There is often some small clue – a dropped glove or hat, a piece of paper, a button torn off during a struggle. I thought we might find Helen’s flowery bag. But we found nothing other than hoofprints and the wheel tracks left by the phaeton. With an angry expression on his face, SP paced along beside the track, stopping here and there to poke a clump of grass or squatting to inspect the ground. I knew he was imagining Drucilla’s ordeal. Harold was beside him. His thoughts were probably full of his aunt. I kept forgetting about Helen.

  It was now two days since Helen and Drucilla had been kidnapped. Two days and two nights. Where are you? I asked silently. I held their faces in my mind. Drucilla. Helen. Where? Where?

  I felt a hand on my arm. “I know this is difficult for you, Verity,” said SP. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too,” I said. “I can’t see anything. No visions, just … just horrors.”

  I won’t describe the rest of the day, because waiting – endless waiting – and worrying and fretting and imagining the worst is tiresome, don’t you think? I was weary. After supper, when SP went back to his hotel, I excused myself and went to bed.

  I fell asleep straightaway. At least, that’s what must have happened, for suddenly I jerked awake from a deep slumber with my heart beating and all senses alert.

  A floorboard outside my room squeaked. Someone was creeping down the passage.

  I eased myself out of bed and tiptoed to the door. I pushed it slightly open. There was Mr Mallard, standing outside Helen’s room. The shadows closed around him as he opened her door and slipped inside.

  I inched out into the hallway. A few minutes went by. Did he have a right to go into Helen’s room? Perhaps he did, but why do it in the middle of the night? I heard the door open again and I drew back into my room just in time. He went to the side door and let himself out. Through the gap in the curtains, I saw him saunter across the lawn to stand in front of one of the garden beds. I saw the flicker of a flame and in a few seconds a strong smell of cigar smoke came wafting towards me.

  I don’t know why I lit my candle and crept out into the passage. I don’t know how I found myself inside Helen’s room. It was as if an invisible string were pulling me there. Why? What was I meant to find?

  Shutting the door behind me, I stood still. The tiny light of my candle was engulfed by the darkness. The room smelled of lily-of-the-valley and … What was that smell? It was an acrid, burnt odour. When I crouched by the hearth, I found some fragile grey wafers of ash. I knew what they were. Burnt paper. They were still faintly warm. Mr Mallard had crept into his sister’s room and burned something. What?

  I stood up and turned around. There on the secretaire, as if Helen had been interrupted in the middle of writing a letter, was a pen, a bottle of ink and a couple of sheets of notepaper. The envelopes and papers in their pigeonholes looked slightly disarranged, as if someone had riffled through them and put them back hastily.

  “Verity? Is that you?”

  Helen sat at her secretaire. She blotted the letter she’d been writing and shoved it into one of the pigeonholes.

  “I do not think I can stand this much longer,” she said. For an instant the expression on her face was pleading. “Oh, Verity – what else could I have done?”

  I opened my eyes. It had happened again. A tiny slice had been taken out of my life and this vision had been put in its place.

  It meant something. Each o
f these flashes, visions – or whatever you want to call them – meant something. They were clues, puzzle pieces, parts of the answer. But I was still completely in the dark.

  I blew out my candle, opened Helen’s door and looked both ways. There was no sign of Mr Mallard so as quickly as I could I raced back to my room and jumped into bed.

  Suddenly, a banshee scream ripped through the night. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up even though I knew it was Mr Snow. Mr Mallard must have disturbed him as he roamed about outside. The neighbours’ dogs began to bark and someone shouted for them to be quiet. Mr Snow let out one last piercing cry and then all was quiet again. I lay awake a while longer. I’d almost drifted back to sleep when I heard footsteps on the verandah and the squeak of the door as Mr Mallard let himself in. He was humming a tune under his breath as he passed by my room.

  24

  OUT OF THE PAST

  For a change Mr Mallard was up early. He refused breakfast.

  “Tea?” Hannah offered, holding up the pot.

  “No. I drink coffee in the morning,” he snapped. “You should know that by now.”

  To save Hannah another trip, Harold went back with her to the kitchen.

  “Did you sleep well, Mr Mallard?” I was curious. He’d sneaked into his sister’s room in the middle of the night and burned something. Then he’d gone outside for a midnight ramble. What would he say?

  “No. Not at all.”

  “I slept badly too,” I said. “I was awake most of the night. I heard someone moving about. I thought it was you.”

  “Did you?” He paused. “Yes, it was me. I heard the most terrible noise and I went to investigate.”

  He was lying. He’d disturbed Mr Snow, not the other way around.

  “And I must remember not to hum,” he continued. “It’s a bad habit of mine.”

  Suddenly, the name of the tune came to me. It was “Champagne Charlie”; probably my least favourite song in the whole world. My horrible uncle Bill Bird used to sing it when he was on a spree.

  Champagne Charlie is my name