The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place

  “Mrs. Plackett’s only beneficiary is Darling Nephew Julius, to further his education,” she announced. “He inherits the school and all its contents in the event of Mrs. Plackett’s death.”

  “He can’t be our murderer.” Dour Elinor looked seriously disappointed. “How can a child in India poison his aunt and uncle in England?”

  Dear Roberta picked up the ebony elephant and examined it. “Voodoo magic?”

  Smooth Kitty ignored this. “He’s too young, and too far away, to have done it.”

  “And too ill,” Dull Martha added.

  Disgraceful Mary Jane and Stout Alice exchanged looks.

  “He isn’t ill, darling,” Mary Jane said. “That’s just a story we made up about him.”

  Dull Martha’s cheeks colored. She wouldn’t lift her eyes from her sewing. “Right. I forgot.”

  “Perhaps he had an accomplice,” Mary Jane went on. “A partner in crime here in England.”

  “Which would make sense,” Smooth Kitty replied, “if the crime was to pinch a jar of marmalade. No, girls. Honestly! Little Julius isn’t our killer. We’re meandering. And we have identified no one else who stands to benefit from the murders.”

  “I’ll investigate,” Pocked Louise declared.

  Stout Alice spoke up. “I’m still puzzled over this matter of insufficient money. What if we find that we, too, need extra sums of cash, and we run out of funds in the same manner as Mrs. Plackett?”

  Smooth Kitty inwardly blessed Alice for shifting the subject back to matters within their control. She rose and struck a match to light several candles, as the twilight pulled its violet curtain over the parlor’s eastern windows. Once she could see sufficiently, she produced a sheet of paper on which she’d written out a budget. “We shall economize,” she said, “starting with the most obvious expense we can eliminate.”

  “Butterscotch and shortbread biscuits?” asked Stout Alice.

  “Amanda Barnes,” was Kitty’s reply.

  This was met with a shocked silence.

  “Not Barnes,” Dear Roberta protested. “She doesn’t deserve to be let go.”

  “Who will do for us if she’s not here?” asked Dull Martha. “Do you mean we should look for other household help?”

  “We shall have to manage on our own,” Kitty said. “We can’t have her about the house all day long. We’d never be able to uphold the illusion that Alice is Mrs. Plackett for the benefit of someone who was indoors all day.”

  Shock became horror.

  “You mean to sack her!” Dull Martha cried. “Fire her on the spot, with no month’s notice to find other employment!”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane looked stunned. “I don’t even know how to do brasses and silver.”

  “Oh, Kitty, you wouldn’t be so awful,” Dear Roberta said. “Leave her penniless, destroy her reputation, and break her heart all in one blow! It’s too, too much.”

  Kitty had anticipated these objections, but not, perhaps, their vehemence.

  “We can pay her a month’s salary,” she said. “It will pinch us, but we’ll certainly do it. And we—I—shall explain that Mrs. Plackett’s resources are too strained by Mr. Godding’s trip to India, by the funds needed for Julius’s medical care. I shall apologize, of course, and say that it all came about so suddenly.”

  “If she’s being paid for the month, she’ll wish to work the month,” Stout Alice said. “Remember how hard it was to persuade her to take today as a holiday?”

  “We shall simply have to insist. I’ll do it myself. First thing tomorrow morning. I shall walk into the village to meet her at her home and deliver the news.” Smooth Kitty spoke bravely but felt her mouth go dry. It had seemed simple enough to dispose of Barnes when weighing dangers and looking at ledgers, but now, the real prospect of looking her in the eye and sacking her felt more terrifying than grappling hand-to-hand with the unknown murderer. Poor, plucky Amanda Barnes, who worked so hard to provide for her elderly mother. Again nagging doubt hovered at the corner of Kitty’s mind. Was she doing the right thing? She chased those thoughts away. Of course she was. There was no other option.

  “What did you fix for supper, Mary Jane?” Stout Alice asked. “I’m famished already.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane gave a self-satisfied little toss of her head. “Mansfield muffins and rice pudding,” she declared. “I’ll go check to see how they’re coming along.” She ventured from the parlor and down the hallway toward the kitchen stairs. She’d not gone far when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” she called.

  Stout Alice heaved herself off her chair. “Not again,” she moaned. “Come with me, would you, Elinor? Just in case I need my face painted again for this unwelcome visitor.”

  The other girls listened as Disgraceful Mary Jane opened the door and greeted the newcomer. The voice was unmistakable.

  “Lord, Kitty,” Pocked Louise said. “Speak of the devil. You can save yourself a trip in the morning. It’s Amanda Barnes.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Good evening, young misses.” Amanda Barnes greeted the young ladies in the parlor. She carried a dish of something mounded high and covered with a napkin. “Look at you all, hard at work on your tablecloth for the social. It’s coming along grand. That’s a fine berry you’ve just sewn, Miss Roberta. Think you young ladies will be able to finish by Wednesday?”

  Smooth Kitty pulled a length of tablecloth over the strange jeweled elephant. Her stomach sickened. If she had to do this ghastly thing, best to get it over with. She rose to her feet.

  “Don’t get up on my account, Miss Katherine,” Barnes protested. “I’m just here to collect the pan I forgot. In all my chattering this morning, I left without it. And I had so much free time today, I baked your headmistress an eel pie, seeing as she’s unwell.” She twitched the napkin off her hot plate, revealing a tall, brown, crumbling pastry crust with savory fragrances wafting from its slits.

  Smooth Kitty groaned inwardly. On the very day she had to sack Amanda Barnes, that good soul had spent her holiday baking them a pie. It was too cruel.

  Kitty grasped Barnes by the elbow and took a candlestick in her other hand. “Mary Jane is cooking in the kitchen. Won’t you join me in the schoolroom for a moment?”

  “Certainly,” Barnes replied, and set down her pie on an end table. “Is something the matter, Miss Katherine? Your mistress—is she worse?”

  Dull Martha met them outside the schoolroom. She held out a tiny skillet. “Is this the pan you’re looking for, Barnes?”

  “The very same,” Miss Barnes replied. “Thank you kindly.”

  Kitty closed the schoolroom door behind Martha, set her candlestick on a desk, and gestured for Barnes to be seated in a student chair. She did the same. Now, how to begin?

  “Miss Katherine?”

  Kitty forced herself to meet Barnes’s expectant gaze.

  “Is there something you wished to say to me?”

  “There is,” Kitty said. Her voice suddenly felt, to her own ears, weak and young. “Barnes, there is no pleasant way for me to say what I now must. I regret this most profoundly.”

  Barnes’s expression did not change. She was perfectly composed, and yet something in the daily woman’s eyes made Kitty feel utterly exposed. She wished she could whisk herself away to any place but here.

  “I am afraid I must—Mrs. Plackett has tasked me with the unhappy burden—of dismissing you from your position here at Saint Etheldreda’s School.”

  There was a moment of terrible silence. Kitty looked at Barnes, and looked away again, reproaching herself for her cowardice. Her eyes fell upon the blackboard at the side of the room, where Mrs. Plackett’s deliberate and flawless hand still spelled out the imperfect conjugation of vouloir, “to want,” in white chalk curves. Je voulais, tu voulais, il/elle voulait …

  When finally she spoke, Barnes’s usually firm voice wavered. “You’re giving me notice, Miss Katherine?”

  Kitty nodded.

  “A month from no
w I shall have to leave?”

  Kitty shook her head. “Sooner,” she said. “Now.”

  There was a slight intake of breath.

  Nous voulions, vous vouliez, ils/elles voulaient. We used to want, you used to want, they used to want. What, Kitty wondered, had Mrs. Plackett used to want?

  “Might I be permitted to ask why?”

  Barnes’s words jolted Kitty back to the present. She struggled to think of how to answer.

  “Has my service been found lacking?”

  Kitty feared she might begin to cry. This was worse than burying dead bodies, a thousand times worse. Amanda Barnes gripped the handle of the skillet that lay in her lap, and for an instant Kitty imagined Barnes striking her with it.

  “If I have failed to give satisfaction to Mrs. Plackett, I wonder why she has never said so.” Barnes held herself straighter and taller than before. “I’ve been in service twenty-four years, Miss Katherine, since I was younger than you, and seven years here with Mrs. Plackett. In all that time I have never had a word of real complaint from any of my employers.”

  Twenty-four years—a career older than Kitty herself. Who was she to put the first stain upon it? I did not kill Mrs. Plackett, she told herself sternly. Whether or not we hid the bodies, Barnes would have lost her job today.

  “Barnes,” Kitty said, “you’ve done a fine job. The simple truth is that the costs of Julius’s medical care and Mr. Godding’s trip threaten to deplete her resources to the point where she can no longer afford household help. She has just enough to pay you a month’s salary.”

  Ordinarily Amanda Barnes had a soft, comfortable aspect, but now her backbone was a sword. Kitty wished she could crawl into the bookshelves and hide among the French grammars. She began, absurdly, to resent Barnes’s resolute strength. In some perverse way, Kitty felt, it would almost be better if she showed some human weakness.

  “Miss Katherine.”

  Kitty made herself face the former daily woman.

  “You have been the bearer of strange tidings twice today,” Barnes said. “To be dismissed in this way—sacked from my post by a student!—is strange, to say the least. I do not wish to impose, but my years of service here entitle me to some small consideration. I feel I should at least be allowed to hear the reason for my dismissal from my own employer’s lips.” She punctuated her speech with a little nod, as though her choice of words had pleased her.

  Kitty hesitated. The request was fair. To refuse could attract suspicion. Was Stout Alice up for this ordeal? She would have to be. “Well. Yes. I can see that that would be a natural request to make. Will you wait here while I go see if she is in a position to speak with you?”

  Barnes paused a brief instant, then nodded brusquely. Aha! Kitty thought. There it was. That first wrinkle in her armor. She was nervous about facing Mrs. Plackett, Kitty would swear.

  “Please remain here while she prepares to receive you.” Kitty closed the door behind her, and hurried down the hallway. At least, she thought with grim satisfaction, as she peered through the dining room to its western windows, the sun was now fully set, and darkness could only help.

  Stout Alice peeped out from behind Mrs. Plackett’s bedroom door. “Is it done? Did you sack her? Is she gone?”

  Smooth Kitty sighed. “Dear Alice. You will despise me now.”

  Alice shrugged. “I already do. What do you need?”

  Kitty briefed her on her conversation with Barnes. Alice pulled Mrs. Plackett’s frilly nightcap down low over her forehead and climbed under the covers of the headmistress’s bed.

  A fit of hilarity overcame Smooth Kitty. She may be excused for this; she had had a trying day. “Oh, Grandmother,” she giggled. “What great ears you have!”

  “The better to listen to sacked housekeepers with, Little Red-Cap.” Alice rolled her eyes.

  “Remember. You’re sickly. And heartbroken that things have come to this sorry pass.”

  Stout Alice pointed imperiously toward the door, just as Mrs. Plackett herself might have done. “Shoo! Bring me Amanda Barnes, and let’s get this behind us.”

  Smooth Kitty ushered Barnes into the bedroom. Only one candle burned on the far mantelpiece, leaving Alice shrouded in darkness. She seemed to slump weakly against her pillows, as though she hadn’t the strength to sit up in bed but had done so heroically, at great personal sacrifice.

  Amanda Barnes seemed to crumple at the sight of her employer. She declined the chair Kitty offered her. She peered at Mrs. Plackett, then rapidly turned away.

  “I … I’m sorry to see you brought so low, Mrs. Plackett.” Barnes’s voice faltered. “It was wrong of me to disturb you.”

  “No.” A somber voice emerged from under the ruffled nightcap. “It is I who must apologize for this sorry state of affairs. I’m cut to the heart to think of what this will do to you.”

  Barnes seemed at a loss. “Your brother’s really gone, then? To India, so sudden?”

  Stout Alice nodded slowly. “Gone. And may he speedily return with good news. But, oh! Barnes!” Alice raised a handkerchief to her eyes with a trembling hand. “I fear for him. I do. My heavy heart tells me I shall not see my brother again in this world.”

  Amanda Barnes gulped. “Now,” she said. “You mustn’t say things like that. It’ll weaken your health, and we can’t have that.”

  Stout Alice dabbed her nose with her kerchief. “As soon as I am up from bed I shall write you a letter of reference, explaining fully the circumstances that brought your employment here to a close. It will do you credit as you apply for new positions.”

  “I’m obliged to you, ma’am.” She kept her head bowed low. “And I hope that you and the young ladies will be able to manage all right on your own.”

  Kitty became conscious of an unpleasant smell wafting into the room from the kitchen below. Footsteps could be heard, as could voices lamenting the fate of the Mansfield muffins.

  Amanda Barnes spoke quietly. “I’ll take my leave now.”

  “We will send you the letter and your upcoming month’s pay,” said Stout Alice.

  Barnes nodded and opened the door. A cloud of burnt flour fumes entered the room, but the daily woman had too much pride to cough. She showed herself down the corridor and out of the house. Smooth Kitty felt her whole body deflate when she heard the front door close.

  Disgraceful Mary Jane poked her head in the door. “How’d that go?”

  “Badly enough,” Stout Alice said. She pulled off her nightcap. “How goes the cooking?”

  Mary Jane shrugged. “The muffins weren’t a total success, but the rice pudding looks decent. A little lumpy, maybe. But come and eat Barnes’s eel pie. She made it specially for you.”

  “Did you test it for poison?” Alice asked.

  That’s when the tears caught up with Kitty. “We don’t have to test Barnes’s eel pie,” she lamented. “It’ll be right as rain. Poor, poor woman.” She buried her face in a pillow.

  CHAPTER 13

  The students enrolled at Saint Etheldreda’s School for Young Ladies set out the following morning for a walk into the village of Ely, armed with baskets and parasols, on a mission to complete several errands of vital importance. It was a fine clear day, with warm sun balanced by cool breezes blowing in across the fens. Saint Mary’s church bells were just ringing ten o’clock as they closed the front door to the school behind them, and Mr. Shambles, the rooster, crowed at them as they closed the gate.

  “This is fine, for a change,” Disgraceful Mary Jane declared, as they set off down Prickwillow Road toward Ely. “That house was beginning to close in on me.”

  The cry of the train whistle greeted them from the far-off station.

  “Someday let’s board that train and go somewhere interesting,” Stout Alice said.

  “Agreed,” said Disgraceful Mary Jane. “Someplace exotic and far away.”

  “In the meantime,” Kitty said sternly, “until we can board that train, we’ve got business to attend to. Today we’ll
shop, tomorrow we’ll wash clothes. We’ve got some terribly muddy frocks, and we promised Alice we’d launder Mrs. Plackett’s things.”

  “Things,” Stout Alice repeated. “Speaking of Mrs. Plackett’s things, Kitty, dear, where did you put Admiral Lockwood’s elephant?”

  “I put it in the curio cabinet in the drawing room,” Kitty said. “Why do you ask?”

  Alice frowned. “I can’t say, really. It’s certain to be quite valuable, don’t you think?”

  “I locked the cabinet.” Kitty felt defensive, which made her cross. “It’s safe enough there. I’m sure that’s what Mrs. Plackett would have done.”

  “I’m just thinking about our murderer,” Alice said slowly. “He let himself into the house to poison the meat. It makes me wonder, is all.”

  “Maybe we should conceal the elephant somewhere no one would ever think to look,” Dull Martha ventured.

  “I’ll think about it,” Kitty said, rather loftily. Secretly she suspected Alice was right to be concerned. But taking precautions was her role in their little tribe. Anything she didn’t think of first, she couldn’t consider to be valid, on principle.

  Before long they reached the bustle of the city of Ely itself. Because it had a cathedral it was considered a city; by any other measure it was a small, bustling market town. But even a hamlet feels like a metropolis to bright, social young ladies who have been cloistered far too long in one house. The shopkeepers in their aprons, the tradesmen in their boots, and the housewives with their caps and babies were an invigorating sight. They proved the world was more than seven maidens, two corpses, and a puppy. Even Dour Elinor took notice of other living creatures with curious interest.

  They stopped first at the post office on Market Street, where they mailed a stack of written bills, one to each of their families, as well as polite notes in Mrs. Plackett’s counterfeit hand to Miss Fringle, inquiring after her health; to Mrs. Rumsey, thanking her for the tablecloth linen; and to Admiral Lockwood, thanking him for his solicitous inquiries and generous gifts.