The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place (12 page)

Dour Elinor watched her work.

“Where did you learn to do this?” she asked Pocked Louise.

“My uncle is a physician in London,” Louise explained, peering at the water level in one of the jars. “He knows I want to be one myself someday, and
he’s
not shocked by that. He lets me help myself to books and journals he no longer needs. I keep them in my footlocker upstairs. One is about medical research used in criminal cases. Fascinating reading. It lists symptoms of various poisons and methods for ascertaining their presence. Hmm, I hope this isn’t too much potash. It didn’t say … but this amount seems sufficiently dissolved, I think.” She glanced at Elinor. “Time for the iron sulfate.” She wiggled a thin glass in which she’d mixed green crystals with water to produce a greenish liquid, then carefully dropped a bit of the green mixture off the end of a spoon into each jar. Dirty-looking granules began to settle to the bottom of both jars. “Ah! Just as I thought … see these brown precipitates? Time for the oil of vitriol.” She mixed drops from a small dark bottle into yet another glass containing water, then tipped a small quantity into both jars.

“
Miss
Dudley!” Stout Alice entered the room and addressed Louise in Mrs. Plackett’s voice. “Let me hear no more of this indecent folly! Science? Young ladies, studying the body? What next? If you
must
devote yourself to studies, content yourself to become a respectable governess.”

“I like you better dead,” Louise replied cheerfully. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? Mrs. Plackett, who was so dead-set against me studying science…”

Stout Alice giggled. “
Dead
set.”

Louise grinned. “Very funny. She who opposed my scientific interests so strenuously is now the subject of my experiment.” She shook her jars slightly, then held them both up to Dour Elinor and Stout Alice. “Now, girls, what do you see?”

The other girls had all entered the room at the sound of Alice’s headmistress impersonation.

Dour Elinor peered into the jars. “Blue,” she said with some surprise. “Shocking blue.”

“Prussian blue,” Pocked Louise said. “Signifying crystalline prussic acid.”

The other girls looked at one another. Louise’s manner suggested this was a significant announcement.

“Meaning?” Disgraceful Mary Jane asked. “What is prussic acid?”

Pocked Louise folded her arms across her chest. “Cyanide,” she said. “One form of cyanide is used for blue dye. Cyanide salts are one of the most potent and deadly poisons known to man. They kill almost instantly. And they’re relatively easy to purchase at the chemist’s shop. A common use is rat killer.”

“But what does it all mean?” asked Dull Martha. “What has cyanide to do with us?”

Pocked Louise looked to Dour Elinor to translate. Elinor explained in her low, spectral voice.

“Poison,” she told Dull Martha, “in the veal. Louise has just tested it and found cyanide in the meat.”

The color drained from Dull Martha’s cheeks. “The veal was poisoned?”

Elinor nodded. “It was the only thing both Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding ate that we did not. And, last night, after you’d gone to bed, we found a dead stoat at the compost pile that had eaten a bite of leftover veal.”

Martha wrenched off her glasses and hid her face in her hands. Loud sobs escaped her throat. “The veal!” she cried. “The veal killed them, and
I
cooked the veal!”

Smooth Kitty
f
lew to Martha’s side and placed her arm around Martha’s shoulders. “We don’t think
you
did it, dear,” she said.

Dull Martha’s hysterics could not be assuaged. “Did I use the wrong pan?” she wailed. “Is veal something that … reacts with iron … like tomatoes?” She snuf
f
led loudly. “Did I use the wrong recipe in the book? Barnes said Mrs. Plackett wanted fried cutlets. She left the marker in the book. I fried them in lard with salt and ground pepper. Was … the pepper actually … rat killer?” She removed her hands from her face, revealing shockingly red eyes, and tear tracks streaming down her cheeks. “I-I-I always do things stupidly! It’s why everyone thinks I’m so dull. My brothers called me The Dunce. Father and Mother always said it’s a pity I’m so unintelligent.” Her sobs racked her whole body. “But … I’m sure … they always thought … I was h-harmless, and now I’ve gone and
murdered two people
!” She made no more attempt to hold back her tears.

Aldous ran to her and licked her face frantically, his bobbed tail wagging at a furious clip.

“Hush, sweetheart,” Disgraceful Mary Jane ordered, scooping up Martha and placing her head in her lap, where she could smooth Martha’s wayward hair from her face. “It wasn’t the pan or the recipe. Louise has just shown us it was poison. Hush! No one thinks you murdered those two old wretches. Someone else must have poisoned the veal before you ever got to it.”

“That’s right,” Alice said stoutly. “You’d no more murder a headmistress than…”

“Conjugate a Latin verb,” Dour Elinor offered.

“Hush, Elinor!” Smooth Kitty hissed.

“… than
f
ly to the moon.” Alice glared at Dour Elinor.

“But who else could have poisoned the meat?” Dear Roberta asked. “Meaning no offense, Martha. But the meat came straight from the grocer’s delivery boy, Saturday night. I remember the little packages, all wrapped in paper and string, along with the potatoes and beans and the other things Mrs. Plackett had ordered.”

“We were at church all morning,” Pocked Louise said. “Half the town knows the larder door is never locked. Anyone could have slipped inside during church and poisoned the meat.”

Dull Martha’s eyes were wide. “You mean, anyone could have done it?”

“So it seems.”

Martha drew a long, ragged breath. “If anyone could have done it, there’s little reason to suppose I did, isn’t there?”

“Not a smidgeon,” Disgraceful Mary Jane replied. “Put it right out of your pretty head.”

Martha sat up straight at these words. “Oh, I’m not pretty,” she said, and an objective observer noting her disheveled hair, red eyes, and puffiness might have, at that moment, agreed. “Not like you. You’re a great beauty.”

“Perhaps,” Mary Jane conceded, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t be as sweet as an angel yourself. Without your glasses on—and when your nose isn’t running—you’re simply charming.”

CHAPTER 10

Louise dumped her noxious cyanide samples in the rhododendrons and opened the window to clear out any vapors. The other girls abandoned the schoolroom for the parlor, and Louise joined them there. Dull Martha sat curled in a ball on the sofa, heaping coals of guilt on her head for ever suspecting Disgraceful Mary Jane after she’d been so kind to her. She hoped Dear Roberta would never divulge it to a living soul. Stout Alice sat in the rocking chair, lost in thought. Smooth Kitty browsed through a stack of papers on her lap. Dear Roberta dangled a bit of yarn for little Aldous, who cavorted and leaped about delightfully in his lust to snap it.

“Louise,” Dear Roberta said, “why was one jar of liquid more blue than the other one?”

Pocked Louise frowned and considered. “That’s to be expected, I think,” she said after some thought. “Different specimen sizes, inexact measurements.”

Smooth Kitty lay down her papers. “Everyone, I think we need to hold a meeting. If we are to remain here as independent young women, we need a source of funds on which to live. I have spent the afternoon looking through Mrs. Plackett’s papers, and…”

“Mrs. Plackett’s papers!”

The girls all turned in astonishment toward Pocked Louise, the source of this outburst.

“Funds!” that agitated young lady continued. She fixed each of them with a look of pure incredulity.

“Yes, Louise?” Kitty was clearly miffed. “Is something the matter?”

Pocked Louise threw up her hands. “Here we sit holding
meetings
, and discussing
funds
and
papers,
when I’ve just proven conclusively that there’s a
poisoner on the loose
, who killed two people right here in this house. Who’s to say he won’t strike again and murder us all? Our time for dilly-dallying is past. This isn’t a game of playing house. We have to solve this crime!”

Stout Alice smiled to herself. That Louise had pluck. Not many twelve-year-old girls could stand up to so many older girls like that. And clearly, she’d rattled Kitty.

But Smooth Kitty was not one to let anyone, much less a younger girl, discompose her for long. “No one is suggesting that we ignore the mystery, Louise,” she said stif
f
ly. “But if we don’t attend to funds and papers, our attempt to remain here will fall to pieces, and we’ll soon run out of food.”

“If we ignore our poisoner, we’ll end up choking on our food and sharing Mrs. Plackett’s fate,” retorted Pocked Louise.

Dull Martha and Dear Roberta seized one another’s hands and held on tight.

Disgraceful Mary Jane stretched and rose languidly to her feet. “There, there,” she said, “let’s not quarrel. You’re both right. I propose that Kitty be placed in charge of funds and paperwork and Louise be appointed our resident Sherlock Holmes. All in favor…”

“Our resident
who
?” inquired Dull Martha.

“Sherlock Holmes,” repeated Mary Jane. “He’s the detective from
A Study in Scarlet
by A. Conan Doyle. Elinor, you’ve read it, haven’t you? I thought you read everything.”

Dour Elinor waved a dismissive hand. “That was popular a few years ago, but I was too deep into my Russian author phase to pay much attention to it.”

Stout Alice had no wish for another of Mary Jane and Elinor’s literary squabbles. Both were avid readers, but Elinor thought Mary Jane’s romance novels were frivolous tripe. Alice coughed to gain the
f
loor. “All in favor of Mary Jane’s motion that we appoint Kitty as our chief financier and Louise as sleuth, say aye.”

The room aye-d without delay. Kitty and Louise, seeing the consensus, aye-d also. Louise was inwardly thrilled at this vote of confidence from her friends, and if her ribcage swelled with a new sense of importance, she can be forgiven for that. She felt much more inclined to be magnanimous, so much so that she forgave Mary Jane for accusing her of over-thinking.

“I shall devise a plan of attack for my criminal investigation,” she announced. “Meanwhile, Kitty, please proceed with the financial matters you wished to share with us.”

Kitty had to hide her smile.

Dear Roberta, thinking a distraction might help keep moods tranquil, retrieved the linen Barnes had brought, and spread it out for everyone to begin working on the strawberry social tablecloth. She armed each girl with a skein of red or green or gold silk thread and a small paper of needles. They began to embroider strawberries around the edge of the cloth, as promised for the strawberry social. All the girls, that is, except Dour Elinor, who was much engrossed in her sketching, and Smooth Kitty, who was preoccupied by a lap full of ledgers and documents.

“I found a statement of accounts,” Kitty began, “including copies of the bills she sends monthly to our families. Now, I’m a fair hand at penmanship, and Elinor does splendid work imitating others’ hands. Between us two I believe we can continue producing the monthly statements, mailing them to our families, and collecting tuition on which to support ourselves. So that solves the money problem for the time being.”

Mary Jane, Alice, Louise, and Elinor nodded, but Dear Roberta looked aghast. “You mean we shall deceive our parents and rob from them in order to live?”

Smooth Kitty had not anticipated this objection. Her mouth, it must be said, dropped open in a most un-Kittylike way.

“Nonsense, Roberta,” Disgraceful Mary Jane replied. “Our parents support us financially regardless of where we are. It’s their moral duty. Kitty is merely proposing that we take on the management ourselves.”

Dear Roberta’s conscience would not be so easily dismissed. “But they believe they’re paying for us to receive an education,” she said. “We will be taking their money under false pretenses.”

“Nothing of the kind,” Smooth Kitty replied. “We shall continue our studies on an independent basis and help each other according to our individual strengths. You can teach music, Martha. Mary Jane was always a better dancer than Mrs. Plackett. Elinor, you can teach French, from those years you lived in Paris as a child…”

“We shall read Victor Hugo,” Elinor said, and Mary Jane groaned.

“That’s the idea.” Kitty nodded approvingly. “Louise, of course, will teach science, I can take math, and Roberta, needlework. See? We shall continue to be educated. Are you content, Roberta, dear?”

Roberta looked anything but content, but she nodded.

“Very good. Now I must return once more to the matter of money. As I said, I’ve been reviewing Mrs. Plackett’s papers, and her ledger has some mysteries of its own. I see line items for the grocer, for coal, for Dr. Snelling, for the dry goods shop, for the chemist, for Farmer Butts for milk and for pasturing her pony, for Amanda Barnes’s salary, and so on. All the school’s basic expenses. The tuition money she receives ought to be enough to cover everything. But it isn’t. I see several substantial checks drawn on her accounts which are labeled simply, “Cash.” No explanation is given for these withdrawals. I can’t account for it. But together, the withdrawals exceed the income.”

Pocked Louise lured little Aldous back from Dull Martha with a biscuit. “Then why is Mrs. Plackett not bankrupt?”

“Because she has a trunk full of Spanish doubloons buried in her cellar,” announced Disgraceful Mary Jane.

“Really?” Dull Martha’s eyes were wide.

Mary Jane laughed. “No, silly. I’m making a joke. Remember the coins Kitty found in their pockets? They were probably fakes anyhow.”

“Yes, but didn’t Doctor Snelling say Captain Plackett was said to have left his wife a fortune?” asked Dear Roberta.

Smooth Kitty nodded slowly. “So he did, Roberta,” she said. “But remember what Miss Fringle said. If Mrs. Plackett possessed a fortune, others would be sure to know. And Mrs. Plackett would likely never have opened her school if she were rich, nor live on such spare economy.”