The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place (19 page)

Stout Alice scanned the lines of the letter once more. “What does she mean? ‘… it is already done … the matter is now settled.’
What
matter? What is now settled?”

“I suppose we’ll never know.” Kitty shook ashes out from her skirts. “It must have been some private family matter. Let’s hope it died with them.”

Pocked Louise took the letter back from Stout Alice. “I’m surprised at you, Kitty,” she said. “Where is your curiosity? Surely this is important. Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding have some disagreement, Mrs. Plackett does … something, and within a day, both are dead. There must be some connection. It’s a clue!”

Stout Alice nodded. “Louise is right. She mentioned Mr. Wilkins, the lawyer. Monday morning, Mr. Wilkin’s clerk, Mr. Murphy, brought us a newly signed copy of Mrs. Plackett’s will. It must be that the
something
she did involved her will.”

Pocked Louise’s eyes grew wide. “She must have changed it. And that change must have affected Mr. Godding.”

They both turned to Kitty. “Did she leave any money to Mr. Godding in the will?” Alice asked. “How much?”

Kitty frowned. She still felt miffed at Louise’s rebuke, and irked with Alice for figuring out that the letter referenced the will first. This troublesome business of day-to-day survival was muddling her wits. With finances to pinch, and shopping and groceries and laundering, who could remember the details of obscure wills?

But Kitty wasn’t about to abdicate her role as chief problem solver at Saint Etheldreda’s.

“Let’s go find the will and see,” she said.

They hurried inside. Kitty washed her sooty hands and Louise abandoned her wet laundry. They went straight to Mrs. Plackett’s private desk in her bedroom, where Kitty continued to store her ledger and lists of the invoices sent to their parents.

The will wasn’t there.

“Are you sure you left it there?” Pocked Louise inquired.

Smooth Kitty felt her pulse race. “Positive,” she said. “I always know what I’ve done with papers.” She scrabbled through the desk’s contents, searching every scrap and envelope.

“What about you, Alice, did you do anything with it?” Louise asked. “You first received it from Mr. Wilkins’s clerk.”

Stout Alice crawled along the
f
loor, searching through stripped bed pillows and blankets, in the nightstand, even under bedsprings. “Not a thing. I made sure to leave it with Kitty.”

“The will’s not the only thing missing,” Smooth Kitty said. “I had eight pounds, a half crown, two shillings and sixpence in this drawer. It’s gone.”

“Girls!” Pocked Louise cried down the corridor. “Emergency conference!”

“Come down here,” Martha bellowed from the scullery. “We’re in the middle of a wash.”

They gathered there in the steamy washing room, aprons and feather dusters and all. Dull Martha loaded more coal into the stove, clanged its door shut, and heaved another bucket of water into the copper kettle on top. Her hair clung to her forehead in soggy wisps.

She and the other girls piled onto heaping baskets of laundry while Pocked Louise quickly explained the situation. “Do any of you know where the will might be?” she asked. “Have you come across any papers in your dusting and cleaning?”

They all shook their heads.

“I’ve gone over the entire parlor, and under every couch and cushion. Nothing there,” said Dour Elinor. “And the drawing room. Clean as a pin, and no papers in sight.”

Dear Roberta nodded. “The kitchen has no papers,” she said, “but I can search again.”

“We all can, if we must,” Disgraceful Mary Jane said, “but first, let’s think. If Kitty’s sure she left the will and the money here, then she did. If they’re now missing, someone stole them.”

“Aha!” Pocked Louise whipped her notebook and pencil out of her pocket and began scribbling. “Our murderer strikes again!”

Dull Martha blinked. “Has someone else died?”

“No,” Louise explained, “but it stands to reason that the person who murdered Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding is the same person who stole the will and the money. It’s a clue. A second crime. It may help me eliminate some potential suspects.” She frowned at her notebook in deep concentration.

“Say, who have you included in that list, just out of curiosity?” Disgraceful Mary Jane peered over her shoulder. She began to laugh. “Admiral Lockwood? Reverend Rumsey?
Letitia Fringle
? What a lark! Amanda Barnes, even?” Her laughter froze. “Why, you little sneak! You’ve written all of
our
names on the list!”

Smooth Kitty snatched the notebook away from Louise and perused it quickly.

“All of our names except her own,” she observed.

Pocked Louise’s face
f
lamed red. She seized her notebook back and closed the cover. “Why on earth should I write my name there?” she demanded. “I
know
I didn’t murder them.”

Stout Alice folded her arms across her chest. “But you think the rest of us might have?”

Pocked Louise clutched her notebook to her body. The accusing eyes of her classmates seemed to surround her, leaving no escape.

“You put me in charge of investigations,” Louise said hotly. “I can’t overlook the
possibility
that one of the students here might have done it. That doesn’t mean I think you
did
.” She reopened her notebook and waved it in their faces. “See? I put you low down on the list. That means you’re all highly improbable suspects. But suspects nonetheless.”

There was a horrible moment of staring. Then Disgraceful Mary Jane wrecked it, as she did so many things, by laughing out loud.

She rumpled Louise’s braids. “Never mind, turtledove,” she said. “You did well to write us all down. I don’t mind; I’m
f
lattered to be thought suspicious enough to make your list.”

“I’m not
f
lattered,” Stout Alice protested. “If I’d known I would be stuck impersonating Mrs. Plackett forevermore, I’d have poisoned the poisoner before he could poison her.”

Dour Elinor smirked. Dull Martha began counting on her fingers: “‘Poison the poisoner who…’ How was that again?”

Pocked Louise closed her notebook once more and slipped the pencil into her pocket. “There’s no point conducting an investigation if you’re not methodical about it.”

“Right you are,” Kitty said, and she
f
lashed a smile at Louise. “We’re sorry we got vexed. You can interrogate us all, if you like, and we’ll cooperate.”

“
I
don’t want to be interrogated,” Dull Martha said. “I didn’t murder them, and I find the whole topic of poison and murder quite terribly distressing.”

“Forgive me, Martha,” said Dour Elinor, “but you’re just not
interesting
enough to have wanted to kill them.”

Martha peeked out from over the hem of her apron. “Thank you, Elinor,” she said. “I take that as a compliment.” She looked at the other girls. “You can search my room for the money and the will,” she said bravely. “You can even search
my person
.”

“Heavens, no.” Smooth Kitty decided it was time for someone of sense to reassert authority. “I hardly think searching your person will be necessary, Martha, dear. We all trust you. You need to trust
us
when we tell you so.”

Dull Martha nodded penitently.

“There. That’s settled then.” Smooth Kitty eyed the other girls sternly, as though any one of them might be next to burst into unruly hysterics. “We must return to the original question. We shall search the house, but even if we mislaid the will somehow, I couldn’t have mislaid the money. This is my cash drawer. It points strongly to a thief. So we all must think. Who might the thief be? And why would a thief come and take a will, and money, but nothing else? There’s no silver or china missing, is there?”

Disgraceful Mary Jane shook her head. “I’ve just dusted and polished it all.”

“What about the jeweled elephant?” asked Stout Alice.

“Right where Kitty left it in the parlor cabinet,” Mary Jane replied. “Everything valuable in the house is where it belongs, except the cash. Our thief makes no sense.”

“Yes, he does,” Pocked Louise said, pacing the
f
loor and tapping her forehead, “if the thief only came looking for the will, then helped himself to the money while he was at it.”

“But this begs the critical question,” said Stout Alice. “Why would someone come to steal Mrs. Plackett’s will? Who even knew it was here?”

“That loathsome law clerk knew,” Disgraceful Mary Jane said. Pocked Louise’s eyebrows rose, and she reached for her notebook.

Stout Alice turned her back on her. “You’re awfully precious, Mary Jane,” she said. “Apparently only tall constables can please you. Mr. Murphy isn’t loathsome, and Louise, there’s no need to write
him
down. Why on earth should he steal it?”

“Why should anyone?”

Dear Roberta cleared her throat timidly. “Ahem. Someone might steal the will if it was in their interest to conceal it from ever being found. Such as, for example, when the prior will is more favorable to their interests. I’ve heard my uncle speak of such cases.”

Alice, Mary Jane, Louise, and Kitty all turned to Dear Roberta. She leaned backwards as if pushed by the weight of so much gazing. Kitty marveled yet again at how dear, innocent Roberta’s remarks contained more sense than she’d ever expect from her.

Pocked Louise had caught hold of the same thought. “You mean, someone would steal a new will if the old one served them better,” she said. “And the letter Alice found seems to suggest Mrs. Plackett had only just updated her will. That leaves the question: who is left out of Mrs. Plackett’s new will?”

“Everyone,” Dear Roberta said, looking puzzled. “Don’t you remember? She left everything to dear Julius.”

Smooth Kitty nodded. “Bless your memory, Roberta. You should be a lawyer someday.”

Dear Roberta laughed. “Impossible!”

“Then marry one,” Mary Jane suggested.

Martha handed Louise a wooden paddle from which a sopping bedsheet draped. Louise fed the sheet into the mangle and began to crank. “The stolen will,” she said firmly, as if to rein in unruly matchmaking impulses, “changes the game. Before, we were looking for the person who benefited most from the new will. Now,” she heaved the crank with great effort, “we want to know who benefits least.”

Smooth Kitty attacked a muddy frock dangling from a wash pail with a bar of soap.

“Mr. Godding would be the obvious choice,” she reasoned. “Mrs. Plackett’s letter suggests she changed her will in a way that Mr. Godding would find upsetting. But he died when she did, so he can’t be our murderer. It must be that someone else was a beneficiary of the old will.”

Pocked Louise wrenched the squeezed sheet from her mangle and dropped it into a basket. “This means that our murderer knew the will was about to change. He—or she, I suppose—tried to stop Mrs. Plackett from changing her will by killing her. Oh!” Her eyes lit up. “Perhaps the murderer also disposed of Mr. Godding so as to not share the inheritance with him. Then the murderer learned the will had been changed anyway, so he came here and stole it!”

Dour Elinor stirred the clothes in the washpail with the long paddle. “An all-too-common story,” she said ominously.

“Really?” Disgraceful Mary Jane laughed. “I should hope not. Perhaps you find stories like these in the dreadful Russian novels you read.”

Elinor ignored Mary Jane. “This could mean ‘darling’ Julius is in danger,” she said. “If the murder doesn’t want to share the inheritance, young Julius would become a prime target. And Mr. Wilkins, too, if he keeps another copy of the will at his office. I wonder if he does. The murderer won’t want to share a penny with a child nephew.”

“Merciful heavens!” Dear Roberta cried. “We must warn them both!”

Smooth Kitty took a deep breath, and tried to think how to be diplomatic. “We can’t, dear,” she said. “Not without giving away everything. This is all speculation. And Mr. Wilkins keeps the wills of hundreds of clients. Surely he has made provisions for his safety. As for Julius, the child is far, far away. We’re best doing nothing, except keeping a careful watch, and trying to solve the mystery ourselves.” She smiled. “If anyone can, it’s our Louise.”

Disgraceful Mary Jane tossed a pair of soiled stockings into the wash pail. “I’m hungry,” she said. “And we still need to bathe and dress for the strawberry social. It’ll take hours to set my hair. I have a special style I want to try. Freddie Quill said he would be there…”

“
Freddie
! Pff!” Pocked Louise snorted. “Never mind your hair. We must find out who else suffered when Mrs. Plackett redid her will.”

“And we shall, Louise,” Kitty said. “We shall pore over Mrs. Plackett’s documents with a magnifying glass and search for hints. There must be some. But not right now. The social is hours away, and each of us—even you, dear—must pretty up for it.”

CHAPTER 16

Dull Martha walked slowly down Prickwillow Road toward the Butts farm. Her errand was a brief one, and really she ought to hurry home to wash and dress for the strawberry social, but it was such a beautiful May afternoon, and she couldn’t make herself rush. Spring bulbs bloomed in Mrs. Butts’s
f
lowerbeds, and wild
f
lowers filled the gully alongside the road. Hairy ferns uncurled their tender green spines among last year’s black raspberry branches, and bees were hard at work sniffing and tasting. Such a fine day could only melt into a fine evening for a strawberry social.

Dull Martha had the task of walking to the Butts farm to ask Henry Butts if he’d hitch the Saint Etheldreda pony to his shiny cart and escort them to the parish social. Martha couldn’t believe she had asserted herself and secured this task alone. It was the sort of thing Disgraceful Mary Jane usually would finagle a way to do. And it was nearly impossible to dissuade Mary Jane from doing anything she wanted to. For all her superior talk about Henry Butts and his farmer’s boots, Mary Jane liked to be wherever young men were—any young men—and Henry Butts was young, male, and close at hand. Mary Jane liked watching her charms work their magic and didn’t care much who the victims were. Was it wicked of Martha to think so? She was secretly thrilled that Mary Jane’s attention was currently distracted by Constable Quill. Henry Butts was the first kind boy Dull Martha had ever met, and she hoped, secretly, to get to know him better.