The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place

by Julie Berry

  “And sleeping deeply,” added Stout Alice.

  “Being seriously ill,” said Dour Elinor.

  “But nothing that a night’s sleep won’t cure,” added Smooth Kitty, with a nervous glance at the doctor.

  “We could help you to an upstairs room,” offered Disgraceful Mary Jane.

  “You’ve already helped me to this excruciating injury,” Miss Fringle replied. “No, I shan’t hazard the stairs. Constance’s room will do. I don’t take up much space. Captain Plackett bought her a much larger bed than necessary when they married, but I always said he was an extravagant man. There’s room for us both.” She paused, then lowered her voice as if confiding in the girls. “Captain Plackett bought her a house that was too big, come to think of it, then up and died leaving her in need of pupils to pay its upkeep. But men are never famous for thinking ahead.”

  Dr. Snelling coughed suggestively. “If you don’t think ahead, Miss Fringle, and give that ankle some rest, I shall order your charming niece to confiscate your shoes and so confine you to your bed. As for extravagance, I recently heard Captain Plackett’s wealth from overseas was more than enough to leave Mrs. Plackett comfortably off.”

  “Pah! What wealth?” Miss Fringle snorted. “If there was wealth, I’d know.” The girls, exchanging silent glances, agreed. They ate their daily bread on Mrs. Plackett’s economy, and witnessed how she pinched and scrimped. They were quite certain she possessed no fortune to speak of.

  Dr. Snelling shrugged. “Idle gossip, perhaps.” He gathered his instruments back into his bag and checked his gold watch. “Nothing more to be done for you, Miss Fringle,” he said. “Mollie Bennion will have birthed and weaned her baby by the time I arrive if I don’t leave now, and then how shall I collect my fee? As you say, Mrs. Plackett sleeps soundly. I’ll leave a sleeping draught for her if she should wake and have trouble settling. See that she gets this, won’t you, young ladies?”

  All seven young ladies nodded solemnly.

  “She’ll sleep like the grave,” Dour Elinor said.

  Disgraceful Mary Jane pinched Elinor where no one could see.

  Miss Fringle’s eyes narrowed at Elinor’s remark, and Kitty worried a bit, but the spinster choir mistress only said, “Stand up straight, my girl. Posture is everything, and you’ve got a back like a camel.”

  “Good night, ladies,” the doctor said. “I’ll return in the morning.” He showed himself to the door.

  The door banged shut behind him, and the girls found themselves facing Miss Fringle.

  “Well?” She banged her cane once more. “Help me up, one of you. Not that one.” She glowered at Dull Martha.

  Smooth Kitty clutched the packet of sleeping powder in her hand. A glimmer of an idea began to stir.

  “Wait a moment, Miss Fringle,” she said. “First, let us build up the fire in Mrs. Plackett’s room. We wouldn’t want anything cold to disturb your sleep. I mean, the, er, cold night air. Or the sheets.” Or a cold corpse, she managed to not say.

  Pocked Louise’s eyes met Kitty’s in alarm. “Should I just go, er, tidy things up in that room a bit first? I left my, um, book in there earlier. When I was … reading to Mrs. Plackett.”

  Stout Alice and Disgraceful Mary Jane made jerky movements with their heads in the direction of Mrs. Plackett’s room.

  “No need.” Smooth Kitty smiled sweetly at the others, enjoying their looks of terror. “Miss Fringle is aware she’ll be sharing a bed with Mrs. Plackett.” She hoped her meaning would not be missed—they couldn’t remove Mrs. Plackett now or they’d have to explain her absence. “The two of them will be quite cozy together, once we build up the fire. Now, Miss Fringle, I know you’ve had a terrible shock to your nerves, being tripped and injured like you were. Let me bring a cup of chamomile to soothe you.”

  “Don’t need soothing,” the choir mistress barked. “Always sleep like a lamb. Only takes me half an hour or so to fall asleep.”

  “Wonderful,” Kitty replied. “Did you know, Mrs. Plackett’s chamomile won a prize at the Ladies’ Domestic Arts Council in Northampton last year?”

  Miss Fringle’s eyes narrowed. “What was she doing all the way over in Northampton? Cambridge isn’t good enough for her?”

  “It’s just that there’s such a demand for her prize chamomile.” She smiled. “Wait right here. I’ll be back in two shakes.”

  The other girls followed her downstairs to the kitchen. Once there, they shut the door and Kitty shoveled more coal into the cooking stove to heat water for Miss Fringle’s chamomile tea.

  “I thought she didn’t want tea,” Dull Martha said.

  “She’ll be itching to drink it now that you’ve made up this nonsense prize,” Disgraceful Mary Jane said. “Good thinking, Kitty.”

  “But why?” Dear Roberta inquired. “Why all this fuss over tea?”

  “The sleeping powders, obviously.” Pocked Louise seized the packet from Kitty’s pocket and read the dosing notes Dr. Snelling had written. “Must be sure not to over-drug the old lady, or we’ll have yet another body to deal with.”

  “And, oh, Saint Mary’s church just wouldn’t be church without its choir,” Dear Roberta mourned.

  “She’s not dead yet,” Dour Elinor pointed out.

  Stout Alice collapsed into a chair. “Birthday party! Darling little Julius! What next?”

  “Pish posh. Nothing to it.” Smooth Kitty patted Alice on the head. Truth to tell, she was feeling quite smug at the moment. It had been rather a stroke of brilliance, cooking up a trip to India for Mr. Godding. That got rid of him for now, and with pneumaria or dipthussis or malonia in the air—Kitty resolved to pay better attention in science class from now on—wait, there’d be no more science class, ever!—they could kill him off permanently from afar. If they could survive this horrendous night, Kitty was sure the young ladies of Saint Etheldreda’s School could conquer anything.

  “Elinor, will you go build up the fire in the bedroom?” she asked. “We want it nice and toasty so Miss Fringle won’t need to snuggle next to a cold corpse for warmth.”

  “But the light of the fire will make her see Mrs. Plackett more clearly,” Mary Jane said.

  “Not if we swipe her spectacles when we tuck her in,” Smooth Kitty replied. “We want her to see Mrs. Plackett. We want her thoroughly convinced she’s sleeping with a living Mrs. Plackett. In the night, after the fire’s died down and the drugs have made Miss Fringle quite unconscious, we’ll make the switch and get the body out of there.”

  “Switch?” Stout Alice inquired. “What will we switch for Mrs. Plackett’s body, a scarecrow?”

  Smooth Kitty studied Stout Alice.

  The latter girl took a step backward.

  “Oh, no, Kit. You wouldn’t.”

  Smooth Kitty placed her hands on Stout Alice’s cheeks and planted a little kiss on her forehead. “No scarecrow, dear,” she said. “Promise you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to say, but you’re simply the best for the job. We shall switch you for our dearly departed headmistress.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Stout Alice ran her hands about her thick middle and sighed. “I only have myself to blame for this, I suppose.”

  “You’re the ideal fit for the task,” Smooth Kitty said soothingly. “You’re a natural actress. Last Christmas, when we did our tragedy plays, you were—”

  “Lying in bed sleeping isn’t playing Lady Macbeth,” Alice said. “No need to try and make nice. I’m the best fit for the job because I’m the best fit for Mrs. Plackett’s clothes. I even have her horrid double chin.” Stout Alice composed herself bravely. “Never mind. I’d better go find one of her nightgowns and caps, and try not to think about having the figure of a sixty-year-old woman.”

  “Your complexion’s much nicer,” Pocked Louise called after her retreating form, but Alice ignored her. Dour Elinor slipped away to build up the bedroom fire.

  Pocked Louise handed Smooth Kitty a cup of chamomile tea. “Here you are. Brewed to perfectio
n and laced with sleeping draught. Miss Fringle will snore like a hound in no time. I’ll go clear off the dining room table. All our dinner things are still there.”

  Dull Martha stretched her arms high above her head and yawned. “I’m absolutely worn to death. Oh! What an unfortunate thing to say today.” She poured hot water from the kettle into the dishpan. “I’d better get washing up so we can all get to bed.”

  “Never mind, Martha,” Disgraceful Mary Jane said. “You cooked today, so I’ll wash. Off you go to bed.”

  A love light filled Dull Martha’s eyes as she gazed at the older girl. “Oh, would you? Thanks awfully. I’ll owe you.”

  “Not a bit, my little mouse. Trundle off, now. You too, Roberta. Nighty-night.”

  When both girls had trudged up the stairs, Smooth Kitty took a long look at Disgraceful Mary Jane. “That was kind of you.”

  Mary Jane shook her head and scrubbed some soap onto her dishwashing brush. “Penance. I was a beast to them earlier, when they let Miss Fringle in and then tripped her.”

  Kitty laughed and banked down the stove for the night. “We’re lucky they did. They saved our skins. Dr. Snelling was just about to discover Mrs. Plackett was no longer with us.”

  “Bless that poor dear Martha,” Mary Jane said. “She’s gone and used every pan in the house to cook dinner, I think. Here’s one for the beans, and here’s another for potatoes. One for boiled onions, and three for the veal! A roaster, and … These tiny frypans look like a doll should use them.”

  “She’s a bit of a doll herself. Pretty and—”

  “Head full of fluff.”

  “Ssh!”

  “You started it.” Disgraceful Mary Jane grinned. “Miss Fringle called her plain tonight.”

  “Of all the nerve!” cried Kitty. “Wait. Before, or after Martha tripped her? Never mind. Don’t answer that.” She seized the teacup and headed for the parlor, where a fidgety Miss Fringle awaited her.

  “What took so long?” she demanded. “Constance Plackett would never keep an injured guest waiting like this.”

  Kitty smiled with all her teeth. Call our Martha plain, will you? “I apologize, Miss Fringle. We were fixing some tea and warming up your room. Have a nice cup, now, why don’t you, and then I’ll show you to Mrs. Plackett’s room.”

  “I don’t need to be shown. I just need someone’s arm to lean on, since that idiot girl plowed me over.” Miss Fringle took a deep draught of chamomile tea and smacked her lips thoughtfully. “First prize in Northampton, did you say? They must have strange tastes over that way. This has a distinctly bitter overtone.”

  “Perhaps life is bitter in Northampton,” Kitty mused. “Bitter tea appeals to them.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Smooth Kitty helped Miss Fringle to her feet and steered her slowly to the bedroom. On their way to the bed, she spied some wads of cotton wool in a china dish on Mrs. Plackett’s dressing table, and had one of the bursts of inspiration for which she prided herself.

  “Here, Miss Fringle,” she said, handing two pieces of cotton wool to the choir mistress, “you’ll want these for your ears. Mrs. Plackett, truth be told, is quite a noisy sleeper.”

  Miss Fringle sat on the edge of the bed. “Help me with my boots, there’s a good girl.” She craned her neck to peer at Mrs. Plackett. “She’s quiet enough now, I’d say.”

  “She always starts her snoring phase after midnight,” Kitty replied.

  “Snoring! I detest snorers. My father, rest his soul, used to shake the roof.” She wadded the cotton pads into her ears. “It’s one of the reasons I thank the Lord I never married.” She yawned deeply. Her eyelids began to droop. “Mercy, I am tired. Must be the shock of that vicious attack catching up to me.”

  Kitty smiled to see the sleeping powders take hold. With the cotton wool in Miss Fringle’s ears, even if the sleeping drugs didn’t do their job, the old biddy would be less likely to wake up when they moved the corpse.

  “May I take your spectacles for you?” Kitty asked.

  Miss Fringle folded up her eyeglasses. “See that you put them where I can reach them in the night,” she said. “I’m quite blind without them.”

  “Of course,” Smooth Kitty purred. She slipped them into her dress pocket. “They’ll be right here on this night stand.”

  She waited upon the old lady until she was comfortably unbuttoned and tucked into bed, practically half asleep already, then blew out the lamps and bid her good night.

  She found the other girls congregating in the parlor. Dear Roberta and Dull Martha had already gone to bed in the room they shared. Disgraceful Mary Jane, Pocked Louise, and Dour Elinor had all changed into their nightgowns, and poor unfortunate Stout Alice had changed into one of Mrs. Plackett’s. She sat with shoulders rounded and a drooping lower chin, just as their former headmistress always used to do.

  “That’s Mrs. Plackett to perfection!” Pocked Louise giggled. “You really have a talent, Alice.”

  “Off to bed with you, Miss Dudley,” Alice said in a spot-on imitation of Mrs. Plackett’s cross voice. “Remember: beauty, that jewel to which every young lady should aspire, and you in particular, Miss Dudley, comes from taking adequate rest.”

  Louise laughed. “I was so sick of her carping on about my ugly skin. What does a scientist care if her skin is pocked?” Her expression grew worried. “Say, you don’t mean it, do you? About bedtime? Because I can stay up as late as the rest of you, if I want to!”

  Stout Alice ignored this and scratched her side morosely.

  Disgraceful Mary Jane shuddered. “Ugh, her horrid scratching. It’s a wonder she ever made a man want to marry her.”

  “Perhaps the captain was also a scratcher,” Dour Elinor said. “Those seafaring men catch fleas from rats. Perhaps they scratched one another.”

  “Coo! Coo!”

  They gazed out the dark window toward the garden from where the sound came.

  “Henry Butts will get an earful from me in the morning,” Disgraceful Mary Jane said.

  “First thing we should do, I think, in our life without adults, is get a bulldog,” Stout Alice declared. “Someone to scare away farm boys and intruders, and bite policemen.”

  “Not if the policemen are handsome,” Mary Jane said.

  “But what if it isn’t Henry Butts out there?” Dour Elinor said. “What if it’s someone with more sinister intentions?”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane began unpinning her braids. “If it was, they wouldn’t coo their fool heads off.”

  Stout Alice shook her head. “I still can’t believe it. Murders. Two of them right under our noses.”

  “I know.” Dour Elinor shivered. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

  Stout Alice sniffed in disgust. Then she sniffed again and pinched a fold of her headmistress’s nightgown to her nose. “Eugh. This smells of Mrs. Plackett. After a long afternoon in the vegetable garden.”

  “Take heart,” Smooth Kitty said. “By tomorrow Mrs. Plackett and her odors will be resting in the vegetable garden permanently. We’ll launder all her clothes.”

  “Shouldn’t Louise and I perform an autopsy first?” Dour Elinor inquired. “I can handle the bodies, and Louise can test the specimens.”

  Disgraceful Mary Jane clutched at her stomach. “Really, Elinor,” she snapped. “Sometimes you go too far. Handle the bodies? Even Constance Contrary and her ghastly brother, Aldous the Arch-fiend, deserve at least enough respect not to be mangled by school-maidens before they reach their eternal rest. Chop them open to find … what? Daggers in their bellies?”

  A wild light flashed in Dour Elinor’s heavy-lidded dark eyes. “Poisons,” she said. “Once they’re buried in the gardens, crucial evidence goes with them, lost forever.”

  Pocked Louise sat upright. “Oh! What’s the matter with me?”

  They all stared at her. “I don’t know, dear, what is the matter with you?” Smooth Kitty asked.

  “Poisons. Evidence. Of course, of course!” She grip
ped the armrests of her chair feverishly. “The food. When we cleaned up dinner, what did we do with the food?”

  “Scraped it into the slop bucket like always,” Disgraceful Mary Jane replied. “Calm down, little Louise. I dumped it on the compost pile while Kitty took Miss Fringle her tea.”

  Pocked Louise sprang to her feet. “Come on! There’s not a moment to lose!”

  She grabbed a candle, lit it in the coal embers of the parlor fire, and ran downstairs to the kitchen and from there, outside in her bare feet. The bewildered older girls followed suit and brought candles with them.

  Chill evening air caught them like a slap in the face after the drowsy warmth of the parlor. The grass was scratchy and damp with dew on their bare feet. Church bells rang out for ten o’clock, and all the girls jumped. Their short walk to the compost heap suddenly felt pregnant with danger.

  “Watch out for Henry Butts,” Disgraceful Mary Jane warned. “If he tries to kiss me I’ll stab him with a pitchfork.” She paused. “Unless, perhaps, he’s a nice kisser, in which case I’ll wait a minute or two, and then stab him…”

  “Hush with your foolish kissing talk,” Stout Alice panted. “Louise, we all ate the food. If it was poisoned, wouldn’t we all be … Oh! Of course. The veal!”

  They stopped in their tracks, looking like a ring of ghosts in the dark night, with wavering candlelight playing over their pale faces and nightdresses.

  “Martha cooked the veal,” Smooth Kitty whispered.

  Stout Alice shook her head slowly. “She wouldn’t.”

  “She couldn’t!” Disgraceful Mary Jane cried.

  “By accident, she could,” said Dour Elinor ominously.

  “She didn’t!” Alice insisted.

  “Come on.” Pocked Louise urged them onward. “We must find that veal.”

  “It’ll be revolting now, all mushed up with the compost and cold gravy and slimy beans.” Disgraceful Mary Jane grimaced at the thought.

  They reached the compost pile, hidden behind the woodshed, where its odors wouldn’t reach the chairs by the flowerbeds in the sunny back garden. Here there was no trace of light from the parlor windows, and the girls’ candles could scarcely penetrate the thick darkness. The compost pile was a blur of indistinct rottenness, and the smell made their stomachs clench.