The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place

by Julie Berry

  “Worms,” said Dour Elinor.

  “Soil research,” said Pocked Louise.

  “Gardening,” said Dear Roberta.

  “Kitty said to,” said Dull Martha.

  The girls exchanged nervous glances. Henry’s brow furrowed in deep concentration.

  “Exactly.” Smooth Kitty nodded.

  Henry Butts blinked. “Exactly what?”

  “Exactly as I said,” she replied. “We’re planting a tree.”

  Henry scratched his scalp. “Did you say that?”

  “Naturally.” Smooth Kitty found Henry Butts to be easy prey. He didn’t even require Disgraceful Mary Jane’s charms to manipulate.

  “Fall’s a better time to plant a tree,” Henry Butts pointed out.

  “I knew we should have consulted with you, Henry.” Disgraceful Mary Jane beamed at him.

  “Nevertheless, we are planting a tree now.” Smooth Kitty laid the matter to rest. “We are planting a cherry tree.”

  This galvanized Henry Butts into excited action. “Then you’ll want manure,” he cried. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with a heaping load.” And, whistling to Brutus, he turned and bolted off down the brambly stretch of Prickwillow Road that connected Saint Etheldreda’s with the Butts Farm.

  “Isn’t that thoughtful of him to fetch us manure?” Dull Martha said wistfully. “He’s a generous person.”

  “Oh, yes.” Disgraceful Mary Jane sneered. “So generous he’s going to bring us boatloads of smelly manure for our very own.”

  “In which we will bury Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding,” Pocked Louise pointed out.

  The girls froze.

  Disgraceful Mary Jane was the first to snort.

  Dear Roberta tried hard not to laugh but even she couldn’t help it.

  “Farewell, Old Stinky Face,” Smooth Kitty declared. “If you hadn’t been such a sourpuss to us, we would have said no to Butts Farm manure as your eternal rest. Come, girls. We must finish quickly.”

  They heaved into the work once more with grim determination.

  “Do you suppose Henry really did see someone here last night?” Dear Roberta inquired.

  Disgraceful Mary Jane laughed lightly. “Certainly he did. His own shadow.”

  Dull Martha pushed her hair out of her eyes, which left a muddy smudge across her forehead. “If he only saw himself, why would he bother to come and tell us?”

  “Maybe,” Pocked Louise said, “he saw us last night and thought we were the intruders.”

  “That makes sense.” Smooth Kitty nodded.

  “But we heard the cooing sound the first time well before then,” Dour Elinor pointed out.

  Mary Jane, who was stronger than she looked, heaved a heavy rock loose from the claybed. It released its hold on the soil with a loud schlock. “I’m certain it was him,” she declared. “He spies on us all a good deal more than you realize. I’ve even seen him point his mother’s opera glasses our way.” She wrestled the melon-sized stone out of the hole, which was finally beginning to look like a grave. “Who else could it have been?”

  Dour Elinor’s spade sliced through a shaft of pear tree roots. “The murderer.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The grave was nearly dug when Henry Butts returned with his wheelbarrow heaped with pungent manure.

  “We are truly in your debt, Henry.” Smooth Kitty curtseyed for his benefit. “I wonder if we might trouble you for one more favor?”

  Henry fumbled his hat off his head, leaving his sandy hair sticking every which way. “What can I do for you, Miss Katherine?”

  Kitty slipped her arm through his and steered him toward his home. Farming, she noted, does no harm to one’s muscles. “You know dear Miss Fringle, of course? The choir mistress?”

  Henry nodded.

  “She visited us last evening and twisted her ankle. She passed the night at the school with us because she was in no state to walk home. I wonder if you’d be willing to drive her home in your handsome little cart.”

  “Of course.” Henry looked relieved once again to have something to do other than visit with the young ladies. “Let me go wash and hitch up Mrs. Plackett’s pony, and I’ll be right back.”

  Henry and Brutus bolted off through the leafy path toward the farm, and the young ladies put their shovels away for the moment.

  “Time to wake Alice up, before Miss Fringle rouses and begins asking her questions,” Smooth Kitty said.

  They left their muddy boots at the door, hurried softly indoors, and washed their hands in the kitchen. Kitty went upstairs and slipped into Mrs. Plackett’s bedroom, prepared to whisper Stout Alice into wakefulness, and found to her surprise that Alice and Miss Fringle were deep in conversation.

  “Oh! Excuse me, I didn’t mean to intrude,” Kitty stammered.

  “Not at all, young lady,” Miss Fringle said generously. “Your headmistress and I were just having a bit of a chitchat about poor Julius and his uncle, Mr. Godding.”

  “I see,” Kitty said slowly. And she did see. Stout Alice lay with her back turned slightly toward Miss Fringle, and her face pointed toward the doorway where Kitty stood. Alice appeared to be working hard not to laugh. Miss Fringle looked like another creature altogether with her gray hair rumpled on the pillow, and her spectacles missing.

  “Reach me my glasses, young lady,” Miss Fringle ordered. Smooth Kitty slipped them from her pocket before the choir mistress could discover that they’d never been on the nightstand.

  Kitty returned to Alice’s side of the bed. “Now, Mrs. Plackett, dear,” she said, “do let me help you up. There’s a matter in the kitchen that I wish to discuss with you before Miss Barnes arrives for her day’s work.” Kitty pretended to assist Stout Alice up and out of bed, making sure that Miss Fringle, whose powers of vision were restored, had no opportunity to see her face.

  They made it out of the room, and Kitty closed the door. Stout Alice shook with suppressed laughter.

  “Lady Macbeth, am I?” she declared once out of hearing range. “I don’t care what Grandmother says. I will pursue a career on stage!”

  The other girls clustered round Alice in the downstairs kitchen to hear how she’d managed it. Alice told them how she and Miss Fringle had carried on a conversation for nearly an hour, ranging in subject from Mrs. Plackett’s dead husband, Captain Plackett, to her two brothers, Geoffrey and Aldous, and Geoffrey’s dear son Julius. Miss Fringle’d had no shortage of scorn for Aldous—he was known to gamble!—and Alice’s parody of the choir mistress’s diatribe on his vices was highly amusing.

  “She kept saying, ‘I know he’s your brother, but it’s my duty to warn you of his dissolute ways, and I don’t mind saying it to your own face!’ Yet all the while she never had a glimpse of my face. Smart old puss!” Stout Alice shook with laughter.

  “Oh, well done, Alice, well done!” Disgraceful Mary Jane cried. “Bravely executed.”

  Alice took a bow.

  “A gambler, was he?” Smooth Kitty mused. “How very interesting. You don’t suppose…”

  “Suppose what?” inquired Disgraceful Mary Jane.

  “Well, he was murdered, after all,” supplied Pocked Louise.

  “Sssh!” Kitty hissed. “She’ll hear us!”

  Louise ignored this. “He was murdered. Could there be a connection? Over gambling debts, perhaps?”

  “Only if Mrs. Plackett was a gambler, too,” snorted Mary Jane. “I can see her now, all dressed in silks and feathers, at the casinos on the Riviera…”

  Pocked Louise considered this most unlikely image. Mrs. Plackett, a gambler? Mary Jane, on the other hand, would fit perfectly into the glittering splendor of the roulette table.

  “At any rate, now we know who Julius is,” Stout Alice observed. “That’s bound to come in useful.”

  “Hurry now, girls, we have no time,” Kitty said, catching sight of the kitchen clock. “Amanda Barnes will be here before we know it, and we need a plan. For right now, Roberta, dear, would you fix some bre
ad and butter and preserves for Miss Fringle? And Martha, would you heat some water for tea in case there’s time before Henry returns? Alice, you run upstairs so there’s no chance Miss Fringle will see you, and change into your own clothes. Elinor, Louise, find some old sheets we can use to wrap up the bodies. We need to get them out of sight the minute Henry’s taken Miss Fringle home.”

  Each young lady ran to follow Kitty’s instructions. Dull Martha and Dear Roberta prepared breakfast for Miss Fringle, and Disgraceful Mary Jane, not quite trusting them fully, delivered it to the invalid. Alice changed quickly, glad to be rid of her headmistress’s nightgown, and was downstairs as her own person when Henry Butts arrived to collect Miss Fringle. He led the choir mistress on his own strong arm to the cart and seated her comfortably. Pocked Louise appeared and announced her intention of riding along as far as the village. She had some purchases to make at the chemist’s shop, she said.

  “Fine, fine,” Kitty pulled Louise aside and whispered into her ear. “Purchase a young cherry tree if you can.”

  “Where?” Louise asked. “What if they don’t sell them at this time of year?”

  “Try the nursery shop, and if that fails, think of something,” was Kitty’s unhelpful reply. “We’re stuck now. We’ve got to plant a tree this morning.”

  Louise climbed in the cart behind Miss Fringle, and the party set off for Ely. Disgraceful Mary Jane had lugged and toppled Mr. Godding out of the armoire before the pony’s tail was gone from sight.

  “He’s stiff!” she gasped.

  “Of course he’s stiff. He’s dead,” Dour Elinor said.

  Mary Jane was unsatisfied with this excuse. “He’s seized up all crooked!”

  And indeed he was. His repose in the armoire had not allowed him to rest flat like a respectable corpse should. Rigor mortis had sealed his fate, with legs and arms bent every which way.

  “We’ll just have to bury him in a seated position,” Smooth Kitty said. “With … let’s see … one hand thrown over his forehead. What difference does it make? Let’s get wrapping.” They swathed the body in old cotton sheets. Stout Alice didn’t mind a bit when his gruesome face was out of sight behind the makeshift grave clothes. Mary Jane and Kitty worked as fast as she-spiders. Dour Elinor seemed rather put out by this. She apparently had cherished hopes of relishing this macabre experience.

  “Egyptian slaves spent weeks mummifying the pharaohs,” she sniffed. “At the very least, we should insert a probe up the nose to agitate and liquefy the brains. They’ll drip right out the nostrils.”

  “And that will benefit us how, exactly?” Disgraceful Mary Jane inquired. “Keep your revolting heathen suggestions to yourself, please. Can’t you see we’re in a hurry?”

  Dull Martha and Dear Roberta hung back from touching the bodies, so Kitty, Mary Jane, and Elinor went upstairs to wrap up Mrs. Plackett. Soon two bodies lay wrapped like laundry parcels at the rear kitchen door.

  “This is the most dangerous part of the whole game,” Smooth Kitty told the girls. “We’ve got to get them in the ground before anyone comes along and sees us doing it. Alice, you stand guard, and if anyone comes along, distract them somehow. Don’t let them anywhere near the gardens or the windows overlooking them. Most especially, keep Barnes at bay. She’s bound to turn up any minute. In fact, she’s nearly late. Mr. Godding first. Fly, girls, fly!”

  Stout Alice made a pretense of picking lilacs in the front gardens, while Kitty, Mary Jane, and Elinor each hoisted up a protuberance belonging to Mr. Godding and waddled out to their cherry tree grave. They deposited him in the cavity, only to discover that his irregular shape meant that the grave needed to be a good deal deeper. Kitty and Martha remained behind to dig while the other girls hurried back for Mrs. Plackett. Alice watched all this from a cautious distance, so intently that she failed, at first, to hear footsteps approaching up the path to the house.

  Her heart sank into her boots. In their hour of need, she had faltered at her post! She had to get this unwelcome person away somehow. Then she saw who it was, and her heart leaped up into her throat and nearly choked her. It was Leland Murphy, who was the youngest junior law clerk ever employed by Mr. Wilkins, the village solicitor with offices on High Street. Short, pale, with sparse whiskers, facial pustules, and a chin that sloped straight down to his Adam’s apple without any trace of jawbone, Mr. Murphy was Lancelot to Alice’s Guinevere. She found no flaw in him. The great and abiding question of her tender heart was whether he found a flaw in her. Thus far in his presence, fear had made her keep a shy and modest distance, almost to the point of muteness, but at this critical moment, she had not the luxury of such reserve.

  She ran to him along the gravel path. “Mr. Murphy! What a pleasure. What brings you here on this fine morning?”

  Poor Leland Murphy was so startled that he seemed to shrink within his skin to little more than bones wrapped in a greasy black coat. One hand, tucked underneath his lapel, clutched a leather folder of papers tightly.

  “Miss … Alice Brooks, is it?” he managed to say.

  That young lady obliged him by curtseying. “Kind of you to take notice of my name.”

  He nodded stiffly, looking quite miserable. “May I come in?”

  Poor Stout Alice suffered agonies over the outrageous boldness circumstance now forced upon her. She slipped her arm through his and led him back along the front garden walk. “Why go indoors on such a morning as this? Surely whatever business brings you here can be transacted outdoors, can it not?”

  Leland Murphy regarded Alice with a look that might have been terror, or loathing. Perhaps both, mingled. She couldn’t be sure. Whatever it was, he remained frozen in that gaze for far too long. His elbow, Alice observed, quavered, no doubt with revulsion.

  They stood there. Leland pondered the roof tiles, and Stout Alice examined the hedge. “I have papers for Mrs. Plackett,” the youth finally managed to say.

  How Stout Alice’s heart fractured into shards of mortification! Whatever hope she’d ever cherished of forging a closer acquaintance with Mr. Leland Murphy evaporated. The perspiration beading on his cheeks was proof of his distaste for her. This should come as no surprise. Was she not, this very morning, cast in the role of sixty-two-year-old woman? What charms could she hold for a dashing and eligible young man like Mr. Murphy, whose arm even now she brazenly clutched?

  “Excuse me.” He cleared his throat noisily. “Perhaps you did not hear me. I said I had papers for Mrs. Plackett.”

  “Of course,” Alice murmured. “I apologize. Why don’t you give them to me, and I will deliver them to her personally?” If all her hopes were dashed, Stout Alice would at the very least not abandon her mission. Her stoutness of person in no way eclipsed her stoutness of heart.

  Mr. Murphy’s Adam’s apple bobbed in anxious agitation. “I’m instructed to hand-deliver them to her only,” he said. “Mr. Wilkins was quite strict on that point. These are important papers.”

  “I comprehend you,” Stout Alice said. “Unfortunately, Mrs. Plackett has been unwell since last evening. She is resting now and cannot under any account be disturbed.”

  “Then I shall have to return.” Creases of worry appeared on the junior law clerk’s forehead. “Mr. Wilkins will be displeased with me.”

  Alice, ever the actress, set her shattered hopes aside and gazed directly into Mr. Leland Murphy’s eyes. “You can trust me, Mr. Murphy,” she said. “I will spare you Mr. Wilkins’s displeasure, and any need to make a second trip. I will make sure that these papers go directly to her private desk, and that she is notified as soon as she wakes.” At the Day of Judgment, she added inwardly, and not a moment before.

  She reached out her hand for the papers. Mr. Murphy’s hand trembled in indecision.

  Just then a footstep sounded farther up the road. Alice looked up to see Amanda Barnes, their daily domestic woman, walking slowly toward the house. Here was the true threat to the girls’ attempts to bury the bodies. If Amanda Barnes entered the hous
e, it wouldn’t be two minutes before she looked out a kitchen window and saw the burial in progress.

  Oh, the exquisite pain in Stout Alice’s broad heart! She must wrench herself away from Mr. Murphy, ending their first and final conversation, prevail upon him to give her the papers, forever sully his image of her as a well-mannered young lady, and evict him in twenty seconds’ time so she could face the imminent domestic servant threat.

  “Trust me, Mr. Murphy,” she repeated, her voice tremulous with intensity.

  As one under a darkly magical spell, Leland Murphy drew forth his hand and slowly surrendered the papers.

  “Thank you.” Alice curtseyed. “I must go. I will deliver the papers immediately, and I must greet our daily woman.” She turned to flee from Mr. Murphy’s side, where her presence was causing him so much awkwardness.

  “Miss Alice.” Leland Murphy’s voice had a strangled quality to it as he spoke her name.

  “Yes?” She paused, fully mindful of Amanda Barnes’s footsteps bringing her ever nearer, like impending doom.

  “There is a parish strawberry social on Wednesday evening,” the junior law clerk croaked. “Will you be in attendance?”

  Poor Stout Alice’s head was a jumble of confusion now. What could it mean? He must, surely he must only intend to use that occasion as an opportunity to check to see that the papers had been properly delivered.

  Mr. Murphy’s face was paler than chalk, yet his cheeks and pustules flamed vermilion. “Could I … would I … might I anticipate the pleasure of further conversation with you then?”

  Rhapsodies of roses and violins flooded Alice’s senses. “You may,” she breathed, then ran toward the house.

  CHAPTER 7

  Back at the grave site, Smooth Kitty, Disgraceful Mary Jane, Dour Elinor, Dear Roberta, and Dull Martha were having a much harder time than anticipated. Not only had Mr. Godding’s irregular posture forced a deepening of the grave, but the awkward spread of his limbs required a widening as well. He was like a little boy sharing a bed with his brother and refusing to keep to his half. The girls dug and maneuvered their cocooned contraband as fast as they could, but the stubborn bodies would not submit.