by Julie Berry
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 floor, 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! Heaven help us. 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 flamed 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 flattered to be thought suspicious enough to make your list.”
“I’m not flattered,” 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 flashed 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 floor 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 backward 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 Darling Julius.”
Smooth Kitty nodded. “Bless your memory, Roberta. You should be a lawyer someday.”
Dear Roberta laughed. “Impossible!”
“Then marry o
ne,” 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, 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 wash pail 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 murderer 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 change 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 flowerbeds, and wildflowers 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.
She reached the gardens surrounding the farmhouse. Mrs. Butts’s superb husbandry was in evidence everywhere—in smart red geraniums blooming in gleaming white pots, in fat speckled chickens roaming and pecking, in smooth white gravel lining the walks up to the bright green door, in the fragrance of rhubarb pie wafting from the kitchen windows. Martha felt a pang of terror, of inadequacy, and quailed at the thought of approaching the farmer’s house, never mind the farmer’s son. Who was she, Martha called Dull, still so young, and no prettier than the spectacles pressing down upon her nose, to dare to strike up an acquaintance with Henry? She turned her steps toward the barns instead, and wondered if she could pretend she’d only come to visit Merry, their pony.
She found the gentle creature leaning out of his stall, apparently in some conversation with a pair of sheep, who wandered off to the far corner of their pen when Martha approached. Merry was a sociable pony, and he whickered at the sight of Martha. She stroked his long face and pressed her palms into his cheeks. He sniffed suggestively at the bouquet of wildflowers she’d tucked into her apron pocket.
“They’re too pretty to eat, Merry lad,” she said. “Let’s braid them into your mane instead.” She found a brush and comb hanging on a nail and set to work grooming Merry’s mane, weaving in delicate strands of wildflowers along with his own thick dark hair.
“You’ve got a good hand with him.”
Martha was so immersed in her work that the voice shocked her, and she jumped.
“I’m sorry. I’ve startled you.”
She turned to see Henry Butts in the doorway, still gripping the handles of a wheelbarrow full of straw. She ducked behind Merry and sank her fingers deep into his mane. How, exactly, did one respond to compliments from boys? Mrs. Plackett’s comportment lessons had never said. For Martha, this was a first. It felt nice, but it left her unsure of what to do with herself.
“I’m sorry to have come without asking,” she said.
Henry set the wheelbarrow down and approached the pony. He ran his fingers along the braided portion of Merry’s mane. “Merry belongs to the school,” he said. “You can visit him anytime you like. He’d like more company, wouldn’t you, you old flirt?”
“Flirt” made Dull Martha think of Disgraceful Mary Jane, and then of her own plainness, and her spectacles, and how she always managed to say the wrong thing, or miss the crucial point of important conversations. And here she’d felt, just a moment ago, so happy.
“Did you come to see Mother?” Henry asked. “Some message from Mrs. Plackett about the milk?”
The thought of an interview with Mrs. Butts made Dull Martha quail. Her temper was as famous as her cottage cheese. “No,” she said. “No message about the milk.”
“Just as well,” Henry said. “Mother says there isn’t room in all of Ely, much less on Prickwillow Road, for her and Mrs. Plackett. Whenever she complains about the milk, Mother’s banging pans and swearing bloody vengeance for days.”
Dull Martha’s fingers froze. “Bl-bloody vengeance, did you say?”
Henry nodded. “And milk’s only the half of it. They’ve been fighting over the fence that divides your property and ours these past five years at least.”
“Gracious.” Dull Martha tried to process her spinning thoughts. “I didn’t know.”
Was it possible? Should she mention it to Louise? Could anyone in the world begin to believe that Mrs. Butts, the supremely efficient farmer’s wife, could have efficiently poisoned her widow neighbor and her bachelor brother, all of a Sunday evening?
Henry’s voice jolted Dull Martha’s t
houghts once more. “That’s some fine fancywork you’ve done, Miss Martha.”
He remembered her name. Among so many girls, he remembered. Her face began to feel warm, and she realized she was starting to blush. This wouldn’t do. She’d best get her errand over with and fly home. Why, oh, why didn’t she leave this task to Disgraceful Mary Jane, or any of the other girls?
“Henry, will you take me to the strawberry social?”
Henry Butts’s mouth opened slightly, like a carp’s. He looked like a schoolboy who can’t guess the answer to a teacher’s question, and the teacher wields a strap.
He seemed to need help, so Martha supplied it. “In your cart? With Merry?”
She waited in agony for his answer. Would he, or would he not take them?
Then she realized something had gone wrong. She knew the feeling well—a sort of buzzing in her ears that meant her dull brain and her wayward tongue had said the worst possible thing yet again. She groped desperately through her memory for the words that had passed her lips, still hanging suspended in the air between them.
Will you take … me …
She clapped her hands over her mouth, turned, and ran from Mr. Butts’s barn.
* * *
“Poison is a woman’s weapon,” Pocked Louise told Dour Elinor. They’d been sitting in the drawing room for an hour, as ready for the strawberry social as they saw any need to be, while the other girls still attended to their toilettes.
“You sound proud of it,” Elinor observed.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” Louise flipped through the pages of her notebook. “I don’t condone killing, but if killing happens anyway, then I think women go about it much more sensibly. Leave it to men to be loud and violent and messy about the business. It’s egotistical of them. It’s not enough to eliminate their enemy. No. They must conquer them face to face and watch them plead for mercy, whereas women dispatch victims quickly and silently.”
Elinor picked up a sketchbook and began to draw. “Men might say poison isn’t sporting.”
“Yes, and men think that organizing parties of dozens of riders and hounds to chase down one poor fox is sporting.” Louise snorted. “Men’s opinions are irrelevant.”