The Truth About Verity Sparks

by Susan Green

  The gas was still burning in the hall, and I wondered about that. Usually all the gas jets were turned off when the servants went to bed, but everything had been in an uproar today, so no wonder if the household was topsy-turvy. I would turn them down on my way back upstairs, I decided.

  Antony was in his case in the conservatory, but Cleopatra had been put in Mrs Morcom’s studio, and the room was hot, stale and stuffy from having a fire all day. I held my candle to the glass, and there she was, coiled around her six precious eggs.

  I knew I had to be careful not to disturb her. She had no venom, of course, so her bite couldn’t kill; it would just hurt a bit, like being scratched by a cat. Or so SP said. Nothing to be frightened of.

  All the same, I was trembling as I raised the lid of her case. She stayed still as a statue, so I propped it open, removed the rock, put it down and shut the lid again. She stirred but didn’t uncoil, thank goodness, for I don’t know how I’d have dealt with a restless python on my own. I nudged the hot rock out from the hearth with the poker and wrapped it up.

  “Bother,” I said to myself. Now I’d have to prop the lid open again in order to get the new rock in. I fumbled it, and made a noise, and Cleopatra raised her triangular face and flicked her tongue at me. “Tasting the air,” SP called it. Snakes don’t have noses, so they smell with their tongues. I just hoped I didn’t smell too good.

  I’d placed the hot rock in the case without a bite when I heard a noise. Footsteps were coming towards me though the conservatory.

  “Is that you, Mrs Cannister?” I called. There was no answer, and I called again. “Mrs Cannister?”

  No answer, but a figure loomed in the doorway. In the dim and shadowy light it took a few seconds for me to work out who it was.

  “Alexander.” My heart was thumping so hard it hurt. “You frightened me.”

  “So sorry.” He sketched a bow. “But I wouldn’t have thought there was much that could frighten the intrepid Verity Sparks.”

  I felt a bit cross. “Well, you did,” I said. A thought struck me. He must have come from Mr Tissot’s, and a visit like this in the middle of the night could only mean one thing. “Kathleen,” I faltered. “Is she …?”

  “Kathleen?” he repeated in a puzzled voice. “Ah, Kathleen. There is no change.”

  “Oh,” I said. Now it was my turn to be puzzled. “I thought you must have come to tell me she had passed away.”

  “No.”

  “Did Judith send you for something?”

  “Miss Judith? Yes, yes, she did.” But he didn’t say what. He moved forward to warm his hands by the fire. “My mother died young too, you know.”

  He seemed different tonight. Odd. I wondered whether Kathleen’s illness was affecting him more than he knew. “This must make you very sad,” I ventured.

  “Not terribly. I was only a baby when she died, and I don’t remember her. Papa was both mother and father to me. You have lost both parents, Verity?” He sat down on one of the armchairs.

  “Yes. My adopted parents.” There seemed no harm in confiding in Alexander. I sat in the other chair. “I don’t know who my real parents are, but we are on the case, as SP would say.”

  “And have you got very far?”

  “No. We’re at a bit of a standstill.” I had a sudden idea. “Do you speak French, Alexander?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Can you tell me what this means?” I repeated what Mrs Vic had said. I spoke slowly, faltering a bit, but I knew I had it right.

  “Mon Dieu.”

  “My God.” He sounded amused.

  “Ce n’est pas possible. Il n’est pas …”

  “It’s not possible. He’s not …”

  “Lyosha. Oh, non, non. That’s no, no. Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what does Lyosha mean?”

  He was looking at me very strangely. “It’s a name, Verity. A nickname. Where did you hear it?”

  “It’s just something someone overheard,” I said, getting up. “Something to do with one of our investigations. It doesn’t make much sense.”

  “But it will, Verity. It will.”

  Alexander was staring at me now, and I didn’t like the look on his face.

  “Sit down, Verity. I am going to tell you a story. Actually, that’s why I came here tonight.”

  Alexander was acting so oddly, and I started to wonder if he’d had too much to drink. “Perhaps tomorrow,” I said.

  “Once upon a time,” he began, ignoring me, “there was a little boy and his father. There was no mother, no sisters or cousins or aunts to get in the way, and they were everything to each other. And then the father married again. The woman he married hated the boy.”

  I put my hand to my chest where the lucky piece, under my nightgown, suddenly felt hot against my skin. I had the strangest feeling: dizzy, and yet clear-headed at the same time. I could see the boy, like a picture in my mind. Solemn, pale, with white-blond hair falling over his forehead. It was Alexander.

  “The boy was very unhappy. It was never like that before, when it was just the boy and his father.”

  I heard shouting. The boy crying. Doors slamming. Then the boy was older: not solemn now, but sad. And angry.

  “Then something happened. The stepmother had a baby. A girl. The father doted on the baby. The boy loved the baby too, for she was very sweet, but he decided that if he was ever to be happy again–”

  The baby was wrapped up, sleeping, in a lacy shawl. All I could see of her were dark eyelashes and fat pink cheeks. She was in the boy’s arms, but I knew … My hands began to tingle. I knew she was in danger.

  “No!” I cried. “Don’t hurt her.”

  Alexander stopped, and I shivered, in spite of the warmth of the room. In the shadowy light from the fire and the lamp, his face looked like another person’s. Harder, colder.

  “It’s just a story, Verity,” he mocked.

  I was trembling. “You’re the boy.”

  “Yes, Verity. Clever Verity. Of course the boy is me. I didn’t hurt her. I wrapped her up and took her miles away, near the river, and left her at the docks. But the old woman, the stepmother’s nurse, was always creeping and spying and poking her nose in. She followed me and found the baby. There was a bit of fuss about that, I can tell you.” He gave a chuckle, for all the world like a naughty child.

  I put my hand to my chest again. The lucky piece was burning and that familiar tingle was prickling and itching my fingertips. I thought my heart would knock its way out of my chest. Beneath his smiles and fine manners, Alexander was still that angry, sad boy, jealous of his father’s love. Jealous of his father’s new wife, and his own half-sister. So jealous, that he …

  “Shall I go on?”

  “No, you’re frightening me.”

  Tingle, prickle, itch. What were my fingers trying to tell me? I hadn’t lost anything. I wasn’t trying to read an object. I tried to get up, but Alexander took hold of my wrists and forced me back down onto the chair.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he said, but every nerve in my body jangled with fear as he touched me.

  “Don’t.” I struggled against his grip. “Mrs Cannister! Etty!”

  He laughed. “Don’t bother with that. No one can hear you. Don’t you want to know how the story ends?”

  “No. Let me go.”

  “Shh. Listen. I wasn’t going to harm her. But the old nurse and the stepmother were so nasty to me, so horrible – they were going to tell my father such awful lies about me when he got back. I had to do it. Can’t you see that? I had to.”

  “What did you do?” I whispered, but I already knew. Miss Minnie Love’s album floated before my eyes. Tragedy Strikes Twice at Prima Donna’s Mansion.

  “The stepmother couldn’t sleep. She could never sleep. And she used drops – knock-out drops, she called them. She drank water at bedtime too. Warm water and honey and lemon, every night, for her precious throat. So I put lots and l
ots of drops in her honey water and she didn’t wake up. Then I thought, what if they find out about the drops? What if they can tell I gave them to her? So I started a fire in her bedroom. I did a good job too. Brought the whole second floor of the house crashing down. There was almost nothing left.”

  “You killed Isabella Savage,” I said. “You killed the baby.”

  “Oh, that was the problem. The baby wasn’t dead. The nosy Frenchwoman had taken her and given her to a friend. To keep her safe, she said, the interfering old crow. She shouldn’t have told me that. It was silly of her.” Alexander chuckled. “Well, I pushed her down the stairs. That showed her.”

  That showed her. He said it as if he was just a mischievous boy playing a trick. I stared at him, wondering where handsome, charming Alexander Savinov had gone. He’d murdered Isabella and Mrs Vic, and he’d tried to murder the baby as well.

  Ah! Suddenly I saw.

  “What is it, Verity Sparks? Have you only just worked it out?”

  “I was the baby, wasn’t I?” I was the baby Mrs Vic had given to her friend from the opera. I was the child of Isabella Savage and Pierre Savinov. I was Alexander’s half-sister.

  “You were always there, in the back of my mind. Where is she? Where is she? It kept me awake at nights, thinking that one day you might just pop up from nowhere, and expect your share.”

  “My share of what?”

  “Of everything,” Alexander said angrily. “Papa is quite rich, you know. Finding you was such a stroke of luck. You see, I’d employed Maxine – that’s Madame Dumas – to keep an eye on Papa. I didn’t want him to do anything silly, like get married and have children. She used to go to seances and spiritualist meetings with him, and after a while she realised that such gatherings were a useful way to obtain information about people. Wealthy people, grieving, eager for some message from the beyond. Often they would spill their secrets to a pretty, sympathetic Frenchwoman, and there might follow perhaps a bit of blackmail from time to time. I didn’t care what she did, as long as Papa remained single. I’d told Maxine about my lost sister. Not the whole story, of course – women are so stupidly sentimental – and so that night at Lady Skewe’s when Mrs Miller said ‘La Belle Sauvage’, Maxine was immediately alert. She hurried straight to my rooms to tell me. It was interesting, I thought. It was worth keeping an eye on you. But then she described to me a little medallion you wore. Silver, with a design of seven stars … I had to act.”

  My hand crept to my neck. “The lucky piece.”

  “Give it to me,” he ordered, holding out his hand.

  I didn’t even think of refusing.

  “Ah,” he said slowly, tracing the design with his forefinger. “I know that medallion well. It got me into a lot of trouble once. Isabella was silly and superstitious. She thought that if she wore this on the opening night, the opera would be a success. So I took it. I took it, and she was beside herself. How I laughed. But I wasn’t careful enough; I kept it. I hid it in my room and the old crow found it. I should have thrown it down a drain so it was lost forever.” He tossed it back to me. “Keep it. I’ve had my luck out of it. Thanks to Maxine and her sharp eyes, it led me to you.” He lowered his voice and, deep and smooth as black velvet, said slowly, “Miss Sparks, I presume?”

  I began to tremble. That nightmare voice in the dark. Foreign, but not quite. A gentleman’s voice, and yet …

  “It was you, not Dr Beale, who chased me that night after the seance.”

  “Yes, Verity, it was. I wanted to talk to you.” He chuckled, and the sound of it nearly froze the marrow in my bones. He hadn’t wanted to talk to me. He’d wanted to kill me. And now he was going to finish the job.

  “Alexander, no.” I tried to get out of the chair again but he hit me, hard, across the face.

  “You need to understand,” he said. “This is something I must do. Don’t make it difficult.”

  “Please …”

  My chair was directly in front of Cleopatra’s case, and I hadn’t put the lid back on. I sensed rather than heard the movement of air and the slide of scales on scales. Unseen, behind me, Cleopatra was beginning to uncoil from her eggs and rise up out of the case. I felt her against my back. Her head was on my shoulder.

  SP had warned me never to let Cleopatra get around my neck. Not that I would, of course, since she was a ruddy great python, not a fur stole. “She wouldn’t mean to,” he’d told me. “She doesn’t think you’re food – far too big – but she could squeeze too hard.” Remembering that, I ducked my head to one side, and stood up out of her way.

  I know I did a faint the first time I met Cleopatra, but that was nothing compared to Alexander’s reaction. He jumped up. He clutched at his chest and made a noise like he was choking, forming words but not able to speak. He took a couple of steps backwards and stumbled on something.

  I swear that when I came through the conservatory Antony was safely in his case. But there he was, all six feet of him, sliding across the floor of the studio behind Alexander. Alexander looked down at what he had tripped on and screamed. Then he ran. He ran back through the dark conservatory, knocking over the cane furniture and pots, crashing into the raised beds, crunching through the ferns. Then I heard another noise. It was glass being shattered and smashed to smithereens. Then a long, hoarse cry.

  I remember stumbling through the conservatory. I saw the broken glass too late, and cut my feet, but at the time I scarcely felt pain. There was enough of a moon to see Alexander lying on the tiled floor. He was still alive then, clutching his hand to his chest and gasping for breath. I cradled him in my arms. What else could I do? He said only one thing before he died.

  “Veroschka.”

  I don’t remember anything else after that.

  21

  THE TRUTH ABOUT VERITY SPARKS

  Judith told me what happened.

  Kathleen died at dawn. The housekeeper made them a pot of tea and poured some brandy, and then Mr Savinov offered to escort Judith back home. She was near to dropping, for she’d had a hard few days and a long, long night.

  It was a crisp morning. The dead leaves, powdered with frost, crackled under their feet, and early birds scattered and flew away as they passed. Judith drew deep, shuddering breaths as she walked, and Mr Savinov held her by the arm, repeating half to himself, half to her. “It will pass. It will pass.”

  They were puzzled when they got to Mulberry Hill, for they found none of the servants were up. No fires had been lit. The gas jets were still burning in the hall.

  “What’s this?” said Judith. It looked like red ink, or sealing wax. There were spots of it on the hall carpet, and on the stairs. And then more than spots, and smears of the stuff, long dribbles, and footprints. Mr Savinov kneeled and touched his fingertip into the red. He sniffed it.

  “This is blood,” he said. Then, “Blood!” he shouted, and bounded up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time, calling my name.

  I didn’t hear him, of course. They found me in my room, curled up in front of a dead fire, with blood on my feet where they had been cut by broken glass. They thought I was dead too.

  It wasn’t till a fortnight later that I was able to sit up in bed for the first time. Judith plumped up my pillows and settled a shawl around my shoulders and SP put a pile of illustrated magazines beside me on the night table. The Professor brought in a bunch of hothouse roses and even Mrs Morcom (who said she couldn’t abide a sick room) peeped around the doorframe to say hello.

  “Dr Raverat says that what with the shock, and being chilled to the bone, you’re lucky to have escaped with high fever and delirium,” said SP.

  “And no permanent damage to the respiratory system, the heart or the brain,” the Professor added cheerily.

  “And if you can’t remember anything for a time, Dr Raverat said not to worry. It’s nature’s way of healing, he said, with forgetfulness and rest.” Judith stroked my hand.

  “I do remember up until Alexander …” I began, and stopped.
>
  SP hesitated. “You may as well know now. It seems that Antony and Cleopatra frightened him so much that he ran through the conservatory and straight into the glass door. Pierre confirmed that Alexander was terrified of snakes. Apparently, he had a weak heart, and … well, he died of fright. There wasn’t a scratch on him.”

  “What happened afterwards?” I asked.

  Rather a lot, it seemed. For one thing, Mrs Morcom came home, accompanied by SP and the Professor. The only accident she’d had was meeting up with an old school friend she’d always disliked. The telegram from Penrose’s Hotel? There was no such place. The telegram was a trick of Alexander’s, to get the family away from the house.

  Inspector Grade turned up with the butterflies we’d left at the police station, and the news that while Dr Beale had indeed written the poison-pen letters and stalked me, he’d been at a Phrenology Colloquium at Oxford University on the night of the seance. So that was Alexander too. But of course I already knew.

  Doctor Raverat and the Inspector then worked out that the selection of treats – Dutch cocoa, sugared almonds and chocolate biscuits – which had been delivered to the Mulberry Hill servants, with a note of thanks from the Professor, were also a trick of Alexander’s. They were laced with Doctor Dearborn’s Relaxation Remedy – laudanum, in other words. Luckily for them, the dose was designed to make them sleep. Not so Miss Minnie. Alexander had intended the drugged macaroons to kill her, so she couldn’t give us the names of anyone who knew of the friendship between Mrs Vic and my mother.

  “So the mystery is quite cleared up,” I said to the Plushes.

  “As much as it will ever be,” said the Professor. “And Verity, my dear, there is someone waiting downstairs who would dearly love to see you. It is Pierre Savinov. May he come up?”