The Truth About Verity Sparks by Susan Green Page B

a very short while ago, a COMMON MILLINER’S APPRENTICE? She has WORMED her way into the Plush household. Your own reputation may even suffer from this UNFORTUNATE connection, and I cannot urge you too strongly, Mrs Dalrymple, to ACT!
    Yours, a wellwisher
.
    “Good Lord, Honoria,” said the Professor. “Is this a joke?”
    “A joke! I think not.”
    “If not, it’s a lot of nonsense.” He screwed up the letter and threw it across the room into the fire. “Now that’s out of the way,” he said, “sit down and have some tea. Anchovy toast?”
    Mrs Dalrymple glared at him, and then glared even harder at me. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Saddington. When you wake up murdered in your beds, don’t come crying to me.”
    I could hardly believe my ears. Me, a murderer? Mrs Dalrymple may have been a relative, but she’d gone a step too far. I opened my mouth to say something, but the Professor put his hand over mine and squeezed it gently, shaking his head.
    “It’s not worth it,” he whispered.
    Mrs Dalrymple was only just hitting her stride. “It is dangerous to reverse the natural order by elevating inferior persons. It is irreligious as well. But what can I expect from a godless
scientist
?” More manure under her nose. “At least I know I have done my duty.”
    “What duty is that?” It was Mrs Morcom, coming in late for tea as usual. She looked coolly at Mrs Dalrymple and held out a red and orange hand.
    “How are you, Honoria?” she said. “How’s that girl of yours? Have the pimples cleared up yet?”
    Mrs Dalrymple ignored her. “Be it on your own heads,” were her parting words, and she turned on her heel and stalked out.

    Mrs Morcom didn’t seem to care a fig about Mrs Dalrymple or her letter, but when the Professor told her about the proposed seance she got very angry. She said they should not interfere with me, and that all of this spiritualist stuff was rubbish and wrong. They had a big argument, and the next day she packed her bags and went off on a sketching trip to Cornwall.
    “That woman is impossible,” spluttered the Professor after she marched out to the carriage, nose in the air, without so much as a wave goodbye. “If she thinks anyone will miss her, she’s mistaken.”
    “I will,” said Judith.
    “And so will Amy,” I said. I felt sorry for Mrs Morcom’s dog, looking at me all lost and lonely with her big brown eyes, and so I began to take the poor thing for afternoon walks.
    The Plushes’ house, Mulberry Hill, is what they call a villa. The back of the property runs down to a little stream. There’s a bridge that crosses over it, and from there you can walk along a lane that leads past the back gardens of the other villas. It was a pretty walk, and it got me out of the house, and so I got into the habit of taking Amy out most afternoons.
    I was standing on the bridge, daydreaming a bit while Amy snuffled in the leaf litter, when I heard a voice call out my name.
    “Miss Sparks!” It was Ben O’Brien, the gardener’s boy, the one who bred the rats. He came panting up to me. “This come for you, miss,” he said, holding out an envelope.
    “Who gave it to you?”
    “An ole woman.”
    “Did she say who she was?” Ben shook his head. “What did she look like?”
    Ben shrugged. “Skinny. She had a shawl on.”
    A skinny old woman in a shawl. Ben would never make a confidential inquiry agent. I thanked him and he ran off. “Verity” was written on the front in big round letters. I opened it.
    Dear Verity
,
    I am in truble. I need to see you. Dont com to me at madams, and dont tell anyone. I will mete you on the canal walk near St Johns church at five oclock on Wensday. Dont let me down
.
    your
,
    Beth
    Guiltily, I realised that I’d scarcely given Beth a thought lately. I’d been at Mulberry Hill over two months now, and though at first I’d missed her and Cook and Madame and the other girls something fierce, gradually I’d got so used to my new life