The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place (31 page)

Constable Quill ignored Mary Jane.

“Mrs. Godding, Mr. Godding, we’re ready to leave for town. The vicar will accompany us. Will you, also?”

“I shall remain here,” said Mrs. Godding. “Julius, I think, can hardly do so under the circumstances, so he will return with you and pass the night at the Lamb Hotel, where we have engaged rooms. Julius can return in the morning and bring me my things.”

The constable nodded. “Just as I hoped,” he said. “May I, then, leave these young ladies in your custody?”

A shock went through the group of girls. “Custody?” cried Disgraceful Mary Jane. “Exactly what do you mean, Freddie?”

The constable went on as though they weren’t there. “Bodies buried in the backyard, impersonating the dead, conducting business transactions on her behalf … these are serious charges. I have a number of questions to ask these young ladies. But first I must attend to the more serious charges, against the two prisoners. I will be back in the morning.”

“‘These young ladies!’” fumed Mary Jane. “Well, I like that! Suddenly we don’t exist. Why, only a few hours ago…”

An anxious look passed over the constable’s face. “Good evening, ma’am,” he said hastily. “I will return in the morning.” He turned heel and
f
led.

Julius Godding kissed his mother and followed the constable without a backward glance. Kitty watched him go, and swallowed hard.

“Come along, girls,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”

CHAPTER 29

Smooth Kitty sat on the edge of her bed and buttoned her dress. It was five o’clock in the morning, and she’d been awake since three. Between retiring to bed and three, she wasn’t sure what had happened. There may have been some fitful sleep. She couldn’t quite remember.

The night before, the girls had huddled together in the room Kitty shared with Mary Jane, whispering absurd plans for how they might
f
lee and escape prosecution, none of which would hold a drop of water. Finally Mrs. Godding had poked her head in the door and, without a word, ordered them into their own beds, and silence.

Kitty felt physically ill. It was rather late now to wallow in regret for her choices.
I didn’t kill anybody,
she told herself fiercely.
I didn’t start any of this. All we wanted was to stick together. All I wanted,
she thought, and here the selfish truth became painful
, was to not go home.
Now going home looked like the best she could hope for. Even her father’s icy indifference was far, far preferable to prison.

She brushed her hair and twisted it into a bun, which she fastened with pins. She clipped her stockings to their garters, then pulled on and laced her boots. What would today bring, she wondered vaguely. Should she pack her things?

It didn’t seem to matter what she did, so she let the idea pass. She spied her schoolbooks, stacked in a windowsill, and felt nostalgia for the days when they actually did wallow through their studies each day, under Mrs. Plackett’s bored and lifeless tutelage.

She listened at the doorway but heard no signs of life. She opened her bedroom door and ventured out. Her steps led her down the stairs and through the long corridor.

She opened the front door and stood on the stoop, breathing in lungfuls of morning air. Over across the way toward Ely, the cathedral spires shone in morning light. Curls of fog shifting low over the grasses gradually gave way to the searching sunshine. Nature neither knew nor cared about what had happened here just the night before.

“Good morning, Miss Heaton,” said a voice behind her.

She turned to see Mrs. Godding standing behind her with a mug of tea in each hand.

“I didn’t realize you knew my name,” Kitty said.

Mrs. Godding offered her a cup. “Someone mentioned it to me. It seems to be a fine morning. Will you join me outside in the garden?”

Kitty followed her through the damp grass toward a pair of chairs in the rear garden, facing away from the cavity in the ground where the graves had been. Aldous chased along after them, bounding after grasshoppers.

“He seems no worse off for his misadventures,” Mrs. Godding said, and sat down. “Here we are. Tell me about yourself, Katherine, or should I say Kitty?”

Kitty sat carefully in the garden chair. “Katherine, please,” she said, then on an impulse added, “though you may use Kitty if you prefer.”

The older woman took a sip of tea. “Well?”

Kitty hesitated. There seemed so little to say, and no good place to begin. “I am an only child,” she said. “My mother died many years ago. I barely remember her.”

Mrs. Godding watched her closely. “I am sorry to hear it. I lost my own mother when I was a young bride. I think of her often.”

Kitty thought about this. “I wish I thought of my mother more,” she said. “There just isn’t much there.”

Mrs. Godding nodded. She gazed thoughtfully at Kitty. “How does your mind work, Kitty?”

Kitty hid her confusion behind a sip of tea. “I don’t know how to answer that question.”

Mrs. Godding looked out across Farmer Butts’s fields. “The mind that chose to bury my brother- and sister-in-law in secret in the back garden was either a heartless and depraved one, with no proper respect for others, or it was … something else. I am not sure what.”

Kitty’s father filled her mind’s eye. She pictured him at his desk in his office, marshaling clerks and secretaries and junior officers in the firm. How efficient he was. How effective. And how cold.

How much was she fashioned in his image?

“Mr. Godding was an unpleasant man,” Kitty said. “He was boorish and crude, and never treated us girls politely. We could sense, I think, the friction between him and his sister, though I don’t think any of us knew the reasons why. But that friction never stopped him from coming over often enough to eat all her food and drink all her wine.”

Mrs. Godding nodded knowingly. “Some people never change,” she said. “When my husband and I first moved to India, I wondered if half a globe was distance enough between us and my husband’s younger brother.”

“Mrs. Plackett was a respectable woman,” Kitty went on, “but there was never any warmth between her and any of us girls. She was harsh and cross much of the time, and preoccupied otherwise. I don’t think she ever enjoyed running a girls’ school.” Kitty wrapped her fingers around her mug and savored its warmth. “The strange part is, I feel we’ve gotten to know her better—at least her kinder qualities—now that she’s gone.”

“Did she have kinder qualities, then?”

Kitty looked at Mrs. Godding in surprise. “Well, didn’t she?”

Mrs. Godding laughed a little. “I’ve often thought that the only thing that made my sister-in-law human was her inexplicable fondness for sailors,” she said. “She had rather a forbidding nature, even when I first met her.”

Kitty smiled. She wondered what Mrs. Plackett would have been like twenty or more years ago when Mrs. Godding first made her acquaintance.

“I think she tried to help her brother, even though she knew he was beyond help.”

Mrs. Godding nodded. “It is often that way within families.”

“I don’t say any of this to excuse myself,” Kitty said, “but perhaps it illustrates why we never felt we owed them special kindness when they died. Their deaths were quite horrible, you know. So sudden and astonishing. But we never cared a fig for either of them. And then we all realized we would be sent home, and I couldn’t bear the thought of going home. Nor of leaving my friends behind.”

Mrs. Godding waited for Kitty to continue. Mr. Shambles strolled by, stalking through the tall grass and clucking to himself, until little Aldous caught sight of him and galloped off to bark at him.

“I only thought of Mrs. Plackett as she related to me,” Kitty went on. “In other words, as a nuisance. And then, in the instant, the nuisance vanished, but if we told anyone, we’d be sent home. If I went home to Father would send me off to some other horrid school. Or worse, keep me home. I couldn’t bear being trapped there.”

Kitty wondered how she could tell so much to this woman she’d met only yesterday.

Mrs. Godding shifted in her seat and turned toward Kitty. “I comprehend,” she said. “Some women are born for more independence than society offers them. Perhaps all are, but some have not yet learned to recognize it.” She gazed off into the distance. “Before I married, I was a nurse, Kitty. I enjoyed four wonderful years of working in hospitals. In fact, my husband was one of my patients.” She smiled.

“Yes, I knew you were a nurse,” Kitty said. “I think that’s wonderful. Julius told…” Her voice died away, and she felt her face
f
lush with heat.

“Did he, now?” Mrs. Godding seemed surprised and pleased. “Isn’t that nice.”

“I don’t know what will happen to the other girls,” Kitty said, and for a sickening moment she feared she might cry in front of Julius’s mother. “They would all be so much better off if they hadn’t listened to my scandalous, unforgivable plan.”

From behind them, inside the house, they heard some stirrings and signs of life. Out front, cart wheels could be heard crunching over the gravel of Prickwillow Road. Not even hidden corpses would stop Henry Butts from bringing the morning milk.

“You give yourself rather a lot of importance, I think, Kitty,” Mrs. Godding chided gently. “To hear you talk, you deserve all the credit for the scheme, and your special reward is to enjoy all the blame.”

Kitty gaped at her. What an enigmatic thing to say!

Mrs. Godding watched Kitty thoughtfully then rose to her feet. “I’ve enjoyed our conversation, Kitty,” she said. “You’ve told me all I needed to know.”

Kitty followed her indoors, sipping her tea and wondering what on earth that meant.

CHAPTER 30

An hour later the girls sat around the dining room table, staring at their plates in penitent silence. Mrs. Godding served up toast, eggs, mushrooms, bacon, and porridge. Stout Alice’s mouth watered at the sight of the food, while Dear Roberta thought the aroma of the bacon might be reason enough to faint with happiness. If only everything around them weren’t so terrible. Disgraceful Mary Jane willingly conceded that her own cooking might be traded in for better.

Mrs. Godding joined them at the head of the table, and held out her hands. “Say grace, girls,” she said. They joined hands, bowed their heads, and held their private, guilty devotions. Then Mrs. Godding dumped a heaping spoon of brown sugar onto her porridge, and drizzled it with cream.

“There’s nothing like breakfast,” she declared, “for making one think fond thoughts of lunch.”

Any other day, Smooth Kitty would have smiled.

The doorbell rang.

Mrs. Godding pushed back her chair. “That will be Julius,” she said. “I’ll go.” She closed the dining room door behind her.

The girls watched her leave, then turned to face each other.

“Don’t sprain your ear listening to see if it’s him, Kitty,” said Disgraceful Mary Jane.

Smooth Kitty halved her toast with a vengeance. “I thought
you
were already picking out the lace for your wedding veil, Mary Jane.”

“That’s not Julius,” said Pocked Louise. “It sounds like a pair of men.”

“Policemen!” squeaked Dull Martha.

Kitty rose from her chair. “For heaven’s sake, let’s hear what’s going on.” She opened the door to find Mrs. Godding guiding two deliverymen in through the front door, each carrying supporting beams bearing a large wooden crate. Aldous barked furiously at their boots.

“More of Mr. Godding’s things?” Stout Alice wondered.

“Present,” gasped one of the men. “For Mrs. Plackett.”

Word had not yet gone far, Kitty realized, that Mrs. Plackett no longer lived on Prickwillow Road, nor any other road, for that matter.

“Set it right down here, gentlemen, in the drawing room,” ordered Mrs. Godding. “I thank you.”

The two men set to work prying the wooden top off the crate. The girls clustered around to watch. The top came off, followed by a spate of packing rags, to reveal …

“What is it?” inquired Dear Roberta.

They stared at the object.

“Well, that’s that,” said the deliveryman. “Here’s a letter for you. We’ll be off now.”

And with that, he handed Mrs. Godding a letter from his pocket, then he and his companion gathered up the pieces of the crate and left.

“But what is it?” Dear Roberta continued to press her question.

Pocked Louise examined the thing all around. “It’s … wood.”

It was indeed wood, a thick and heavy object carved intricately from solid wood, of a rich amber color. It stood about as wide and deep as an ottoman on four wooden legs, and possibly twice as tall.

“Is it furniture?” inquired Dull Martha.

“I wouldn’t care to sit on it. The top’s too pointy.” Pocked Louise had knelt down to examine it from all around. She traced her fingers along the grooves and protrusions, and followed the scrolling carved lines with her eyes.

“What do you think, Mrs. Godding?” asked Smooth Kitty.

Mrs. Godding folded her arms and frowned at the thing. “It’s indigenous, at any rate,” she said. “I would venture to guess African. Let’s see what this letter tells us.”

“It’s a palace,” declared Pocked Louise. “See? These are pillars. These represent windows, and this is the roof.”

Mrs. Godding unfolded the letter. “Dear Mrs. Plackett,” she read. “This is a gift the admiral had prepared specially for you. He had already made arrangements for this to be delivered to your home today. I saw no reason to interrupt his plans. I’m sure you are as grieved as I am at the loss of the admiral. I hope this gives you something by which to remember him.” She folded the paper and tucked it into her pocket. “Well, well. So my sister-in-law was linked to the admiral. I wondered, when I saw him sitting next to her. Or next to you, I should say, Miss Brooks?’”

Stout Alice curtseyed. “Please. Call me Alice.”

Pocked Louise had not ceased her probing of the wooden palace. “Here’s our problem!” she cried. “It’s backwards. The front is facing the wall. Help me turn it around, Kitty.”

It was astonishingly heavy, and it took several girls to do the job, but together they heaved and hoisted the carving around until it faced the right way. Now it clearly represented a palace. Pocked Louise bent to examine the doors. Aldous licked her face helpfully.