The Truth About Verity Sparks (21 page)

I went up to my room at about ten o’clock. I put on my nightgown and dressing-gown, but since I had to stay up until eleven o’clock to give Cleopatra her hot rock, I couldn’t go to bed. I don’t think I would have slept, anyway. I kept thinking about Kathleen. How cruel this horrible disease was. She was kind-hearted and laughing. It wasn’t fair.

I thought about the Professor and SP too, and wondered what they would find at Penrose’s Hotel. They’d sent a couple of telegrams before they left, asking for more news, but no replies had come. It was the not knowing that was such a worry.

I sat on the hearthrug, hugging my knees and staring at the fire. “You never know what’s round the corner,” Cook would have said. Cook had a saying for every occasion. “You never know when your time is up,” was another of them. It seemed Kathleen’s time had come. What about Mrs Morcom? And poor Miss Love? Thinking about Miss Love led me on to Mrs Vic, and
la Belle Sauvage
, and Mrs Miller, and the medallion with the seven stars. I fingered the lucky piece and wondered once again about the six aunts and six sisters and …

Suddenly, I had a jolt to the chest. My fingers and hands itched and trembled, and I saw in front of me a woman with grey hair and a hooked nose, just staring out into nothing. In spite of the shock I recognised her at once. I’d seen her in Miss Minnie’s album. It was Mrs Vic.

“
Mon Dieu
,” she whispered. “
Ce n’est pas possible. Il n’est pas … Lyosha? Oh, non, non
…’ Then she was talking, quickly and urgently, in accented English. “Lizzie, thank you! You are an angel,
chérie
. You are the only one I can trust. You mustn’t tell a soul, not even your good Thomas … no one. No one, you understand? Monsieur will be back at the end of the month, and I’ll come then.”

And my mother’s voice, saying softly, “She’s beautiful, Mrs Vic. She’s so beautiful.”

Mrs Vic faded, and I felt sick and shaky. I huddled closer to the fire and looked at the lucky piece. I’d tried to “read” it before, and got nothing. So why, all unexpected, had it happened this time? And what did it mean?

“Monsieur will be back at the end of the month,” she’d said. “And I’ll come then …” She’d died before she could come and take me back. Monsieur? I knew that was French for “sir”. Was monsieur my father? That fitted in with the
septième étoile
story. But what else had she said? The only other French word I recognised was “no”.

I was really cold now, so I put a few lumps of coal on the fire. Then I remembered. Cleopatra! Taking the candle, I went to do my duty.

I passed Mrs Cannister’s room. The door was open, and she was in her armchair with the gas light still on. She was snoring, quite loudly, and her fire had gone out. I went in and tapped her lightly on the arm, but she just mumbled something and snored on. She’d knocked her night-time cup of cocoa onto the floor, and there was a trail of sticky brown liquid on her apron. She must have been exhausted, poor thing. There’d been so much to do, getting SP and the Professor off to catch their train. I turned the gas down so the room was dim, and tiptoed out.

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 lots 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.”