Somebody Stop Ivy Pocket (27 page)

But I didn’t believe her. That is why I turned my back on Estelle and looked at her uncle instead. ‘Anastasia had the baby here, didn’t she? That is what you meant when you said you didn’t see her after it was over.’

‘Do not speak, Uncle,’ ordered Estelle. ‘She means to use your words against us.’

But the Baron would not be stopped – he had a story and he meant to tell it. ‘The baby was coming as she sat on the stairs – what else was there to do? She was taken down to the basement where the child was born.’

‘And then?’ I said eagerly.

‘The only way to get her to speak the truth was …’ Baron Dumbleby shuddered, closing his eyes. ‘It was cruel, but the newborn was the only weapon. If she would just tell us what
really
happened to Sebastian she could have her child.’

I was shaking my head in disbelief. ‘You took her baby away?’

‘What else was my mother to do?’ said Estelle, pacing about the bedroom. ‘This girl claimed to be from another world, she claimed my brother and she had married there, and that he had
perished. She was clearly insane and had no business caring for a child.’

My legs seemed to give way and I found myself slumping on the edge of the bed. ‘The baby – you gave it back to her, didn’t you?’

Estelle gave no answer.

‘McCloud was our very best maid!’ cried the Baron. ‘She took the infant away with two hundred pounds and orders not to return until we sent for her.’

My heart was a mallet trying to crack open my chest. Was such cruelty possible? But, of course, it was. ‘Where is the child now?’

‘McCloud promised to love it as her own,’ said the Baron meekly. ‘She had longed for a baby so the child would be well cared for … the child would not suffer.’

‘They settled in Wales,’ said Estelle stiffly. ‘Mother did not wish to correspond with her, but I wrote this past winter and received a note back saying that she and the baby had left there seven years ago, leaving no forwarding address.’

‘And Anastasia,’ I said, ‘what of her?’

‘How should I know?’ snapped Estelle. ‘Mother told her that as soon as she confessed the truth about what she had done, we would return her child. She went on her way and we haven’t heard from her since.’

‘But surely – ?’

I stopped. My mind was circling back. To just a few minutes before. Something I had heard, but not listened to. It was as if the words were threads that had looped themselves into just the right holes, until it was possible to step back and see the finished tapestry. I jumped up off the bed and crouched down beside the Baron.

‘Listen to me,’ I said urgently.

The old man opened his eyes.

‘You said you could not bear to hear her – you were speaking of Anastasia, weren’t you?’

‘She would not stop,’ cried the old man. ‘Her voice carried up from the basement.’

‘Be silent, Uncle!’ Estelle came up behind me, trying to wrench me away. ‘Leave him alone – he is old and feeble of mind.’

I freed myself from her grasp with a small amount of slapping. Kept my gaze firmly on Baron Dumbleby. ‘What was it she would not stop, dear? What did you hear that haunts you so?’

‘Hush, Uncle!’ cried Estelle.

The Baron did not heed her, for he was somewhere far away. His dry lips, which had been sunken into his mouth, pushed out. Then a shaky but unmistakable melody came up and out of him.

‘
Mmmm mm mmmm mm
,’ he hummed.

‘Sleep and Dream, my Sweet’. The very tune I had heard day and night from my cell at Lashwood. They had separated Anastasia from her baby, then locked her away in Lashwood all these years.

I wanted to weep, but there wasn’t time.

‘You heard her, didn’t you?’ Estelle pulled me roughly to my feet, seizing my shoulders. ‘You heard her humming when you were at Lashwood?’

‘Yes,’ came my faint reply.

‘And you wonder why my mother had her locked away?’ Estelle’s eyes were wild and ferocious. ‘Every week for twelve years my mother would visit her and ask for the truth – offering her freedom if she admitted what she had done.’ She lifted her head defiantly. ‘And now I do the same.’

‘What you are doing is horrid! A child needs its mother and a mother needs her child!’ I pulled my arm free and took a shaky breath. ‘Your brother is dead, dear. You must accept it and stop punishing Anastasia – she did not kill him, I know that for a fact.’

‘She took him away and she must pay the price,’ came the cold reply.

I walked past the hateful girl and headed for the door. ‘I will tell the world what you have done – Anastasia does not belong
in that place any more than I did.’

A door banged down below. Then came the sound of raised voices. Followed by hurried footsteps.

‘She is here!’ cried Estelle at the top of her lungs. She lunged at me, grabbing my wrist. ‘Please hurry, she has threatened me with a knife!’

I pulled free and ran.

My escape was of the daring and death-defying variety. The house was swarming with orderlies from Lashwood and a constable or two. Clearly, when Estelle went to fetch a nightdress for me, she had sent word to the asylum. Or the police. Probably both.

They came charging up the main stairs, following Estelle’s wicked cries for help. Being breathtakingly canny, I took the servants’ stairs at the back. Came out by the kitchen door. I could hear a cook shrieking that she wasn’t hiding a fugitive in her larder.

I picked up a vase from a gilded table and threw it down the hallway, where it shattered against the far wall. This set them all into action. I hid around the corner as they spilled out of the kitchen, while others came rushing down the back stairs – all of them charging off in the direction of the broken vase.

Then I burst into the kitchen, sidestepped the cook, leapt over a toppled chair and charged out of the back door. The cook, being a jolly good sport, didn’t even sound the alarm.

Highgate was wonderfully deserted. The plump quarter-moon had vanished – probably behind a cloud – the sky capping the city like a black shroud. I didn’t slow until I was six or seven streets away, turning into Crumble Avenue and walking in the shadow of a fine apartment building.

There was so much in my head, I simply didn’t have room for it all. It churned with such fury that I couldn’t hold a thought for more than a moment or two. But the silence was rather soothing. So soothing that I didn’t sense the figure darting out from the shadows. Or their hands reaching for me. I was yanked from the footpath and thrust into a doorway.

‘You are a hard person to catch, Miss Pocket.’

‘Miss Frost!’ I cried.

‘Hush,’ she whispered firmly, ‘we do not wish to wake the whole of Highgate.’

The Mistress of the Clock began to remove her black gloves. She was just as I remembered her. Dark dress. Freckled face. Flaming red hair. ‘You need a bath,’ she said, looking me up and down.

‘How did you find me?’

‘With some difficulty,’ came the tart reply. ‘I tried to intercept you when you first broke out of Lashwood, but you seemed rather more interested in leaping on to the back of a carriage.’

‘That was
you
?’

She nodded. ‘I called to you, but apparently the carriage wheels obscured my voice.’

I was frowning now. ‘If you knew I was being kept prisoner in Lashwood, why did you not get me out?’

Miss Frost smiled faintly. ‘I have kept as close an eye on you as was possible – and to be frank, as unpleasant as Lady Elizabeth’s revenge was, in some ways you were safer in there.’ She glanced up and down the empty street. ‘Miss Always has led me on a wild goose chase – she is up to something, though I am yet to discover the particulars.’

It was hard to deny that, despite everything, I was rather delighted to see Miss Frost. But then I remembered the Snagsbys and Anastasia, not to mention Rebecca, and my heart hardened. There was so much to say. Naturally, I began with a firm scolding.

‘You sent me to the Snagsbys knowing they would start using the Clock Diamond again, didn’t you?’

‘I knew it was a distinct possibility.’

‘How could you do such a thing?’

‘The Snagsbys deal with people at the end of their journey here in this world,’ she explained coolly. ‘Who better to use the stone? The Clock Diamond’s work, though unpleasant, is of the utmost importance.’

‘It is murder! Mr Grimwig would have been next and he was perfectly healthy!’

‘Do stop shouting, Miss Pocket,’ was her calm reply. ‘It is most unbecoming and is likely to attract the attention of the gentlemen currently combing the streets looking for you.’

‘The Snagsbys are nutters,’ I said, lowering my voice, ‘murderous nutters. Now that they have the stone all to themselves, they will kill half of London before they’re done.’

‘What a feverish imagination you have.’

Then Miss Frost did the most remarkable thing. She reached into the sleeve of her dress and pulled out the Clock Diamond. Fixed it around my neck and tucked it under my dress. The stone began to glow like a lantern, warming against my skin. Its pulse was urgent, but within moments had slowed to match my heartbeat.

‘I suppose you had to kill them for it?’

Miss Frost rolled her eyes. ‘We discussed the matter like mature adults and after some
persuasion
, they relinquished the necklace.’

‘You should never have given it to them in the first place,’ I snapped.

‘Shortly after I began my tenure as Mistress of the Clock, I was able to retrieve the necklace from a rather unpleasant fellow in Istanbul. As my time in your world is rather limited, I needed a collaborator, someone who would use the stone in the most
ethical
way.’

I huffed. Scowled. Gave every indication that I violently disagreed.

‘I searched all of the places that might have access to the old and the sick – hospitals, funeral parlours, poorhouses – and came upon the Snagsbys.’

‘But how could they be so willing to kill?’ I said, shaking my head.

‘The Snagsbys couldn’t give their daughter a second chance, but they knew that for every soul they captured here, a hundred would be cured of The Shadow in my world.’ Miss Frost placed her finger under my chin and lifted it. ‘This plague of which I speak is a horror that I cannot describe, and children are particularly vulnerable.’

‘But what of the children from this world?’ I pushed her hand away. ‘I have seen Rebecca – why must she suffer so that children from Prospa can live?’

‘Rebecca chose her fate,’ came the heartless reply.

‘What are they doing to her in that ghastly place?’

‘Once a soul crosses into Prospa their very touch has great healing power,’ said Miss Frost, her gaze slipping from mine as she searched for the right words. ‘We call them Remedies and they are treated with the greatest reverence, but this new life comes with conditions and I freely admit that there is a cost.’

‘Well, the cost is too great, you cold-blooded fruitcake.
Rebecca has the look of someone haunted, and poor Mr Blackhorn seems to be fading away.’

The Mistress of the Clock nodded her head soberly. ‘A Remedy’s healing power is not infinite – eventually it wears out.’

‘Which is just a nice way of saying they die all over again.’

‘They fade,’ said Miss Frost softly, ‘they fade away. I wish there was another way to help my people, but there is not.’

I desperately wanted to hate Miss Frost. Or at the very least, stomp on her foot. But I couldn’t. I may not have agreed with her methods, but I could see that she used the Clock Diamond reluctantly and that she understood the awful price.

‘Come,’ said Miss Frost.

We walked swiftly along the street, taking refuge around the side of a stately mansion. Moments later a pair of orderlies from Lashwood hurried past without spotting us. Miss Frost was peering into the night with a great deal of interest.

‘Your new
friend,
Miss Dumbleby, will have the entire city looking for you by morning.’

‘They cannot lock me up again,’ I whispered firmly. ‘I’m not bonkers.’

‘You, Miss Pocket? Never.’ But there was mirth in her voice. Horrible dingbat!

The mention of Estelle’s name brought the horror of what
her family had done rushing back. I looked hard at Miss Frost. ‘I know that Anastasia Radcliff came from your world. What I don’t know is
how
.’