The Truth About Verity Sparks (13 page)

“Miss Sparks. Good evening. Fancy meeting you here.”

“Mr Opie!”

Silly Amy instantly lost interest in the watcher in the bushes. She bounced up to Mr Opie and licked his hands.

“Miss Sparks, are you quite well? You look–”

“I am perfectly well, Mr Opie. It’s just … I got a letter from a friend asking me to meet her here, and she didn’t turn up, and then I was sure I was being watched, and …” I knew I was babbling, but now that I was safe, I couldn’t help it. “I’m so glad it’s you.”

“Here,” said Mr Opie, taking me by the arm. “I think I’d better escort you home.”

The family was in the drawing room.

“Opie, my dear chap,” boomed the Professor. “Haven’t seen you for ages. I missed you when you called last week. Come in. Come in.” In the fuss and bother of offering a sherry, and Judith dropping the tray, and Amy jumping up and knocking over a pot of aspidistras, it was a little while before Mr Opie was able to come out with the real reason for his call.

“Someone was watching you?” asked the Professor. “Did you see who it was?”

“No, but someone was there. I could feel it.”

“Have you still got Beth’s letter?”

“No, I dropped it,” I said. Then suddenly I remembered something. Beth was the youngest of thirteen children from Spitalfields. She was clever with her hands, but she’d never been to school. “Beth can’t read or write. She didn’t write that letter.”

“She may have got someone else to write it for her,” said SP.

Of course.

“Hmm,” said the Professor. “Another letter. And hand-delivered, like the last.”

“What other letter?” asked Judith.

“That most peculiar letter that Honoria brought us. It’s been bothering me, you see. How I wish I hadn’t burned it.”

“I got another one as well,” I confessed, and told them about it. “I thought it was probably from Miss Charlotte.”

“Two poison-pen letters, and then this,” mused the Professor. “We must ask ourselves, are all three connected?”

“Of course they are,” said SP. “And we call ourselves inquiry agents! We need to investigate this without delay. Opie, will you come with me to the canal walk, to see if we can find the letter?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t worry, Verity,” said the Professor. “Would you like it if tomorrow you were to visit Madame Louisette’s? You could reassure yourself that your friend is not in trouble.”

I smiled at him gratefully. If I could just see Beth, my mind would be at ease.

The next day, Judith and SP took me into town and dropped me off at Madame’s. They had business, they said, and would pick me up in an hour’s time.

It was awkward. I could see Beth and Emily and Maria staring at my new clothes and boots with envy. We were different now, and there wasn’t much to say.

When I asked Beth if she’d written me a letter, she gave me a funny look.

“What for?” she asked.

She was quite well, she said. Quite happy too, and she seemed fond of the new girl, Sallie, who was sharing her room. Madame was pleased to see me, but just as pleased to see me go. Cook was the only one who gave me a smile and a hug and a bit of a welcome. I left the workshop feeling sad and a bit lonely, like a stranger in my own life.

Three letters. One to scare me, one to make the Plushes turn me out of the house and one to lure me out to the canal walk.

We had a bit of a conference about them the morning after I went to Madame’s.

“We have no evidence,” said the Professor. “We can’t compare them, or inspect the paper, the ink or the penmanship. Bother! It was so careless of me to throw it into the fire. If only you’d kept the first one, Verity.”

“If only we’d found the last one, down by the canal,” said SP.

“Do you think they are all from the same person?” I asked. “From Miss Charlotte maybe?”

The Professor and SP shared a look, and I could see that we’d all been thinking the same thing.

SP said, “Miss Charlotte is a strong possibility. Opie and I are investigating.”

“I do not think you are in any danger, Verity,” added the Professor. “But don’t go wandering off by yourself until we get to the bottom of this.”

“I won’t.”

Silly of me, but I felt the pricking of tears in my eyes. I’d looked after myself for so long that it gave me a funny sort of feeling to see those two so careful and concerned. I could fight my own battles if I had to, but it was good to have help.

That afternoon, when Judith went next door to visit her friend, I went too.

“Mr Tissot is an artist,” Judith told me. “He’s French. He’s quite famous, and very amusing.”

“And Mrs Tissot?”

“Kathleen’s a dear,” she said warmly.

We found them out in the garden. He had his easel set up under some trees next to an ornamental pond, and was painting a portrait. The model was right in front of him. It was Mr Opie.

“Oh,” said Judith. “You!”

Mr Opie went white, Judith went red, and I felt embarrassed for the pair of them. Mr Tissot didn’t seem to notice a thing.

“Judith, you’re just in time. I need you to read to Daniel, or talk to him, or sing to him – anything, mademoiselle, to keep him from fidgeting. No, you can’t refuse – it will be just for ten minutes – I need the angle of his wrist to be just so.” Mr Tissot was a small dark gentleman, about forty, with a strong accent. “Kathleen,
chérie
, give Judith your book.” I turned, and saw a lady lying in a kind of long net strung between two trees. She had a book in her hand, but it was upside down.

“She’s quite useless at entertaining him,” said Mr Tissot in a teasing voice. “Reading puts her to sleep.”

With a laugh, she threw the book at him, and then beckoned me over. “How rude they are.” Her voice was husky and low, Irish-sounding, and now that I was up close, I could see that she was very pretty, with dark brown curls and bright brown eyes and a lively heart-shaped face. Her hat, a tip-tilted straw trimmed with red silk poppies, was what Madame would call
très chic
. “But I suppose art comes before everything else, even manners,” she said.

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I curtseyed, and murmured, “How d’you do?” as Judith had taught me. “You’re not the one with bad manners. Perhaps I am, for teasing you so. I am Kathleen. And you are?”

“Verity Sparks, ma’am.”

“Well, Verity Sparks, can you help me out of this hammock?” She clasped my hand, and by swinging the net sideways I managed to tip her out onto her feet. She laughed again, but then she coughed and I saw how thin she was, and how the veins in her wrists and hands stood out as if they’d been drawn on with blue ink. She stood holding my hand for a few seconds, breathing heavily, and then said, “Judith told me you were visiting. You are a friend of the family?”

That’s what the Plushes had been telling people. It was simpler than going into the experiments and the confidential inquiries. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“No, no, don’t call me ma’am; it makes me feel as old as the hills. You call our friend over there ‘Judith’; call me ‘Kathleen’ and then I’ll feel as young as she is.” She looked across to Judith. “Dear Judith,” she said, and her voice was very gentle. “She’s a darlin’ girl. But so unhappy. You know, Verity, there are many obstacles for the respectable. Almost as many as there are for the thoroughly bad. Shall we have some lemonade and cakes, just you and me?”

“Yes, please, ma’am,” I said happily.

Kathleen Tissot was a little strange. With her playful ways, she was more like a girl my age than a grown-up lady, but I liked her at once.

“Oh,” she said, glancing over my shoulder. “Here is another visitor.”

Who should it be but Mr Savinov, wearing a pale linen suit and a shady hat, with a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums in his hand? I smiled and waved to him.

“It’s darling Pierre. Shall we invite him to join our picnic?”

“Oh, yes.” I liked his noble lion’s head and kindly manners. It was a treat to see him again.

“We meet again, Miss Sparks.” He bowed over my hand, and kissed Kathleen’s. “How are you, Kathleen? What a ravishing hat.”

“You’re a flatterer, old friend. Have you come to see how the portrait’s getting on?”

“I’ve come to see you, of course. But I may as well take a look.” He turned to me. “It is a likeness of my son, you see.”

“Mr Opie’s your son?” I was astonished.

“No, no,” said Kathleen. “Daniel is merely providing the body. Alexander is Pierre’s son. He posed for the head months ago, but we were never able to get him to sit still after that.”

“It’s true,” said Mr Savinov. “Alexander must be always in motion.” He smiled as he walked with us to the terrace where chairs and a table and tea things were set out. Kathleen went in search of cakes, and he leaned closer to me and said in a low voice, “I hope the meeting the other night did not tire you or distress you?”

I shook my head.

“You have remarkable abilities, Miss Sparks. Finding lost things – this is a truly useful gift.” He sounded sad. “But things are not so important, I find. It is people who are. Can you find lost people, Miss Sparks?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, but continued in a chatty tone. “And how are all at Mulberry Hill today?”

“We’re very well, thank you,” I said. “Even the snakes.”

“Ah,” he said. “Antony and Cleopatra, the fatal lovers of the Nile!”

Lovers of the Nile. I didn’t understand what he meant but I did know that pythons weren’t fatal unless they squeezed you to death. I was starting to explain this to Mr Savinov when Kathleen came back followed by a maid with a plate of little iced cakes.

“What are you two talking about so seriously with your heads together like that?” she asked.

“Snakes, my dear Kathleen,” replied Mr Savinov. “We were talking about snakes.”

“There are no snakes in Ireland, you know. Our darlin’ St Patrick shooed them all out.”

“Then they all went to Canada,” he said. “One day, many years ago in Manitoba, Alexander somehow stumbled into a den of garter snakes – they sleep all winter, you see, in holes in the ground – and he fell in among thousands and thousands of little snakes all tangled up together waiting for the spring. He screamed like a … like a …”

“Like a banshee,” suggested Kathleen.

“Did he get bitten?” I asked.

“No, no. They were too sleepy, and I am not sure that their bite is dangerous, anyway. But Alexander never forgot his adventure. He still jumps at a coil of rope, or a worm.”

“It’s amazin’ what can scare a person,” said Kathleen. “Imagination can be a mighty dangerous thing.”

“Imagination.” Mr Tissot, smelling of oil and turpentine, strolled over to join us. “Where would we be without it?”

“A lot better off,” said Mr Savinov.

“You can’t believe that,” said Mr Tissot, but Mr Savinov shook his head very sadly, and Kathleen tactfully changed the subject.

“I suppose Canada was very wild, Pierre?” she said. “The people as well as the places?”

“Not all.” He laughed. “Montreal, where I lived for many years, is a very fine old city, very cultured, very French. And Toronto has many splendid buildings, and an Opera House …” He stopped, as if in a dream, and then caught himself up again. “Canada, though young indeed compared to Mother Russia, is very like it in some ways. It is wild and uncivilised in places, and poor Alexander did not have the gentlest of upbringings. When we came to England, I was determined to make him into an English gentleman.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Now, I wonder what for?”