Verity Sparks and the Scarlet Hand (25 page)

“It’s in Carlton. A side street. I’m not sure of the name –”

“But you know where it is? If we get a cab, can you show us the way?”

“Why yes, I …” She looked at me strangely. “Verity, why are you in such a hurry for a new hat?”

Papa stayed at the hotel while the rest of us went to look for the hat shop. Della was easily able to direct us there. We stopped outside a double-storey brick building painted cream, with that ornamental iron lace they used so much here in the colonies. I was out of the cab almost before it had stopped. Curly letters spelled it out in gold on the window:

ADELINE
Exclusive Millinery

Three fascinating hats in shades of blue were arranged in the shop window, but I gave them hardly a glance. With SP and Della hurrying to catch up with me, I ran to the door. It was green. The doorplate and knob were brass, polished till they shone.

It was all just as it had been in my vision. My fingers were fizzing, tingling, burning. It felt like I was holding an ants’ nest in my hands and I knew Helen was near.

“This is the place,” said Della. “I will go in first, SP, as you suggested, and inquire.”

Déjà vu.
That’s French, and means you’ve seen it before. Della’s hand in its lilac glove reached out, turned the handle. The bell above the door jangled as she pushed the door open.

The woman at the counter was making silk rosettes. She put down her work and looked at Della over her steel-rimmed spectacles. So this was Adeline. She didn’t look like a kidnapper. She looked like a hardworking milliner with sore eyes and stiff, reddened fingers. But Helen was hidden somewhere in the shop, and this woman – Adeline – knew where she was.

A smile spread over her features. “Miss Parker, how delightful to see you.” Adeline spoke so carefully that each syllable was half-strangled. “And how well that hat suits you – if I do say so myself.” With an artificial laugh she turned to SP and me. “Good afternoon, sir. And miss …” It must have been obvious we weren’t there for new
chapeaux
. Her accent slipped. “What’s the matter? What do you want?”

“We are looking for a friend of ours. Her name is Mrs Petrov,” began Della. “We have reason to believe she is here.”

Adeline shook her head. “No, there’s no Mrs Petrov here. Miss … I say, miss, you can’t go through there.”

But I could. I pushed past the counter and went into the back room. It was a workshop. The next room was a cramped kitchen, and that opened out into a courtyard. Where was she? My hands were on fire. She was here, near …

A flight of steps led up to a second-storey landing. Another green door. As I raced up the steps I could hear Adeline protesting. SP’s footsteps pounded after me down the hall. The burning sensation in my hands was unbearable. I couldn’t wait. I opened the green door.

She was sitting in the window seat, with a cup of tea on a tray beside her and her sewing on her lap. It was pink rosebuds, her favourite motif, on the finest white linen. She looked calm and beautiful, and for a second I was so overwhelmed I could scarcely breathe. It was the feeling I’d had in the Indian room, only stronger. Stifling, choking sorrow, like a mist, lay all around the room. It lapped at Helen’s feet and crept its tendrils up her skirt but she didn’t know it. She sat and sewed rosebuds.

Then everything changed. The mist vanished. Her eyes darted here and there, as if she was looking for a way to escape. Her fingers fluttered. Dropping her needlework, spilling her tea all over the white linen and her chintz sewing bag, she got to her feet.

“Verity,” she whispered. “Oh.” Her eyes filled with tears. “What else could I do? What else could I do?”

SP appeared in the doorway, with Adeline and Della following close behind.

“Is it her?” SP asked me. “Is it Mrs Petrov?”

Before I could answer, a man’s voice rang out. “What the hell’s going on?”

A door opened. It was the bedroom door, for I glimpsed an unmade bed and piles of clothes and a cheval mirror. He looked as if he’d been napping.

“Mr Torrance, I’m so sorry,” said Adeline. “These people just barged in. I couldn’t stop them.”

“Leave immediately or I will call the police,” he said in a haughty tone. The effect was spoiled a bit by the rumpled clothes and mussed hair, but nothing could detract from his good looks. How handsome he is, I thought. His hair was dark, but his eyes were sky blue with black lashes. Like a picture of a hero in a book – almost too handsome to be real.

“You,” I stammered. “It’s you …”

He looked at me, perplexed. He had never seen me before in his life, but I had seen him. He’d been high up on a balcony that overlooked a city and a bay. The last rays of a fiery sunset had painted everything red, orange and pink. His face had glowed in the light.

He was the man in my vision.

“How did you find us, Verity?” said Helen.

“Don’t talk to them, Helen,” the man said. “Get out, all of you, or you’ll be sorry.”

“We thought we’d been so careful, so clever …”

“Helen, be quiet.” His face, flushed with anger, was not quite so handsome now.

“I never thought–”

“I told you to be quiet!” he shouted. He raised his hand as if he was going to hit her, and Adeline screamed. Della backed out of the room.

SP grabbed me by the arm and pushed me behind him. “Control yourself, sir,” he said.

“This is none of your business,” Torrance snarled. “Get out!”

“Gilbert, it’s too late.” There were no tears now. Helen’s eyes were as blank as those marble statues in Papa’s conservatory. “Don’t you see that? We’re not going to get away. It’s over.”

Torrance slumped, defeated. I breathed a sigh of relief. And then suddenly he whirled around, eyes blazing, teeth bared like a trapped animal, and swung a punch at SP.

I’d never seen SP like this before. Cool as a cucumber, he dodged and stepped sideways. He made his hands into fists and it took only three quick blows before Torrance was lying flat on his back.

Helen, dropping her needlework, got up and kneeled next to Torrance’s prone body.

“Who is he, Mrs Petrov?” asked SP.

“I’m not Mrs Petrov. I’m Mrs Torrance. He is … God help me, he is my husband.”

While we waited for the police to arrive, Helen told us her story. There was no stopping her. She sat, unwinding her embroidery silks and twisting them in her hands, and talked.

“My family were shopkeepers, and they expected me to marry the butcher’s son. But then … I met Gilbert. I ran away from home to be with him. I was eighteen.

“He was an actor. He was never as successful as he should have been. The other actors were jealous of him. Spiteful too. They were always getting him into trouble with the management.

“We married when I found I was expecting a child, but the baby was stillborn. My little girl, Sarah, was born a year later. She was …” Helen’s long white fingers began to torture the silk into knots. “It was only a cold. Nothing serious. I wasn’t worried.”

We didn’t need to be told that her daughter died.

“Not long afterwards, Gilbert left to find work in America. I was going to join him as soon as he was settled. At first he sent letters and money. Then just letters. Jobs were hard to find, he told me. He was ill. The letters stopped after a year and then I heard nothing. Not a word.

“I met an acquaintance of Gilbert’s, another actor. He’d heard a rumour that Gilbert had been killed in San Francisco. Then a package arrived – a few of my letters and a photograph of Sarah and me. They’d been found in a hotel room after the occupant died. I put on widow’s black; I appealed to my family for help, but they showed me the door. Even my own mother …”

“What about your brother?” asked SP. “He seems very fond of you.”

“Emeric? Fond of me?” Her voice was full of scorn. “He’s fond of money, that’s all. He’s been sending me letters for the past six months, threatening to tell Nicholas about my past.”

“He was blackmailing you?” I was genuinely surprised. Shocked. I’d disliked Mr Mallard from the first but I’d thought he was harmless. This explained what he was doing in Helen’s room. He was looking for letters and destroying them. I remembered, too, that on his first morning at Shantigar, Mr Mallard had riffled through the mail, extracted one letter and tossed it onto the fire. He’d said it was from his tailor. Perhaps it was really one he’d written himself.

“The first time,” said Helen, “I sent him twenty pounds to shut him up, but that was a mistake. He wanted more. And more. I knew he’d turn up. I’m glad I won’t have to see him.”

SP’s lip curled. “His own sister. How could anyone be so low?”

“Low? Even as a boy, he stole from our parents. He forged cheques. Low? He abandoned his wife and family. Three children …” Helen shrugged, as if the subject of Emeric Mallard was of no interest.

Helen sailed to India to take up a position as nursery maid with the Petrovs. After the children died, she stayed on to look after Mr Petrov as a nurse and companion.

“But people began to gossip, even though he was a sick old man. So … so he suggested we marry and I … I accepted. When he decided to emigrate to Australia, I was so happy. It was to be a new start …”

“When did you realise that your husband was still alive?” SP asked gently.

“It was before we left India for Melbourne. Gilbert had been framed for a crime he didn’t commit – he’d been in jail – he’d been ill. It had taken him years to track me down and … I was married.” She sighed and looked down at Torrance’s face. She stroked his cheek and he stirred slightly.

“Gilbert convinced me to stay with Nicholas. After all, the poor man didn’t have long to live … and then Gilbert and I could be together again. It didn’t seem so very wrong. Nicholas was sick; I cared for him – I really did.” She paused. “But Nicholas didn’t die. Gilbert grew impatient. So he came up with a plan.”

A plan to gain himself a rich widow for a wife. Helen had always seemed so kind and gentle, so tender-hearted. This deception was ruthless and cruel. How could she have agreed to it?

As if she read my thoughts, she said, almost wildly, “My life was wasting away. Sometimes I felt as though I was going mad. I wanted happiness, I wanted children!” She turned to face me. “I told Gilbert about the Scarlet Hand. How the letters kept coming even after Mr Petrov left Russia. Threats, curses. Even after his wife died.

“It wasn’t hard for Gilbert to hire three men to fake the kidnapping and leave the red glove as a clue. Mrs Leviny was supposed to be the witness but that morning Kate was sick. Everything was in place, I couldn’t call it off, so I asked you to come along, Verity – remember? – but then you insisted on bringing Drucilla with us. How was I to know she’d fight like that? Or that I’d faint? With the two of us in pink, the stupid men had no idea who to take, so they took us both. And then the business of hiding Drucilla delayed our plans. She nearly ruined everything.”

SP suppressed some kind of swear word, and I stared at Helen, astonished at her coldness. Drucilla could have been seriously injured. She could have died.

Helen blushed. “You don’t understand. I was desperate.”

“Helen,” I said. “So many people have been hurt. Not just Mr Petrov and Drucilla, but Papa and Harold and SP – Hannah and Mohan – me–”

“It was wicked,” said SP, harshly. “Unforgivable.”

Helen stared down at Torrance’s face. He opened his eyes and she stroked his cheek again. “Was it?”

It was after dinner, and we were sitting in the drawing room at Alhambra. Flames crackled in the hearth, polished wood shone in the firelight and all around me were beloved family and friends. Della was with us now too, for Papa had insisted she move in with us straightaway. It was as if he could not bear to have her out of his sight.

I thought of Helen. Was she alone in her prison cell? Would they let her keep her sewing bag and her embroidery? Probably not. I saw her long white fingers fluttering, her eyes darting here and there, looking for escape. I sighed.

“What will happen to her?” I asked.

Daniel knew what was on my mind. “She will go to gaol,” he said. “They both will. Bigamy and kidnapping are both very serious offences.”

Drucilla nestled against SP and they smiled at each other. At least there is one happy ending in this story, I thought.

“We need to tell Harold what has happened,” I said.

“Ah, poor lad. He will take it hard,” said Papa. “He loved his aunt very much.”

And she loved him, I added silently. Helen could be kind and loving, as well as cruel. Nothing was simple. Nothing was black and white. Grown-up life, I thought once again, is very complicated.

Papa smiled at me from across the room. “Come here, Veroschka,” he said. I pulled up the footstool and snuggled up to him, with my head against his knee. He stroked my hair. “My dear child,” he said. “You have seen too much of the ugly side of life. Lies, deceit, greed – you know, it is not all like that.”

“I know, Papa.”

“Look at SP there, with our Drucilla. Whatever life flings at them, they will answer it with truth and goodness. There are horrors in the world and there always have been. But in our own small world, all is well.” He looked across to Della, who was now chatting with Poppy and Connie. “And look what can happen. A little girl, abandoned and unloved, nevertheless grows into a fine person and – almost a miracle – she finds her family.”