The Truth About Verity Sparks (16 page)

They drew back, and one of them said, “What you doin’ ’ere then?”

“A spot o’ business, and never you mind what it is, neither,” I snapped, losing the genteel tone Miss Judith had been working on. “Lemme go now, and I won’t say nothin’ about it to Uncle Bill. What’s that street up ahead?”

They’d already scarpered, but the answer came floating back to me. “Haymarket.”

Cook had always warned us about Haymarket, with its pubs and theatres and saloons that were open till all hours, full of shady characters just waiting to pounce on young girls. Was I out of the frying pan and into the fire? I turned the corner and looked around me. It was certainly crowded, busy and noisy. There were drunks of both sexes and painted ladies and beggars and jugglers and flower sellers and muffin men and an organ-grinder and even a few gentlemen too, in dark coats and stiff white collars and tall top hats. One of them laid his gloved hand on my arm, saying, “Hello, my dear. Going my way?” but I ducked away from him. I looked high and low for a member of the Metropolitan Police but I couldn’t see that blue uniform anywhere in the crowd, and I didn’t feel like asking anyone. Then I had an idea. A cab was what I was after. I’d get the cabbie to take me to a police station, and the police could find Miss Lillingsworth and SP, and tell the Professor, and … My plan didn’t go any further than that.

Now I could see a line of hansom cabs waiting for fares. I felt sorry for the horses, working so late on a cold night, but at least the two-wheeled cabs weren’t heavy to pull. I went up to the first one in the line.

“I haven’t any money …” I began.

“You don’t get no ride, then,” the cabbie said, and turned his back to me.

I tried the next one. “My friends will see to it that you get paid when …”

“I drive for a fare, not for a promise.”

Well, it was clear now I was going the wrong way about it. I approached the next cabbie differently.

“I’d like to go to the nearest police station, please,” I said.

But the first cabbie yelled down the line, “Don’t you listen to ’er, Sam. She ain’t got no money.”

Sam growled at me. “Off you go. And don’t hang around here, botherin’ the punters.”

“But how am I going to get to the–”

“Same as everyone without a fare. You walk.”

I walked to the corner and then stopped. I didn’t even know where I was going.

“Get out of the way,” someone said, bumping me sideways.

“Move along,” said another, and I found myself swept along with the stream of people, buffeted and trodden on, through the brightly lit streets. At last I pushed and shoved my way out of the crowd, and slipped around a corner. There I leaned, trembling, against the side of a haberdashery shop.

I felt like I couldn’t go on. I was tired and aching all over; I was worried sick about SP and Miss Lillingsworth; and worse still, I was right at the very end of my courage. My mind went back to Ma. If she was here, watching over me, what would she want me to do?

I don’t know why I looked across the street just then. What I saw was a lighted shop with the sign of the three balls on it. Underneath that was written in large gold letters:

Vassily Plotkin
Money Lent Upon Every Description
of Valuable Property

A pawnbroker. My hand went to the red cord around my neck. Ma’s ring was gold. It must be worth a dozen cab fares. What would Ma want me to do? All at once I knew. She’d want me to pawn her ring and help SP and Miss Lillingsworth.

A bell tinkled as I opened the door. At the back of the shop an elderly bearded man sat surrounded by furniture and racks of clothes and cases of jewellery and trinkets, and telescopes and stuffed birds under glass and brass trumpets and I can’t say what else, but the shop was very clean and neat all the same. He had a coffee pot on a burner. The familiar comforting smell made me think of home. Mulberry Hill. How I longed to be back there, safe and sound, with this nightmare over. I was close to tears.

“What can I do for you, little miss?” The man had a very deep voice, slightly foreign.

I held out the ring. “Can I have … can I have some money for it, please, sir?”

He peered over his wire-rimmed specs. “You have fallen over?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked me up and down, taking in my new boots and my fine wool dress. I could tell he was wondering why I was here in his shop, covered in mud and trying to pawn a ring.

“The ring was my mother’s,” I said. I didn’t want him to think I’d stolen it.

He took it from me and inspected it closely. “It is a Russian wedding ring. See, there are three kinds of gold – rose, yellow and white. It is a lovely thing. Why do you pawn it, little miss?”

“I need money for a cab,” I said. “I don’t know what happened to our coachman, but someone else was driving, and he attacked my friend, and …” I started to tremble.

“Sit down, little miss.” He put a cup of coffee into my hand.

“… and I ran and ran and he chased me and there were these men and …”

“Eat this.” It was a sweet roll.

“… and I’m lost, and the cabbie wouldn’t take me without the fare. Please, sir, I don’t know what to do.”

“Let me think about your problem while you finish your coffee and your roll,” he said. He seemed very kind and I now felt quite safe with him in the circle of lamplight. He asked me who my friends were, and where they lived, and wrinkled his brows as he thought and thought. “Now, this is what I will do. I will go with you to the police station, and after that, I will send you home. I will pay for the cab, and you can keep the lovely ring that was your mother’s. It will be a loan with no security, but I think that I can trust you.”

“You can, you can.” I took his hand. “Thank you so much, sir.”

He nodded and looked at me with his gentle brown eyes. “You will come back and see me, no? And repay your loan?”

“Yes, of course.”

Mr Plotkin closed up the shop. We found a cab, and I started to thank him again, but he shook his head. “What were we put on earth for, if not to help one another? Do not worry. You know, I predict that in no time at all, you will be home safe with your friends.”

To tell the truth, I had my doubts, but Mr Plotkin was right after all.

“Thank goodness, miss,” one of the policemen said, after we walked in to the police station and I started to tell my story. “We’ve had five men out searching for you. Mr Plush is well known to the constabulary – I mean that in a good way – and as soon as we heard, we were onto it.”

“Inspector Grade is handling the case,” said another. “We’re to take you to your friends’ house, not keep you here, you being a young lady and all.” He looked me up and down. “You look dead beat, miss, and no wonder, running all that way. Since the cab’s still waiting, we’ll just pop you back in and Constable Griggs’ll go with you. And Mr Plotkin, I’ll find a cab for you, sir. A regular good Samaritan you’ve been tonight. We’ll have her back with her friends in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

It took a little longer than that, but by midnight Constable Griggs had delivered me to Miss Lillingsworth’s, and she had me clutched to her chest like she’d never let go.

“I’m all right, Miss Lillingsworth,” I said. “I’ve had a few adventures, but I’m right as rain, truly I am.”

When at last she believed me, she told me that she’d had a few adventures of her own. After the man ran off after me, she revived poor SP and helped him back into the carriage. As soon as she changed her calls of “Help!” to “Fire!”, a nightwatchman ran to her aid. He got the police, and the police got them home and sent word to the Professor. Then all she had to worry about was SP’s head and finding me.

“Miss Lillingsworth,” I said. “What a terrible time you’ve had.”

“Nonsense. I’ve been through worse, my dear – why, when I was teaching the Lampedusa children in Sicily, we were captured by bandits. No, the only terrible thing was the worry about you and SP.”

Miss Lillingsworth, I thought, was made of very tough stuff.

“Is SP badly hurt?” I asked.

“He got a nasty blow to the head, and the doctor’s with him now in the parlour,” she said. “I must get back to him. Millie will look after you, won’t you, Millie?”

Millie actually gave me a hug, and then she bustled me downstairs to the kitchen, where she bandaged my grazed hands, sponged the mud off my skirt and gave me a cup of hot cocoa and some buttered toast.

“Finish your supper, and don’t you fret about your friend, miss,” she said, seeing I was a mite twitchy and anxious to get upstairs. “He’s got Sir Barrington Topp with him, and as he’s the personal physician to the Duke of Cambridge, he ought to be good enough for Mr Saddington Plush.”

Eventually, she let me go into the front parlour where SP was lying on the sofa with cold compresses on his forehead. It seemed he was asleep.

Sir Barrington, looking like a toff in his evening suit and smelling of gardenias, was just about to leave.

“The young man has sustained a blow. The brain naturally resents being thrown around inside the skull and, as any injured tissue is liable to do, it swells,” he was saying. Even though he was trying to whisper, his voice was loud and plummy, and it was clear he liked the sound of it. “Our patient needs to be kept quite quiet, in a darkened room, on a bland diet, for at least a week. I have prescribed a sedative and a sleeping draught.” He scanned the room, as if half-expecting applause, and then his eye lit on me. “So this is our young friend. Another patient for me, Maria?” In spite of my saying I was perfectly fine, he insisted on taking my pulse, looking at my tongue and feeling my forehead before he was satisfied.

“My work is done,” he said, and with that he gathered up his top hat, cloak and cane, and said, in quite a different tone, “Goodnight, Maria dear, and let me know if you need me again, won’t you?”

“Yes, Barry, I will. Thank you for coming.”

“Any time,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.

Miss Lillingsworth watched him leave the room. “He’s so good to his old governess,” she said fondly. “He was such a shy little boy too. He’s come out of himself wonderfully. Now, Saddington.” She tapped him gently on the shoulder. “Here is Verity, as I told you, quite safe.” She turned to me and whispered, “He’s been in agonies of worry about you.”

SP spoke like he was still dreaming. “It’s really you, Verity?”

“It is, SP, and I’m safe and sound so there’s no need to worry yourself.”

“Really, Verity?” SP sounded weak as a kitten.

“Really,” I said, kneeling next to him. “A few scrapes, but no harm done.”

“Tell … tell Inspector Grade …”

For the first time I noticed someone sitting in the shadows near the fireplace. He was a small balding man, wearing a baggy tweed suit. He stood up and offered his hand, and I noticed that under his bristly ginger moustache he had bad teeth and a very kind smile.

“I’m Inspector Grade, and I’m glad to see you, miss,” he said. “And I’m very glad you’re unharmed. A nasty thing for a young lady like yourself to be running at night through those streets. But here you are, and that’s one less of Her Majesty’s subjects in harm’s way, for which I’m grateful. Are you up to giving me a statement?” He flipped the pages of his notebook.

“Statement?”

“If you’ll just tell me what happened, that’ll be good enough for Her Majesty.”

There wasn’t really much to tell. All I could say for certain was that the man who chased me was tall and well-spoken.

“And his voice was quite unusual.”

“Can you elaborate on that?”

“Very deep and sort of smooth, if you know what I mean. He had a way of talking that wasn’t foreign, like Mr Savinov or Mr Plotkin, but somehow different. Like a gentleman, but … but not quite.”

Inspector Grade’s pen was poised in midair. But I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

“He was a good runner too,” I said, trying to be helpful.

“Could be a young man. Could be an active older man.”

“Young, I think, sir.” But when he asked me why I thought that, I couldn’t tell him. Dookie, Sam, Polly and the rest of the urchins might have had a better look at him, but I didn’t want to send the police round to Flash Harry’s, for they’d move them on, or worse – round them up and put them in some poorhouse where they’d be separated. It was no way to thank them, so I said nothing.

I was giving Inspector Grade more useless answers when the knocker banged loudly. We heard voices and footsteps in the hall, and Mr Opie burst into the room.

“SP, old chap.”

“Shhh,” said Miss Lillingworth.

“Sorry, Maria,” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “SP, I was with the Professor when the message came. I just had to let you know. We found John. He was in the mews behind Lady Skewe’s house, wrists and ankles tied with rope, and doped with chloroform.”

“Is he all right?” asked SP.

“A thumping headache, but no worse than that, thank God. He says that he was having a stroll when a cloth was put over his face. He saw no one, and heard nothing.”

“Chloroform, eh?” said Inspector Grade. “Then it was all well planned and executed. Not a robbery, that’s plain. What was he after?” He chewed the end of his pencil and then looked at me sharply. “The answer seems to be you, miss, seeing as how he ran in pursuit. He called your name too. Anything else unusual happened to you recently? Anything at all?”

“I had a letter,” I said. “A letter warning me away from the Plushes.”

“Do you still have it?” asked the Inspector.

“No, I threw it in the rubbish.”

“Pity. Anything else?”

“I had a note from a friend, asking me to meet her. She wasn’t there, and when I saw her later, she knew nothing about it.”

“You mean she didn’t write to you at all? Aha.” He scribbled busily. “So what’s the motive?” Inspector Grade went on, half to himself.

I started to tell the Inspector about Lady Throttle, Miss Charlotte and Mic-Mac Pinner, but Mr Opie interrupted.

“They’re almost certainly out of the picture, Verity. Mic-Mac is in gaol, and Miss Charlotte has run off with the strongman from Leopoldi’s Circus. She’d be in Brussels by now. Without them, Lady Throttle has no accomplices. And more importantly, she has no money.”