I was at the tradesman’s entrance right on three o’clock, and this time Violet opened the door on the first ring. Crewel arrived a few seconds later, and gave me a funny kind of smirk.
“You are very punctual,” she said, and since I didn’t know what that meant, I just bobbed a curtsey and followed her upstairs.
Lady Throttle was standing in front of the fire. She’d changed from the flashy red into a pale blue dress. Very sweet she looked, almost girlish. I curtseyed and tried to hand over the hatbox, but she shrank back like I had lice.
“There she is,” she cried, pointing.
I looked behind me. “Beg pardon, ma’am?”
“You wretch! Where is it? I demand to know. Where is it?”
“Please, Lady Throttle.” A tall man with a big brown moustache loomed out of the corner. “Do not distress yourself, ma’am. Allow me to question the young person.”
“She has it. I can tell. Guilt is written all over her wicked face. And to think,” Lady Throttle pressed a lace handkerchief to her eyes. “To think that I gave the vile creature a chocolate!” She sank into an armchair and began to weep quietly.
“Sit over here, if you please.” The man indicated the stool I’d perched on that morning. “You may put the hatbox down,” he added kindly.
I’m not slow on the uptake, and I could see where this was leading. Someone had nicked something. And they thought that someone was me. Bloomin’ hell!
“My name is Saddington Plush,” the man said. He was quite a young man, maybe just turned twenty in spite of the moustache, with curly brown hair and kind green eyes. “I am a confidential inquiry agent, and Lady Throttle has called me here today, in great distress.” He paused, and she let out a long, shuddering sob. “Let me take down a few details.” He whipped a little notebook and a pencil from his top pocket.
“Your name?”
“Verity Sparks, sir.”
“The name Verity,” he said, looking down at me all serious and stern, “comes from the Latin veritas, and it means ‘truth’. I hope you intend to be truthful, Verity?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. Pompous ass, I thought.
“Your age and employment?”
“Thirteen, sir. I’m an apprentice trimmer at Madame Louisette’s.”
“Who are your parents?”
“Thomas and Elizabeth Sparks, sir.”
“Where do they live?”
“They’re dead, sir.”
“We don’t need her pedigree,” interrupted Lady Throttle. “Search her.”
“Just a few more questions.” He turned back to me. “After your parents died, where and with whom did you reside?”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Who took you in?”
“Auntie Sarah and Uncle Bill.”
“Tell me about your uncle and aunt, Verity.”
“They run a used-clothes stall. Auntie Sarah couldn’t keep me, and so I got apprenticed to Madam Louisette.”
“When did you last see them?”
“Christmas time, sir.” Only for a few minutes though. Auntie Sarah had a black eye, and that meant Uncle Bill was back on the grog. I didn’t want to cause any trouble, so I’d given her a quick kiss and gone away.
Lady Throttle stamped her foot, and Mr Plush turned to her. “There is method in my questioning, as you will see. What is your uncle’s name?”
Oh, no, I thought. So this is where Mr Plush was leading. “Bill – I mean William – Bird, sir.”
“Aha!” Mr Plush got out another notebook and flipped through the pages till he found what he was after. “Just as I thought,” he said. “Are you aware, Verity, that he is a notorious fence?”
Lady Throttle was wide-eyed. “A fence? Whatever do you mean, Mr Plush?”
I tried to look as blank as a sheet of paper, but I knew. We used to have visitors, lots of them, coming at all hours with parcels and packages for Uncle Bill. Money changed hands, no questions asked, and then they’d go away. So I knew about Uncle Bill all right, but I wasn’t going to tell Mr Saddington Plush.
“No, sir,” I lied. “He’s an honest man, he is. He’s no fence.”
“Fence is thieves’ slang for a receiver of stolen goods, Lady Throttle,” he explained.
“Stolen goods.” Lady Throttle was shrill. “A rookery of thieves! A den of criminals! Thank God we were not all murdered.” She shot me a glance that’d poison a snake. “It is all clear to me now.”
“Verity Sparks, I propose to you that you have stolen Lady Throttle’s brooch, with the intention of passing it on to your uncle, the notorious fence, William Bird. What do you say to that?”
“I say I haven’t done it, sir.” I tried to speak loud and strong, but I felt like a rat in a trap, and it came out as a whisper. They’re fitting me up, good and proper, I thought. Who done it? That bony old maid, Crewel? I stole a glance at her, and she met my eye, cold as an icicle. Then again that little smirk. Something was going on.
My fingers began to itch. It was annoying, and I rubbed them together, but it only got worse. They were stinging now, worse than a wasp bite. What was wrong with them? Lady Throttle was saying something but I couldn’t hear what it was. The only thing I could think of was my itchy fingers, and then …
“The brooch is in Lady Throttle’s purse,” I gasped. All eyes turned to the embroidered bag on her bureau.
Lady Throttle almost fell off her chair. “What nonsense.”
“It is,” I insisted. In a flash I’d seen it, clear as day.
Mr Plush turned to Crewel. “May I have Lady Throttle’s purse, please?”
“You may have no such thing, Mr Plush!” Lady Throttle was red in the face. “This creature is simply trying to delay the inevitable. Search her, sir!”
“Crewel?” Mr Plush held out his hand.
Mistress and maid locked eyes, and I saw Lady Throttle give a tiny shake of her head.
“Surely, Lady Throttle, if there is any chance of a mistake?” pleaded Mr Plush. “I know that a lady such as yourself would not wish to falsely accuse this young person, however dubious her ancestry.”
My what? Never mind that. Grabbing my chance, I snatched up the bag and handed it to Mr Plush.
His hand hovered over it. “I need your permission, Lady Throttle.”
“Which I do not give.” Lady Throttle snarled. For a pretty little thing, I thought, she can come up ugly all right. “Hand it over, and search the brat.”
Mr Plush bowed. “Of course, Lady Throttle.” But somehow, in the handing over, he fumbled and dropped it, and out onto the threadbare carpet rolled a hair comb, three gold-wrapped chocolates, a couple of sovereigns – and the Throttle diamond.
“My God!” cried Lady Throttle. “Crewel, you idiot. Why did you not tell me you’d put it in my purse?”
“I … I …” stammered the maid, and dodged as Lady Throttle threw a small clock at her. A silver hairbrush and a cut-glass perfume bottle followed, then Lady Throttle flung herself into the armchair and began drumming her heels on the floor like a child having a temper tantrum.
“You’d best go,” said Crewel sourly, and opened the door.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I hurtled down the stairs and into the hall. It was empty, but when I opened the front door I nearly collided with the master of the house. Sir Bertram looked down at me with surprise.
“What’s this?” he said.
I pushed past him and ran as fast as I could.
“Hey, you!” I heard him shouting, but I was down the street and round the corner already.
I ran for two blocks, then I sat in the gutter and up came my lunch. After I’d heaved a few times I just sat there, trembling. My hands were still tingling, ever so slightly, and I held them out in front of me and stared at them.
Itchy fingers. That had come first. And then suddenly, with no shadow of a doubt, I’d known where the brooch was. It had been like a picture in my mind’s eye, clear and sharp and certain and sure. But there was no way I could have known that the brooch was in the purse. It was true I’d always been good at finding things, but not like that. And I’d never before had itchy fingers.
“Miss?”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stood up. Mr Saddington Plush gave a quick bow.
“Miss Sparks, I–”
I backed away from him. “Miss Sparks all of a sudden, is it? What do you want with me? I ain’t going back there.”
“No one wants you to go back there, Miss Sparks,” he said. He was puffing slightly. “I simply wanted to apologise.”
“What?”
“Say sorry.”
“Why should I say sorry? I never done it. It was the maid, Crewel; I saw her put the brooch in the bag.”
“No, you didn’t.”
I stared at him.
“How did you know where it was, Miss Sparks?”
“I dunno what you mean.”
He sighed. “Have it your own way,” he muttered. He fished in his inner pocket, brought out a little rectangle of pasteboard and handed it to me.
“It’s my card,” he said. “I’d like to discuss this matter with you further. At your convenience. Feel free to contact me. Any time.”
I glanced at it.
Saddington Plush and Son, Con–
Continental-something-or-other. I popped it in my pocket and turned to walk away.
“Let me detain you just one instant further, Miss Sparks,” he said. He took my hand and folded it around a couple of coins. “If you continue along this street, and then turn left, you will be able to find a cab for your journey home.”
Never take money from a gentleman, Cook had warned me. Evil designs, she said. But I was too tired to walk and too tired to care about designs, evil or otherwise.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“I shall expect to see you, Miss Verity Sparks.”
Expect all you like, Mr Saddington Plush.
Even with the cab ride, it was after five by the time I got back to Madame Louisette’s. I went to the kitchen first, and Cook gave me a couple of fairy cakes. I wondered, as I ate them, what to say to Madame. Any kind of trouble with customers was bad for business, and I knew she’d worry when I told her.
She knew already. The door of her private parlour was open and she was sitting at her bureau with a glass in her hand and a gin bottle in front of her. A litter of bills and letters and advertising fliers lay mixed with ribbon samples and odd trimmings around her on the floor, as if she’d simply swept the lot from her desk. She’d been crying.
“Oh, Verity.” She swayed to her feet. “Verity, I’m so sorry. So very sorry, my dear girl.”
“What’s the matter, Madame? Have you heard about the brooch?”
She nodded.
“But you know I didn’t take it.”
“I know, I know.” She gulped down the rest of her gin and poured another half-glass, then scrabbled around on the floor for a piece of paper. “But here. Look! It’s a note from Lady Throttle. She insists I let you go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kick you out. Get rid of you. She says that if I don’t, she won’t pay her bill.”
“Is it so very much?”
Madame ignored me. “And she’ll tell all her friends not to pay. Don’t you understand, dear? If they don’t pay me, I can’t pay for these.” She tossed a bunch of ribbons into the air. “And then they’ll send the bailiffs round. I’ll be ruined.”
I sat shocked and still while Madame continued drearily, “And not just me: there’s Emily and Bridget and Beth, and there’s Charlotte, and Cook as well. I’ll have nothing.”
I could see why Madame was scared, but my heart sank like one of Cook’s fairy cakes. Where would I go? What would I do?
“I’d like to stick up for you, Verity, I truly would, but she’s got me, and there’s nothing I can do.” Madame upturned the gin bottle and shook the last drops into her glass. “Nothing.”