The Snagsbys disappeared every Sunday morning at nine o’clock sharp. Which was a great relief. It was all on account of Adelaide Snagsby – Ezra’s favourite sister. Once a week the Snagsbys would put on their finest clothes and set off for Adelaide’s boarding house in Bayswater. But I wasn’t invited.
For I didn’t exist.
Apparently, finding out that her brother had adopted a twelve-year-old maid of dubious origin would upset the narrow-minded nitwit. Therefore, I was kept a secret. Left behind with a list of chores, while the Snagsbys went off to shovel cream cake in their pie holes and chat about the weather.
Sometimes I threw a thrilling tantrum. But not today. Mother Snagsby was still cross with me about Mr Blackhorn’s poem. Two days had passed and she had barely uttered a word in my direction.
‘We are running late,’ muttered Ezra as he shuffled in from the workshop. Ezra made all of the Snagsbys’ discount coffins in the carriage house out at the back, though he spent a great deal of time snoozing under the almond tree.
‘Mother Snagsby is in the kitchen,’ I said, moving my dustpan and broom to let him pass.
The Snagsbys’ home was narrow and tall and terribly fond of dust. The downstairs was devoted to the funeral business – the viewing chamber and consulting room were handsome and elegant. The upstairs was for living – these rooms were faded, worn and bleak (with the exception of Gretel’s room).
Ezra looked towards the kitchen. Scratched at his jowls. ‘Bacon?’
I nodded my head. ‘She’s on her third plate.’
Mother Snagsby had an unnatural fondness for bacon. Ate it by the bucketful. Poor Mrs Dickens (the housekeeper and cook) was forever sending me to the butcher for another pound.
The old man sighed and sat down in a chair beneath a portrait of his daughter, Gretel. There were paintings of her in every room of the house, including the kitchen – one for every year, from a little girl up until the age of eighteen, when she was sent off to finishing school in Paris. Mother Snagsby had painted each one. She was rather gifted with a brush. In the picture above Ezra’s bald head, Gretel looked to be about ten or eleven, sitting atop a horse and looking rather delighted.
‘It cannot be good,’ said Ezra softly, ‘all that bacon.’
‘I wouldn’t worry, dear,’ I said, wiping my hands on the beastly apron Mother Snagsby insisted that I wear. ‘Back when I worked for the Midwinters, Miss Lucy ate nothing but turnips for a whole winter.’ I gave Ezra a reassuring smile. ‘It did her no real harm. Well, apart from her skin turning green. And I seem to recall she lost all feeling in her face. Other than that, fit as a fiddle.’
‘Get up, Ezra!’ snapped Mother Snagsby as she bustled into the narrow hall.
Ezra jumped to his feet – he was frightfully obedient.
Mother Snagsby wiped some bacon grease from her chin and regarded me coolly. ‘Why are you sitting there, young lady? The hall will not dust itself.’
‘I feel I must point out that, as your daughter, it isn’t proper that I should dust and polish and sweep like some sort of pint-sized Cinderella. Not to mention answering the door, fetching endless pots of tea and cleaning your diabolical undergarments.’
‘And where would you be if Ezra and I had not taken you in?’ Mother Snagsby slipped on a pair of pale green gloves (which matched her pale green dress). ‘This house is a place of work and everybody must play their part, even daughters.’
It was hard to say exactly how old Mother Snagsby was. She had a most interesting face. Lumpy skin covered by a thick layer of white powder. Fine lines scrunched around her bright blue eyes and tiny mouth. Black hair with a streak of white at the temple. And a stupendous mole, sitting above her upper lip like a Christmas pudding.
‘But there must be more to life, dear,’ I said, picking up the dustpan. ‘Why can we never have company over? Haven’t you any friends?’ I gasped with great commitment. ‘I know! We could throw an enchanting afternoon tea and invite some girls my own age. Just think how nice it would be to have people in the house who haven’t come to view a dead body.’
‘Out of the question,’ came Mother Snagsby’s stiff reply, ‘but as you are keen for company, young lady, once you have finished your chores, you may go to the library and select a few suitably sombre poems – no more making things up. It’s unseemly.’
Ezra put on his cap and opened the front door. ‘Be sure to walk the main roads, Ivy,’ he instructed, same as always. ‘No shortcuts, you hear?’
‘Yes, dear,’ I said with a sigh.
Then the Snagsbys passed out into the morning sun and were gone.
The long trek from Paddington to the library always went by in a blur. It was my thinking time. And I had a great deal on my mind. Secrets aplenty. The Snagsbys hadn’t a clue about my adventures in Paris, or the journey to England with Miss Always or the events of Butterfield Park. Mother Snagsby disapproved of the way I dusted, so I could not imagine how she might receive the news that I was dead. Or half dead.
And then there was the Clock Diamond. That cursed and magical stone that should have killed me when I first wore it all those months ago. For that is its great power. It steals souls, leaving behind the withered husk of the innocent fools who put the necklace on. Just as it did with poor Rebecca.
The necklace also offered visions of the past, present or future. But ever since I had arrived at the Snagsbys’ front door it had been something of a disappointment. Not a single vision. Nothing, until I woke up in Mr Blackhorn’s bedroom chamber and the stone felt warm against my skin.
It occurred to me that the diamond may have something to show me. So I had hurried up to my bedroom the moment we got home, and peered into the stone. Was I about to be shown a glimpse of my tragic past? Or my glorious future? Perhaps it would be a tantalising clue about why the Clock Diamond hadn’t killed me as it did everyone else who wore it. But no. All I saw was the present – the afternoon sun setting over London. It was a cruel blow.
I passed through the imposing doors and entered the cool of the London Library. It was a hive of bookish activity. People reading with tremendous relish. Others carrying bundles of books, speaking in whispers. I scanned the room. I did this everywhere I went. What on earth was I looking for? Certainly not Miss Frost. I didn’t expect her to appear and whisk me away on some thrilling adventure. At the train station in Suffolk she had promised that although I would not see her, she would be around. But I had my doubts.
Even the dangerously bonkers Miss Always had vanished. Hadn’t set eyes on that mad cow since she jumped off the roof at Butterfield Park. If she really believed I was the Dual – the saviour who would heal the plague killing her people – then why hadn’t she appeared? Or tried to grab me and drag me into Prospa (the mysterious world where she and Miss Frost hailed from)? Perhaps Miss Frost had been right about London being the one place on earth Miss Always would not think to look for me.
‘You are in the wrong place, Ivy.’
I smiled. ‘Am I?’
Miss Carnage motioned to the sign in front of me – Mysticism and the Occult. ‘The poetry section is upstairs.’ She poked me playfully in the arm. ‘You of all people should know that.’
I had only known Miss Carnage for a few weeks, but she was everything that one could hope for in a librarian. Poorly dressed. Frightfully thick spectacles. Greying hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. Hooked nose. Enormous chin. Teeth that looked big enough to carve an inscription on. She was plump and walked rather like a duck – taking short waddling steps.
‘You are right,’ I said. ‘My mind was elsewhere.’
‘It worries me that you spend so much time looking at morbid poetry,’ said Miss Carnage with great certainty. ‘It isn’t my place to say, but I do not think it healthy for a young girl to be reading poems to the dying, not healthy at all.’
I sighed and nodded. ‘It’s not nearly as much fun as you might think.’
Miss Carnage peered down the narrow corridor of books. ‘And I do not think it was an absent mind that brought you to this section of the library. “Mysticism and the Occult” must hold a certain fascination for you, Ivy, given the nature of your parents’ work.’
I shrugged. ‘Not really, dear.’
‘The books here concern dark matters indeed,’ said Miss Carnage, completely ignoring what I had just said, ‘things you would not have any experience of – such as communing with the spirit realm, cursed objects, ghostly visitations.’
‘No experience?’ I huffed. ‘Miss Carnage, I’ve had more ghostly visitations than you’ve had lonely evenings by the fire.’
‘Heavens.’ Miss Carnage pushed her spectacles up her bent nose. ‘You have seen ghosts, real ghosts?’
‘Dozens,’ I told her. ‘Vengeful ones. Sad ones. Lost ones.’
‘How fascinating!’ Miss Carnage pulled me down the aisle, scanning the endless spines as we went. ‘In that case there are a few books here that will interest you greatly. Of course, some books are so revolutionary they are frowned upon.’ She looked up and down the aisle as if she were expecting a train. ‘I believe that the library has a few such books hidden away, though they are long forgotten, concerning ghostly matters, worlds within worlds … that kind of thing.’
Miss Carnage stared at me expectantly.
‘Honestly, dear, I’m not at all –’
‘Here!’ she declared, pulling out five tomes with lightning speed. ‘If ghosts are troubling you, then the only answer is to arm yourself with the tools to get rid of them.’ Miss Carnage piled the books into my arms with great enthusiasm. ‘This top book is most interesting – Famous Ghosts of Scotland and Wales by Miss Geraldine Always.’
‘She’s beastly,’ I heard myself say.
‘You know the author?’
I nodded. ‘The truth is I thought we were friends, bosom friends, but I was horribly mistaken. Has that ever happened to you, dear?’
Silence.
I looked up. Miss Carnage was nowhere to be seen.
Just at that moment I heard the floorboards creak behind me. I spun around, expecting to see the tender-hearted librarian. But the aisle was deserted. Which was rather odd. Perhaps it was because I had been thinking of Miss Always. Or perhaps it was being alone in that vast, dim corridor. Whatever the reason, I began moving swiftly out of there.
A shameful thrill of relief surged though me as I passed out of the aisle. My eyes were fixed on the welcome buzz of the crowded reading tables. Which is why I didn’t see the foot shoot out. Tripping me up at the ankles. I tumbled to the floor. The books scattered all around me in a thunderous symphony that shattered the quiet.
As I climbed to my knees, I spotted a pair of black boots and the hem of a fine lilac skirt.
‘Honestly, dear,’ I said, hastily collecting the books from the floor, ‘you really should watch where you are going. If I wasn’t the beloved daughter of a pair of violently upstanding coffin makers, I might slap you about the head with a book on vengeful ghosts.’
With tremendous dignity I got to my feet and looked my attacker in the face. There wasn’t time to control the gasp that flew from my mouth.
Matilda Butterfield was smiling at me, but her pretty eyes glistened darkly. ‘Hello, Pocket.’