The Truth About Verity Sparks (8 page)

I handed the horse over to the Professor, for now that my hands weren’t itching, they felt so weak that I was scared I’d drop the blessed thing. We trooped down the stairs and into the drawing room, and Mrs Chalmers went outside to get Jimmy. He came in, clinging to his grandmother’s skirts, but when Mrs Honeychurch asked him if he knew where the missing Tang horse might be, he shook his head.

“Don’t know no Tang,” he whispered.

“Then what’s this?” asked Mrs Chalmers, pointing to the china horse in the Professor’s hands. She was close to either tears or temper, I could tell, but her face changed when the little boy spoke.

“That’s Mazeppa,” he said, surprised. “No one asked me ’bout Mazeppa.”

“Jimmy,” she said sorrowfully, but Mrs Honeychurch began to laugh.

“You know that it was very wrong of you, don’t you, James, to put Mazeppa in your stable without asking?” said Mrs Honeychurch. “Everyone was so worried about him. Please put him back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” whispered James. He took the horse from the Professor and placed it carefully on the shelf. “Lovely, he is.” He stroked its shiny brown back. “Lovely.”

Mrs Honeychurch sat a few seconds, thinking. “James,” she said. “You may have him.”

Jimmy stared at her.

“He’s yours.”

“What do you say, Jimmy?” prompted Mrs Chalmers.

Jimmy stammered out his thanks, but Mrs Honeychurch wasn’t listening. The Major had hold of her hand, and she was staring into his eyes like he was Romeo and Prince Charming all in one. We tiptoed away.

“It just goes to show,” said the Professor to Judith and me when we were back in the carriage.

“What, Father?”

“There is such a thing as a happy ending.” He dabbed at his eyes with his handkerchief, and then blew his nose very hard. “Touch of hay fever,” he explained, then turned to me. “Well done, Verity. Perhaps we should add matchmaking to our prospectus.”

When I look back to all the things I learned in those first few months as an Assistant Confidential Inquiry Agent, it’s a wonder my brain didn’t burst.

First, there was Surveillance. That meant following people and watching what they did.

“Remember, any small detail might be the vital clue we need to crack the case,” said SP.

And then I had to learn Reporting.

“Father says you have remarkable powers of observation – that means noticing things, Verity – and at times you must take notes about what you’ve seen.” SP hesitated, as if he was embarrassed. “Do you … er … can you read and write?”

I wasn’t too offended. Lots of girls like me couldn’t, but I was lucky; Ma had taught me my letters when I was small. Even so, I was a bit rusty, and SP took on the job of bringing me up to scratch. We started with the
London Illustrated Journal
and soon I was picking and choosing from the Professor’s library. Who would have thought of a milliner’s apprentice reading Mr William Shakespeare and Miss Jane Austen?

Judith’s job was Manners and Deportment. I had to be able to go with her to a concert or a tea party or a smart shop without giving the game away that I was in fact a Female Operative. I was nearly over saying “ain’t” and dropping my aitches, and Judith was pleased. I was easy to teach, she said, for my voice was sweet and low, and I was naturally quite refined.

“Ha!” said Mrs Morcom. “I’ve heard refined young ladies that shriek like cockatoos. You are an excellent teacher though, Judith. Verity is not exactly a sow’s ear, but I do believe she will be a silk purse by the time you have done with her.”

It was book-learning with SP and tea parties with Judith, but with the Professor it was all Experiments.

“Experiment” was a new word to me, but I learned its meaning only too well. So well that my heart sank to my boots every time I heard the Professor say it. At first it was fun, but after a while a few hours trimming hats would have seemed like a holiday to me.

This is what we did. I’d be blindfolded, and the Professor and I would sit either side of a table, with a screen between us. He’d shuffle a pack of cards and then place one of them on his side and ask me to guess what it was. And what do you know? Right from the first, I hardly ever got one wrong. That got the Professor very excited. After the playing cards, we moved on to coloured shapes and wooden animals and words written on pieces of card. All these childish games were highly interesting to the Professor, but to me they were strange and a bit scary. It was sort of like finding you can speak French or play the piano, just like that, with never a lesson or a teacher. I found myself trying to ignore the itchy fingers, trying not to see the pictures in my head. But the Professor was unstoppable.

“Excellent, excellent,” he’d say, and write it all up in his big leather-bound book. He put in the time and date and how long it took for me to guess, and my answers to his questions. Well, question, really. He said it different ways, but it was always the same one.

“How do you do it?”

I couldn’t tell him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I just didn’t know.

“These experiments, sir,” I said one morning. “Can I ask you what they are for?”

The Professor stroked his moustache, and thought a little. “In this modern scientific age,” he began, “we have to assume that there are in fact real explanations for events and occurrences that in the past were seen as pure mysteries.” He smiled his beautiful smile and patted my shoulder. “As a very great man, a friend of mine, said, ‘Every fact is a theory, if we did but know it.’ And so my aim is to gather as many facts about your gift as possible, so that my fellow researchers and I can put them under the light of scientific analysis.”

“Fellow searchers?”

“Ah, my dear child. You’ve said it.” He looked at me very kindly and fondly. “We are indeed searchers: searchers after truth in dark and hidden places. We call ourselves the Society for the Investigation of Psychic Phenomena. A small group as yet, but some fine minds. In fact, there is a meeting here tonight. I would like it very much if you would join us.”

“So you can show me off, Professor?”

The Professor choked on his tea, and I wondered if I’d been rude.

“No, Verity. Well, actually, yes. But not if you truly dislike the idea.”

I did. I could just see it: a pack of toffs all looking on while I did tricks like an organ-grinder’s monkey. But I didn’t have the heart to say no. The Professor was so excited about his notes and his experiments, and who was I to spoil his fun?

“I would like to do something a little different too. I will describe the way you found the brooch and my pipe and the horse, but I would also like you, if you would, to demonstrate the finding of a hidden item,” he said.

“Yes?” I said, trying hard to sound willing.

“It would be a splendid addition to our data.” He rubbed his hands together. “I will ask one or two of our members to secrete some small objects in the room before you come in, while another pair keeps watch in the passageway, to make sure you are not peeping through the keyhole. And Verity, could you put your mind to the toasting fork?”

“The toasting fork?” Whatever next! Sometimes the Professor’s mind leaped about like a barrel of monkeys.

“It’s been missing since last week.”

They came at eight, and after half an hour of official SIPP business, the Professor came and got me. There were seven members of the SIPP gathered in the library, but I was too nervous to notice much more than a varied collection of beards and moustaches, some very dreary dresses on the ladies, and even drearier bonnets.

“My fellow searchers,” the Professor began. “I would like to introduce Miss Verity Sparks. Miss Sparks has kindly consented to be with us tonight, to demonstrate her skills as a teleagtivist.” There was some whispered comment, and the Professor went on. “Teleagtivism, as you all know, is a word of my own devising; some of you of course will prefer the catch-all ‘telepathy’, but we may leave that issue for another meeting. I would like to assure you all that Miss Sparks is not a professional, has never mounted the stage and has never given any exhibition or display. Miss Sparks, may I present Sir Maximilian Orffe, Mrs Rose, Professors Choate and Flange, Mr Savinov, Miss Kelling and our newest member, Doctor Beale.”

We did the usual. I named the cards and I found the small objects, including the toasting fork that the Professor had really and truly mislaid. (It was in the coal scuttle.) But we didn’t go on too long; I think Mrs Morcom must have had a quiet talk to the Professor about performing dogs and the like, and it was all rather well-mannered and respectful, with a lot of “If you please, Miss Sparks” and “Thank you, Miss Sparks”. At the end, he asked me if I would be prepared to answer one or two questions from the meeting.

Doctor Beale stood up. He had narrow shoulders but a very big head, and thin mousy hair slicked back with oil. He was clean-shaven, which was unusual; most gentlemen preferred beards and moustaches, and a few whiskers would have balanced out his large, white forehead. The room was too dim for me to judge the colour of his eyes, but they were pale, and when he fixed them on me I couldn’t help giving a little shiver, as if I’d stepped out into the cold. All in all, he was rather odd, but I don’t think that was why I took an instant dislike to him.

“Miss Sparks,” he said, speaking very slowly and precisely, as if each word was snipped off with scissors. “Can you tell me if any other member of your family exhibited special gifts?”

“No, sir,” I said. My family tree – or lack of – was none of his business.

“And have you ever taken part in any program of experimentation before?”

“No, sir.”

“Aha. In your opinion, Miss Sparks, how are the experiments impacting upon your abilities? Have you noticed an increase, or indeed a diminishing of your powers?”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“He’s asking if you are getting better or worse,” said Mrs Rose in a loud whisper.

“Nothing much has changed, sir,” I said.

That wasn’t exactly true. I knew that all the practising was making me better at it, but I met the Professor’s eyes and he gave a tiny little nod, as if agreeing with my short answers. I got the impression that he didn’t like Dr Beale very much.

Then Miss Kelling wanted to know if I visualised in black-and-white, and Mrs Rose wondered if I felt tired afterwards, and I said no to that one and yes to the other, and then asked to be excused.

“Miss Sparks, permit me to detain you for a minute longer,” said a deep fruity voice. It was Mr Savinov. He’d been sitting quietly at the back of the room, but as he rose I saw that he was a fine-looking old man, tall and so burly he was almost bursting out of his evening suit. His hair was long and brushed back from his face in thick silver-grey waves, and his beard and moustache were neatly trimmed. His calm, stern face reminded me of the bronze lions in Trafalgar Square.

“Miss Sparks, your skills are remarkable, and so is your patience. I would like to thank you on behalf of all of us –” he gestured to those gathered in the library “– and to wish you well.”

There was a polite round of applause, and I think I blushed red as a beetroot. Fancy that, I thought. Compliments to Verity Sparks. I looked back into the room just as I was closing the door, and Mr Savinov caught my eye. He gave me a little smile, as if we two were in on the same secret. I smiled back. I was still smiling when I got upstairs to my room.