Free At the Sign of the Sugared Plum by Mary Hooper Page A

them. After this I dipped them quickly in cold water and placed them in the hot sun to dry out.
    Sarah watched me and said this was a new recipe for her, and she had not worked with cherries before, but thought they looked very pretty and tasty.
    That evening came the information from Mr Newbery that there had been another death at the top of our street, although as the person there had lived alone there was no need for the house to be shut up. We had received no further news of our Williams family these last three days, so as we closed the shutter of the shop, Sarah and I resolved that we would go and enquire after them.
    The guard outside their house was asleep and snoring, so Sarah tapped on the next-door house to enquire how they did.
    The woman who answered, Mrs Groat, shook her head. ‘I’ve heard nothing of them these last two days,’she said. ‘That first night – and the next day – there was a wailing and a crying and carrying on, but for the last two days there’s been nothing.’
    ‘Has food been taken inside?’ Sarah asked.
    She shrugged. ‘The guard has money to buy their everyday provisions, and get milk for the children, but to tell the truth I fear he takes it for ale. I was going to ask the minister at church tomorrow what I should do.’ She looked at us and lowered her voice, ‘I don’t even know if they live.’
    Hearing this, Sarah did no more than go straight to the guard outside the Williams’ house and try to rouse him, and I fear he had been on ale, for it took a great deal of shaking and shouting before he was awake to our questions.
    ‘We want to know how the family within are,’ she said and, seeing his rather blank and stupid face, added some falsely polite words of praise for his care of them.
    ‘Has a doctor called on them?’ I asked, thinking that if nothing else I could run and get Doctor da Silva and see what he could do.
    The man smiled, a drunken, lop-sided smile. ‘This family give me no trouble at all. Quiet as the flowers, they are.’
    ‘But we want to know if they’re all right!’ Sarah said. ‘When did you last see them?’
    ‘Can you ask them how they’re doing?’ I said. ‘Can we see if they need anything?’
    The man leaned over and picked up his glittering halberd, waving it in front of our faces. ‘I has to guard this house. No one can go in!’
    ‘You can go in, though, can’t you?’ I said. ‘You cansee how they fare.’
    He looked at us suspiciously. ‘Are you family?’
    I was about to say no, but Sarah broke in and said yes, they were our dear cousins and we were fair desperate to know how they were doing.
    ‘We hoped such a kind and reasonable man as yourself would be looking after them,’ I added, for I could see that flattery might be the only thing to move him. ‘Would you be able give us news on how they fare?’
    Grinning now, the man got out a set of keys and proceeded to open the two padlocks which held together the chains which had been hammered across the doorway. He pushed at the door, which opened to nothing but silence and darkness.
    ‘How do you keep?’ the guard hollered into the hallway. ‘Is there owt you need?’
    Holding each other, Sarah and I looked through into the hall, where not a candle or a taper showed through the darkness. And then the air from the newly-opened house billowed to reach us and we smelled a stench so foetid that we had to step backwards.
    ‘I very much fear all is not well,’ she whispered to me, and then braced herself to call, ‘Hello! Mrs Williams. Is there anything you need?’
    No reply came.
    She and I looked at each other nervously, for I felt sick from the smell and would not have been brave enough to enter.
    ‘Will you go in?’ Sarah asked the guard.
    ‘Not I!’ he said. ‘I’m not paid to enter charnel houses.’
    ‘And you mustn’t go in either!’ I said, holding fast to Sarah’s arm.
    Behind us, Mrs Groat had come up to peer into the dark abyss of the house.
    ‘I’d