Free The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry

lugged and toppled Mr. Godding out of the armoire before the pony’s tail was gone from sight.
    “He’s stiff!” she gasped.
    “Of course he’s stiff. He’s dead,” Dour Elinor said.
    Mary Jane was unsatisfied with this excuse. “He’s seized up all crooked!”
    And indeed he was. His repose in the armoire had not allowed him to rest f lat like a respectable corpse should. Rigor mortis had sealed his fate, with legs and arms bent every which way.
    “We’ll just have to bury him in a seated position,” Smooth Kitty said. “With … let’s see … one hand thrown over his forehead. What difference does it make? Let’s get wrapping.” They swathed the body in old cotton sheets. Stout Alice didn’t mind a bit when his gruesome face was out of sight behind the makeshift grave clothes. Mary Jane and Kitty worked as fast as she-spiders. Dour Elinor seemed rather put out by this. She apparently had cherished hopes of relishing this macabre experience.
    “Egyptian slaves spent weeks mummifying the pharaohs,” she sniffed. “At the very least, we should insert a probe up the nose to agitate and liquefy the brains. They’ll drip right out the nostrils.”
    “And that will benefit us how, exactly?” Disgraceful Mary Jane inquired. “Keep your revolting heathen suggestions to yourself, please. Can’t you see we’re in a hurry?”
    Dull Martha and Dear Roberta hung back from touching the bodies, so Kitty, Mary Jane, and Elinor went upstairs to wrap up Mrs. Plackett. Soon two bodies lay wrapped like laundry parcels at the rear kitchen door.
    “This is the most dangerous part of the whole game,” Smooth Kitty told the girls. “We’ve got to get them in the ground before anyone comes along and sees us doing it. Alice, you stand guard, and if anyone comes along, distract them somehow. Don’t let them anywhere near the gardens or the windows overlooking them. Most especially, keep Barnes at bay. She’s bound to turn up any minute. In fact, she’s nearly late. Mr. Godding first. Fly, girls, f ly!”
    Stout Alice made a pretense of picking lilacs in the front gardens, while Kitty, Mary Jane, and Elinor each hoisted up a protuberance belonging to Mr. Godding and waddled out to their cherry tree grave. They deposited him in the cavity, only to discover that his irregular shape meant that the grave needed to be a good deal deeper. Kitty and Martha remained behind to dig while the other girls hurried back for Mrs. Plackett. Alice watched all this from a cautious distance, so intently that she failed, at first, to hear footsteps approaching up the path to the house.
    Her heart sank into her boots. In their hour of need, she had faltered at her post! She had to get this unwelcome person away somehow. Then she saw who it was, and her heart leapt up into her throat and nearly choked her. It was Leland Murphy, who was the youngest junior law clerk ever employed by Mr. Wilkins, the village solicitor with offices on High Street. Short, pale, with sparse whiskers, facial pustules, and a chin that sloped straight down to his Adam’s apple without any trace of jawbone, Mr. Murphy was Lancelot to Alice’s Guinevere. She found no f law in him. The great and abiding question of her tender heart was whether he found a f law in her. Thus far in his presence fear had made her keep a shy and modest distance, almost to the point of muteness, but at this critical moment, she had not the luxury of such reserve.
    She ran to him along the gravel path. “Mr. Murphy! What a pleasure. What brings you here on this fine morning?”
    Poor Leland Murphy was so startled that he seemed to shrink within his skin to little more than bones wrapped in a greasy black coat. One hand, tucked underneath his lapel, clutched a leather folder of papers tightly.
    “Miss … Alice Brooks, is it?” he managed to say.
    That young lady obliged him by curtseying. “Kind of you to take notice of my name.”
    He nodded stif f ly, looking quite miserable.