Read Online The Truth About Verity Sparks by Susan Green - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Green
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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
“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
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