The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry

last. “Time for me to crawl into bed with Miss Fringle, on the very spot where a dead woman has lain for hours. At least I’m spared your job of hauling her away somewhere and hiding her. Where will you stuff the old girl?”
    Smooth Kitty was happy to stop worrying for a moment whether or not Henry Butts had heard all. “Oh, I already have that figured out,” she said. “We’ll carry her upstairs to your bed.”
     
     
    Pocked Louise and Dour Elinor retired to the bedroom they shared with Stout Alice while the older girl remained downstairs in the parlor, waiting to change beds with Mrs. Plackett’s body. Louise crawled in between her chilly sheets and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Are you worried a bit, Elinor?” she asked her roommate.
    Dour Elinor combed slow strokes through her long black hair. “About what?”
    Louise shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. About murder, I suppose.”
    Elinor’s comb caught upon a snarl. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Murder doesn’t pay much heed to who’s worried about it or not. The Grim Reaper always collects his prize in the end.”
    Pocked Louise rolled her eyes. It was so frustrating, sometimes, trying to talk to Elinor. “What if it was one of us?” she asked. “Do you think it’s possible?”
    Elinor rose and stretched. “Of course I do.” Her nightgown rustled as she blew out their candle and climbed into the upper bunk of their bed. “Anything is possible.”
    “Then who?”
    “I don’t know. Whom do you suspect?”
    Louise shuddered. “Suspect! It’s such a serious word. I wouldn’t dare to suspect anyone. Not without evidence.”
    Elinor lowered her head down over the edge of her bed. Her hair hung down almost to the top of Louise’s bed, a swaying curtain that glistened in the wavery moonlight. “I won’t tell a soul what you say,” she said. “It’s not suspecting. It’s just asking the question. A scientist asks questions to find the truth, don’t you think?”
    Louise slid down under her covers. “Yes … naturally.”
    “Then what questions occur to you?”
    This, Louise felt certain, was one of those times when saying nothing would be the wisest policy. But Elinor did promise to keep her words secret. And it wasn’t often that the older girls seemed this interested in Louise’s opinions. This was murder, after all. What if she said nothing, and then poor Elinor was the next to fall? Louise could never forgive herself.
    “I don’t know anything,” Louise whispered. “Not a thing. Not a single clue.” She took a deep breath. “But doesn’t it seem rather strange to you how quick Kitty was to take charge of things?” She heard Elinor’s soft intake of breath and plowed ahead. “I mean … this idea of running the school all by ourselves. It seemed so … almost premeditated. Almost as if Kitty had been thinking of and planning this for a long time.”
    Elinor nodded her dangling head, sending her hair undulating.
    “That’s not suspicion, of course,” Louise said. “It’s just a question I have.”
    “I know.” Elinor pulled her head back up and lay down upon her bed.
    Footsteps down the hall made them both pause. Someone creeping down the hall after dark, and tonight … Louise’s pulse raced. She slipped out of bed to listen at the door. She breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s only Kitty and Mary Jane,” she said, then blushed to think of all she’d just said. “They’re bringing us the body.”
     
     
    Smooth Kitty woke at four o’clock in the morning, when nothing but a sable stripe along the eastern horizon suggested morning would come. After a late evening spent deep in calculating thoughts and plans, she’d had less than three hours of sleep, but Kitty was blessed with the knack of waking whenever she had predetermined to—to the precise minute. Any less control over her person would have been unacceptable to her well-ordered mind.
    She shook Disgraceful Mary Jane awake. The older girl