A Very Unusual Pursuit (24 page)
Birdie didn’t want to waste any time. When Miss Eames began to argue that two lone children shouldn’t be entrusted with such a dangerous mission, Birdie’s answer was to push open the carriage door and ask, ‘Where
is
Mr Bunce?’
‘Birdie—’
‘The house ain’t far,’ Ned volunteered, interrupting Miss Eames. ‘I’ll take you there.’
‘Let
me
go!’ Miss Eames tried to grab Birdie’s pretty beaded sash. ‘Ned and I can protect Mr Bunce, while you and Aunt Louisa alert the police.’
‘Oh, but Edith . . .’ Mrs Heppinstall looked aghast.
‘I have no
idea
what’s going on! You never told me about this Pickles woman. I know nothing of Jem Barbary—’
‘And
I
ain’t going to no lock-up,’ Birdie snapped. She eluded Miss Eames by jumping to the ground, where she landed near a pile of horse manure. ‘Them traps won’t listen to me. Nor to
him
, neither.’ She jerked her chin at Ned, who had just joined her on the road. By this time Miss Eames was hovering in the doorway, glancing from her aunt to Birdie and back again. It was hard to judge who needed help the most; though Birdie was just a little child, Mrs Heppinstall was as frail as a stick of rotten wood.
Seeing Miss Eames hesitate, Birdie made the choice for her – by moving away from the carriage.
‘Wait! Birdie!’ Miss Eames tried to call her back. And when that failed, she added, ‘Take the front-door key! You might need it . . .’
She tossed the key in Birdie’s direction, so that it flashed through the air like a silver dart. Ned caught it. Then he offered it to Birdie, who waved it aside because she didn’t have a pocket.
‘Which way?’ she asked him.
‘Next left,’ he answered. Behind them, Samuel was cracking his whip.
‘Look after her, Ned!’ Miss Eames exclaimed. ‘I’ll be there directly, as soon as I find a policeman!’
She slammed the door shut as the brougham began to roll forward.
Ned and Birdie took off down the street, which was flanked by very wide pavements. For once, Birdie didn’t feel out of place among all the gentlefolk parading up and down – not in her expensive, brand-new clothes. But she was running with a badly dressed boy, and they made such an odd couple that they attracted quite a lot of attention.
Rounding a corner, she almost collided with a nurserymaid pushing a pram.
‘Beg pardon, miss!’ Birdie gasped. She saw that she was now on a quieter, narrower street where the terraced houses were all five storeys high, with white porticoes, black railings, and tall, stately, red-brick facades. At number six, a maid was sweeping the front steps. At number nine, a footman was helping a lady into a cab.
‘It’s over there,’ Ned suddenly announced, pointing. ‘Twelfth one along.’
Birdie stopped in her tracks. ‘Tell me where Mr Bunce is.’
‘In the parlour.’
‘Yes, but where’s that?’
Ned haltingly explained that the front door of Mr Fotherington’s house opened into a wide entrance hall with two large rooms off it. The parlour window looked out onto the street, and was divided from the dining room by a pair of wooden folding doors. When prodded by Birdie – who found it hard to get information out of him – Ned explained that the bogle was supposed to be hidden in the parlour fireplace.
‘So they’re all in the front room?’ asked Birdie, her face falling.
‘It ain’t as bad as it sounds,’ Ned assured her. ‘The window’s shuttered, and them rooms . . . they’re
big
.’ He racked his brain for a comparison. ‘Like a church.’
‘But they’ll hear us if we go through the front door. They’re bound to.’ As Ned shrugged, Birdie pondered. ‘And we can’t see through the window, on account o’ the shutters being closed.’
Ned gave a nod.
‘Where’s the kitchen?’ Birdie queried.
‘In the basement.’ After a moment’s thought, Ned continued, ‘There’s a mews out back, for the horses, but I ain’t bin there. It’s all locked up, I expect.’
‘We’ll try the kitchen first,’ Birdie decided.
She took the lead, marching along with her head held high because she was as well-dressed as any child in London, and saw no need to skulk. Ned, on the other hand, followed her with his head down, casting nervous glances from side to side.
‘You look like a princess,’ he mumbled, making Birdie flush.
‘If I were a princess,’ she replied in a low voice, ‘I’d be wearing a hat and gloves.’ Abruptly she halted again. ‘Is this the house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’ They all looked the same to her. ‘How do you know?’
‘I told you. I counted.’
They were lucky. There wasn’t a soul near the place. What’s more, the parlour window was set quite high; even if it hadn’t been shuttered, anyone inside would have had to stand very close to the glass to see Ned and Birdie pass underneath it, into the area. A simple latch opened the area gate, which swung smoothly on well-oiled hinges. A short flight of stone steps led down to the basement door. No stray leaves or nuggets of coal crunched under Birdie’s feet as she padded across the area flagstones. No curious neighbours hailed her from the street, to ask why such a respectable-looking girl was ushering a common beggar (or worse) into Mr Fotherington’s house.
When Birdie tried the basement door, its knob turned cleanly in her hand. Someone had left the door unlocked. Doctor Morton, perhaps? After he let Jem in? As Birdie slowly pushed her way inside, she gritted her teeth in fearful anticipation. But the door was as well oiled as the gate, and hardly made a sound.
All at once she found herself in a generous scullery, complete with four stone sinks. The room was deserted save for a ginger cat, which was sunning itself on the windowsill. Silently it watched Ned follow Birdie over the threshold. The door clicked shut behind him, making him wince. Across the room, another door was standing ajar. It led to the kitchen, which was enormous but very dingy.
It, too, was uninhabited.
Mr Fotherington ain’t short of a quid,
Birdie thought, noting the fine array of copper pots stacked on a dresser. She threaded her way between the table and the bread oven, her gaze lingering on bowls full of candied peel and great bunches of fresh parsley. The floor was damp. There were no windows. The larder was a dismal rat-hole, and the limewashed walls were grey with soot. Yet the shelves groaned with spices, a whole brace of partridges hung from the ceiling, and a fancy dumb waiter had been built into one wall, ready to transport food directly upstairs at the pull of a chain.
One of the doors beyond the larder was a pitch-black rectangle. Birdie could only guess that it led to a root cellar. Though she caught barely a glimpse of it in passing, even that quick glimpse filled her with dread. Was there someone inside? Someone she couldn’t see? Telling herself that this was a foolish notion – that Miss Eames had given all the servants the day off – Birdie rushed up the kitchen stairs as if pursued by a man with a meat cleaver. She didn’t know why she was so unnerved. The danger lay ahead of her, not behind. Yet the more distance she put between herself and that dark hole, the better she felt.
She stopped only when she reached the top of the staircase, which didn’t creak as much as she had expected it to – perhaps because it was built to muffle the footsteps of servants at dawn. Ned caught up with her as she was yanking off her boots. From the ground-floor stairwell they stepped straight into a kind of butler’s pantry full of crockery and linen. This pantry, in turn, opened onto the main entrance hall, which was separated from the servants’ quarters by a cloth-covered door.
Birdie placed one hand on the green baize padding and gave it a gentle push. Then she peered into the hallway. Like the kitchen, it was empty. The front door was shut. There were only two other access points: the parlour door, which was also closed, and the dining-room door, which stood slightly ajar.
Somewhere out of sight, a voice was squeaking wordlessly in fear or anger. Or was it desperation?
‘That’s Jem,’ Ned breathed into Birdie’s ear. ‘Sounds like he’s bin gagged.’
She nodded. Thanks to Ned, she knew that she would see something of the front parlour if she stuck her head into the dining room – because the folding doors between the two rooms had been pushed apart. So she crept forward on stockinged feet, passing lightly from oilcloth to polished parquet. But then the floor creaked behind her, and she glanced around.
Ned was standing frozen, with one foot raised. He looked both guilty and apologetic. When she motioned for him to stay put, he gnawed at his lip and pulled an anxious face. He didn’t, however, try to follow her across the hall, which was wider than Birdie’s whole house and crowded with all kinds of strange things: a carved grandfather clock, a hatstand made of horns and antlers, a barometer inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a painting of a tiger eating a wolf. The dining-room door was squeezed between the grandfather clock and a lacquered cabinet full of strange wooden masks. When Birdie peered around the doorjamb, the first thing she saw, in the middle of the room, was a long table draped in green cloth. Behind it was a fireplace. To the left was a sideboard, with the dumb-waiter hatch inserted into the wall just above it. To the right, one of the folding doors projected slightly, forming a strange little stub of a wall that partially blocked Birdie’s view of the parlour.
But though she couldn’t see much of the room to her right, she
could
see Alfred. He had stationed himself beside the parlour fireplace, which shared the same wall as the one in the dining room. Visible in front of him was a triangular wedge of parquet floor, together with a small portion of the salt circle he’d laid out. Birdie could also see half a painting, half a side table, and a very large book-cupboard.
She couldn’t, however, see Doctor Morton. If he actually
was
in the parlour, he had to be tucked away out of sight, near the front window. Jem was also hidden from Birdie, though she could hear him well enough. The sound of his muffled squawks made her blood run cold. She guessed that he was in the middle of the magic circle – most of which she couldn’t see.
She was craning her neck to get a better look when Alfred suddenly spotted her. His eyes widened. His face stiffened. Birdie quickly put a finger to her lips, before encircling her wrists with her fingers, to signify handcuffs. Then she jerked her head towards the street. She was trying to tell Alfred that the police were coming.
In response, he blinked. Birdie instantly understood that Doctor Morton must be in the room with him – somewhere in a corner, out of sight – and that she would have to be very, very careful. So she went on to explain, in sign language, that Alfred shouldn’t drink anything. First she pointed in his direction. Then she mimed a bottle. Then she shook her finger at him, after which she clutched her throat with both hands, as if she were choking.
Again Alfred blinked. Twice. He had been darting little glances at her; now he fixed his gaze on the parlour fireplace, as if trying to allay any suspicions that the doctor might have. Birdie was satisfied. She knew that Alfred had understood. And since she was becoming more and more overwhelmed by a kind of creeping dread (which she blamed on Doctor Morton’s close proximity), she decided it was time to retreat.
She was slowly edging backwards when her eyes strayed towards the dumb waiter. For an instant her heart seemed to stop. The little hatch was open. It had been closed before, and now it was a gaping hole.
But it wasn’t the hole that frightened Birdie. What gave her the shock of her life – what made her freeze, then gasp, then jump back into the entrance hall – was the thing bubbling
out
of the hole.
It moved silently, like a cloud. It was large and dark and oily, like a surge of coal-black soapsuds. And it was growing bigger by the second as it slurped down onto the floor . . .
Birdie didn’t know how long she stood there, paralysed, with her hand over her mouth. Time slowed to a crawl. She could see Ned trying to attract her attention, his face a mask of anxiety. He wanted to know what was going on.
Then she heard a muffled shriek – and snapped out of her daze. There was a bogle in the next room! A
real
one! And here she was, a bogler’s girl, cowering like a mouse in a bread-bin!
It’s only a bogle
, she told herself, before taking a deep breath and charging back through the dining-room door.
She was confronted by a scene of pure chaos. The bogle was now heading for the parlour. It was a huge mass of warts – or were they boils? Or bubbles? Birdie couldn’t tell; while the lumps
did
pop like bubbles, they also oozed like boils. And because of all these eruptions, it was hard to make out the bogle’s exact shape, though it did have a couple of gnarled, twisted, leprous-looking horns, and some kind of dragging tail that left a sticky black residue in its wake.
It also had two very long arms, with claws at the end of them. And just as Birdie crossed the threshold, one of these arms shot towards Alfred – who couldn’t quite dodge it in time. Perhaps he’d been deliberately looking away from the dining room, so that Doctor Morton wouldn’t be tempted to glance in that direction. Perhaps he wasn’t as alert as usual because he hadn’t been expecting a real bogle to descend on them.
Whatever the reason, he was taken by surprise. Before he could even aim his spear, the bogle seized a clump of his shirt-front and jerked him into the air like someone lifting a pint-pot. The spear was knocked from Alfred’s hand. Birdie saw it hit the floor. She darted forward to grab it, but the bogle was in her way.
Behind her, Ned cried, ‘Birdie!’ Jem was squealing; from where she now stood she had a clear view of the salt circle and the brass box, which was quite big, though not big enough for Jem. His feet and head were sticking out of the box, which could have been a coal box except that it was embossed with strange symbols instead of miners or knights or jolly drinking scenes. There was a strip of cloth tied across his mouth. His legs were bound with thick, hairy twine.
