Dial a Ghost (5 page)

Miss Pringle was becoming very excited.

‘You know, I think I have just the family for you. The nicest ghosts you could possibly ask for.’

‘I know you will understand that we need ghosts who are not too noisy. Sadness wouldn’t worry us,’ said Mother Margaret, ‘or cold kisses from bloodstained lips. We would completely understand about sadness and cold kisses. Someone headless would be all right too, as long as they didn’t frighten the goats. We keep goats, you know.’

‘And bees,’ said Sister Phyllida eagerly. ‘It’s quite a little paradise we have at Larchford Abbey. Our rose garden—’

‘Yes, the bees are important. We ourselves would not be disturbed too much by screams and that kind of thing, but bees are very sensitive. So we would ask you to be very choosy.’

‘Indeed, yes – I think you couldn’t help being pleased with the Wilkinsons. You wouldn’t mind a very old lady? She has rather a fierce umbrella but she is an excellent person and in no way shrivelled or withered – or at any rate no more than is usual at her age.’

‘Being shrivelled or withered would be no problem at all,’ said Mother Margaret with her kind smile. ‘We are used to nursing old people and have great respect for them.’

‘Then there is Mr Wilkinson – he was a dentist, a most upstanding man, and his wife is one of the nicest people you could imagine. She has done wonders trying to make the knicker shop into a home.’

Miss Pringle blushed, wondering if she should have said the word ‘knickers’ in front of nuns, but they did not mind in the least.

‘They sound just the sort of people we want,’ said Mother Margaret. ‘And I may say that the accommodation we offer must be what any ghost would want. A ruined cellar – rat-infested of course. A roofless chapel overgrown with weeds and the haunt of large white owls. A tumbledown refectory with a fireplace open to the roof...’

‘And such a pretty bell tower,’ put in Sister Phyllida, ‘full of tangled ropes and iron rings and trap doors. A child would love to play there.’ She looked wistfully at Miss Pringle. ‘There don’t happen to be any children?’

‘But there are, there are! Eric is a teenager and a bit wrapped up in himself – but there’s a delightful little girl – she’s not a real Wilkinson, they found her lost and abandoned, but they quite think of her as their own. She’s rather strong-willed and very fond of animals but—’

Miss Pringle paused, wondering if she should warn the nuns about Addie’s passion for unusual pets. But the nuns just said that it was natural for children to grow up with animals, and it was arranged that the family should come to Larchford Abbey in three weeks’ time.

‘Friday the 13th seems a nice date,’ said Mother Margaret, looking at her diary. ‘Ghosts would like to come on a date like that, I feel sure.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Miss Pringle, quite overjoyed at the news she was going to give the Wilkinsons. ‘Now if you would just be kind enough to fill in this form...’

That night in the Dirty Duck the ladies had not one port and lemon, but two.

‘If only we could get your Shriekers placed as happily,’ said Miss Pringle.

Mrs Mannering sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s going to become of them, Nellie. They’re wrecking the meat store, and that servant of theirs has climbed into one of the containers and passed out cold. I keep wondering what would happen if someone came for a tray of hamburgers and found a completely frozen ghoul.’

Miss Pringle made sympathetic tutting noises. ‘We must just go on hoping, dear,’ she said. ‘Perhaps getting the Wilkinsons fixed up will turn our luck.’

‘Is this really mine? All of it?’ asked Oliver.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Fulton grimly. ‘I hope you’re impressed.’

But Oliver was not impressed; he was appalled. They had driven through a spiked iron gate along a gravel drive and now stood at the bottom of a flight of steps on either side of which were statues. To the left of Oliver was a lion being stepped on by a man who was beating him on the head with a club. On the right was an even bulgier man wearing a sort of nappy and strangling a snake. The windows of the tall grey building stared like a row of dead eyes; pointless towers and battlements sprouted from the roof, and the front door was studded with nails.

Almost worse than the gloomy building and the statues of animals being bullied by bulging men was the icy wind sighing and soughing in from the sea. Tall trees bent their branches; rooks flew upwards shrieking. Everything at Helton looked grey and miserable and cold.

Oliver shivered and wondered again if there was some way he could give the place away. Perhaps he should ask his guardian? Colonel Mersham sounded sensible, trying to save the lemurs in the rain forest and looking for golden toads; but he wasn’t going to be back for months.

The door now opened from the inside and Oliver found himself in a stone hall which was full of things for killing people. Crossed pikes, a blunderbuss, a row of rusty swords fastened to the wall...A stuffed leopard snarled from a glass case and beside it stood the butler and the housekeeper waiting to greet him.

Oliver thought he had never seen two people who looked so old. The housekeeper, Miss Match, had a grey bun of hair and a pink hearing aid stuck lopsidedly to one ear. The butler, Mr Tusker, was bent almost double with rheumatism. As he shook their dry leathery hands Oliver was shocked that they should be working as servants; they should have had servants working for them.

‘Dinner is ready in the dining room, sir,’ said Miss Match to Fulton. She had been told to take her orders from him and she was too ancient and tired to be curious about the little boy who now owned Helton Hall.

Oliver followed them down a long corridor hung with portraits of the Snodde-Brittles in heavy golden frames. They passed through a shuttered billiard room . . . a library with rows of leather-bound books locked up behind an iron grille... and reached the dining room where Oliver’s first meal at Helton Hall was waiting.

It was a meal he never forgot. Cousin Fulton and Cousin Frieda made him sit at the head of the table and his feet, hanging down from the high carved chair, didn’t even touch the ground. The table was the size of a skating rink, the room was freezing cold – and beside his plate were more knives and forks than Oliver had ever seen in his life.

‘Start from the outside in,’ Matron had told them when they went for a treat to the Holiday Inn and had a proper banquet. So he picked up the round spoon and ate the soup, and then Mr Tusker shuffled away and came back with a very red-looking bird and some potatoes and cabbage. Oliver ate the vegetables and took two mouthfuls of the bird, which was full of round dark pellets and tasted of blood. Then he put down his knife and fork.

‘Have you finished, sir?’ asked the butler.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Oliver.

‘What’s the matter, boy?’ said Fulton. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the meat, is there?’

‘No, I expect it’s fine, but I don’t eat meat. I’m a vegetarian.’

‘A vegetarian?’ said Fulton, his eyes bulging.

‘A
vegetarian
?’ echoed Frieda.

‘A lot of us were in the Home. About half. It was after we saw a film about a slaughterhouse.’

No one said anything after that. It was as though Oliver had said he was a wife-beater or had the plague.

But if the meal was bad, going to bed was much, much worse.

‘You’re to sleep in the master bedroom,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s up in the tower, quite on its own. Nobody will bother you there.’

‘I don’t mind being bothered,’ said Oliver in a small voice. ‘Couldn’t I sleep a bit closer to other people?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Fulton, for it was part of his plan to keep Oliver as lonely and as far away from help as possible. ‘The owner of Helton has always slept in the tower.’

So Oliver followed Cousin Frieda up a wooden staircase, through the Long Gallery with its faceless statues and rusty suits of armour, along a corridor lined with grinning African masks... up another flight of steps – a curving stone one this time, lit only by narrow slits in the walls – down a second corridor hung with snarling heads of shot animals... and reached at last a heavy oaken door.

The room in which he found himself was huge; the single light in its heavy shade scarcely reached the corners. Three full-length tapestries hung on the wall. One showed a man stuck full of arrows; one was of a deer having its throat cut, and the third was a battle scene in which rearing horses brought their hoofs down on screaming men. An oak chest shaped like a coffin stood by the window, and the bed was a four-poster hung with dusty velvet curtains and the words ‘I Set My Foot Upon My Enemies’ carved into the wood.

‘The bathroom’s through there,’ said Frieda, opening a door beside the wardrobe. ‘I’ll leave you to unpack and put yourself to bed.’

Oliver listened to her steps dying away and followed her in his mind along the corridor with the stuffed heads, down the curving stone stairs, across the Long Gallery... He had never in his life felt so alone.

The bathroom was a room for giants. All the cupboards were too high for him, and the only way he could reach the lavatory chain was to stand on the seat. In the bathtub, scrubbing himself with a long-handled brush which hurt his skin, Oliver tried hard not to think about the Home. Bath-time had been one of the best times of the day; they’d blown bubbles and told silly jokes and afterwards there was cocoa and a story from Matron. They were reading
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The only way to get into bed was to run fast across the blood-red carpet and leap in under the covers. But it didn’t help much. He could still hear the stealthy tap-tap of the tassel of the blind against the window – and surely there was
somethin
g
in that big brown wardrobe... the way it creaked even when there was no one near.

The sound of footsteps returned. At the thought that someone had come back to say goodnight to him, Oliver brightened and sat up in bed. Perhaps they did care at Helton; perhaps he wasn’t quite alone.

Cousin Frieda entered the room.

‘Well, you’re all settled, I see.’ She moved to the bed and looked down at the inhaler which Oliver had put on the night table beside him. ‘You won’t want that,’ she said briskly. ‘I’ll put it in the bathroom cabinet.’

‘Oh no, please.’ Oliver was frightened now. ‘I always have it by my bed. Sometimes I need it in the night.’

‘Well, it won’t be far away,’ said Frieda. She took it off to the bathroom and put it in the high medicine cupboard, far out of Oliver’s reach. ‘Now I know you’re not one of those silly children who ask for night lights,’ she said, and her bony fingers moved towards the switch.

She was halfway out of the door when Oliver’s choked voice came out of the darkness. ‘Cousin Frieda,’ he said. ‘There aren’t... are there any ghosts here? Does Helton have ghosts?’

Frieda smiled. Standing there in the shadows in her black dress, she might have been a phantom herself.

‘Really, Oliver,’ she said. ‘What a silly question! Of
cours
e
there are ghosts in a house as old as this.’

Then she shut the door and left him alone in the dark.

Fulton was in the drawing room, smoking a cigar.

‘It’ll work, Fulton, you’re right,’ said Frieda. ‘He’s scared already – in a week or two he’ll be ready.’

Fulton nodded. ‘I’ve had another look at the leaflet and there shouldn’t be any trouble about getting what we want. ‘‘Spooks of every kind,’’ it says. I’ll ring up in the morning to make an appointment. I’ll go down in a few days and book some that’ll do the trick. Then when the boy’s properly softened up, we’ll move them in.’

‘You hadn’t thought of us being in the house when... you know. Not that I’m frightened in the least, but...’

‘No, no. When the time’s right we’ll go away and leave him quite alone. I tell you, Frieda, our troubles are over. Helton is as good as ours!’

Three days later Fulton walked into the
Dial A Ghost
agency. He had put on a blond wig and gave his name as Mr Boyd because he didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing to Oliver.

Mrs Mannering smiled at him. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Boyd?’ she asked.

‘Actually, it’s more what I can do for you,’ he said. ‘Which is to offer a home to some ghosts. But not any ghosts. I want fearful ghosts; frightful and dangerous ghosts. Ghosts that can turn people’s limbs to jelly.’

Mrs Mannering leant forward eagerly. Was it possible that she could get rid of the Shriekers at last?

‘You see, I think that people nowadays want a bit of danger,’ Fulton said. ‘They want a thrill. They don’t want things to be boring and tame.’

‘No, no, of course not. You are so
right
!’ cried Mrs Mannering. ‘If only more people thought like you!’

‘Now, I’m the manager of this big house in the north of England. It’s been empty for a long time and now the owners want to open it to the public. They want to charge money for letting people go round the place.’

‘Yes, I see. It’s sad the way these stately home owners have fallen on hard times.’

‘Only of course there’s a lot of competition in this business. At Lingley they’ve got lions and at Abbey-ford they’ve got a funfair and at Tavenham they’ve got a boating lake. Well, there’s nothing like that at the place I’m talking about. So I thought if we got some proper ghosts we could advertise it as The Most Haunted House In Britain or Spook Abbey or some such thing. That should pull in the crowds.’