Frognapped (3 page)

“I
t's obvious when you think about it,” I told Wanda after I had drunk the Coke and started on my second bag of chips.

“Can I have a chip?” asked Wanda.

“Okay, but don't eat them all,” I told her.

“Not much chance of that,” Wanda muttered as she took the biggest chip out of the packet.

Have you ever had a packet of chips where
there was one enormous chip in it and just a few really tiny ones—as if a cannibal chip had eaten up all the others while it was hanging around on the shelf waiting to be bought? Well, the crisp that Wanda took was one of those, so all I had left were the few scared baby chips. I tipped the rest of those into my mouth and then I said, “In fact it is so obvious I am amazed I did not think of it before.”

“Whaaarsobvious?” asked Wanda, spraying me with chip bits.

“Yuck, Wanda. When did Barry's frogs disappear?”

Wanda swallowed and the cannibal chip met its doom. “Dad hasn't seen them for three whole days now.”

“And how long has Nurse Watkins been coming to shout at Uncle Drac?”

Wanda counted up on her fingers. “Three days?” she asked. Wanda is not as good at math as I am.

“
Precisely
, my dear Wanda,” I said, smiling like one of those detectives who has just tripped up a particularly difficult suspect with a clever ploy.

“Why are you looking like that?” asked Wanda. “Stop it, Araminta. It's scary.”

I sighed. It is tough having a dim-witted sidekick, but I guess it is good practice—in case I ever get to be a real detective, which is one of the career options I have recently been considering. “Barry's frogs have been missing for three days,” I told her. “Nurse Watkins has been coming here for three days. Two and two make four. Obvious, isn't it?”

Wanda looked puzzled. “But it's three,” she
said. “And that makes
six
.”

“No, Wanda, listen. Frogs gone: three days. Nurse Watkins here: three days.
Get it?
”

Finally Wanda got it. Her eyes opened really wide and so did her mouth. Which was not nice as I could see bits of chip stuck on her tongue. “You mean Nurse Watkins has Dad's frogs?” she said.

“Shh!” I pointed frantically behind her.

“Oh,” said Wanda. “Er, good morning, Nurse Watkins.”

“Good morning, dear.” Nurse Watkins strode up to the monster chair and hauled her great big black nurse's bag out from underneath it. “I'll let myself out,” she said. Then she zoomed across the hall and slammed the front door behind her.

“Shoot!” I said. “I wanted to look in her bag.”

Wanda looked shocked. “You can't go looking in other people's bags,” she said.

“You can if you are searching for evidence…or
frogs
.”

Wanda gasped. “Frogs! You don't think she's got Dad's frogs in her
bag
!”

“She might. It is a possibility. We will just have to find out, won't we? Come on, Wanda.”

Wanda can be quite quick when she wants to be. She jumped up and grabbed hold of my arm and in a moment we were outside on the front path. “If we hurry we could catch up with her,” she said. “Then we could grab her bag and rescue Dad's frogs.”

I followed her down the winding path to the rusty old gate, which had fallen off its hinges and was propped up by the hedge as
usual. Something else was propped up by the hedge, too—Uncle Drac. Actually Uncle Drac was
in
the hedge. Spookie House is surrounded by tall, thick hedges that are great for hiding in. Uncle Drac has a really good hideout by the front gate where he can keep an eye on things—and do his knitting in the dim green light.

“Minty,” he hissed, “has she gone?”

I could see the square figure of Nurse Watkins perched on top of her big black bicycle wobbling up the road. We would have to hurry. “Yes, she has. We've got to go, Uncle Drac. See you later!”

Uncle Drac waved his knitting at me. It was a very weird red and black stripy thing with lots of tendrils hanging off it. “Do you like your hat, Minty?” he asked.

“My
hat
?”

“Yes. I think it will really suit you.”

“Oh. Uh, it's um…
beautiful
, Uncle Drac.”

“Why don't you try it on?”

“No! I mean, no thank you, Uncle Drac. We've got to go. Byeeee!”

But by the time we had escaped from Uncle Drac, Nurse Watkins had disappeared.

“She's gone,” said Wanda, staring at the bend at the end of the road. But I knew that even if a suspect is out of sight, you don't give up. All detectives lose their suspects at least once. You just have to find them again—and fast.

“Just around the bend,” I said. “Come on, Wanda. If we hurry we can catch her.”

Wanda looked worried. “It's out of sight of
the house. We ought to tell Mom where we're going,” she said.

“She won't mind,” I said.

“She
will
if I don't tell her first.”

I sighed. Most detectives do not have to put up with their dim-witted sidekick having to tell her mother where she is going. “Well, go and do it then, but get your skates on, otherwise we'll never find those frogs.”

Sometimes Wanda surprises me and I realize she is not totally dumb. This was one of those times. Wanda was really quick, and when she came back she really did have her skates on—
and
she was carrying mine. Wanda is quite good at skating. She jumped down the crumbly old steps by the front door, glided along the path, and handed me my skates.

“Now you get
your
skates on.” She grinned.

I didn't need telling twice. I really love my skates. I am so glad that Brenda and Barry gave us both roller skates for Christmas, even though Aunt Tabby disapproved.

The road from Spookie House is a great road to skate along. It is very smooth and no cars come down there because of the notice Aunt Tabby has put up that says:
DANGER, UNEXPLODED MINES
. Wanda and I whizzed along at top
speed, and very soon we had rounded the bend at the end and were zooming down the hill toward a small cottage by a stream. Suddenly Wanda did a show-off stop—the kind where you turn at the same time and end up facing the other way. I bumped straight into her and fell into the ditch.

It was not funny and I do not know why
Wanda would not stop laughing. I got out of the ditch—which luckily was not very full of water—and told her to be quiet or she would alert the suspect; then we would never find the frogs and it would be
all her fault
. My dim-witted sidekick stopped laughing and said, “There's her bike!”

Wanda was learning fast. Sure enough, there was Nurse Watkins's bike, propped up outside the cottage.

“Aha,” I said. “We will have to stake out the cottage.”

“What?”

I sighed. “We'll have to wait outside until she comes out,” I said, which somehow sounded much less exciting.

So Wanda and I skated down to the cottage very quietly and hid behind the fence. Wanda
found a small hole and peered through. “As I am chief detective
I
should do that,” I told her.

But Wanda would not budge. “
I
found the hole,” she said, “and they are
my
dad's frogs.” She kept looking through the hole as though she was watching something extremely interesting, which I knew she wasn't as she was fidgeting a lot. After a while Wanda got bored and then the chief detective took over—just in time.

The cottage door creaked open and I saw a sweet-looking old lady with a bandage around her neck showing Nurse Watkins out.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” Nurse Watkins's voice boomed.

“Will you?” The old lady sounded worried.

“Yes,” Nurse Watkins told her very firmly. “I can fit you in at the same time as today.
After Mr. Spookie and before the mushroom farm.” The old lady slammed the door and Nurse Watkins clomped off down the path. She put her bag into her bicycle basket and then stopped for a moment. She opened the bag and rummaged inside. “Shoot!” I heard her say. “I'll forget my head next.”

The next moment she was banging on the cottage door and the bag was just sitting there, all alone in the sunshine. A good detective does not waste an opportunity like that; I shot out from behind the fence and hurtled over to the bike. Unfortunately I forgot I was wearing my skates. It is not a good idea to grab onto a bicycle when your feet already have eight wheels underneath them—in my opinion it just adds extra wheels to the problem. But that is what I did. Nurse Watkins's
bike fell on top of me—and so did the contents of the bag.

Yuck.

You do not want to know what was in that bag.

“W
ell, I never thought Dad's frogs were in the bag anyway,” Wanda said the next morning.

“You
did
.”

“No I didn't. It was a stupid idea.”

Wanda and I were getting ready to go to the beach. It was a really sunny day and usually I would have been excited because I like the sea now. I never used to go to the beach
when I lived with just Aunt Tabby and Uncle Drac. Aunt Tabby thought the sea was dangerous and Uncle Drac does not really like daylight, and he especially does not like being out in the sun.

But just then I did not want to go to the beach, as I was in a bad mood. I was in a bad mood because:

1. Yesterday, after her bicycle ambushed me, Nurse Watkins marched us back to Spookie House. She found Uncle Drac knitting in the hedge and made him walk up and down the path twenty times.
   
2. Which annoyed Uncle Drac.
   
3. When Barry asked how come we had broken Nurse Watkins's bicycle, Wanda had told him that I had been looking in Nurse Watkins's bag for his frogs.
   
4. Which annoyed Barry.
   
5. And Brenda.
   
6. And Aunt Tabby.
   
7. And
   me.
   Because it was not true, as I never got the chance. In fact I had been savagely attacked by Nurse Watkins's bag.
   

It was just
not fair
.

But no one cares what I think, so we were going to the beach whether I wanted to or not. Ever since Brenda told Aunt Tabby about lifeboats and rescue helicopters, Aunt Tabby has changed her mind about the sea being dangerous and now she really likes it. In fact, I think she secretly wants to be rescued by a helicopter. Actually, I wouldn't mind being rescued by a helicopter either. But not at the same time as Aunt Tabby.

“You will enjoy it when we get there,
Araminta,” said Aunt Tabby. Huh. Aunt Tabby always acts like she knows the future, but she doesn't.

“How can you know that I will enjoy it?” I asked. “I might get eaten by a shark. I wouldn't enjoy
that
.”

Aunt Tabby raised her eyes up like she was looking for something in her eyebrows and sighed. “I don't suppose the shark would either,” she replied. Which I did not think was very nice.

I had been thinking about what Nurse Watkins had said to the little old lady and I realized I had another clue. I was hoping that if I was grumpy enough everyone else would go to the beach and leave me behind because I had a plan—I wanted to sneak off to the mushroom farm.

But it was no good, we were
all
going to the beach in Barry's van.

Except for Uncle Drac, of course.

And Barry, as he was still looking for his frogs. I told Barry that we were still looking for them too, and he said it was probably better that we didn't look anymore, all things considered. But what Barry did not understand was that a good detective never gives up. In fact, from what I have seen, the more people tell them to give up, the more determined they are to continue. As soon as the detective's boss tells her that she is being taken off the case, you know that's it—she will go right on and solve it.

But if I couldn't go to the mushroom farm, I knew someone who could. So while Brenda, Aunt Tabby, and Wanda were making the picnic
and finding the beach towels, I went to find Sir Horace.

Sir Horace is one of the ghosts in Spookie House. The other ghost is a weedy boy called Edmund who likes Wanda very much, but he would be no good at finding frogs because he would be scared of them. But I knew Sir Horace would help.

When you first see Sir Horace you do not realize he is a ghost at all; you think he is just an old suit of armor. But inside the armor is the real ghost of Sir Horace Cuthbert Shirley George Harbinger. Sir Horace got to be a ghost after a fight with some nasty people called FitzMaurice who left him (and Edmund) to drown in a horrible grotto and then took over his castle. One of their descendants, Old Morris, still lives there, although
the castle has almost disappeared, and now it is
the mushroom farm
.

First of all I had to find Sir Horace. Sometimes he is easy to find, as often he just hangs around the hall. Sir Horace likes company and you can usually find him propped up beside the old clock watching the comings and goings. But that day there was no sign of him anywhere. I really hoped that I was not going to have to go and find him in his secret room, as that takes forever, and I did not want Aunt Tabby coming to look for me.

The other place Sir Horace hangs out is up on the landing. He does this when he wants to go to sleep or if he is in a bad mood. I ran up the big staircase from the hall and crept along the landing, which is really wide and has banisters so thick that you can swing from
them—if you don't mind hundreds of spiders joining in too. I was very quiet; I did not want Sir Horace to hear me coming, as he can be quite good at hiding from me. It was almost dark on the landing because Aunt Tabby had closed all the curtains to stop the sun from coming in, and the brown paintwork kind of sucked up any light that was left. I couldn't see Sir Horace anywhere so I stopped and listened, and sure enough, I soon heard a telltale squeak of something that needed oiling.

I tiptoed along the dusty old carpet and soon saw what I was looking for—two pointy armored feet sticking out from underneath a long and suspiciously lumpy tapestry that hung on the wall.

“Boo!” I said, and pulled back the tapestry. Sir Horace jumped and his armor squeaked
like a scared hamster. Well, like quite a lot of scared hamsters, actually.

“Hello, Sir Horace,” I said, as I got the impression Sir Horace was still trying to pretend he was not there. “Would you like to come out today?”

“No,”
said Sir Horace in his low, booming voice, which always gives me goose bumps when I first hear it.

“Please,” I said. “I need your help.”

I thought I heard Sir Horace sigh. You see, because he is a knight he cannot refuse to help any damsel in distress. I may not look much like a damsel, but as far as the average knight is concerned, that is what I am. Also I was in distress. Well, sort of. On behalf of the frogs.

“What can I do to help you, Miss Spookie?”
asked Sir Horace. He did
not sound as keen as I would have liked but that did not matter.

“I want you to come to the mushroom farm. You know—your old castle where Morris FitzMaurice lives.”

“Do not mention that name here, Miss Spookie,”
Sir Horace boomed.

“I want you to search the mushroom farm for frogs and report back to me—got that?”

“Frogs?”
asked Sir Horace.

“That's right. Acrobatic frogs. Five of them.”

“Oh.”

I waited for Sir Horace to say something more but he didn't.

“Come on then, Sir Horace.”

“What,
now?”

“Yes. In fact we're late as it is.”

“Can't it wait?”

“No.”

Sir Horace gave a really big sigh.
“Very well then. I shall be with you in a moment, Miss Spookie. But if I am to return to my castle there is something I wish to get.”
He bowed, then lurched to one side, threw his left leg forward, and set off along the corridor doing the weirdest walk I had ever seen him do.

Sir Horace has a habit of falling to pieces every now and then. Wanda and I always have the job of putting him back together again, but we never seem to get all the pieces in exactly the same place as before. So every time he gets rebuilt, Sir Horace walks in a different way. I guessed his weird walk might have had something to do with the fact that we last put Sir Horace together at the same
time we were mending Wanda's bicycle. I had a feeling that some of the parts got mixed up.

I found Sir Horace waiting for me in the hall a few minutes later and we got to the van just in time. Wanda, Aunt Tabby, and Brenda had finished loading up with the picnic basket, rugs, beach umbrellas, windbreaks, air matress, snorkels, flippers, and all the hundreds of things that Brenda always takes to the beach. Brenda was sitting nervously in the driver's seat—because Aunt Tabby is teaching her to drive—and Wanda was already in the back of the van with all the stuff.

Sir Horace was on the doorstep staring at Barry's van. I was not surprised, as most people stare at Barry's van. It is very embarrassing, especially when you are in it. Barry recently painted his van (which used to
belong to Uncle Drac) with pictures of his frogs. They were leapfrogging all over it, they had big scary eyes, and since he had run out of green paint, they were all weird colors. Also the paint had run. It was meant to be an advertisement for his troupe of frogs, which Barry thought would make his fortune, but personally I thought it would put people off.

“Hurry up, Sir Horace,” I said. “Brenda's driving and she is likely to take off at any moment.” Brenda does not have what Aunt Tabby calls “good clutch control,” which is a fancy way of saying that when Brenda drives, the van leapfrogs like a giant frog itself.

Sir Horace clattered down the steps and I was glad that Aunt Tabby was so busy telling Brenda to remember to
let go of the handbrake this time
that she did not notice. Aunt Tabby
has a policy of never letting you do anything that you want to, and I was pretty sure this would cover taking Sir Horace to the mushroom farm in the back of the van.

Wanda, however, did notice. But luckily, just as she shouted, “No, Araminta, I will
not
move over for Sir Horace,” her voice was drowned out by the metallic screeching of Brenda crashing the gears and Aunt Tabby yelling, “Clutch, Brenda!
Clutch!
”

I pulled Sir Horace inside and slammed the door just in time. Then we kangaroo-hopped down the drive and out into the lane. It was a lovely sunny day, and as we passed the
DANGER, UNEXPLODED MINES
sign I smiled. Chief Detective Spookie was on the case.