The Monster Hunter (6 page)

It was halfway through the second week of the outbreak that tragedy struck. All the boys who were not too ill were summoned to the classroom; even William was taken from his bed as he was certainly showing signs of improvement.

Mrs Reed and her brother-in-law stood at the front of the class. Mrs Reed was looking very ashen faced and as she went to speak her words failed her. She turned to Mr Reed, who stepped forward.

‘Boys, I am afraid to announce that late last night Miss Poppy died in her sleep. She has been ill now for a few days but it seems her body could not recover from the sickness that she contracted. We will therefore be cancelling all classes for the next day and will inform the masters of those who have apprenticeships that you will be absent until after the funeral, which you shall all attend.'

‘It's the cherries!'

All eyes turned to Ben who had suddenly blurted out the strange comment. Mr and Mrs Reed almost spoke in unison:

‘What do you mean the cherries?'

‘It's nothing, Mrs Reed – Ben's just jealous,' interrupted James, giving Ben a hard threatening stare.

‘I'm not jealous,' continued Ben. ‘It's the only thing that everyone eats and even William said that the birds won't touch them. Everyone knows animals have a better sense about these things. The cherries must be poisonous.'

Suddenly aware that the words had an element of sense to them, the children went quiet – all, that was, except Farley
Moore, who was usually a quiet child.

‘It can't have been the cherries,' he said with a definite note of certainty to his voice. ‘Wasn't just the birds who didn't eat them. Poppy didn't eat them either; she didn't think it ladylike to spit out the pip so she gave all hers to me.' All eyes went from Farley to Mrs Reed, who just looked confused.

‘I don't know why you're all suddenly going on about cherries but it's something I will get to the bottom of. Right now a young girl has died in my care and four others are still ill with the same symptoms, and I believe they are my priority right now. You boys will stay in and around the orphanage today and if any of you want to talk about anything – excluding cherries – you can do so with Mr Reed or Reverend Luck, who will be joining us later.'

Mrs Reed left the room promptly, underlining the fact that the responsibility for the boys now lay with the men of the orphanage.

When the boys realised that they were under no obligation to stay in the classroom they started to file out in groups until just Mr Reed and Ben remained.

‘Do you want to tell me about these cherries, young man?' said Mr Reed, his voice calm and full of respect for the boy before him. He was aware that Ben had made a stand even though it would cause him trouble, purely because he felt it might help.

‘Not really.' It was the most honest thing Ben had ever said. He had indeed taken a stand, hoping it would make him the hero and win him friends but instead it had simply put up a bigger wall between him and the other children. ‘Can I stay in here?' he practically whispered. ‘I think I want to be alone.'

Mr Reed nodded once and stood to leave. ‘I think you've guaranteed that,' he said, practically under his breath, though Ben still heard.

Nanny Belle

T
he funeral of Miss Charity Poppy had taken place at St David's church on a day full of clouds and sorrow. It wasn't an overly long ceremony but was well attended by the pious folks of Whitgate, and the children of the orphanage had all made the effort and dressed in their Sunday finest. They watched silently as the small, simple, wooden coffin was carried by the imposing figure of Mr Reed from the cart to the graveside. Reverend Luck gave a good service and everyone shed the right amount of tears and sang the appropriate amount of hymns before parting to continue with their lives. Ben stood at the back of the group of children, clearly set in his position of outcast, allowing him the freedom to observe the whole proceedings unhindered by connections or emotions. As impartial observer, he was made aware at how dark and sombre the funerals of England could be. The funeral of his mother, by
contrast, had been a celebration of her life, not an expression of regret at her passing. Death was just part of the Sinhalese way of life and their funerals were colourful festivals recalling the joy the person had brought while they had been alive.

Ben was still struggling with the concept as the children walked from the church to the orphanage. It seemed to him that their sorrow would not lift from either their minds or their hearts for a long time. However, children are fickle and often when one door closes another opens. The next event was to be one of those moments.

As the children rounded the wall to enter the grounds of the orphanage, they were met by the figure of a young woman. The clouds had literally followed them all week but as their eyes met the figure of the lady who stood patiently waiting by the door of the orphanage the clouds parted and the sun shone through brightly, making the red-brick building shine like a ruby as sunlight found every colourful surface. The colour theme continued down to the woman who was wearing a sensibly cut crimson dress and jacket with a white blouse and green hat. If she hadn't been so slight of figure, she would have resembled a shining red apple, and her ready smile seemed to have been produced by a steady diet of the self-same fruit. Around the woman were a selection of heavy bags, worn travelling trunks and, most unusually, a covered birdcage of some size.

Mrs Reed approached the stranger and held out a friendly hand, which was promptly taken and shaken.

‘You must be Mrs Reed,' said the woman cheerily, in a happy singsong tone that could have penetrated even the heaviest heart.

‘And I'm guessing that would make you Nanny Belle. We weren't expecting you until tomorrow,' said Mrs Reed happily.
She had always been a big fan of punctuality, and unwarranted tardiness was her biggest gripe so a woman who was early got Mrs Reed's seal of approval on the spot.

‘Oh, I know but I thought what with today being… well, today, you could possibly do with the help a trifle early.'

The smile she gave to Mrs Reed held just the right amount of compassion and friendliness, and Ben knew at once there was something special about Nanny Belle.

Before Ben had arrived at the orphanage they had had a fulltime schoolteacher, a lovely well-educated, patient woman by the name of Miss Snow and along with the help of Mrs Reed the tutoring of the pupils had been first class. The marriage of Miss Snow to a London master stonemason had robbed the orphanage of its best teacher. Reverend Luck had eagerly stepped in to fill the void until they found a new tutor, but this, alas, had soon become a permanent arrangement as Mrs Reed was so stringent in what she demanded of any candidate.

Nanny Belle, however, fitted the bill perfectly. Within days it was all the orphanage could talk about. The lessons had moved from dull Bible readings to dramatic science experiments that filled the room with pyrotechnical flashes and colourful smoke, from the dry, repeated diction of Latin verbs to laughter-filled conversations in French.

After all the practical learning was done, Nanny Belle would turn her attentions to the Bible readings, and the biblical stories that had seemed so cold and sterile from the lips of the ordained Reverend were suddenly full of giants, warrior kings, wise men and fallen angels.

It wasn't just the children that were buoyed up by the appearance of Nanny Belle. Mr Read seemed to enjoy the presence of a new lady at the Garden and when she was sitting reading in the
garden Mr Reed often seemed to be just passing on some errand and would became tangled in conversation with the pretty teacher. Mrs Reed was also happy, as she suddenly had someone who was prepared to muck in and make sure that the children were well looked after and suitably educated as well as being a friendly ear that Mrs Reed could just unload her problems on to, without criticism or judgement.

Perhaps to an outsider it would have seemed heartless how quickly they had bounced back from the tragedy, but as Nanny Belle would say: ‘Life is for the living.'

However, for all that the household's spirits had been lifted by the new tutor, it didn't prevent the four sickly children remaining so for a long time. Ben found himself often sitting in the same room as the sick boys, quietly reading. He had certainly burned all his bridges by revealing the secret about the cherries, even though it had not been acted upon, and he was certain cherries were still eaten by all.

As he listened to one of the boys vomiting, it occurred to him that the infection hadn't spread. His books clearly said that isolation was needed to prevent an epidemic and he noted that these boys had shared the same room as all the others without incident. The only thing that could follow this path of natural isolation was poisoning, but that had been ruled out, or so it seemed. All that Farley had proven with his statement was that cherries weren't to blame for the poisoning; he certainly hadn't ruled out the possibility of poisoning altogether. The children all ate the same lunches, so it had to be something different, as whatever it was had clearly affected only five of the orphans.

Ben just had to work out what they all had in common. He spent three days working with Buddy and his oysters and three in the classroom, so the final day was his and he wanted to get
to the bottom of the sickness. The doctor merely treated the symptoms; Ben wanted to find the source.

On Sunday the classroom was always empty and Ben had made it his own personal study, spreading his notebooks and reference material as far as he wanted as he tried to find a link. His first eureka moment came when he realised that the five children were the only ones not apprenticed but still old enough to walk around unaccompanied, which meant that they could have picked the poison up anywhere. He was giddily congratulating himself at making his breakthrough when he was interrupted by a female voice.

‘I guess it's going well then.'

It was Nanny Belle. She moved across the room from the door that led to her private office and rooms above, to the desks on which Ben's notes were laid out. She moved books and papers about, raising her eyebrows as she read scrawled messages and turned pages. Ben felt awkward as if he had been caught red-handed planning some dastardly crime. He couldn't help watching how the nanny worked, linking notes and references together as if she was seeing patterns he had never considered. His mother would always be the most beautiful woman he would ever see but this lady, with her soft pale skin and intelligent eyes, looked like an angel…

… and for a moment he considered how timely her appearance had been at the orphanage but before his mind wandered too far she turned towards him as if reading his mind and wishing to interrupt his thoughts before they came to close to the truth. She was holding in her hand a map of the area that had been among Ben's papers. ‘I think this is your most important find.' She spoke softly as she handed it to him as if humouring a much younger child. Ben looked at the map blankly. He looked
up questioningly at the nanny but she was already disappearing back through her door.

As if guessing his question, she simply said: ‘You will find more out in the field than in in a stuffy room surrounded by books. You just have to find the strength to go out and look, like the people who wrote all these words in the first place.'

Ben looked around at the many books that had seemed to contain so many answers but none of them for the right questions. He knew that Nanny Belle was a good teacher – possibly one of the best – and that the best teachers didn't simply tell you the answers – they pointed you in the right direction and let you find the answers yourself. How could she know what question he was asking, though, and which questions couldn't be answered by books? He wasn't even sure whether he knew the questions he was asking himself.

He started stacking up the books and returning them neatly to the rough wooden shelves of the schoolroom. His little study den had been discovered once now and he did not wish it to be discovered again by one of the other children, who would not be so tolerant as Miss Belle. Soon all the desks were clear, apart from the map of Whitgate, which he had rolled out flat and which he was now studying for the very first time.

It was a simple map drawn by the hand of a company-employed cartographer with the initials A.N. several years previously. Its initial purpose had been to find top-quality gravel and shale for mining and the original skilled hand had marked out the land with blue circles where the sought-after materials were most likely to be found. A latter hand, in a heavier black ink, had carefully added on the streets of Whitgate and the farms and orchards of the area. There was only one other mark on the whole map, a tiny grey egg-shaped spot. It fell almost directly
at the centre of one of the original cartographer's blue circles and was in turn surrounded by an irregular ellipse in the black ink.

Why had this spot been highlighted by three different hands? Ben was racking his brains. He wanted to knock on the teacher's door and ask the answer, but he realised that she had been deliberately cryptic and would refuse to help him, though naturally in the most good-humoured of ways. To Miss Belle it was all about learning and you did that best at your own speed. He might also just be looking for clues where there were none; she might simply have been telling him to go outside.

Then he looked again and it struck him all at once. The blue circle was like all the other blue circles on the map – a potential source of aggregate for the building industry. The ragged ellipse was the shape of the subsequent quarry that had been mined and which was now spent, for Ben knew that mining no longer took place in the area. The small grey egg was the final piece of the puzzle. He smiled as he placed his own index finger on it to prove to himself that it was in fact the smudge of a fingerprint. It was smaller than even his own, so it could only be that of a young child, a child who was choosing a destination.