The Tale of Hill Top Farm (21 page)

It was the Parish Register.

21

Rats!

When Tabitha Twitchit met Crumpet and Rascal the Jack Russell terrier in the bushes beside the pub that night, it was getting on to nine o’clock, and Dr. Butters had just dropped Captain Woodcock off at Tower Bank House. The clatter of the doctor’s gig died into the dark, and all was quiet, except for the churring call of a nightjar and an occasional burst of raucous laughter from inside the pub, where a half-dozen village men were enjoying a noisy game of darts along with their evening pint.

There was plenty for the animals to discuss. Tabitha (who as senior village cat presided over the meeting) told Crumpet and Rascal what she had heard in Bertha Stubbs’ kitchen that afternoon: that Bertha had given notice at Sawrey School because Miss Crabbe had unfairly accused little Jeremy Crosfield (whom the animals all knew and liked) of stealing the School Roof Fund. Crumpet and Tabitha told Rascal what they had learnt about Miss Barwick when they were hiding behind the sofa in Miss Tolliver’s sitting room—Miss Barwick’s sitting room, now. And Rascal, still rather breathless from his run down Market Street, told Crumpet and Tabitha what had just happened at Castle Cottage.

“Miss Crabbe broke her leg!”
Crumpet exclaimed in astonishment, and then related the scheme she had suggested to Max the Morose, as a means of preventing Miss Crabbe from going to Constable Braithwaite.
“Of course,”
she added,
“I had no way of knowing that Max would actually be able to bring himself to do such a thing. He’s afraid of heights, you know
.
”

Rascal patted Crumpet’s shoulder with an approving paw.
“I say, Crumpet, that was a topping idea! It stopped her dead in her tracks.”
He paused
. “Well, not dead, exactly. You know what I mean.”

“I didn’t know she’d break her leg,”
Crumpet said, frowning. She was a cat who liked to see things done in an expeditious manner, but that didn’t include hurting people.
“I’m sorry to have caused her pain.”

“Look at it this way, Crumpet,”
Tabitha said
. “There was no way to stop that woman, short of flinging her down the stairs. And if she hadn’t been injured, she would certainly have done a great injury to Jeremy Crosfield and his aunt. Either way, somebody was bound to suffer.”

Crumpet had to admit that Tabitha was right. What boy could defend himself against a teacher, and the headmistress, at that! In Sawrey village, Miss Crabbe had almost as much authority and prestige as the vicar and the justice of the peace.

Rascal sat down on his haunches and cocked his head to one side.
“I have an idea,”
he said.
“If the money wasn’t stolen, it’s lost, right? I think we should go to the school and search. If it’s there, we’ll find it. And that will clear Jeremy completely.”

“But won’t that have been done already?”
Crumpet asked with a frown
.

“Probably,”
Rascal said, with a careless toss of his head
. “But I’ll wager the place wasn’t searched by anybody with my expert nose. Don’t you remember the time I found George Crook’s leather coin-purse after he’d dropped it in the field behind Belle Green? I know what money smells like. And if it’s there, by Jove, I’ll sniff it out!”

Tabitha leaned close to Crumpet and spoke into her ear.
“Rascal’s right about his nose. He certainly has a better chance of finding that money than any of the humans. All they have to go on is their sight—and even that isn’t too good. I think we should let him try.”

“Of course we should,”
Rascal barked.
“Come on, girls! We’re going on a treasure hunt!”

And with that, the two cats and a dog set off down the narrow lane that led from Near Sawrey to Far Sawrey. The moon was full, a large, low-hanging globe that floated over the larch trees, and their lane was an intriguing patchwork of bright and dark, noisy with the skitterings and scratchings of small nocturnal creatures. Wilfin Beck, which came leaping down from the tarns of Claife Heights past Cuckoo Brow Wood, was in spate, running bank full, a silver skein shimmering through the shadowy meadows, and the night air was rich and heavy with the autumn scents that all animals love: damp earth, peat and decaying mosses, fallen leaves.

And if there were a few fairies loitering among the roots of the large oaks in Penny Wood that evening—well, would that be any great surprise? Not to the animals, who had the wisdom to acknowledge that there might be things in the world that they did not fully understand. And not to most Lake Country dwellers, either, who still believed in elves, witches, wizards, fairies, and the supernatural in general. Vicar Sackett had once been told, as if it were the gospel truth, of a parishioner who, returning late one night from Hawkshead, was dragged off his horse by fairies. He would have been pushed through a door in a fairy hill, the man claimed, if he hadn’t a page of the Bible in his pocket, carried as a charm against just such abductions.

But animals know that fairies and elves do not like to cross running water, so they hurried toward the stone bridge over Wilfin Beck. As they reached it, they heard a scurrying rustle and a sharp hissing. It was the ferret who lived there—not a wilding, but an escaped ferret named Fritz whose master had trained him to catch rabbits—and who often made it unpleasant for the small animals who wanted to go across. Fritz made his living by raiding the large rabbit warren in Sawrey Fold, sometimes with Rascal’s help, since Rascal enjoyed going after the bolters that his companion flushed out of the burrows, and was always very keen on a day’s rabbit hunting with a skilled and highly motivated ferret. So when Fritz saw that his friend Rascal was leading the trio of animals, he sat up on his haunches and cheerfully waved them on, as they crossed the bridge and ducked through the opening in the hedgerow to take the footpath across the open expanse of Sawrey Fold.

Here, the night air was scented with meadowsweet and wild thyme, and the field seemed very still under the silent moon, which flickered as cloud shapes passed over it. But the animals had not gone far when they heard a soft whispering sigh, and then the sigh was louder, and then it resolved itself with a flutter of heavy wings and a rasp of claws into the dark shape of an owl settling onto the limb of a willow beside the beck. The flat round disk of his large face was ghostly in the moonlight, his staring eyes wild and fiercely luminous. He was annoyed.

The animals ducked under a hazelnut bush. The owl was Professor Galileo Newton Owl, D.Phil., a tawny owl who was much larger and very much older than the common tawny owls of the region. The Professor lived in an enormous hollow beech in Cuckoo Brow Wood and spent the hours between midnight and dawn searching the heavens with his telescope from the observatory he had built at the very top of his tree.

In addition to his scholarship in celestial mechanics, the Professor had a wide reputation for applied studies in natural history, particularly in the nocturnal habits, preferences, and tastes of small furry creatures. His evening hunting forays had made him an expert in all matters having to do with the meadows and woods around Sawrey, and not much went on that escaped his scrutiny. The Professor was an enormously dignified bird who refused to suffer impertinence—and one never quite knew what might strike him as impertinent.

“Who?”
the Professor called in a cross, quavery interrogative. He turned his head from side to side, repeating his question.
“Who-who-whooo?”

“It’s Rascal, sir,”
Rascal barked, with the greatest politeness.
“And Tabitha Twitchit and Crumpet. From Near Sawrey
.
”

“Sooo I see,”
said the Professor, sounding even more cross.
“But you are on the wrong side of Wilfin Beck. Your side is the
other
side.”

“That is true, Professor Owl,”
Rascal agreed, aware that it would not do to offend. Galileo Newton Owl was really quite large, his beak razor-sharp, his claws powerful. Every rabbit and mouse in the district fled when the shadow of his wide wings crossed their paths, and even Fritz the Ferret was afraid of him, although he laughed carelessly and pretended not to mind.
“But we’re on an important mission, you see, sir,”
Rascal went on.
“We’re on our way to Sawrey School to see if we can find the lost money.”

“Lost money?”
asked the Professor with an irritated glance down his beak. He found it disagreeable to be told that there was something going on that he did not know about.
“Whooose money was it? Whooo lost it?”

“Tabitha,”
Rascal said, with a certain sense of nervous inadequacy,
“p’rhaps you’d better explain.”

Tabitha Twitchit was a good storyteller and related the tale with such skill that the Professor was intrigued. More than intrigued, though, he was nettled, for he often had occasion to observe Jeremy Crosfield when the boy was putting up his aunt’s sheep at dusk, and had found him quite a sensible and respectful young man.

“I’ll go with you,”
he said.
“If there’s anything I detest—worse than impertinence, that is—it is the want of integrity. I dooo not hold with people making accusations for which there is nooo foundation. And Jeremy Crosfield is a fine lad
.
”
He flapped his large wings and rose with a hissing whisper into the dark sky, where his black shape hung like an ominous thought between earth and moon.

The two cats and the little dog raced across the meadow, across a lane, and up a steep hill to Sawrey School. The building had a melancholy look, standing alone on the hill in the flickering moonlight, the boundaries of its yard marked by a low drystone wall. It looked as if it missed the children’s gay games and laughter.

“How will we get in?”
Tabitha asked, as they paused under the trees, surveying the shadowy scene.
“The doors must be locked tight.”

“There’s bound to be a way,”
said Rascal, conscious that the Professor had just settled onto the branch of a nearby elm and was watching them.
“Let’s just follow our noses.”

And follow their noses they did, all the way around the stone building to the place where a small frame addition had been constructed to serve as the teachers’ pantry, where Miss Crabbe and Miss Nash could hang their coats and hats and brew a pot of tea on the gas ring. And there, just at ground level, in the corner where the little room had been built against the stone wall, was a round hole and a narrow passage, barely large enough for Tabitha and Crumpet and Rascal to squeeze through, one at a time. Rascal wrinkled his nose as he went, for he was smelling a very strong, very disagreeable scent. It was the pervasive, repulsive, disgusting scent of rat.

The animals pushed out through the end of the passage and found themselves in the far corner of a very dark cloakroom. Dogs are not especially known for their nighttime vision, but cats are quite adept at seeing in the dark. Crumpet and Tabitha encountered no difficulty as they led the way past stacks of newspapers and magazines and boxes and broken umbrellas and unmatched wellingtons. They went out into the main lobby, and saw that there were two rooms, one smaller, one quite large.

“Let’s take the small room first,” Tabitha said. As they could tell from the scrawled pictures pinned to the wall, it was Miss Nash’s infants’ room, where children aged five, six, and seven learnt their first lessons in reading, writing, and sitting still. There was a window in one wall, and in the gloom, Rascal could make out the rows of empty wooden desks, their seats neatly folded up. He was pleased to see that there were several colorful pictures of dogs, and only one of a cat.

“Well, Rascal?”
Tabitha demanded
. “Can you smell any money?”

“Give me a minute, will you?”
Rascal growled.
“I’m not a magician, you know. This sort of thing takes skill and concentration.”

As the cats made their own search (not nearly so thorough as Rascal’s, of course), the dog applied his nose to the floor and began to sniff, methodically quartering Miss Nash’s room, just as he would quarter for the scent of a fugitive fox. He spent ten minutes prowling around the four walls of the room, around the teacher’s desk, under the children’s desks, and in front of the bookshelves and lockers. He found some polished stones under a desk, several bits of chalk, and some beech leaves that had been tracked in and not swept up, probably because Bertha Stubbs had given notice. He also found a yellow bead, a bright blue marble, and a broken red-painted handle from a skip-rope. But there was no money.

“Nothing of interest here,”
he reported
. “Let’s try the other room.”

“What does money smell like?”
Tabitha Twitchit wanted to know, as they went into the larger room—Miss Crabbe’s junior room.

“It smells like gold and silver, brass and copper,”
Rascal said
. “It also smells like sweat and human hands. It smells,”
he added, half under his breath
, “like greed.”

The junior room had a window that caught the moonlight and spilled it onto the floor, brightening the gloom. Miss Crabbe’s wooden desk was at the front, before a long black chalkboard that hung on the wall, beneath a row of pictures showing the letters of the alphabet as they were meant to be written. Bookcases ran the length of one wall, and a piano stood in the corner, with yellowed ivory keys, a decorative bracket for an oil lamp, and a fretwork front cut in an intricate design, its curlicue openings filled with green silk. The students’ desks were larger than those in Miss Nash’s room—the children who sat in them were eight, nine, ten, and eleven years old—and each one had an inkwell and a slot for pencils and a top that folded down over a wooden box beneath, where books and papers were put. The children were forbidden to keep food in their desks, of course, but Rascal could smell it: the tantalizing odor of crusts of buttered bread and cheese, ginger biscuit, and soft, ripe apples and pears.