Wilma Tenderfoot: The Case of the Fatal Phantom (3 page)

Wilma shook her head.

“You’ll need to go past the pig poke, across the fields, straight on after Blackheart Hoo, and it’s the other side of Hare Forest. And put these on. They’re duffel coats. One for you and the smaller one’s for Pickle. I made them.”

Mrs. Speckle pulled out a pair of heavy knitted garments with large hoods and held them up. Wilma, who was a scrap of a thing with a tendency to look crumpled, stared at the enormous bundle of wool in front of her. The hood was yellow, the left arm was blue, the right was red, and the main body was green melting into an
indiscriminate striped pattern. The smaller one, intended for Pickle, was even more colorful. She blinked and said nothing. Sometimes, if you have no immediate talent for fashion, it’s hard to know whether something is cutting-edge or ludicrous. Wilma, who only ever wore her pinafore and baggy socks, wasn’t entirely sure. But if she was to take a first stab at having a hunch, she thought it was probably the latter.

“I used up all my old wool,” explained Mrs. Speckle with a sniff, bending down to help Pickle into his coat. “Hood’s a bit big on this one,” she added, trying to plump the beagle’s hat into some sort of useful shape. “Hang on.” Opening a drawer, the housekeeper pulled out two large wooden clothespins. “There we go,” she said, pinning the hood to Pickle’s ears. “Much better.”

That was a matter of opinion, thought Pickle.

“And there’s mittens on string that runs through the sleeves,” continued the housekeeper. “Two for you, Wilma, and four for Pickle. He can put them on his feet. Right, then. That’s that. Off you go. And get a good one!”

Though it had nearly stopped now, the snow
had been falling heavily for an hour and had started to settle. As Wilma and Pickle made their way across the main square, children all around them were having snowball fights and building snow-sheep and snow-chickens. On Cooper, children are only allowed to make snow-animals, as it is illegal to make snowmen. This is because hundreds of years ago a very pale, rotund gentleman called Roland Dennob, who lived in Arewenearlythereyet, took the matter to the Cooper Court of Spurious Lawsuits, complaining that snowmen were an affront to very pale, rotund gentlemen everywhere. He won. His case was clearly helped by the fact that he liked to smoke a pipe and suffered from a strange cold-like ailment that meant he also had a pointy orange nose.

As the woolen pair left the main town of Coop and headed out into the countryside, the sky suddenly darkened, the wind picked up, and the snow began to fall harder again in fat, swollen flakes. At first Wilma and Pickle trudged onward, their tracks instantly covered behind them. But eventually, Wilma stopped and looked
up. “I’m not sure where we are anymore, Pickle,” she yelled anxiously over the wind. “Everything is covered. I think we’re on the road to Hare Forest, but it’s very hard to tell. I’d say let’s turn back, but I’m not even sure what way
back
is.”

With dusk drawing in and no light other than the strange sickly glow from the sky, Wilma found herself quite disoriented. Landmarks and signposts had been turned to unidentifiable white lumps. It was all a bit eerie, not helped by the strange howls of the wind.

Wilma lifted her heavy woolen hood and tried to spot anything that might look familiar. Pickle, always ready to be of use, sniffed the ground for memorable smells, but with the snow now up to the top of his legs, all he succeeded in doing was sniffing icy crystals into his nostrils until a large frozen snowball formed at the end of his muzzle.

“I don’t know what to do,” admitted Wilma as she knocked the ice off Pickle’s snout with her mitten. “I don’t think this situation arises in any of the knotty problems in my Academy handbook or Mr. Goodman’s previous cases. Although
there are always the apprentice detective’s Golden Rules. Number four might be useful—if in doubt, stand very still and do nothing. Let’s try that. An opportunity may present itself.”

With the blizzard raging about them, Wilma and Pickle stood motionless in the hope that something, somewhere, would help them work out what to do next. However, Pickle, who was only a small hound, soon realized with a twinge of concern that by standing stock-still he was in grave danger of being snowed over. He quietly hoped he wasn’t about to be buried alive. Imagine the embarrassment of having to be dug up by the emergency services while he was wearing Mrs. Speckle’s home-knitted duffel coat! And the clothespins. Don’t forget the clothespins. Oh, he’d never live it down.

Wilma, whose face was scrunched up against the biting cold, put her mittens to her forehead to shield her eyes from the onslaught of snow. Through the thick swirl of flakes she thought she saw something…moving. Ahead and to the left, on a raised mound, she could just make out
what appeared to be the silhouette of a small boy. Phew! “Hello!” she called. “Is someone there?”

There was no reply, but a dim orb of lantern light flickered through the gloom. Wilma scooped Pickle up and made her way toward it. She was more certain now that there was someone ahead of them on the mound. She could definitely see a boy, hair blowing in the wind, gesturing for them to clamber up the slope. Slipping on a patch of ice, Wilma fell forward, her mittens plunging into deep snow and her hood flopping over her face. Pickle plopped down beside her and in desperation they both crawled wetly up the small hill. At the summit, Wilma straightened and the silhouette before her vanished into a blaze of bright light as a lantern swung toward her face.

“Who are you?” asked a gruff voice below her that didn’t sound like a boy.

“I’m Wilma Tenderfoot,” Wilma answered, trying to make out who she was talking to. “I’m an apprentice detective. This is my dog, Pickle. He doesn’t normally look like that,” she added, acknowledging the wooden pegs on Pickle’s
ears, “but he can’t see without them. We’ve been sent to get a Brackle Bush. Ours got burned. And we’re a bit lost, what with the snow and everything. But I saw the lamplight and the boy and—”

“There are no Brackle Bushes here,” interrupted the voice gruffly. “You’re in Blackheart Hoo. This is private land. You’re not allowed here. And what’s more, you’re damaging my excavation trench.”

“Ex-ca-whatsit?” asked Wilma, scrunching her nose up.

“Excavation trench,” replied the man, clambering up beside her and lowering the lantern in his hand. “I’m Dr. Irascimus Flatelly. I’m an archaeologist. I am conducting a dig on the Blackheart estate perimeters and you’re standing on the edge of my excavation trench.”

“Oh,” said Wilma, stepping sideways. “Although with all this snow, it’s quite difficult to see what I’m standing in.”

Dr. Irascimus Flatelly was a small, wiry man with a scrappy beard and round spectacles worn over droopy-looking eyes. He had an intense way
about him, as if he might recite a poem at any moment or crush walnuts with his bare hands. He was dressed in a leaf-green tweed suit with his trousers tucked into long socks and was wearing a battered trilby hat that was slightly too small for his head. Wilma looked around her. She could just make out the edges of what appeared to be a rectangular pit. There was a spade stuck into the ground and a sizable mound of earth behind it, both partly snow-covered. A large wheelbarrow with an empty sack in it stood at one end of the site and Irascimus, lantern held close to his face, looked anxious. Wilma had never met an archaeologist before and wasn’t entirely sure what one was or what they did. Perhaps they always looked worried, she thought. Because some grown-ups do.

“If you’re looking for the Brackle Bush farm,” continued Dr. Flatelly, “then you will need to go back down this bank and bear left. I think it’s about a mile in that direction.” He waved off into the distance. “Actually, I have a map in my pocket. I can show you if you like.”

“Yes, please,” replied Wilma, smiling. “My
Academy textbook says looking at maps is generally to be encouraged. I am a pupil at the Academy of Detection and Espionage. I’m an apprentice detective.”

“Yes, you said,” mumbled the archaeologist, fumbling in a pocket.

“I work for Theodore P. Goodman,” continued Wilma, trying to look official. “I have a badge.”

“Theodore P. Goodman?” said Dr. Flatelly, looking up suddenly. “Is he with you?” He raised his lantern and looked over Wilma’s shoulder.

“No. It’s just me and Pickle.”

Wilma stepped closer to Dr. Flatelly. Pickle gave himself a little shake and tried to follow her, but as he did so, he lost his footing and slid sideways into the excavation trench. Falling into a rather deeper drift than he was expecting, he was momentarily flummoxed. Above him he could hear Wilma taking directions from Dr. Flatelly and below him he could smell the deep, rich scent of just-turned soil. But there was something more. No hound worth his salt would pass up a smell as fertile as that. It was the sort of ancient
buried bouquet that could send dogs into rhapsodic trances. Pickle began tentatively to paw at the ground beneath him. Feeling something hard and round under his claws, he dug deeper and gave the small uncovered protuberance a little lick. It tasted rusty and metallic, but there was something else …

Giving a little whirrup, Pickle scrabbled farther into the trench and began to dig frantically. Snow and soil flew upward behind him. “What the…!” yelled Dr. Flatelly as icy mud splattered his tweed suit. “This is an important historical site! Your dog is destroying it!”

“No, Pickle!” yelled Wilma, jumping into the excavation trench. But she was too late. Pickle was already tugging something from the earth. Dr. Flatelly, spluttering and spitting snow, saw what the determined dog was doing and let out an anxious wail as Pickle, his jaws clamped tightly about his prize, lowered his shoulders and yanked one last time. The ground beneath his quarry cracked open and with a mighty jerk, Pickle fell backward, pulling whatever it was he had with
him. “Oh my goodness,” whispered Wilma, her eyes popping.

There before her, sticking up from the snow-covered ground, was a large, ancient-looking key. And clutched around it was a dried and lifeless human hand.

“There’s someone d-d-dead in my excavation trench,” stuttered Dr. Flatelly, pointing at the mummified hand.

“But who is it?” whispered Wilma, scrabbling backward. “And why are they holding a key?”

Who and why indeed. Get ready for the long haul. This could be another case for Theodore P. Goodman (and his apprentice, Wilma Tenderfoot).

“A
sort of hand, you say?” shouted Inspector Lemone over his shoulder the following morning. “Like a claw? Of some sort of unidentifiable monster?”

“It was a bit like a claw,” yelled Wilma as she bounced along in the trailer at the back of Theodore’s tandem. “But I’ve looked up the chapter in my Academy textbook on Things That Clutch, and it was definitely a hand. One that looked like it had been pickled, then roasted, but left in the oven too long.”

The Inspector gulped. He didn’t like the sound of this. It was bad enough having to pedal
anywhere on the tandem, but pedaling toward something ghoulish seemed positively reckless. Inspector Lemone was Cooper Island’s only police officer. It had happened by accident. On leaving school, all children on Cooper are required to fill in a form saying what job they would like to do. Lemone, hoping for an easy life, had declared that he would like to be a “polite officer,” a straightforward job that required the occasional pleasantry. But the Minister in Charge of Island Jobs had forgotten his reading glasses that day and misread Lemone’s request. And so Lemone, a rotund fellow with a deep love of biscuits, had found himself in charge of all manner of laws and orders. Which was quite a shock. “That claw sounds awful,” he panted, reaching up to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

“Actually, it sounds mummified,” said Theo-dore, indicating left as they rode in through the gates of Blackheart Hoo. “Which means whoever it is may have died a very long time ago.”

“That’s what the ark-ologist said,” added Wilma, making a few scribbles in her apprentice detective
notebook. “Dr. Flatelly said it looked ever so old and that he was going to get the Blackheart butler to help dig it up. He said that was why it wasn’t urgent you saw it either. I couldn’t stay, of course, because Pickle and I had to get the Brackle Bush, so I didn’t see the rest of it. But I expect it’s HORRIBLE.”

“Ah! Titus!” called out the great detective with a wave. “Glad you’ve made it.”

Wilma looked over her shoulder. Coming up the driveway behind them was a rickshaw in which sat the island’s forensic scientist, Dr. Kooks. He was a large fellow with a jolly demeanor who liked to spend his spare time singing songs about body parts in the hope that one day he would be in an opera. Pulling him along, with considerable effort, was his long-suffering assistant, Penbert. Kooks was wrapped in a large blanket and singing a song about elbows. “Ah-ha!” he boomed with a broad beam upon seeing Mr. Goodman and his friends. “Isn’t it cold! Absolutely frozen! Still, not as frozen as the poor chap they found last night, I’ll wager! HA!”

Penbert rolled her eyes. It was quite against every rule in the book to make jokes about dead bodies in front of non-medical personnel. Most improper. She would have to enter this in her incident book.

The morning was crisp and sharp. The snowstorm had left the island feeling fresh as the flick of clean sheets. Horse-drawn snowplows had been hard at work since dawn’s first light to clear the roads, and the fields were full of snow-animals hastily built by children on their way to school. Theodore and Inspector Lemone traveled everywhere on the island by tandem with Wilma and Pickle sitting in a two-wheeled trailer attached to the back. With the icy conditions, however, the journey had been a little more treacherous than usual. At one point, swerving to avoid an out-of-control donkey spinning toward them on a patch of black ice, they had ridden headfirst into a snow-filled ditch and had to be pulled out by a passing funeral procession, which in anyone’s book is nothing short of awkward.

The main house at Blackheart Hoo rose into view behind a long line of oak trees. The manor was vast, the sort of place where you could sit in a different room every day of the year without ever getting back to where you started. Dark brickwork gave the place a sense of unwelcoming menace, spiny turrets clambered toward the sky as if trying to escape, and Wilma was a little taken aback by the gargoyles of pigs that snarled down from every corner of the building. “Legend has it,” explained Inspector Lemone, following her gaze, “that the Blackhearts actually invented pigs. True story.” Theodore rolled his eyes and pulled off his bicycle clips.