Zeuglodon (12 page)

It was quiet in Bowness, the evening settling in and the houses lamp-lit and cozy. The streets were almost deserted, with only now and then someone hurrying along, holding onto his hat and hunched over out of the drizzle. There was smell of suppers cooking, and I was suddenly hungry and anxious to be home. We had gotten to the St. George and were turning up the walkway toward the lodge, when I heard the sound of a motor coming down from the town of Windermere, a town that’s a mile up the road from Bowness. Within moments a bus came looming out of the misty evening with the lights on inside, looking warm and cozy.

Inside the bus, wearing a hat and sitting very stiffly and staring straight ahead, was Henrietta Peckworthy, and no doubt about it.

The bus passed us, heading down toward the lakeside where it went around a corner and out of sight.

The sight of Ms Peckworthy had flabbergasted us. Brendan couldn’t speak, but gaped around, looking back down the road and then at Perry and me. Our nemesis had picked up our trail. But why? Surely not to recover the stolen notebook—unless Brendan had been right and there was something more to the notebook than we had thought. But even if that were true, the notebook was burned up anyway.

None of us spoke a word about it to Mr. Wattsbury, but followed him into the lodge, where Mrs. Wattsbury was putting dinner on the table—an enormous roast pork with potatoes and applesauce and bread and butter. I can’t tell you whether the food was good or awful, because I didn’t really taste it, but just pushed it around on my plate, dividing it up so that it looked like I was eating. Now and then I said, “Mmmm,” in an appreciative way. Not ten minutes ago I was starved, but now I had lost my appetite. The mere sight of Ms Peckworthy can do that to you. She could hire herself out as a diet.

I saw that Brendan was secretly sliding pieces of food off his plate and onto a napkin in his lap, especially the vegetables. At home he slips outside and throws it all onto the roof, and for the next couple of days there are all manner of birds and animals up there. He says it’s just like fairy food. The fairies love children for spilling food, because spilled food becomes the legal property of fairies as soon as it lands on the ground. And of course fairies aren’t fond of adults, who get angry about spilled food and set about cleaning it up. Perry was eating everything on his plate, as he always does unless he’s lost in contemplation. He eats very heartily, too, for a thin boy, and nods his head over his food, as if he has just heard some true thing. It’s very difficult to watch him eat.

It seemed to take forever for dinner to be over, and then we helped Mrs. Wattsbury with the washing up, and so it was another half an hour before we had a chance to go up to our room to talk. “You children must be tired after your long day,” Mrs. Wattsbury said to us before we headed toward the stairs.

We told her that she had hit the nail squarely on the head. “
Rem acu tetigisti
,” Perry said, showing off. And Brendan pointed out that at home it was the middle of the night, and that he had half a mind to turn in, and I said I did too. But of course it was only
half
a mind—there was the other half…. The first thing Brendan did when we got up to the room was to open the window and pitch out the napkin full of cut-up food, which flew like a meteor straight into the neighbor’s shrubbery. “A treat for the hedgehogs,” he said.

“What do you think?” Perry asked, giving me a shrewd look.

“I
guess
hedgehogs would eat it,” I told him, although I didn’t really know what they ate—hedges, maybe. “It seems kind of like cannibalism, hedgehogs eating roast pork. Like with the starving sailors.”

“Not
hedgehogs
,” Perry said. “I mean, what about the appearance of Frau Peckworthy?”

“I’m wondering why she came all this way,” I said. “It must be about us, but….”

“Maybe it’s
not
about us,” Brendan said hopefully. “Maybe she’s just on a jolly holiday.”

“Of
course
it’s about us,” Perry said. “By stealing the notebook you made it an
affaire
d’
honneur
.”

“It’s always some kind of Frenchy thing with you, isn’t it?” Brendan asked sulkily.

“Perry means that stealing the notebook made it personal,” I said. “Peckworthy can’t let us get away with it. It’s an affair of honor now.”

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” Perry said.

“
I’ll
give her a frying pan,” Brendan said ridiculously, but then he looked sharply out the window, stood up, and drew the curtains almost shut. “Hark!” he said. “Here comes someone, and not just anyone, either.”

Perry doused the lights so that we wouldn’t be seen, and the three of us peered out past the curtain. A mysterious-looking man had come out of the trees on the opposite side of the street. He was quite small—not a midget of any variety, but small—dressed in dark clothes and with a cap pulled down over his eyes. He hesitated for a moment, looking back into the shadows as if he was worried that someone was following. He carried a stick in his hand, but it wasn’t long enough to use as a walking stick—more the kind of stick you’d carry if you thought you might have to clobber someone. He stepped down into the street and hurried across, straight toward the door of the St. George. We lost sight of him, because our view was blocked by the tree outside the window and by the porch eaves, but we could hear him rapping on the door with the stick, and then there was the sound of the door opening.

We slipped out onto the landing at the top of the stairs and tiptoed down until we got halfway to the bottom. Any farther and they’d be able to see our feet, if they had happened to look. The small man was in the Wattsbury’s parlor now, and even without getting close enough to be actually snooping, we could hear him talking quite clearly.

“Yes, sir,” he was saying, “down at the old King’s Owl. He was a strange customer, all right.”

“How do you mean
strange
, Mr. Boskins?” Mr. Wattsbury asked.

“I mean he had a bloomin’ great seashell on his head, didn’t he? And it was full of water, and him breathing through a hose into his midsection.”

Brendan squeezed my arm hard at that point, meaning it was Reginald Peach, but he didn’t really need to, because it was moronically obvious.

“At the pub?” Mr. Wattsbury asked.

“Yes, sir. That is to say, not in the Owl itself, sir, but out by the wall opposite that runs down to the lake. Do you know the Old Door?”

“The wooden door in the wall?”

“That’s it, sir. He said he’d be back at that very door in an hour if he could manage it, and would wait for you there. Them’s his very words.
If
he could manage it. It didn’t seem certain. If he could
not
manage it, then you were to play your part without a script, like the poet said.”

“Tonight? An hour from
now
?”

“That’s it, Mr. Wattsbury. He said it was now or never, that the others were going off to try the key. Mind you, I was specifically to say that they were going to ‘
try the key
.’”

They
, I thought. Who else but Frosticos and the Creeper? So the Creeper was alive! It was the black cloud and the silver lining both together, although the lining was paper thin.

Mr. Wattsbury spoke again. “
Try the key
, do you say? This is all very mysterious, Mr. Boskins. I’m not fond of a mystery.”

“Nor am I, sir. Nor was your man in the helmet. He seemed frightened nearly out of his wits, I’d say. I came here straight off. He give me five pound for my troubles, and in two minutes I mean to be up the road to spend my earnings. Don’t look back, that’s my motto.”

“But was there any further message, Mr. Boskins? Anything besides the key and this clandestine meeting? Something I can make sense of?”

“I was to tell you, ‘the girl is safe.’”

“And did he mention anyone named Hedgepeth?”

“Yes, indeed, sir. Hedgepeth ain’t.”

“Ain’t what, Mr. Boskins?”

“Ain’t safe, sir. Not by a long chalk. They’re meaning to do him a mischief if the key ain’t right. That’s why it must be tonight that you act, while them others have gone down the lake. Your man in the helmet can’t lift a finger to help or he’ll catch it, and the little girl, too. He put the weight on you, sir, every last punctilio. It’s up to you now. That was the last word from your man in the helmet.”

It might have been a mystery to Mr. Wattsbury, but none of it was a mystery to
us
, I can tell you, and we lingered there halfway down the stairs for Mr. Boskins to leave, at which moment we would fill Mr. Wattsbury in on the details. And of course we would go with him to his meeting with Reginald at the Old Door.

If he wouldn’t let us, we’d go without him.

But then the door to the St. George opened again—someone else coming in. We heard Mr. Wattsbury say, “May I help you madam?” and I thought that it was a woman wanting a room. But then, in the unmistakable voice of Ms Henrietta Peckworthy, she said, “I’ve come to claim Toliver Hedgepeth’s children.”

I turned to Perry and Brendan, and Perry held his finger to his lips, and we got ready to listen again, although all of us were thinking the same thing, having to do with the tree outside the window and how long it would take to get down it.

Mr. Boskins had clammed up, and now he was taking his leave, and Mr. Wattsbury was saying, “Very good, Mr. Boskins, here’s another fiver for your trouble,” and Mr. Boskins said “Cheers,” and the door opened and shut once again, and then Wattsbury said to Ms Peckworthy, “I’m afraid the children have been left in my charge, ma’am. The missus and I are entirely competent to care for them while their uncle is away.”

“I have it on good authority that Mr. Hedgepeth is not ‘away’ as you put it, but is in fact either dead or missing. And on the basis of that information I have brought a legal document that allows me to take charge of the children on their aunt’s behalf.
My heavens, it’s that infernal dog
!”

She had apparently seen Hasbro and taken fright. “Bite her on the ankle!” I thought, trying to project it, although I shouldn’t have. Not that Ms Peckworthy doesn’t deserve to be bitten, but Hasbro shouldn’t bite anyone simply for pleasure, his or ours.

“In fact Mr. Boskins has just been telling me that there’s evidence Mr. Hedgepeth is very much alive, and is in fact right here in Bowness, Mrs.…?”

“Peckworthy,” she told him. “
Ms
Henrietta Peckworthy.”

“Lemuel Wattsbury, ma’am, and
Mrs
. Wattsbury.”

“Pleased,” Mrs. Wattsbury said, although she didn’t sound pleased, and who would be, talking to Ms Peckworthy?

“I’ll just ask you to produce your evidence, if you don’t mind, Mr. Wattsbury,” Ms Peckworthy said. “Aunt Ricketts will insist upon it.”

“Ricketts, ma’am? Are you referring to the bone disease?”

“I certainly am not, sir. I’m referring to the maternal aunt of those three wayward children. Your Mr. Boskins left in a
very
suspicious hurry with his fabulous evidence. Perhaps you’ll want to call him back?”

“If you’d be kind enough to produce
your
document, Ms Peckworthy…”

We didn’t stop to hear the rest, but went straight back up the stairs. The production of documents didn’t interest us at the moment. The words, “They’ve gone down the lake,” kept going around in my head, and I was certain that I had seen
them
—that the white-haired man in the boat at twilight must have been Hilario Frosticos and the dark-haired man had been the Creeper, setting out to “try the key,” as Mr. Boskins had put it. But how long would it take them? They’d been gone for an hour at least.

We jammed pillows under the bedcovers, made the lumps look humanish, grabbed our jackets, turned out the lights, and went out through the window like the infamous criminal, one step ahead of the law.