The Ghastly Gerty Swindle With the Ghosts of Hungryhouse Lane (9 page)

“What is keeping you, Charlie?” she demanded to know.

“I think I've got it. It must be this one here.”

“Do you think we'll hear them?”

“We might get Chief Suspect,” said Charlie. “But Sick Mother's voice probably won't be loud enough.”

With a click the tape began to run. They heard Chief Suspect telling Charlie to get lost, and Charlie saying, “
Up your nose.”

“That's very rude!” Bonnie said loudly.

“Shhh!”

“No, Alexander, I wasn't telling you to get lost, just one of the local pests. Although don't you think it's a bit late to be calling? You sound a bit hoarse, dear. I sincerely hope you're taking Knox's Oval Lozenges for that throat. What? A smoke alarm? … Three smoke alarms? … Alexander, have you been drinking? There is no such thing as a … You thought he was George the WHO? What do you mean, that's not all? This is enough moonshine for one night, if you ask me…. Alex, how could she float like a bubble, and I don't care if she was wearing a Queen Anne necklace, you'll have to pull yourself together, don't you dare go feebleminded on me, boy, or you'll ruin everything. One more load and … I don't understand what you're saying, Alex dear. Who are Long John Silver and Admiral Foo-Foo? What? Tick tock, look in the clock? Only its head, I see. I see. Well, why didn't you give it a thick ear and knock the stupid smile off its face, then? And stop saying ‘Good-bye Rio,' it doesn't make any sense. Look. Stay right there. I'll be around first thing in the morning, and we'll soon see about spooky-wookies!”

The phone went dead, the recorder went click, and the Sweet kids celebrated by bouncing about on the bed and thumping pillows.

“Sick Mother is a man!” cried Charlie.

“Shh!” hissed Zoe.

Muldoon, horrified to discover that he'd gone to
bed on a trampoline, jumped to the floor and rushed about impressively. Then Zoe disappeared in search of a phone book.

“Does this mean that Lulubelle is coming back?” Bonnie asked Charlie.

“Yep. Thanks to my modern technology.”

Now that Lulubelle was about to be recaptured, a tear or two brightened Bonnie's lovely eyes. She may have been feeling guilty for some of the terrible things she had done in her lifetime.

“Charlie?”

“What?”

“Would you like me to make satin bows for your juggling balls?”

“What?”

“I could make satin bows and I could tie them around the middle. Miss Amy says I can tie bows as nice as ninepence.”

Charlie may well have been thinking, Juggling balls don't wear satin bows, you daft moonbeam, but for some reason he didn't say so. He just said, “I forget where I put them.”

Now Zoe returned, whooping quietly but in triumph. “He's in the phone book, right? Under Moag, of course. I bet he's her husband and they're in this together. Here's what it says: Alexander Moag, Antiques Dealer, Seventeen Frogworth Place. Then I looked it up in the Yellow Pages and you'll never
guess what he calls himself:
Alexander the Grate, Specialist in Period Fireplaces.
” With a mighty thud, Zoe closed the book and cried, “Come on!”

“Where are we going?” asked Bonnie.

“Up to the attic. We have to talk to Bobbie. Alexander the Grate, indeed! We're going to show that gangster something that'll put him off fireplaces for
life
!”

Breakfast in Hungryhouse Lane was a strange affair.

The three Sweet kids sat at the table around a communal plate of overdone toast. From time to time they stared at the gangster's wife in the plastic apron who was making tea for Miss Amy at the cookstove. Amy Steadings sat up very straight in a highbacked chair and said, “You really needn't go to any trouble on my account, Gertrude, for I have quite lost my appetite this morning.”

“Now, now, now,” clucked Gerty. “We must eat, mustn't we? And I'm going away today, and who knows when you'll get a proper cooked meal again, dear?”

“We're getting Lulubelle back today,” Bonnie piped up, only to be thumped on the left thigh by her sister and whacked on the right arm by her brother. In normal circumstances she would have screamed blue murder.

“How sick
is
your mother?” Zoe asked, nibbling innocently on a piece of toast.

“Didn't have a good night, the poor duck. But it comes to us all, doesn't it? That's what I always say: it comes to us all. And now I must fly. There's only the nine-thirty bus into town. Cheers, my dears.”

“Cheers,” said Charlie.

Breakfast continued in silence until Muldoon trotted into the kitchen as if he owned the joint. Obviously, the coast was now clear.

“I really can't believe it of Gertrude, you know,” Amy Steadings muttered sadly. “It's too bad.”

“I'll phone for the taxi,” said Zoe.

“Don't you think we should perhaps get in touch with Bill Partridge's grandson? There might be trouble, children.”

“Naw, cops wouldn't understand about the spooks,” said Charlie.

“And anyway,” Zoe pointed out, “I'm bringing my first-aid kit in case anyone needs a bandage or a tourniquet.”

The red first-aid case was one of the first things the taxi driver saw when he pulled in front of the grand old house. He also saw an elderly woman, a mongrel with its tongue hanging out sideways, and three children—the eldest of whom carried an object that might have been a cage with a blanket thrown over it. This cage was almost as big as herself.

“This is a very tiny little car,” said Bonnie as she
climbed in. “Daddy's car is twice as big as this car. Charlie can juggle in Daddy's car, can't you, Charlie?”

“It'll have to do,” said Zoe, shoving in the big birdcage she'd found in the attic. “Driver, we're going to London. Do you know where Seventeen Frogworth Place is?”

“Yeah. I know where everywhere is.”

“Put the pedal to the metal, then,” said Charlie.

“Look, mate, don't let that dog scratch my seats.”

“Our dog is a very experienced traveler,” Zoe pointed out as Muldoon licked the driver's ear like a lollipop. “Are you all right, Miss Amy? Let me fix your seat belt. Have you got enough room?”

“Yes. Oh, but did I pull the front door behind me? I think I must have.”

They were on their way. The taxi driver began to hear strange snippets of conversation that made him wonder about the passengers in his car. “I'm going to give Lulubelle a new mouth,” said the littlest one. “A nice smily-mouth with turny-up ends.” The boy whipped out a tape recorder and whispered peculiar phrases like “chief suspect” and “sick mother” and “save the spooks.” The oldest girl talked about Alexander the Great as if he was living down the road instead of being dead for a couple of thousand years.

Bunch of crackpots, thought the driver. After some minutes, he asked, “What's in the cage, then?”

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” said Zoe.

“Why is it covered by a rug?”

“That's not a rug, it's a blanket.”

“It's a parrot, right?”

“Yes, it's a parrot.”

“Is your parrot sick, then?”

“No. It got stuck up a chimney.”

“What can it say?”

“It doesn't talk.”

“What use is a parrot that can't talk?”

“Actually, if it could talk, it would say: Mind your own business.”

“Excuse me for breathing, sweetheart,” said the taxi driver, switching on his radio.

Before long they had left Hungryhouse Lane, Tunwold village and the quiet country far behind, and were approaching the city along a busy highway.

“I wonder what makes her do it?” Amy Steadings said suddenly. “What is it that brings out the wickedness in people? Gertrude was quite kind in her own rough way, you know.”

“She's a rip-off artist,” said Charlie. “One more load and they'd have disappeared into the underworld where no crook ever squeals on another crook and we'd have lost them instead of catching them red-handed.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Amy. The taxi came to a halt, and they got out.

“Thirty-one pounds, please,” said the driver.

“Thirty-one POUNDS!” Zoe almost exploded. “You can't be serious—we don't carry that sort of money around on our persons.”

“Oh, I get it! Fare dodgers, eh? I knew there was something fishy about you lot.”

“How dare you! Our dad could buy your whole taxi with the interest on his capital investments,” cried Zoe.

“Ten taxis,” said Charlie.

“And he could buy me a helicopter for my birthday,” Bonnie threw in for good measure.

“I think I have the money here,” said Amy Steadings. “Oh dear, yes. It's here somewhere.”

As he waited, the taxi driver stared at the Sweet kids, plus their dumb parrot and their red first-aid case, as if they had just beamed down from a passing starship. When the old lady coughed up the money, he took off like a Formula One racing driver. Zoe hoped that he didn't have an accident and therefore require her medical assistance one day.

And there it was on the sunny side of the street: number 17. ALEXANDER THE GRATE sparkled in golden letters on a maroon background. The Sweets were filled with excitement as they stared at it between the passing vehicles, for in there were Lady Cordelia McIntyre and Sir James Walsingham, and Chief Suspect and Sick Mother—not to mention many of Miss Amy's most precious things.

“We're here Bobbie,” Zoe whispered to her sick parrot. “The time has come for you to do your stuff. Let's see what happens when Alexander finds
you
in his grate!”

14

A Bandage for Gertrude

Alexander, surrounded by grates, paced around the floor of his shop in ever-diminishing circles until he came to a complete stop. And when he came to the stop, he threw out his arms as if to warn an invisible orchestra that their moment had come.

Then the arms flopped to his sides. Harmlessly.

“It is
not
some jerk of a joker, Mother. I saw it with my own two eyes as well as I'm seeing you now. It was right there
inside
the clock, it winked at me with an empty eye and spoke to me on the subject of smoke alarms. He says we stole him from Hungryhouse Lane.”

Moonshine! thought Gerty. But she bustled forward, determined to be full of jolly good cheer. There was nothing new in all this, actually—her Alex had always been a little bit nervous and high-strung. Such a great reader of monster and horror comics, he was!

“You're run-down, dearie, that's all. Why, there's
nothing in that old clock but the pendulum and that tatty old doll. There wouldn't be room for a ghost in there, Alexander, would there, duck? Not if you think about it.”

For most of the night Alexander had been thinking about it, and now he was on the point of losing his temper, as people who are under pressure often do. He wanted to say, Listen, you old cow, it's a ghost and the pendulum passed right through the middle of its
head.
Ghosts aren't like you or me. The blighters are from beyond the grave and that's what makes them weird and scary.

However, he didn't say that, but instead looked out of the window at the street, where a scruffy mongrel stared in at him from the pavement. Its lollopy tongue stuck out sideways.

“When I go to sleep, the other one comes, you know. If it's not King George, it's Queen Anne. Or Admiral Foo-Foo.”

“Who is Admiral Foo-Foo?”

“Long John Silver's monkey, Mother.”

String me up, thought Gerty, now he's seeing monkeys.

“Alex—you will pull yourself together!” barked Gerty. “The house is a gold mine. Just one more run and we can take a long rest far away from here. We might even be able to buy you a bigger boat and sail away to Ireland.”

Alexander blinked at the word “Ireland.” He seemed to be thinking of somewhere else.

“Yacht, Mother. I do not sail boats.”

“You'll sink like a blasted stone if you don't listen to me! Think of all the goodies we've got already. That musket might have been fired by Cromwell himself, you know. I looked it up in my book of—”

At that moment Gerty broke off, for she had just noticed white fragments on the floor. Had something priceless been broken?

“My smoke alarm,” Alexander explained. “It went off at four in the morning. A policeman, a police car, three nightwatchmen and a tramp turned up at my door.”

“How did it get broken?”

“I belted it with a brass candlestick, that's how!” cried Alexander. “That's one dead smoke alarm, may the blighter rest in pieces!”

Sure enough, Gerty found the candlestick—an Edwardian work whose beautiful ornamental branches had obviously come off during the assault on the smoke alarm. Stone me, thought Gerty, this business is getting out of hand. She glanced at the raked ashes under the big chimney. Was Alexander cracking up completely?