Conrad's Fate (24 page)

“Start again,” Mr. Amos said. “And
try
this time.”

“I try, I try!” Mr. Prendergast said, arriving beside me again. “I am exercising every thew and sinew to persuade that man to give me the sack, but
will
he?”

“Why?” I said.

“The union must have been right when they told me that a reasonable-looking underbutler was very hard to find at short notice,” Mr. Prendergast said dolefully.

“No, I meant why do you want to be sacked?” I said.

Mr. Prendergast grabbed each of his elbows in the opposite hand and hitched his face mournfully sideways. “I don't like the man,” he said. “I don't like this house. It strikes me as haunted.”

“You mean the changes,” I said.

“No,” said Mr. Prendergast. “I mean haunted. As in ghosts.”

And the strange thing was that by lunchtime everyone was saying that Stallery was haunted. Several agitated people told me that that someone—or something—had thrown a whole shelf of books on the library floor. I tried to find Anthea to ask her, but she was out with Count Robert. By teatime all the maids were saying that things in the bedrooms kept being moved. Some of them had heard strange hammerings and knockings there, too. By the end of the day Mr. Prendergast was not the only actor who was talking about leaving.

“It's just the changes,” Christopher said as we climbed the stairs that night; the lift was full of a courtroom drama just then, with Mr. Prendergast as the judge and a very glamorous dark girl called Polly Varden being accused of murdering Manfred. “Actors are some of the most superstitious people there are.”

“I'm glad Mr. Amos doesn't seem to notice the changes,” I said.

“It is lucky,” Christopher agreed. Here he began looking very anxious and raced ahead to the attics.

He didn't go into our room at all. I think he spent all night out in the forbidden part of the attics. I woke up to find him already dressed and bending over me urgently. “Grant,” he said, “there were no changes last night either. I think that fat swindler turns his machines off before he goes to bed. I'm going to have to look for Millie by day. Be an absolute cracker and cover up for me, will you?”

“How do you mean?” I asked sleepily.

“By saying I'm ill. Pretend I'm up here covered in green and yellow spots. Please, Grant.” Christopher had been learning from the actors. He went down on one knee and raised his hands to me as if he were praying. “Pretty please, Grant! There's a
witch
out there—remember?”

I woke up enough to start thinking. “It won't work,” I said. “Miss Semple is bound to come up and check on you, and when you're not there, I'll be in trouble, too.”

Christopher went, “
Oooh!
” desperately.

“No, wait,” I said. “The way to work it is for you to
show
Mrs. Baldock that you're really not well. Can't you work some magic to make yourself look ill? Give yourself bubonic plague or something? Then stagger into her room looking like death.”

Christopher stood up. “Oh,” he said. “Thanks, Grant. I wasn't thinking, was I? It's easy, really. All I have to do is to get hold of some silver, and Series Seven will do the rest. But you'll have to be the one who brings meals and medicines to my sickbed. Will you do that, Grant?”

“All right,” I said.

So, when we took the boots and shoes down, we took them by way of the big main staircase. There was no one about to see us at that hour. This made it all the more puzzling when we found a big red rubber ball, which must have come from the nurseries, bouncing slowly down the stairs in front of us.

“I wonder if there
is
a ghost after all,” Christopher murmured.

We were too busy with our plan to get hold of something silver to bother much about it. When the ball rolled away across the black marble floor of the hall, we simply dumped our baskets of footgear outside the breakfast room and sneaked in through the door. Christopher went on a rapid search of the sideboard in there. In no time he selected a very small silver spoon from one of the big cruet sets and stuffed it into his waistcoat pocket. “This'll do,” he said.

The effect was almost instant. His face went bluish white, and by the time he was back at the door, his legs were staggering. “Perfect,” he said. “Come on.”

We dodged out into the hall again, where, as far as I could see, the red rubber ball had vanished. But I didn't have any opportunity to look for it because Christopher was now—honestly and completely—too weak to carry his basket. He panted and he wavered and I had to carry one handle of it for him.

“Don't look so concerned, Grant,” he told me irritably. “It's only a sort of magical allergy.”

Actually, I was staring anxiously after the vanished rubber ball with shudders creeping up my back, but I didn't like to say so. I helped Christopher to the undercroft, and to dump the baskets in the bootroom, and then to the Middle Hall for breakfast. By the time everyone else arrived there, he was looking like death warmed up.

All the actors exclaimed. Fay Marley took Christopher along to Mrs. Baldock herself, and Mrs. Baldock believed he was at death's door like everyone else did. Christopher reappeared in the Middle Hall doorway, blue pale and staggering between Fay on one side and Mrs. Baldock on the other.

“I must have Grant!” he gasped. “
Grant
can take me upstairs!”

I knew he meant that we had to put the silver spoon back before Mr. Amos noticed it was missing. I jumped up at once and draped Christopher's arm artistically across my shoulders. Christopher collapsed against me, so that I staggered, too.

To my surprise, everyone protested. “You're not his servant!” several actors said. Most of the others added, “Let Fay help you take him!” and Gregor said, “I could probably carry him.” Mrs. Baldock said anxiously, “Are you sure you're strong enough, Conrad? He's a big lad. Let someone else try.”

“Grant!” Christopher insisted expiringly. “
Grant!
”

“Not to worry,” I said. “I can get him as far as the lift, and we can go up in that.”

They let us go, rather doubtfully. I heaved Christopher along to the lift, which was about as far as I could manage. Christopher was looking so unwell by then that I was quite alarmed. I took the spoon out of his waistcoat pocket and put it in mine, before I opened the lift, in case anyone was listening for me to do that. Hugo was in the lift, sitting on the floor with his arms around his knees, staring at nothing. So I shut the lift again. When I turned to Christopher, there was color back in his face and he was standing on his own—it was as quick as that.

“Keep tottering,” I said, and we pretended to stagger to the lobby.

We met Anthea there, dashing past us from the stairs. “What's wrong with him?” she wanted to know.

“Muscular dysfunctional debilitation,” Christopher said. “MDD, you know. I've had it from the cradle.”

“You look pretty healthy to me,” Anthea said, but she was, luckily, in too much of a hurry to ask any more.

We tottered artificially on, up into the hall and across it to the breakfast room, where Christopher took a swift look around to make sure that nobody was there. “You put it back, Grant,” he said. “I have to get going.” And he went dashing away up the main stairs.

I was a bit annoyed, but I sighed and slipped into the breakfast room.

As soon as I was inside, I was quite positive there was a ghost in there. The room had a heavy
occupied
feeling, and the air seemed thicker than it ought to be. It smelled of damp and dust instead of the usual coffee and bread smell. I stood for a moment wondering which was worse, facing a ghost or being accused of stealing the silver. Facing Mr. Amos, I thought. Definitely worse. But my back shuddered all over when I finally made myself scuttle over to the sideboard. As quick as I could, I laid the shiny little spoon back where I thought it came from.

There was a thudding sound behind me.

I whirled around to see the big bowl of fruit in the middle of the table in the act of tipping over. The thud had been the orange that tipped out first. It was followed by apples, pears, nectarines, and more oranges, which went rolling across the table and off its edges, while the bowl stood on its edge to shake out a floppy bunch of grapes.

“Don't
do
that!” I shouted.

The bowl thumped back to its right position. Nothing else happened. I stood there for what must have been five minutes, feeling as if my hair was trying to pull itself up by its roots. Then I made myself scramble to pick up the fruit and put it back.

“I'm only doing this because of what Mr. Amos will say,” I said as I crawled after apples. “I'm not helping you. Go and annoy Mr. Amos, not me.
He's
the one that needs a fright.” I crammed the last handful of apples in anyhow, on top of the grapes, and then I ran. I don't remember anything on my way to the Middle Hall. I was too scared.

The next thing I remember is being
in
the Hall and being greeted merrily by the actors. “Come and sit down,” they called. “We saved your breakfast. Do you want my sausage?”

Polly Varden said, “I'm glad you're not ill, too. We enjoy having you here, Conrad.”

“But you're too humble with Christopher, you know,” Fay Marley said. “Why did it have to be
you
who hauled him to the attics?”

I couldn't answer that. All I could think of to say was, “Well, Christopher's—er—special.”

“No, he's not, no more than you are,” Francis said.

“Darling, he just
thinks
of himself as a star,” Fay said. “Don't get taken in by the posing.”

And Mr. Prendergast explained, “A person may have the
quality
, but he still has to earn his right to be a star, see. What has young Christopher done that makes him so special?”

“It's—more the way he was born,” I said.

They didn't like that either. Mr. Prendergast said he didn't hold with aristocracy, and the rest said, in different ways, that it was
work
that made you a star. Polly made me really embarrassed by saying, “But you don't put on airs, Conrad. We
like
you.”

I was quite glad when it was time to go and stand against the wall while Count Robert bolted his breakfast—he seemed to be in as much of a hurry as Anthea. The ghost was still in there. I think it was the ghost that made Manfred drop a steaming squashy haddock on his feet—but it could have been Manfred on his own, of course.

That morning Mr. Amos had us all up on the
ballroom floor, first in the great Banqueting Hall, learning how to lay it out for a formal dinner, and after that in the Grand Saloon, where he made half of us pretend to serve coffee and drinks to the other half. It did not go well. There was change after change, sideways jerk after sideways jerk, and each change caused someone to make a mistake. There was a golden footstool that turned up in so many places that even Mr. Amos noticed. I suppose it was hard to miss after Manfred had booted it across the room six times. Mr. Amos thought it was me playing practical jokes.

“No, no, you wrong the lad,” Mr. Prendergast said, stepping up between me and Mr. Amos. “There is a ghost in this place. You need an exorcist, not a lecture. You need a divine with bell, book, and candle. As I have played the part of a bishop many times, I would be happy to stand in the role of cleric and see what I could do.”

Mr. Amos gave him an even nastier look than he had been giving me. “There has never,” he said, “been a ghost at Stallery, and there never will be.” But he gave up lecturing me.

Despite what Mr. Prendergast said, the maids told me that they thought the ghost had been busy in the bedrooms all morning, making loud thumps on the walls and rolling soap about. Mrs. Baldock had had to go and lie down. The maids were scared stiff. And they may have been right, and it
may
have been the ghost. The trouble was, it was so difficult to tell, with all the changes. The sideways jerks seemed to be happening twice as often that day.

The maids crowded around and told me all about it when I went to the kitchens at lunchtime to fetch a tray of food for Christopher. I had to push my way through them. I knew that if I didn't take the food to Christopher quickly, then Fay or Polly would tell me I was being too humble and take the tray up herself. And either she would find Christopher looking perfectly healthy, or he would not be there at all.

Mr. Maxim handed me the tray with a wonderful domed silver cover on it and whispered, “You'll never guess! Mr. Avenloch has gone missing! The garden staff don't know what to do!”

“You mean, like the dog, Champ?” I asked.

“
Just
like that,” Mr. Maxim said. “A real mystery!” He was loving it, I could see.

I rushed off to the lift with the tray before any of the actors could start acting in there. And it was just as well I took it. Christopher was not in our room. There was no sign of him anywhere in the attics. I wondered what to do for a while. Then it occurred to me that the silver dome would make Christopher ill anyway, and so would the silver cutlery Mr. Maxim had given him, so I might as well eat the lunch myself. I sat on my bed and ate it all, peacefully.