Fizzlebert Stump (12 page)

If Mrs Stinkthrottle really wanted him to clean the place you’d think she would have given him some cloths and some detergent, but all he had was a crumbly old bath sponge that he found in the medicine cabinet and a kitchen spatula that had been stuck to the windowsill.

He spent more than an hour emptying the sink and chipping away at the gunk and muck, before he had his idea.

It wasn’t much of an idea, but it was a moment of courage. The thoughts had slowly bubbled up to the surface of his mind that he had been left alone for a whole hour, that he was alone upstairs and that the bathroom wasn’t the only room. He could, if he was really careful, sneak around a bit. Have a snoop. Have a nose about to see what he could find. It wasn’t a plan of escape, but it meant he was doing something and not just giving in to the mad old woman downstairs.

At home, in the caravan, when they all went to bed his dad would lock the door. It was better safe than burgled, he used to say. He kept the key in his strongman’s suit’s pocket, but in case there was a fire or other emergency in the night, Fizz knew there was a spare key tucked in a sock at the back of the sock drawer.

Fizz didn’t expect that the Stinkthrottles would keep a spare key in their sock drawer, he was sure that different people kept their spare keys in different places, but maybe he’d find
something
. Whatever happened, it was definitely much better to be doing something for himself than just scrubbing a sink for her. He felt good about it, and being active even took his mind off poor Kevin stuck in the kitchen.

He pushed all thoughts of Kevin, and of his mum and dad, who he really missed, to the back of his mind. It was like having your head in the lion’s mouth: you took a deep breath and tried not to think about what you were doing. Sometimes bravery is just getting on with things.

He crept across the landing on tiptoe and pushed open the first door he came to.

The room was really dark. He assumed the curtains were drawn. Either that or the rubbish was piled up so high that it had blocked the windows up. Or he’d been here much longer than he’d thought.

He ran his hand along the wall by his head until he found the light switch and flicked it.

Light filled the room, which, at a very quick glance, looked to be full of furniture, suitcases and accordions.

There was a burst of flustered flapping feathers and a loud squawking and a great clatter as two startled parrots banged their wings against their cages’ walls.

Fizz’s heart almost leapt out of his chest. (Which would’ve been a horrible sight if it wasn’t just a metaphor.) He quickly switched the light off and the room was plunged back into darkness. Slowly the birds subsided. Just before he pulled the door to, one of them called him a name. The sort of name I can’t repeat in a book like this (I’m far too polite, even if parrots aren’t). He was glad his mother hadn’t heard.

Fizz stood leant in the doorway, clutching his booming chest and listening really hard. He was afraid they’d heard the parrots’ noise downstairs. But the noise of the television was still rumbling up through the floorboards and the door to the hallway hadn’t opened. It seemed he’d got away with it, for now.

He decided to leave the parrots’ room to the parrots, and tiptoed along the landing to the next door.

This was obviously the Stinkthrottles’ bedroom. There was a thread of light from between the curtains which lit enough of the room for him to be pretty sure there wasn’t any wildlife lying in wait for him.

He switched on the light.

This room, he had to admit, wasn’t quite as bad as the rest of the house. It still smelt. (Of course.) It still looked worse than even
your
bedroom looks. (Naturally.) But compared to everything else he had seen recently, it was almost tidy.

Stepping into the room he knocked against a pile of plates, and for a terrible moment he thought they were going to crash to the floor. (The bedroom was directly above the front room, where the Stinkthrottles were watching telly. They were bound to hear a bang on the ceiling.) But instead of falling they just wobbled. The plate on top was glued to the one underneath with leftover supper, and that one was stuck to the one under it, and so on down, so instead of a pile of plates, it was a column, a tower of them, and it just tilted, rocked and settled back down where it was.

The bed was unmade, and the sheets looked grey and greasy and gritty and crumby. The pillows had indentations where the heads would lie, and one of them was stained the same blue as Mrs Stinkthrottle’s hair. (She slept on the right-hand side, nearest the window, in case you wanted to know.)

Fizz left the bed well alone.

There was a dressing table, with a mirror, on one side and he had a look at what was lying about on top. There was jewellery and bottles of perfume, all of them empty. There were pots of makeup and lotions, powder-puffs and tubes of ointment. Some peppermints and humbugs. A book called
Forty Beauty Secrets For The Busy Woman
. (Mrs Stinkthrottle had clearly been too busy to read it.) There was nothing here that would help him and he wasn’t learning anything new.

In frustration he began pulling out drawers and rummaging. They certainly wouldn’t notice any extra mess he made, so he didn’t have to worry (he hoped) about putting everything back the way he’d found it. That made searching easier.

The first drawer he opened was filled with old paperback books, furry boiled sweets and a stuffed eel. The next few were mainly filled with clothes that were more made of hole than cloth. All the usual rubbish, but nothing that added up to an escape plan. And then he made an amazing discovery.

The bottom drawer was full of money.

Pardon?

The whole drawer was stuffed full of bank notes.

There was no way in the world that Fizz could count it all. It was certainly more money than he’d ever seen. It looked like it had just been stuck in the drawer and forgotten about, except that on the top was a neat little book. When Fizz opened it he saw it was full of columns of numbers. At the bottom of each page was a figure, which he guessed was all the other numbers added up. As he flicked towards the back of the book the numbers at the bottom got bigger and bigger.

He realised that this must be the Stinkthrottles’ savings. They didn’t use a bank, but a bottom drawer instead.

Fizz knew about this, it was an old circus trick (and one of the reasons his dad kept the caravan locked). Because a circus is always on the move, it’s hard for performers to open bank accounts, so lots of them use their bottom drawers. Fizz knew that his mum and dad’s bottom drawer was nothing like the Stinkthrottles’. In fact, his mum and dad’s bottom drawer was so empty most of the time you could hear an echo when you dropped a 50p in.

Fizz stood and looked at the money (thousands and thousands of pounds, if the notebook was right) and wondered what to do. He could take it, or take some of it. If he filled his pockets up they’d never notice what was missing, would they? But what good would that do? And if Mrs Stinkthrottle looked in his pockets, or saw a five pound note sticking out, then she’d know and then he’d be in . . . well, not big trouble, he was in that already, but in
bigger
trouble, if such a thing were possible.

He put thoughts of the money out of his mind and got on with rummaging through the last few drawers, desperately looking for
anything
that might help him find a way out.

Suddenly he froze in the middle of searching. He thought he’d heard something.

Was that the downstairs door?

And then . . .

Was that the creak of the first step of the stairs?

It was. Wasn’t it?

There was another creak and suddenly Fizz was sure.

Someone was coming up the stairs.

He had to run for it.

His hand was still in what was quite clearly Mr Stinkthrottle’s underpants drawer. The idea of it turned Fizz’s stomach, but he’d had to look everywhere. Just as he decided to run, his hand brushed against something cold and hard, something metallic. On a reflex he grabbed it and stuffed it in his pocket, then he dashed back to the bathroom.

From the landing he could see it was Mrs Stinkthrottle returning up the stairs, but fortunately she was so bent (with her back like an upside down L, you’ll remember) that she couldn’t see up them very far at all. She didn’t seem to notice him dart back into the bathroom.

‘Johnnie? Little Johnnie,’ she croaked up the stairs. ‘Is it clean yet? Have you done a good job?’

‘I’m getting there,’ he called back, trying hard to not sound out of breath or scared. (He was both.)

‘Well, you can get out now,’ she snapped. ‘Come out of there. Just for a moment.’ (She was almost at the top of the stairs.) ‘I have to use the toilet. Go on, get out.’

Fizz stood on the landing, next to the bathroom door as the top of her blue-haired head came into view. She looked pained, impatient, urgent, angry. Her face was scrunched up as if she had waited too long before deciding to get up off the sofa. She was, in short, desperate. She peered at him through the tiny glasses at the tip of her nose and her eyes were so small and pointy and mad that he had to look away and when he did he saw . . .

He saw that he’d left the bedroom light on.

If she turned around now she’d see where he’d been. He’d be for it. In big trouble.

‘I’ve cleaned the sink, see?’ he said, hoping to distract her, but he need not have worried because she just pushed past him into the bathroom and locked herself in.

‘Stay there,’ she shouted through the door. ‘Don’t move an inch. I’ll be out in a minute. Oh yes, look. You’re a good boy, little Johnnie, you’ve made that sink gleam.’

Fizz breathed a sigh of relief and put his hands in his pockets.

There was something metal in there. What was that?

He pulled out the thing he’d snatched from Mr Stinkthrottle’s underpants drawer and saw it was an old pocket-watch on a long silver chain. (In the old days men would wear their watches in their waistcoat pocket, instead of on their wrists, and the chain would dangle from the pocket to a button hole where it would fasten, meaning they couldn’t drop their watch and no pickpocket could steal it.) On the back there was an engraving that said, in small curling letters:
For A.J.S. on his 21st birthday
. It had obviously been a present for someone, a long time ago by the look of it.

A pocket-watch.

Now why did that ring a bell with Fizz?

From inside the bathroom Mrs Stinkthrottle was making weird noises. There was banging and groaning and wheezing. There was moaning and grunting and series of sounds like balloons deflating. There was one noise like ripping Velcro. Fizz didn’t want to think about what she was doing. And I don’t want to think about it either, so I’m going to gloss over it, except to say it wasn’t going well.

Suddenly half a plan sprung into Fizz’s mind. He’d remembered what it was he’d forgotten about the pocket-watch and suddenly he had a feeling of hope. The first hopeful feeling he’d had since he’d joined the library, hours and hours ago. He had a suspicion he could get Kevin and himself out of the Stinkthrottles’ grasp, if only luck was on his side.

Leaving the old woman to her trials and tribulations in the bathroom, Fizz tiptoed down the stairs. He wasn’t afraid Mr Stinkthrottle would hear (the telly was still on, and the old man was, it had to be admitted, somewhat hard of hearing), but if his wife realised Fizz had gone, she’d be in a fury. He didn’t want to face her if he could help it.