The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy (6 page)

‘
I
wanted to do that,’ complained Amy. ‘Bother! Now I’ll just have to sit crossed-legged on the floor looking up at her with a spellbound expression.’

‘Okay,’ chipped in Ricky, ‘then I’m going to stand leaning nonchalantly against the wardrobe with my arms folded, and let my facial expression and the widening of my eyes do all the spellbinding.’

Then Daniel changed his mind about lying on the bed, preferring to stand with his back to the old hag and to turn suddenly every time she said something enthralling, so Betty lay there instead, which suited Ricky as he could see down her top from where he stood.

Meanwhile, Whatshisname had quietly adopted a languid pose under the table in the corner of the room, where he could sniff and lick his vacant area, which was as enthralling as any activity known to dog.

‘Right,’ said the old hag, her old hag’s eyes scanning her eager audience. ‘I’ll tell you all I know.’

They sat, stood or lay enthralled.

‘He’s been kidnapped!’ the old hag exclaimed.

The children looked at her, then at each other, then back at the old hag.

‘And?’ prompted Betty.

‘And what?’ said the old hag.

‘And what else?’ said Betty.

‘That’s all I know,’ the old hag said. ‘Must go. Byeee.’

And with that, she hurried out of the room and down the corridor. Betty jumped up from the bed and went after her.

‘Hey!’ Betty called. ‘You . . . you old hag! Come back! What about our Uncle Quagmire’s secret mission?’

The others suddenly appeared at Betty’s side.

‘Yes, you old hag person, tell us something enthralling!’ called Daniel. ‘Or else you’re out of the Secret . . . Palpable . . . Five? Six? Seven?’

‘Woof woof woof,’ said Whatshisname in his backup role.

The old hag stopped and turned. Then she realised that she’d turned too far so she turned back, just a little, before speaking. ‘I know nothing!’ she said. ‘NOTHING!’

‘She’s at it AGAIN!’ muttered Betty.

The old hag turned back quite carefully so that she was facing exactly the right way, and scurried off.

‘Let’s wait a minute, she’ll be back,’ said Amy.

They all stood and waited for a minute, then for another minute. Whatshisname sat and looked up at them, wondering. To be honest,
a minute
did not make any sense to Whatshisname. After all, his time system did not correlate to the human concept of time, where one second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of a caesium-133 atom, an atom he thought was particularly overrated. Instead, Whatshisname’s time system was directly correlated to how long it takes to retrieve an average stick thrown by an average human arm in an average park on an average day, from
the
Fetch
moment to the
Good Boy
moment. Using this measure, having a wee takes one and a half sticks, eating a pork chop takes eight sticks, and a successful afternoon nap would take at least seven hundred and thirty five sticks.

They had all waited for about ten sticks when they realised that the old hag was not going to come back.

‘She’s not coming back,’ observed Amy. ‘Can we all go home now?’

Whatshisname whined in agreement. Surely this adventure was doomed. After all, they had now contaminated the scene of crime, they had failed to draw a chalk figure of a man on the floor, his own fleas were now mixed in with the fleas of the perpetrator – this was a disaster. He knew that they had to create a Secret Five CSI department. But it was too late now. End the adventure!

‘No, we can’t go home,’ said Betty. ‘The adventure is only just beginning!’

Whatshisname sighed.

They were standing around, wondering what would happen next, when they were startled to hear a man’s posh voice coming from behind them!

‘So, children, I am
indeed
what happens next, and I hear that you want to know about your Uncle Quagmire,’ the man’s posh voice said.

They swung around, and there at the end of the voice stood a medium-sized man with a head of thick hair, but he was quite bald.

‘I know all about your Uncle Quagmire’s mission,’ he said poshly, tucking the head under his arm for later. ‘It’s amazing what people talk about in their sleep. So, I will gladly tell you everything I know, but only if you let me join your critically-acclaimed Secret Five. That’s always been my ambition, second only to the gender realignment by keyhole surgery.’

‘Join The Secret Five? Never!’ said Amy.

‘Never!’ said Daniel, but it didn’t sound very original.

‘Woof woof woof,’ said Whatshisname, quite originally.

‘Oh all right,’ said Betty. ‘If it’s in the interests of our adventure. But I think that it should be without any of the privileges.’

The medium-sized man pondered for a while, pensively scratching the chin of the head under his arm. ‘Hmmm,’ he hmmmed poshly. ‘I was rather looking forward to the Girls Aloud experience, but if that’s what it takes, then so be it.’

‘Girls Aloud?’ moaned Ricky. ‘Did he say
Girls Aloud
? But . . .’

‘You missed that meeting as well,’ said Betty. ‘You really must attend more meetings, Ricky.’

Ricky looked quite glum as the others agreed that the posh medium-sized man could join without privileges.

‘Goody goody,’ the man said. ‘Then gather round me and I’ll tell you all about your Uncle Quagmire.’ He made quite an effective gather-round motion with his hand.

‘Erm, excuse me for asking, sir, but do we need to look enthralled?’ enquired Daniel.

‘Oh, no no no,’ the man said, wasting two potentially useful nos in the process. ‘I’m not into all this enthrallment business. But, if you don’t mind, before I tell you all this important stuff, we’ll have a little break. Is that okay?’

In which they learn really really useful stuff; they encounter a little old lady in a tea shop; the kangaroo hides in the bushes and thinks, quite foolishly, that we can’t see him; we learn the truth, at long last, about how dinosaurs became extinct.

They nodded their heads in agreement (a little too late, it must be said) and then gathered around the man, trying their best not to look too enthralled.

‘Well, your dear Uncle Quagmire, as you well know, used to be a government spy . . .’ the medium-sized man said.

‘I didn’t know that!’ interrupted Betty. ‘Did you, Daniel?’

‘No,’ said Daniel. ‘Did you, Amy and Ricky? After all, you are the fruit of his loins, his off-springs . . . apparently.’

Amy and Ricky exchanged a look. ‘No,’ said Amy. ‘We didn’t know he was a government spy! My! Why, all he told us was that he did top secret things for the government, and he used to explain in fine detail how he went undercover in foreign countries and worked top-secretly, using listening devices and extremely cunning disguises, but we never knew he was a spy. Did we, Ricky?’

Ricky nodded his head up and down then realised that he should have shaken it, so he hurriedly shook his head from one side to the other side.

‘Yeeesss . . . anyway, enough,’ said the posh man, his posh forehead wrinkling all over, as did the forehead of the head under his arm. ‘I’ve got this head to deliver, I’m late and in a bit of a hurry, so please don’t interr . . .’

‘We won’t,’ Betty interrupted. ‘But shouldn’t this be an official meeting of the Secret . . . Palpable . . . Five? Six? Seven? Eight?’

‘I say, this is so jolly exciting! My first meeting!’ exclaimed the posh man poshly, almost dropping his under-arm head in the excitement of the moment. ‘I’ve always wanted to be in middle management and have meetings every hour of the day! Can I say things like
Let’s have some blue sky thinking, team?
Or maybe
Come on, we should all be snorkelling in the same think tank
? Hmmm? Can I?’

The children frowned in unison and ignored his extremely silly request. They chatted about whether an official meeting was absolutely necessary. They came to the conclusion that, under the circumstances, it could be an extraordinary meeting where the password would not be needed, which was a good job because everyone except Betty and Whatshisname were desperately trying to remember it.

‘Okay,’ okayed the posh man, ‘let me just pop this head on the top of the Ovaltine machine, and I’ll tell you all about your Uncle Quagmire.’

They stayed gathered around him as he went over to the Ovaltine machine and popped the head on top. Then they listened quite intently as he began to talk to them through his posh mouth.

‘Your Uncle Quagmire used to be a spy . . .’ he began.

‘But we didn’t know that,’ said Amy.

‘Yes, I
know
you didn’t know, but you know now, okay?’ said the man, rather irritably. ‘Now, listen, as I was saying, he used to be a spy but, as you know, he recently became an inventor . . .’

‘Gosh, we didn’t know that either!’ said Amy, and it was quite possible that Ricky agreed with her because he said, ‘I agree with Amy.’

‘We knew that he made things in his big shed in the garden,’ Amy continued. ‘Like new designs, new products, that sort of thing, but we didn’t know he was an inventor. Did we, Ricky?’

Ricky agreed with Amy again but, for some reason that escaped the children, the man was getting even more irritable. ‘Look, kids, listen! He was an inventor!’ he shouted. They noticed
that he was becoming quite red in the face. He closed his posh eyes and took a posh deep breath before continuing. ‘And the government had heard about his latest invention and wanted to use it, and he didn’t want them to, so he was forced into hiding right here in Greentiles.’

‘Wow!’ said Daniel in unrestrained astonishment, but slightly worried that enthrallment might be creeping up on them all, which might severely irritate the irritable posh medium-sized man even more.

The man continued talking. ‘It all started when there was a threat to the world, and our government learnt that, if this threat happened, then the world was at risk from it happening, so your Uncle Quagmire has been kidnapped to help prevent it happening. . . erm, can I ask . . . your expressions? Are you all following this?’

To be honest, out of the five, only Whatshisname appeared to be following it, giving a knowing nod of his head in the direction of the man every now and again. The others, far from looking enthralled, were looking positively mystified.

‘So,’ said Betty, sounding quite important for a girl of her weight/height ratio, ‘as I understand it, he’s been kidnapped for a reason that is beyond our current comprehension and that of most people.’

‘Woof woof woof?’ said Whatshisname, glaring hard at Betty.

‘That’s about the size of it, give or take an inch,’ said the man. ‘I’m so glad you all understand. Now, where’s my head? I must take my leave – or is it take
your
leave, I never know.’

The medium-sized posh man reached up and retrieved the head from the top of the Ovaltine machine. He tucked it under his arm.

‘Oh, one more thing,’ he said, ‘if only to justify my presence in your pathetic little story. Can I say that if you want a really good adventure, and want to know where he was taken to, he’s most likely being held captive in a big castle up on Lower Downs. There’s something up, something very peculiar indeed, going down
up there on Lower Downs, that’s for sure. But it’s up to you – or is it down to you.’

‘We certainly wouldn’t say no to a really good adventure,’ said Daniel. ‘But how far is it to get up to this Lower Downs from here?’

The man and his under-arm head looked quite pensive again. ‘It’s quite complicated. It depends.’

‘Depends on what?’ asked Daniel. He instantly regretted his question.

‘It depends very much on how you travel,’ the posh medium-sized man replied thoughtfully. ‘Walking? Well, that would make it a very long way, especially if you stop on the way for a small glass of reduced-sugar lemonade and a honey-glazed ham and organic chive sandwich. Yet if you went by horse and trap, for instance, it would still take you a long time, but not so long as walking, unless it was a very slow old horse, of course, in which case it would certainly be faster to walk alongside and feed it the occasional motivating carrot. But, as an option – and this is where it gets a bit exciting – if you had a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti V12, preferably a red one, then you’d be there in no time, unless you had to stop for petrol, and maybe a tall mug of cappuccino and a roasted vegetable sandwich with pine nuts. It’s all so complicated you see. Nothing in this life is straightforward, don’t you agree? Anyway, I can’t stop here listening to you chatting away all day. I have to go and return this head to its rightful owner.’

And with that, the medium-sized posh man hurried away down the corridor and out of sight. The children all knew that there was a question they should have asked the man, but none of them could think of it.

‘Right,’ said Betty, turning to the others. ‘We need to get this adventure on the road –
any
road – and we need to get ourselves up to Lower Downs. Do you have any really helpful ideas?’

‘Well, I’m hungry, so let’s go and find a tea shop,’ suggested Ricky, really unhelpfully.

Betty glared at him. ‘Has anyone
other
than Ricky got any ideas?’ she asked.

‘Do we still have the world atlas?’ asked Amy. ‘Where is it?’

‘I’ve got it,’ said Daniel. ‘I kept it down my trousers.’

Whatshisname sighed and recalled the Shakespearean lines:
Vigilance! For it is the trousers most foul that oft harbour rank-infested detachments.
‘Woof woof woof!’ he warned.

Daniel reached down the front of his trousers and pulled out the world atlas, which he offered to Betty. She took it quite gingerly, inspected it, then told them it was safe to gather round. They scoured the pages for Lower Downs.

‘It’s no good,’ Daniel said after a while. ‘I’m no good at scouring. Never have been. We need to ask someone the way, urgently. Uncle Quagmire might be in mortal danger of death, and in desperate need of our immediate highly-trained assistance. Maybe Ricky’s idea is the best one. The helpful owner of a local teashop would know where this Lower Downs is.’