The Rookery Boxset

by B G Denvil

  “Well, that’s simple. Everyone can do that,” Rosie said. “I can click my fingers for some little things. But nothing big.”

  “We shall see,” Peg told her.

  It was as Rosie clattered downstairs, with Peg flying above, that she thought of something and asked, “Why were you out with Mandrake yesterday? I’ve never liked Mandrake. But you seemed happy with him.”

  “Yes,” Peg sighed. “You like Montague, because he’s good looking and seems a whole lot younger than he really is. But Montague can’t even remember your name and hardly knows you exist. Mandrake, on the other hand, likes me.”

  Immediately disinterested, Rosie changed the subject. “I thought about the bats too,” she said. “They fly at night, and Whistle was murdered at night. They just could have seen someone. But I doubt I’d understand them, and probably they wouldn’t want to talk to me. But they like you too, you said, and you get on well together. So have you asked the bats if they saw anything that night?”

  “A highly sensible idea,” Peg agreed. “We shall go together tonight after supper. But had they seen anything horrible, I’m sure they’d have told me already.” She shrugged. “You never know. We’ll take some wine and biscuits, and go to the attic tonight for a bat chat.”

  Eleven

  Understanding each other after all, the bats seemed very pleased to see Rosie. Rosie was distinctly surprised and equally delighted. One small bundle of soft fur upended itself so its head actually cuddled into Rosie’s hair.

  “You smell so nice,” it told her. “Sort of familiar. Welcome to our belfry.”

  “But no bell,” muttered Rosie, not entirely sure she wanted a bat, however friendly, feeling cheerfully at home in her hair.

  Peg sat just as cheerfully on the piles of guano, looking perfectly content. It was hard to see if the bats were smiling, but a huge number flapped down onto beams closer to their visitors.

  “Whistle’s window?” answered one. “No. I never fly close in case I disturb him. Such a nice and clever man.”

  “Didn’t you know he was dead?” Rosie was surprised.

  “I did,” several called from the beams.

  And one said, “I knew, poor gennleman. And I seen summit too.”

  Eagerly leaning forwards, Rosie asked, “What? Can you describe what you saw?”

  “He were lyin’ proper dead,” answered the bat. “All smashed and squashed, he were, and I seen the door shuttin’ an’ all.”

  “So who left the room?” Now Peg was equally excited.

  “Dunno,” said the bat. “I only seen a foot goin’ out in a boot, it were. A boring brown boot.”

  Immediately Rosie and Peg started to think who wore brown boots. “One, sometimes me,” started Rosie. “Number two, Mandrake. He did last night.”

  “And me, and everyone,” Peg objected, and looked up again at the bat. “Large? Small? Insignificant? Dirty? Polished? Buckle or laces or ribbons?”

  “Oh, botheration,” said the bat, and paused to think. “Reckon they was big. Reckon they was an itchy bit grubby. No polish. Laces, it were. Just a dirty old brown cord tyin’ up a brown boot.”

  “Now that,” grinned Peg, “is extremely useful.”

  As gently as possible, Rosie dislodged the bat’s little head from her hair. “I’m sure I shall see you again,” she said. “I’m Rosie.”

  “Oooo, I knows,” whispered the bat into her ear. “And you smells proper sweet. I’s Milly, and I reckons I shall see you again.”

  For the entire remainder of the evening, without realising there were large patches of guano stuck to the backs of their gowns, Rosie and Peg tottered around The Rookery staring at everyone’s feet.

  This did not go unnoticed.

  It was eventually Montague who said loudly, “Mistress Tipple, you seem remarkably interested in my shoes. Yes, they are pointed, and emerald green leather with an extremely attractive copper buckle. Is this of the slightest importance to you?”

  Looking up, Peg said, “Do you have any brown boots, perhaps?”

  “You wish to borrow my boots, madam?” He pointed to her feet. “Yes, I have very smart brown boots tied in a handsome red ribbon. But I must point out that your feet are considerably smaller than mine. You would fall top over tail.”

  She shook her head. “Just wondering. Taste and fashion, you know.”

  Montague gazed back. “Since I disbelieve you, madam,” he said with considerable hauteur, “I suggest we all convene in the meeting hall tomorrow morning immediately after breakfast. Get that old turnip Alice too, and her silly little daughter. But I doubt the maid or the gardener would be of any use. And you can proceed to carry out your own interrogation, using fire tongs and red-hot pokers, if you wish, to discover our footwear and work out who you think killed Master Hobb.”

  Rosie blushed, and Peg smiled. “Excellent. I do believe the time has come. It’s precisely what I planned myself. So ring the kitchen bell, and tell everyone the moment of disclosure will come in the morning.”

  Now late April, the sunshine was strong and enjoyed peeping into every window each morning. Breakfast had been served and eaten, and they had gathered in the main hall.

  It was quite a squash. Even without Rosie’s father, Alfred, the maid, Kate, and the gardener, there were thirteen witches and ten wizards. Montague suggested they sit in order of merit, according to their magical power, but others shouted him down.

  “Just because you think you’re special at seventy-one.”

  “Whereas I’M a seventy-eight,” said Mandrake with a large smile.

  “Sit wherever you wish,” Peg shouted at them. “And let’s get on with this before midday dinner.”

  “If I am kept here,” Alice sniffed, “dinner will be late.”

  “Then we could all go down to the Juggler and Goat,” beamed Rosie, but no one took any notice.

  Montague and Mandrake pulled up their stools but sat on opposite sides of the room. Alice did not sit next to her daughter and glared at Peg. Emmeline, a stout seventy-two, sat next to Rosie and gazed placidly while sucking her chocolate, which wouldn’t be discovered until many, many years later, and Emmeline’s was nicer anyway. Next to her sat Butterfield Short, a full seventy-nine. Leaving a polite space between, Pixie West sat, almost equal at seventy-six. Taking the vacancy between them, Bertie Cackle, an eighty-two in grubby brown boots, sat himself down and stretched out his legs. Apart from Peg, he was now the most powerful wizard there.

  Gradually, each wizard and each witch took their places, staring with interest at each other. It was extremely rare that all The Rookery inhabitants agreed to meet together.

  “It’s not just astrology,” announced Ermengarde Spank, a tidy sixty-four. “One of our most interesting and powerful neighbours has been murdered in shocking circumstances. We should have discovered the perpetrator before now.”

  “I quite like astrology,” muttered Gorgeous Leek, who was only a nineteen and so never wanted to be noticed.

  “I,” said Montague, “have no interest in the matter. Whistle Hobb was a fool who played with spoons and candle sticks, and wrote books that William Caxton refused to print.”

  Lemony Limehouse often behaved with surprising levity, but everyone knew beneath the giggles, she was a respectable sixty-six. “I do believe,’ she said, “we were all in our beds at that time. No one heard anything, and no one saw anything. Except the killer, of course. So how do we find out?”

  “What about asking the bats?”

  “Done.”

  “What about the crows?”

  “Done.”

  “What about the owls?

  Rosie looked up. “I haven’t spoken to Rocky. I did with Cabbage, but I forgot Rocky. Of all those who could have seen what went on at night, Rocky might be the most appropriate.”

  “Then stop bothering the rest of us,” said Montague.

  Rosie went off him in an instant. “But we ought to continue talking here and now,” she said. “There’s a lot
to learn. For instance, did anyone hear footsteps?”

  Montague sighed. “As a fifty you may have to walk,” he said. “But most of us more talented wiccans choose to fly.”

  Rosie snapped her mouth shut and left the rest to Peg.

  Boris, short stocky and a somewhat tough little twenty-four, sat back behind most of the others and muttered, “Humbug. Pissywallop. Pendigo-parcels. Squirrel breath and toppsy-turvey- pickled rodents and hedgehogs swimming swamps.”

  “There are certain facts which I see as obvious,” Peg said, ignoring Boris. “As such a powerful wizard, Whistle can only have been killed by someone over a seventy. For that sort of physical strength as well as magical power, it has to have been a male. He may have entered by the window, but he left by the door, so he walked some of the way.” Here she scowled at Montague. “He wore brown boots on large feet. And he didn’t like Whistle.”

  “That means almost everyone,” Alice interrupted, standing with an impatient sniff. “And since it excludes me, I’m going to the kitchen to start dinner, and Rosie can come and help.”

  But Peg shook her head. “Rosie has been investigating this situation from the start. She needs to stay here.”

  Alice flounced off alone, and Rosie looked around as more than half The Rookery occupants were pushing over their stools, ready to leave. “But,” she called, “someone could have seen something, even if they didn’t do it themselves.”

  It was Percy Rotten who marched to Peg, raising his voice. “OK. I’m a sixty-nine, not strong, but enough when something matters. I could have killed the wretched man, since I never liked him. I’m strong in both ways, and I own a great pair of brown boots which I never bother to polish. My feet are definitely large. So it could have been me. But it wasn’t. Why would I bother? There’s lots of people here I don’t like, including you, Madam Tipple. But I’m not going to trot around killing anyone who annoys me. And how could you prove it anyway, even if I did?”

  “Besides,” said Mandrake, “if any of us disliked someone enough to bounce them off in such a manner, why wait until now? If I’d wanted to, I’d have done something years back.”

  “Squeezy – wheezy. Spooky – slosh. What a dipsy waste of time,” muttered Boris. “Teezle-weezle and pintified bricks.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with Boris,” said Mandrake, leaning back with a yawn.

  Rosie was disappointed, but smiled at Peg and wandered out to join her mother. “It’s obvious we’re getting nowhere. I suppose I’d better go and help my miserable mother.”

  It was on her way to the kitchen that she bumped into Uta Hampton, the impressive eighty-one who rarely spoke to anyone. “I was wondering,” she said softly, “whether Whistle was working on anything new lately.” Smiling, she pulled Rosie into a shadowed corner. “It’s probably finding the motive that is so interesting, you know,” she said. “The why, and the why now? All sorts of us might have had the occasional conversation, you know, giving some faint disclosure of what he was doing. Only motive will unmask our villain.”

  Rosie supposed this was true. “And you were friendly with him,” she smiled back. “Have you any idea?”

  “Unfortunately not,” she murmured. “He disliked discussing his work, as most of us do. But it’s possible he was discovering some facts that disproved someone else’s work, made another of us look foolish, or simply proved their work false. Mandrake or Montague, for instance, since they both fancy themselves magical geniuses. I’d believe both of them capable of killing someone who threatened to make them look like the idiots they are.”

  “So both capable of bashing an old man’s head in.” Rosie gulped. “Just to keep him quiet.”

  “True.” Uta nodded. “But I confess, I’m less interested in finding the guilty one. After all, we must die eventually, every one of us. Sometimes such long lives prove most tedious. Whistle had led a remarkably interesting two hundred years. Perhaps that’s enough.”

  Rosie, however, knew nothing of any wizard’s present work, since her only job usually involved sweeping, dusting and scrubbing. She thanked Uta and plodded to the kitchen. She had insisted on leaving the one secret paper she had found in Whistle’s room with Peg and hoped that might bring up new ideas. Peg, for all her muddles, was an expert at the wiccan runes. But since the room had originally held at least a thousand papers of all kinds, the discovery of one was unlikely to prove significant. The other nine hundred and ninety-nine had evidently been destroyed.

  Watching her mother boiling a watery gravy in the cauldron over the fire, and since it was still hot outside, Rosie spoke from the doorway. “You don’t really need me, do you, Mamma?”

  Alice snorted. “Why should I ever actually need you, girl?” She returned to the stirring. “Once this is hot enough, I shall turn it into mutton and peas. “I might add a little chutney on the side. And parsnip jelly for pudding.”

  “Must it be parsnip jelly? What about blackberry jelly?”

  Alice didn’t bother turning around. “I shall make whatever I wish, rude brat. You can go and play.”

  “I was just wondering,” wondered Rosie, “how you can turn hot water into proper dinner. You’re a fifty like me. I can’t do things like that, and I can’t even fly. Couldn’t you have taught me a thing or two?”

  Her mother snorted back over her shoulder. “I’ve taught you a thing and ten,” she said without turning. “Obedience, cleaning up, keeping out of my way. That’s enough for me.”

  Biting her lip and refusing to get annoyed, Rosie asked, “Whistle’s papers? There were so many, and they might have held clues. But Kate says you had them all torn up and set on fire.”

  “Naturally,” Alice bothered to answer. “I could hardly leave a mess like that for our new lodger. And I might add she’s arriving tomorrow. She’ll pay a high rent, since she wants both rooms, and I shall greet her myself when she flies in.”

  “Do you know her number?” Not that it mattered.

  “Oh yes indeed,” replied Alice. “She’s a nice warm ninety-three.”

  Rosie gasped. “Ninety-three? That’s nearly the whole hundred. Have you met her yet? Is she nice? Do you know her name?”

  “Twenty-five questions as always,” sighed her mother. “Yes, yes, yes, and yes. There’s just one no, since I haven’t met her yet. But she’s flying down from the north. I believe she’s been living in a cave in the Scottish mountains. An odd choice, but I suppose as a ninety-three she can keep herself warm wherever she is.”

  “And she’s arriving tomorrow?” Rosie was quite excited at such a powerful new-comer. Even Whistle had only been a ninety-one.

  Twelve

  Sitting at her own little table which she used as a desk, Peg stretched out Whistle’s last surviving piece of parchment, which Rosie had left with her, and attempted to decipher the codes and scattered runes. This was no beautiful illuminated manuscript, and no gorgeous pictures nor decorated letters adorned it. There simply seemed to be a mess of scribble. Yet Peg was magical enough herself to know that this was surely a disguise, and a disguise was only ever used to hide something important.

  “Emphatic,” she read out, using her fingers constantly just in case something turned out to be a spell. “Sing at the sun. Spoon up the negatives and pour the positives into the cup.” Mentions of spoons and cups interested her since both those items had been spoken of as relevant. Rosie kept the spoon safe in her room, but no one had yet discovered the cup. “But that greedy old baggage won’t have chucked it,” Peg muttered, “since it was silver.” She read on. “One, two – three – four – humph,” she said. “Sounds like Rosie.”

  Yet half the signs were unreadable even to her, and she leaned back, gazed from the window and sank into dreams.

  Rosie rushed in, wishing Peg a good morning. and skipped to her side. “Edna Edith Ethel Enid Elsie Oppolox is our new resident,” she said, “she’s coming today, and she’s a ninety-three.”

  Peg refused to appear impressed. “Then I hope she doe
sn’t show it off,” she said. “In the meantime, I’m trying to understand this wretched parchment of Whistle’s.”

  “Perhaps Edna will be able to,” Rosie suggested.

  “You mean perhaps we should give it to Edna whatever her name is when she arrives?”

  “I just meant, if you were tired of it—”

  “Certainly not,” grunted Peg. “As soon as the poor woman arrives, you think we should tell her she’s taken over the rooms of someone recently murdered, and would you please read this parchment before hanging your cloak up?”

  “Alright,” Rosie nodded, accustomed to being told off. “Besides, it’s quite easy, isn’t it? I expect you read it ages ago. I mean, the spoon and the cup. And that’s the same number of spots as the toadstool,” she said, pointing to where the dots were. “Here’s the wind whistling down the chimney, so he means himself. This could be a Rosie rose, but I’m quite sure he isn’t writing about me. And that’s multiplication, with a hand, and an umbrella. In the end, there’s a sliver of papers like glass shards, glass being transparent, so papers easy to read. And I think it means go and stand in the rain with the cup, the spoon and the toadstool, and demand the return of anything you’ve lost or been destroyed.”

  Peg stared at her young friend in absolute amazement. “How on earth did you manage that?”

  “I may be a fifty, but I’m not an idiot,” sniffed Rosie.

  Having worked on that parchment for two days without being able to read it, Peg was somewhat shocked. “True,” she said in a mumbled undertone. “Well done, dear. Then this could be exactly what we need to do. Wait for the rain, and we can demand the return of all those papers your mother destroyed. And it will take us weeks, but we can study every one of them and find the clue to the murderer.”

  “I’m looking forward to meeting this new witch,” Rosie said. “She’s been living in a cave. But a ninety-three? Gosh. That’s special.”

  “Not much more than an eighty-six.”

  Rosie got the point. “Almost the same,” she agreed. “But a new look from an outsider – you know – can be useful.”