Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Vampire Menace

by Olga Wojtas

  Cart Woman put her hands on her hips. I thought she was about to object to my suggestion that there should be education in a school: but it was quite the opposite. “Teaching them? Thank goodness someone is. The teaching has gone to hell in a handcart with this new schoolmaster. Our mayor’s a good man, but he’s done some crazy things recently.”

  “What’s it got to do with the mayor?” I asked. “Education is the responsibility of national government.”

  “This is Sans-Soleil, madame. We don’t hold with national government. The mayor appoints the schoolmaster. And the judge. And the police officer. And a pretty mess he’s made of it.” She paused. “Did he appoint you?”

  I didn’t like the implication. “The mayor had nothing to do with my teaching. It was a private arrangement between myself and the schoolmaster.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What exactly were you teaching them?”

  I thought back. “Literacy, numeracy, history, geography, communication skills, urban design, fine art.”

  Her expression changed to somewhere between disbelief and awe. “You know about all these things?”

  “I do,” I said. “I have had the finest education in the world.”

  “Ah, education!” She clasped her hands to her chest as she sighed; then, spreading her hands wide, she said, “Look at me, madame, I’m not an educated woman, although I do like my books. That’s why all I can do is pull a cart. Education, that’s the way forward for my girl.”

  This was casting a different light on things. “You said you were looking for your daughter because she had work to do. What sort of work?”

  “Homework, of course.”

  “Housework?”

  “Studying! It’s hopeless now because all she’s doing are these stupid practical lessons. But I make her go over the lessons she did with the previous teacher so that she doesn’t forget.”

  I mused on the advice not to judge a book by its cover, axiomatic in librarianship, but which I felt I had been guilty of in relation to Cart Woman.

  “You said you liked your books? What sort of books?”

  Shrug. “Just the usual. Balzac. Dumas. Zola. Stendhal.”

  “That sounds like an expensive hobby.”

  “I haven’t got money to waste buying books. No, I get them out of the library.”

  For a moment, I couldn’t respond. I had seen no sign of a library as I’d walked round Sans-Soleil, and that in itself worried me – I can usually sense libraries before I see them. But this was the solution to all of my problems. Where there is a library, there is a librarian. And if ever you want to know something, a librarian is the person to ask.

  I swallowed hard. “Where’s the library?”

  She pointed over my left shoulder. “Miles away. Not the next village but the one after that. Well beyond the pick-up point. I don’t think anybody else in Sans-Soleil has ever been that far.”

  Cart Woman could take me in her cart. “What’s the librarian like?” I asked, trying to control the excitement in my voice.

  “There’s a library with books, and that’s not enough for you? You want a librarian as well?”

  A library without a librarian – it was inconceivable.

  “How do you take books out?” I demanded. True, the City of Edinburgh libraries now had self-service machines, but they definitely hadn’t had them in 1900.

  “There’s a woman with a mop,” she said. “I tell her what I’m borrowing. She can’t read, but she’s quite good at remembering. I go with the cart once a week. I don’t take out so many books now, of course. I used to get them for my husband as well. He was a great reader. An educated man.”

  I had forgotten that she too was a widow. “I was very sorry to hear about your loss,” I said.

  Another shrug. “Oh well, I just have to get on with things.” She seemed remarkably phlegmatic.

  “You do believe he’s dead?” I said. “I know Madeleine doesn’t believe her husband’s dead.”

  A third shrug. “Madeleine’s not from here. She’s full of silly notions about love and romance. If that’s how people think in Sans-Saucisse, I’m glad I live in Sans-Soleil where we just get on with things. But who knows what to believe any more?”

  This was interesting. “You mean you don’t believe your husband was torn to death by wild animals?”

  She folded her brawny arms. “All I’m saying is that I’ve never known anyone to be torn to death by wild animals, apart from those four ages ago, and they were years apart. Now suddenly everyone’s being torn to death by wild animals, and the forest is out of bounds. Unless you’re ‘authorised personnel’.” She put the phrase in derisive quotation marks. “Though how a wild animal would know the difference between an authorised personnel and an ordinary villager is beyond me. Hell in a handcart, that’s where this place is going to. Meanwhile, I just get on with things.”

  I was impressed by her stoicism. “It can’t be easy when you’re not getting as much work as before. I suppose you still have to keep feeding your horse, or pony.”

  Her brow creased in a frown.

  “Or donkey.”

  “A horse or pony or donkey?” she repeated incredulously.

  “Or … cow?” I ventured.

  “You don’t come from here either,” she declared. “The people in your village must have more money than sense.”

  I was going to explain that the Scots were noted for their thriftiness, but she was still speaking.

  “Why would I waste money feeding an animal to pull the cart when I’ve got two strong arms and two strong legs?”

  “You pull the cart yourself? Like a rickshaw?” No wonder she had brawny arms. And her glutes must put mine to shame.

  “Of course. I just have to get on with things.”

  She made it sound as if she had no choice, but there was one question I had to ask.

  “Why do you take the cart to the library? Wouldn’t it be easier to walk?”

  She gave me a scornful look. “But then I’d have to carry the books back. This way, I can just throw them in the back of the cart.”

  “Of course,” I said. “And any luck with the coffins?”

  “None. It’s always just getting sorted out and then nothing happens. Hell in a handcart, I’m telling you.”

  She strode off, leaving me with nothing to do but go back to Madeleine’s. I entered the house cautiously, as appropriate when encountering a suspected cold-blooded killer. I felt quite full after eating all of the baguette remnants, allowing me to refuse any food and drink she offered, just in case she decided to poison me. I would also be sure never to turn my back on her.

  She was sitting in the kitchen with her head in her hands and she looked as though she was crying. I would normally treat an individual in that situation with sensitivity and sympathy. But it could just be a ploy to get me to go closer to her, and then she would shove a hunting knife between my ribs or toxic mushrooms in my mouth.

  “Hello,” I said, staying in the doorway.

  She gasped and turned away, rubbing her face with her apron. Clever. She was pretending she didn’t hear me come in.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” she snapped. “I’ve got no food prepared. I had no idea whether you were coming back or not.”

  “It’s OK, I ate earlier,” I said.

  She faced me, her eyes red and puffy, her cleavage as defined as ever. “And I told you before, you don’t get a rebate for not staying the night.”

  I was incensed to read the subtext: “dirty stop-out”. Even more clever. She was trying to needle me, so that I would lose focus and concentration. I did a bit of abdominal breathing before saying calmly, “I believe we agreed that what each of us got up to at night was none of the other’s business. I didn’t expect a rebate when you kindly facilitated my imprisonment and I don’t expect a rebate for last night either. I’m going to my room now, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I sat on the bed, gazing out at the dark, dense forest, trying to mar
shal my thoughts. But it was impossible. Madeleine had decamped to the parlour and was playing the first of Satie’s three Gnossiennes in the most poignant, heartbreaking way. All I could do was listen. She really was gifted. I would have paid good money to go and hear her in the Usher Hall. Then she moved on to the second one. And after that, the third.

  By the time she stopped, night had fallen. I was about to go downstairs to offer my sincere congratulations when I remembered she was more than likely a cold-blooded killer. I had almost fallen into her trap. She was trying to hypnotise me with music, just as Kaa hypnotised Mowgli in The Jungle Book cartoon.

  I stayed in my room, avoiding lighting the candle in case the light seeped under the door: she had to think I was already asleep. I stood behind the door with the chair in my hand, ready to hit her over the head with it if she burst in to kill me. But when she came upstairs, she went straight into her own room, and after a while, all that could be heard was gentle snoring.

  I couldn’t risk her suddenly waking up and bumping into me on the stairs, especially when she might try to push me down them. I took the top and bottom sheet off the bed and knotted them together before tying them to the chair, which I wedged under the windowsill. The window was quite small, and it was tricky getting through. Had there been any butter, I would have considered greasing myself, but there wasn’t, so I just struggled and eventually managed to shin down the sheets to the ground and slip over the wall without being detected.

  I made my way through the village with the help of glints of candlelight through the chalets’ wooden shutters, and once I was safely out of the villagers’ sight and near the forest, I switched on my head torch. It was all a bit eerie, the soughing of the wind through the branches, the branches themselves casting weird dancing shadows, the crack of twigs. But the thing that was bothering me was the wild boar.

  In principle, I’m very pro wild boar. They live in a matriarchal society. What they lack in looks, they make up for in personality. But those tusks are pretty dangerous. And if a boar decides to gore you, it just keeps goring until it’s quite sure you’re not going to give it any more trouble. I didn’t know how easy it would be to convince a boar that I too was a good feminist, so as I went into the forest, I made sure I kept very close to trees that I could shin up at a moment’s notice.

  The torch lit my path, illuminating not only the trees but also mosses, ferns and shrubs, picturesquely dotted with small red flowers. Pretty though they were, I follow the countryside code – respect, protect, enjoy – so I certainly wasn’t going to pick a plant that might be endangered. In any case, I wasn’t here to admire vegetation, so I continued my journey to the interior.

  I could hear something creeping through the forest in my direction, so I switched off the head torch. Whatever it was didn’t sound like a wild boar – they have hooves, and this thing sounded as though it had paws. And as it got closer, I could see two red, gleaming eyes in the darkness. For safety, I tried to clamber up the nearest pine tree, but since I didn’t have climbing spurs or a winch pulley, and the pine trunk didn’t have branches, I quickly found myself slithering back down again.

  The red eyes had a satanic glow. I put the head torch back on in the hope of scaring away whatever the creature was. And I found myself confronted by a massive shaggy-haired wolf, chief predator of the wild boar. If it could make quick work of an animal that was thirteen stone and had tusks, I didn’t give much for my chances if I had only a head torch.

  The great grey wolf blinked when the light came on and stood there, panting slightly, its jaws stained with blood, its scarlet-spotted tongue lolling out of its mouth. It almost seemed to be smiling, and I couldn’t help thinking what big bloody teeth it had.

  And then I mused, what is a wolf but a big dog? I’m very good at training dogs. I once trained a ghastly little lapdog in less than a minute. It’s all about dominance and showing you’re the alpha animal.

  Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way was one of my favourite television programmes in the 1980s. Putting out my hand, palm aloft, I brought it sharply up to my shoulder while saying “Sit!”

  The wolf sat. It was obviously nothing to do with the language, since this was a French wolf and I was speaking English: it was everything to do with the right signal and the right tone. Channelling my inner Barbara Woodhouse, I held out my arm and lowered it quickly as I said, “Down!”

  The wolf lay down. It gave itself a quick lick round the jaws, removing all of the blood, and I could see now that it didn’t look remotely ferocious. It was watching me with an alert but compliant expression, which proved the efficacy of the Woodhouse Way.

  “Good wolf!” I said, and its tail thumped on the ground, displacing moss and lichen. If I went further into the forest, I might meet the rest of the pack. That could mean more than twenty wolves, and I wasn’t sure how many I could train simultaneously. There was also the risk of meeting the wild boar. I had found nothing significant in the forest, no clues to anything, let alone anything untoward, so the wisest thing was to go back to the village. But I wasn’t entirely sure which way I had come.

  The wolf was watching me. It really looked remarkably intelligent and I found myself saying, “I don’t suppose you know how to get back to Sans-Soleil?”

  I knew how absurd it was even as I said it. I almost laughed when the wolf scrambled to its feet and set off, for all the life as though it had understood me. But this was far from a humorous situation. Miss Blaine had failed to provide me with a compass, so all I could do was wait for what passed as dawn to work out where east was, and orienteer accordingly.

  There was a tug on my skirt. The wolf had returned and had sunk its teeth into my clothing. I knew it wasn’t being aggressive, it was simply trying to initiate play, but this was still totally unacceptable. I used the training method of turning away to show the wolf that it had to modify its behaviour if it wanted to get my attention.

  The tug on my skirt intensified. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I maintained my aloofness and then, success. The wolf let go. I turned to see it bound away. And stop. It looked at me expectantly before returning and sinking its teeth into my sleeve.

  “Naughty wolf!” I said severely, and it loosened its grip, looking abashed. It ran forward, ran back to me, ran forward, ran back to me until I finally understood what it wanted. To be taken for a walk.

  “Walkies!” I said, stepping forward. The wolf came to heel and must have had a favourite route since it periodically nudged me in a particular direction.

  Serendipitously, the trees began to thin. We were reaching the edge of the forest.

  “Clever wolf!” I said, even though it had no idea it had inadvertently led me exactly where I wanted to go. But tone being everything, it wagged its long tail. I bent down to scratch it behind the ears, but it shied away, looking apprehensive.

  I obviously appeared too dominant. “It’s all right,” I said. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. Go back home now. That’s what I’m doing.”

  I had expected to have to use the head torch to get back to Madeleine’s, given the lack of electricity. But as I emerged from the forest, I was puzzled to see a glow of light where the village began. I switched off the head torch and made for it. As I got closer, I saw a large group of villagers holding flaming torches. And pitchforks.

  “It’s her!” shouted one. “And look, it’s true, she’s got a wolf with her!”

  I hadn’t realised the wolf was still with me. It bared its sharp teeth and gave a long, low growl.

  The crowd began moving towards us, still wielding their torches and pitchforks.

  “Everything’s fine,” I shouted back. “I’ve trained the wolf so it does what I tell it.”

  I was just wondering what else I could do to reassure them, perhaps get the wolf to balance a pine cone on its nose, when it gave a final growl and bounded away back into the forest.

  “There, you’ve frightened the poor thing away,” I said accusingly.

  But still they
came on, and before I realised what was happening, I was seized and pinned to the ground by half a dozen pitchforks, which fortunately went over my limbs rather than through them.

  I tried to struggle free, but another pitchfork slammed down across my neck. Thankfully, the pitchforks were only two-pronged, and while I was pretty well immobilised, I wasn’t skewered. But no wonder they never got visitors if this was how they treated them.

  “What do you think you’re playing at?” I croaked. “Let me go.”

  “Never,” said the nearest villager. “We must destroy you. You are evil.”

  “You’re confusing me with perfidious Albion,” I said. “I keep telling you, I’m not English, I’m Scottish. You and me, we’re the Auld Alliance. Just let me up, and we’ll say no more about it.”

  “Vampire!” he snarled at me.

  “Oh, is this because of the misunderstanding with the mayor?” I asked. “I’ve already apologised, but I’m very happy to apologise again, in writing if necessary.”

  It all seemed quite anarchic, and I thought it would be wise to invoke some sort of officialdom.

  “I wonder, could someone call the police?” I asked. “Or the judge? Or perhaps the mayor?”

  The response wasn’t the one I’d hoped for. “Burn the witch!” someone shouted and flaming torches were waved in my direction. I tried to struggle free, but it was no good.

  “Fools! She’s not a witch! You mustn’t do that!” shouted another villager.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “I’m not a witch. You mustn’t do that.” It was good that someone was talking sense.

  “That won’t kill her,” the villager went on. “She’s a vampire.”

  “Now just hang on a minute,” I said. “I’m not a vampire.”

  “Then why do you look like one?” said the villager next to me, and everybody nodded.

  “Why do I…? I look nothing like a vampire. Do you know the first thing about vampires?”

  “I do!” I recognised the voice. It was Cart Woman. “I know all about them,” she said. “When my girl came home from school, she was full of it, said you’d been telling her about a book on vampires, so I went straight to the library and got it out.”