by Simon Brett
‘Glad “Pinko” Fripworth, my old cricket coach at Eton, didn’t see that innings,’ Blotto observed. ‘Not the most stylish display of my life.’
‘Never mind. It worked! Sometimes in life style has to give way to expediency.’
‘Tickey-tockey, me old fruitbat. You never said a truer word.’
Blotto and Twinks exchanged looks and hugged each other.
‘Well done, anyway,’ she purred. ‘You may be my brother, but you’ll always be my hero as well.’
Blotto let out an embarrassed, self-deprecatory snort. ‘Don’t talk such toffee, Twinks. You make me feel like a Grade A poodle.’ But he actually rather liked it when his sister said things like that. ‘Come on, what’s next on the hymn sheet?’
‘Next thing we do is: we get off this train before it reaches its destination.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘Because if Wellborough Choat was on it, I’d lay a guinea to a groat that the driver and anyone else on board is also a member of the League of the Crimson Hand. And the moment we get to McCluggan Halt we’ll be grabbed and incarcerated as surely as The McCluggan of McCluggan himself.’
‘So what do we do, Twinks?’
‘We wait till the train begins to slow down and we get out of that door as quick as two ferrets in a rabbit warren.’
‘What about our luggage?’
‘Leave it. Only take essentials.’
Blotto looked at his second-best cricket bat. ‘This is all I need. I’ve never rated this old willow very highly, but when nudge comes to knockout, it certainly fits the pigeon-hole.’
‘Well, I’ve got all my essentials in my reticule,’ said Twinks.
Even as she spoke, they felt the motion of the train change. It was definitely slowing down. Blotto and Twinks again exchanged looks. In both pairs of blue eyes the same excitement glowed. The siblings were never so happy as when they were on a hazardous mission together.
‘Right, jump!’ said Twinks.
‘I’m taking the kite,’ said Blotto. He unhitched it and managed to pass the end of the string from the window round the back of the carriage to keep control of it. ‘Otherwise Jerome Handsomely will never find us.’
Twinks once again chose not to point out the uselessness of the kite as a location marker. Blotto so rarely had ideas that it didn’t do to condemn them.
He jumped first, perhaps hoping to be able to break his sister’s fall when she did. But of course the train’s motion left him behind on the track. Twinks leapt into the void, and landed as neatly as a butterfly on a flower petal. Both of them scurried off into the woods at the side of the track.
The wind through the trees was strong and had a salty tang, suggesting that they were near the Firth of Lorne. And also near their destination. They couldn’t progress far into the wood with the kite, because its string kept getting tangled in the branches. So Blotto tied it firmly to a tree trunk and found that the wind off the sea kept it aloft. The trees thinned out into a flat field near where he’d fixed the kite, but it wasn’t the way they were going.
They followed the direction of the railway line and soon found themselves on the edge of the woods. Up ahead stood the reality whose image they had seen in The Ancient Castles of Scotland (With Engravings on Steel).
In the dying light of the autumn afternoon Blotto and Twinks looked up at the forbidding walls of stone that encased Glenglower Castle, the lair of the Crimson Thumb.
26
Glenglower Castle
The darkness was their friend. They could see light at the castle’s main gate, and see it reflected on the rifles of the men who stood there on guard.
‘Shall we make a full-frontal attack?’ suggested Blotto, more confident of his second-best cricket bat than he had been before it had dealt with Wellborough Choat.
‘No,’ replied Twinks.
‘Oh, but come on, me old biscuit barrel, we do have the advantage of surprise.’
‘That’s the last thing we have, Blotto. When the train we were on arrives at McCluggan Halt, the driver – not to mention the members of the League of the Crimson Hand who were lined up to be our reception committee – will find our luggage and pretty soon after find the body of Wellborough Choat on the line. We couldn’t have advertised our arrival more if we’d announced it in the Daily Clarion’s Court Circular.’
‘Oh. Yes, I read your semaphore. So how do we get in?’
‘We don’t go in the main entrance.’
‘That sounds all tickey-tockey, but suppose there isn’t another way in?’
‘There is.’
‘How the strawberries do you know that?’
‘Because I not only looked at the picture of Glenglower Castle in The Ancient Castles of Scotland (With Engravings on Steel), I also read the accompanying article. And there it said that there had always been a secret passageway leading into the place, down at the edge of the Firth of Lorne. It leads up from a natural cave which can only be accessed at low tide.’
‘But it might be high tide now, Twinks me old trouser button.’
‘It might, but it isn’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I checked the tide tables for the Argyllshire coast before we left Tawcester Towers.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole,’ said Blotto, ‘you think of everything. You know, when you die, Twinks, they should take your brainbox and put it in the British Museum.’
‘Don’t talk such guff. All I was doing was making proper preparations.’
‘Yes, but why don’t I ever think of doing things like that?’
There were some questions that Twinks’s generous nature preferred to leave unanswered. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s get down to the seashore.’
The sky was clear and a thin moon let out just enough light for them to see where they were going. Twinks led the way. Not only had she found out about the secret entrance to Glenglower Castle, she had also memorized the map which had accompanied the article in The Ancient Castles of Scotland (With Engravings on Steel).
As they had hoped, they didn’t meet anyone on the way to the Firth’s edge. Either the League of the Crimson Hand didn’t know about the secret entrance, or they didn’t think anyone else would know about it. In a matter of minutes Blotto and Twinks found themselves on the narrow strand between the sea and the base of the crag on which Glenglower Castle stood. Close up, the huge turreted structure looked more threatening than ever.
Twinks marched straight to the cave entrance, a low semicircle of darkness set into the solid rock. Once again she produced from her reticule the small torch which had lighted their way through Llanystwyth House. They had to crouch to get under the low archway, but inside the space opened up above them. The floor was still smooth sand, and the beam of the upturned torch showed the shape of a natural cathedral, whose walls glistened with seaweed.
At the far end of the space a flight of steps which had been carved out of the solid rock led up to a small door. The stairs were very slippery and as they mounted them Blotto and Twinks held hands, the torch pointing down at their precarious footholds. After a couple of stumbles they reached the top and Twinks focused the beam on the door that barred their way.
Its state of dilapidation suggested that the new owners of Glenglower Castle were unaware of the thing’s existence. The wood at the bottom had rotted, one of the hinges had gone and the metalwork of its locks had rusted away to almost nothing. Pulling the hasp and padlock away from the spongy wood was a matter of moments. The door almost fell apart as they opened it, and Blotto and Twinks soon found themselves on a continuation of the carved steps. These were drier and offered a safer footing on the route up into the castle, though there was still a strong smell of the sea below.
The steps, over a hundred in all, continued straight in one long incline, at the end of which Blotto and Twinks’s passage was barred by a rusted metal panel in the roof of the cave. Inspection with the torch showed an accumulation of cobwebs and fungoid growth which suggested th
e trapdoor hadn’t been opened for some generations.
Blotto pushed up against it with one hand. There was no give at all in the metal. He put down his second-best cricket bat and tried pushing with both hands. Still nothing. ‘It’s stuck as tight as a milliner’s corset,’ he announced.
‘Having come this far,’ said Twinks, ‘there is no way we’re not going to get inside the castle.’ She once again darted the beam of her torch around the sides of the square above them. ‘Maybe if we scrape some of the guff that’s gathered round the edges . . .?’
Her brother needed no further prompting. He reached up with his bare hands and dug away at the accretion of the ages, closing his mind to the precise nature of the noxious substances he was getting under his fingernails. He was about to announce that the mission was hopeless when his hand snagged on something hard.
More clearing around the protrusion revealed three aligned rusty rings, two affixed to the cave wall, the other to the trapdoor. Through them a rusty metal bar had been fixed, making an effective lock which could not be opened from the other side.
The rings and bar had been fused by rust, but two substantial whacks with Blotto’s second-best cricket bat loosened them. A third blow to the end of the bar sent it flying out of the fixture and clattering down the rocky walls until it embedded itself in the soft sand beneath.
‘Right. Let’s have another pop at the partridge,’ said Blotto. He planted his feet firmly on the top step, set both hands on the underside of the trapdoor and heaved upwards.
At first nothing seemed to be happening. Then there was a slight creaking noise and accumulated sand and other debris began to trickle from one side of the metal square. Blotto, realizing that that must be the side that opened, shifted his stance to apply maximum pressure there. He could feel sweat forming at his temples and down his back, he could feel his biceps straining against his shirt as finally, slowly, the trapdoor lifted.
No light appeared through the widening chink, which was good news. People need light and the lack of it suggested the space above them was unoccupied.
A couple more shoves and the three unhinged sides of the trapdoor were all free of their grooves. The only thing that prevented Blotto from opening it further was his own lack of height. But the metal square was moving quite freely now, so he got Twinks to climb on his shoulders and she pushed it back up into an upright position. As it passed the vertical, she let go, anticipating a huge crash as it fell to the ground, a huge crash that might well announce their arrival to every member of the League of the Crimson Hand inside Glenglower Castle.
But the trapdoor didn’t crash down flat. Quickly meeting some obstruction, the sheet of metal rested safely against it.
From her brother’s shoulders Twinks had no problem pulling herself up into the space above them. Then she reached down a hand to help Blotto up.
She had shielded the light of the torch by pressing the business end into her dress, but now cautiously brought it out to explore the room in which they had found themselves. It was very small, little more than a cupboard. In fact, as she moved the torch beam around she saw that it actually was a cupboard. The dust on the piles of what looked like old weapons, chains and manacles suggested that no one had opened its doors for a long time. Which perhaps explained the castle owners’ ignorance of the sea entrance’s existence.
Anticipating another lock to be broken, Blotto pushed gently against the cupboard door, but obligingly it gave and opened. The two of them stepped out into a narrow passage, again carved out of the solid rock. The end nearest to them had been blocked off by fallen rubble, but in the other direction there was a distant glimmer of light. Blotto and Twinks exchanged looks, both put their fingers to their lips and advanced towards it.
From what they could judge, the corridor along which they were progressing turned at right angles into the lit area. They could hear no sounds of human activity, but still kept their own noise to a minimum. At the turn, Twinks gave a quick look around the corner before signifying to Blotto that they were safe to continue.
The lighting in the new corridor came from gas lamps set high on the walls. On the opposite side were a row of heavily studded doors, whose square unglazed windows were thickly barred. No light came from the first one, into which Twinks directed her torch beam, but what she saw inside confirmed her suspicion that they had found the dungeons of Glenglower Castle. The slimy walls were pierced by no other windows, and the empty manacles hanging down from hooks symbolized the misery of those who had been incarcerated there. The only comforting fact was that the dungeon did not appear to have been used for a long time.
The second cell was more or less identical to the first, but from the opening in the door of the third light spilled. Switching off her torch, Twinks moved quietly forward to look inside.
Sitting alone at a table, she saw an elderly man with a magnificent greying ginger beard and eyebrows. He was wearing full Highland dress – a bonnet decorated with pheasant feathers, a short jacket and waistcoat with silver buttons, kilt, sporran and elaborately laced shoes over thick grey socks. Above the top of one sock protruded about two inches of his dagger, or sgian dubh.
Confident that they had been successful in at least the first part of their rescue plan, Twinks pushed open the door of the dungeon and pronounced in perfect Scots, ‘Guid eenin!’
The elderly man turned in surprise. But, like most of his gender, he was pleased to see Twinks.
‘You,’ she went on, ‘must be The McCluggan of McCluggan.’
‘I am that,’ he admitted. ‘And ye twae must be the younger son and daughter o’ the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester.’
‘We spoffing well are!’ said Blotto. ‘And we have come to rescue you from the evil clutches of the League of the Crimson Hand and their stencher of a leader, the Crimson Thumb!’
The McCluggan of McCluggan smiled. ‘I cannae thank ye enough,’ he said, with something that sounded very much like relief.
27
Betrayed!
The McCluggan of McCluggan led the way out of his cell and towards the main body of the castle. The next two cells they passed were dark as pitch, but from the grating of the third a thin light emanated. A look through the aperture revealed Laetitia Melmont, sitting at a humble table reading a book (which they subsequently discovered to be The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius).
The keys to the cells, hanging from a hook on the wall opposite, were pointed out by the laird. ‘How many times in mae miserable solitude I hae seen they keys and wished I could reach across and tak them tae achieve mae liberty,’ he said.
‘But in fact,’ Twinks pointed out, ‘the door to your cell was unlocked.’
The McCluggan of McCluggan raised his eyes to heaven. ‘I ken weel. And I hae lang sin gi’en up the idea o’ walking oot of it. The castle is aswarm with the League o’ the Crimson Hand. Everich time I tried to escape – once I even got as far as the courtyard – I’d be recaptured and brought back tae my cell in humiliation.’
‘Well, don’t worry, you’ve got us with you now.’ Blotto brandished his second-best cricket bat fervently. ‘Twinks and I are a match for any number of the stenchers!’
‘Really?’ asked the laird, looking dubiously at the bat.
‘Look, there’s no time to fritter,’ said Twinks. ‘Let’s put a jumping cracker under it and rescue Laetitia.’
‘Good ticket,’ Blotto agreed, turning towards the cell with the relevant key in his hand. Then he stopped. ‘Think it’d be better if you freed her, Twinks me old cauliflower . . .’
‘Why?’
Her brother blushed. ‘Well, you know . . . Young women being rescued have a disturbing tendency to throw their arms round their liberators. And I’m deep enough into a gluepot with the Mater’s plans to marry me off . . .’
Twinks understood immediately. She unlocked the door to greet a delighted Laetitia Melmont who immediately, ignoring her liberator, rushed out of the cell to throw her arms around Blotto.
Through Laetitia Melmont’s all-encompassing embrace, Blotto caught his sister’s eye. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed.
Aloud, she asked Laetitia, ‘Who imprisoned you here?’
‘The only one I know by name was the pilot from Llanystwyth House.’
‘Gerhardt Sachs?’
‘Yes. The others were just men in uniform I had never met before,’ she replied, her arms still wrapped around her reluctant paramour.
Once he had finally disentangled himself from the ‘the Snitterings Ironing-Board’ and introduced her to The McCluggan of McCluggan, Blotto said to the laird, ‘You’re the boddo with local knowledge. You’d better tell us the best way to get out of this place.’
‘But surely,’ Twinks intervened, ‘our best route would be to go back the way we came? Out through the trapdoor. And down the steps to the beach. The League of the Crimson Hand don’t know about that entrance.’
‘Hoopee-doopee!’ said Blotto. ‘Give that pony a rosette!’
He would have said more, but was interrupted by heavy throat-clearing from The McCluggan of McCluggan. ‘I’m afraid ye are wrong if ye imagine that the League o’ the Crimson Hand are unaware of the sea entrance.’
‘But none of the bad tomatoes stopped us when we came in that way,’ protested Blotto.
‘Did you nae think that was rather unco?’ asked the laird.
‘“Unco”?’ echoed Blotto in bewilderment.
‘Odd,’ supplied his sister.
‘Oh. Well, it was a bit –’
‘You mean it was a trap?’ Twinks asked the laird. As ever, her reasoning moved a lot faster than her brother’s.
‘Exactly that. The League hae been primed for your arrival since the moment you left Oban – or in fact some time before that. Once it was clear that Wellborough Choat had failed to sort oot their wee problem, they’ve been waiting for you here in Glenglower Castle. And I can guarantee there will now be a heavily armed presence at the mouth o’ the cave on the beach.’
