The Ghost of Howlers Beach

by Jackie French

  But who’d pay a ransom for susso kids? And the boat had still been too far out to have picked the kids from the beach. There’d just been him, the dog and the skull.

  ‘I think the dog is still be outside,’ Butter offered.

  ‘I doubt the dog would be much of a witness,’ said his father dryly. ‘I’ll call the police. They’d better move fast before the animal digs up more evidence.’

  Evidence! So this might be a crime! A real one! A killer on the loose . . .

  ‘I can show the police where the dog found it,’ suggested Butter eagerly. ‘Do you think the murderer is still around? Or a master criminal like Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes—’

  ‘No need for you to be there,’ said his father shortly. ‘I’m sure the police can find where the dog was digging. There’s no master criminal either. There’s nothing around here to interest criminals.’ He gave an almost smile. ‘Unless they’d like to steal some of your Aunt Peculiar’s paintings. Don’t go scaring your aunts. However this skull got there, it wasn’t recently. You go and have your lunch.’

  Butter had known the skull wasn’t fresh — it was too clean. But still, it was his mystery. ‘But Dad—’

  ‘No buts.’ His father headed toward the telephone in the hall, the skull carefully wrapped in the jacket again, just as someone knocked on the back door. Would it be someone offering to paint the fence? thought Butter as he ran to open it. Or wash the car or any other odd job that would earn them sixpence or even just a good meal? Last week their former bank manager had asked if they needed their windows washed. Auntie Cake had shaken her head, then given him ten shillings, and then she’d cried in the drawing room because there had been nothing else she could think to do to help him. Wallaby Jams already employed as many people as they could while still making enough to keep going.

  But Butter had never seen the man on the doorstep before. He was as tall as Aunt Elephant, but thin as a match with the wood shaved off. He seemed to sway in the breeze from the sea. ‘Have you seen a grey dog?’ he began. He coughed weakly, sweat beading his face. The cough went on and on, till finally the man was leaning on the doorjamb.

  Butter had heard that kind of cough before. It was a cough from the War, the kind men got when they’d breathed in mustard or chlorine gas in the trenches of France or Belgium. Mr Fancham who sold clothesline props had a cough like that, and Mr Elliot at school who taught Latin, though his cough wasn’t as bad, but the gas scars to his eyes meant he couldn’t see very well and had to have an assistant mark the exam papers.

  Suddenly Dad appeared behind him. He expertly put an arm under the man’s armpits. ‘Let me help you inside, sir. I’m Dr O’Bryan.’

  ‘The dog,’ whispered the man, as if his body didn’t have enough air left to speak. ‘Them kids need their dog. Only thing those kids have got now, that dog. They got to have it . . .’

  The effort seemed to have dragged the last of the air from his lungs. The man spasmed, arching in Dad’s arm, then slumped, like a limp handful of spaghetti. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth. His unseeing eyes stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Butter, go back to the dining room,’ said Dad quietly, as he laid the man gently on the scullery floor, ‘and get Jenkins. Tell him that a man seems to have had a heart attack. Ask him to come to me here at once. And don’t ask questions.’

  Butter hadn’t been going to. For even Butter could see that the man was dead.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jenkins wasn’t their butler because Aunt Elephant felt that people shouldn’t be extravagant and have butlers during the Depression. But, on the other hand, if they fired the servants there would be more people without jobs — with a third of the men in Australia unemployed and searching for any sort of work. So the Very Small Castle didn’t have a butler these days, or a valet for Dad or a lady’s maid for each of the aunts.

  Jenkins served the meals and answered the front door, cleaned the silver and did other butler-type jobs, as well as helping Dad get dressed. He also drove the car if the Aunts wanted to use it, while Smithers looked after the Aunts’ clothes and did their hair but also dusted the best china too, and did the most delicate mending jobs.

  The only other members of staff were Cookie — who was always complaining that Auntie Cake kept trying to take over her nice neat kitchen — and Esmé the kitchenmaid, Gwen the housemaid, Small Bob who cleaned the boots and ran errands, and Big Bob who did the garden, with Mrs Reardon who came in early each morning to scrub floors and stayed to do the washing on Mondays and the ironing and mending on Thursdays.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ asked Auntie Cake, when Butter came back to the dining room.

  Butter tried to think what to say. ‘A man came to the scullery door.’

  ‘What did he want?’ rumbled Aunt Elephant. ‘Selling clothes pegs? Sharpening knives?’

  ‘He . . . he died,’ said Butter.

  ‘What, here?’ squeaked little Aunt Peculiar indignantly.

  Butter nodded. ‘Dad’s calling the police. Or maybe an ambulance.’ Who did you call when a man dropped dead at your door? Perhaps Dad was going to call both.

  He felt . . . strange. He’d never seen anyone dead before. He hadn’t even been allowed to see Mum when she was dying because she was in the infectious polio ward in hospital with an iron lung over her to try to keep her breathing, though even that hadn’t been enough to keep her alive.

  Butter supposed he might have caught polio too, if they’d let him stay with her in hospital. But if he’d been with Mum when she died, holding her hand, maybe he wouldn’t keep feeling as if she might be in the next room but he just couldn’t reach her . . .

  He forced his thoughts away. WHY had the thin man died? He didn’t look like he’d been shot. Poison? Maybe whoever had been buried above the sand on the beach on the headland had been poisoned too.

  But the man had coughed like his scarred lungs had finally ripped apart. And he had been so thin . . .

  ‘People should have the decency to die in their own homes or in hospital,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar, shoving hairpins back into her hair. ‘Not on other people’s doorsteps.’

  ‘Poor man,’ trumpeted Aunt Elephant. ‘Sit down and eat your lunch, Butter,’ she added. ‘Make sure you eat all your greens.’

  Butter looked at the slices of lamb, the buttered peas, the mashed potatoes and baked pumpkin congealing in the gravy on his plate. He wasn’t hungry but the Aunts wouldn’t think that was relevant.

  ‘The man was looking for his dog,’ he remembered at last, after the mountain of food was demolished by half, which was all he could manage and probably enough for the Aunts to accept. He stood. ‘It might still be nearby. I’d better go and look for it.’

  ‘But you’ve hardly eaten anything!’ sang Auntie Cake.

  ‘Boys need their vitamins. Minerals too,’ thundered Aunt Elephant in her ‘indoor’ voice which was only half as loud as her ‘outdoor’ voice and probably three times as loud as an elephant.

  Aunt Peculiar’s tiny face softened. ‘It’s hard for a dog to lose its master. Off you go then.’

  Maybe the dog has already gone back to the beach, thought Butter, as he headed back down to the back door. Or found the kids, wherever they had gone to. Hadn’t the man said it was their dog? That proved the kids couldn’t be ghosts because ghosts didn’t have dogs, except ghost dogs.

  But the police would be digging around the landslide soon, looking for more of the skeleton. Maybe he could watch or even help them dig . . .

  ‘Sploof,’ said the dog, limping out of the oleander bushes and not looking ghost-like at all. It lifted its remaining back leg to scratch its ear, then fell over. Stupid dog, thought Butter. Hadn’t it worked out it needed to sit down and use a front paw to scratch?

  The dog scrambled up, thought for a moment, then limped over to sit at Butter’s feet, drool dripping from the corner of his mouth at the scent of roast meat coming from the kitchen again. The servants must be having their dinner.


  How do I tell a dog its master is dead? wondered Butter. And what would happen to it now? No one would want a three-legged dog with no brains and scruffy fur. Even if it did belong to the kids on the beach it might be too stupid to find them again.

  ‘That animal needs a bath,’ rumbled Aunt Elephant, appearing out of the scullery like a walking forest in a vast green dress.

  ‘And some food. It’s so thin!’ crooned Auntie Cake. ‘Poor little poochie.’

  ‘It needs a visit to the dog pound,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. ‘It’s the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen. I’m sure it’s full of germs. And fleas.’ She wore a pink linen dress, which would have looked normal, except she’d painted ants all over it. Butter hoped the dog’s fleas didn’t hide among them or the family would be scratching for weeks.

  But he felt sorry for the dog, so thin and ownerless. He wondered if, just possibly, the Aunts might keep him. At least the dog would be something to hug at night, when the castle echoed and the sea sang sad songs and he felt the blackness would go on forever.

  But the kids on the beach owned this dog, and the dead man had said they needed him.

  ‘Bob!’ yelled Aunt Elephant. Only Aunt Elephant could yell in a ladylike way.

  Big Bob and Small Bob peered out of the garden shed. ‘Just about to tie up the peas, missus,’ said Big Bob.

  ‘Would you mind washing this dog first?’ boomed Aunt Elephant.

  ‘Looks more like a rat,’ said Small Bob, looking at it. ‘Except rats mostly have four legs.’

  ‘Bucket and soap and warm water,’ ordered Big Bob. ‘And look sharp about it.’

  The dog looked quite different once washed: more fur than dog, and white, except for one black leg and ear.

  ‘Who’d’a guessed what was under that dirt?’ said Small Bob, staring at the dog, still busily scratching, but with its front paw now, as if it couldn’t believe there was such a thing as a life without fleas.

  ‘Here you are boy,’ crooned Auntie Cake putting down a plate of lamb and gravy. The newly white fuzz-ball stared unbelievingly at all the meat, then lay down carefully next to the plate so it didn’t fall into the gravy. A minute later the lamb was gone and the plate licked clean. The dog looked expectantly at Auntie Cake.

  ‘I don’t suppose another helping would hurt it,’ sang Auntie Cake. ‘Do dogs like banana custard, Peculiar?’

  Aunt Peculiar shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘He’s terribly thin, isn’t he?’ boomed Aunt Elephant. ‘Maybe we should keep him. Just for a while, in case his owners come for him.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Elephant. He’d bring in dirt,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. ‘And germs.’

  Cookie brought out a dish of banana custard. It seemed that dogs DID like banana custard. At least three-legged ones did. And leftover baked potato and a piece of sponge cake and the scones from morning tea. Auntie Cake gazed at it happily. ‘Poor thing. It must have been starving.’

  ‘Excuse me, Master Butter,’ said Jenkins, appearing from the scullery. ‘But there are three young persons asking for you at the front door. They’re looking for their dog.’ Jenkins glanced down at the small white object staring hopefully at Auntie Cake. It still looked more like a rat than a dog, but at least it was a clean one.

  Were they the kids from this morning? They have to be, thought Butter. Maybe now he’d find out how they’d managed to vanish so quickly.

  Jenkins paused and added significantly, ‘They said their uncle has been looking for the dog too.’

  Butter shivered. So the thin man had been their uncle? What had he said? ‘Only thing those kids have got now, that dog.’

  No one had much at the susso camp, not even a proper cottage. And now he had to tell the kids their uncle was dead.

  He looked at the dog, licking the last of the cream from his newly white whiskers, then at the Aunts. He wished Dad was there, but he’d left with the police and the ambulance. ‘I’ll go and see them,’ he said bravely. ‘Someone has to tell them about the man who died too.’

  ‘As the eldest in the family I should be the one to—’ began Aunt Peculiar.

  ‘I think we should find out where their parents are first,’ said Auntie Cake softly. ‘Then Pongo can explain what happened to their parents, and their parents can break the news to the children. Show the children into the Almost Mauve Drawing Room, Jenkins.’

  ‘At least there’s nothing small enough to steal in the Almost Mauve Drawing Room,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. ‘They’re probably from the susso camp. They might have all kinds of diseases. Tell them to sit on the sofa,’ she told Jenkins. ‘Make sure you sit in the armchair by the open window,’ she added to Butter. ‘That way the wind should blow away their germs.’

  ‘At least the dog is clean enough to come inside now,’ boomed Aunt Elephant. She picked it up and strode back into the house.

  CHAPTER 4

  The three kids from the beach cricket that morning sat side by side on the very edge of the sofa, as if afraid they might dirty its mauve and white roses. But their clothes looked clean, even if they were faded against the kids’ deeply tanned skin, and they must have washed their sandy feet at the tap outside.

  ‘Woofer!’ yelled the little girl. ‘Gil, Olive, look! They’ve got Woofer!’

  ‘Snerf,’ barked Woofer in delight. He jumped down from Aunt Elephant’s arms, landed on his nose, stood up, wobbled a bit, then limped over to the sofa. The smaller girl picked him up and cuddled him close as he licked her chin. She stared at the Aunts and Butter accusingly. ‘He looks different. What have you done to him?’

  ‘Washed him,’ rumbled Aunt Elephant.

  ‘Got rid of his fleas,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar.

  ‘Fed him,’ murmured Auntie Cake.

  The small girl looked around, still tightly holding the dog. ‘How can you have a house so big?’

  ‘Tish!’ muttered the older girl. ‘It’s rude to ask questions.’

  ‘Because our father made a lot of money selling jam and wanted a castle,’ trumpeted Aunt Elephant.

  ‘But castles are big,’ argued the little girl.

  ‘My father said he only needed a Very Small Castle. He only had four children, my sisters and my brother. And the servants of course,’ said Aunt Elephant.

  ‘Why are you so big?’ Tish gazed up at Aunt Elephant.

  Aunt Elephant grinned. ‘Because I eat all my vegetables and drink my milk and take healthy exercise.’

  ‘Why do you have all this space just for you?’ Tish peered around the room. ‘And what’s that thing?’ She pointed to the mauve china woman holding up a gigantic torch like America’s Statue of Liberty.

  ‘That’s an electric lamp,’ said Butter. ‘You turn the generator on, then you turn the lamp on and it lights up the room.’

  He waited for Tish to ask what a generator was, so he could tell her how electricity worked. But instead she asked, ‘Why is the sofa so bouncy?’ She bumped up and down to demonstrate its bounciness.

  ‘Because it’s got springs in it,’ said Auntie Cake.

  ‘Though springs can break if someone bounces on them too hard,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar darkly.

  ‘But they must be strong if she can sit on them!’ Tish pointed to Aunt Elephant.

  ‘Tish, shhh. That’s enough!’ said the older girl.

  ‘But I want to know things, Olive,’ protested Tish. ‘How can I find out if I don’t ask? What are springs?’ She turned to Aunt Peculiar. ‘And why have you got ants on your dress? And why are you all round?’ she added to Auntie Cake.

  ‘Cakes should be round,’ sang Auntie Cake. ‘It means they are delicious.’

  ‘And I sit on a good solid armchair,’ boomed Aunt Elephant. ‘Most furniture is too spindly.’

  ‘Why don’t they make it stronger?’ demanded Tish.

  Butter was beginning to understand why people got that dazed expression when he asked lots of questions.

  The boy stood up. ‘That’s enough, Tish. We need to go.
Now.’

  ‘But Gil—’ began Tish.

  ‘Shhh,’ said Gil. ‘Thank you for finding our dog,’ he said to Butter and the Aunts stiffly. ‘We’d better go and tell Uncle Harry that Woofer is safe. He’s out looking for him too.’

  The Aunts exchanged glances. ‘You live down in the camp on the other side of the headland?’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar.

  The boy Gil raised his chin. ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  So much for being ghosts, thought Butter.

  ‘We need to speak to your parents,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar.

  ‘No need,’ said the bigger girl, Olive. ‘We’ve found Woofer now.’

  Aunt Elephant stood casually by the door, blocking their way. ‘Nonetheless, we must speak with your parents. It’s important.’

  ‘Well you can’t,’ said Gil gruffly.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Butter.

  ‘None of your beeswax,’ said Olive. ‘Come on, Tish. And don’t let Woofer lick your face. You don’t know what he’s been eating.’

  Roast lamb, sponge cake, banana custard, scones and a skull, thought Butter, feeling a bit sick.

  ‘Where can we find your parents then?’ demanded Aunt Peculiar.

  ‘That’s none of your beeswax either,’ said Gil.

  ‘Gil, don’t be rude. Our parents aren’t far away though,’ added Olive quickly.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gil.

  They’re hiding something, thought Butter. Something about their parents or their Uncle Harry. Maybe Uncle Harry had been a crook. He’d been in a jewel robbery and was hiding out in the susso camp. But a crook wouldn’t go looking for the kids’ dog.

  Suddenly Aunt Elephant boomed, ‘Where are our manners? We haven’t even introduced ourselves. I’m Miss O’Bryan, and these are my sisters. This is our nephew, Butter O’Bryan.’

  Tish giggled. ‘Butter!’

  Butter glared at her. At least at school everyone was known by their surnames.

  ‘I’m Gil,’ said the boy reluctantly. ‘And these are my sisters, Tish and Olive.’

  ‘And we really must be going,’ said Olive in a tone as polite as the Aunts’.