by Angie Sage
I remembered the rattling door handle of Miss Gargoyle’s study and the Yellow Vulture standing on guard outside. “That’s because Miss Gargoyle is being held prisoner,” I said. “This morning, the Vultures put a bolt on the outside of her study door. She is probably asking for help.”
Matthilda looked shocked. “I didn’t know it had got that bad,” she said.
Slowly, like a tiger checking out her prey, I raised my head above the grass. I saw the line of tall, pointy windows that ran along the bottom of the house. It was easy to guess which one was Miss Gargoyle’s study—it was the window with a small round person holding up a big sign that read: HELP!
We crawled quickly down the hill and soon we reached the big hedge and a very tall gate, which was locked. Mathilda wriggled through a small hole at the foot of the hedge and we followed her. We came out into a little lane, where a black motorbike was parked. It had an amazing sidecar that looked like a big silver bullet.
As we looked back at Gargoyle Hall, all we could see was the roof with its gargoyles and turrets. It looked really mysterious. “We’re safe,” Mathilda said. “They can’t see us down here. Come on, let’s get going.”
“Going where?” asked Wanda.
“I’m taking you home,” Mathilda said, pointing at the really cool motorbike. “And then I will get some help for Miss Gargoyle.”
Yesterday evening I would have been thrilled if Mathilda had turned up on her fantastic motorbike to take me home—but today was different. A good detective does not leave an unsolved mystery behind. And, apart from the Spook House Mysteries, I now had two Gargoyle Hall Mysteries: The Mystery of the Monster in the Night (which I now knew was really The Mystery of the Beast of Gargoyle Hall) and a new mystery: The Mystery of the Headmistress Imprisoned in Her Study. So I said, “No thank you, Mathilda. We don’t want to go home.”
“Don’t we?” asked Wanda.
“No, Wanda, we don’t. We want to know what’s going on at Gargoyle Hall.”
“A load of trouble,” Mathilda said. “That’s what’s going on. I told Grannie that she was crazy sending you here. Come on, get in.” She pointed at the sidecar. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get you safely home.”
Wanda did not need telling twice. She scrambled into the sidecar and sat in the front seat looking really pleased. I wanted to get in but I didn’t. I knew that as soon as we got home Aunt Tabby would take over and Chief Detective Spook would be off the case. This is what happens with detectives. They get started on their investigations and then some bossy superintendent takes over. I was not going to let this happen to me, especially as Mathilda was my Number-One-Witness and I needed to get her to tell me all she knew. Right now. So I said, “Mathilda, thank you very much for your kind offer, but we are definitely not going home. No way.”
But my less-than-faithful sidekick said, “Oh, but I love this little car thingy. Look, Araminta, it’s got such cute red seats. And the blue carpet is gorgeous. Oh, wow, it is even on the inside of the door!”
Mathilda climbed on to the big springy saddle of the motorbike and put on a really cool black helmet with goggles on the top of it. “We’re going, Araminta,” she said. “Are you coming?”
I needed to play for time. This is what detectives do when they are in a tricky situation and need to think. So I said, “OK. But before we go, will you tell Wanda what’s going on? Because as soon as we get home Brenda will scoop Wanda up and disappear with her and she will never, ever know.”
I could see that Wanda realised I was right. And because Wanda is very nosy and likes to know everything, I could also see she was not as keen on going home right away as she had been. My plan was beginning to work.
“All right,” Mathilda said reluctantly. “But you had better get in the sidecar. I want to be able to make a quick getaway if those Vultures appear.”
But Chief Detective Spook was not to be tempted. Even though I really wanted to sit in the shiny silver bullet sidecar, I suspected that once I was in there Mathilda would just zoom off home. So I said, “Thank you, Mathilda, but I will keep watch from here.”
Mathilda gave me a strange look. “I wasn’t planning on kidnapping you, Araminta.”
“Good,” I said, but I didn’t get in all the same.
I was about to start interviewing my Number-One-Witness when my sidekick piped up with, “So who are the horrible Vultures? What makes that scary roaring in the night? Why is Miss Gargoyle locked in her study? How did you know we were in the cellar?”
I was quite impressed that Wanda had figured out exactly the questions I was going to ask, but I was not pleased. It is a Chief Detective’s job to ask the questions, not the sidekick’s.
Wanda got out another bag of gummi bears and passed them around.
“No thank you, Wanda,” Mathilda said. “But give some to Araminta, then she won’t keep asking me questions.”
Huh! That was not fair. Mathilda obviously had not noticed that so far it was Wanda who had been asking all the questions. But I did not say anything, because Mathilda had begun to speak. And a good detective always listens to her Number-One-Witness very carefully indeed.
“Last year,” Mathilda began, “I was head girl at Gargoyle Hall.”
“You!” I was amazed. I thought that Mathilda was far too old to go to school. And with her dead-mouse hats and motorbike, she didn’t seem like the kind of person who gets to be head girl.
“Yes, me,” Mathilda said, sounding a bit annoyed. “Wanda, give Araminta some more gummi bears, please. I was head girl and at the beginning of last term the school had a hundred girls in it. By the end of term nearly all of them had left.”
“Was that because you were head girl?” Wanda asked.
“No, it was not,” Mathilda said, sounding even more annoyed. “Why don’t you have some gummi bears too, Wanda?” Mathilda dropped her voice and looked around as if she was afraid of someone hearing. “It was because of the Beast of Gargoyle Hall.”
“Ooh …” breathed Wanda, digging into the gummi bear packet. “The Beastly! We heard that last night.”
“You did?” Mathilda looked shocked.
Chief Detective Spook decided to ask a leading question before she had some more gummi bears. “Mathilda, what is the Beast of Gargoyle Hall?”
“Well … there is an old story that Gargoyle Hall was once haunted by a great black beast. But there had never been any sign of it until last term, when we began to hear the most horrible roars in the middle of the night. So I got a group of older girls together to track it down. It wasn’t easy to find.”
“Gersts rrrnt,” I said sympathetically.
“What?” said Mathilda.
I managed to prise my teeth apart from the gummi bears. “Ghosts aren’t easy to find,” I said. “I spent ages exploring Spook House before I found one.”
“So I heard,” said Mathilda. “Anyway, we spent quite a few nights searching and eventually we saw it in the distance, lurking at the end of a corridor. It was a huge black thing with lots of arms and a horrible big head. It scared the girls so much that many of them decided to leave.” Mathilda sighed. “So that didn’t turn out to be a very good idea.”
“Did the Vultures hunt the Beastly too?” Wanda asked.
For once I was pleased my sidekick was asking questions, because I had just discovered that if you eat a load of red gummi bears together, they are extra sticky.
“No, they didn’t,” said Mathilda. Which was what I expected her to say.
“So when did the Vultures arrive?” asked my surprisingly useful sidekick.
Mathilda sighed. “At the beginning of last term. I remember it well. Because I was head girl, I had breakfast with Miss Gargoyle in her study every Monday morning. Miss Gargoyle was so nice; she always wanted to know what was going on and how all the girls were doing. It was a really happy school and I used to tell Grannie that you and Wanda should go there. Grannie did try to get Aunt Tabby to send you but she wouldn’t. She said she lik
ed having you and Wanda at Spook House.”
I was amazed. Aunt Tabby never gave the slightest sign of liking me being at Spook House. Ever. But I couldn’t say anything because of the red gummi bears.
“Anyway,” said Mathilda, “we were just having our buttered toast when Matron bustled in and said that the two new girls had arrived. It was the Vultures. They came in to sign the school register and they stared at me and Miss Gargoyle like they hated us. I showed them to their room and when I came downstairs, Miss Gargoyle told me all about them. Their father—she called him the Bonkers Baron—owned Gargoyle Hall.
He wanted to turn it into a luxury leisure centre. So although Miss Gargoyle was pleased that he had sent his daughters because she thought it meant he had given up trying to close the school, she felt kind of worried too. ‘Mathilda, dear,’ she said, ‘something just doesn’t make sense.’
“After the Vultures arrived, the whole atmosphere of the school changed. They stirred up trouble between the older girls and they were horrible to the little ones. So what with the Vultures in the day and the Beast of Gargoyle Hall at night, girls began to leave. One weekend twenty parents arrived to take their daughters away and a whole load of teachers left too. It was awful; Miss Gargoyle was in floods of tears. Later I caught the Vultures laughing in the tuck shop.”
“What’s a tuck shop?” asked Wanda.
“It’s the school shop that sells gummi bears,” said Mathilda.
“Wow.” Wanda looked impressed.
“Anyway,” said Mathilda, “by the end of last term we were down to just me, a few girls and the Vultures. I had to leave because I was too old, so this term the school staggered on with just a few girls and the horrible Vultures—until yesterday morning when the last two girls left. Miss Gargoyle was in a terrible panic. She knew that if she didn’t find anyone else, then the next day the Bonkers Baron would get his horrible hands on Gargoyle Hall.”
“That is awful,” I said.
“Yes it is,” agreed Mathilda. “Which is why Grannie, who is Miss Gargoyle’s best friend, was desperate for you to come to the school. And she knew you would actually like the roars in the night and would not be scared.”
“Oh. I thought it was because Araminta was being bad,” said Wanda, sounding a bit disappointed.
“Well, Grannie had to make it seem like that because she was afraid Aunt Tabby wouldn’t let Araminta go.”
“Uncle Drac has a good word for what people are when they behave like that,” I said. “But I can’t remember what it is. It begins with a D.”
“Desperate?” said Mathilda.
“No,” I said. “Devious.”
Mathilda frowned. She didn’t seem to like that word. “Let’s get going,” she said. “There’s no point hanging around here.”
But I had a question to ask my Number-One-Witness. “Mathilda,” I said, “did anyone hear the Beast of Gargoyle Hall before the Vultures arrived?”
“No.”
“Thank you. No further questions.”
Mathilda gave me a half-smile that reminded me of Aunt Tabby. “Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “Get in, Araminta, and let’s get out of here.”
One of the things you have to do when you are Chief Detective is to think fast, which is what I was doing right then. Another thing you have to do is have a really good plan and suddenly, I knew I had one. I took out the red hanky that Sir Horace had given me and passed it to Mathilda.
She looked puzzled. “What’s that for?”
“It’s for Sir Horace,” I said. “It’s a message to him that I need help. I think it would be a really good idea if you go back to Spook House and ask Sir Horace to let us have Fang. Fang will scare the Vultures away. Then we can free Miss Gargoyle and get all the nice girls back to the school.”
“You have forgotten about the Beast of Gargoyle Hall,” Mathilda said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“You think the Vultures brought the Beastly with them, don’t you Araminta?” my sidekick piped up. “You think it’s their pet and when they go, the Beastly will go too.”
“No, Wanda,” I said. “I do not think that at all.”
What I did not tell Wanda was that actually, I had a hunch that the Vultures were definitely involved with the Beast, but I wasn’t going to tell her about it yet. I needed to do a bit more thinking first. All good detectives have a hunch now and then. This is not like a camel with a bump or anything like that. It is a feeling that you know the solution to a Mystery, even if you do not have any proof. And because of my hunch, the Vultures were my Prime Suspects in the Mystery of the Beast of Gargoyle Hall—and Prime Suspects are the most suspicious suspects of all.
“Well, that’s what I think,” said my know-it-all sidekick. “I think a Beastly is just the kind of pet those horrible Vultures would have.”
“We shall just have to find out, won’t we?” I said. “And Fang is just the ghost to do it. He is a hunting dog and he will hunt out the Beast of Gargoyle Hall in no time at all.”
I could see that Mathilda was thinking hard. “Actually, that is not a bad idea,” she said. “All right, then, I’ll go and fetch him now. You two lie low until I get back with Fang.”
“I’m not lying low in that grass,” said Wanda. “It stings.”
“I’ll drop you off at the porter’s lodge by the gate,” Mathilda said. “The porter left last term too after the Beast broke his windows one night. You’ll be safe there and out of the way of the Vultures. I’ll pick you up when I get back.”
“We’ll make our own way there, thanks, Mathilda,” I said. “We have things to do here first. Come on, Wanda. Hurry up and get out.”
Wanda got out of the sidecar very, very slowly, like I was making her do something she didn’t want to do. “What things do we have to do?” she asked suspiciously.
I did not answer. A Chief Detective does not have to tell her sidekick everything.
Mathilda fished around in her pocket and brought out a bag of pink shrimps. “Here, have these while you’re waiting,” she said. “I’ll be a while.”
I love pink shrimps. “Thank you,” I said.
Mathilda pulled her goggles down so that she looked like a weird insect. “Keep out of the way of the Vultures, OK?” she said. Then she shoved her foot down on the kick-start of the motorbike and it roared even louder than the Beast of Gargoyle Hall. Wanda put her fingers in her ears and we watched Mathilda’s amazing motorbike zoom off down the lane in a cloud of dust.
I felt sad to see it go. But when a Chief Detective is on an important case, she cannot go racing around the countryside in a motorbike sidecar, however much she might want to. “Come on, Wanda,” I said. “We have a headmistress to rescue.”
We crept back up the garden, then we tiptoed along the path at the back of the school, ducking down below the windows. When we got to Miss Gargoyle’s window, I very slowly stood up until I could see into the study. The HELP sign was lying on the floor and Miss Gargoyle was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands. She didn’t see me and I ducked back down.
“What did you see, Araminta?” hissed Miss Nosy-Bucket.
“Shush,” I whispered. “Come on, let’s go.”
We came to a side door. I tried the handle and it opened. A moment later we were in a gloomy, narrow corridor painted the kind of brown that Aunt Tabby likes and smelling of the kind of cabbage that Aunt Tabby cooks. It felt just like home.
“Araminta, what are we doing?” Wanda whispered.
“Like I said, Wanda. We are going to rescue Miss Gargoyle.”
“But the Vultures are guarding her.”
“So you will have to lure them away.”
“Me?” Wanda gasped.
“Yes. Then I will undo the bolt and let Miss Gargoyle out.”
“But that’s not fair,” said Wanda in the moany voice that Brenda is always telling her off about. “I want to undo the bolt and let Miss Gargoyle out.”
“Well, you can’t. Because y
ou won’t be there.”
“Where will I be?” Wanda asked suspiciously.
I did not want to tell Wanda that she would be running away from the Vultures dressed as a pink rabbit. I thought it best to break that to her gently.
“No, Araminta. No, no, no!”
We were in our little cabin in the attic and I was holding up the pink rabbit costume. “Shush,” I hissed. “They’ll hear you!”
“I don’t care,” Wanda whispered—so I knew she did care, otherwise she would not have whispered. “I am not, repeat not, putting on my pink rabbit costume and calling the Vultures rude names so that they chase me. No way.”
“You don’t have to do rude names if you don’t want to,” I said. “You can just jump up and down in front of them and waggle your ears or something and then run away. They are bound to chase you.”
“But I don’t want them to chase me.”
I sighed. “But that is the whole point of the plan. The Vultures have to chase you so that I can let Miss Gargoyle out.”
“Why can’t you wear the rabbit costume and I will let Miss Gargoyle out?” Wanda asked.
“Because you said that you would never, ever, ever in a million years let me wear your rabbit costume,” I said. “And I would not want you to break your word.”
“But—”
“Besides, you’re too short to reach the bolt.”
Ten minutes later I was creeping down the back stairs with a pink rabbit. It did not look happy. Its ears had been squashed in the trunk and they now hung down limply. At the foot of the stairs we tiptoed along the gloomy back corridor and stopped outside the cellar door. The key was still sticking out of the lock. I very quietly unlocked the door, took out the key and gave it to the pink rabbit. “Remember,” I whispered, “all you have to do is hop along to Miss Gargoyle’s door, jump up and down a bit and when the Vultures start chasing you, you run into the cellar and lock the door. Then you can get out the way we did with Mathilda. OK?”
