by Anna Dale
It took them twenty minutes of scrutinising spines to find it.
‘Right,’ said Arthur, handing Miss Quint a yellow jacketless book. ‘Here you are. You take that and I’ll watch Nurse Thingamy to see if she disappears.’ He sought out the ugliest old lady in the room, who was dressed from head to toe in black.
‘Poor Susan!’ he said, distracted by the sight of his fellow washer-up passing behind the old woman, her arms supporting a heavy tray. ‘She’s still handing out cups of tea.’
‘I hereby solemnly declare,’ Miss Quint asserted in a sing-song voice, keeping to one constant note as if she were chanting a canticle in church, ‘that I really do ever so regret wishing that this lady, Nurse Matilda, would pop out of this book and be a real human and I’d be for ever in your debt, not to mention eternally grateful –’
‘That’s grovelling,’ Arthur interrupted. ‘I shouldn’t think the magic would be too impressed by that.’
‘All right, then,’ said Miss Quint tetchily, reverting to her normal way of speaking. ‘I’d be obliged if your good self . . . selves . . . whatever you are . . . could grant me another wish and put this Nurse Matilda person back where she came from.’
Miss Quint removed her finger from the page she had chosen with a triumphant gesture. ‘How was that?’ she asked.
‘A bit long-winded,’ said Arthur bluntly. ‘We’ve got thirty-eight more to go.’
‘Thirty-nine,’ said Miss Quint, correcting him. ‘You’ve forgotten Susan.’
Arthur grunted. ‘Does she seem a bit paler to you?’
‘Who, Susan?’ asked Miss Quint. ‘I wouldn’t have said so. She seems to have caught the sun today. Her nose has gone all freckly.’
‘Miss Quint, I wasn’t referring to Susan,’ said Arthur, suddenly feeling weary. ‘I meant the nurse.’
Stretching her neck, Miss Quint looked over to where Nurse Matilda was lecturing an elderly bearded clergyman who had laid claim to one of the wing chairs. Every now and then the nurse dug the old man in the ribs with her stick to ensure that he stayed awake. ‘Well, bless me!’ exclaimed Miss Quint. ‘I do believe she’s gone grey around the edges!’
Miss Quint and Arthur grinned at each other and watched to see what would happen next.
Her jaw continuing to exercise itself, Nurse Matilda slowly ebbed away, fading into nothingness like a dawn mist. The clergyman’s head fell forward on to his chest and remained there. No stick jabbed him between his ribs to interrupt his nap because Nurse Matilda had dematerialised.
‘Job done!’ said Arthur. ‘Well, nearly.’ He gazed around the shop, his eyes flitting from person to person. They would all have to be dealt with in the same laborious way. The enormity of the task ahead was daunting, but Arthur felt upbeat. ‘What’s the next book we’ve got to look for, Miss Quint?’ he asked.
It went quite well to begin with. Fifteen guests were removed from the shop without any hitches. All of them took their leave gradually, like aspirins dissolving in water. The other guests were untroubled by their departure and assumed that their acquaintances had gone outside for a breath of air or upstairs to use the lavatory.
At half past six, Arthur made a phone call home and asked his mother if he might be allowed to sleep over at his friend’s house that evening. With six children to look after, a cockatiel, two guinea pigs and an axolotl, not to mention a scatterbrained husband, Arthur’s mum could not be expected to remember the names of all of her children’s friends. She expressed no surprise when Arthur told her that his playmate was called Susan.
‘Susan? Fine, but you’ll have to pop home for your pyjamas and your toothbrush,’ she told him.
Things started to go awry when Arthur left to collect his night things. He had brought his bicycle and was not away for long, but winds can change in an instant and large clusters of magic are just as fickle. With Scallywag asleep on a rug by the fireplace, Susan dozing on the bottom stair (worn out from her tea-making duties) and Trunk still refusing to come out from behind his flowerpot, Miss Quint was left to cope alone.
She had her first inkling that the magic was starting to misbehave when a ballet dancer vanished with a bang. Up until that moment, every character had evanesced gently, over a period of minutes, but the instant that Miss Quint wished for the dancer to disappear, there was an ear-splitting crack, the ballet dancer was engulfed by smoke and when it had cleared there was nothing left of her. The other guests did not react well to this event. Everyone threw up their hands in surprise, most of the ladies screamed and the gentlemen – depending on their upbringing – said ‘Yikes!’ or ‘Cor blimey!’ or ‘What the dickens was that?’ All over the shop there was the sound of breaking china as dropped teacups and saucers shattered on the floor. Susan ran to fetch a brush and dustpan, Scallywag dashed upstairs after her, and Miss Quint hid and dithered, not knowing what to do.
After about a minute and a half an idea came to her. ‘Marvellous!’ declared Miss Quint, striding into the frightened crowd. ‘Excellent! Superb! What an amazing stunt!’ Expecting the others to believe that the ballet dancer’s sudden disappearance had been some kind of spectacular trick was wildly optimistic and, at first, they stared at her as if she were mad. Refusing to abandon her plan, Miss Quint kept up the pretence, and slowly the crowd began to relax and smile and join her in remarking upon the wondrous nature of the ballet dancer’s feat. Soon they had separated into little groups and resumed their former conversations.
A little while later, when Miss Quint had picked the next person to unwish and had the right book open in her hands, she paused, afraid that the same alarming exit would befall this person too. She weighed this fear against the knowledge that she could not afford to dilly-dally. There were still around twenty guests to evict from the bookshop and if she did not get on with the job she would find herself unwishing people into the early hours.
Taking a deep breath, she put her finger on the character’s name and pleaded with the magic to do as she asked. ‘And I’d rather you did it without all that razzmatazz this time.’
The magic outdid itself, but not in the way that Miss Quint had hoped.
Instead of getting fainter, the character that she had unwished (a cook with an apron tied round her waist) grew fatter. The unfortunate woman swelled to three times her normal size, and the squeals and exclamations of those watching her were matched in volume by the zinging sounds as the buttons on the woman’s dress detached themselves and shot across the room. A lone drawing pin emerged from its carton and began to encircle her like a fly. She flapped at it with her podgy hands, but it zigzagged out of reach. It hovered in mid-air, then with a rapid dive it struck, puncturing the cook and making her pop like a balloon. The drawing pin dropped to the floor. Nothing of the cook remained.
Pandemonium followed. A group of ladies cowered in a corner and there was screaming and shouting and lots of running to and fro. Miss Quint’s attempts to calm everyone merely made things worse and, grouping themselves together, the bulk of the guests made a rush for the door.
Fortunately, Arthur arrived back just at that crucial moment.
‘Stop them, Arthur!’ cried Miss Quint. ‘Bar their way! Pull the bolts across!’ She steamed towards him in a frightful panic. ‘Whatever you do, don’t let them escape!’
.
Chapter Ten
Meddling and Muddling
In an agitated state, Miss Quint lobbed the door key at Arthur. It sailed over the heads of the stampeding guests and, timing his jump to perfection, Arthur snatched it out of the air. He turned round quickly and locked the door, then slipped the key into his pocket before the others could do anything about it.
‘Boy, give up that key and stand aside!’ the MP for North Lonsdale bellowed pompously. ‘A policeman must be summoned at once. Betsy the cook has been murdered!’
‘Right in front of our ey
es!’ said the parlour maid, clutching the MP’s arm and trembling. ‘It were ’orrible.’
‘’Twas not an honourable death,’ said the knight, sounding aggrieved. He curled his gauntleted fist and placed it over his heart. ‘Betsy deserved a bloodthirstier end. I myself desire to have my gizzards slashed open and my eyes gouged from my head.’
‘Gross!’ muttered Arthur.
Everyone thought that the knight’s comments were in poor taste and it was agreed that in future he should keep his ideas about noble ways to die to himself.
‘The key, you insolent upstart!’ roared the MP impatiently. ‘I demand that you hand it to me this instant. If you refuse, I shall have no choice but to search your person.’
‘Alas! If only I had my sword,’ bemoaned the knight, slapping his empty scabbard and cursing in Old English. ‘I would smite this young churl’s head from his shoulders with one blow –’
‘That’s enough of that sort of talk!’ interrupted Miss Quint, appalled by the threats, which were being levelled at Arthur, who was only a schoolboy after all. She elbowed her way through the unfriendly mob. ‘Leave the boy alone!’ she yelled. ‘There’ll be no smiting of heads or searching of persons or running to the cops for that matter. You’ve all got your facts wrong. There hasn’t been any murder! Your friend Betsy the cook is as right as rain.’ Miss Quint waved the dog-eared paperback book in her hand. ‘Betsy isn’t dead. She’s just been returned to her story!’
Miss Quint’s explanation did not seem to convince the outraged crowd, who were growing more restless by the minute. None of them seemed to recall that they were characters, borne out of the imaginations of authors. They refused to believe that any of their number belonged between the pages of books, and stuck steadfastly to their theory that the cook had been done in.
‘Betsy blew up and exploded. We all saw her,’ piped up the bootblack.
‘She did what?’ said Arthur. ‘What’s been going on, Miss Quint?’
‘It’s the magic,’ whispered Miss Quint, squeezing past the final few guests and reaching Arthur’s side at last. ‘It hasn’t been toeing the line. Things have been getting out of hand.’ She told him what had happened to the ballet dancer and then described the sequence of events, which had led to the bursting of Betsy.
‘Crikey!’ Arthur said. ‘We’re in a bit of a fix.’
Miss Quint chewed her lip worriedly. ‘I daren’t unwish another one. This lot will go berserk.’
With his back pressed against the door and a small army of angry, fearful people advancing towards him, Arthur decided that he needed to take action.
‘They’re really ticked off,’ he said to Miss Quint. ‘I’d better do something or this could get nasty.’ In an appeasing gesture, he raised his hands above his head and asked them to listen to what he had to say.
‘OK, I believe you,’ Arthur told them. ‘Something upsetting has happened to Betsy. You’re right. We should get the police involved. I’ll phone them now. Everyone stay calm.’ Arthur edged past the hostile crowd and hurried over to where the telephone rested on the desk. He picked up the handset and, holding down the button switch, he cut off the dialling tone and spoke to a dead line.
‘Is that the police station?’ Arthur said to nobody. ‘Hello, this is Arthur Goodenough here. I’d like to report a murder, please. I’m calling from the bookshop on Meadow Street. You’ll come immediately, won’t you? Thank you very much.’ Pretending to look relieved, he put down the receiver and smiled at the crowd, who were on tenterhooks. ‘The Plumford Police Force are on their way,’ he said.
Ignoring the clapping and cheering that greeted his announcement, Arthur dashed to join Miss Quint by the door. He got to her in the nick of time. Her face had been paralysed by shock and she was swaying unstably as if she were about to faint. ‘Miss Quint!’ whispered Arthur, putting an arm out to steady her. ‘Don’t panic! The police aren’t really coming. It was all a bluff.’
By now, Arthur and Miss Quint were getting used to dealing with sticky situations. They stood in a conspiratorial huddle beside a display of cricketing books and talked in hushed voices.
‘It’s a shame we can’t unwish them all in one go,’ lamented Miss Quint, anxiously shifting her weight from one high heel to the other.
‘Hey! I think you’ve got something there,’ said Arthur. ‘Why don’t we split them into groups? We could put the groups in different rooms and call them in here when we’re ready for them. I reckon we could manage to unwish three or four people at once. That way, no one would see any funny disappearances and get worked up.’
Miss Quint gave an awestruck gasp and patted Arthur’s shoulder. ‘First-class idea,’ she said. ‘That would certainly speed things along.’
Arthur nodded. ‘They’re expecting the police to arrive, don’t forget. It’s important that we get rid of these people quickly. If we take too long they might get suspicious. The only problem is I can’t think how to persuade them to split up.’
‘Parlour games!’ Miss Quint cried out exultantly.
‘Huh?’ said Arthur.
Reaching behind his head, Miss Quint plucked a book from the shelf and grinned at him. The book was called Popular Parlour Games. She turned to its index, and ran down it with her finger. ‘Blind man’s buff, charades, postman’s knock, hunt the thimble . . . This should keep them busy. We could put Susan in charge.’
Arthur was doubtful. ‘Do you think they’re in the right sort of mood to want to play games?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes!’ Miss Quint waved a dismissive hand. ‘We could tell them that it’ll keep their minds off Betsy until the police get here. They’ll go for it. I know they will. We could even have a beetle drive. Who can resist one of those?’
‘Er . . . I’m not even sure what one is,’ said Arthur, scratching his head. He peered warily over his shoulder. Miss Quint’s voice was getting very loud and squeaky. In his opinion, she was becoming overexcited.
‘Don’t worry, Arthur. Leave it to me,’ said Miss Quint. She tweaked his nose. Then, clutching the book, she bustled off, calling out Susan’s name. ‘Where are you, cherub?’ she cried. ‘I’ve got a little project that I want you to help me with!’
Much to Arthur’s astonishment, the guests did not object when Miss Quint asked for their attention and explained to them why she thought it might be a good idea if everyone joined in some games. Perched on a pile of old musical scores, Susan had her nose in Popular Parlour Games while Miss Quint delivered her spiel. There was a slight interval while the guests decided which groups they wanted to be in. When they had made up their minds, Miss Quint stepped behind Susan and gripped her shoulders.
‘This is Susan, everyone,’ said Miss Quint. ‘She’ll be supervising your games while my young friend, Arthur, and I will be preparing a special treat for you.’
Having been briefed on her task, and with the copy of Popular Parlour Games wedged under her arm, Susan took each of the six groups to their allotted rooms and explained the rules of the games that Miss Quint had selected from the book. It had been decided that Susan should flit from room to room to check that everyone had enough paper and pens and that they were all obeying the rules. From the ripples of laughter, which could be heard throughout the house, the games seemed to be providing light relief.
The first four groups were summoned, one by one, to the shop floor and, working as an effective team, Miss Quint and Arthur sent them back to their books with a minimum of fuss.
The fifth group to be unwished contained the knight. Miss Quint was glad to be seeing the back of him, as he had shown himself to be hot-headed and reckless. Having watched the knight participate in a game of beetle, Susan had reported that he was a terrible cheat as well.
The knight and his two companions lined up in front of Arthur and Miss Quint, expecting to be rewarded with a treat. Arthur had two books open
ed in front of him and Miss Quint held A Tale of Derring-do: the book in which the knight’s story was told. Placing their forefingers on each of the character’s names, Arthur and Miss Quint wished them back into their stories. Magic achieved this by spinning them like tops while they faded into nothingness.
Feeling a strange tingling in her palms, Miss Quint glanced down and saw A Tale of Derring-do reducing in size until it was only a few pages thick. ‘Oh, dear!’ she said as the reason for this new compact version dawned on her. ‘We sent the knight back without his sword.’ She turned to the last page and her face crumpled in revulsion.
‘Let’s see!’ said Arthur, pawing at the final page.
‘No!’ Miss Quint told him sharply. She slapped his hand and slammed the book shut. ‘It’s not the sort of thing your mother would want you to read. Let’s just say the knight got what he wanted.’
‘Ohhh,’ said Arthur in a drawn-out breath. ‘You mean his gizzards and – eugh! – his eyeballs . . .’
‘I don’t wish to discuss it,’ said Miss Quint. ‘Call the last group, please.’
When it came to the sixth and final group a problem arose. Miss Quint and Arthur could not find the books that they needed, even though they hunted on every shelf and in every corner of the shop.
‘Oh, never mind,’ said Miss Quint tiredly, sending the people away again. ‘We’ll move on to Susan, shall we? Well, that’s a funny thing,’ she said, her hand hovering above a column of books. ‘I’m sure I put Susan’s book on top of these others.’ Arthur and Miss Quint searched and searched, but finally they were forced to admit that they could not find Susan’s book, High Jinks, either.
By nine o’clock the three remaining guests had played so many games of Consequences that they were heartily sick of it. Susan brought them downstairs, where they confronted Miss Quint and asked her where the police force had got to.
‘Oh, the police have been and gone,’ Miss Quint told them casually. ‘They dusted for fingerprints and cordoned off the crime scene . . . and . . . and then they un-cordoned it, because they’d solved the murder and they’ve gone now, so everything’s done with. Nothing to worry about at all.’
