To maintain the impression that she did in fact belong to the place, Samantha walked round the outside of the Park nearly every evening. She was bound to meet the keeper on one of these perambulations, and she did, but she was not trespassing, so he did not attempt to loose his dogs, who looked quite amicable on their leashes, walking beside him.
Samantha did not expect the keeper to stop and talk to her, unless he meant to tick her off, and she was walking past with her head in the air when to her surprise he said to her:
‘How’s your auntie then?’
Samantha stopped and stared. The keeper was much more likely to know the state of Lady Clandorris’s health than she was herself.
‘She’s all right!’ she said haughtily, not wishing to start a conversation with the keeper. They went their different ways.
A few days later she met him again.
‘Where’s your auntie?’ he asked her this time.
Samantha was unprepared for this.
‘I don’t know!’ she said defensively.
‘You don’t know?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t live at the Park any more then? I never did think you belonged to her. She’s not your real auntie, is she?’
‘She is my real auntie, and I do belong to the Park!’ Samantha said indignantly. ‘I’m just staying with the Prices at present, that’s all!’
‘Oh you are, are you?’ said the gamekeeper. ‘Well, it’s over a week since I saw your auntie and she owes me three weeks’ wages.’
Samantha looked supercilious.
‘Well I can’t do anything about that, can I?’ she said. ‘I expect she will come back and pay you tomorrow.’
‘She’d better, or she’ll lose I,’ said the keeper angrily. He walked away grumbling.
Samantha wondered whether she would walk back across the Park, under the very window of the house, and then decided against it. Her Aunt Daisy might be there all the time, with a cold or something, and Samantha did not want to be routed for a second time, or she might even say, for a third.
But Ozzy Wallace told her in the morning that the milk bottles had not been taken in for several days.
‘My dad says she has done it before,’ Ozzy said. ‘Just gone away and never told him, and made ever such a fuss when she came back and found all that milk had gone bad.’
‘Tell him not to leave any more!’ said Samantha. ‘Tell him I said so!’
Ozzy’s father left no more milk, but he called at the Park in the mornings just in case there was an order. The order never came, and no empty milk bottles were put outside. He took the sour milk bottles away again.
‘My dad says you ought to go up to the Park and see about your auntie!’ Ozzy Wallace told Samantha. ‘He’s knocked and knocked and knocked, and nobody comes, and he went round the back and saw her ladyship’s car in the garage. He thinks she may be ill.’
For caution’s sake Samantha went round the Park to tell the keeper of Mr Wallace’s suspicions. But the keeper was loading all his furniture on a van and leaving that very night.
‘Four week’s wages she owes me now!’ he told Samantha. ‘I’m not stopping. She did it once before, and I told her next time would be the last.’
‘Mr Wallace the milkman thinks she may be ill,’ said Samantha.
‘Then you’d better fetch an ambulance,’ said the keeper unsympathetically. He whistled his dogs into the back of the van and drove away.
Samantha felt very deserted and almost helpless. She did not like the keeper but he was a part of the Park and a link with her aunt, Lady Clandorris. She really did not know what to do next.
Reluctantly she left the keeper’s cottage and entered the back gates of the Park. She began to walk slowly towards the house.
It had always been the quietest and most deserted house she had ever known, so it was not surprising that there should be no sign of life anywhere around it. And it felt more empty than she had ever known it to feel, even before she went inside it. In fact the memories of her last visit were still so vivid that it took all her courage to mount the steps and knock on the front door, after she had walked round the outside of the house two or three times, half dreading and half hoping to see her aunt’s head come popping out of one of the upstairs windows. She would not even had objected to dodging a bucket of disinfectant as a proof of Lady Clandorris being alive and healthy.
But when absolutely nothing happened, and no reply came from her knocking, she gave the door a push, and found that it was not locked but opened quite easily. Samantha entered a completely empty hall.
No crumpets today. No glowing fire in the grate. Only the pheasant feather hat was there as before, lying on a chair. It looked as if it had lain there for years and years.
‘So she’s not out!’ thought Samantha, with a shiver of apprehension. She waited and listened. There was no sound in the house at all.
Slowly it came to her that perhaps Ozzy’s father had been right. Aunt Daisy might be lying upstairs ill! Ill and helpless, unable to make anyone hear her … why! she might have been lying there for days!
And as this possibility grew larger and more likely the thought came into Samantha’s mind that here, perhaps was her opportunity at last! Now, after long weeks, Lady Clandorris would at last be pleased – thankful – to see her only niece arrived to save her, and Samantha would forgive all and nurse her back to life. Fantastic pictures began to spin in Samantha’s brain as she imagined Aunt Daisy convalescent, leaning on her shoulder for support, fumbling her way about the Park with a stick, and telling her niece that from now on they must always make their home together.
And thinking these beautiful thoughts Samantha began very slowly to climb the stairs.
14. Alone in the House
Halfway up the stairs the dream vanished, while a much more sinister vision took its place.
Suppose Aunt Daisy were not ill but –dead?
Samantha came to a sudden halt. She felt she simply could not face finding a dead person all by herself. She decided to go home and fetch the Prices.
But as she turned to descend she stopped again. Because if Lady Clandorris were not dead but very, very ill there was no time to be lost, and she ought to fetch a doctor as quickly as possible. Slowly she began to creep back up the stairs.
On the landing she stopped, listening for a groan. None came. There was no sound in the house except for Samantha’s nervous breathing.
She was so anxious now that she ventured to call: ‘Aunt Daisy!’ almost under her breath, and then a little louder. It sounded like a shout in the dreadful silence. There was no answer.
Terrified now, Samantha moved on towards Lady Clandorris’s bedroom door, dragging her feet and clinging to the wall with both hands as if it could shelter her. It seemed a mile and a half along the corridor to Aunt Daisy’s bedroom, and when she got there the door was shut.
Samantha’s fingers closed round the chipped china handle. She almost longed to find it locked, but it turned, creaking, as almost everything creaked in the old house when it was interfered with. She stood holding the door an eighth of an inch ajar, and not daring to look inside.
But having gone so far the job had to be finished, so opening the door a fraction wider, Samantha put her eye to the chink and peered inside the bedroom.
The complete emptiness of the bedroom surged out to meet her. It was almost like having a slap in the face. Slowly Samantha went inside to meet it.
There was nobody there at all. The bed was made, Aunt Daisy’s worn hairbrush lay on the dressing table. Her coat was on the back of a chair, and her tattered dressing gown hung on a peg. On one side of the cracked looking glass dangled her bunch of keys. But of Lady Clandorris there was not a sign.
‘She has gone away!’ thought Samantha in relief. And then she thought of the car in the garage, of the hat in the hall, and of Aunt Daisy’s coat, hanging here on a peg under her very eyes. Where would she go without her hat, her coat, her car and her bunch of keys? Perhaps she has been taken ill s
omewhere else in the house, thought Samantha. She went upstairs to the landing above, where her old, empty bedroom received her coldly.
Nowhere was there any sign of her aunt. She explored the house from top to bottom, and then, feeling that here was a mystery too big for her to tackle alone, she went back to tell the Prices.
Deborah, Jeff and Timothy received the news with incredulity. When they were certain that Samantha was not telling them some imaginary story they wanted to set out for the Park at once, to see for themselves this remarkable act of disappearance. They were all certain that Samantha must have overlooked some vital clue that would tell them exactly where Lady Clandorris was.
They agreed not to tell their parents for the moment. In next to no time the police would be involved, besides which Deborah, Jeff and Timothy longed for the delicious privilege of exploring the house again from top to bottom, without fear of the keeper, and with the very real prospect of unravelling a mystery.
They were not quite so brave when they arrived at the Park, but the open front door, the immense quiet and Samantha’s confidence drew them on. They went from room to room, even looking inside the cupboards, ‘In case she has been murdered!’ said Jeff with determination. Their courage rose as it became quite obvious that they had the house to themselves. Tim searched the herb garden, which looked quite different by evening light, and not at all alarming. But Lady Clandorris was not to be found among the herbs, although they searched every inch of the little patch where they had previously hidden.
There was a half-eaten meal on the kitchen table, but as Lady Clandorris seldom cleared up after herself, sometimes leaving her dirty plates about for days, Samantha did not think this was very peculiar or unusual. Neither did the untidiness of the store cupboard shock her, though the contents were spilling all over the shelves. But Lady Clandorris never put anything neatly away.
Samantha had looked inside the cellar, but now she looked again, with the Prices to support her. They all climbed down the steps into the damp, dark room that gave entry to the big drain that had once been used by the bogwoppits.
The last time she had visited it the drain shaft had smelled strongly of disinfectant, but now that particular smell was quite gone, and the earthy, marshy boggy odour was once more apparent.
‘Pooh! The bogwoppits don’t half pong!’ said Timothy. ‘And all that way off too! The marsh pool must be miles away, and so is my dad’s grid.’
‘He locked it!’ said Jeff. ‘So they can’t get up here any more, but they do pong all right!’
Close to the entrance to the drain shaft were two full buckets of disinfectant standing ready for use. Samantha carried them up the steps and emptied them down the sink. When she returned with the empty buckets the twins were peering into the old drain.
‘It’s like a secret passage!’ they said. ‘Shall we go down and look at the grid our Dad made?’
‘It’s filthy dirty!’ said Deborah. ‘You’ll catch it from Mum if you go down there. She said your shirts had got to see tomorrow out, and you’ll only get all mucky down that place. I’m not going!’
‘I would if I had a torch!’ said Jeff.
‘We ought to go home,’ said Deborah.
‘I’m not going home!’ said Samantha. She never knew what suddenly made her so brave. ‘If my aunt is away there ought to be somebody looking after the place while she’s gone. I belong to it and I’m going to stay here.’
She actually felt a responsibility for the big old empty house, and the thought of being in complete charge of it made her forget the long, dark lonely hours ahead. She had never been afraid of the house itself, only of Lady Clandorris and her rages.
‘I’ll stay with you!’ Jeff said at once.
Deborah looked doubtful.
‘What shall I tell Mum and Dad?’ she said.
‘Say me and Sam are staying the night at the Park!’ Jeff retorted.
‘They’ll ask ever such a lot of questions!’ said Deborah.
‘You go home then!’ Samantha told him. ‘It won’t look so funny if I stay alone. You come up in the morning. There’s no school. We can spend the weekend here. You can say I stayed to see my auntie come home!’
Reluctantly the Prices left her.
Samantha felt proud and independent. It was such a long time since she had been alone by herself anywhere, and the solitude was quite a relief. She went into the pianola room and began to play all her favourite tunes one after the other.
When she returned to the hall it smelled of bogwoppits.
‘Ugh!’ said Samantha aloud. The Prices had left the cellar door open. When she went to shut it the cellar steps seemed very damp. ‘I hope there isn’t going to be a flood!’ thought Samantha.
She went to the store cupboard to find some food for herself, and discovered that the shelves were nearly empty. This was peculiar because Lady Clandorris always kept her shelves so well stocked that there was enough food to last her a lifetime, Samantha had considered in the days when she was a visitor at the Park. And now nearly all the food was gone.
Her first suspicions fell on the gamekeeper. Perhaps he knew all the time that Lady Clandorris was not in the house, and had stolen the food in place of the wages she owed him? But Samantha had seen the inside of the van when he left his cottage, and there had been no sign of the stacks and stacks of tins and boxes he would have had to take with him if he had robbed Lady Clandorris’s cupboards.
Whoever the robber might be, he had taken advantage of Lady Clandorris’s disappearance to help himself, and suddenly Samantha began to feel less confident. A moment ago the empty house seemed to belong to her, and to herself alone, but now there was the possibility of sharing it with a burglar, and this was not at all a pleasant thought. She turned from the cupboard trembling, and almost screamed aloud as something moved in the shadow behind her.
Something was crouching in the arch of the entrance to the great drain, and it now emerged, looking at her defiantly, and, she thought, with malice. It was followed by another shadow, and yet another.
Three, four, five bogwoppits marched out of the drain, slopping with wet feet across the cellar floor to the store cupboard.
Infinitely relieved that it was only bogwoppits and nothing human, Samantha held out her arms to them, but the little creatures ignored her. Each in turn spread its wings and made its whirring ascent to the shelves above its head. With eager wing and claw it took possession of the remaining provisions. Then each bogwoppit dropped to the floor, and pushed, rolled and chivvied its booty into the entrance of the drain, before trundling it out of sight into the darkness beyond.
When she realized what was happening Samantha sprang to protect her Aunt Daisy’s property. She was horrified by the barefaced pilfering, on such a gigantic scale, by the bogwoppits. They must have been at it for days. And how had they penetrated Mr Price’s grid? He had been so convinced it was ‘rat-proof’, and strong enough to resist them. But bogwoppits penetrate anything.
Samantha rushed upstairs to fetch the store cupboard key from her Aunt Daisy’s bedroom, but it was gone. There were only the car keys left, and the big key that locked the front door. But there were a great many muddy footprints round the room, and some of them were on the bed.
When she returned to the kitchen a second lot of bogwoppits had arrived. They were more determined – if anything – than the last.
‘You can’t do that! You mustn’t take things away!’ Samantha cried, standing in front of the cupboard with her arms spread wide to prevent them from reaching the shelves. ‘You must leave her some food! You can’t steal just everything!’
The bogwoppits reply was to rush past her towards the cupboard. In a moment Samantha was the centre of flailing wings and wet, scratching feet. She pushed them away but she was no match for such an army of them. They simply knocked her down and helped themselves to what they wanted. When they had emptied the shelves of the remaining stores, they bundled them away, whistling and hooting impishly at her as t
hey vanished into the drain. Samantha might never have existed for them. She could hear them singing for a long time, and then, far off down the tunnel something clanged dully, like a gate.
‘It must be Mr Price’s grid, and they’ve got the key!’ thought Samantha, looking at the completely empty cupboards and the bogwoppits’ dirty footmarks trailing across the cellar floor.
Suddenly with all her heart and soul she detested bogwoppits.
15. A Question of a Ransom
Samantha closed and bolted the door to the cellar.
She was on the point of abandoning the house and going back to the Prices, but a feeling stronger than her fear and distaste prevented her from leaving. It was an odd kind of loyalty to the Park, and an unwillingness to leave it to be overrun and pillaged by the little monsters belonging to the underworld of the drains below. She walked as far as the front door, and then quite firmly shut and locked it, before walking calmly upstairs to her bedroom on the second floor. The bric-a-brac and pieces of furniture she had selected to live with greeted her like old friends.
Unashamedly she pulled a chest of drawers across the door and went to bed. She did not hear a sound the whole night long.
In the morning the cellar was dry and deserted, but Samantha was running no risks. She filled the buckets with a new mixture of disinfectant and stood them on either side of the entrance to the old drain. And just for good measure she slopped a little on the ground and watched it trickle away into the darkness – not enough to travel far, but she hoped it would convey a positive message.
Instead, as she sat down to eat the only food left in the house, a half bowl of stale cereals without milk or sugar, a pitiful sound arose in the cellar below, a mewing and a sobbing and a wailing that was so familiar she did not hesitate to thrust the cereal aside as she rushed down the cellar stairs to meet it.
Bogwoppit Page 9
