by Alex Shearer
‘Oh, what a fine young lady this girl is,’ she exclaimed. ‘What pluck, what courage, what character, what determination! This is the sort of girl the suffragette movement needs. A few more like her and all the barriers of discrimination will just crumble away!’
There was a bit of an embarrassed silence after that. Mr Copperstone didn’t say as much, but he plainly did not approve of these outbursts. And yet he did not wish to reprimand Miss Rolly, especially not in front of others. For he regarded her as a valuable member of the team, and would not ever wish to demean or to lose her. Also, he was a little frightened of her.
‘Yes, well, anyway … ’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘If, em . . . you’d like to … to take your leg away, Tim.’
‘Of course. Thanks. Sorry for any inconvenience.’
‘Not at all. And as for the kipper … ’
‘It’s probably not good for much by now,’ Thruppence said. ‘I’ll take it away and bin it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ll get down to the library then, and have another look at Grimes and Natterly’s Manual of Ghost Hunting. See if there’s anything else we can try.’
‘Please avail yourselves of anything there,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘Might I also recommend Snodge and Bickerstuff’s Encyclopedia of Spooks. You’ll find it on the shelves there. It also has a few pages on ghost hunting, and is especially strong on haunted houses and how to get a mortgage on one.’
‘We’ll take a look at everything, thanks. Coming, Tim?’
‘Just getting my leg.’
So Tim took his leg, and Thruppence retrieved her kipper, and down to the library they went.
They spent an hour or more poring through the books there, jotting down recommended methods for the finding, the luring and the capture of ghosts.
‘Okay,’ Thruppence said, putting down her pen. ‘I think we’ve enough here to be getting on with. I ought to go home now, or they’ll be wondering.’
She and Tim called their goodbyes and went out into the street. Thruppence dropped the bagged-up kipper into a litter bin. Then they turned a corner, and who should they see coming towards them but the Reverend Mangle.
‘Tim! The leg!’
Tim quickly hid it behind his back. The Reverend Mangle passed them without so much as a nod. He appeared to be distracted, and his mind, no doubt, was preoccupied with the affairs of his parish. For he had more to worry about than kippers and wooden legs. There was the Men’s Club, the Women’s League, the Sunday School, the Coffee Morning, the Harvest Festival, there were weddings, there were funerals, there were christenings – it went on and on. Looking back to his past life, he sometimes felt that things had been a lot easier when he was robbing banks, with a sawn-off shotgun in one hand and a large pickaxe handle in the other.
But, fortunately, he had seen the light.
***
Over the forthcoming weeks, Thruppence Coddley and Tim Legge, both together and separately, tried many a scheme for the finding and the trapping of ghosts.
They held a seance; they made a Ouija board; they tried again with spells and incantations; they went to dark and frightening places, but all to no avail.
They even tried a haunted house. This was an old and empty building in Brewery Row, the doors and windows of which were all boarded up, and had been for years. But there was a loose panel around at the rear, which they prised back to allow them entry.
It was said that both a murder and a suicide had taken place, here at number seventeen, many years ago. It was said that a poor woman, ground down by years of hunger and poverty and unable to look after her children, had done away first with her landlady downstairs, who was threatening her with eviction, and had then done away with herself – while her children were out. She had left a misspelt note saying: ‘Theyl be beter off wivout me. Beter a live in the wurkhuse than a live like thiss.’
But, in its anguish, the poor woman’s ghost was said to have returned, and it stalked the house, searching in every room and in every nook and cranny and cupboard and in every inch of cellar and loft for those lost and abandoned children.
‘Where are you, my dears?’ the ghost supposedly said. ‘I’m so sorry I left you. So sorry I did. Come to me now, my dears. Come to your mother’s arms.’
Doors were banged open and shut, and windows rattled, and old furniture moved, as the ghost went eternally through the house, searching, always searching, for those lost, abandoned children.
But now, when Thruppence and Tim crept into the house, with torches in their hands and with their courage screwed up tight, with their ghost hunting gear and with their ghost trap – the thick glass jar with the stopper, inside of which, for bait, they had placed a baby’s rattle, which had come from Thruppence’s drawer of her own memorabilia – there was nothing but silence. An eerie, awful, frightening silence. But silence all the same.
The ghost did not come to them. She did not cry out for her children. She did not slam the doors, nor make the windows tremble. She just kept her grief and pain to herself, and made no sound.
Maybe she was waiting for them to leave; maybe she saw in them two young and decent people, who reminded her so painfully much of her own lost children, and so she did not care to frighten or to harm them in any way.
Or maybe she was not there. And never had been. And it was all just a story, the whole thing, the murder, the suicide, the children, the ghost – all fantasy, all gossip and rumour, the product of idle tongues and overactive imaginations.
Yes. Maybe the truth of it is that there are no ghosts – anywhere. Nowhere in the world at all. All there is is the human desire to be startled and amazed and to believe that there are further and greater things than exist in dull, solid form. A world without ghosts. A world without possibility. A world without magic and mystery – what good is that?
But all the same, it did not look good. Tim and Thruppence did their best, but from each venture they went home empty-handed, with nothing in the jar but the bait.
And so time moved on, and the deadline was approaching, and soon Mr Beeston would return to the Ministry and he would demand evidence and sight of a real live ghost. And if one could not be produced, then that was the end. It was the end of the Ministry and the end of Mr Copperstone, who would be bundled away to tedious retirement and empty days of monotony and boredom. And Miss Rolly and Mrs Scant and Mr Gibbings would be posted away to the Ministry of Sewage, to end their careers amid the splashes and the odours and the unpleasant glugs that would come from the processing plant next door.
Nevertheless, Mr Copperstone ensured that the two children were paid promptly, as agreed. Their money was always there waiting for them, when they let themselves in on a Friday afternoon. Two envelopes. One marked Thruppence, one marked Tim, in thin, scrawly handwriting – Mr Copperstone’s hand, one presumed.
And Tim and Thruppence each pocketed their wages. But not with the delight that you might assume. Because they had not succeeded in their work or in their quest. And they did so want to succeed. They discovered – to their surprise – that they wanted to find a ghost and to save the Ministry and old Mr Copperstone and his staff far more than anything else.
‘I don’t know what it is, Thruppence,’ Tim said, ‘because I thought I’d be dead chuffed to be making all this money, but somehow … it’s gone a bit flat. I can’t get any fun out of it. It just feels – not much good somehow.’
‘I know what you mean, Tim,’ Thruppence said. ‘I just take mine home and hide it in the drawer. I don’t want to spend it or anything.’
‘Me neither,’ Tim said. ‘I let it stack up, but I just don’t care about it somehow. All I want to do is do the right thing – to find a ghost for them.’
‘Me too,’ Thruppence said. ‘I might enjoy the money when I’ve done that. But until then … ’
‘How long have we got left now?’ Tim asked.
‘Just over three weeks,’ Thruppence said.
‘So that’s over two months we’ve
been looking. And still no luck.’
‘But we can’t have tried everything,’ Thruppence said. ‘We can’t have exhausted all the possibilities. There must have been something we’ve missed. There must have. I bet there is, Tim. I bet there is something and it’s staring us right in the face.’
‘Can’t see the wood for the trees, kind of thing,’ Tim said.
‘Exactly. Come on. Let’s go through all the books again. There has to be something we’ve missed, Tim. Just has to be.’
And, in saying that, Thruppence Coddley was absolutely correct. There was something that she and Tim Legge had missed. There was something staring both of them full in the face. Yet both of them were blind to it, and were likely to remain that way forever.
Unless …
Oh yes, of course.
Unless …
But meanwhile, there was one other solution. Because, even if you cannot find a ghost, even if you cannot produce one to show to your seniors and superiors for their staff appraisals, there is something else you can do. You can pretend that you have found one.
You can fob them off, if you have to, with a hoax.
19
A Jar of Ghost
‘It’s not from lack of trying on our part, Mr Copperstone,’ Thruppence said.
‘I didn’t think that for a moment, my dear,’ Mr Copperstone told her. ‘I know that you have done more than your best.’
Thruppence, Tim and Mr Copperstone were huddled in conference in his office. It was late on a Wednesday afternoon.
‘We’ve looked everywhere. Left no stone unturned,’ Thruppence went on.
‘And that’s in the ghost hunting book too – Spells for the Upturning of Stones: Large Ones,’ Tim said.
‘Once or twice we felt we were getting so close –’
‘You could feel it,’ Tim said. ‘The hairs standing up on the back of your neck.’
‘But when it came to it –’
‘Nothing there.’
‘A feeling, certainly –’
‘But you can’t trap feelings in a glass jar,’ Tim pointed out. ‘So we’re back here again, and empty-handed too again, I’m afraid.’
‘But it’s not for lack of trying,’ Thruppence said again. ‘We can assure you of that. We were out last night, looking for ghosts down at the football ground –’
‘For the ghosts of footballers past,’ Tim explained. ‘Who died before they were able to score that winning goal, and who walk the pitch in anguish, unable to lie at rest until they’ve put things right, wanting some extra time and another shot at the net. But the ghosts must have been playing away last night, as none of them were there.’
Mr Copperstone was silent a while, his steepled fingers resting against each other, their immobility reflecting his steadiness of thought.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I am starting to wonder if perhaps that awful Mr Beeston was possibly right. What if there really are no ghosts?’
‘No!’ Thruppence said.
‘No!’ Tim agreed.
‘No, that’s impossible. We know they’re there. We’ve felt them, even maybe glimpsed them … ’ Thruppence trailed off .
‘But what … what if … well … we allow ourselves to imagine such things? What if the Ministry of Ghosts has truly been a place without purpose, and all our labours have been in vain, since the Ministry was founded, back in 1972 – I mean, 1792. I was never great at maths.’
‘No, that can’t be right, Mr Copperstone,’ Thruppence said. ‘The ghosts are there. You can feel it in your very, well, your very … ’
‘Bones?’ Tim suggested.
‘Yes, and in your heart too,’ Thruppence said. ‘We just need a little more time, that’s all.’
‘It’s of the essence, is time,’ Tim said. (It was an expression he had heard on several occasions and he liked the sound of it.)
‘You may be correct,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘But time is what we do not have. The beast Beeston will be back next week. If we do not have a ghost to show him, well … he will be implacable.’
‘Will he?’ Tim said. ‘That’s not so good. By the way, what does implacable mean?’
‘It means he will stubbornly continue with his plans to shut down the Ministry and to send us on our way – either to retirement or to the administration of sewage.’
‘Oh. I see.’
The three of them were silent now, until Thruppence, after a glance at Tim and a nod of assent back from him, broached their alternative plan. ‘Mr Copperstone … ’
‘Hmm?’ he said, distracted and lost in thought.
‘There is a way of buying some time.’
‘What might that be, my dear?’
‘Well – you know that story, The Emperor’s New Clothes?’
‘Hans Christian Andersen! I remember it well. My mother used to tell it to me, back when I was in knickerbockers.’
‘What are –?’
‘Not now, please, Tim,’ Thruppence hissed.
‘I mean, I know what knickers are,’ Tim whispered back. ‘But I’m a bit stuck on the bockers.’
‘Later, Tim.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘But what,’ Mr Copperstone said, ‘do the emperor’s new clothes have to do with us?’
‘Easy, Mr Copperstone. In the story, the emperor had no clothes on. The swindlers had sold the emperor a suit of nothing. But they told him that only wise and intelligent people could see it. So everyone pretended they could see the suit, because they didn’t want to seem stupid.’
‘And?’
‘So what if we hand Mr Beeston a glass jar with a stopper on, and we say – or rather you say, as obviously we won’t be here – there it is, there’s your ghost!’
A wide smile spread across Mr Copperstone’s face.
‘Oh, what an idea,’ he said. ‘What a delicious – and possibly rather wicked, not of course that you are wicked, my dear, quite the contrary –’
‘I always smell of strawberries, actually,’ Thruppence said. ‘Fresh ones.’
‘Yes. But do you think Mr Beeston would be fooled?’
‘For a while, maybe. And while he’s working out what’s going on, it gives us more time to find a real ghost.’
‘I see. Yes. So you think that when Beeston gets here, I should show him a glass jar with a stopper in it and say, “There it is, Mr Beeston. There’s your spook!”’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, what an idea. Now why can’t I think of clever things like this?’ Mr Copperstone said.
‘’Cause you’re too old,’ Tim informed him.
‘Tim!’
‘Nothing personal. Just saying.’
‘No, he’s probably right, Thruppence. And I do feel old some days. I feel about a hundred and fifty some mornings. But never mind. All right, I’m of a mind to give your idea a try. But I think we should have a little something in the jar. Maybe a little smoke, or something. Or some dust. Just to give things that touch of authenticity. Would you be able to arrange that?’
‘You leave it to us, Mr Copperstone. We’ll fix up a jar so it looks convincing. And we’ll bring it round so that you can have it in reserve, in case a ghost doesn’t turn up between now and next Wednesday.’
‘Thank you. I feel a lot more optimistic now and easier in my mind. If nothing else, it will buy us some time. There could be a ghost just around the corner. Waiting there for us. A ghost with … what’s that modern expression again?’
‘A ghost with our name on!’ Tim and Thruppence said together.
‘A ghost with our name on. That’s the one.’
‘All right then,’ Thruppence said. ‘We’ll get cracking.’
‘And we’ll keep looking for ghosts too,’ Tim said.
‘You can rely on us, Mr Copperstone,’ Thruppence assured him. ‘We won’t let you down. If anyone can keep you out of the sewage works, we can!’
‘Thank you. That is most reassuring. And now … ’
Mr Copperstone plainly had a
little work to finish before he went home. What that work might be, who could imagine? In truth Mr Copperstone appeared to have nothing to do all day than to make steeples out of his fingers, to doze in his chair, and to have long chats with Mrs Scant, which usually culminated in promises of tea that never arrived.
Before seeing themselves out, the two children went down to the library and the tackle room to look around. Maybe there was something they had missed down there, some essential nugget of information. There were so many volumes on the subject of ghosts it would have been a lifetime’s reading to get through them all.
While Thruppence checked through the ghost trapping equipment, Tim, in the adjacent room, thumbed through some books. First the ever reliable Grimes and Natterly’s Manual of Ghost Hunting. Next he turned the pages of Snodge and Bickerstuff’s Encyclopedia of Spooks. Then, lodged under a pile of old newspapers and magazines, Tim spotted an edition he had not noticed before.
‘Hey, Thruppence! Look at this.’
She came through to see what he was excited about. But it was just another drab, leather-covered tome.
‘Haven’t we already seen that one?’
‘No. Look. It’s called: 101 Things You Never Knew About the Paranormal.’
‘Is that going to help us, Tim? We really need –’
‘Hold on. Just let me look up “ghosts”.’
Tim consulted the index and turned to the appropriate page.
‘Hey, now this is interesting,’ he said. ‘Look at this. I didn’t know this, did you?’
Thruppence leaned over the book, and Tim smelled the faint perfume of fresh strawberries. It was remarkable how she managed that, seeing as her dad owned a fishmonger’s and the family slept in rooms right above it.
Little known facts about ghosts, the entry read.
1) Ghosts are, in most instances, not unfriendly. Ghosts do not wish to frighten people. Ghosts merely wish to be at peace and to find the means of achieving this.
2) Ghosts are affected by temperature. They become hyperactive in extreme heat and sluggish in cold. A ghost, if trapped, may be put into a freezer and can remain there indefinitely, without harm. It will be as if the ghost has gone into hibernation. If taken from the freezer and allowed to warm up slowly, the ghost will become active again.
