Operation Bunny

by Sally Gardner

  “Harpella?” suggested Fidget. “A good enough reason in my litter box.”

  As instructed, Emily held tightly to the keys. According to Fidget, the minute they were near the shop, the keys would spring into action. So far, they had been round the town twice, and the keys had not sprung.

  It was mid-morning, and for the third time that day, they were standing by the forlorn statue of Queen Victoria.

  “What now?” asked Emily.

  “I don’t rightly know,” said Fidget. “Miss String had the brains. I have the brawn.”

  They set off again, this time up a narrow lane that led away from the town square. A placard outside a newsstand read 59 PEOPLE VANISH ON MIDNIGHT TRAIN.

  “It’s in the papers, then,” said Emily.

  “Yes, but fortunately nothing about pink rabbits,” said Fidget.

  “Tickets, please,” said the mournful voice from the basket.

  Farther along the street was a junk shop. Outside, it had a few chairs, an old mangle, and boxes of odd china plates. Suddenly the keys came to life, wriggling around with such urgency that the ring holding them together gave way in Emily’s hands.

  “Oh, look!” said Emily, as the keys jumped to the ground and ran as fast as their booted feet would let them toward the junk shop.

  Fidget peered through the window as the keys kicked at his brogues.

  “No. This is most definitely not our shop. I don’t know what those keys are up to,” said Fidget. “Blast my whiskers! First the kettle, now the keys. Why can’t anything behave?”

  One of the keys stopped kicking him and, for a nonspeaking piece of ironmongery, seemed to be saying quite a lot.

  “Maybe we should go in?” suggested Emily.

  “Maybe,” said Fidget and pushed open the door. “I bet this is a red herring,” he muttered to himself as the shop bell rang.

  Inside, the light was very dim, and the shop smelled of old books and mothballs. Emily could see a stuffed alligator, a tailor’s dummy, saucepans, gas lamps, a skull, and a gramophone with a stack of records. But the object that immediately caught her eye sat on a round table in a Victorian birdcage. It was a figurine of a handsome young fellow wearing an old-fashioned frock coat. For a doll, he was extraordinarily lifelike, with silvery-blue glass eyes that appeared to twinkle. He had floppy auburn hair and long, elegant hands.

  Emily had never seen anything so beautiful before. She wanted to buy the doll, free it from its prison bars, and take it away with her. Emily studied the little fellow for so long that she was certain she saw his lips move.

  “Hello, can I help you?” said a voice behind her. Emily spun round to find a teenage boy standing there, a college scarf wound around his neck.

  “Just looking,” said Fidget. “You have an interesting collection.”

  “Not me; my grandpa. I just help out in the holidays. Wowza,” he said. “That is one ace cat suit, dude.”

  “Thanks,” said Fidget.

  The keys had hidden under the round table.

  Emily pulled on Fidget’s sleeve. “Can we buy that?” she asked, pointing at the birdcage and quite forgetting why they were there.

  “No,” said Fidget. “We are not here to buy…” He stopped and stared at the birdcage. “Buster?” he said, stepping forward and knocking into a glass display cabinet. “It can’t be.”

  The student rushed to catch the case before it toppled over altogether.

  “Sorry, mate,” said Fidget.

  “Gramps has so much stuff in here,” the student said as he put the cabinet back in its place. “It’s almost impossible to move. I like the way your tail swishes and curls into a question mark just like a real cat’s. Do you do it by remote control?”

  “No, you don’t,” said Fidget absently. He was still staring at the little fellow in the birdcage. “Is this for sale?”

  “Yep, I think so. I’ll go and check.”

  With that, the student disappeared behind a curtain at the back of the shop.

  “Twiddle my whiskers and call me tuna,” said Fidget.

  Just then, the figure started to wave its arms.

  Emily looked at it in amazement. “He’s alive!” she said. “Oh no, that’s terrible! We must free him.”

  “Yes, yes, we must. Oh dear, oh dear, what a pickle,” said Fidget.

  “Do you know who it is?” asked Emily.

  “Know who it is?” repeated Fidget. “Yes, of course I know who it is. It’s Buster. Buster Ignatius Spicer, one of Wings & Co.’s great fairy detectives!”

  “A detective?” said Emily. “Miss String never said anything about detectives.”

  “She couldn’t—secret stuff and all that fish paste.”

  “What is he doing in there?” asked Emily.

  “A good question, my little ducks. A good question indeed.”

  Fidget was trying to open the cage when the student came back.

  “Sorry, dude,” he said cheerfully. “That item’s not for sale. Gramps has had it for years. It would take a lot of money to make him part with it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The receptionist at the Red Lion Hotel wore a well-rehearsed smile along with the badge pinned to her jacket. It read JOAN and, underneath, RECEPTIONIST.

  “Sorry,” said Joan, smiling. “We don’t allow pets. It’s company policy.”

  “I’m not a pet,” said Fidget. “Do I look like a pet?”

  “You look like a very large cat, and as I said, we don’t take animals.”

  Fidget leaned forward and whispered, “If you must know, I have a medical condition, which means I can only go out dressed as a cat. I am, as you can imagine, somewhat sensitive on the subject.”

  Joan looked genuinely shocked, and the well-rehearsed smile crumbled into concern. “Crikey. I didn’t mean to be rude. That’s awful.”

  “I know,” said Fidget, suitably wounded.

  “Sorry … it’s just that the cat disguise looks so real.”

  “I know; it happens all the time. We need two rooms.”

  Joan, still bright red, said, “We have a very nice suite on the second floor. It’s rather expensive, but it does have two bedrooms and an interconnecting lounge.”

  “We’ll take it,” said Fidget, handing Emily the fat brown envelope Alfred Twizell had given him.

  Emily carefully counted out the twenty-pound notes, just as she had in the junk shop.

  * * *

  “One thousand pounds?” The young man had been taken aback by the sum on offer. “Wowza! One thousand pounds for a Victorian birdcage?”

  And that is how Fidget and Emily came to be standing in the foyer of the Red Lion Hotel in Podgy Bottom with a rucksack, a cardboard suitcase, a picnic hamper, and a rather badly wrapped birdcage.

  It was only after a waiter had delivered a tray of delicious food to their suite that Buster Ignatius Spicer climbed gloomily out of the birdcage. Small and dejected, he sat on the floor, his head in his hands, his legs stretched out before him.

  “I let Miss String down, and now that enchanting lady is dead. It was up to me to protect her from Harpella, and I didn’t.”

  “How do you know she’s dead?” asked Emily, feeding some arugula salad to the rabbit.

  “Because Fidget would be with Miss String if she was still alive,” said Buster.

  “Eat something,” said Fidget.

  “I can’t,” said Buster sulkily. “It’s all too big. But I would very much like to meet the wizard who broke the spell the magician put on the keys.”

  “You have,” said Fidget. “She’s sitting right next to you. Emily is the new Keeper, and now Harpella is after her.”

  “You?” said Buster to Emily. “You? But you’re a girl! Not a wizard, not even a fairy.”

  “And who are you, exactly?” asked Emily.

  “Miss String must have told you about me,” said Buster.

  “No,” said Emily firmly. “She didn’t.”

  “Perhaps you weren’t listening. Well
, I will tell you again. My best friend and I ran a detective agency.”

  “Where?” asked Emily.

  “In Miss String’s shop,” Buster said impatiently.

  “But Miss String told me the shop sold potions and such things.”

  “That was before I took over. My friend was twelve, one year older than the age I am now. We made a good team. We found and returned what was lost or stolen, captured the thieves, freed the innocent. That’s the general gist. Then without any warning, the Fairy Wars started.”

  “Miss String never told me about the Fairy Wars, or about you. Or about the detective agency. I wouldn’t have forgotten. Who started the Fairy Wars?” asked Emily.

  “Harpella,” said Buster, “with the spirit lamp.”

  “Why? How?” asked Emily.

  “Don’t you know anything? The human world used to protect us, as we did them. Over time, fewer people believed in us, and as our power became weaker, Harpella’s became stronger.”

  “But why did she want to kill all the fairies?”

  “She married one and then he ran off and left her,” said Buster.

  “In other words,” said Fidget, “it’s personal. A family problem for which all the fairies have been made to pay.”

  “What happened to Harpella’s husband?”

  “Excuse my asking,” said Buster, “but is she always like this? Full of whys and hows and wheres?”

  “Yep,” said Fidget.

  “So are all the fairies in the spirit lamp?” asked Emily.

  “I wish,” said Buster.

  “No,” said Fidget. “They are not. Once a fairy is dead, he or she is gone. Nothing will bring them back.”

  “Harpella is up to her old tricks again, isn’t she?” said Buster, looking cautiously at the pink rabbit, which seemed enormous to him.

  “Spot on the sprat,” said Fidget. “She changed a whole train full of passengers into pink bunny rabbits in the hope of catching my little ducks. We had a lucky escape.”

  Buster leaned on the birdcage. “Did Harpella see you get off the train?”

  “No,” said Fidget. “She was too busy.”

  “Well, that’s one bit of good news,” said Buster. “That means she thinks you are among the pink rabbits, and that means we have a head start on her.”

  “Well, twiddle my whiskers and call me haddock! I hadn’t thought of that,” said Fidget.

  “If we can find the shop, I can get my wings back,” said Buster.

  “But first we need to get the lamp. Otherwise, you’re a fairy fishcake.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Daily Bugle reported that the fate of the fifty-nine passengers was the biggest mystery of all time. An eyewitness claimed to have seen a flying saucer hovering above the train. There was even a man who posted fuzzy pictures on YouTube claiming they showed a witch on a broomstick who had swooped down and turned the passengers into pink rabbits. No one believed a word of it.

  Ronald and Daisy Dashwood knew that Emily must be among the fifty-nine. Not that they were sad about it. In fact, it couldn’t be a better outcome. “You know what this means, Smoochikins?” said Ronald.

  “No,” said Daisy. “What?”

  “It means that we, as Emily’s legal guardians, will have access to all that money she inherited from Miss String.”

  “But we haven’t reported her missing, have we?” said Daisy.

  It was the stationmaster at East Grimewood who told the police that only two passengers had boarded the train on that particular evening. One a gent, the other a little girl in a red coat.

  “Then there was this loony couple. They dashed onto the platform just before the whistle blew, saying their daughter was on the train,” said the stationmaster. “I thought they were off their rockers. Both covered in mud, and the woman had no shoes on.”

  James Cardwell, a senior detective at Scotland Yard, went to interview the Dashwoods. He had been in the police force for as long as anyone could remember. His age and length of service were lost in the mists of time. He had a reputation for solving difficult cases, and Operation Bunny was certainly a difficult case.

  Detective Cardwell was immediately suspicious of the Dashwoods. As he listened to Ronald and Daisy’s story, he knew something was wrong with this picture of a happy family.

  “We were just too upset,” explained Daisy. “I mean, she was such a darling daughter to us.”

  “Although she did have special needs, due to being abandoned in a hatbox,” added Ronald.

  “Even more reason to report her missing straightaway, surely,” said Detective Cardwell, unimpressed by Daisy batting her false eyelashes.

  While she burbled on, Detective Cardwell remembered the letter he had received from his aunt about the little baby found in a hatbox at Stansted Airport.

  And this whining woman and her red-eared husband had been allowed to adopt the baby. The name Ronald Dashwood had a familiar ring to it—for all the wrong reasons, of that Detective Cardwell was certain. He asked to see Emily’s bedroom and was shown to the spare room. It was then he saw the three little girls standing together on the landing. He looked at his notes.

  “Your daughters?” he asked Daisy.

  “Yes, Peach, Petal, and Plum,” she said.

  “And they do advertising work?”

  “No,” said Daisy with a genuine gulp of emotion. “No, not since—”

  “Since Ms. Harper came to see us,” said the triplets in one eerie voice.

  Detective Cardwell crouched to their level. Their blank faces confirmed all he had suspected. “Did Ms. Harper have anything with her when she came to see you?”

  “Yes,” said the girls. “A brand-new designer handbag.”

  “Do you remember what was in the handbag?”

  “A lamp,” they said. “It had rainbow-colored light, and we followed the light.”

  “That’s very good,” said Detective Cardwell. “Where did you follow it to?”

  “Into the lamp,” they all said together. “That’s where we are.”

  “Do you miss your big sister?” asked Detective Cardwell, changing the subject.

  “No,” said the triplets. “She was just our nanny. Mother misses not having a servant to push around. Mother is going to kill Emily Vole when she comes home. It was Emily Vole’s fault Mother ruined a pair of expensive shoes.”

  “Shut up, the three of you,” screeched Daisy. “Just shut up!”

  “Why did Emily run away, Mrs. Dashwood?” Detective Cardwell asked her for the second time.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” chorused the little girls.

  “Mr. Dashwood,” said Detective Cardwell, turning to Ronald, “am I right in thinking you have some connection with Sprout Securities in Brussels?”

  Ronald’s ears began to go even redder. “I think we should have our lawyer here before we answer any more questions,” he said.

  James Cardwell left the Dashwoods’ executive home and went next door to Miss String’s house. He stood outside, feeling overcome with sadness. He had often visited Aunt Ottoline when he was a boy. It was here he had first met the remarkable Buster Ignatius Spicer. A golden time. Buster was just a year younger than he was, and all they had wanted was to be detectives. Aunt Ottoline, bless her cotton socks, had thought it a champion idea.

  At first it was a bit of a lark, but the whole thing turned very nasty indeed. The battle with Harpella and the spirit lamp had been as good as lost. So many fairies were dead. It had been Buster’s idea that all the remaining fairies hand in their wings. Reluctantly, James, like the other fairies, had given his wings to Buster to be locked away by the magician. After the magician’s death, Aunt Ottoline had hidden the keys. But he and the rest of the fairies had lost their magic, joined human time, grown up, and grown tired of waiting for a new Keeper of the Keys to appear. As the centuries passed, hope had faded. The remaining fairies would have to live without their wings, forever stuck between two worlds.r />
  He closed the front gate with a sigh and returned to his car. He hadn’t seen Buster since just before the Battle of Waterloo. What if he had been murdered, like Aunt Ottoline? It was too terrible to think about.

  Detective Cardwell started the engine. The fairy who’d walked out on Harpella had a lot to answer for.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Buster,” said Emily the next morning, “was Miss String a fairy?”

  “Of course she was,” replied Buster, looking bored. They had been waiting ages for Fidget to come out of the bathroom. He’d been in there since breakfast. “What do you think Fidget is doing?”

  “I don’t know,” said Emily. “Cats like to be clean.”

  “But they hate water,” said Buster.

  “I didn’t think Miss String was a fairy,” said Emily, “because she was the same size as all of us.”

  “What makes you think fairies are small?”

  “In fairy stories,” said Emily, “you are all small.”

  “Who wrote the stories?” asked Buster, tying his shoelaces.

  “Lots of different writers, some from a very long time ago.”

  “Any of them fairies?” asked Buster.

  “No. Don’t be silly.”

  “Exactly. Have you noticed how few fairies there are in those stories?” asked Buster. “More often, there are hard-done-by princesses dressed in rags and boring princes being all soppy. The only time we fairies come into the picture is when we are invited to christenings and grant daft wishes.”

  Emily had to admit that Buster had a good point.

  “Don’t worry,” said Buster. “The mistake you make is a common one. Fairies happen to have the gift of becoming smaller when necessary, which is handy. That’s if you can resize yourself afterward.”

  “Which you can’t.”

  “YES I KNOW. A goblin I had a run-in with took that power away from me.”

  Emily smiled to herself and sat down, nibbling a piece of leftover toast.

  “I can’t understand why the keys took a shine to you. You, of all people,” said Buster. “Perhaps it’s because you are a human. The keys wouldn’t be safe in fairy hands. That’s why Miss String kept them hidden in the attic.”