by Anna Dale
Feeling breathless with excitement, Dawn slowly reached into her pocket and withdrew her miniature camera. If her suspicions were correct, and Murdo Meek was in the room, she would be the first person ever to capture his likeness on film.
Initially, all she could see was the bright yellow glare of a torch. There was a man’s face behind it but his features were shadowy and unrecognisable. Was it Charles Noble? She couldn’t tell. The man altered his position and lowered his hand so that the torch’s beam fell on bare floorboards. In that instant, Dawn saw his face clearly enough to be sure of his identity.
She pressed the camera to her eye, and clicked. So, it was Seth. Seth Lightfoot. Hadn’t he been the one who’d insisted that she and Felix should stay away from Palethorpe Manor? It appeared that his warning had not been prompted by any concern for their safety, but rather to keep them from stumbling upon whatever it was he was up to. Dawn felt a twinge of disappointment. Earlier that day, he had seemed so friendly and had even given her one of his precious sculptures. She had wanted to believe that Seth had chanced upon the piece of paper from Bob’s file as he went about his litter-collecting duties. Now she was not so sure. With a shiver, she realised that she had started to warm to a man who could very well turn out to be Murdo Meek.
Seth began to mumble something. Unfortunately for Dawn, he had turned his back on her so she did not manage to catch a single word of what he said. She gripped her camera tightly, poised to take a picture of the other person in the room just as soon as she caught sight of them. Dawn’s eyes darted into every corner. Where was Angela Bradshaw? What kind of shape would the poor woman be in, having been held captive for one whole month? Dawn began to feel frustrated. As far as she could see (and it wasn’t easy, given the limited supply of light) there was no one in the room apart from Seth. But how could that be?
Seth turned suddenly, and raised his voice. His words rooted Dawn to the spot.
‘I know you’re there,’ he said. ‘Show yourself.’
Dawn figured that she had two choices. She could leg it down the stairs and hope that Seth was a useless runner, or she could keep to her cover story and try her hardest to bluff her way out of trouble. Deciding that the second option was marginally better than the first, she tucked her miniature camera into her pocket and, with some trepidation, pushed open the door.
‘Aha!’ said Seth with vigour. He shone the torch directly in Dawn’s face and she squeezed her eyes shut instinctively.
‘Would you mind not doing that, please?’ she said, sounding mildly irritated. In actual fact, she was feeling jittery and scared, but was determined not to show it.
‘Oh!’ Seth breathed out the word in a sigh of disappointment. The inside of Dawn’s eyelids darkened as he aimed the torch beam somewhere else. ‘For a moment, there, I thought … Hey, aren’t you the gardener’s kid? Kitty, isn’t it? What you doing here, huh?’
Dawn squinted at him, and nodded. ‘Yes, I’m Kitty Wilson – and I’m looking,’ she said solemnly, ‘for barn owls.’
‘Where’s your mum?’ said Seth, frowning, in what Dawn considered to be a most sinister manner.
‘She isn’t with me,’ Dawn replied casually. ‘My mum doesn’t feel the same way about owls as I do. I saw one the other night, flying about on the hill, and I thought it might have made a nest in this old house. Barn owls like raising their chicks in ruined buildings.’
‘Bit of an expert on birds, are you?’ said Seth.
Dawn thought that he sounded suspicious. She decided to back up her story. Unfastening the popper on her purse, she drew out her Young Ornithologists’ membership card and handed it to Seth. ‘I’m not really an expert,’ she explained, ‘not yet, anyway … but I have read quite a lot about them.’
‘Like what?’ said Seth. If Dawn hadn’t known better, she might have thought that he was genuinely interested.
‘Oh … I Spy Birds,’ said Dawn, which she knew existed because she had once got it out of the library, ‘and … er … Birds in Your Back Garden and … Wings and Things,’ she said, making up the other two titles on the spur of the moment.
‘Really?’ said Seth. ‘That’s impressive.’ He seemed convinced that she was telling the truth. ‘Past your bedtime, though, isn’t it, Kitty? Does your mum know where you are?’
‘Sure,’ said Dawn, trying not to panic. ‘She’s cool about it. I can go to bed when I like. My mum doesn’t believe in too many rules and regulations. She thinks that kids should be allowed their freedom.’ Dawn tried very hard not to wince after she had uttered these words. Would Seth be gullible enough to believe her?
‘That’s funny,’ said Seth, tapping the end of the torch against his jaw. ‘I had quite a chinwag with your mum this afternoon. She didn’t seem like that type to me. I can’t think that she’d approve of you wandering around at night on your own.’
‘Oh … um …’ Dawn floundered. He knows it’s all a pack of lies, she told herself. He’s rumbled me. I’m in hot water now.
‘She’s not on her own,’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘She’s with me.’ This last sentence was followed by a whine and one short yelp. ‘And him.’
‘I see,’ said Seth.
Dawn looked over her shoulder. She would never have imagined that she could actually feel pleased to see Felix. In fact, she was more than pleased: she was overjoyed. Haltwhistle’s tail thumped against the doorframe, and Dawn had to stop herself from throwing her arms around the dog’s neck.
‘This is my brother, Wayne,’ she said, giving Felix a grateful smile.
‘And this is Fred,’ said Felix, winning another smile from Dawn for remembering to use Haltwhistle’s alias. ‘We often accompany my sister on her birding expeditions. I’m a lepidopterist, myself. Butterflies, you know.’
‘And moths,’ said Seth. He seemed a little taken aback.
‘Indeed,’ said Felix rather pompously.
‘Well, you won’t find any fluttery bugs up here … nor any owls, neither. Leastways, I can’t remember seeing any nests.’ Seth narrowed his eyes. ‘So you kids had better shove off. I think I mentioned to you before that this place isn’t for larking about in.’
Dawn decided that the best course of action would be to follow his advice – or at least to appear to. She began to sidle towards the door.
‘OK,’ she said, lightly, ‘we’re going. I must’ve been mistaken about that owl.’
‘Hang on a moment, sis,’ said Felix, as Dawn hinted heavily that it was time to go by tugging on his sleeve and looking plaintively at him. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, turning to Seth. ‘Would you mind if I asked you a question?’
‘I s’pose not,’ said Seth, folding his arms, ‘as long as you make it quick.’
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Felix. ‘It seems a bit strange to me that you should bang on about how this place could fall apart at any moment and yet … well, here you are. It strikes me as odd.’
Dawn pinched his arm gently. ‘Come on,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Don’t blow it.’
‘Nosey, aren’t you?’ said Seth, who was beginning to get a mite fractious. ‘It just so happens that it isn’t any of your business.’
‘I wonder if the police would be interested to know that you’d been trespassing on private property …’ Felix shot him a haughty look.
‘Your brother’s a regular pain in the backside, isn’t he?’ Seth smiled wearily at Dawn (who was desperate to agree but didn’t think she should). ‘All right, I’ll tell you but you, must promise to keep it under your hat. If it gets out, there’ll be coach parties and all sorts up here – and that’ll be sure to drive her away, as sure as eggs is eggs.’
‘Drive who away?’ said Felix.
‘The ghostie, of course,’ said Seth. He tucked his torch underneath his arm, and wiggled his fingers. ‘I was trying to get her to reveal herself when your sister showed-up and scared her off, no doubt.’
‘Ghost?’ said Dawn, edging closer to Felix.
‘Load
of baloney,’ said Felix, putting his arm around her. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’ He glared angrily at Seth. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, frightening my little sister like that.’
‘Well, you did ask!’ objected Seth. ‘And they’re real enough, all right … I saw one large as life, just the other week. A lady ghost with long white hair and a face so sad it fair broke my heart to look at it. Standing at one of these windows, she was. I often take a walk up here on a nice summer’s evening. Always had a feeling this place might be haunted – and now I know it is.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Felix hotly. ‘That’s absolute nonsense. Right, Kitty. We’re leaving.’
As Dawn followed behind Felix, who was stepping out rather boldly considering that he couldn’t possibly see where he was going, She kept her fingers entwined in Haltwhistle’s collar. Dawn told herself that this was a sensible thing to do because dogs were bound to be better than humans at finding their way in the dark. The fact that she was nervous about bumping into a ghost, and the reassuring way in which Haltwhistle’s warm, hairy body padded along beside her, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Dawn, as she scurried down the moonlit hillside, ‘is how you managed to follow me. I didn’t catch a glimpse of either of you; not once!’
‘Is that so?’ said Felix, striding ahead of her at a brisk pace.
‘Yes,’ said Dawn, breaking into a run in order to catch up with him. She tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Hey, would you mind slowing down? Socrates told me that a spy should always proceed with caution, especially when she’s travelling on foot in the dark.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Felix gave Haltwhistle’s lead a yank. ‘Whoa, there, boy. Old slowcoach can’t keep up.’
Dawn opened her mouth to protest; then closed it again. Embarrassingly, her lip began to tremble. She pulled her hood up over her head, balled her fists and shoved them deep into her pockets.
If she had been pressed to evaluate her performance that evening, Dawn would have given herself three-and-a-half out of ten. Her blunders hadn’t been disastrous, but there had been rather too many of them. She’d picked the wrong place to send a radio message to P.S.S.T., revealed herself to Seth unnecessarily, not been able to lie convincingly enough, and – worst of all – she had been trailed by Felix and his highly conspicuous dog, and hadn’t even noticed! She was supposed to have a natural affinity for spying. How could her skills have deserted her quite so spectacularly?
Felix nudged her elbow. ‘What’s up with you, sulky-chops?’ He brushed his hand against Dawn’s hood so that it fell back on to her shoulders. ‘Not still worried about that spook that Seth invented, are you?’
‘No,’ said Dawn miserably.
‘OK… hmm … I know! You’re annoyed about us tagging along on your little night-time jaunt,’ said Felix. ‘Is that it?’
Dawn shook her head. She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell him how relieved she’d been when he and Haltwhistle had turned up.
‘You must have trailed me for at least a mile – and I didn’t have a clue,’ admitted Dawn in a small voice.
‘Oh, you’re fretting about that,’ said Felix, half-laughing. He gave her shoulder a playful shove. ‘Well, you needn’t, you great ninny. The reason you didn’t see us following you … is because we weren’t.’
‘What?’ said Dawn. She was stunned, not to mention confused.
‘You’re wondering how I knew where you were headed?’ said Felix, sounding rather pleased with himself. ‘Remember yesterday afternoon, when you demanded to be left in peace while you wrote your letter to P.S.S.T …’
‘I might have asked you politely to leave the room for a bit,’ said Dawn, bristling at his suggestion that she was a bossy sort of person. ‘You said you were going to play cricket in the garden with Haltwhistle.’
‘And I did, eventually,’ said Felix, ‘but only after I’d had a jolly good eavesdrop. I heard you telling Trudy about your plan to have a snoop around Palethorpe Manor, and we thought we’d invite ourselves along, didn’t we, boy?’ Felix reached down and patted his dog. ‘We came through that little copse of birch trees, where you collided with Haltwhistle the other day.’
Dawn felt impelled to correct him. ‘It was your dog who bumped into me,’ she said.
‘So, you see … you’re not such a hopeless spy, after all,’ said Felix, and his teeth glinted as he grinned at her.
Dawn was not amused.
‘Actually,’ he said, patting a stile to encourage Haltwhistle to climb on to it, ‘I think you’re doing a fair job … for a beginner. You’re especially good at making up stories. Your fib about the barn owl was inspired. I almost believed you for a second myself.’
‘Oh … er … thanks,’ said Dawn. She wasn’t used to receiving compliments from Felix. ‘It’s important to have a reason ready to explain why you’re hanging around … in case anyone ever challenges you. Socrates taught me that.’
‘Your reason was heaps better than the one that litter collector came up with. What a load of old bunkum,’ said Felix, clambering over the stile. ‘He must have thought we were stupid. As if we’d believe some ridiculous story about a ghost! I wonder what he was really up to.’
‘You didn’t believe him, then?’ asked Dawn.
‘Not likely.’
Dawn stepped on to the stile and looked over her shoulder at the moon, which was the colour of curdled milk, and the smear of black beneath it that was Palethorpe Manor. It did not seem nearly so forbidding from a distance.
‘What about you?’ said Felix. ‘ You reckon his story was genuine?’
Dawn shrugged her shoulders, and frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Chapter Seventeen
The Stake-out
The alarm that sounded in Dawn’s ears the next morning was an unfamiliar one. Instead of the piercing tinkle of bells, she heard a harsh rattling noise. Bizarrely, it did not seem to be coming from the table next to her bed, where her clock usually resided, but from somewhere near the ceiling in the corner of the room.
Dawn opened her sleepy eyes and was most surprised to see a magpie with lustrous black and white plumage strutting up and down on top of her wardrobe. He was a handsome creature with a long, green-glossed tail and a metallic-blue gleam to his wings, and Dawn would have been thrilled to wake up to such a vision if he hadn’t been making such a terrible racket.
Once she had untangled her legs from the polyester bed sheet, Dawn stumbled over to the window and opened it as wide as it would go.
‘Would you mind leaving, please,’ she said, covering one of her ears in an attempt to block out the incessant chack-ack-ack noise that the bird was making. ‘Mr Magpie!’ she said, patting the window frame to remind him how he’d got into her room. ‘The sky is just through here.’
Twitching on the floor, at the foot of her bed, Dawn caught sight of a fluffy black tail. She moved closer to it, and saw Peebles sitting very still with his eyes trained on the agitated bird.
So that’s why the poor thing is so upset, thought Dawn.
‘Get lost, you!’ she said to Peebles, scooping up the cat and depositing him outside her door, from where he could be heard miaowing aggrievedly.
Once Peebles had been evicted, the bird became much calmer. He stopped making such a dreadful din, gripped the edge of the wardrobe with his talons and swooped down on to the bed. Exasperated at first, Dawn became concerned when she saw a slight swelling on one of the magpie’s legs. She sat down beside the bird to get a better look, and was astounded when he jumped into her lap.
It wasn’t a swelling at all; it was a tiny canister with a piece of rolled-up paper inside. Dawn had heard of messages conveyed by pigeons but she had never come across a carrier magpie before. Written on the small, square sheet was a coded message from P.S.S.T. She grabbed a pencil and prepared to decipher it.
Dawn had barely even started when the door was thrust open suddenly.
�
��Is everything all right in here?’ said Trudy. ‘I heard the most appalling noise …’
‘No!’ yelled Dawn, waving her hands frantically. ‘Don’t let Peebles in!’
The cat’s claws missed the magpie’s tail feathers by a fraction of an inch. In one bound, the bird reached the windowsill, and in another, he took to the air.
‘Didn’t you get any parsnip-flavoured crisps?’ said Felix, emptying a string shopping bag with a disappointed look on his face.
‘No, I most certainly did not,’ said Trudy, heaving another bag on to the worktop. She began to unpack it at a swift rate. ‘The village shop doesn’t stock weird flavours.’
‘You got ready salted!’ said Felix, staring at a packet in his hands. He looked absolutely crushed. ‘And …’ He gasped in horror. ‘It’s past its sell-by date!’
‘Only by a few days,’ said Trudy briskly. ‘It was dirt-cheap, which is good because I didn’t have much to spend. Red only supplied me with enough cash to feed Dawn and myself. Stop making such a fuss, and put the kettle on, would you? I need caffeine.’
Dawn slipped into the kitchen without either of them noticing, and helped herself to a bowl of newly-purchased Crunchy Bitz. She had so many things on her mind that she spooned the cereal into her mouth without even tasting it (which was just as well).
P.S.S.T.’s little note had been tricky to translate. The code they had chosen to use was called ‘Tornado’ which turned letters back to front and upside down. Dawn had puzzled over it for half an hour but the message turned out to be worth the effort. As she had requested in her letter to P.S.S.T. two days before, P.U.F.F. had dug a little deeper into the histories of the main suspects, and they had discovered something interesting about Charles Noble. He had swum the English Channel at the age of fourteen.
Which means he’s a superb swimmer, thought Dawn as she gulped down the last little heap of Crunchy Bitz. Which means that if anyone could have got himself to the riverbank after falling into the Thames in the middle of winter, he could!
