The Midnight Foxes

by Sarah Lean

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

  1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

  The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Text © Sarah Lean 2016

  Illustrations © Anna Currey 2016

  Cover illustration © Simon Mendes

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

  Sarah Lean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

  Anna Currey asserts the moral right to be identified as the illustrator of the work.

  A catalogue copy for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008165734

  Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008165741

  Version: 2016-08-09

  For Sophie

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1: Where is Holly?

  Chapter 2: A Strange Discovery

  Chapter 3: Who is Twinkle?

  Chapter 4: Case Closed

  Chapter 5: Rules of Being a Fox

  Chapter 6: From Up on the Roof

  Chapter 7: The Real Discovery

  Chapter 8: Rare Friendships

  Keep Reading

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Lean

  About the Publisher

  Map

  Tiger Days loved tigers. She often wore tiger-print pyjamas, socks and slippers and used to spend all her time indoors drawing pictures of tigers. Ever since she’d been to stay with her grandmother, May Days, at her new house, Tiger was beginning to be more adventurous. May Days used to live on a wildlife reserve in Africa but now lived in a large old house in the countryside, called Willowgate House. Even now, she sometimes looked after animals that were in need of helping hands. There were lots of repairs to be made at Willowgate, and while the house was being fixed up, May Days and Tiger slept in a tent in the great, unexplored garden.

  It was spring, warm and bright, and Tiger was on her way to visit her grandmother but there was a long journey in the car first. Tiger was eager to arrive and see May Days again, as there was still so much to find out about each other.

  Excitement swirled in Tiger’s tummy with his grandfather next door. Tiger was also looking forward to seeing Holly Days – a white cat who had made her home at Willowgate even before May Days had moved in. She was the kind of cat that did as she pleased and Tiger thought of Holly as belonging to the house, rather than to anyone in particular. Holly had a mind of her own and was quite in charge of herself, but Tiger and the cat had become firm friends during Tiger’s last stay.

  The car pulled up at the end of the drive, where Tiger had last seen Holly. Obviously Holly wasn’t still sitting there, but when Tiger jumped out of the car to open the gate she looked around, hoping the cat was nearby. There was no sign of Holly, but May Days was already jogging down the drive to greet them. Tiger smiled and ran to meet her grandmother, while Dad drove up the drive.

  “May Days!” said Tiger as the two of them flung their arms round each other.

  “I’m so happy to see you all over again,” said May Days, planting a big kiss on Tiger’s cheek. The garden smelled of new grass and warm breezes and Tiger hoped she’d find everything else just as before.

  In the kitchen, Mr Days had lots to talk about with his mother over gallons of tea, which Tiger didn’t mind too much as she was now desperate to find the cat.

  “Where’s Holly?” she said.

  “That cat is still a bit of a mystery,” May Days said. “Why don’t you go and see if you can find her?”

  Holly was not in any of the rooms downstairs, or hiding in any of the chimneys, or behind any doors. She wasn’t upstairs in the bath, or in the bedrooms, or inside the cupboard with the lift in the wall where Tiger had first discovered her. Outside, Holly was not in the porch, nor sitting on the windowsills, nor in the tent.

  Tiger called and called but no blossom-white cat came padding through the garden. Tiger anxiously went to her grandmother with empty news and worrying fears.

  “What if something terrible has happened to her?” Tiger said, in the comfort of her grandmother’s arms.

  Every day May Days left out a bowl of food for Holly and the next day it would be empty, even though May Days didn’t always see the cat.

  “You know what Holly is like,” May Days reassured Tiger. “She suddenly turns up, just like that, looking quite content. That cat certainly knows how to look after herself and I’m sure she’ll come when she’s ready.”

  Before long it was time for Tiger’s dad to return home.

  “What if Holly doesn’t come?” Tiger said quietly, with a tremble.

  “Don’t give up so soon,” said Dad, giving her a final, final hug. “There might be a completely new adventure waiting for you.”

  “Are there any poorly animals we need to look after?” Tiger sniffed, holding May Days’ hand as she waved goodbye to her dad.

  “Not this time,” said May Days, and then explained that the builders were coming the next day to fix the chimneys on the roof. “In the meantime, keep your eyes wide open. You never know what else you might find.”

  To help feel more at home, Tiger unpacked her case in the tent. Colourful striped rugs from Africa covered the ground and the tent smelled of dried grasses and faraway. There were two camp beds, puffy with sleeping bags and blankets, and Tiger put her pyjamas under the pillow of the one where she’d sleep. A rope was strung from one end of the tent to the other, hung with gas lamps for night-time, coat hangers for clothes, a torch for visiting the outdoor bathroom, and a pair of May Days’ shoes tied by the laces.

  Tiger sat on the end of her bed where Holly used to sleep, but it only made her feel worse. A visit to Willowgate just wouldn’t be the same without Holly. Instead she crawled through the hedge and called for Tom, but nobody was home at all. May Days didn’t know if Tom was coming to stay and now Tiger wasn’t expecting to find anything good at Willowgate.

  Early the next morning, the builders arrived and had already begun to put up scaffolding at the front of the house by the time Tiger was dressed. Higher and higher the poles and planks and ladders rose, so that the builders could climb up to the roof to fix the cracked chimney stacks and toppling clay pots. They propped open the conservatory door to let warm air flow through and dry out the damp that was making the bricks crumble. The scaffolding made the house look stronger and straighter, but to Tiger it now felt more skewwhiff than ever without Tom and Holly.

  Tiger sighed as May Days rolled up her sleeves and helped carry planks to lay on the platforms. Children were not allowed to climb up the ladder – it was against the rules, the builders said – and Tiger soon wandered off when she felt she was getting in the way. She sat at the kitchen table and drew pictures of tigers and a cat, but the outline of the white cat on a white page wasn’t anything like the real thing.

  There was a crate in the kitchen, one that May Days had brought from Africa. In the hope of finding something to
distract her from waiting for Holly to appear, Tiger leaned over the crate to see what was inside. It was still packed, and there was a small red box on the top that looked interesting.

  “May Days!” Tiger called up to the roof. “I found a red wooden box. Can I open it, please? I’ll be careful and won’t break anything.”

  “I know you won’t,” said May Day, smiling down to Tiger. “But that little box contains my most special keepsakes, so I’d like to save showing them to you until we have lots of time to sit down together and I can tell you all about each one.”

  “OK, but what can I do instead?” said Tiger, a little hurt that all the things she wanted to see were staying hidden – first Holly and now the contents of the red box. From high up, May Days could see her next-door neighbour’s car coming up the lane with an extra passenger. “Why don’t you go and call for Tom again? I think you might have a nice surprise!”

  Tiger ran round to the hedge at the back of the house and called for her holiday friend through the gap underneath.

  “Boo!” said Tom, appearing at the other side and Tiger was so happy to see at least one of her friends. “Who’s up on the roof?” Tom said.

  “Henry and James the builders,” said Tiger. “But somebody else is missing.”

  Tom crawled through the hedge tunnel to Tiger.

  “A missing person?” asked Tom.

  “A missing cat,” said Tiger, sighing sadly. “I can’t find Holly.”

  Did Holly know that they were there, they wondered? Where could they f ind her? Tom screwed up his face, thinking hard.

  “I know how we’ll find Holly!” said Tom. “This holiday we can be private-eye detectives!” He was already crawling out of the hedge in a hurry. “Come on. Let’s get started!”

  “What do we need to be private-eye detectives?” said Tiger, warming to Tom’s idea.

  “We need to be a bit brave and probably clever,” he said.

  “We also might need notepads,” said Tiger, and then smiled, pleased that her fun friend from next door was there to help.

  Tom’s grandfather was affectionately known as Grumps, although he was, in fact, the opposite of grumpy. At his kitchen table Tiger and Tom made badges from circles of cardboard and safety pins. On them they wrote: Private Eye Tiger – Detective, and Private Eye Tom – Detective, shortened to PET detective. It made them think that they were destined to find the cat all along.

  “We also need to feel like detectives,” said Tom to Grumps. “What do they dress like?”

  In the back of the cupboard under the stairs, Grumps found a couple of hats, a scarf and a beige-coloured raincoat.

  Tom eagerly put on the coat, declaring it an exact fit after he’d hitched it up with the belt. He pinned his badge to the lapel and put on the small brimmed hat.

  “That’s what Inspector Clouseau would wear,” said Grumps with a chuckle, and Tom liked the way the name sounded like clues.

  “Very Sherlock Holmes!” said Grumps to Tiger as she swished the scarf around her neck and pinned her badge to the checked hat with ear flaps.

  “And might this be of any use?” added Grumps, holding up a magnifying glass that he used for crosswords. Perfect.

  Tiger and Tom set off to investigate.

  May Days was now helping the builders to carry bricks, two at a time, up to the roof. When Tom saw the scaffolding he immediately wanted to climb up the ladders, but Tiger told him they were not allowed.

  “Before you set off,” May Day said, smiling at their clever badges and outfits, “there’s some clean washing that needs hanging out to dry and I’m too covered in dust to do it myself. Please can you help?”

  Tiger and Tom said yes and raced inside to fetch the washing.

  The makeshift washing line was looped through pulley-wheels tied between a pillar on the porch and a tree, sagging in the middle where the children could reach. Tiger pegged May Days’ shirts and trousers and also a pair of her own tiger-striped socks she’d worn the previous day. With the magnifying glass, Tom inspected the swirls of the skin on his fingertips and then a builder’s footprint on the ground.

  “You’re not helping much,” Tiger said.

  “I’m looking for clues,” Tom said, “but I’m also thinking that what we need is a detective office.” They’d wanted to find a den the last time they visited, but hadn’t succeeded.

  “Good idea! But what we need first are some detective rules!” said Tiger.

  On her notepad, Tiger wrote:

  But so far they hadn’t found any clues and therefore had nothing to write down. What questions did they need to ask?

  Tiger and Tom sat on the lawn and rubbed their chins, but the only question they could think of so far was: where is Holly? They definitely needed to be smarter than this to be detectives.

  Tiger squeezed her eyes tight to see if that would help while Tom scanned a bare patch of freshly dug earth with the magnifying glass. “Look! I’ve found a paw print!” he said.

  “Let me see!” said Tiger, peering closely at the mark in the soil. “It looks like a cat paw print! Our first piece of evidence that Holly has been here.”

  Tiger drew a copy of the print on the notepad and Tom poked the ground with his pencil, digging to see what else was there.

  “Tiger,” said Tom slowly, “I think I’ve found another clue.”

  “For finding Holly?” Tiger said.

  “No, but it might be a strange scientific discovery instead.”

  Tiger and Tom peered at the moony-coloured shape through the magnifier.

  Tom dug away more earth with his pencil and they stared at each other with wide eyes. What Tom had found felt cool and smooth, rounded at one end and pointier at the other. It was an egg. They were sure that birds laid eggs in nests, but this one seemed to have grown in the ground!

  “We might have another case already,” said Tom.

  Together they walked slowly back to the house, with Tiger holding the egg carefully in her hands.

  May Days climbed down from the scaffolding as the builders were ready to pack up for the day and go home.

  “Oh,” she said, seeing the egg. “Is it time for tea, detectives?”

  The children explained where they’d found the egg and they all went to the kitchen. Tiger and Tom stared at the evidence, now nestled on the table in a towel to stop it rolling away. They examined it all over with the magnifying glass, but there were no more clues or paw prints.

  May Days suggested the children write down a list of animals that they knew laid eggs. Tiger was impressed with Tom’s confident guesses.

  May Days went through the list and Tiger crossed off the wrong guesses and made some notes.

  “If it was a chicken egg from the shops, it would have a little lion and date printed on it,” said May Days. “But I declare that it is definitely a chicken egg.”

  Tiger excitedly put a tick next to the correct answer.

  “But how did it get in the ground?” said Tiger.

  “Good question!” May Days said with a twinkle in her eye. “And what about this question: who might have buried the chicken egg to hide it and save it for their tea another day?”

  Tiger and Tom had no idea, but having good questions to think about was very helpful. Tiger took her job as PET detective very seriously and quickly came up with an answer, although not to that particular question.

  “Food!” Tiger said, suddenly forgetting about the egg and going back to case one. Instead of looking all over for Holly, they would tempt her to come to them with food.

  Using a box of cat treats, Tiger and Tom laid a fishy-smelling trail. They scattered the biscuits from the door, across the lawn and down towards the part of the garden that was overgrown and dense, hoping that wherever Holly was, her clever nose might bring her back to Willowgate.

  Upon investigation the following morning, Detectives Tiger and Tom found that the fishy biscuits had gone, which was a good clue that Holly might have been there, although they wondered, just
for a moment, if any other animal might have eaten them too. Unfortunately, there was no evidence of paw prints on the grass, though. They also discovered that nobody had remembered to bring the washing in from the day before and now Tiger’s striped socks were missing from the line. And, the conservatory door was left open overnight and a pot had been broken with the soil spilled over the floor.

  Tom poked around in the soil with his pencil. There was another egg buried there.

  But who had done all this?

  “It must be Holly,” said Tom, thinking he had already cracked both cases of the missing cat and mysterious egg (now eggs!). “Holly is an egg and sock thief.”

  As far as Tom was concerned, there were not two separate investigations but only one. Tiger was upset by two things. If Holly had been there, why hadn’t she come to see Tiger? She always used to turn up to see what Tiger was doing. And also, Tiger didn’t like her favourite cat being accused of stealing. Tiger rested her pencil against her lips, thinking hard.

  “But how could Holly carry the eggs?” she said, trying to picture the cat holding an egg in her paws, or in her mouth, which was hardly big enough. She’d never heard of cats digging holes and burying things. Surely that was not how the eggs got there, and more importantly, Tiger felt sure Holly wouldn’t steal.

  Tiger wrote down the new developments …

  These investigations were not finished at all. In fact, they had just become more intriguing. And Tiger wasn’t going to let anything distract her from finding Holly, even though May Days’ special red box was now in the middle of the kitchen table.

  Tiger was determined to find Holly. According to detective rules, questions were essential, and Tiger and Tom decided to conduct some interviews to uncover more information about the missing cat, the mysterious eggs and the stolen socks. Tiger hoped most of all that a clue about either case would lead to finding Holly.