The Phantom Portrait

by Sarah Todd Taylor

  Agnes watched longingly as the rest of the company left the theatre, the men of the chorus doing elaborate tumbles across Lord Fawley’s long front lawn. Under the watchful eye of Maximilian, they ran through the scene one more time, with Maximilian helping them out by miaowing “a little higher” and “you are not quite in time” and “can I have a snack now?”

  Agnes was halfway through the most difficult part of her solo when there was a sudden rattling. Agnes froze, her mouth still open to soar up to the note that made people clutch their hearts and murmur “wonderful”.

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  The theatre was silent for a few seconds, then the rattling began again, louder and more urgent. Sylvia moved close to Agnes and the two of them glanced around nervously. Maximilian sprang to his feet and peered into the wings.

  “It’s nothing,” Sylvia said. “Just the wind, I suppose.”

  Agnes grabbed at Sylvia’s hand. “It doesn’t sound much like the wind,” she whimpered. She glanced quickly up at the dome of the roof.

  The rattling stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Sylvia breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Maximilian.

  “See, old puss,” she said with a smile. “Nothing to worry about after all.”

  And then they were plunged into darkness.

  Agnes screamed.

  “It must be the electrics,” Sylvia cried.

  Maximilian jumped on to the stage, trying to find Agnes and Sylvia in the pitch black. He brushed against one of their feet, hoping that it would be comforting, but Agnes just screamed even louder.

  All at once the lights came back on. Agnes had her hands over her face and was still shrieking.

  Sylvia looked wildly around the theatre. “Over there!” she cried, pointing at the wide oak doors that led out into the lobby.

  A tall figure dressed in a flowing midnight-blue gown was disappearing through them, a figure with dark flowing curls and stars on her dress.

  “It’s her!” Agnes shrieked. “It’s the Viscountess!”

  Maximilian growled. He leapt from the stage and fled down through the rows of seats and through the doors out into the night. The moon was hidden behind the clouds, making the shapes of the garden loom up at him from out of the dark. The statues and hedges seemed larger than they had in the day. Ahead of him the house glowed with light. He glanced from side to side. One of the statues shivered and set off across the lawn. It was the figure from the theatre. Maximilian set off after it, gaining on it quickly as it hurried towards the side of the house.

  It’s huffing quite loudly for a ghost, Maximilian thought. It sounds very out of breath.

  As the figure reached the corner of the house, Maximilian caught hold of the edge of its skirt between his teeth and pulled. The figure whirled round.

  “Get off that!” said a voice, and the figure pulled roughly at the fabric. There was a ripping sound as the dress tore and Maximilian tumbled back into the grass, a scrap of blue fabric caught in his mouth.

  He watched the figure disappear round the side of the house. His head was reeling. Surely ghosts could not speak. Maximilian’s tail twitched. This was no ghost!

  Agnes flung open the door of the castle. Maximilian bounded in after her, the shred of velvet safely clamped in his mouth.

  “Stop being so silly,” Sylvia said firmly. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. It was probably one of the footmen playing a prank on us.”

  “It was her,” Agnes wailed, flinging out a hand towards the portrait of Celine at the top of the stairs.

  Maximilian patted Agnes’s ankle with his paw. If she would only take a look at the scrap of fabric she would realise that whoever wore it had been very human. Agnes ignored him and continued to sob.

  “What on earth is the matter, my dears?” Lord Fawley cried, coming out of the library with Arabella and Lord Rorston. He crossed the hall quickly, a look of great concern on his face. As he reached them, Bunty came dashing down the stairs, her hair in disarray and her face very pink.

  “She thinks she saw a ghost,” Sylvia explained, patting Agnes on the arm. “I’ve been trying to convince her that it’s probably just someone playing a joke.”

  “Probably a result of too many ghoulish stories late at night,” sighed Lord Fawley. “I think we’ve had quite enough of this haunted portrait nonsense. My dears, you must have been hard at work. You’ve not had time to dress.”

  “Never mind,” said Arabella, who was looking delightful in a fringed teal dress with little rosebuds on the shoulders. “It’s a silly tradition anyway, and what you have on is charming.”

  Maximilian saw Bunty’s mouth twitch a little at this. She was dressed less smartly than Arabella in a rather drab-coloured dress with a lace edging. Maximilian felt a little sorry for her. It was rather mortifying not to look one’s best when one was in company.

  Bunty dropped down to tickle Maximilian on the nose. “Hello, lovely puss,” she whispered. “Aren’t you handsome.”

  Maximilian looked up into her smiling face and felt himself melting. She was so awfully sweet. Agnes was being very silly at the moment. Sylvia could think of nothing but perfecting her dances, and Mrs Garland and Miss Julier were both too caught up in trying to get the show together to pay him much attention. It was not very loyal to admit it but Bunty was the only human who was being particularly nice to him.

  “What’s this, puss?” Bunty asked, taking hold of the scrap of fabric. Maximilian gritted his teeth but Bunty pulled determinedly. “Nasty stuff for a puss to have,” she said, barely glancing at the scrap before folding it into her palm, out of sight. Then she smiled and tickled him under the chin again before standing up and taking Arabella’s arm.

  Maximilian gave out a plaintive miaow of “that could be valuable evidence” but, as usual, no one was listening.

  Lord Fawley was about to lead them all into dinner when the door of the castle was flung open and a pinched-looking little man with a pointed beard stood in the doorway.

  “Maurice! I come. You call for me and I come!” The man executed a most unnecessarily complex series of bows.

  Lord Rorston threw out his arms to welcome the intruder. “Antonio! Fawley, this is my very good friend Antonio, one of the most celebrated psychical researchers in all of London.”

  The little man carried out another round of ridiculous bows and bounded forwards to Lord Fawley, who was looking rather confused.

  “Lord Rorston was kind enough to say that I could accompany him on this most interesting visit,” he said.

  Maximilian’s ears pricked up and he felt the end of his tail tingle. The man called Antonio had a very familiar voice. Maximilian was sure that he had heard it before, and quite recently too. He craned his head round Agnes’s ankle to get a proper look at him,

  “Antonio is fascinated by your haunted portrait, Robert,” said Lord Rorston. “I took the liberty of inviting him to join us for a few days. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Maximilian thought that Lord Fawley looked as though he minded very much, but he was far too much of a gentleman to say so. It was most peculiar of Lord Rorston to invite a stranger to Lord Fawley’s house, and for a family party too.

  The man called Antonio bowed again. “I have brought some equipment with me, Your Lordship. Sensitive equipment. Scientific equipment. It will detect your ghost and perhaps we can make contact with it. But I insist that no one else but me has access to it. You understand? No prying by maids and footmen. I will not allow it!”

  Lord Fawley looked a little put out at being ordered around in his own house.

  “It’s his way,” Lord Rorston explained. “He is very particular. But he’s the talk of London, I assure you.”

  Maximilian frowned at this. He had never heard of Antonio, and he was a very well-informed cat. The great front door of the castle swung open again and Lord Fawley’s footmen entered, staggering under the weight of a number of large crates.

  Antonio went into instant flurries of c
oncern. “Careful! Careful!” he cried.

  Lord Fawley rolled his eyes and beckoned one of the footmen over to him. He murmured something in the man’s ear and with a brisk nod and a click of the heels the footman strode off towards the staircase, followed by the crate-carriers. Antonio accompanied them, fussing about needing a room with a nice view.

  “It is most important,” he insisted to the footman in charge. “I fade without a view of nature.”

  Maximilian stared at him. What a fusspot! He was sure now that he recognised the man’s voice. And there was something else as well. Every sentence was punctuated with a strange twisting gesture of his right hand, the fingers pointing upwards to the ceiling. Maximilian wracked his brain. Where had he seen that before?

  “You get used to him,” Lord Rorston said once the little man was out of sight. “He will amuse Arabella. A psychical researcher at her party. None of her friends can claim to have someone catch a ghost for their birthday present!”

  Catch a ghost? thought Maximilian. I nearly caught a “ghost” earlier myself. I wonder who it really was. If only Bunty hadn’t taken away his only shred of evidence, but then humans were always getting in the way.

  “I think that the skeleton is going to fall into the lake,” said Oscar.

  It was the next morning and the two friends were watching a team of men in overalls putting the finishing touches to a ghostly galleon, hung with cobwebs, that had been winched on to Lord Fawley’s ornamental lake an hour earlier. Just after dawn, two large trucks emblazoned with “Cooper’s Theatrical Equipment Co.” had drawn up to the gates of the castle and a small army of workers had descended to create the perfect atmosphere for Arabella’s Halloween masked ball. Hundreds of pumpkin-shaped lanterns had been brought out to hang from every tree and to line the paths around the gardens. Witches’ broomsticks were hung from wires that trailed from tree to tree and up to the towers of the castle itself. At the flick of a switch the brooms would fly down the wires over the heads of Lord Fawley’s guests.

  On the galleon, two men were involved in a tug-of-war over where the skeleton hanging from the rigging would look best. Oscar raised an eyebrow at Maximilian and, as if on cue, the skeleton fell from the ship into the lake, followed by one of the men.

  It was all very interesting to watch, but Maximilian’s tummy was beginning to rumble a little. He eyed the fish in the lake very keenly but decided that it was probably bad manners to poach from your host’s lake. “I hear that they have started to make the salmon mousse in the kitchen,” he said.

  Oscar grinned and they set off towards the castle to see if the cook was in a good mood.

  As they rounded the corner of one of Lord Fawley’s magnificent yew hedges, they saw Bunty sitting on her own on a bench by the rose garden. She was engrossed in a satin-covered book, deep frown lines running across her brow as she pored over the pages. Arabella, dressed in a crisp tweed skirt and cashmere jumper, was crossing the lawn towards her, but Bunty was too taken up with her book to notice her friend. It was not till Arabella dropped herself on to the bench beside her that Bunty realised she was there at all.

  “Arabella, you frightened the life out of me!” she cried, dropping the book. Folded pieces of paper spilled out from between its pages and Bunty scrabbled to collect them. Arabella leaned over and picked one up.

  “What on earth is all this, Bunts? It looks like letters,” she said, turning the paper over in her hands. Bunty snatched it away and blushed as she tucked the folded paper back into the book.

  “It’s … nothing. Let’s talk about the party.”

  Arabella pouted. “Well, this sounds very mysterious. Oh, Bunty, it’s not love letters, is it? Who? You have to tell your dearest friend!”

  Bunty slipped the book into one of the roomy pockets of her cardigan and shook her head. “I can’t tell anyone yet. Not even you.”

  Arabella sighed. “Why not? Oh, it is love letters, isn’t it! Is it awfully romantic? But why must it be a secret? Is he something awfully low, like a farmer? Will your father be utterly furious? Oh, Bunts, how lovely. But you’re right, we’ll talk no more about it. Come and see the galleon. It’s looking wonderful and there’s going to be fireworks over it at midnight as we all take our masks off!”

  Maximilian watched them walk across the lawn. Was Bunty hiding a love affair from her father? Maximilian was, at heart, wonderfully romantic. His favourite shows at the Theatre Royal always involved doomed lovers torn apart by cruel parents. He instantly cast Bunty in the role of the tragic maiden, separated from her dearest love. Perhaps, once he had solved the mystery of the theatre hauntings and the curious ransacking of the dressing rooms, he could help the star-crossed lovers…

  Oscar gave a little cough. “I believe someone mentioned salmon mousse?” he said.

  Lord Fawley’s cook turned out to be very generous when it came to portions, and after licking the last morsels of salmon from his paws and cleaning up his tail, which had somehow trailed in his dish, Maximilian was ready for one of his eight daily catnaps. As he was settling his head on his paws in the library, however, he heard Lord Rorston and the man called Antonio pass the door, deep in conversation. Maximilian sighed. He was so tired, but he could feel that familiar tingling in his tail. There was something very odd about Antonio’s presence at Fawley Castle and he was not sure that he believed the man’s story about “catching a ghost”. So he slipped from his chair and crept out into the hallway. He was just in time to see the two men mount the stairs, heading to the landing where the painting was. Being careful not to get too close, Maximilian followed them.

  “… planning this for months,” Lord Rorston was saying. “Having the theatre folk here has been a little awkward but they shouldn’t cause us too much trouble.”

  Antonio did not say anything. He took a silver box out of his waistcoat pocket and turned it over in his fingers. He pressed a button on the side and a tape measure spooled down across the floor.

  “Precision is everything,” he murmured, stretching the tape measure from the wall where Lady Celine’s portrait hung to the top of the stairs. “Oh, hello, small cat,” he said, noticing Maximilian. Antonio tipped his head to one side and stared at Maximilian keenly. “A handsome fellow,” he remarked. “I would like to work with cats. They are very jolly. Do you think he can be trained?”

  Maximilian let out his “how dare you suggest such a thing!” miaow. Trained? The very thought of it! Dogs could be trained, of course, but, as everyone knew, they were even less intelligent than humans.

  “Stick to the plan,” Lord Rorston said firmly. “As we agreed. At midnight she appears, Arabella gets the fright of her life and then leave the rest to me.” He looked up at the portrait and laughed. “Trained cats, indeed! Everyone knows you can’t train a cat. They’re not as clever as dogs.”

  Maximilian had heard enough.

  He was still smarting over Lord Rorston’s rudeness late that night, curled up on Sylvia’s bed and musing on everything he had heard. Why on earth was the man planning to scare Arabella on her birthday? What did he mean by “leave the rest to me”? Maximilian added these mysteries to the ones he already had – who had been ransacking the theatre, and who was dressing up as the Viscountess. But there were too many pieces of this particular puzzle and, try as he might, he could not make them fit together. There was only one thing to do. Maximilian set to giving his tail a groom.

  He had just got it looking utterly perfect, and was feeling much more clever as a result, when Agnes and Sylvia fell through the door, giggling and with bundles of fabric, lace trimmings and beads spilling from their arms. Sylvia dropped her pile on the bed, squashing Maximilian’s tail. He let out an exasperated sigh and whisked it under his paws.

  “Just look what we found in the theatre, Max!” Agnes said, shaking out a bright-orange organza gown with a handkerchief hem. The light evening breeze from the window made the hem flutter, and as the moonlight caught the silvery braid in the fabric it shimmered like
flames.

  “Isn’t it just perfect!” Agnes cried, holding the dress to herself and whirling round. “We rescued some old jewellery from a tea chest too, so I’m going to sew the sparkliest bits on to this and go as fire for the costume ball tomorrow night.”

  Maximilian reached out a paw to the pile of gems that Sylvia had dropped on to the bed. It was a mass of chains and beads and twisted metal. Chunks of glass cut to look like precious gemstones hung from some of the chains, their brilliance dulled by layers of dust.

  “Some of these do look awfully pretty, you know, Sylvia,” Agnes said, picking up a crescent-shaped piece and blowing the dust off it. Maximilian coughed as the dust went up his nose, and he tucked his tail more firmly under his paws to stop it from being utterly ruined. Agnes gave the piece a polish on the edge of her sleeve and held it up to the light.

  “It looks like a tiny moon,” she sighed. “Isn’t it lovely. There are lots of them – ouch!”

  Agnes held up a finger on which a tiny bubble of blood was pooling.

  “The setting must be broken,” Sylvia said. “Give it a good wash. I hate to think how many germs there must be on it.”

  Agnes dashed to the basin on the dressing table and sloshed a good deal of water into it from a nearby jug. Maximilian patted at the bits of jewellery that were scattered across Agnes’s bed. There were lots of moon shapes, but then there were moons everywhere in the castle. Each of the window panes had crescent moons delicately etched into the corners. There were moons carved into the top of each bed and delicate curves of crescents danced around each of the lamps. He tucked a claw round one of the sparkling moon-shaped gems that was snagged on a delicate filigree pendant and tugged. With one pull it worked free and clattered to the floor.