Jasper and the Green Marvel (8 page)

22 Mrs Knutmegg and the Carrots

The following morning as Jasper was heading out to the garden, he met Mrs Knuttmegg at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I need some vegetables from the kitchen garden,’ she said. ‘Six carrots. I’ll be out to fetch them later and I’d ask you to be good enough to have them ready for me.’

Jasper flounced out of the house without even bothering to answer her, but after the business with flicking Mrs Haverford-Snuffley on the nose, he was keen not to get into any more trouble.

The kitchen garden was a charming spot.
It had a herb garden that scented the air when you walked past it and brushed against the leaves. There were fruit bushes, including blackcurrants and gooseberries. There were strawberry beds too, and raspberry canes. The vegetables grew in neat rows: lettuce and cabbage; leeks, and peas and beans.

But as Jasper stood that morning gazing over the garden he couldn’t for the life of him work out where the carrots might be. Was there a carrot bush somewhere around that he hadn’t noticed? He poked at some spinach with his toe. Maybe that was a carrot plant and they just weren’t ready yet.

He still hadn’t worked it out when Mrs Knuttmegg appeared at his elbow, skinny and stern in her dazzling white pinny.

‘I’ve come for my veggies, mister.’

‘I haven’t got round to that yet. I had lots of other things to do.’

Mrs Knutmegg folded her arms. ‘I’m in no rush,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait here while you get them.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to get them yourself?’

‘You’re the gardener, that’s your job.’

‘Wouldn’t you rather have a lettuce?’

‘Mrs Haverford-Snuffley asked me to make carrot soup for her lunch. I need six carrots.’

Jasper looked around the garden wildly. ‘I’m not sure that there are any here. I think the last gardener was really stupid and planted them in the wrong place. Do you know, now I come to think of it, I’m sure I saw a carrot bush down in the rose garden. Couldn’t believe my eyes. What’s that doing there? I asked myself. Covered in carrots it was though, oh yes, hundreds of them. Lovely and straight and a nice bright orange colour. Why don’t you go down there and pick as many of them as you want. You see, I am rather busy here …’

‘HA!’ And Mrs Knuttmegg once again interrupted him with one of her harsh barks of laughter. Then she did something that astonished Jasper. She bent down and grasped a delicate feathery plant that was growing at
her feet. She pulled hard on it and it came out of the ground … and there was a carrot! A nice fat pointy orange carrot!

‘How did that get there?’ Jasper said. ‘I know – you put it there! You nasty, weird woman, hiding vegetables in the ground like that! What’s wrong with you? What are you up to?’

Mrs Knuttmegg dropped the carrot and grabbed Jasper by his lapels, pulled his face up close to hers.

‘It’s not me, it’s you,’ she hissed. ‘What are
you
up to, Professor Orchid? If that’s your real name and you really are a gardener, I’ll eat my biggest saucepan, and I’ll have three tea-towels for dessert.’

She let go of Jasper’s jacket and held her hands up close to his face. ‘See these?’

Jasper could see nothing else. They were big hands, muscular and strong from years of kneading dough and mixing cakes. They were rough and red, and scarred from where she had cut herself when chopping things and where
she had burnt herself on the kitchen stove when lifting things out of the oven.

‘That’s what a cook’s mitts look like, mister,’ she said proudly. Then she grabbed Jasper by the wrists and held him tightly so that he couldn’t wriggle out of her grasp. She lifted his hands up to eye level so that they could both inspect them.

Jasper had beautiful hands. They were soft and white with not a mark on them. His fingernails were short, and perfectly clean. ‘So you’re telling me, mister,’ she cried, ‘that those are gardener’s hands? That you’ve been digging and planting and weeding with these lily-white paws for years on end? Potting things? Pruning? Planting bulbs? Don’t make me laugh.’ But she did laugh: ‘HA!’

Jasper knew he’d been rumbled.

Mrs Knuttmegg let go of his wrists and grabbed him by his jacket again. ‘Let me tell you this about Mrs Haverford-Snuffley. There’s not a kinder, more gentle and generous
soul in all the world. She took me in when I was down on my luck, when I had nothing. I couldn’t begin to tell you how good she’s been to me. She’s kind to dumb animals too. And because of all that, see, I watch out for her. If she has a fault it’s that she can be too trusting, too nice. She doesn’t know a villain when she sees one. She thinks everybody’s as sweet and thoughtful as she is herself. But I’m not like that, oh no!’

‘I didn’t think you were,’ Jasper said brazenly. ‘As soon as I met you I knew you were a tough, suspicious old biddy who could see only the bad in people.’

‘And there’s plenty of bad to see in you,’ Mrs Knuttmegg shot back immediately. ‘If I knew what you were up to, I’d have you run out of here tomorrow.’ She let go of his jacket again.

‘I’m going back to my kitchen now,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, mister. I’ll be watching every move you make.’ She bent down and picked up the carrot she had
dropped earlier, then swiftly hauled five more out of the ground.

‘Gardener, indeed,’ she said as she shook the soil from the vegetables. ‘Doesn’t even know what a compost heap is. Carrot bush. HA!’

And with that she turned her back on Jasper and stumped off towards the house again. 

23 Sing Your Heart Out!

While all of this was happening, Rags and Bags had sneaked off again, and were well on their way down the garden even before Mrs Knuttmegg had grabbed Jasper by his jacket.

‘Well, here’s the wall Georgiana talked about,’ Rags said.

‘And here’s the wooden door. But where’s the letterbox? I don’t see it.’

‘It must be hidden under all that ivy. I bet there wasn’t as much of it in Georgiana’s day.’

They decided that one of them would climb up and look for the letterbox while the other one stayed on the ground, and they were
talking about this when Rags suddenly heard something. It was the distant notes of a flute.

‘Oh no! It’s that music again!’ The sad, melancholy air grew louder and louder, and once again the rats began to feel very unhappy.

‘I can’t bear this, I don’t want it,’ Rags cried. ‘What shall we do?’

‘We’ll sing a happy song,’ Bags wailed miserably. ‘Drown it out.’

‘Do we know any happy songs?’ asked Rags, who was already beginning to sob.

‘“Happy Birthday.” What about that?’ Even in jail, all the prisoners would always sing for a birthday boy, and so Rags and Bags knew this song well.

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Rags, who was weeping now, and full of a terrible grief. ‘But who will we sing it for? Whose name will we put in?’

‘Georgiana’s,’ Bags replied, as the tears rolled down his snout. The sad music was very loud and close now, as if the flute player was
perhaps standing only on the other side of the wall. ‘Join in with me, Rags, and be as loud and as cheerful as you can. Sing your heart out! One … two … three …’

And with that, the most extraordinary thing happened.

The music stopped!

It stopped immediately, all at once, in the middle of the melody, as if someone had snatched the flute away. The rats were amazed.

‘I didn’t think that was going to happen,’ Rags said, still shaken, and gulping away the last of his tears.

‘It certainly did the trick,’ Bags agreed, wiping his nose with the back of his paw and sniffing.

Gradually they started to recover and feel better again. They quickly decided that Rags would be the one to climb up the ivy and look for the letterbox. Rats are very good at climbing, and once he set out, he moved swiftly up the wall, while Bags watched from below.

‘I’ve found it!’ Rags shouted down. ‘There’s a hole in the wall here, a narrow rectangular hole. I’m going to climb in and see what’s there.’ His head, then his body, then his bum and finally his tail disappeared into the
ivy-covered
wall and Bags wondered excitedly what Rags would find. Might it even be the Green Marvel itself?

After what seemed to him to be hours, but was only a matter of minutes, a whiskered snout popped out, high up in the ivy.

‘There are two notes this time. Which one should I bring?’

‘Both of them, you twit! Throw them down to me here and I’ll look after them.’

The snout disappeared again, and a few
seconds later a paw appeared, holding two folded squares of fragile yellowed paper which it tossed down. Bags caught them neatly, and before long Rags climbed out of the letterbox and was descending through the shiny green leaves of the ivy.

‘We’ll take these to Georgiana tonight and see what they say, but when we get back to the house I vote that we have a little snooze for a while,’ Bags said.

‘Good idea! I’m exhausted. That was almost too much excitement for one day!’ 

24 A Surprise for Jasper

When he had finished working that day, Jasper stumped upstairs to his room, feeling tired and irritated. It was early evening by then and already there was a full moon, low and huge and silvery. Jasper noticed it, but he paid it no heed, it meant nothing to him. Jasper only valued things that other people valued because they couldn’t have them. For that reason he had no interest in wild flowers or birds or the stars or any of the other beautiful things in the world which are there for everyone to enjoy.

His body was aching from all the weeding and hoeing. He’d always known that Mrs
Knuttmegg didn’t like or trust him, but he didn’t like to be told it to his face. Oh, if only he could find the Green Marvel and leave this house, with its dotty owner and its nasty cook. For how much longer will I have to put up with all of this? he wondered.

And what about those miserable rats? They were more trouble than they were worth, as far as Jasper was concerned, but when he did finally leave he was going to take them with him. Even in jail rats were useful to frighten other prisoners, and although he would be rich and powerful once he found the necklace, he would still want to be able to scare the pants off people. What annoyed him here was that he had no way of controlling the wretched creatures. As soon as he had money, one of the very first things he was going to buy was a cage to keep them in. He’d go back to feeding them very little too. Be harsh and show them who’s boss: that was the best way to treat animals as far as Jasper was concerned. Where were they,
anyway? What were they doing right now? He stood listening carefully, and heard a little snore coming from the dressing table.

He crossed the room on tiptoe, gently pulled out the top drawer and there were the rats. They were both tucked up in their sock sleeping-bags, with their heads resting on the rolled-up vest. They seemed to be smiling in their sleep, and Jasper could see their tiny fangs. Ugh, what hideously ugly creatures they were, with their dull fur and weird little ears.

But then, as he looked at them with extreme dislike, Jasper noticed something. They were lying with their front paws out over the tops of the socks, and each rat was clutching a small square of folded paper. What’s all this about? he wondered.

Carefully, very, very carefully so as not to waken them, with the tips of his fingers he gently removed the paper from the rat nearest to him, unfolded it and read it. ‘What piffle!’ he muttered to himself and he frowned. He
didn’t understand what the note was all about, but as far as he was concerned it was a pile of sentimental twaddle. With remarkable skill, he tucked the note back into the grip of the sleeping animal.

Was it even worth looking at the other one? It was probably more of the same codswallop. But Jasper was a born nosy-parker, and couldn’t resist taking the second note too. As he did so, Rags – or was it Bags? He still found it hard to tell them apart and he wasn’t interested enough in them to care which was which – as he did so, the rat yawned and stretched. For a moment he thought it was going to wake up, but it seemed instead to sink back into a deeper sleep, as he deftly removed the note from its little paws.

He unfolded it and glanced over it … and then he gasped. He read it again and then again. For a moment he thought he was going to faint, so astonished was he by what was written in the note. Jasper’s hand was shaking
with excitement when he put the piece of paper back in the rat’s paws, and gently slid the drawer shut again.