Not Just a Witch (13 page)

Dora had found some people to buy the stonemason’s business, but suppose they got annoyed with the poor spirit? Suppose in a fit of anger they
did
chop down the wardrobe. Dora would never forgive herself.

Could her friend really refuse to take in this doleful ghost? It wasn’t as though Dora was asking anything for herself. She knew Heckie never wanted to see
her
again. But could Heckie, who had never turned away a stray in her life, refuse to give a home to this poor sad thing?

And Dora climbed into the cab and drove up the hill towards the town.

The cheese wizard went to bed early. Serving in his shop by day and doing magic on his cheeses at night made Mr Gurgle very tired. But on the night of Heckie’s farewell party, he was woken in the small hours by an odd tapping noise. Tap, tap, tap, it went, and then stopped again, and just as he was dropping off, it began once more.

‘Oh, bother!’ said Mr Gurgle, and got out of bed and put on his slippers. The tapping seemed to be coming from right below him, from the cellar. Could his prize cheese be learning to tap dance? Sometimes people who couldn’t walk very well got on better when they tried to move to music.

But when he got down to the cellar, the Stilton lay quietly on its shelf, looking as fast asleep as only a cheese can do.

The wizard scratched his head. Had he imagined the tapping? No, there it was again. Sounding louder, sounding really frantic. But it wasn’t in his cellar, it was in the cellar next door. Which was very strange . . . Because the shop next door belonged to the furrier, Mr Knacksap, who had gone away to get ready for his wedding to Heckie. Mr Knacksap’s shop should have been empty.

Another burst of tapping . . . Mr Gurgle went up to the dividing wall and tapped in turn, and the tapping became louder. Something or someone was trapped in there. The wizard slipped on his coat and went outside. The front of the furrier’s shop was locked – the back too. But there was a grating across the top of the cellar steps, out in the back yard. He fetched a stepladder and climbed over the wall, wobbling a little, for he was holding a torch in one hand.

The grating was ancient and rusty, but though Mr Gurgle was weedy, he was also obstinate. He tugged and he tugged and at last it came away and he could make his way carefully down the cellar steps.

At the bottom, curled in a heap, lay a boy. Blood had hardened on his forehead and his face; there was more blood on his hands where he had pounded the rough stone wall.

It was only when he tried to speak, muttering words that made no sense at all, that the wizard recognized Daniel.

Everyone had been worried about Heckie’s engagement to the furrier, but as the day of the wedding grew closer, Daniel became quite frantic. Though he knew that Heckie was a powerful witch, he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that some frightful harm would come to her through Mr Knacksap.

He had bought Heckie a present: a tea-making machine which dropped exactly the right number of bags into the pot. He was actually wrapping it up when he decided not to go to the party. Instead, he made his way to the furrier’s shop in Market Square. Perhaps even now he could still get proof of the furrier’s treachery.

Over the FOR SALE notice, another notice had been plastered, saying SOLD. The beaver cape had been taken from the window. But, to Daniel’s surprise, the door of the shop was ajar. Mr Knacksap’s cleaning lady, in a very nasty temper, was just leaving.

‘If you want him, you’d better come in and wait,’ she said. ‘I’m not hanging around any longer. If he doesn’t want to give me a bit of a farewell tip like any decent gentleman would, then good riddance to him.’

She left, and Daniel slipped in to the furrier’s office. It was stripped and bare. Beside the desk stood three leather suitcases with gaudy labels.

L
.
KNACKSAP
,
HOTEL SPLENDISSIMA
,
ALICANTE
,
SPAIN
, read Daniel.

Spain
? Why Spain? thought Daniel. Surely it was beside Lake Windermere that the furrier was going to marry Heckie?

At that moment he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. Mr Knacksap coming back for his luggage! There was a cupboard in the corner for coats and overalls. Daniel slipped inside, his heart pounding, and closed the door.

Mr Knacksap was whistling jauntily as he sat down at his desk. Then he picked up the telephone. ‘Flitchbody? It’s Knacksap here. I just wanted to make sure you’ve got everything sorted. The bodies should be with you by six this morning. Three hundred snow leopards. They’ll be dead and without a scratch on them – we’re going to use gas. All you’ve got to do is get them skinned.’

‘Where are you going to gas them for heaven’s sake?’

‘Hankley Hall – it’s about five miles from Wellbridge. Don’t worry, it’s a doddle.’

‘I still don’t know where you think you can get them from.’

‘Well, if I told you I’d found a witch who can turn people into leopards, you wouldn’t believe me. So just take it I’ve found someone who breeds them in secret and thinks I’m going to let them loose on the hills. And remember, Flitchbody, I want the money in cash or I’ll blow the lot to kingdom come.’

He put down the phone.

Oh, God, thought Daniel. What does it mean? What shall I do?

Then something awful happened. His foot slipped and bumped against one of Mr Knacksap’s walking sticks, propped in the corner of the cupboard. Daniel lunged, trying desperately to catch it – and missed. There was a frightful clatter. Then slowly . . . very slowly . . . the cupboard was opened by an unseen hand.

Heckie pulled the dragworm through the lamplit streets of Wellbridge, past Sumi’s shop, past Boris’s garage. Everything was shuttered; everyone slept. It was a long way to Fetlington, but the night was fresh and cool.

She was turning into Market Square when she saw, coming towards her, a furniture lorry which stopped suddenly with a squeal of brakes. Then a dumpy lady in a boiler suit got down from the cab.

It couldn’t be . . . But it was!

‘Dora!’ said Heckie – and waited for her friend to snub her and turn away.

‘Heckie!’ said Dora – and waited for her friend to shout rude things at her.

There was a pause while both witches looked at each other. Then:

‘Oh, Dora, I have missed you,’ said Heckie.

‘Oh, Heckie, I have missed
you
,’ said Dora.

And then they were hugging each other and talking both at once, explaining how miserable they had been and promising that they would never, never quarrel with each other again.

All this took a little while, but then Heckie said: ‘Why are you moving furniture at this time of night?’

‘Well, actually . . . I was coming to see you. I was going to have a last try at being friends and I wanted to ask you if you’d take my wardrobe. It’s haunted, you see, and I’m getting married and my fiancé doesn’t like ghosts.’

‘But of course I’ll take it. Only it’s so funny, Dora, because
I
was coming to see you! I wanted to have a last try at being friends and I wanted to ask you if you’d take my familiar because I’m getting married and my fiancé doesn’t like dragworms!’

So then they both laughed so much they nearly fell over and said wasn’t it amazing that both of them were going to get married, and then Dora opened the wardrobe and the thing came out looking white and vague and blinking worriedly – and as Dora had known she would, Heckie took to it at once.

And then Heckie unzipped the dragworm’s basket and of course it was love at first sight. ‘Oh, Heckie, you were always so clever with animals! The way the back of him is so different from the front and yet somehow he’s all of a piece!’

So now their worries were over and they could settle down to a good gossip.

‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could visit each other every week like proper married ladies?’ said Heckie.

‘Oh, wouldn’t it!’ said Dora. ‘But I’m going to live in the Lake District.’

Heckie gave a shriek of delight. ‘But so am I! So am I going to live in the Lake District! Isn’t it absolutely splendid! We’ll be able to swap recipes and have tupperware parties and—’

She never finished her sentence. The door of the cheese wizard’s shop burst open and Mr Gurgle came running across the square, still in his bedroom slippers, and as white as a sheet.

‘Thank goodness!’ he said, grabbing Heckie’s arm. ‘I thought I heard you. It’s the boy . . . Daniel. I found him trussed up in Knacksap’s cellar. He’s been hit on the head and he’s got brain fever, I think. He keeps talking about leopards. Three hundred snow leopards going to be gassed at Hankley Hall!’

Daniel lay on Mr Gurgle’s sofa. He had lost so much blood that the room was going round and round, but when he saw Heckie, he made a desperate effort to speak.

‘Leopards,’ he said again. ‘Three hundred . . . at Hankley Hall . . . killed.’ And struggling to make her understand what he had heard: ‘Flitchbody . . .’ he began – and then fell back against the cushions.

Heckie felt his head with careful fingers. ‘He must go to hospital at once and his parents be told. Get an ambulance, Gurgle. When he’s safe you can rally the others, but the boy comes first.’ She turned to Dora. ‘I did it,’ said Heckie, and she looked like a corpse. ‘I made the leopards out of the prisoners, for Li-Li to turn loose on the hills. This Flitchbody must have got wind of Li-Li’s plans and kidnapped them!’

‘Oh, but that’s terrible, Heckie. You see one of them must be Lewis’s Cousin Alfred! He went to the prison to free him. Lewis will never forgive me if Cousin Alfred gets gassed and skinned.’

‘Perhaps it’s not too late,’ said Heckie – and both witches ran like the wind for the lorry.

It had been a splendid place once – a long, low building with towers and turrets and an avenue of lime trees. There was a statue garden with queer griffins and heraldic beasts carved in stone, and a lake and a maze – a really frightening maze, the kind with high yew hedges that could trap you for hours and hours.

But now the hall was empty and partly ruined. The people who owned Hankley couldn’t afford to keep it up and then it was found that an underground river was making the back of the house sink into the ground, so nobody would buy it.

The ballroom, though, was in the front and it looked almost as it had done a hundred years ago. There were patches of damp on the ceiling and the plaster had flaked off, but the beautiful floor was still there, and the carved gallery. And now, with candles flickering in the holders and graceful shadows moving across the windows, it might have seemed as though the grand people who had danced there had come back to haunt the place in which they had once been happy.

But the creatures who moved between the pillars wore no ball gowns and carried no fans – and when they turned and wove their patterns on the floor, it was on four legs, not on two.

The leopards had been quiet when Heckie made them, but now it was different. The men who brought them had handled them roughly, prodding and poking with long-handled forks to send them faster down the wire tunnels and into the room. The big cats had smelled the fear in the men; their eyes glinted and they lashed each other with their tails.

A door opened high up in the gallery and a man dressed in black leather came out. His gas-mask hung by a strap round his neck and he carried a zinc-lined box which he lowered carefully on to the floor.

Sid would do anything for money. It didn’t matter to him what he killed. Only the week before he’d shot two dozen horses between the eyes so that they could be sent off to be eaten. He never asked questions either. How Mr Knacksap had got hold of three hundred leopards was none of his business. All the same, as he looked down on the moving, frosty sea of beasts, he felt shivers go up and down his spine.

I wish I hadn’t take it on, thought Sid.

Which was silly . . . He’d clear a thousand just for an hour’s work and nothing could go wrong. The windows were sealed up; the men who drove the lorries would drag the brutes back into the vans. They had masks too. There’d be no trouble.

Better get on with it. He fitted the rubber tight over his face. Now, with his black leather suit, he looked like someone from another planet. Then he bent down and began to prise open the box.

‘Stop! Stop!’ A wild-haired woman had burst through the door and was running between the leopards who, strangely, parted to let her pass. ‘Stop at once, Flitchbody! Those aren’t leopards, they’re people!’

‘And one of them is Cousin Alfred,’ yelled a second woman, small and dumpy, in a boiler suit.

Sid straightened up. He could knock off these two loonies along with the leopards, but killing people was more of a nuisance than killing animals. There were apt to be questions asked.

‘Get out of here!’ he shouted, his voice muffled by the mask. ‘Get out or you’re for it!’

Neither of the witches moved. Heckie couldn’t touch the assassin with her knuckle because there were no steps from the floor of the ballroom to the gallery. Dora couldn’t look at him out of her small round eyes because he wore a mask.

They were powerless.

Sid picked up the canister of gas. The women would just have to die too. Nat and Billy could throw them in the lake afterwards.

A large leopard, scenting danger, lifted its head and roared. And high in the rafters, a family of bats fluttered out and circled the room.

The witches had always understood each other without words. Heckie knew what Dora was going to do and it hurt her, but she knew it had to be done.

‘Ouch! Ow! Ooh!’

The shriek of pain came from Sid, hopping on one leg. Something as hard as a bullet had crashed down on his foot – a creepy, gargoyle thing with claws and wings made of stone. And now another one – a bat-shaped bullet hurtling down from the ceiling, missing him by inches. This wasn’t ordinary danger, this was something no one could endure!

Sid put down the canister and fled.

He didn’t get far. Almost at once he ran into someone who was very angry. Someone whose voice made both witches prick up their ears.