The Mysterious Howling (17 page)

The Judge's mellifluous voice replied, “I have reason to believe Ashton did find these three in the woods. To me the more interesting question is whether they are more rightly considered animals or human. What do you gentlemen think?”

“I say animals. Strays are strays.” There was a whirr and clunk, like metal grinding against metal.

“Animals who speak Latin? Preposterous. Careful, Maytag, there may be bullets in there.”

“A parrot can be taught phrases in Latin. It proves nothing.”

“Maytag, I say, watch where you point that—”

“As the newest member of our club, Judge Quinzy should get the last word! What is the verdict, your honor?”

There was a brief pause before Quinzy answered, “I say the Earl of Maytag has a point. If a creature that looks like a dog speaks to you in perfect Latin, you would be hard-pressed to argue that it was merely a dog, agreed? Likewise, if a creature that looks like a child comes to you howling and barking and threatening to bite, you would be perfectly justified in assuming it was not precisely a child.”

“Well, that's something to bear in mind if one of them attacks.” Maytag sounded quite pleased. “Can't believe Ashton's not here. He'd love this.”

“I think he's pulling a joke on all of us, or trying to.”

“Always a joker, that Ashton. He was the same when we were at Eton. You daren't turn your back on him for a minute, or you'd end up with a ‘kick me' sign pinned to your back. We're not so easily fooled now, though, eh?”

“Not now, no,
har har!
”

Penelope scrunched her eyes shut. All her attention was focused on what she could hear. Laughter, the slapping of backs. The snakelike hiss of cold metal being rubbed with a polishing cloth. The grind and thunk of guns being loaded.

Without thinking, Penelope hurled herself into the study. She stood there, breathing hard and trying not to scream at the sight of all the guns. The men stared at her.

“The children,” she panted. “They have run out into the woods. Mrs. Clarke said you might help look for them.” It was a lie. She was quite convinced the children had gone upstairs, but she wanted these men as far away from them as possible, and it was easy for her to look desperate and afraid, for that is exactly how she felt. “They are very skilled at covering their
tracks,” she added quickly, “even in the snow. You will not have an easy time finding them—but please—if you could try—I know you are skilled hunters—”

“We will do our best,” Baron Hoover said warmly.

“We'll bring 'em back, one way or another,” Maytag added with a dark chuckle.

Penelope nodded and backed out of the room. She could stay quiet no longer; the sob was rising in her throat. Covering her mouth with one hand, Penelope ran, as fast as she could—almost as if she were being hunted herself.

U
P THE STAIRS
P
ENELOPE RAN
. Once on the third floor she thought to check the nursery; perhaps the children had lost interest in the squirrel and found their way back there. Breathless, she dashed inside. The nursery was cold and dark. No fire had been lit, and there was no sign of the children.

She threw open the window and leaned out into the night air, craning her head this way and that. The men were right. The full moon was now at its highest and the snow caught and magnified every morsel of its eerie blue glow. Although hardly as “bright as day,” as Maytag had claimed, the night was as bright as a night could be.

“They are in the house, I know they are!” Penelope
said it aloud, both to convince herself and to steady her nerves. She still believed the squirrel's natural instinct would be to climb. She also knew Ashton Place possessed a fourth floor, but she had never had cause to visit it, until now.

The stair leading to the fourth floor was not a continuation of the main stairs of the house, but a smaller back staircase that rose from the far end of the third floor, where the smallest of the guest bedrooms were located. Only the servants used this stair, for the fourth floor held only servants' quarters, storage closets for linens and out-of-season clothes, sewing rooms, and so forth.

The stair was fully enclosed and pitch-dark. Why had Penelope not thought to bring a candle? If she could see, she would be able to tell whether there were four sets of tracks in the dust. As it was, all she could do was grope her way to the top, step by unseen step, and then push open the door.

She waited for her eyes to adjust, and looked around. She was not on the fourth floor at all. She was in the attic—in the dark she must have missed the landing and gone up two flights instead of one. The ceiling was low and angled, but moonlight streamed in from a high window covered by slatted shutters at the far end of the hall, and there was just enough light to see.

As soon as she closed the stairway door behind her, she heard sounds.

Scuffling. Panting. A low, anxious whine.

And—how her heart sank to hear it!—the unmistakable sound of gnawing.

“Children?” she called in a trembling voice. “It is Miss Lumley. Where are you? Please answer me!”

“Lumawoooooo! Lumawoooooo!”

She ran in the direction of the voices, racing blindly across the rough wood floor until she skidded to a stop at the end of the passageway. There was a windowed alcove hung with heavy drapes all around, but the drape on one side had been pulled back to reveal a small landing and a short series of steps that seemed to dead-end into the wall. Beowulf was standing on the top step, Alexander on the one below.

Alexander turned to face her. His face—his mouth, to be precise—was stained crimson. So were his fingers.

“No, oh no!” she cried. “Oh, dear, I know it is not really your fault, but children—that poor, poor squirrel!”

Chatter, chatter, chatter
. Penelope wheeled to the source of the sound and stared into the darkness until her eyes adjusted. In a tiny window seat, tucked low in the alcove so that it was set deep in shadow, sat Cassiopeia. In her lap was the squirrel. It chattered excitedly
as Cassiopeia fed it petites madeleines out of her reticule. Evidently, she had stuffed the tiny purse full of cakes when no one was looking.

“Cassawoof new pet,” Cassiopeia said happily. “I name Nutsawoo. I love.” Gently, she scratched the squirrel between the ears. There was much happy chirruping in answer. “My Rainbow,” she explained, gazing up at Penelope with soft, trusting eyes.

Penelope felt herself flooded with a mixture of shock, relief, confusion, and fear, for even as Cassiopeia spoke, there was a thunder of hoofbeats from below. The search party was out in force, guns loaded, galloping into the woods. They would not find the Incorrigibles there, but by the time they realized that and returned to the house, who knew what fate they might have decided for the children?

With so many emotions to sort through, it is no wonder that the only thing Penelope could manage to say was, “That is all very well, Cassiopeia—but Alexander! Beowulf! Whatever have you got smeared on your hands and faces?”

The boys' hands flew up to their mouths. They looked at each other and grinned.

“We eat the wall,” Alexander explained.

“Taste bad,” Beowulf added, spitting a little.

Only then did Penelope see what was behind them. The wall at the top of this strange staircase was plastered over with many layers of wallpaper. Judging from the piles of soggy, chewed-up scraps that littered the steps, the boys had been gnawing their way through each one. The top layer (that is, the most recent one) was a loud floral pattern in bright red—the dye from this is what had stained the boys' mouths crimson. Underneath that was a tasteful multicolor stripe.

But Penelope was in no mood to think about the evolution of interior design trends. “This is a frightful mess you have made!” she said sternly to the boys. “Why on earth are you tearing away at the wallpaper like that?”

“Make a hole. Someone inside,” Alexander explained. He gestured for her to come up the stairs. “Listen.”

“Make a hole. Someone inside,” Alexander explained
.

“I don't hear anything,” she said nervously. “And please, stop putting your mouths to the wallpaper. It looks frightful, and I am sure it is quite unsanitary.”

Obligingly, Alexander and Beowulf attacked the striped layer of wallpaper by shoving their fingers under the edge of the seam. With a nod, Alexander cued his brother to pull. The paper peeled off in a whole sheet, slowly, with a long
fffffft
sound, as the ancient dried paste reluctantly turned to dust.

But there was yet another layer underneath, or perhaps it was some kind of mural, or a large painting. Even as Penelope looked, a cloud passed over the moon and the light was snuffed out. She could only catch a glimpse—it was a dark, woodland scene—something frightened and pale in the foreground—the glint of a ravenous yellow eye—a spatter of crimson—

In the dark, Alexander pressed his ear against the wall.

“Listen,” he insisted.

Penelope came closer and listened. Wait—was there something? A faint snuffling and then some guttural noises like a growl or bark, followed by a low and plaintive howl?

Ahwoooooooooooo
. . .

No. There was no howl, no sound at all; she was imagining it. In any case, it was very dark now, and she was suddenly groggy with exhaustion and freezing cold. She had had enough excitement for one day and longed for a warm fire and an interesting book. “Children,” she said, shivering. “That is enough of that. We must leave at once.”

“Someone, Lumawoo,” Beowulf insisted. He sniffed at the wallpaper. “Someone inside.”

“I am sure there is not,” she said firmly. “Now we
must return to the nursery. We are all very tired, and it is far too easy to start imagining things when one is worn out. Christmas is over. It is time to go to bed—after scrubbing your faces and hands, of course.”

Obediently, the boys turned away from the wall. Cassiopeia tugged at her sleeve. “My Nutsawoo? Keep?”

Penelope sighed. “He will not be happy living indoors, but he can live in the tree outside the nursery windows.” Cassiopeia was content with that solution, but Penelope had to bite her lip not to comment as the little girl explained its new living situation to the attentively chirruping squirrel. Then, with her brothers' help (Beowulf had to hoist her onto Alexander's shoulders to reach), she opened the high window just enough to let creature out and closed it after.

“Nutsawoo meet us downstairs,” Cassiopeia explained, jumping lightly to the floor. With deep satisfaction, she wiped her filthy hands on the shredded remains of her party dress. “Now”—
yawn!
—“Cassawoof go to bed.”

T
HE
F
IFTEENTH AND
F
INAL
C
HAPTER
Lord Fredrick demands a lozenge, and the children's fate is decided
.

I
N
E
NGLAND
(and in some other countries as well), the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day.

Nowadays, Boxing Day is the day in which stores put all their merchandise on sale, thus giving exhausted and bankrupt shoppers the chance to stand in line for hours in hopes of saving ten percent on a new microwave oven, which, presumably, would come in a box. In Miss Penelope Lumley's day it was the occasion for small boxes of holiday presents to be distributed to
the servants, and that is where the name “Boxing Day” originated. In fact, on Boxing Day it was customary to give the servants the day off, and most household employees considered this the greatest gift of all.

Perhaps Lady Constance had secretly planned to declare Boxing Day a day off for the servants of Ashton Place. She had not mentioned her intention to do so, but every member of the staff, from Mrs. Clarke down the youngest stable boy, had lived in hope. In fact, Margaret and Jasper had been seen whispering plans to go ice skating on the lake should a few hours of freedom tumble unexpectedly into their laps.

But when the sun finally dared to rise on this particular Boxing Day morning, all such hopes were dashed. Lady Constance's Christmas party had ended in such a free-for-all of destruction that a whole fleet of servants working 'round the clock for a month would be hard-pressed to put the house right. There would be no day off, and if any Christmas boxes had been prepared for the staff, they were nowhere in evidence.

At least the staff had no houseguests to take care of. Once the children had charged out of the ballroom in pursuit of Nutsawoo (and you may think of that mischievous scamp as Nutsawoo from this point forward, now that he has been given a name), the party never
recovered. Most of the guests insisted on leaving at once, and the few remaining stragglers had departed at daybreak without even waiting for breakfast.

Mrs. Clarke had the heartbreaking task of writing a full inventory of the damage; by half past nine in the morning, her hand was already starting to cramp. Carpets throughout the house had been flipped over and torn. Potted plants had been knocked to the ground, and the dirt spilled everywhere. Floorboards had been yanked up, and curtains had been pulled down. The ballroom floor was ruined and would have to be sanded and refinished.

As for the damage to the reputation of Ashton Place and of its hostess—that was not so easily fixed.

T
HE ARMED GENTLEMEN
on horseback had not returned until nearly sunrise. Penelope knew this because she had spent the night in the nursery. The thought of leaving the children alone while the search party was still at large had been simply unacceptable to her. She slept in the outer nursery, where she would be near the door in case anyone attempted to enter during the night, but it was the noise out the windows of the men returning that woke her. They sounded boisterous and merry, as they had in Lord Fredrick's study. She dragged herself to the window
to look out; in the predawn light she saw that they had brought back an alarming amount of game—a good-sized stag with beautiful antlers, a small bear, a great horned owl, countless bags of rabbit and pheasant. . . .

After that, she slept only fitfully. When she opened her eyes again, she had to think for a moment before recalling how she had come to spend the night curled up in a toy trunk. Then she remembered everything and wished she could close the lid on top of herself and hide, at least until spring.

The children had no such anxiety. They awoke later than usual, which was understandable given their missed bedtime, but in all other respects, they behaved as if it were a normal day. Their destroyed clothes, the ruination of the party, the damage done to the ballroom and the rest of the house—none of this weighed on the minds of the Incorrigibles. Cassiopeia was overjoyed with her new pet (who, to Penelope's surprise, appeared in the tree outside the nursery window during breakfast, chattering a greeting and begging for treats), and the boys filled their morning with a game of chess, which they had been teaching themselves to play from a pamphlet that came with the set.

Penelope watched the three of them at their tasks, cheerful and innocent of any wrongdoing. She
herself did not feel the children were fully to blame for what had happened. But who was? The squirrel in the ballroom might have been an accident, but taken together with those suspiciously wolfish
tableaux
and the bizarre behavior of the gentlemen from Lord Fredrick's club—surely there was more going on here than mere coincidence could explain. Someone (or some
ones
) seemed to have wanted to provoke the children into behaving like wild things.

And what of the children's insistence that someone was living behind that strange wall in the attic? That was another mystery altogether.

“To make sense of all this, I must use my powers of deduction,” Penelope thought to herself. Aloud she said only, “Watch your knight, Beowulf.”

(Some years later, another rather popular writer who lived for a time in London would create a detective character known for his superb powers of deduction. Penelope had never heard of Sherlock Holmes, of course, for in a fictional sense he had not been born yet, but she was a clever girl and no stranger to logic herself. That is why she realized that her powers of deduction would come in useful when trying to figure things out.)

Calmly and methodically, Penelope considered each of the possible suspects.

Lady Constance? No doubt Lady Constance would prefer the children be sent away to live elsewhere. An outburst of horrendous behavior would certainly help her argue that case to Lord Fredrick. But she had seemed sincere and determined in her ambition to have the party go well. She had argued convincingly with the Thespians that they not present the wolf-themed
tableaux
. And she was utterly distraught over the damage that had been done to the house. No, Penelope was certain; Lady Constance would rather endure a dozen wild children living in Ashton Place than risk inciting the kind of home wrecking that had transpired. But Penelope wondered once more: What had been in that letter?

Lord Fredrick? Judging from the gentlemen's remarks, Lord Fredrick had led them to expect a spectacular display of wolflike behavior from the children at the party. Perhaps his pride was at stake—yet the cost of the repairs to the house was bound to be enormous! It did not seem reasonable to incur such an expense merely to impress one's friends; although Penelope did not know Lord Fredrick well, he did seem to her to be both reasonable and cost-conscious. Moreover, Lord Fredrick had not even attended the party. How could he be the culprit when he was not there?

The Earl of Maytag? Penelope was unsure. His
obnoxious remarks about the children seemed entirely in character; the man was obnoxious on every subject. Still, he had expressed that unfortunate wish for the children to prove themselves animals so he could—Penelope went pale to think it—go hunting. “Surely he was joking!” she thought quickly, which was just as quickly followed by the nauseating suspicion that he was not. “The verdict on Maytag,” she concluded grimly, “is not yet in.”

And what of Old Timothy? He had no personal grudge against the children that she knew of, but, after all, he was a very enigmatic coachman. Who knew what had prompted his presence at the window? Still, of all of them Old Timothy seemed the most culpritlike, even if Penelope had no provable reason to think so.

“If only Nutsawoo could speak!” Penelope concluded with a sigh. The poor squirrel was the only creature that might be trusted to give an honest accounting of the events that had led to its untimely arrival at the party. Unfortunately, and despite Cassiopeia's rather adorable attempts to teach it polite party conversation and socially useful phrases, the squirrel was not talking.

There was a light tapping at the nursery door. Penelope assumed it was one of the serving girls come to take away the breakfast dishes, but it was not.

“Miss Lumley, good morning,” Judge Quinzy said
with a half bow. “I am sorry to disturb you, but our search party last night turned up no sign of the children. I merely wanted to inquire for myself whether they had been safely found.”

“Yes, of course,” Penelope felt her cheeks flush. “It seems I had been mistaken. The children had not left the house at all. They were simply—hiding.”

“Like hide-and-go-seek?” Judge Quinzy smiled. “How charming.” His eyes quickly scanned the nursery. His inscrutable expression became even more so at the sight of the two boys playing chess and the tiny girl with a squirrel in her lap.

“I am so sorry, Judge Quinzy,” Penelope said. “I seem to have sent you and the gentlemen on a wild goose chase, in the snow, no less. You must extend my apologies.”

“Ha!” The judge snapped out of his reverie. “Funny you put it that way, Miss Lumley. There is nothing the gentlemen from Lord Fredrick's club like better than a wild goose chase, and although we did not find any geese last night, we did not come back empty-handed, I assure you. The gentlemen were quite satisfied.” He half bowed once more. “But, forgive me, I am keeping you from your lessons. I am glad to see the children are safe. Good day, Miss Lumley.”

“Good day,” Penelope said, as the judge strode
noiselessly away. She closed the nursery door behind him. This time she locked it as well.

“M
ISS
L
UMLEY
, I
AM AFRAID
we have a great deal of unpleasantness to discuss. Please have a seat.”

Penelope entered the sitting room, her head held high. She had known this summons would come at some point during the day, and she was only glad she had had the chance to give the children a few final lessons in geometry before Mrs. Clarke had come to fetch her. She was not nervous; in fact, Penelope fully expected Lady Constance to fire her on the spot, so she felt she might as well say what she thought. Hence, she had a lack of fear.

“I realize you must be quite disappointed in the children's behavior,” Penelope began, as soon as she was settled in her chair. “Remember that I am their governess and any errors they make are more my fault than theirs. Please, Lady Constance: Regardless of what becomes of me, I must insist that you not hold the children responsible for yesterday's unfortunate—accident.”

“Accident!” Lady Constance clutched the seat of her chair so tightly, her knuckles turned white. “They ruined the party and have nearly destroyed my house! In what way can that be considered an accident?”

“They were provoked,” Penelope said in a cracking
voice. “In fact, I believe they may have been provoked on purpose, although for what purpose I cannot say.”

Lady Constance lowered her voice and leaned forward. “It is very odd that you say so, Miss Lumley. Very odd. For that has crossed my mind as well.”

Then, much to Penelope's surprise, Lady Constance produced a letter from inside her sleeve and handed it to her. It was addressed to Leeds' Thespians on Demand, to the attention of the Management.

To Whom It May Concern:

It is my understanding that Leeds' Thespians have been engaged to perform at Ashton Place on Christmas Day
.

Stories with wolves and gruesome ends are specifically requested. The enclosed funds should be sufficient to guarantee your cooperation
.

Disregard any other instructions you may receive
.

Regards,

The letter was signed with a large, flourished
A
. It was very like the
A
that appeared on the Ashton letterhead. Penelope had seen it twice before: on the employment contract she had signed upon her arrival at the house, and also on the note Lady Constance had given her with her salary.

Penelope looked up. She was too shocked to do anything but speak bluntly. “Wolves and gruesome ends, and signed with an
A
! Does this mean it was Lord Fredrick who requested those disturbing
tableaux
and without your knowledge?”

“I don't know what it means,” Lady Constance answered tremulously. “And I have not seen Lord Fredrick since lunchtime on Christmas Eve, so I cannot ask him. It is all very mysterious! And very upsetting! And it all started when Fredrick found those awful children in the woods! I do not know what is going on, Miss Lumley, but I do know I cannot bear it any longer.” She snatched the letter back. “I realize this is unpleasant for both of us, but since Fredrick is not here, it must be my decision. Given all that has happened, I have no choice but to—”

There was a kind of crashing, stumbling sound just outside the sitting room. It was followed by a grunt, then a moan, and then more crashing.

“Horrors! Have the children got loose?” Lady Constance clutched at her chair again and looked as if she might scream.