Cold Shoulder Road (28 page)

In the middle of her joy over this find, she heard a skittering on the floor, and spun round with horror to see that Rosamund and family were awake again and hurrying towards her.

Not wasting a second, Is leapt out of the kitchen, sword clutched in one hand, lamp and pot in the other, and kicked the door to behind her.

She was close to the main hall when – to her utter dismay – she heard the front door open and, worse still, the voices of the Admiral and Miss Twite in the hall.

So early! What could possibly have happened?

“Very vexatious indeed!” the Admiral was saying angrily. “Cannot understand it . . . How could they have made a mistake over out admission tickets? The whole thing seems deucedly queer to me . . . all that way for nothing. And in our best clothes . . . and in the rain—”

“I did not observe anyone
else
being turned away. Our tickets were the only ones they rejected, so far as I could see. You should certainly write to the
Times
about it,” Miss Twite remarked in her grating tone. “But, stay, Percival – something is surely amiss here? You had not left a light burning in the house?”

“Damme no, certainly I didn’t—”

Then the Admiral saw Is in the passageway, with her lamp, and let out a hiss like a cobra. He snatched a blunderbuss from the umbrella stand.

“So, Miss! I find you here, poking and prying! What explanation have you for this?”

Now that’s a foolish question, thought Is. What explanation
could
I have, except to find out some of his haveycavey secrets? Specially considering all the tusks that are lying about.

She did not trouble to reply – her mind was too occupied with wondering how she and Pye could possibly extricate themselves from this unpromising situation.

“Who is this girl, Percival?” Miss Twite was enquiring. “She looks somewhat familiar but I—”

The Admiral, however, had noticed the cage at the top of the stair.

“Ho! I see that my little anti-theft device has caught another intruder!”

He stumped up the stairs and peered through the bars at Pye, who was still crouching among scattered tusks and squashed spiders, looking sleepy and bemused. “And who are
you
, might I enquire?”

“Why, anybody can see who
she
is,” said Merlwyn, now following him up. “That is the Handsel Child, the brat who resided in the care of myself and my brother, until abducted by Ruth Twite.”

Indeed, at the sight of Miss Merlwyn, Pye let out a faint pitiful wail. Is, who, temporarily forgotten at the foot of the stair, had been wondering if the most sensible course would not be to nip out through the open front door and yell for help, now changed her mind.

She ran up the stairs and said rapidly, “Admiral, I dunno why I should do you any good turn, considering you left me and my cousin shut up in your cave, but I’ll tell you summat you don’t seem to know: there’s three huge crocks of cash and joolry and silver fal-lals stashed away down in your cave. Look—” and she rummaged in her pocket and brought out the last two of her Charles the First sixpences and tossed them on the stairs.

“A likely tale!” said the Admiral, but the speed with which he snatched up the coins contradicted the chilly incredulity of his tone.

“Is that coin genuine?” grated Miss Twite. “If it is, Percival, do you not think we should delay our departure while we investigate . . .”

“First we have to rid ourselves of these intruders. Over the cliff, perhaps—”

“But, if the girl knows where the cache is situated—”

“Oh, we can soon extract
that
information from her,” said the Admiral, directing his blunderbuss towards Is in a very menacing manner.

Can you, though? she thought to herself, just as another voice entered the conversation.

“Well I never did! The Admiral, his own self. And Miss Twite! Back home early from the party, ain’t ye? Did you come over poorly, then? Or wasn’t the wittles up to your taste?”

The newcomer was Mrs Boles, who, to the amazement of Is, now came through the front door. She wore a crocheted scarf over her head, and a shabby shawl over her shoulders. Her red-rimmed eyes gleamed and her long nose twitched interestedly, as she peered about. Then she looked up the stairs and saw Pye in the cage. She let out a loud cry of real astonishment.

“My little Abandella
! What the Gentry took, ever so long ago! Well I will be jiggered. What have you got her buckled up in there for, you old monster? You make haste, right away, and let out the poor little precious, afore I call the Watch!”

“What the deuce are you talking about, woman?” snapped the Admiral, pale with fury. “Pray walk your chalks out of my house, before I set Rosamund on you.”

“And I’ll tell you summat else you don’t know, you nasty old man,” pursued Mrs Boles (though she did flinch a bit at the mention of Rosamund), “my little Abandella is your own grandchild, for her dad was your good-for-nothing son Horatio. Of course I never said nothing when she turned up at the Twites. Least said’s soonest mended, is my motter.”

“Wh-what
s-spiteful nonsense are you talking?” stammered the Admiral, even more startled.

“Well! If you don’t believe me –
look
at her! Isn’t she the spitting likeness of you, close as one halfpenny is to another? (That my own daughter Meena should ever go off with such a capsy fellow I never could understand, and a lucky chance it was he got killed in a smugglers’ fray afore she had cause to repent it – but there! Done is done.)”

Now, for the first time, Is realised why, when she looked at Pye, she always absent-mindedly fitted her with a pair of imaginary rimless spectacles. Put them on her nose, and she was the identical image (only smaller) of the Admiral. Mercy, what a grandpa to have, thought Is.

Though I dare say mine was a right skellum, too, for that matter.

All this time, Is had been almost unconsciously combing through the boxful of keys, hunting for one that looked as if it might fit the small keyhole in the metal cage. Now, having found a likely key, she edged up the stair, past the Admiral, who had come down to engage in heated dispute with Mrs Boles.

“Your daughter Meena, Madam, was no better than a slattern. And where is she now, pray? My son Horatio was at least killed fighting bravely—”

“Ay! In a smugglers’ scuffle!” Mrs Boles spat out venomously.

“But your daughter, Meena, where is she? Went off and abandoned her defenceless infant.”

“Not a bit of it! The Gentry took the babby from her, for their Handsel Child. Cried my eyes out, I did. So then Meena cut her losses and went to New York where she’s doing nicely in the hotel business . . .”

“Hah! That I can
well
imagine!”

Is went quietly up the stairs and tried her key in the lock. It fitted, but refused to turn.

Pye’s lamp had been broken by tusks, and lay inside the cage, leaking oil on the stair-carpet.

“Pass the lamp through, Pye!” Is whispered. Pye did so with a nod of comprehension. She was beginning to look more pulled-together. Is wondered, dribbling oil on to the lock, if she had heard and taken in what Mrs Boles and the Admiral were saying to each other.

“That’s the dandy! Now it turns.”

The key turned, the lock clicked.

“Now let’s give the cage a shove, Pye.”

Remarkably, the cage, when shoved, glided silently and easily back into the cobwebby ceiling. This old Admiral, Is had to admit, is no fool when it comes to making machines work . . . Perhaps that was where Pye got her unusual abilities.

“C’mon, Pye, let’s get us outa here. Penny’ll be worrying.”

But Miss Merlwyn barred the way, large and threatening in her inappropriately gorgeous dress of pale-yellow silk. Her face, above it, was exactly the same shade of yellow, her eyes had turned to angry Chinese slits. She had helped herself to another blunderbuss from the umbrella stand.

“Wait a moment, my fine pair! Stand still where you are, until you have told us where the treasure is to be found. Otherwise the smaller one gets a breakfast of lead shot.”

“I wouldn’t advise that, ma’am,” said Is.

“Oh? And why not?”

“Because there seems to be a whole caucus of folk outside the front door. And somebody might see you do it.”

Miss Twite turned and looked down the stair, through the door. Her jaw dropped, her eyes widened.

By a slow, unnoticed process, while these events had been taking place, the dark of the night had faded to grey. The hall windows had turned from squares of black to squares of pale blue. And a distant sound, which Is had at first taken for the shushing of the sea at the foot of the cliff, was now recognisable as something else.

It was people singing.

Without giving any more thought to Miss Twite and her blunderbuss, Is ran outside the front door.

“Come on, Pye. Come and take a look at this!”

The Admiral’s house, set on the slope of land between the cliff edge and the hilltop, faced in two directions, uphill and downhill.

To the south lay the sea, faintly silver now, with the black shape of the ship
Gentian
bobbing gently at anchor down by the foot of the cliff. And to the right the white chalk track which led down the steep slope to the town gleamed faintly in the pre-dawn light.

There were dozens of people coming up the slope and gathering steadily in front of the house. There were more people – many, many more people – winding down from the top of the northerly hill behind, in a long black snakelike procession.

“Croopus!” murmured Is. “What a lot of folk. Where the pize have they all come from?”

“Some here, some from France,” Pye told her matter-of-factly. “That lot up there from France.” And she pointed to the procession winding down the hill. “I called ’em. Where is France?”

“Over the water,” said Is absently. She was listening. “Pye, they’re all singing ‘Whales and Snails’.”

Or, if not, it was something very like.

At the head of the file of people coming down the hill, Is – hardly able to believe her eyes – saw Ruth and Arun. And a black-haired girl whom she did not know. And Micah Swannett.

“Pye, look who’s there!”

With a shriek of joy, Pye raced towards Ruth and Arun. She was hugged, passed from one to the other.

Now, suddenly there came an outbreak of shots and angry shouting in the town below. There were puffs of smoke. Heads turned that way. The crowd on the hillside was momentarily hushed. But it was only for a moment. More and more people came pouring from both directions. Up the hill from the town. Down the hill from (presumably?) the Channel Tunnel entrance that lay beyond. And all of them assembled in front of the house.

They were all singing. Some in one language, some in another. But the words they sang seemed to dovetail well enough.

Is ran to Arun.

“What happened to Dominic? How did you get here? Were you in France?”

“He’s dead,” said Arun, answering her questions in order. “The diamonds killed him. They gave off poisonous rays. Yes, we were in France. We walked back.”

“
Walked
from France?”

“Through the Tunnel. It took all night.”

“Why not on the train?”

“Held up by French customs officers. Is, this is Annette de Puy. She helped Ma and me, and she saved Micah. Where’s Penny?”

“There she comes now,” said Is, who saw Penny, still with a black eye and swollen cheek, coming up the hill from Folkestone. She looked angry and sad, but hugely relieved at the sight of Is and Pye, Arun and Ruth.

“They shot that poor girl,” she told Is bitterly, when she was within speech range.

“Who?”

“Jen Braeburn, she was called. From Seagate. She came to the house in Cold Shoulder Lane to fetch me. Those two coves who followed me were lurking outside and shot her. But then the crowd just took them and threw them off the pier.”

“Oh, poor Jen, how dreadful. How
wicked
. Why should
she
have to die?”

“Why should any?” said Pen, staring at the huge crowd.

The Admiral came out of his front door and looked about him in a bewildered manner.

At sight of the Admiral, a tremendous communal groan of hate and disapproval went up from the crowd, followed by another, equally angry, at the sight of Miss Twite, who followed close behind. The pair glanced nervously this way and that, then made their way at speed across the lawn and into the cantilevered triangle of garden beyond, that hung on its platform right over the sea. Nobody tried to stop them. Everybody watched. Down below, the ship
Gentian
rocked gently. Now it could be seen that sailors were very busy about her, unfurling sails, undoing ropes, fastening hatches.

“Getting ready to make sail,” said Arun.

“But will folk just let them go? After all the harm they’ve done?”

“We’ll see.”

With shoulders hunched and heads bent forward, as if they expected showers of missiles to be launched at them, the Admiral and Miss Twite made their hurried way to the very tip of the cantilever garden, where a ladder hung down by which the ship could be reached.

“I’d simply hate to climb down that,” muttered Ruth.

“But it’s good they are going,” said Pye. And then, with tremendous emphasis, in thought-speech:

“Sing louder, everybody.
Sing
!”

The crowd burst into a roar of song:

The sudden shattering roar of so many voices had a formidable effect. The Admiral and Miss Twite, at the edge of the garden, stopped in fright and looked behind them. Then they both shrieked and started to run back, for a gap had opened between the artificial garden and the true cliff edge.