The Mysterious Howling (15 page)

The children also seemed to be enjoying themselves, and they remembered all their steps and turns perfectly. The only glitch in the whole affair was during the portions of the music when the ladies changed partners, for at each successive pairing a new gentleman would nearly stumble to the ground before realizing that his role would be not merely to partner, but to actually carry Lady Constance through the dance. The lady herself was having a conspicuously marvelous time. She kept crying out, “Oh, I feel light as a feather! I can barely feel the floor beneath my feet! If only my Fredrick were here to see,” and other blurry exclamations of that sort.

In short, the schottische was a success, and it went on for a good long while. Soon everyone was warm from exertion. Someone called for a window to be opened and cool air let in. At last the musicians took their break, and the guests returned to their tables for refreshments, laughing and fanning themselves.

The fresh air seemed to clear Lady Constance's
mind somewhat; at the very least she regained the ability to stand upright. She rapped on her glass to get everyone's attention.

“Marvelous dancing, everyone! Our next entertainment will delight you just as much, I'm sure,” she said. “Behold, the astonishingly lifelike
tableaux vivant
of Leeds' Thespians on Demand!”

The applause was vigorous, for, in fact, Leeds was a very well-known company. Only now did Penelope notice that, during the dancing, a curtained playing area had been quickly set up on one side of the ballroom, between the tall windows. As the applause peaked, the principal actor stepped in front of the curtain.

“Lords and ladies, on behalf of my fellow thespians, allow me to wish a happy Christmas to one and all. May I present: our first
tableau
.” With a grand gesture he pulled the curtain open.

(A brief aside: Although they have fallen out of style, in Miss Penelope Lumley's day
tableaux vivant
were all the rage. Using costumes, sets, and props, the participants arranged themselves to depict some recognizable scene—a famous painting, perhaps, or a well-known fable. No doubt this will sound dull to the modern viewer whose tastes have been shaped by more
advanced forms of entertainment featuring zombies and so forth, but rest assured: The power of a well-executed
tableau
to shock and delight the audiences of its time must not be underestimated.)

A collective gasp of appreciation rose from the guests. Before them was a forest, or rather a painted backdrop of a forest, but a convincing one. Two near-naked youths clung to each other. Looming above them was a fully occupied wolf costume of the sort where one person inhabits the head of the wolf and another works the hind end. As you might imagine, it was quite a bit larger than life.

“I know it already! It's Romulus and Remus, the twins who were raised by a wolf,” Baron Hoover crowed. “An apt choice,
har har har!
”

Quickly, Penelope looked to see if the children were disturbed by the scene. On the contrary, they were quite transfixed. Beowulf had a dreamy smile on his face, and Cassiopeia extended one hand as if she would pet the somewhat implausible creature before her.

“Draw the curtain, please!” Lady Constance was suddenly agitated. “That is not well-suited to my party. Show us something else.”

The principal actor bowed; if he was annoyed, he hid it well. “As you wish. We have also prepared
a
tableau
based on Aesop's well-loved fable ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf.'”

“Nooooo!” The word came out sounding like a growl, and Lady Constance stamped her feet in anger. “I have heard quite enough on this topic already today, I am sick to death of it! Let us not have any of these upsetting stories, if you please!”

At this point the actor playing the head of the wolf peeked out through the mouth. No doubt he was wondering at the cause of the delay. The sight of his human face inside the wolf's gullet struck the children as hilarious; all three of them burst out laughing.

“May I suggest a simple, harmless fairy tale, then?” the lead actor said, with only a touch of condescension. “Something even a child would enjoy?”

Lady Constance nodded her consent. The curtain was closed for a moment while the actors prepared. Then it was drawn open once more.

A different, more ominous-looking forest backdrop had been unfurled, and an actor dressed as a young girl in red cape and hood entered, carrying a basket. She took an innocent pose, one hand delicately framing her face. And then, emerging from the shadows, still terrifyingly larger than life, and this time with teeth bared, came the big—bad—

“No!” Lady Constance barked. “
No no no no
—”

The actor playing the head of the wolf howled.

Alexander—who could blame him?—howled along.

Beowulf, not to be outdone, howled, too.

“Now that's what we came to see,” Maytag remarked to Hoover. He sounded very pleased. “That's what Ashton promised.”

Cassiopeia jumped onto the foot of the stage area, threw back her head, and—

“Enough!” Lady Constance marched up to the stage and pulled the curtain shut. Then she spoke to the proprietor in a fury. “Sir! These are not the
tableaux
I instructed you to prepare. I asked for something uplifting! Something with artistic merit! And all you have to show us is wolves, wolves, and more wolves! Why is that, pray tell?”

The actor bowed his head. “I apologize, my lady, but it was specifically requested. I have it in writing.”

He then reached into an interior pocket of his waistcoat and produced a letter, which he handed to Lady Constance. Her expression did not change as she read it, but when she looked up, her attitude was quite transformed. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “That will be all. Everyone, let us offer our thanks to the good thespians from Leeds.”

The actor playing Little Red Riding Hood pushed back his hood. “All? But we have hardly performed.”

“You are Leeds' Thespians on Demand, are you not?” Lady Constance hissed through her teeth. “Well, I demand that you stop. You shall be paid your full fee, but now you must go.”

As the disappointed actors took down the curtain and packed up their unused props and costumes, the party guests shrugged and resumed drinking and flirting with one another's spouses, just as party guests have done since the beginning of time. But questions pirouetted around Penelope's mind faster than even the ballerinas of the Imperial Russian Ballet could have managed: Who had requested these awful stories about children and wolves? Obviously it was not Lady Constance; she seemed as dismayed by the content of the
tableaux
as Penelope was. And what had been revealed in that letter?

The children had stopped howling, and now watched the actors packing up with keen interest. For the moment they seemed more entertained than disturbed by the strange goings-on, but Penelope's sense of foreboding had returned at twice its previous level. Unexpected encounters, unsettling remarks, a distraught hostess, a theatrical flop—the party had turned
out to be much more interesting than expected, to be sure, but fresh mysteries kept slithering to the surface like earthworms after a heavy rain, and Penelope had had enough. In another few moments, she decided, she would fashion some excuse for her and the children to leave.

But, alas and alack! Timing is everything, as one of the actors from Leeds could surely have told her. If only she had reached this conclusion a few moments earlier! For at that very second a disagreement broke out between Baroness Hoover and her husband:

“We shall catch a play in London, dear. Will that make it all right?” he soothed.

“But I was so looking forward to the
tableaux
!”

“It was frightening the children, precious. Didn't you hear them howling?”

“They didn't look frightened to me,” she snapped. “They looked rather at home in those tales, in fact. But if the children did not care for the actors'
tableaux,
” she added slyly, “perhaps they will show us one of their own.”

Then Judge Quinzy, who had returned to the party with the faintest dusting of snowflakes on his jet-black hair, turned to the Incorrigibles. “What a splendid idea,” he said in his smooth, charming way. “Will you
indulge the baroness and grace us with a presentation of your own choosing?”

The children were excited by the request and quickly conferred with one another in that private, guttural code they sometimes used among themselves. Penelope wondered what on earth they could be thinking of. But as she was about to discover, their thinking was not on earth. In fact, it was all at sea.

“Incorrigibles
tableaux
!” Alexander announced proudly, after another brief huddle. “Title: ‘Wreck of the Hespawoo.' A poem by Longfelloo.”

“Longfelloo? I think they're talking gibberish,” someone griped, but he was quickly shushed by the other guests.

Using the long drawstring of her reticule as rope, Cassiopeia lashed herself firmly to a potted fern. “Mast!” she explained.

Beowulf took the role of her desperate sea captain father, while Alexander ran about them as the storm, howling like the wind, and quite convincingly, too.

“Rain!” Cassiopeia instructed. Beowulf grabbed one glass of champagne after another off a nearby serving tray and tossed them at her, until her dress was sopping and her hair dripped in wet tendrils.

“Snow, snow!” she yelled. Beowulf seized handfuls
of white linen napkins, quickly shredded them with his teeth, and flung them in the air around her. Meanwhile, Alexander seized the round silver serving tray and held it in front of him as if were the helm of the ship. Bracing himself wide and bowlegged in a way that was thrillingly reminiscent of a sea captain, he proclaimed:

“And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.”

“Woe!” The children rocked back and forth to simulate the tossing of the ship in a storm and howled with merry abandon. “Woe-wooooe!
Awhoooooooooooooooooe!
”

“
Woe-wooooe!
Awhoooooooooooooooooe!”

“Stop them! Somebody stop them!” Lady Constance shrieked, clutching at her temples. “They are mad! Oh, my head hurts!”

“Bravo, bravo!” Baron Hoover was on his feet, applauding. “This is marvelous!”

“Children, well done, but that is enough—” Penelope was also impressed with the presentation, but she thought it best to end there. After all, it was well past
bedtime, and it had been a very long day, and—

“Eeeeeek!”
It was the lady with the fur-collared dress. She stared in horror at the floor.
“Eeeeeeeek!”
she screamed, twice as loudly. “It is alive! I think it is a rat!”

The napkin storm abated, the Hesperus stopped sinking, and everyone looked down. Something furry and trembling peeked out from beneath the edge of the woman's gown. For a sickening moment Penelope thought that the dead creatures draped around her neck had miraculously come to life and were now seeking some kind of awful revenge.

“Ashton always keeps a gun in his study,” one of the men offered. “I will go—”

“No!” Penelope cried. “It is only a squirrel; they are harmless. Let me coax it to safety—”

But the
eeeeek
ing woman could not wait; she lifted the skirt of her gown and delivered a swift kick, which sent the squirrel skidding to the center of the ballroom. After giving itself a shake, it scampered in confused zigzags around the dance floor. Finally, it sat up on its haunches, its button eyes fearfully darting around, wringing its tiny monkeylike hands in dismay.

Ever sympathetic to animals in need (and urgently aware that the sooner the squirrel was whisked out
of sight, the better), Penelope slowly approached. She offered the squirrel a morsel of petite madeleine. “Here, poor nubbin, now we will just lead you out of doors again where you belong—”

Before she could say more, a terrible growling sound filled the room.

It was not the violinist tuning this time. A whole army of incompetent cellists could not have made this sound. It was fierce. It was bloodcurdling. It was coming from the Incorrigibles.

Penelope wheeled around. “No,” she warned in a panic. “Children, no! Squirrels no! You know better. You must calm yourselves—”

But it could not be helped. The excitement of the party, the provocation of the
tableaux,
“The Wreck of the Hesperus,” the consumption of far too many sweets—the children were, as they say nowadays, overstimulated. This was simply the squirrel that broke the camel's back. Before Penelope or anyone else could stop them, they stared, hunkered down, and pounced.

The squirrel bolted, with the children barking and yapping in pursuit. Around the ballroom the creature raced, underneath tables and up across the window ledges, although it dimwittedly ignored the one that had been opened. Soon the children had it backed
into one end of the room. After a moment of terrified squeaking, it spotted the Christmas tree and jumped. Alexander leaped after it. Amid the alarmed cries of the guests, the tree swayed drunkenly, first this way, then that, before toppling over with a mighty crash.