by Laura Wood
But for now, I reminded myself, I had a job to do. It seemed as though the secret tunnels we had already discovered had played a part in both Jenny and Miss Susan’s kidnapping; was it possible that this tunnel was being used by the kidnapper too? If so it must be someone who knew the castle well. I shone my torch ahead of me and made my way carefully along. This tunnel took a steep downward turn, and I felt like I was climbing down into the centre of the earth, mud and dirt sticking to my hands as I tried to catch on to the walls to steady myself. Eventually the ground evened out again and I found that I was in a long passageway with a higher ceiling. Pricking my ears, I could just hear the crashing of the sea again somewhere in the distance. Wherever this tunnel ended up, it was likely to be down by the beach again. I kept on walking, stumbling along on the uneven floor until, suddenly, I was surprised to find a set of wooden steps, more like a very basic ladder, propped against the wall. Shining my torch past the steps, down the rest of the tunnel, then up at the ceiling above them, I realized I had found a trapdoor. Where, I wondered, did that go. Only I didn’t wonder for very long before I was scrambling nimbly up the ladder to find out for myself.
Pushing cautiously against the trapdoor, it creaked open with a dusty thump. I poked my head up through the hole. I seemed to be at the bottom of a spiralling stone staircase. Heaving myself through, I closed the trapdoor behind me and dusted off my hands. I had emerged beside a big, solid-looking wooden door. I tried the handle, but found that it was locked. There was nowhere left to go except up the stairs.
My heart was thundering as I crept up, and up, and up, the narrow steps seeming to go on for ever. What was this place? And what would I find at the top? Finally, I reached the last step and found myself confronted by another heavy-looking wooden door. This time when I tried to turn the handle I felt it move and the door swung open with ease.
What I saw on the other side of the door stopped me in my tracks.
The room I was in was quite large and round; it had a high ceiling with wooden rafters and small round windows. There was some very old bedroom furniture, and another, smaller door at the back that stood slightly ajar and appeared to lead to a very basic bathroom area. There was also a camping stove and next to it, a lot of empty food tins stacked up in a pile. From the window on one wall I could see all the way down to the beach below. I realized that I was in the room at the top of the castle’s turret, I must have tunnelled down under the castle and come back up behind the door that blocked it off. But that wasn’t the thing that had stopped me in my tracks. No.
The thing that had stopped me in my tracks was the sight of Miss Susan and a girl with long gingery hair. It was Jenny. I had found them!
They were both very pale and seemed to be gagged and tied to the chairs they were sitting on by some kind of thin plastic rope. Otherwise they didn’t look like they were hurt.
“I found you!” I cried, beginning to move towards them.
But then, I heard the sound of footsteps below. Thinking fast, I threw myself at the wall, clambering up the rough stonework and stepping out on to one of the wooden rafters as if it were a high wire. Miss Susan’s face was turned up towards me and I saw her eyes widen.
Then the door to the turret room opened, and someone walked in. I couldn’t quite see them, and so I adjusted my position as silently as possible. When I did catch sight of who it was I had to stifle my gasp. I saw the impossibly blonde hair, the broad shoulders and muscly brown arms. There was no mistaking him – it was Jack Jenkins.
He didn’t say very much, just went and checked that the plastic ties were still secure. Jenny was wriggling around in her seat, making muffled noises through the piece of cloth over her mouth. If she didn’t stop soon she was going to give me away. I had to make a decision. I had to time it just right.
“Stop it, Jenny,” Jack snapped. “Someone will hear you.”
I inched along the rafter, my arms out on either side until I was standing directly above Jack. Jenny’s wrigglings became more furious.
“Oh, all right,” Jack sighed. “I’ll take the gag off, but you have to be quiet, OK.” He leaned forward and tugged the material. It was now or never.
“Jack!” Jenny shrieked.
I took a deep breath and stepped off the rafter, throwing myself forward into a double somersault and aiming straight for Jack Jenkins.
“Aaaaaaaaaaggggghhhh!” I shouted as I slammed into him, knocking him to the floor with a loud thump. Feeling a bit jangled I got unsteadily to my feet. Jack Jenkins lay out cold on the floor.
I had done it! I had caught the criminal, and saved the day! For some reason Jenny was crying noisily and straining towards Jack’s unconscious body. I supposed it was just the overwhelming relief at being rescued.
Rushing over to Miss Susan I pulled the gag away from her mouth, expecting words of gratitude to pour from her lips.
“Poppy, no!” she cried instead, and too late I heard the footsteps behind me. I started to turn, raising my hands, but something heavy hit me on the head with a sickening crack, and white stars exploded all around me, dancing before my eyes. I felt my knees disappear from under me and then … everything went black.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When my eyes blinked open, it took me a while to remember where I was. My head was really hurting, and in my hazy state I could just hear Miss Susan’s voice calling my name over and over again.
“Poppy! Poppy!”
Unfortunately, the more awake I became, the more my head hurt. I also noticed, rather foggily, that my legs seemed to be tied to a chair, and my hands were tied in front of me. Huh, I thought, looks like this rescue mission isn’t going quite to plan.
“Poppy!” I heard Miss Susan’s voice again, and turning towards the sound, my eyes came in to focus on her pale, worried face. Next to her was the girl with a frizz of red hair who I had recognized as Jenny. She was crying. And tied to another chair next to me was Jack Jenkins. What was going on?
“I’m OK,” I mumbled, and I saw Miss Susan’s shoulders slump in relief.
“Well, I’m sure we’re all glad to hear that.” A sarcastic voice rang out behind me.
I twisted my neck, and my mouth dropped open as a familiar face emerged from the shadows.
It was Stanley Goodwill.
“You!” I gasped.
“Yes, me,” he said, simply, and it was then that I noticed he held a gun in his hand. My heart sank right down to the soles of my trainers.
“What are you doing, Stanley?” Jack asked, his voice hoarse. “Let me go! I thought we were in this together.”
“Well, you thought wrong.” Stanley smirked, the gun glinting dangerously in his hand.
“Just let Poppy go, Stanley,” Miss Susan pleaded. “She’s only a child – she’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
“Neither of you were supposed to be involved!” croaked Jack from his seat. “If you had both just left things alone, everything would have been fine. No one needed to get hurt.”
Jenny was still crying, but she spoke now in a trembling voice. “Jack,” she whispered. “I don’t understand … what is going on? This was never part of the plan.”
The wheels in my head were turning away. “The plan!” I exclaimed. “You were the one who wrote the love letters to Jenny! Jenny-kins – I heard you call that other girl Betsy-kins. Just like that gross baby talk in the love note.”
“What’s she talking about?” Jenny’s head snapped up. “Does she mean Betsy Johnson? You said there was nothing going on between you!”
“I thought I told you to get rid of those letters!” Jack snarled, ignoring this and turning angrily to face Jenny.
“I couldn’t get rid of them, Jacky-Bear!” Jenny wept. “They were so beautiful!”
I snorted at that, and Jack turned back on me. “What?” he said.
“You’re not very good at writing poetry.” I grimaced.
“I’m sure this is all very interesting,” Stanley Goodwill interrupted,
“but perhaps you could all stop squabbling and pay attention to the man with the gun.”
“You’ll never get away with this!” I said bravely, but I felt a lot less brave when he raised the gun again. “So,” I said, stalling as I looked around, desperate for a way to escape. “The kidnapping was fake.” My eyes fell on Jenny tied to the chair. “You all planned it together?”
“Not really,” Jenny said miserably. “Me and Jack wanted money to run away together, to start a new life as SOUL MATES.” Her eyes were all starry and I had to choke down another snort. “I thought it was Jack’s idea to try and get Mum and Dad to part with some of their inheritance money. They were being so stingy with it, they wouldn’t let me have any of the things I wanted, or let me go on holiday with my mates or anything.” Jenny’s voice was a bit whiny now. “I mean, I am a Booth, too, you know. That inheritance is, like, mine as well. I didn’t know Stanley had anything to do with it. What’s he doing here, Jack? What’s going on? WHY HAS HE GOT A GUN?” Jenny dissolved into noisy tears.
“Just shut up, Jenny!” Jack snapped. “You’ve been like this the whole time. I am so sick of you! Are you so thick that you still don’t know it was all pretend?!”
“W-what?” Jenny looked stunned.
“I just had to get you to go along with it, so that I could get the money. Stanley was the one who got me to talk you into it. When the money came through, we were going to split it fifty-fifty, and then I was going to be finished with you. I wasn’t about to take you with me… Not when I was going to head off to some tropical island and live a life of luxury.” He tossed his bleached hair. “You know I can’t be tied down, babe.”
Jenny sat with her mouth hanging open. “Wh-what?” she screeched. “How could you?!” She began to struggle in her chair, fire in her eyes.
“Quiet!” hissed Stanley, turning his gun on Jenny who stopped wiggling immediately and gave a scared whimper.
“So it was Jack and Jenny using the smuggler’s signals that night?” I said quickly, trying to keep the conversation moving while I came up with a plan. Unfortunately, from the scheming look in Stanley’s eyes, he was doing the same. Obviously my arrival had thrown a spanner in the works.
“I had to bring in the food and hide it,” Jack was saying. “Jenny signalled that the coast was clear so I could break into the house through the tunnels.” He sighed. “I’d been nicking stuff from the kitchen but Mrs Crockton got wise and started locking the larder shut, so I needed another plan.”
“So you weren’t tied up or anything?” I asked Jenny quietly.
“Only for the last couple of hours,” Jenny sniffled. “He said it was to fool Elaaaaaaaine!” She was weeping again now, and I rolled my eyes. Jenny was clearly going to be no help in this crisis and we needed an escape plan for three – maybe even four – people, if we were going to try and save the thoroughly worthless Jack Jenkins from this mess as well. I strained at the ropes on my wrists, but they were tied tight.
“But why did you take me?” Miss Susan asked Jack, her voice betraying only a very slight tremble.
“Yes, Jack, enlighten us,” Stanley said now, his voice silky smooth. “Why did you take this woman? The plan was to poison her and shut her up for good. If you had put all of the mixture in her sherry bottle, like I told you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Why did you take it into that thick head of yours to deviate from the plan?” He was getting louder now, clearly angry and a shiver wiggled down my spine.
“I think I know what happened,” I said, sniffing the air and finally placing the musty smell that I had also sniffed when Jack entered the drawing room with Horatio Muggins earlier. “You’ve been hiding behind that big stuffed bear,” I said. “I can smell it on you. You smashed the window so that Fuddling would take Agatha out of the room, then you came back through the tunnel and hid behind the bear, waiting until Miss Susan was alone and unconscious before you grabbed her.”
Jack slumped. “I thought it was a really clever plan. I thought you’d be pleased.” He turned pleading eyes on Stanley. “If we took her as well then we could ask for more money. It just seemed like such a good opportunity. We didn’t really need to get rid of her – no one was supposed to get hurt.” He sounded frightened now.
“You were there too, when Horatio Muggins said Miss Susan was the only person who drank the sherry,” I said, remembering. “You knew you could hide the poison there.”
Jack nodded. “I thought…”
“This is exactly the problem,” Stanley snapped. “You thought, you thought… When will you realize that empty head of yours doesn’t contain a single decent idea. This whole thing was my plan all along!”
“Yeah, a great plan,” hissed Jack, his own eyes flashing angrily. “Except now we find out it was all for NOTHING.”
“What do you mean?” whimpered Jenny, looking frantically from Jack to Stanley.
“There is no money,” I said. “Your mum and dad are broke, Jenny. They couldn’t afford to pay the ransom demand.” Jenny looked stunned by this – obviously the Booths’ secrecy about their money troubles had included their daughter.
“I admit that finding out the inheritance was not all Ada had led me to believe, was something of a blow,” Stanley mused aloud, still waving the gun at us. “But then, it was never really my true goal.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” Jack looked dumbstruck.
The cogs were whirring away in my brain. “It’s about the castle,” I said, realization dawning. “You’re next in line if the Booth’s leave… You get the castle.”
Stanley’s watery eyes shone behind his glasses. “Of course it’s about the castle! It’s always been about the castle! It’s my HOME! MINE!” His hands were shaking now, the gun quivering between his fingers. “I alone appreciated its true history. I loved it, I studied it … who do you think told Jack about all the tunnels?” He sneered at me. “My research uncovered them years ago.”
“So you’ve been trying to drive the Booths away. You’re the one who’s been sabotaging the campsite!” I cried.
“The campsite!” Stanley’s eyes flashed. “That abomination! Turning this hallowed place of history into some sort of tacky tourist attraction? I couldn’t believe it. Such a thing would NEVER happen with me in charge.”
“You must have been very angry with Ada when she left the castle to the Booths,” I said, desperately tugging at the ropes again.
“Angry?” Stanley let out a short, humourless laugh. “I was furious. After everything I’d done for that old dragon? After all the sucking up for years, putting up with her temper and her nasty little jabs. At least I got my own back on her.”
“What do you mean, you got your own back?” I asked, a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Let’s just say Miss Susan here wasn’t the first to ingest the poison I had Jack put in her sherry. Though for her there were less … fatal … consequences.”
I gasped. “You don’t mean…”
“I did what needed to be done,” hissed Stanley. “I always do. The castle needs me. I am its protector, its saviour!” He was staring somewhere into the distance, a deadly smile on his face. “And now your interference has left me with a real mess on my hands,” he snarled suddenly, waving the gun around in a way that made me feel more than a little bit nervous. “And there’s nothing left to do but clean it up and make sure none of you can talk. The Booths still seem determined to stay, but once the kidnapping deadline passes and you don’t come back, I’m sure they won’t want to stay in a place filled with such terrible memories. I’ll make them hand over what is rightfully mine!”
“What does that mean?” I croaked, tugging desperately at the rope again.
“It means it’s time for you lot to go for a little walk.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Stanley undid the ropes that tied our ankles to the chairs, easily avoiding the desperate kick I lashed out with when he got to me. “That’s enough of that!” he said roughly, his eyes sparkli
ng dangerously. He trained the gun on me. “Now stand up, all of you and get down the stairs. No funny business from any of you or I shoot.” He smiled a very unpleasant smile and I wondered how I could have ever thought he was a nice old man. “Start walking.”
My hands tied in front of me, I walked behind Miss Susan, Jack and Jenny as we made our way downstairs to the trapdoor. There must be a way out! my brain cried desperately – but if there was I couldn’t see it. At the bottom of the steps Stanley lifted the trapdoor and gestured towards it. “Down you go, and don’t forget if anyone tries anything then I start shooting,” he said with a smirk. We all clambered down the steps with Stanley behind us once more. Instead of turning back down the tunnel towards the castle, he nudged us in the other direction, towards the sound of the sea. Jenny whimpered with fright and I knew this wasn’t good.
The tunnel was getting lighter and the sound of the sea was getting louder as we walked further along. My eyes were straining against the gloom and my brain was working furiously, trying to come up with a plan to get out of there. Finally, we emerged into a familiar cave. “This is where the tunnel from Jenny’s room comes out!” I exclaimed.
“Found that one too, did you?” Stanley almost looked impressed. “And here I was thinking I was the only one who knew about the secret tunnels. You can learn a lot if you do your research!”
We were standing at the back of the cave, at the top of another set of rough steps cut into the stone. My heart thudded in my chest, and fear pulsed through me as I realized that the bottom of the cave was filled with water. A small row boat, attached to the cave wall by an old iron chain with a big padlock, bobbed on the waves. Stanley jumped down into the water, surprisingly agile. With the gun still trained on us he forced us to follow. The waves of the incoming tide lapped gently around my ankles.