Jane Blonde: Sensational Spylet

by Jill Marshall

  ‘Blood! Blood!’ screamed Janey, as she accidentally stepped on Trouble’s tail. The kitten roared with outrage, his fur standing on end.

  ‘Will you calm down? And leave that poor cat alone,’ said G-Mamma. ‘What have those doctors been doing to you?’

  ‘Well, first of all they took a pile of blood samples, and then they looked down my throat, and then they went away and huddled together at the end of the ward, and then they came back and told my mum that they didn’t know what it was but I could probably go home, and then I told Mum all about me becoming a SPI, and about Uncle Solomon, and about you assigning me my mission . . .’

  G-Mamma looked at her strangely. ‘And what did Gina have to say about all that?’

  ‘Ah, well, she thinks you’re a nutter, filling my head with fantastical nonsense, and she’s going to get social services to have you locked up because you’re a monster, and—’

  ‘All right, Janey, I think I get the picture. Your mother’s gone completely ding-dong and you can’t seem to stop talking. Do you know why?’

  ‘Let’s see . . .’ Janey took a deep breath; it seemed her sentences were very long at the moment. It was very bizarre. ‘I don’t really know why I can’t seem to stop talking, although maybe I’m making up for being quiet most of my life, and anyway my tongue seems to be flapping away all on its own, and I want to tell Mum and everyone else everything that’s been happening. Some of the doctors thought it might be shock—’

  ‘Shock?’ bayed G-Mamma. ‘Shock my shimmying hips! You were poisoned, Blonde! Look at this!’

  Leading Janey down the bench, G-Mamma showed her a large Petri dish into which she had tipped the mug of tea and chocolate from the Browns’ kitchen. It looked unspeakably disgusting, like something Trouble might produce. Janey lifted her eyes to the ticker-tape stream of print lying next to it. Following a long chain of symbols and codes that she couldn’t understand came two distinct words. Janey gulped as she read them: ‘POISONOUS ELIXIR’.

  ‘Yep. Poisoned. And I think I know what with. Here it comes.’ The ticker tape was still pouring out of the computer. G-Mamma studied it for a moment, then held it up triumphantly. ‘I knew it! SPIT!’

  ‘I don’t want to, it’s really bad manners,’ said Janey.

  ‘No, no, no. That’s what poisoned you – SPIT. And a big dose of it too, which is probably why you fainted.’

  Janey was confused. ‘Hang on. I’ve been poisoned by my own spit? That’s revolting.’

  ‘It’s not spit, Blonde. It’s SPIT. SPI-T, or SPI-Truth, to use its full name. Commonly known as SPIT. Once it’s been administered, whenever someone asks you a direct question, you feel compelled to give them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the festering, fiendish truth! Someone poisoned you with some SPIT a couple of hours ago, and it won’t wear off until the morning.’

  ‘Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? Where did it come from?’

  ‘Not sure,’ admitted G-Mamma. ‘Can’t seem to pinpoint the source exactly, but it was obviously something to do with what you ate or drank today. I’m fully analysing the chocolate and the tea right now. Do you have any ideas?’

  ‘Yes! Lots! I think maybe I should start calling myself Jane Blonde all the time—’

  G-Mamma held up one of her pudgy hands. ‘Nooooo. Not general ideas. Do you have any idea who might have tried to feed you SPIT?’

  Miserably Janey shook her head. ‘I don’t know! My teacher came round and my new friend, Freddie, but dodgy Alfie and Needle-Teeth sent me the chocolates, so I bet it was them! And, like I tried to tell you before, there’s something even more frightening going on too,’ she whispered. ‘There’s blood under my bed!’

  G-Mamma suddenly flushed dark red. ‘Oh. Sorry. I think that’s probably jam. I scrambled through to get your suitcase with a doughnut in my mouth, but as the fireplace squashed me around the middle I, er, clamped down on the doughnut. Did a bit of a jam dirty squirty. Sorry. And I still haven’t checked out Alfie and Needle-Teeth. But I did get your suitcase and pack it for you.’

  Janey turned to see her suitcase standing smartly on its tiny silver legs. She dreaded to think what might be in it. Then a thought ate into her brain. ‘Hey, how did you know I was going away?’

  ‘Elementary, Blonde.’ G-Mamma picked up the receiver of her phone and pressed a replay button. Her mother’s voice rang into the room, explaining to Uncle James in no uncertain terms why he needed to come and collect his niece and have her under his roof for an undetermined period. Her orders were punctuated only by Uncle James’s miserable grunts of agreement.

  ‘You bugged our phone.’

  G-Mamma rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve had some SPI training myself, you know, Blonde-girl. It’s second nature, same as it is to check that a mirror has a proper backing on it by putting your fingernail against it and making sure there’s no gap between your nail and its reflection. If there is, it’s a two-way mirror and you’re in trouble. Or, you know, waiting for your host to eat first. Just wait until you’ve had the the full SPI:KE treatment. You’ll do all those things as fast as blinking.’

  Just as Janey was about to reply, her mother’s voice sang out again through G-Mamma’s phone. ‘What? Say that again, will you? You’re breaking up. Five minutes? OK, James, I’ll make sure she’s ready.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ said Janey. ‘But now what? I can’t just hang around at Uncle James’s doing nothing. We have to carry on with the investigation.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch. And remember everything I’ve taught you. Now take your case. Go,’ cried G-Mamma, shoving her through the fireplace.

  Janey hauled her case into her bedroom, pausing for a few precious moments to open the lid and shove in the shoebox holding Sol’s gifts. At least she could think about him, even if she was staying with another uncle. How different they were. Uncle Sol was trying desperately to get to meet her, while Uncle James, she was sure, would be trying just as desperately to pretend she didn’t exist.

  the other uncle

  Apart from the fact that he looked exactly like her mum but with very little hair, Janey could hardly believe that her mother and Uncle James were related. While her mum raced around doing at least three things at once, Uncle James concentrated on just his crossword, or just his breakfast, or just gazing out of the window at the trees in his garden. Mrs Brown liked to sit and chat with Janey in the evenings, cooking mad things to eat and choosing what they would both like to watch on the television or listen to on the radio; Uncle James liked to go out to the opera or to play bridge at his club with his friend Sinjun (both of which he had to cancel, a little grumpily, now that he was supposed to be looking after Janey). And while Mrs Brown knew quite a bit about children and what they liked, Uncle James knew so little that Janey wondered if he’d ever actually been a child himself. What must his own children think of him? she wondered.

  ‘So,’ Uncle James muttered after a long silence in the car, ‘what’s this trouble you’ve been having?’

  Janey screwed up her face, trying to stop information leaking out of her willy-nilly. But he had asked her a direct question, and the SPIT was not about to stop working just yet.

  ‘Um, yes. You see, I’ve discovered that I’m a SPI and Mum and Dad used to be SPIs too. And a SPI is living next door to us and she’s training me to be a proper SPI so I can work for my uncle – I mean my other uncle, Solomon – who’s in terrible danger from an evil espionage group called Sinerlesse and their nasty leader, Ariel . . .’

  ‘Just like your mother,’ her uncle commented in his slightly nasal voice, rolling his eyes. ‘Typical of the women in our family. Can’t seem to keep out of mischief. Although your mum is far more sensible nowadays.’

  Janey stared at him, unsure what to say. As he didn’t seem to be waiting for an answer, she decided to change tack. Maybe that way she could avoid any further direct questions.

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting my cousins again, Uncle James.’

  ‘Cou
sins?’ It was if he had to think quite hard to remember his own children. ‘Oh, Edie and Fen. Well, they live with their mother on the other side of town now, so you won’t be seeing them, I’m afraid. Unless you’re still here at the weekend.’ Janey gathered from his tone that he hoped most sincerely that she wouldn’t be.

  As soon as they arrived, Janey was led into the sitting room, where a portly man with a speckled and not terribly healthy complexion was sitting in a leather chair. He was reading the pink part of the newspaper, which Mrs Brown always put straight in the bin or used for potato peelings.

  Uncle James smiled weakly at his friend. ‘Sinjun, this is my niece, Janey.’

  Prising his turgid torso out of the chair, the man delved in his waistcoat pocket and handed Janey a business card before formally shaking her hand. ‘Sinjun Tavistock. Pleased to meet you, young lady. Although not so pleased about losing my bridge partner while you’re here! Phnuff Phnufff.’ He had a laugh like a hippo sneezing. ‘Don’t suppose you play, do you?’

  Janey readied herself. She knew she was still under the influence of the SPIT. ‘I quite like playing Twister,’ she began. ‘And Jenga. I don’t play with my dolls any more, but I’ve kept them all in my blanket box. I play rounders pretty well, though I’m not so good at netball even though I’m tall. I like to play my CDs, but I haven’t got a CD player in my room, and Mum doesn’t like the things I want to listen to, and . . .’

  Both men stared at her, mildly horrified. Uncle James shook his head. ‘No, no. I think Sinjun meant, do you play bridge, Janey? Just bridge. Didn’t your mother say you were quiet?’

  Even though she slapped a hand over her mouth (at which the men both looked at each other in consternation), the words forced themselves through Janey’s lips and out between her stretched fingers.

  ‘Well, it’s true, usually I am pretty quiet. tonight I’ve been given some SPIT and if you ask me a direct question I have to answer it. Don’t worry, it will have worn off by the morning, or at least that’s what my SPI:KE – that’s my SPI: Kid Educator – said.’

  Uncle James leaned closer to Sinjun. ‘Apparently she likes to play “spies”. Think it’s time for bed, Janey. Off you go!’

  Janey looked at Sinjun’s card as she climbed the majestic staircase. ‘St John Tavistock. Actuary’ it read. Sinjun seemed a funny way to say St John. And what did an actuary do? Something dull, thought Janey. He seemed like a suitably stuffy friend for Uncle James.

  Janey would be staying in the room that Edie and Fen used when they spent the weekend with their dad. The room was a vast blancmange of pink, lilac and silver, with glitter and girly fripperies littered all over the floor. It even had its own en-suite bathroom – another confection of shimmering pastel, including a gleaming shower curtain embossed with silver and lilac stars. Much further down the landing, Uncle James had his own suite of rooms, consisting of an immense beige bedroom, a caramelcoloured bathroom, a mushroom-painted study and a faun seating area. Janey couldn’t help thinking that Uncle James might as well have been painted beige himself, for all the life he had in him.

  Still wearing her clothes, Janey got into bed and pulled the duvet up to her chin. As she lay awake through the night her mind played endlessly with bits of information she had collected. She went over and over the words she had heard in the pool room at Sol’s Lols HQ but could get no closer to working out what she was supposed to destroy. Nor could she forget the fact that someone had poisoned her – someone in the Sinerlesse Group. Maybe someone close to her . . . When she did eventually sleep, a series of frightening dreams flashed through Janey’s brain. After a particularly weird one, in which a bucket-headed monster was chasing her through a dark and eerie school where no one could hear her shouts for help, she woke up to find that it was light.

  She wandered downstairs to find Uncle James reading the paper in the breakfast area. Janey sat down self-consciously and looked at the table.

  ‘How are you this morning?’ asked her uncle.

  ‘Fine, thank you.’ The SPIT had obviously worn off, as Janey was able to lie convincingly. ‘You must have been up ages to make all this!’

  Janey was amazed. A sumptuous morning feast lay before her: warm croissants and pastries snuggled up to dripping buttery toast; scrambled eggs frothed from under a silver dome; sausages, bacon, black pudding and mushrooms were piled up like a bonfire waiting to be lit; and little boxes of breakfast cereals stood in a neat domino-row to one side.

  Uncle James glanced up from his plate. ‘The housekeeper does all this. Excellent arrangement – she comes in before sunrise, gets breakfast, does the cleaning, then leaves with the chauffeur when he drives me to work.’

  ‘You don’t drive yourself then?’

  ‘No, Janey,’ said her uncle sternly. ‘I have work to do in the car, and I am not one of these foolish folk who believe it’s possible to drive and think and talk into a mobile phone all at the same time. Focus. That’s what people lack these days. One task at a time, with maximum concentration.’

  ‘Focus,’ repeated Janey, nodding as if she knew what he was talking about.

  Uncle James pointed his eggy knife at her. ‘I’m willing to bet you were trying to do too many things at once when you fell over, or whatever it is you did. You weren’t focusing.’

  Janey frowned and was just about to launch into a defence of herself when a crash from the kitchen stopped her.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Bell! Clumsy me. Just nudged that baking tin off the shelf as I put in your casserole for tonight. Oh, hello, love! You must be Mr Bell’s niece. Hope you like the extra special breakfast I got together for you!’

  A kind round face beamed across the kitchen counter. The woman crossed to the table, tucking her oven gloves into the huge pocket that stretched the width of her maroon tabard-style overall. ‘Now, you eat that up, young Janey. Look at you. Not a scrap on you, is there, love? Need to build up your strength.’ The sweet lined face, topped with bright ginger hair, crinkled with concern.

  What was it G-Mamma had said? Eat what your host eats, or something like that. Scanning her uncle’s leftovers quickly, Janey lifted up the silver dome and shovelled egg on to her plate. ‘Oh, I’m going to eat lots and lots. Think I need some . . . some protein, make me stronger.’

  The housekeeper crowed delightedly. ‘That’s the way! I can see you’re a bright young lady. I expect you’re going to be a genius like your uncle here, and my dear departed son. You’ll go to one of those super-universities like they did. All tradition and black gowns and punting on the river. Marvellous!’

  ‘Those were the days, Edna,’ said Uncle James glumly. ‘Formal dinners in the college hall. Foxtrotting under the stars at the summer ball. Nothing like that now, you know.’

  Smiling indulgently, the housekeeper spoke to Janey. ‘Maybe you can do something about cheering up your uncle while he’s looking after you.’

  ‘Edna thinks I work too hard,’ said her uncle with a peculiarly soppy grin. He looked at the housekeeper like a puppy waiting for scraps. ‘So she spoils me all the time.’

  ‘Well, it’s true, Mr Bell. You do work too hard. And there’s no one here with a nice meal for you when you get home. Now me, I’m pleased to have someone new to look after, with my own son gone. Anyway, maybe you’d help me out a little, dear? Take care of him a bit for me? It’ll be nice for you, Mr Bell, having a youngster around.’

  Starting to giggle, Janey pulled a face at her uncle. To her surprise he pulled one back, looking slightly human for the first time since she’d met him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, picking up his folded newspaper, ‘for once I can assure you that I won’t be working too hard today. I promised my sister I’d take the day off to keep an eye on Janey here.’

  ‘Oh, you won’t be needing the car then? I’ll just let the agency know that Billy will be dropping me off on my own today – don’t want them thinking I’m making off with the company’s property!’ The housekeeper picked up the telephone and punched i
n a number. ‘Oh, hello?’ She yelled as if the person on the other end was hard of hearing. ‘Miss Lear? It’s Edna, dear. Just letting you know, Billy will be dropping me off today. Mr Bell won’t need the car – he’s taking the day off with his niece. Yes, we’re leaving now. Righto!’ Edna put down the phone and waved as she shuffled out of the kitchen. ‘Bye, Mr Bell! Bye, Janey!’ she called.

  ‘Miss Lear?’ said Janey incredulously. ‘But that’s . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know, your mother works for her,’ Uncle James said. ‘It was Jean that recommended the company. She said that if I wasn’t going to let her clean for me herself – which obviously I wouldn’t – then the next best thing was someone from St Earl’s.’

  Janey’s eyes sharpened. ‘St Earl’s?’

  ‘Yes. St Earl’s Sanitation and Security Enterprises. Miss Lear’s company. Your mum thinks they’re really excellent, and I have to say I agree with her. Edna and Billy have been superb from the outset. A real bonus, getting the housekeeper and the driver from the same company. Makes life easy, Janey. Good synergy.’ Shaking out his paper, Uncle James lowered his head to read.

  ‘Uncle James,’ said Janey slowly, trying to make connections in a brain which still felt a little sluggish.

  ‘Ye-e-e-es?’

  ‘Why would a cleaning company have the same name as a school? Only Miss Lear’s brother, Freddie, he’s a friend of mine. He goes to a school called St Earl’s. And his sister’s cleaning company is called St Earl’s too. Isn’t that a bit weird.’

  ‘Well, I expect what happened was that Miss Lear was the cleaner at her brother’s school and took the name on when she set up her company. Things like that matter in competitive tendering, you know. Gives the company a distinctive ring. Might get more business that way. Yes, I expect that’s it.’ He rattled his newspaper pointedly. ‘Now, would you allow me to focus on the news for a few moments? I’ll be with you in ten minutes precisely.’