[Brenda & Effie 07] - A Game of Crones

by Paul Magrs

  At this younger age my reflexes are pretty good. I leap backwards, slinging into the face of my assailant the first thing that comes to hand. This happens to be an armload of Prof Tyler’s soggy underthings.

  The mummy crashes through the back door to the sound of splintering hinges, undeterred by the weight of old underpants.

  I cast desperately around for a weapon. The mangle? The mop? I’m backing away now, dread almost overcoming me. There isn’t time to consider where such a musty brute has come from.

  Then it turns out he isn’t after me at all.

  It’s my hostess trolley he wants.

  The revenant lumbers forth and tries to take hold of the still-warm teapot. I’m standing there astonished, watching on, as the kitchen door flies open. Help is at hand!

  ‘I heard something untoward in the vicinity of the scullery!’

  Henry Cleavis comes bounding to my rescue. He is astounded at the sight of the monster, now trying to drag my entire hostess trolley out the back door and into the misty garden beyond.

  ‘Cease and desist at once!’

  ‘That trolley is an heirloom!’ I find myself yelling, and feel such a fool once the words are out.

  The mummy gives a dreadful, guttural snarl and then he’s gone, quick as you like. We can hear china cups and saucers tinkling like mad as he makes his escape.

  We try to follow but to no avail. The back garden is suffused by an evil brown fog. The gate hangs open and the lane beyond betrays no sign of the bandaged miscreant.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear? What was that thing?’

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ I burst out, and feel like collapsing into tears. I should have put up more of a fight.

  ‘It looked very much to me like an Egyptian mummy come back to life.’

  Professor Tyler’s dry, acerbic voice comes from behind us and we whirl around to see my employer. He’s standing in his shirtsleeves and puffing thoughtfully on his pipe.

  ‘You saw it as well?’

  ‘I was right on your heels, old chap. How very alarming. Our tea things have been carried away by a cadaver some half dozen millennia old. He must have a most ghastly thirst on. Brenda, you look as if you’re about to keel over.’

  I admit that I feel a good deal better when we are back indoors and out of that perishing fog. The gentlemen bring me to sit by the study fire. Prof Tyler disbands the Smudgelings’ meeting and dismisses his fellow scribblers. They seem concerned and disappointed to have missed the fracas in the kitchen.

  Henry Cleavis makes some rather nasty tea in some old mugs.

  ‘I wonder why our mummified chum would want our dregs.’ Tyler leans against the mantelpiece musingly. I can recognise the excitement in his thin-featured face. He doesn’t give a hoot about the smashed back door or the expensive trolley. There is a mystery and he is cockahoop.

  ‘I wonder if it’s all to do with our meeting?’ Henry Cleavis is examining the packet of tea I’ve been using. It is purple cardboard and decorated in foreign symbols. Rather exotic.

  ‘Do you believe whoever controls the mummy was thinking of poisoning us?’

  ‘You had some senior dons here tonight, Reg. Not that I want to flatter us unduly…’

  ‘We’d already finished the tea. Little point in poisoning the pot after it’s been emptied, is there?’

  ‘Fair point. What a whopper though, eh? I’ve not seen a reanimated corpse like that since… well, a very long time indeed.’

  Discussion of our frightening visitor comes to an abrupt end. Tyler stumps off to spend the remainder of the evening writing, and Professor Cleavis says his goodbyes, pulls on his hat and coat and goes off into the murky night. I clear up the disturbed kitchen and, just before bedtime rolls around, I take Prof Tyler his usual nightcap.

  I find him scratching away in one of his old ledgers. He’s working on the book that will eventually take him thirty-four years to finish. At this stage he is teetering at the halfway mark and quite grumpy about it. I tiptoe up behind him, put down his whisky, and turn to scoot back out.

  ‘Poppy Keyes’ Herbal Infusions.’

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  ‘The people you bought that tea from. They are based in this very city. I read the back of the packet. Do you know what, Brenda?’

  This old man always manages to make me feel nervous…

  ‘I think there might be something in this tea leaf business.’

  ‘I’ve only been using this new kind quite recently, sir…’

  ‘Yes, the quality of the tea round here recently has been bloody awful. I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about it. There’s something rather nasty in the leaves, I think, and I intend to find out what it is.’

  I nod, reflecting that Professor Tyler only turns his massive intellect upon spooky mysteries when they disturb his comfort or when his magnum opus hits a sticky patch. Judging by the crossings out in his ledger, I’m guessing he has double the cause for thinking about this mystery tonight.

  In the following few days there are reports of several incidents involving the tea leaf thief. A bandage-wrapped spectre is spotted in numerous locations all over the city as high teas and breakfasts are rudely interrupted. Each time there are ructions in the houses of brilliantly learned scholars as tea pots and cups and saucers are dragged ruthlessly away.

  One luckless Reader in Applied Ethics puts up a fight for the sake of his wife’s best china. Both of his arms are torn out of their sockets and the astonished academic bleeds to death on his dining room carpet.

  When I hear this I’m glad that I never put up more of a struggle on the night my hostess trolley was manhandled away.

  I’m relieved… everso relieved… oooh…

  This is the moment that I come back to myself.

  Right then. I mean, all these years later, standing in my attic. Brewing my tea. It’s a bit stewed and awful now. But it was worth it. The fumes took me back through all those years.

  To the first time I was menaced by mummies in a tea-drinking-related escapade.

  I must tell Effie about this at once, I decide.

  ‘Ooh, Effie. Thank goodness you’re here. How did you manage to free yourself?’

  She’s gasping, ‘I don’t have time to go into that, Brenda. They’re right behind me!’

  ‘Who?’ I ask, as she struggles with my bonds, sawing away with a pair of handy pinking shears she’s taken to carrying about in her handbag. I already know the answer.

  It’s Professor Marius Keyes and Sheila Manchu. They’re descending into the dimly-lit crypt where I’ve been incarcerated.

  They’ve realised that we are on the point of escaping!

  ‘Wait! Brenda, stop!’

  ‘You wait till I get free, buster. You won’t know what’s hit you.’

  ‘Please… you must listen to me… I never meant to hurt you. Either you or Effie, or anyone else. I just wanted to help my aunt… my poor old aunt Poppy.’

  ‘This?’ I ask, pointing to the hideous and withered up old thing in the casket. ‘This old mummy is your aunty?’

  ‘She is indeed, Brenda. And, really, it’s partly your fault that she’s in this state… ‘

  ‘My fault! Well, I like that!’

  ‘Yes, indeed. But to understand why that is so, I believe we must return to the tale of how you first met Poppy Keyes, many years ago, in Darkholmes…’

  ‘Hold on, sonny. This is my flashback. I’ll tell it the way I think best.’

  ‘Very well, then…’

  Three nights after the mummy’s first visit I wake in a muck sweat. I have suddenly remembered how I came by Poppy Keyes’ special blend in that purple packet. It was given to me as a free sample, by a rather severe and glamorous woman in a head scarf. She had a bike with a basket on the front, and it was full of these packets of tea. She claimed to be pedalling free samples for the most august professors in the vicinity. Would I care to try this new blend her firm had perfected?

  Well, nothing ventured, not
hing gained, I thought, and thanked her kindly. At the time I didn’t suppose it odd, the way she came to the door like that.

  And something else has come back to me, too. It’s to do with the tea leaves themselves. I believe that the fact that the mummy was nicking dregs was significant. It isn’t really about poisoning people at all.

  Prof Tyler is already out that morning, but I run into Henry Cleavis in the town. I happen past his favourite hostelry just as he comes tripping merrily into the autumn sunlight.

  ‘Brenda, dear!’

  He does look a treat in his green velvet jacket. A bit of a dandy on the sly, is Professor Cleavis.

  I tell him about the sample, and how I have met the glamorous Mrs Keyes. And how she was particularly keen that the learned Professor Tyler properly sample her wares. Henry is thinking deeply, chewing on both ends of his moustache.

  ‘But why collect leaves afterwards? That’s what I don’t understand. What’s in tea leaves after you use them?’

  ‘This is what I’ve been stewing over for days. And… well, you know how some folk can read fortunes from your tea cup?’

  ‘Go on, my dear.’

  ‘Well, what if there really was something magical about what’s left at the bottom of your cup?’

  ‘How fascinating! My dear, in your lumpen, proletarian simplicity, I think you may have strayed onto something! Why, I’ve read of something similar to this in old Icelandic mythology…’

  ‘The leaves have been infused, you see, with the future fortunes of the tea drinker…’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Inspiration! The leaves are filled with the very inspiration of very brilliant men! Good god, my dear, but I think you have it!’

  Henry Cleavis invites himself over to Professor Tyler’s house this very evening. He primes me so that I will be ready with a pot of special tea. Tyler is surprised but pleased to see his fellow Smudgeling. When I bring in the tea Henry and I exchange a wink of complicity.

  ‘Oh, you’ve made this horrible concoction again, Brenda.’

  ‘It’s that special blend, Reg. I want to try out an experiment. Indulge me.’

  ‘An experiment, eh? Ugh. Filthy stuff. Now, what is it you want to see me about?’

  I return to my tasks in the scullery, pottering about, though I soon fall asleep in the old armchair. Don’t blame me – I’ve been up since five this morning, riddling the grate and boiling porridge. I am dozing by the heat of the stove when there comes all this brouhaha from the living room. It sounds exactly like someone kicking the French windows in and then getting caught up in the velvet curtains and that’s precisely what it is.

  I wake with a cry and stagger into the hall, hearing Professors Tyler and Cleavis shouting at the tops of their voices. A tea cup shatters and then several more follow suit as I fling open the door onto a scene of utter chaos.

  Henry has taken up arms. He has a poker and a pan shovel from the companion set I polished yesterday afternoon. He brandishes them fiercely at the figure still struggling amongst the folds of the curtains.

  ‘We have captured the blighter, Brenda! Let’s pin him down!’

  ‘Is that wise, sir? If he’s strong enough to kick in doors and yank off the arms of Readers in Applied Ethics?’

  ‘Is this another of these mummified fellows?’

  ‘Yes! He’s covered in curtains, though.’

  ‘We lured him here!’

  ‘Are you saying you purposefully lured this creature here?’

  ‘With the aroma of the tea…’

  ‘That filthy brew!’

  ‘We need to know what they want with used-up tea leaves…’

  ‘Do we? Why do we?’

  ‘Just help me, Reg! Help me with this confounded devil!’

  All this while Henry Cleavis is battering away at the shrouded monstrosity with both dust pan and poker. The mummy is letting out some savage and disturbing – though muffled – cries of vengeance.

  Then all three of us are upon him, and wrestling the creature like mad.

  ‘Hold him steady! Good girl!’

  ‘I’ve never been involved in anything so ridiculous!’

  ‘Watch yourself, Reg! This chap’s a killer!’

  Then, all at once, the mummy goes very limp. It’s as if all the life force suddenly drains out of it. We stop hitting and it slumps the ground. Henry drags the curtains away and hastens to prop up the damaged curtain rail.

  Then the three of us are staring at the hideous revenant as it lies completely lifeless on the oriental rug. There are bits everywhere and I can picture me having the devil of a time with the ewbank later.

  ‘It’s given up the ghost.’

  ‘Just moments ago it was possessed of the most diabolical vigour. Someone is dabbling in supremely dark arts, Reg. You know it as well as I. And we pledged, didn’t we? To combat those forces wherever we encountered them.’

  Professor Tyler mutters to himself and suggests that we unwrap the creature and have a look at what’s underneath the bandages. Not being overly fond of this idea I head off to make tea and, when I return with the second-best pot I am confronted by a heap of dirty bandages and a lumpy form lying on the dining room table. They’ve covered him up with a spotless tablecloth muggins here spent her time ironing.

  ‘Well, we’ve established that it’s a cadaver of the correct sort of vintage.’

  ‘I’m just glad my Nancy’s away at her sister’s. She would be livid seeing a nasty thing like that hanging about the place. I shall phone the museum at once.’

  ‘I don’t think they pick up donations this late in the evening, Reg.’

  ‘Shall I phone the police?’

  Both gents turn to stare at me like I’m mad.

  ‘The thing is, what if it comes back to life in the night?’

  ‘We shall keep a vigil by its side!’

  I volunteer to take my turn, naturally.

  ‘Certainly not. You have more important duties to attend to than mummy-sitting. I insist you get a proper night’s sleep.’

  When I glumly go off to bed I can’t help feeling I’ve been cast out of the boys’ gang. Actually, though, in my tiny housemaid’s room, I sleep wonderfully well.

  In the morning I find the house empty and abandoned. The mummy and its dreadful wrappings are vanished, as is the second-best teapot and both Professors. I could weep with frustration. How dare they go off without me? Haring off into adventure like that. Or perhaps, they had no choice in the matter? Maybe something truly dreadful has befallen them? I start to panic, shivering in the breeze that wafts through the broken French windows.

  Then I see the note propped up by the clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Brenda dear – the mummy awoke! We even managed to get some sense of out the brute…!’

  ‘I am the servant of… Princess Ayotep… long-lost queen of my tribe… I followed her into the land of the dead in order that I may protect her forever against…’

  ‘Yes, yes, we understand all of that. But what is it she wants with all the tea leaves?’

  ‘I must follow the aroma of the tanna leaves… I must take out the pots… bring the mystical infusions…’

  ‘Oh, dear. He’s a bit slow.’ said Henry. ‘But, look here, old man – do you think you could show us to where you must take all these used tea leaves and so on?’

  ‘Take you… take you to Princess Ayotep…’

  ‘Well, that would be most awfully kind.’

  ‘You have a real knack for talking to monsters, Henry.’

  ‘You will… come with me…’

  ‘Marvellous! Well, there you have it, Brenda dear. This mummy chap is taking us to the secret hideout, apparently. So – if we’re not back at Prof Tyler’s house before you get this, then I suppose, er, we might need your help. With my very best regards, Professor Henry Cleavis.’

  His handwriting is as diabolical as the whiff of grave mould that still haunts the dining room. But never mind all that upset just now! The Professors need me! They surely n
eed my help!

  I surge at once into action… but the room around me is fading…! All colour and light are draining away…

  And then all at once I’m back in the present day. Strapped to the sacrificial slab deep underground in the villains’ lair and everyone looking at me.

  Slightly awkward moment.

  ‘I’ve had another flashback!’ I cry out, before I can stop myself. ‘I’ve seen all this happen before! It’s all been flashing past my mind’s eye! I know the secret at the heart of this mystery!’

  ‘Oh!’ gasps Effie. ‘Do you, Brenda?’

  ‘ Do you indeed, Brenda? Do you really know the secret of our activities in Whitby today, as well as when you were investigating in the Forties with Professors Cleavis and Tyler?’

  ‘Yes, I believe I do. I believe my frangible and delicate memories have lifted the veil of forgetfulness just enough to allow me to peek into your nefarious doings…!’

  ‘Oh, not that nefarious at all, my dear. If there is anything mysterious going on, then it’s all in the cause of love.’

  ‘Love, he says! And do you think it’s right to commit murders in the name of love, eh?’

  ‘There has been no murder here. Ah, maybe in the past. When the mummies were too unwieldy and over-zealous, perhaps. But not now. Now I hope that there will be no harm to anyone.’

  ‘You’ve already caused plenty of harm. Look at this! Look at how you’ve had me! All trussed up in your secret base underneath your rotten tearooms! Leaching the blood and life force out of me!’

  ‘But you are a special case, Brenda. A very special case indeed.’

  ‘You wanted more than just my used tea leaves.’

  ‘Yes, that’s very true. You see, you have so much to offer, my dear…’

  ‘My own special blend.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t let you leave, you know.’

  ‘What? Oh, help!’

  Suddenly the mummies are advancing out of the shadows. They’re seizing hold of Effie and me again. Sheila Manchu has the decency to look perturbed as her fancy man rocks with silent mirth.