by Debi Gliori
“Some of your wine for my learned colleagues at the bar,” their spokesman demanded, “and make mine a double Scotch on the rocks.” The speaker drummed tanned fingers on the countertop, jiggled loose change in his pockets, and gazed around. “Say, ma’am,” he drawled in some puzzlement after encountering the combined stares of the beasts and Tock, “did we get our wires crossed? Is this Fancy Dress Night?” He stepped forward and peered at Tock with interest. “Say, feller,” he said admiringly, “that’s a pretty darn realistic costume you’ve got there. How much did that ole ’gator skin set you back?”
Tock opened his mouth to reply. The combination of his squid-tainted breath and his serried rows of teeth made the American recoil sharply. “Well, Bud”—Tock attempted a mid-Atlantic accent—“it’s not what ya know, it’s who ya know. My mom was in the skin trade, if you follow my drift.”
The door of the cocktail lounge opened to admit Hugh Pylum-Haight, wreathed in cigar smoke and dressed in an impeccably tailored dark cashmere suit. He elbowed his way to the bar and tapped Vincent Bella-Vista on the shoulder. Looking like an aristocrat and his gamekeeper, the two men moved away to a secluded corner and were soon deep in conversation. Beelzebub, the resident cat of the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms, was curled up in the fireplace, attempting to ignore the unwelcome attentions of Knot, who persisted in sniffing the cat’s fur and drooling in a most repulsive fashion. The smell of cigars mingled with wood smoke and, outside the windows, snow fell. The lounge was full to overflowing by the time the Strega-Borgia party finally appeared.
The room fell silent as all eyes beheld Signora Strega-Borgia. Dressed in a simple green velvet sheath with her black hair falling glossily over one shoulder, she looked like a mermaid. Her lack of makeup or jewelry only served to accentuate her natural beauty. The crush of bodies parted to allow this vision access to the bar. Signor Strega-Borgia, Latch, and Mrs. McLachlan followed in her wake. Around them, interrupted conversations were resumed and a measure of normality returned to the lounge.
Mortimer, on bar duty, goggled, choked, and managed a smile halfway between a leer and a grimace.
“Luciano? A glass of wine? Latch? A hot toddy for your cold? Flora?” Signora Strega-Borgia smiled at Morty. It was the kind of smile mermaids use to lure sailors onto rocks. Morty floundered. His hands shook as he uncorked a wine of his re-labeled gut rot. Signora Strega-Borgia reached out and took the wine from his trembling hands. Reading the label, she began to laugh. “I don’t believe it,” she said, passing the bottle to her husband. “Mr. Fforbes-Campbell—is this some kind of joke?”
Signora Strega-Borgia failed to notice the manageress bearing down on her, lips drawn back in a snarl, eyes flashing danger. Pretending to catch her stiletto heel in a crack in the floorboards, Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell staggered into Signora Strega-Borgia with a girlish shriek of dismay. “Oh, my dear!” she gushed, recovering her balance, “your poor dress. Oh, heavens above, and red wine, too. Awful. So sorry. Only one thing for it. . . .” And, grabbing a soda siphon from the bar, she drenched Signora Strega-Borgia in its contents.
Once again, the cocktail lounge fell silent.
“Dear me,” said Signora Strega-Borgia in arctic tones. “I think you can stop squirting, Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell. The dress is ruined. Antique velvet doesn’t put up with such clumsy treatment—but you couldn’t be expected to know that, could you? It belonged to my grandmother, designed especially for her by Schiaparelli herself. Still . . . ,” she said, brightening considerably and drawing her husband close, “. . . the replacement cost should more than cover our hotel bill for the next few weeks.”
She turned back to Morty, who stood gasping behind the bar, his mouth opening and closing like a stranded cod. “I think we’ll pass on your interesting little wine, Mr. Fforbes-Campbell. Instead, let’s have a glass of your finest champagne for everyone in the lounge and a bucket with four straws for my dear beasts and Tock.”
Morty was stunned. Finest champagne? Twenty or so bottles at one hundred and seventy-two pounds each? He rubbed his hands in glee.
“And, Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell,” added Signora Strega-Borgia, “that will be on the house. Against the damage to my dress, you understand.”
At a table by the window, the group of American lawyers on vacation stood up and cheered. The prospect of Mermaid v. Morty more than made up for their lack of Nessie sightings.
Dodgy Santa
Huddled in a forgotten corner of the attic at StregaSchloss, Tarantella shivered. “How could she? How COULD she?” she demanded, addressing the rafters. “Thoughtlessly, heartlessly abandoned. Forgotten. Overlooked. After all I’ve done for her, and her miserable family—the ungrateful bizzem of a biped.” Tarantella paused to stuff another desiccated fly into her underfilled Christmas stocking. “Where’s my Christmas present? Where’s my annual reward for being such a perfect pet? Where’s Pandora?” The spider pouted in a fashion that would have given any self-respecting bluebottle nightmares, then added a deceased daddy longlegs to the stocking. “Not seen hide nor hair of her for three weeks. Not even a postcard. Faithless Pandora. Leaving me with uncultured heathens like rats for company. . . .”
The distant clatter of a diesel engine broke into Tarantella’s thoughts and she paused, arrested in mid-rant. Closer now it came, negotiating the moat and pulling up in front of the deserted StregaSchloss. Tarantella instantly relented. “I take it all back. Better late than never. . . . I wonder what she’s brought for me?”
Far below, van doors opened and slammed. Tarantella scampered to the cobwebby attic window and peered out through the snowflakes. “Dubious company she’s keeping,” she observed, noting the four stocky men unloading ladders and ropes from the back of their van. Incorrectly assuming that Pandora was already inside the house, Tarantella leapt across the attic to stand in wait by the trapdoor. “Come on, come on,” she muttered impatiently.
Clanking and banging came from the scaffold wrapped round the outside of StregaSchloss, and muffled thuds and gruff voices filtered up from the hallway. “This way,” came a shout, followed by the sound of boots clattering on the stone stairs.
“It’s a right pain in the backside, this. Christmas Eve, and here we are, working. What’s the boss up to?”
“Don’t know, mate. Just get the roof off, lose the slates in the loch, and no questions asked.”
Tarantella puzzled over this. Get the roof off? What was going on? The attic was quite cold enough, thank you, without taking the roof off. And lose the slates in the loch? That sounded a mite extravagant. . . . The spider crept behind an old cabin trunk and waited.
Seconds later, the trapdoor creaked open, and a silhouetted figure swept a flashlight round the attic. “Pass me your crowbar, Malky,” it said, hauling itself inelegantly into the attic, “and the wrecking bar and angle grinder.”
Thumps and crashes came from the roof above. Something’s gone horribly wrong, Tarantella decided. This is definitely not Santa Claus on my roof, and by the sound of things, this isn’t going to be my roof for much longer. . . . A distant series of shattering crashes confirmed her assumptions. Through the attic window, it appeared to be snowing slates. Hundreds of them, flying through the air and landing with a crash on the flagstones below. An arctic wind blew through centuries of cobwebs strung across the eaves, and snowflakes began to dust the attic floor. The wind picked Tarantella up and blew her across the floorboards. Oh, my word, she thought, woman the lifeboats, mayday, mayday, help, police. Then she looked up. She could see the night sky through the rafters now. It looked black and bleak and cheerless. Straddled across the pockmarked timbers, a man levered off slates with a crowbar and hurled them into space.
Tarantella ran across the attic floor and skidded to a stop at a disused chimney stack that ran the full height of StregaSchloss, from the attic down to the kitchen. Peering through a hole in the chimney breast, she tutted mildly. “Dear, dear. Lift’s out of action. Such a nuisance. I suppose that means I’ll have to use the sta
irs.”
With a backward glance at the rapidly vanishing roof, and using a flurry of snowflakes to camouflage her hasty exit, Tarantella headed for the trapdoor.
Getting Stuffed
Christmas Day dawned wet and sleety. Sensing that this day was extra special, Damp roused her parents from their champagne-drenched slumbers at five-thirty a.m. She dealt with the contents of her stocking in two seconds flat, and happily spent the next two hours trying to poke melting chocolate coins between the clamped lips of her parents.
In their shared room, Pandora and Mrs. McLachlan woke at a more civilized hour, bid each other a sleepy good morning, and rolled over to go back to sleep again. On the foot of their beds, lumpy stockings lay unopened.
Woken by Latch’s extended sneezing and nose-blowing session, Titus pried his eyes open. Christmas! he thought, and then, remembering that he was too cool for such things, thought, Oh, yeah, Christmas. There was a large red stocking at the foot of his bed! Oh, yeah, the stocking. Titus scratched an armpit in a thoughtful fashion and tried to yawn insouciantly. Two seconds later, unable to restrain himself any longer, he somersaulted to the end of the bed, grabbed his stocking, and tipped it upside down on the floor.
Titus was simultaneously cramming chocolate reindeer down his throat and loading a brand-new copy of Schlock-Horror IV onto his laptop when Latch emerged sniffing from the bathroom, clutching a box of tissues since his seasonal cold was currently at its peak in terms of mucus production. Titus blinked. Latch was wearing a lounge suit that looked as if it had been salvaged from the wreck of the Titanic. Furthermore, he’d cut himself shaving, and a thin trail of blood was trickling down his chin. Briefly, the thought occurred to Titus that he could offer to dab Latch’s chin, thus gaining a drop of the butler’s blood for cloning purposes, but remembering his success of the night before, he decided that enough was enough. He wondered if Pandora had forgiven him yet. . . .
He didn’t have to wonder for too long. Meeting his sibling on the way down to breakfast, he noticed that her left thumb was heavily bandaged.
“Aaargh! It’s Psycho-Titus! Keep him away from me,” Pandora said, clutching Mrs. McLachlan for protection.
“What’s she on about?” Titus attempted injured innocence.
“Last night, Titus. Remember? My poor thumb?” Pandora turned to explain to Mrs. McLachlan. “He appeared in my room, black cloak, fangs, full-on vampire, and sank his teeth into my hand. . . .”
“Pardon?” Titus looked blank. “I did what?”
“You bit me,” said Pandora. “Hard. You drew blood. So I had to hit you with the first thing that came to hand.”
“Which was?” Mrs. McLachlan frowned.
“What are you on about?” Titus interrupted. “I was in bed. All night. Asleep, not prowling round the hotel. You’re blathering, Pan. Or dreaming. Either way, I think you need therapy.”
“So what’s this, then?” Pandora waved her thumb in Titus’s face. “Or that?” She grabbed her brother’s hair, pulling back his bangs to expose a lump the size of a small egg. “Here, look. I did that. With my shoe.”
“I wondered where that lump came from. . . .” Titus absentmindedly rubbed his head, then looked up at his sister, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “Oh, heck—d’you think I bit you when I was sleepwalking?”
“That’s quite enough,” interrupted Mrs. McLachlan in tones that brooked no dissent. “I’m ashamed of the pair of you. Biting and hitting. Any more of this nonsense and you can both go in the stable block with the beasts. Now. Not another word. Let us all go downstairs and have breakfast like civilized human beings, not little heathens.”
Over the muted strains of Christmas carols, the Strega-Borgia clan assembled in the dining room could hear the unmistakable din of crashing cutlery and clattering saucepans. Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell was not in a festive mood. The previous evening’s wine tasting had left a bitter taste in her mouth, coupled with a thumping headache and an overweening desire to have her revenge on Signora Strega-Borgia. To make matters worse, in her three a.m. search for her infallible headache remedy, Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell had discovered that her crocodile-skin handbag had gone missing. Her temper, usually maintained at a temperature just below simmering point, boiled over.
“You must have seen it, you useless MORON!” she yelled at her husband. “I had it yesterday, in the kitchen. If you hadn’t pickled what few remaining brain cells you possessed, you’d be able to remember where I left it. . . .”
Mortimer groaned. Seeking to deflect attention from himself, he picked on the most likely suspect. “Probably been nicked, old girl. Wouldn’t put it past that ghastly Borgia chappie, what?”
The ghastly Borgia chappie buttered a round of toast and passed it to the equally ghastly Borgia crocodile. “Tock,” he said, attempting a stern manner, “would you happen to know anything about a missing crocodile-skin handbag?”
Tock’s dripping spoonful of prunes halted in midair. The crocodile opened his eyes wide and approximated an expression of puzzled innocence. Beside him, Ffup blushed and Sab busied himself with the contents of the marmalade dish.
“It might improve the atmosphere in the hotel if you were to return it,” suggested Signor Strega-Borgia, adding, “Anonymously. That is, if you know where it is.”
Tock was about to deny all knowledge of the missing handbag when Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell stalked into the dining room. She looked every bit as ill as she felt.
Pandora’s eyes rolled backward in her head as she beheld the proprietrix’s ostrich-feather-trimmed cardigan, her leopard-skin leggings, and her calfskin boots. “I’ve suddenly lost my appetite,” she remarked, standing up.
“How interesting,” said Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell. “I’ve suddenly lost my handbag.”
Tock slid sideways off his chair and, followed by his fellow beasts, vanished in the direction of the gardens. Pandora and Titus headed upstairs to their bedrooms and Mrs. McLachlan and Latch made themselves scarce. Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell looked round the suddenly deserted dining room. “Was it something I said?” she asked, slipping into the empty chair beside Signora Strega-Borgia. “Are you going to join us for lunch today? Very traditional fare, I’m afraid. Roast goose and all the trimmings. Plum pudding—all those ghastly calories. . . . Luciano, you simply must have some of my special stuffing—it’s absolutely heavenly. Not for us, dear,” she said, patting Signora Strega-Borgia conspiratorially on the arm. “Not if we need to watch our figures . . .”
Signora Strega-Borgia poured herself another cup of coffee, ostentatiously ladled four spoonfuls of sugar and a generous dollop of cream into it, and swallowed the lot in one elegant gulp. “I’d love to try your stuffing, dear,” she said sweetly, “since I don’t have to watch my figure—I let Luciano do that for me.”
Comparisons are odious, but if asked to name her favorite present of that strange Christmas, Pandora would have nominated the tiny pot of cream given to her by Mrs. McLachlan. Compared to that tiny bejeweled tub of vanishing cream, all CDs, clothes, toys, and books paled into insignificance. Even Titus conceded that vanishing cream was seriously cool after Pandora had demonstrated its miraculous powers during a Brussels sprout episode at lunchtime.
“Just eat them, darling,” advised Signora Strega-Borgia, “and then we’ll have pudding.”
“Frankly, I’d rather die,” muttered Titus, glaring at the little mushy green cannonballs clustered round the rim of his plate.
“TITUS!”
Titus looked up from his plate. His father was glaring at him, but given that Signor Strega-Borgia had held his face muscles in the Grimace Position throughout the starter (prawns Marie-Rose), the soup (broccoli and Stilton), and the sorbet (avocado and lime), the effect of his glare was somewhat diluted.
“Titus,” Pandora hissed, “cause a distraction and I’ll make your sprouts disappear.”
Titus didn’t need to be asked twice. He reached out for the gravy boat and skillfully toppled a teetering arrangement of fir c
ones and fruit that the management had provided to grace each table in the dining room. “Ooops. Sorry,” Titus mumbled, joining in the under-the-table scrum to catch tumbling apples, pomegranates, and fir cones that cascaded from their table. When the family reseated themselves to continue their meal, Titus saw that Pandora had been as good as her word. “Wicked,” he whispered, attacking the rest of his meal with renewed relish.
Much later, bloated and bilious, all the guests and staff collapsed on sofas in the residents’ lounge to attempt to cram in mince pies and postprandial drinks before their stomachs finally exploded. Titus took this opportunity to disappear in search of an incubator. Since the previous evening he’d been in possession of the blood, the infrared facility, and, in a moment of inspiration, had realized that his mother’s Knot-regurgitated ectoplasm would provide the perfect growth medium for his diy-clones. All he needed now was an incubator. . . .
He had a pretty good idea where to find one. Over lunch, he’d overheard a most promising conversation between Latch and Mrs. McLachlan, who, along with the rest of the family, had avoided the roast goose completely.
“I don’t think that has been properly cooked,” Mrs. McLachlan said under her breath as she passed the platter to Latch without taking any for herself. Latch observed the pink slabs of meat studded with congealed goose fat and, with a shudder, passed the plate onward to Tock.
“I’ll pass,” the crocodile decided. “Raw goose for you, Ffup?”
“It’s a breeding ground for all sorts of bacteria,” Mrs. McLachlan advised, passing a tureen of roast potatoes on to Latch.