by Debi Gliori
Beetroot-red with embarrassment, the policeman said, “Er, one last thing, sir, if you would be so kind? If you could just identify the bodies, I’ll arrange for them to be removed as soon as possible. . . .”
Signor Strega-Borgia heaved a sigh and joined the sergeant by the pile of rubble. Both the bodies wore expressions of polite surprise, as if by plunging through several floors of rickety real estate they had committed some minor breach of etiquette.
“To the best of my knowledge, Sergeant, that one on the left is Vincent Bella-Vista, and the other is his lady friend, Vadette—I don’t know her surname, as we were never properly introduced.”
“They’ve made a right mess of your house.” The policeman produced a flashlight and shined it up through the damaged ceiling.
“We’ll get in touch with our roofer,” said Signor Strega-Borgia. “Hugh Pylum-Haight—d’you know him?”
“Indeed we do, sir. He appears to have done a runner, I’m afraid. We’re looking for both him and Mrs. Ffion Fforbes-Campbell in connection with an attempted murder.”
“Good Lord,” said Signor Strega-Borgia. “You mean the poor chap at the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms?”
Conscious that he’d said far too much, and learned nothing in return, the policeman snapped his notebook shut, replaced his flashlight in his pocket, and clasped his hands behind his back. “Did I hear you mention coffee?” he said, attempting an ingratiating smile. “I could murder a cup, myself. . . .”
“Unfortunate choice of phrase, don’t you think?” murmured Signora Strega-Borgia, leading the way down the corridor to the kitchen. She pushed open the door and sniffed appreciatively. “Mmmm. Delicious. Oh, Flora, you have been busy. . . .”
Sitting round the kitchen table, devouring cinnamon and raisin muffins, were Titus, Pandora, and Damp. Mrs. McLachlan, resplendent in a cook’s apron and oven mitts, was just removing a trayful of chocolate fudge brownies from the oven. She straightened, pink-cheeked and beaming with pleasure. “Welcome home, dears. I knew you would be a little peckish so I’ve made some fruit scones, raisin muffins, fudge brownies, and praline cake, and the meringues should be ready in a minute. . . . Come and sit yourselves down by the range, you must be frozen.”
Drawn by the heavenly smell of baking, the policeman edged into the kitchen behind Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia. Gazing at the fount of such culinary largesse, he caught sight of Ffup’s egg, dangling in its jelly pan over the range. “What in heaven’s name do you feed your chickens? That’s some egg you’ve got there,” he said in tones of reverence.
Damp slid off her seat and teetered across the floor toward her mother. A cascade of muffin crumbs tumbled in her wake as she blissfully wrapped herself round Signora Strega-Borgia’s knees. Making sure that her employers were comfortably ensconced on the settle, their cups full of coffee, with Damp and a plate of brownies between them, Mrs. McLachlan turned her attention to the hovering policeman. “Some coffee, Sergeant?” she said, fetching an extra mug from the china cupboard. She filled this and passed it across to the policeman but pointedly did not press him to take either a seat or a piece of home baking. With a tut of apparent displeasure at her own appearance, Mrs. McLachlan produced her powder compact and began to dab at her nose with the powder puff. Pandora tensed when she saw this, wondering whose inner thoughts were about to be invaded by the magical i’mat. When the nanny swiveled round to point the back of her mirror at the unwitting policeman, Pandora held her breath. Was he about to arrest them all as accessories to murder? Was he even faintly suspicious? Or could it be that he was utterly unaware of what had really happened at StregaSchloss?
“There. Nothing like a wee bit of artifice,” said Mrs. McLachlan, snapping the i’mat shut and dropping it into her apron pocket. “Much better, I think.”
Pandora exhaled with relief and helped herself to another muffin by way of celebration. Mrs. McLachlan winked at her, the nanny’s whole being radiating the knowledge that they had indeed gotten away with it. In her mirror, she had seen a vision of the policeman carrying a file labeled STREGASCHLOSS down a set of stairs into a basement. In the tiny i’mat screen, the policeman had opened a dusty filing cabinet in the darkest recesses of the basement and hurled the file inside. In the swirling face powder below the soul mirror, the words FILE UNDER “FORGET” and HATE PAPERWORK had appeared briefly.
Hence Mrs. McLachlan’s broad smile, and her hospitable offer of “More coffee, Sergeant? And you must try some of my muffins. . . . Here, have a couple.”
The Borgia Inheritance
Preparations for a Scottish Hogmanay at the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms began early in the morning of that last day of the old year. In the absence of both proprietors, the remaining staff had raided the Fforbes-Campbells’ wine cellar and were applying themselves to Mortimer’s cache of vintage champagne. The chefs and chambermaids gathered in the lounge bar to toast the health of their absent employers and failed to notice a taxi drawing up at the front of the hotel. Mortimer, pale and shrunken, climbed out of the rear and tottered up the steps to the entrance. Under strict instructions from the doctors at the hospital not to touch any alcohol whatsoever, he had been allowed home to celebrate the new year. He carefully negotiated the revolving door, tiptoed across the tartan carpet, and headed purposefully for the forbidden solace of his stash of Old Liverot in the laundry room.
Just one sip, he thought, and with his hands trembling at the prospect, he uncorked the bottle and raised it to his lips. “Chin, chin, Morty, old chap,” he muttered. “Bally doctors don’t know a thing, what? Bunch of quacks, wet behind the ears. . . .” He paused, suddenly aware of a scraping sound emanating from one of the laundry sinks next to the industrial washer-dryer.
“Rats, what?” he snorted, staggering across to peer into the sink. “If She Who Must Be Obeyed had put the blasted poison down for them instead of feeding it to Yours Truly . . .” The old man’s eyes watered as he considered the recent attempt made on his life. “Rum old thing, marriage, what? S’posed to love, honor, and obey and all that rot, and there she was, trying to bump one orf. . . .”
Once more he raised the bottle to his mouth, but before the first sip could cross his lips, the drain cover in the sink lifted up, clattered across the porcelain, and a tiny naked figure clambered arthritically out of the open drain, wheezing and creaking as it did so. Simultaneously, the bottle of Old Liverot shattered on the laundry room floor as it fell from Mortimer’s grasp.
“Much worse than I thought, what?” he mumbled. “Seeing things already. Little pink men in the laundry. Bodes ill, Morty, old bean. Time to lay off the sauce, what? No more of the cup that cheers for this chap. . . .”
Rubbing his eyes, Morty spun round and marched out of the laundry room into his future, which, from the moment he’d seen the geriatric clone exiting the drains, he’d vowed would be a tee-total one.
In the games room at StregaSchloss, several tincture squaddies were engaged in a protracted game of Monopoly while their peers snoozed, happily slung in pockets on the billiard table. Running the full length of one wall, a glass-fronted bookcase groaned under the weight of several thousand board games beloved by generations of Strega-Borgias. Chess sets in materials as diverse as Carrara marble and lapis lazuli were stacked on top of battery-operated games of Battleship. An antique game of Go reputed to have been made for the Emperor T’ai Ph’Twang had become intermingled with the porcelain and gold tiles from a mah-jongg set dating back to the P’ing dynasty. Jigsaws, cards, roulette counters, poker chips, spillikins, marbles, yarrow stalks, dice, jacks, Trivial Pursuit wedges, bridge score-sheets, discarded Pictionary doodles, Scrabble tiles, bits of unidentifiable plastic, and shards of Bakelite, wood, and metal formed a jumbled compost capable of engaging a dedicated housekeeper for several months of full-time sifting, cataloguing, and sorting into the correct boxes. In between looking after Damp and producing ovenfuls of delicious food, Mrs. McLachlan would spend approximately one hour each week attempting to tidy up th
e mess, but so far had made little impression.
Wishing that she could find herself a Mrs. McLachlan clone to sort out the chaos in the games room, Signora Strega-Borgia opened the door and sighed deeply. She reminded herself that being a householder in the sprawling pile of ninety-six rooms that comprised the interior of StregaSchloss meant that any attempts to impose order were forever doomed to failure, and picked her way across the room to gaze out of the window that afforded the best view of Lochnagargoyle. Behind her back, the tincture squaddies dotted across the billiard table attempted to look as much like inanimate tin soldiers as possible, considering they were all dressed in kilts.
“Happy, darling?” Signor Strega-Borgia crossed the room to join his wife where she stood framed by the spectacular view beyond her.
“Blissfully, Luciano,” she said, indicating the vista through the window. “I’m so glad to be home—and just in time for fireworks at midnight. . . .”
Together they looked down to the loch shore, where Latch was hammering large wooden stakes into the pebbly beach, watched by the beasts and Tock. On the jetty, three wooden crates were stacked one on top of the other, their combined contents comprising enough gunpowder to ensure that this new year would be welcomed in with an assault on the eardrums that would render the residents of StregaSchloss totally cloth-eared for hours afterward.
In the far distance, a hearse bore the bodies of Vincent and Vadette back to the village for burial. Sergeant MacAllister’s car followed at a respectful distance, a tray of Mrs. McLachlan’s home baking strapped onto the back seat to ensure that the night shift at the Auchenlochtermuchty police station would not suffer a calorie famine in the wee small hours of Hogmanay.
“What do you think really happened?” asked Signora Strega-Borgia, watching as the two vehicles bounced down the bramble-lined track leading to the village.
“To Vincent and Vadette?” said Signor Strega-Borgia, nibbling his index finger as he considered the question. “You mean, did they fall or were they . . . um . . . assisted? Were they in cahoots with Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell and Mr. Pylum-Haight? Or, could it be that they were merely having an innocent stroll through our attic last night when the ancient timbers gave way beneath them? I suspect that Latch and Mrs. McLachlan know the answer to these questions, but in truth, I think I would rather remain in blissful ignorance. As to how our roof miraculously reappeared—well, Baci, my dearest, you’ve always taught me never to examine the hows, whys, and wherefores of good magic, so I’ll just give silent thanks for the fact that we are all back here, safe in StregaSchloss. . . .”
Downstairs, in the kitchen, Titus was sorting through the range-dried salvaged post, while Pandora and Damp shared spatula scrapings from Mrs. McLachlan’s pavlova mix.
“Two for you, Mrs. McLachlan, four brown ones for Mum and Dad, Latch’s copy of the Gentleman’s Gentleman quarterly, a postcard for Damp from . . . Oh, dear, Marie Bain. I’d better read it to you, Damp, shall I? Let me see. . . . Oh, heck, she’s coming back . . . had a lovely holiday . . . slowly recovering from gastroenteritis . . . looking forward to being our cook again. . . .” Titus’s stomach gave a warning groan in unhappy anticipation of the return of the worst cook in the Western Hemisphere. With a heartfelt sigh, he returned to the pile of mail. “Nothing for you, Pan, and . . . Hang on, this one’s for me.” Amazed because he so rarely received any mail whatsoever, Titus examined his envelope.
“That’ll be the lunatic asylum informing you it’s time to return for treatment,” said Pandora, scraping the last few atoms of pavlova from the mixing bowl and offering them on a spatula to Damp. “Or maybe it’s the Federation of Feebleminded Friends reminding you that your annual subscription is due. . . .”
Ignoring this, Titus opened his envelope and withdrew a single sheet of creamy laid paper, which, due to the quality of its weave, had survived prolonged immersion in raw sewage and subsequent laundering and drying on the range.
“. . . or perhaps it’s your plastic surgeon letting you know that he has a slot in March for your total face reconstruction,” continued Pandora, peering over Titus’s shoulder to read the letter. “Who on earth are Dombi, Figlio, and Sonny, W. S.? And is your middle name really Andronicus? Phew—what a mouthful: Titus Andronicus Chimera di Carne Strega-Borgia. . . .” Her voice trailed off as she read the next paragraph of the letter held in her brother’s trembling hands.
“Er, Mrs. McLachlan, how many lire are there in a pound?” said Titus, trying to sound unconcerned, but uncomfortably aware that his voice was coming out as a shrill squeak.
“It’s ounces, not lire, child,” said Mrs. McLachlan, immersed in a recipe book. “Why do you need to know?”
“Because he’s just inherited one hundred and forty-seven billion of them,” said Pandora. “Or at least he will, on his next birthday.”
“That’s very nice, dear,” said Mrs. McLachlan distractedly.
“Why did Grandfather Borgia leave all his lire to you?” muttered Pandora. “That’s so unfair.”
“Brains and good looks, I guess . . . ,” murmured Titus. “And now money, too. Some guys have all the luck.”
“Still,” said Pandora hopefully, “maybe you won’t make it to your thirteenth birthday. Some awful accident might befall you, and as your next of kin, Damp and I will inherit the lot. . . .”
“Your next of kin have curly tails and a tendency to say ‘oink’ a lot,” said Titus, peering into the empty mixing bowl in dismay.
“Children! Enough!” said Mrs. McLachlan, looking up from her cookery book with a sigh. “Put that carving knife down, Pandora, and stop gloating, Titus. There are more important things to think about than money, you know. Now, I need your help to decide: shall I bake a pound cake or perhaps some millionaire’s shortbread? What do you think?”
After Midnight
“Not ‘Oh,’ ‘Ahhh,’ ‘Eek,’ ” sighed Tarantella, tapping her newly woven web with one of her legs. “Pay attention. Now, after me, ‘O is for Orange. . . .’ ”
“Don’t like oranges,” muttered Multitudina.
“A is for?”
“Anything I can eat, except oranges.”
“E is for?” Tarantella glared at her pupil.
“Enything I can eat. I’ve already told you.”
Tarantella groaned. Teaching Multitudina the Illiterat to read was proving to be an uphill struggle. For the past hour, the tarantula had been weaving an alpha-web in a corner of the china cupboard. Written in spider silk were the five vowels, dotted here and there with flies that had blundered fatally into the web during Tarantella’s efforts to instill the rudiments of language into her reluctant pupil. The tarantula decided to make one more attempt and then call it a day.
“I is for?”
“I hate oranges,” replied Multitudina, ignoring Tarantella’s moan of despair and launching herself out of the china cupboard onto the laden kitchen table. “Can’t we do B instead?” she pleaded. “Look, they’ve left stacks of Brownies, Black Bun, Banana loaf, and . . .” She paused to deliver her final thrust: “They Bribed me to Baby-sit. . . .”
Assembled on the chilly loch shore, the family waited for the hands on Mrs. McLachlan’s watch to reach midnight, signaling in the new year. Behind them, the meadow was a dark mass, out of which soared the moonlit silhouette of StregaSchloss, its turrets and tiles restored, the copper star on the observatory roof mimicking the thousand pinpoints of distant constellations that peppered the night sky. Lit by flaming torches, the family raised their glasses to the future, whatever it might bring.
“I could, of course, buy an ice-cream factory . . . ,” mused Titus.
“Oh, do shut up,” groaned Pandora.
“Or a private jet. . . .”
“Mum . . . he’s gloating again,” said Pandora.
“One minute to go,” said Mrs. McLachlan, peering at her watch. Latch stepped forward and applied a smoldering taper to the fuse of the first firework.
“Then again, if you were nice to
me, I might buy you a proper bicycle. . . .”
“Now you’re talking,” said Pandora, linking arms with Titus. “I’ve always wanted a mountain bike, actually . . . with an optional five hundred cc engine for those tedious uphill bits.”
“Twenty seconds . . . ,” said Mrs. McLachlan.
Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia hugged Damp between them, pulling her little woolly hat over her ears to muffle the impending din from the fireworks. The beasts and Tock, their eyes pools of light reflected from the torches, huddled closer to their beloved owners and bickered quietly.
“Why aren’t you back at the house with your egg?” nagged Sab, digging Ffup in the ribs with a curved talon.
“Don’t be silly,” said the dragon. “I hired Multitudina to baby-sit. I’m a teenage dragon, remember? A party animal!”
“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”
All eyes were drawn to the hissing red line of lit fuse as it inched ever upward, closer and closer to the crate containing the first firework.
“FOUR . . . THREE . . . TWO . . . ,” they chanted in unison.
On the stroke of midnight, accompanied by a vast boom from the loch shore, the jelly pan over the range quivered ominously. As Multitudina sat on her haunches on the laden kitchen table, her whiskers twitched. The slab of Black Bun that she’d been about to sink her fangs into fell untasted to the floor as she swiveled round to face the fireplace.
“Oh, my whiskery heavens!” she gasped in awe. “This was definitely not in the baby-sitting contract. Oh, my word! OH! AHHH! EEK!”
An exasperated “Tchhhhh” came from the china cupboard but went unnoticed as the jelly pan clattered against the mantelpiece and shards of discarded eggshell began to fall like brittle snow onto the kitchen floor.
“Gosh, um . . . yes . . . ah . . . help yourself,” Multitudina whis-pered, indicating the tableful of delights awaiting the post-firework revelers, and, leaping to the floor, she headed for the safety of the dungeons, calling behind herself, “Be my guest . . . whatever you are. . . .”