Doctor Mordant peered through his magnifying glass, consulted his book, and peered some more.
‘It doesn’t look very nice,’ he said. ‘If I wasn’t such an authority on cloning – I mean, if I was looking at this sample with an untrained eye – I would say it was a bit of snot.’
‘But you are an expert,’ said the headmaster, ‘so what would you say it was?’
Doctor Mordant looked again.
‘Well, it could be a Big Brother contestant’s brain. They look very similar to a bit of snot or, as we cloning operatives like to call them, a bogey-wogey.’
His first guess was right. The dead fake professor’s favourite hobby had been picking his nose. He had been something of an expert on snot and had actually kept a diary to demonstrate how snot tasted different depending on what time of day you collected it and what time of year it was. Apparently spring snot tasted nicer than winter snot, which contained more salt.
As Doctor Mordant read the cloning spell out of his book, a gigantic snot appeared on the table. It looked like a bogey asteroid. They could see all the disgusting cavities full of green sticky stuff, with flaky bits of crust forming round the edges. They could even see, magnified a thousand times, the unspeakable seven-legged bacteria that live on snot, spending their entire lives up people’s noses, except when they get sneezed out. And at almost a metre long there was a smell too – a smell that made the worst smell any of them had ever been exposed to before seem lovely by comparison.
This time Avid had no trouble deciding whether she’d rather faint or throw up. She did both. Grusom agreed and did the same.
‘Humans are pathetic, aren’t they?’ said the headmaster, though even he felt a little green.
‘I know,’ said Doctor Mordant. ‘I mean, look at it. That’s a nice shade of green on those little bumps and I think the bacteria drowning in those slimy pools are quite cute.’
Scooping the tiny creatures up into a jam jar, he added, ‘Think I’ll keep some. They’ll make a really interesting science project for my year seven class.’
Then he reversed the spell, cleaned up the slime, resuscitated Grusom and Avid and tipped the second sample bag onto the table. The minute speck was a flake of skin, so this time they got what they wanted: an almost identical copy of the missing corpse.
Except that the Professor Randolf Open-Graves clone was not dead and, like the original, was not actually Professor Randolf Open-Graves from Belgium but Klaus von Klaus, the international bus ticket forger who had been hiding out on Inaccessible Island.
‘Vot am I doing here? Thank you, good morning, please,’ he said, sitting up and looking round the room. ‘Zis is not Tristan da Cunha being, thank you, good afternoon.’
‘Are you Professor Open-Graves?’ said the headmaster. ‘You sound more German than Belgian.’
‘Zat is because I am one hundred percent German being,’ said Klaus von Klaus.
‘Have you ever been Belgian?’ said Grusom. ‘How dare you suggest such a thing being?’ said Klaus von Klaus. ‘If you don’t mind, good afternoon and good night.’
Then everyone accused Dr Mordant of being rubbish at cloning because he had obviously created the wrong person. Grusom suggested that maybe the professor had been standing next to Klaus von Klaus on a bus and somehow got some of his skin underneath his fingernails.
‘But that wouldn’t explain how they look exactly the same,’ said Avid. Breaking into a big happy smile, she got out her special FSI cotton bud and added, ‘I’ll do a DNA test.’
‘I think it’s my turn to do the DNA test,’ said Grusom sulkily, but Avid had the swab under a microscope before he could even clean the magic bean juice off his cotton bud.
The DNA results showed that Klaus von Klaus and Professor Open-Graves were one and the same person. No one knew what to make of this news, least of all Klaus von Klaus.
At that moment the Hearse Whisperer returned from burying the body of the original Klaus von Klaus outside his old cave on Inaccessible Island. She had taken the form of an eagle for her journey back, and on reaching the school she had changed into a sparrow. By an incredible coincidence, of the school’s seven hundred or so windowsills, the one she chose to land on was the one with the headmaster, Grusom, Avid and the Klaus von Klaus clone inside.
The Hearse Whisperer was totally confused. She had just buried the dead fake professor yet there he was on the table. Not only that, he was alive. Before she could work out what was going on she took a step backwards – which is not a good idea when you are standing on a windowsill only one step wide ten stories above the ground – and fell into a drain before she had time to realise she was disguised as a sparrow and could actually fly.
This was good timing for the people in the room, because the Hearse Whisperer didn’t hear the headmaster say sarcastically, ‘Do you think we should make some spare ones in case you lose this one too?’
They made three more Klaus von Klauses and locked them up in a cupboard in a state of suspended animation.
‘Just make sure Elanora Bedlam doesn’t know they’re there or we’ll be eating Klaus von Klaus burgers for a week,’ said the headmaster.
By the time the Hearse Whisperer had flown out of the drain, wasted five minutes turning a small boy into a bucket of carrots to make herself feel better and flown back up to the windowsill, the scene was the same as it had been five minutes ago: the first Klaus von Klaus clone was sitting on the table and everyone else was standing around looking confused.
The Hearse Whisperer clicked her fingers and everybody in the room fell into a deep sleep. Normally she would have killed them all in a very unpleasant yet colourful way, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself or do anything that might deflect suspicion away from the Flood children, wherever the little brats had got to.
Ten minutes later everyone woke up again, including the first Klaus von Klaus clone, who was not so much sitting on a table in the headmaster’s office at Quicklime’s as being buried next to the original Klaus von Klaus far away on Inaccessible Island.
‘Vot am I doing here? Thank you, good morning, please,’ he said, spitting earth out of his mouth. ‘Burying for the dead persons is good, thank you, but I am not dead being, thank you, good afternoon.’
Two seconds later he was dead being.
The mound of sand where she had buried the original Klaus von Klaus was still there. Instead of digging into it, the Hearse Whisperer simply assumed the body had miraculously come back to life and escaped, leaving a pile of sand to make it look like he was still there.
She flew back to Quicklime’s to find yet another Klaus von Klaus clone sitting at the table drinking a cup of tea. This time she was really confused but, remembering what had happened before, she did not take a step back. Instead she took a step sideways and hit her head on the wall, which made her fall off the windowsill and back into the drain again.
‘Now I am REALLY ANGRY!’ she screamed.
This time, there was no way turning a small child into a bucket of carrots would make her feel better. This time she turned two small boys into Welsh36 stamp collectors who only collected stamps from countries beginning with W, none of whom actually produce any stamps.
Once more she made everyone fall asleep, took the second clone and buried it next to the other two, but she still didn’t check the other graves until she had brought the third clone back to bury.
Then she realised what was going on and got double, triple, super REALLY, REALLY ANGRY.
Buckets of carrots and Welsh stamp collectors were not going to come anywhere near making her feel any better. Not even an enormous bar of chocolate would fix it, though it did help. She had to eat twenty-seven massive bars of chocolate before she calmed down completely. Unfortunately she only stayed calm for a couple of minutes before she was very sick, which, of course, made her angry again.
But, she thought, philosophically, angry is what I do best. It’s my greatest talent. It’s what I’m famous for.
That made her feel better. Except now she felt better, she wasn’t angry any more and that made her angry because being angry was what she was best at. She flew back to Quicklime’s and beat her head against the same wall that Grusom had beaten his on earlier. She could sense that he had been there before her and that made her angry, but then she got distracted because she noticed that the grass was green and that made her angry too.
She then killed and buried the last clone, so that there were five dead Klaus von Klauses buried in a row on the beach of Inaccessible Island and zero Klaus von Klauses at Quicklime College. The Hearse Whisperer was generally quite good at burying people, but this time she was so frustrated that she didn’t bury them as deeply as she should have. There was an unusually high tide that night and the next morning there were ten Klaus von Klaus feet sticking up out of the sand, like a tiny model of the Easter Island statues.
‘I am not making any more clones,’ said Doctor Mordant. ‘Have you any idea how tiring it is? And I mean, if you can’t manage to keep a single one of them, I don’t see why I should bother. I just don’t think you’re valuing my work nearly enough and I’m really upset.’
‘I don’t think you need to make any more,’ said Grusom. ‘I think it is now very obvious that the Flood children are definitely behind the murder.’
‘How come?’ said the headmaster. ‘I know there seems to be increasing evidence of their guilt, but I still find it hard to believe. I’m sure something or someone else is involved.’
‘Well,’ said Grusom, ‘just add up the numbers. We have had one original and four clones of the dead professor stolen. Five. And how many Flood children are there at the school?’
‘Five,’ said Avid.
‘EXACTLY!’ said Grusom.
‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ said the headmaster, who had just realised that Grusom was more than a bit strange. He was a complete fruit-loop with as much scientific ability as a broccoli-and-rhubarb sandwich.
‘OK, OK,’ Grusom persisted. ‘Do this then. Make one more clone and if that doesn’t get stolen then that will prove it.’
‘No it won’t,’ said Doctor Mordant, ‘and I am not making any more. You don’t deserve it.’
With that, he stormed off and cloned himself another six eyes so he could have a really good cry.
Grusom took Avid to one side and whispered that it was looking as if the headmaster and Doctor Mordant might be involved in the whole thing too and were trying to cover up for the evil, and therefore obviously guilty, Flood children.
‘I can’t believe the headmaster’s involved,’ said Avid. ‘I mean, he runs the school. He’d hardly want dead bodies around the place. And don’t forget, he was the one who sent for us in the first place.’
‘I think that was just a part of his incredibly cunning plan to throw us off the scent and shift the blame away from him and the Floods.’
‘Well, why would I bother to send for you in the first place?’ said the headmaster from his desk a metre away. ‘And when you take someone aside and whisper to them, I suggest you whisper a lot more quietly and go further away.’
‘Well, how come you’re wearing red socks then?’ said Grusom. ‘If not to hide the splashes of blood from the murder?’
‘I think,’ said the headmaster in a slow and deliberate way, ‘that you are probably insane.’
‘Oh yes? Oh yes?’ said Grusom. ‘Well, why are lobsters all left-handed then? Answer me that then.’
‘What on earth has that got to do with the case?’ said the headmaster.
Or anything at all? thought Avid.
She finally had to admit to herself that her boss was as crazy as a bucket of angry jellyfish playing with an electric drill, and that meant she now also had to struggle with the fact that she had been foolish enough to fall in love with him. She saw years stretching ahead of her visiting her beloved in his padded cell in the Blue Torch Retirement Home for Confused Forensic Scientists and feeding him porridge with a blunt spoon as he dribbled down his bib all over his blue torch. She knew that if she had any sense she would get out while she could and find herself an nice ordinary safe bank manager called Nigel Davenport, but she was in love and sense had nothing to do with it. She patted Grusom on the arm and looked away so he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes.
How close and very similar being a genius is to being a loony, she thought.
Grusom looked at Avid suspiciously. Are those tears? he thought. If they are, that could mean she’s in on the whole thing too. Unless she has been peeling onions while my back was turned.
In a tree outside the window a sleek grey bird looked into the room and stared straight at Grusom.
‘Cuckoo,’ it said.
‘How true,’ said the Hearse Whisperer, who was sitting next to it disguised as another cuckoo.
Meanwhile, back in the Sahara Desert, the five Flood children were planning what to do next. They were sitting around the screen of Winchflat’s I’ll-Think-Of-A-Place-And-Then-We-Can-All-See-It invention – known as the Peeky Thing – watching what was going on back at Quicklime’s. Most of the wanted posters had already had moustaches and thick black glasses drawn on the faces, which had completely confused Grusom. He had issued an arrest warrant for a second family of Flood children, all of whom had moustaches and wore thick glasses.
‘I don’t think we need worry too much about the wanted posters and that stuff,’ said Winchflat. ‘After all, Grusom is crazy and it won’t take much magic to make everyone see that and realise we’re innocent.’
‘But the Hearse Whisperer is another matter,’ he added. ‘We are going to have to do something about her, something permanent, otherwise she will be after us forever.’
‘Why don’t we trap her in a bottle?’ said Satanella. ‘You know, like you do with a genie.’
‘That wouldn’t work,’ said Merlinmary. ‘She’s much too powerful to keep in a bottle. She’d just shatter it.’
‘Not if it was a magic bottle,’ said Morbid.
‘I think it’s risky,’ said Merlinmary. ‘I mean, supposing someone rubs the bottle like you do to make the genie come out.’
‘We could make the outside of the bottle really gross and disgusting so no one would want to touch it,’ said Satanella. ‘And we could put it where no one could ever reach it.’
‘Yes, we could sink it to the bottom of the deepest ocean,’ said Morbid, ‘and then Twinkletoes could guard it.’
Twinkletoes was Morbid and Silent’s pet Vampire Octopus, one of the most terrifying creatures you could ever meet.37 Except that if you did meet one, you would already be dead because they live in the deepest, darkest oceans where no humans can go unless they are in a very special high-pressure submarine. Of course, if you are a wizard you can dive to those depths with no problems at all, which is what Morbid and Silent did to feed Twinkletoes and play fetch by dragging a dead mermaid around on a bit of rope.
‘OK. Let’s say we can keep the bottle safe once the Hearse Whisperer is inside it,’ said Merlinmary. ‘How do we get her to go inside in the first place and how do we get the cork in before she shoots out again?’
‘No problem,’ said Winchflat. ‘I will make a Super-Strong-So-Transparent-You-Can’t-See-It-Bottle, then we will put it in a cave with an opening exactly the same size as the top of the bottle and we will be inside the cave behind the bottle and the Hearse Whisperer will see us, but not see the bottle, and come shooting in to get us.’
‘I don’t want to seem to be the one who’s, like, always down on everything,’ said Merlinmary, ‘but how do we get the cork in the bottle if we’re all in the back of the cave?’
‘We could use a bit of string,’ said Morbid, ‘and we could tie it to the cork and then thread it over a branch and round a stick and under the bottle to where we’re hiding and then we could pull the string and –’
‘She might see the string or a magpie might come and steal the string,’ said Satanella. ‘They’re famous for that. I saw it on Dav
id Attenborough. They steal corks too.’
‘We need something to ram the cork in really hard,’ said Merlinmary.
‘Like a rampaging bull,’ said Satanella.
‘Funny you should say that,’ said Lord Clacton, who was doing his best to help his friends. ‘I actually happen to own a rampaging bull, Chloe of Clacton.’
‘Chloe?’ said Merlinmary. ‘Isn’t that a girl’s name?’
‘Yes,’ said Lord Clacton, ‘but it’s an old Clacton tradition. There’s been a bull called Chloe in our family for thirty-six generations.’
‘All called Chloe?’ asked Morbid.
‘Absolutely, can’t break with tradition.’
‘And did they all rampage?’ said Satanella.
‘Well, or course they jolly well did,’ said Lord Clacton. ‘After all, old thing, if you were a macho 400-pound bull and people kept calling you Chloe, you’d feel like a bit of the old rampaging too.’
‘True.’
Making the bottle was easy. Winchflat and Lord Clacton were both geniuses so a Super-Strong-So-Transparent-You-Can’t-See-It-Bottle was child’s play. It was the sort of thing either of them could make with one arm tied behind their back, and to prove it Winchflat took off one of his arms and tied it behind Lord Clacton’s back while they made the bottle. Glass is basically made of silica with a few odds and ends added, and silica is what sand is made of and they were in the middle of the desert so the 12,700 tons of sand that it took to make their magic bottle was right outside the back door.
They decided the best place to put the bottle would be in the secret cave that Klaus von Klaus had been hiding in on Inaccessible Island before the Hearse Whisperer killed him. And they decided they would lure her there with someone she would not be expecting to see.
Their youngest sister, Betty.
Now you might be wondering how they could get in touch with Betty, since they had decided that under no circumstances would they make contact with home in case the Hearse Whisperer or the FSI people were tapping the phones and internet. The answer is yet another of Winchflat’s special brilliant inventions.
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