by Paul Magrs
We listened to Robert jangle the keys, finding the right one, and held our breath.
I couldn’t have asked for two braver, more stalwart companions. They kept absolutely quiet, Robert in front, Effie bringing up the rear, as we crept into Chef McFee’s gleaming domain. Even with only a few pools of milky light to see by, I could tell that his kitchen was immaculate. Every stainless-steel surface was free of grease and crumbs; everything had been wiped and disinfected within an inch of its life. I was pleased to see that the slapdash, cheery mess above wasn’t mirrored down here. Moonlight glinted off the pots and pans, and the evil-looking armoury of knives.
‘Hadn’t we better arm ourselves?’ said Effie, thoughtfully, eyeing them.
I was shocked. ‘I refuse to carry weapons,’ I said, ‘whatever the situation.’ Now I sounded prim.
Ever the pragmatist, Effie picked up a carving knife, and slipped it into her handbag. ‘We have to be prepared for any eventuality,’ she mumbled.
I couldn’t see her stabbing anyone. Nevertheless, I think she had reached the age when she felt that she could do anything: there was nothing she couldn’t get away with - she’d say she was doo-lally and plead diminished responsibility. Or she’d look so respectable and proper in the dock that the judge would be sure to let her off.
That made her seem rather dangerous.
Robert waved us across the slippery tiled floor. ‘We have to open it very carefully - I don’t know how noisy it is.’
Before us was a tall, solid steel door with a wheel on the front. We might have been robbing a bank and this was the safe where the gold bullion was kept. Robert stepped up and grasped the wheel with both hands. We all braced ourselves, flinching, ready for a shrieking noise to rip through the air, or even an alarm to go off - something, at any rate, to bring our enemies running . . .
Robert winced, and inched the wheel round anticlockwise. Luckily, it slid smoothly, soundlessly. Effie was gripping my upper arm, and she was starting to pinch.
‘I’ve done it,’ Robert whispered.
‘You’ve unlocked it?’
In answer, he stood back and the heavy door swung open - just a couple of feet but we felt the chill immediately. It was as if all the warmth and living moisture in the air had been sucked instantaneously into that fearsomely dark maw. The cold was terrifying. It burned my nose and throat as I tried to breathe quietly and not to choke or panic.
We were going to have to climb inside that cave of ice. We knew how big these freezer lockers were. They went back and back and back. To know for sure, and to prove or disprove what we hoped to, here, tonight, we were going to have to clamber into that frosty blue cavern.
Robert had a pen torch, which he trained into the dark hole. We crowded in and glimpsed heavy forms hanging from savage hooks. They were pigs and sheep, surely, opened and gutted, dangling there submissively. They were like tree-trunks in a frozen forest of the dead. Robert stepped in and we followed him. The frost crunched underfoot: the loudest noise in the place.
‘For Gawd’s sake, Effie,’ I said. ‘Don’t let that door slam shut on us.’
She made a disparaging pshaw noise in response, but I knew we were all imagining being locked inside it. Would we run out of oxygen before we froze? I wasn’t sure. I knew that, with my singular biology, I would survive longer in the cold than my companions, which was of little consolation. Freakish to the last, I would have to watch them die, unable to save them.
Enough of these morbid thoughts, I told myself. I had to stay focused. It was like walking a tightrope, braced between my two best friends in Whitby, advancing deeper into the meat locker, dodging and slipping and veering between the pendulous bodies of pigs, sheep and who knew what else. Even I - resilient as I am - felt my lips turning blue and crystals of ice forming on my eyelashes. That journey, inch by inch in that hellish place, felt as if it would last for ever - until suddenly Robert, ahead, held up his hand. We stopped. We held our breath.
‘What?’ hissed Effie, wriggling round to peer over my shoulder. We were too confined and she could see hardly anything. I was pressed against a frozen body, which felt like stone against the side of my face.
‘We’ve reached the back wall,’ whispered Robert, sweeping the narrow beam of his torch about the place, seeking out the corners of the steel walls, fixing the parameters of our prison. ‘There’s nothing here,’ he said, with relief in his hushed voice. ‘Just dead animals.’
‘Hmm,’ said Effie, evidently relieved too.
‘Let’s get out,’ Robert said. ‘We’ve checked it. Jessie was wrong, thank God. Now we can go . . .’ He turned round, twisting awkwardly in the confined space, and that was when his foot connected with the crates lined on the floor against the back wall. He had missed them with his torch just as, presumably, he - or any other interloper - was meant to. ‘Oh,’ he said, and I heard the dread in that single syllable. ‘Boxes. Down here.’ He crouched.
‘Boxes?’ said Effie. ‘What size? Hm? Are we talking hatboxes? Shoeboxes?’
‘Bigger,’ said Robert. He reached forward to check if the lids were nailed down. I bustled to his side, still holding my breath.
‘How many?’ said Effie. ‘What kind of boxes? You still haven’t said.’
I turned to shush her: her voice was rising in pitch and volume.
‘Don’t you shush me, madam!’ she said, even louder. Tell me, Robert! What have you found? What size boxes?’
‘Coffin-sized,’ he said dully. Then came the sudden rending noise of wood splintering and cracking. Frozen wood breaking apart in someone’s hands as they struggled to lift a lid.
‘What?’ Effie cried, pummelling my back to be let through. She wanted to yank me aside, and Robert too, to find out what we could both see as he shone the torch at the box in front of us. ‘What is it?’ Effie almost shrieked in my ear.
I let her through. I didn’t want to. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to save her the sight. She didn’t have to see it. Robert’s and my witness was enough. But Effie is always headstrong. She wanted to see for herself. And I was frozen there, in below-zero shock and awe, at the sight of poor Jessie’s placid, simian face, gazing up at us, blue-whiskered, from inside that box at our feet.
Effie let out the most horrific, bloodcurdling scream. You would have thought it was enough to bring every stalactite of frozen meat crashing down from the ceiling of that nightmarish room.
Undignified haste. That’s the only phrase for it. We knew we had just moments before Effie’s distorted ululations brought everyone running. The three of us turned and pelted out of that meat locker - I hit every frozen carcass on my way. We left them swinging on their hooks as we tumbled back into the kitchen.
There we heard voices, footsteps, the sound of people being roused from their beds. Effie was still making terrified whimpers and I had to take hold of her to get her to move. I’d forgotten the layout of the large galley kitchen, and had to depend on Robert to show us the way out.
We had almost made it to the door when a great cry went up from the other end of the room. We had been discovered. The chef was there in his night-things, aggrieved and formidable, while the night porter was flashing a torch about, shouting at us.
‘Run!’ Effie wailed. ‘Leave me. I’m puffed out. I can’t move.’ She was sagging in my arms, as if she wanted to lie on the floor.
‘It’s two old women.’ The chef laughed. ‘What are you doing down here? Were you after a midnight feast?’ He had mistaken us for hotel guests. Maybe that was a good thing. We could talk ourselves out of this.
‘He works here,’ said the night porter, gesturing at Robert. ‘He’s one of the nancy-boy elves. What are you doing down here, then? What was all the noise about? What are you doing to these two old ladies?’
I saw that Robert’s face was white with fury. He swore and launched himself across the room at them. It was as if he wanted to tear them limb from limb. The shock had turned him mad - his poor, dead auntie, his only relation
in the world, lying in the freezer like so much mince. Effie and I could hardly move to stop him. He went by us in a flash, and the next thing we knew he had his hands round the chef’s fat neck, attempting to choke him to death.
The night porter raised his heavy torch high above his head and I had only a second to cry out a warning, but it smashed on to Robert’s head and he was out cold. He slipped to the tiles and Effie shrieked again. ‘You’ve killed him!’ she howled. ‘You’ve killed him stone dead.’
The night porter checked that that wasn’t the case and hoisted Robert up. ‘He might wish I had when he has to explain himself to Mrs Claus.’
‘You’re going to kill us all!’ Effie cried. ‘Just like Jessie. You’re going to put us in there!’ She flung out a bony finger at the meat locker, its door still hanging open. ‘You’re going to put us in there dead, like Jessie.’
The night porter frowned at the chef. ‘What’s she on about? Jessie? Jessie the waitress?’
‘They’ve killed her!’ Effie said. ‘She’s . . . in there!’
The chef looked thoughtful. He knew, of course, that Effie was speaking the truth. Obviously the night porter wasn’t party to the same schemes. I could see that the chef was having to box clever. He didn’t want the porter poking about in the freezer. He had to play it cool. Dismiss Effie’s rantings.
‘It’s true,’ I said calmly. ‘They’re storing dead bodies in there. Employees of the hotel.’
‘What?’ The porter looked as if he was on the verge of laughter. But it was hysterical laughter, I thought, as if he knew, really, that evil things were going on in this establishment.
I said, ‘The chef is . . . feeding the corpses to the guests.’
The chef gave a nasty laugh. ‘They’re unhinged. Look at the state of her. She’s a madwoman. I’ve seen her around the town. She’s crazy.’
‘Feeding . . . corpses?’ said the night porter.
‘You should look in there,’ I urged.
The chef stepped forward, blocking the way with his considerable bulk. ‘He doesn’t need to go looking at anything. There’s nothing to see. She’s just trying to wriggle out of it. She’s an intruder here. All three of them are. They need dealing with. They need taking to Mrs Claus. She’ll know what to do.’
‘Yes,’ said the porter. He was an oldish man. He’d worked there for years. He’d never known trouble like this and he was out of his depth. ‘Yes, she’ll know . . . She’ll tell us what to do.’
I looked at Robert, lying like a dead weight on the floor, and at Effie, whose hands had flown up to her face. I supposed I could have taken on the two men - I might even have been able to batter them, get the three of us to freedom.
As the porter and the chef advanced on us, I was still making up my mind whether to fight or to give in. I felt Effie pressing against me, terrified out of her wits, poor thing.
The time to put up a fight wasn’t then. We had to give in. Besides, I wanted to see Mrs Claus. I wanted to find out what she was up to. I had a few questions for her.
We were bundled into a lift like prisoners, and taken straight to the top of the hotel. The proprietress’s suite was, like my own, in the attic but hers was even more elaborate and luxurious. Downstairs in the hotel, everything was worn and shabby, but up here no expense had been spared. We wandered into the lair of the gargantuan Mrs Claus, staring about us in awe at its gorgeousness.
She was wrapped in a silk kimono and perched on a velvet settee. Word had been sent ahead by the night porter that we were on our way. She seemed tired but alert, her complexion more florid than ever without makeup, and her hair crammed under a net. As we shuffled in, her eyes flashed with malice and amusement.
‘These are the intruders, madam,’ said the night porter, with a little bow. They were all so scared of her, and I still didn’t know why. What power did she wield over them?
‘They were in my kitchens,’ growled the chef. ‘They’d broken in through the back way and went inside the meat locker,’ he added significantly.
Mrs Claus nodded. She glared at the three of us and I’m afraid we must have looked rather defeated and exhausted. She fixed on Robert first. ‘I took you in when you had nowhere to go,’ she said. Her voice was choked with sweetness, as if she had been eating Mars Bars half the night. ‘Isn’t that true? You had no family, no roots, no job that you were qualified for. I let you live here and work for your keep. I saw that you were trained in the hotel trade. Like all of my family of elves, you belonged nowhere and to no one. I took you in and gave you a purpose . . .’
Robert was staring back at her, incredulous. ‘You made us into your private army of slaves.’
A throaty chuckle from Mrs Claus. ‘Perhaps. But I was paying for the privilege, wasn’t I?’ There were other elves in the room, dressed in their green and scarlet finery. They were ready for action, I saw: ready to jump to their mistress’s defence. They looked glazed, drugged: their eyes stared blankly at us.
‘Now,’ said Mrs Claus, ‘you two ladies. I can’t see what business it is of yours whatever goes on in my establishment. I do not poke my nose into your goings-on, do I?’
‘We came here because—’ Effie began.
‘I haven’t finished,’ Mrs Claus cut her off brusquely. ‘You see, I’ve been very interested in some of the things in which you two have involved yourselves over recent weeks. You, Brenda, harbouring that strange young family to keep them safe from the wicked world, hm? I could have tipped off those who were looking for them, made a pretty penny out of that, but I kept shtum, didn’t I? Just like a good neighbour should. Wasn’t it thoughtful of me?’
How did she know about any of that? I was clenching my fists, scared to hear what was coming next.
‘So many things I could take an interest in. Your rockery, for example, and why it was that you two ladies suddenly decided to go digging in it one night. What was the urgency? A rather deep hole, I understand.’
Effie was nudging me bonily.
I didn’t understand: where was this monstrous woman getting her information from?
‘Oh, I’m discreet, though. I know many, many secrets. I even know what was said in your house, Effie, that night when you had the television people there. It was a seance, wasn’t it, hm? I understood better than any of you what came through the ether that night. Oh, and the Deadly Boutique. I learned all about what the two of you got up to down there the other week. How you ruined Mr Danby’s thriving concern. You were the ghost in his machine, Brenda. You doomed his mother. She’s clinging on for dear life, but she doesn’t stand a chance after what you two did, blundering about and smashing things up.’
I was aware that Robert was staring at us, as were the porter, the chef and the other elves. What was he thinking? It sounded as if we made a habit of breaking into people’s places, causing chaos and getting caught up in weird, supernatural affairs.
‘I don’t see what any of this has to do with what’s in your meat locker,’ I said, keeping my voice steady.
‘Ah, Brenda,’ chuckled Mrs Claus, ‘and you’re the biggest mystery of all, aren’t you?’
She looked me up and down and, all of a horrible sudden, I felt exposed. All my innards and nerve endings felt as if they were illuminated and tingling in the X-ray of her gaze. ‘There’s nothing mysterious about me,’ I said gruffly.
‘I think there is,’ she said. ‘Have you told anyone? Your new friends in your new town? Are they aware of your history? Your provenance? Hm? How much have you told them, Brenda?’
‘Shut up,’ I said quietly. I was sweating. I could feel all their eyes on me.
Mrs Claus tossed back her head. ‘You’ve kept it all bottled up, haven’t you? Years and years and years of telling no one, of skulking about from place to place, moving on again, never getting too attached to anyone. Yes, I can understand that. I can see how that might be the best thing for you. Being as you are. A woman like you.’
‘What do you know about any of it?’ Even to mysel
f my voice sounded low and dangerous.
‘I know enough, Brenda. I know enough to make a few phone calls. Whisper a few dearly held secrets in the right ears. And then what would happen? What would become of you?’
‘What’s she on about?’ Effie piped up. ‘What phone calls, Brenda? What does she mean? The police?’
‘You’re so prosaic, Effie,’ laughed Mrs Claus. ‘But, yes, I imagine the police would be rather interested to hear about Brenda. As would Social Security and the Ministry of Defence. But so would MI5 and the Ministry for Incursions and Other Wonders.’
‘MIAOW?’ I gasped. ‘You know about them?’ I had encountered the ministry’s agents a number of times over the decades. As had been explained to me by various operatives, they were supposed to be ‘terribly, terribly’ secret.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘How do you know I’m not an agent myself? I could be doing their work right now.’
I thought about this. Could she have been sent to nobble me?
‘So many people would be interested to hear that you are alive and kicking, Brenda. They would love to know that you’d come to light here, in this sleepy little fishing port. The British Museum, the Natural History Museum - I imagine they would slap a compulsory purchase order on you immediately.’
‘I am not a thing,’ I said. ‘I’m not available for a museum to buy.’
‘You would have to convince them of that. I think you would find your human rights a matter of dispute. You would have to try very hard to convince the world of your right to a human identity. Especially when it became aware of the events you have been involved in, the atrocities in your wake. It looks rather as if death and disaster dog your footsteps, doesn’t it? Just think. How much support would you find if the truth came out?’
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She had robbed me of my anger, silenced me with her threats. All I could think about was being paraded in front of these authorities, the judges and experts, pundits, professors and officials. Doctors. Surgeons.