by Ivan Brett
“I’ve made a friend,” said Lamp. “His name’s called Albert.”
Albert nibbled on a feather.
“Shh,” whispered Casper.
Albert nibbled a little more quietly.
Up the dusty staircase Casper crept, taking each step with the utmost care, watching out for creaky bits. Haughty portraits of the Blights’ ancestors watched over him from the wall to his left: Lord Digby Blight wielding his bloodied sword and the head of an antelope; Lord Horatio Blight wielding his bloodied musket and the head of a wild boar; and a young Lord Tobias Blight wielding his smoking shotgun and the Head of Maths (recently retired). What
a vile family those Blights were, each more evil than the last, each cutting a gaunt, skeletal figure, smiling smarmily from under that infamous pointy nose.
The staircase led to a marble landing, slightly cleaner than downstairs, with delicate footprints smudged in the dust. Casper peered with disgust into the dank and dingy rooms passing on his left. A bathroom with a chipped sink and the wrong half of a bath; a library scattered with yellowed pages torn from books with cracked spines; one room furnished only with a three-and-a-half-poster, wrought-iron bed with rusty springs poking through the mattress, a one-legged wardrobe and a bare hanging light bulb.
“This must be where Anemonie sleeps,” whispered Casper. “Imagine living here. No wonder she’s so grumpy.”
Lamp patted his own shoulder and gasped. “Albert? He’s gone! Daisy, have you seen—” Lamp swivelled round the room with panic in his eyes. “Daisy? She’s gone! Casper, have you seen—” He spun back round and gave a sigh of relief. “Well, thank goodness you’re still here.”
“Actually, where is Daisy?” Casper’s skin prickled, as if something was terribly wrong, but instantly it faded. “She’ll catch up. Probably looking downstairs.” He continued up the next flight of stairs, tailed by Lamp, who kept looking over his shoulder.
“Hope she’s all right,” whispered Lamp.
“She’ll be fine.”
“Because she was quite scared and I—”
“Shh, listen.”
There was a noise from the far end of the second landing, like gurgling and then a meow.
“I know that noise…”
There was more gurgling, clearer this time, and a gnashing of teeth.
Then, for the first and last time in his life and without any word of a warning, Casper antiprofrogniloficated.
“Cuddles!” Casper cheered. “And Tiddles!”
Cuddles gurgled happily and squeezed Tiddles a little harder, which made the poor cat’s eyes bulge.
“We’ve found you!” He ran forward to pick Cuddles up, but she snarled at Casper’s hand and shuffled backwards, Tiddles still clutched in her arms.
“Thank goodness for that,” said Lamp. “D’you think Cuddles likes discos?”
“No, Lamp, we can’t go back. This is all the proof we need that Anemonie is Le Chat. We’ve got to find her right now.”
“Not if I find you first,” snickered a sickly sweet voice in the doorway.
There was no time to look round. The next moment Casper felt a dull thud on the back of his head as the cricket bat struck home, and everything went black.
The first thing Casper noticed was the throbbing in his head much like a thumb under a hammer. The second thing was that he couldn’t rub it because he couldn’t budge his arms. Dizziness clouded his brain and swamped his memory. “Wh-where am I?”
“Stupid boy. You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Who’s that? Mrs Blight?” The back of Casper’s head pounded as if it was about to split. He could feel it swelling. “Ohh, that throbs.”
A different voice spoke this time. “I told you not to come.”
Shaking the buzz from his head, Casper tried to blink his swimming surroundings into focus. The room was dark and spinning round and there were at least two of everything. He was bound to his chair with thick rope. Two people stood before him: one woman, one girl. Or was it four? The shadows were playing tricks on Casper’s dizzy eyes.
“Where am I? Where’s Cuddles?”
“Cuddles is… gone.”
Casper caught his breath. “Gone? As in—”
“She escaped,” said the girl.
Good on her, thought Casper. No such luck for him, though – his ropes held fast.
Close to Casper’s right ear, Lamp groaned snoozily.
“Lamp!” He’d never been so happy to hear his friend in pain. “Are you OK?”
“Just five more minutes, Mum,” he mumbled, and then let out a deep snore.
A mournful meow rose from Casper’s left.
“Tiddles?”
Meow. The ropes tugged round Casper’s chest. The three of them were tied up together in a circle.
“Let us go. We’ve done you no harm.”
“Oh, what a good idea, let’s untie you so you can tell the whole village about us,” the woman in the dark cooed sarcastically. “Too bad you’re not a bit brighter, Casper.”
The moonlight appeared from behind a cloud, casting a silver glow on the faces of Lobelia Blight and her daughter Anemonie.
“Blights,” spat Casper. “I knew it was you. Let me go right now.”
Anemonie sniggered coldly. “You still think it was us?”
“Course I do. Cuddles was in your house. You just hit me over the head. You’re standing right there, for goodness’ sake. Who else could it be?”
“Things aren’t always as they appear, Candlewacks,” scorned Lobelia, wrinkling her nose hatefully.
“Just tell me this, Mrs Blight. How did you lie to the Bluff Boiler and get away with it?”
“How thick can you be, Candlewacks? I didn’t lie.”
Casper’s brain pounded on the inside of his head like a slimy caged gorilla. Nothing was making any sense, and his double vision still wasn’t fading.
“She didn’t lie, Casper.” A woman’s voice, but not Lobelia’s.
“Who’s that? Somebody tell me what’s going on!”
“And I thought you were clever. Ah well…” A second woman in a skin-tight black cat suit stepped forward into the patch of soft moonlight. She pulled back the black-eared hood, revealing her curly brown hair, her bright green eyes…
“Mrs Blossom!” Casper choked. “And that means…”
“Sorry, Casper,” said Daisy, joining the other three in the moonlight. She’d also changed into a black leotard.
“You’re Le Chat?”
Lavender Blossom rolled up a sleeve to reveal the so-called Venus Flytrap bites. “Guilty,” she sang. “Your sister’s a real biter.”
“Wh-why?”
“Why not?” soothed Lavender. “It’s our job. And, well…”
“Don’t you dare,” scorned Mrs Blight.
“Shut up, Lobelia. I can say what I want.”
Casper’s brain was still spinning. Questions without answers swirled about his head like a tornado of confusion spilling out of his ears and making the back of his neck tingle and his head throb even more. “Wait, you know each other?”
“You could say that,” Lavender smiled gracefully. “We’re sisters.”
Casper caught his breath. “No…” But the more he looked at Lavender’s face next to Lobelia’s, the more he saw what he hadn’t before. Keen eyes, angular face, and that nose. How hadn’t he noticed? Lavender’s nose was pointy. Not poke-out-your-eyes pointy like the Blights’. But it was there – elegant, yes, but pointy. “So… Anemonie and Daisy are…”
“Cousins, yes. Small world.”
“Bit too small,” Anemonie grunted.
“The dolphins are coming, we’re saved!” Lamp cried, bursting from his dream with triumph. “Oh.” He tugged on his ropes (making Tiddles wheeze like a bagpipe), and then spotted the two Blossoms by the window. “Hey, Daisy, it’s me. Lamp. Can you untie me?”
Daisy turned away and covered her face, barely muffling a sob.
Lavender clicked her teeth. “Oh,
grow up, you pitiful girl. It’s your fault for getting involved with them.”
“What’s going on?” Lamp’s voice wavered.
“How stupid can you be?” spat Anemonie. “They stole the sword and now they’re setting us up.”
“Not Daisy. Daisy wouldn’t do that.”
“Poor little Lampy. Never suspects his girlfriend.”
“No,” Lamp sniffed. “No, it’s not true. Tell her, Daisy.”
A sob floated from the corner.
Lamp fell silent.
Casper felt something on the left side of his face and smiled. Tiddles was licking his cheek. “Thanks, boy. Sorry we got you into this.”
Tiddles purred.
But wait… something else was wrong. A memory blundered its way forward through the ache in Casper’s head and sat there, blinking at him. Their last meeting with Tiddles, that time in the greenhouse. What had he missed? Bad balance, clumsiness, this licking didn’t really tickle at all… Casper gasped.
“I can’t feel his whiskers. Tiddles doesn’t have any whiskers. You took them!”
“Well,” Lavender extended her arms in apology. “We needed to sign our notes with something.”
“That’s evil. You’re evil.” Casper felt sick, but he pushed on, his mind still riddled with questions. “What about your arms, Anemonie? You had bites too. We saw them.”
Lavender laughed silently. “Oh, Casper, you really don’t get it. While I’ve been babynapping, they’ve been babysitting.”
“So they’re in on it too?”
“Oh, no, no,” she said, laughing. “We don’t get on, them and us. I’m afraid we had to be a little… stronger in our methods.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever heard of blackmail, Casper?” Retreating to the far corner of the room, Lavender picked up a small collection of items. “Right then, girls, over here. Now, same rules apply. Try anything clever and I tell the villagers. Understood?”
Anemonie hissed.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.” Lavender smirked as Anemonie snatched the items from her – a cricket bat, a pot of glue and a bulging brown paper bag. “Let’s get to work.”
Lavender stood watching over the operation while Lobelia dabbed glue on to the blade of the bat. Anemonie pulled from the paper bag a blood-red jelly bean and stuck it down.
“Those belong to Betty Woons!” Casper yelled. “You stole them too.”
“Naturally,” chortled Lavender.
“Um,” It was Daisy, standing sulkily in front of the boys. “I owe you an apology.”
“Bit late for that,” snarled Casper. “You tricked us.”
“I’m not talking to you any more, Daisy,” said Lamp. “Except for that bit. And that bit.”
“You should’ve listened to me. You could be at the ball right now, not tied up here.”
“Then let us go.”
“And that bit.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Why not?”
“Let me explain.”
“There’re a lot of things I haven’t told you about who I am. Who I really am, I mean.” Daisy spoke in hushed tones so that the others couldn’t hear. “Maybe at the end you’ll forgive me a bit. I hope so.”
“Doubt it,” said Casper.
“Well, it’ll make me feel better, anyway.”
Casper didn’t reply, so she began. “I guess it starts with my mum. Her surname’s not really ‘Blossom’. She was born Lavender Potatia Blight, first child to Lord and Lady Benson Blight, the wealthiest couple in the Kobb Valley. My granddad wanted a son as an heir so he demanded that Mum become a boy. Of course she couldn’t, so Granddad never spoke to her again. Grandma thought children were a bore so she only visited the nursery wing of the house when she drank too much gin and forgot the way back to her room.
“When Mum was four my grandparents had a second daughter, Lobelia Tomatia Blight. She wasn’t a boy either, so Granddad threw rotten fruit at her. Grandma tried to sell them at a jumble sale, but they hid in a box of cutlery and nobody bought them.
“Mum says Lobelia was a pale, sickly girl who only went outside during thunderstorms. Looking at her now I can see she was right. She was afraid of daylight and noise; apparently her only friends were the spiders in the attic.
Worst of all, she absolutely hated Mum – mostly because she was first in line to inherit the Blight fortune. Jealous, that’s what she was. It wasn’t as if Mum was going to inherit a thing anyway – Granddad set out to spend every penny of the fortune before his daughter could get it. Mum says he’d wash his feet in baths of vintage champagne, crush up diamonds on his cornflakes and roll his sports cars off cliffs when they ran out of petrol.
“When she was sixteen, Mum got wind of the fact that their parents were going to sneak off to a cottage in the Scottish highlands without them, so she and Lobelia stowed away in the car boot. She got her holiday, but she’d pay for it. In a game of hide-and-seek on their final day, Mum went into the cellar and hid behind a barrel. Lobelia spotted her opportunity, jumped in the car with Grandma and Granddad and drove home without her.
“They forgot about Mum. She roamed the highlands for six months, sleeping in barns and stealing food through kitchen windows. Mum doesn’t tell me much about this part because she says she’s ashamed, but what I do know is that she ended up meeting someone called Tamworth Ringshank, a gypsy pickpocket with one eye and eleven fingers. He stole her heart and he stole her wallet, and they were married within a week. He taught mum every trick in the pickpocket’s book as they travelled the world in his caravan. He even taught her how to steal the pickpocket’s book. Mum was happy for the first time in her life. She changed her name, cut her hair… she even managed to forget about the Blights.
“He’s my dad, this Tamworth guy. I never met him, though… The moment Mum told him I was on the way he got spooked and scarpered.
“So I grew up on the move. I’ve never lived in one place for longer than a month. As soon as I could walk, Mum was teaching me the pickpocket’s way. I stole my first dummy from the mouth of Princess Tabitha the Third. I’ve never paid for a meal in my life. I’d have nicked your wallets if either of you ever carried one.
“Oy,” said Casper.
“It’s the truth,” said Daisy. “It’s the only way I’ve ever known. At least I’m being honest with you now.”
Casper grunted.
“So this is my life. Mum and me, we steal stuff. I can’t pretend we don’t. Every time the police almost catch up with us, we change our disguise and move on. Le Chat was my idea, actually. Mum says it’s ‘too flamboyant’. I think it’s pretty cool.
“We happened to be travelling through the Kobb Valley when Mum decided to steal the sword. What with the Blights living here, we had a bit of power. If they didn’t do what we wanted, Mum could just stride in and claim Blight Manor for her own. Not that she actually wants a big house like that – she’s spent too many years on the open road to settle down now. It’s more of a bargaining chip.
“Anyway, we like to get a good picture of an area before we steal from it, so that’s why we set up our flower shop here. Quite quickly we realised that the village wasn’t much of a threat.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Apart from you two! I spotted you were different immediately. That’s why Mum made me… um… say hi to you back at the garage.”
“That’s why you made friends with us? To spy on us?”
“Sorry. Yeah.”
“Unbelievable.”
“But it’s not just that, Casper. I’m glad I met you two. I like you. It’s such a shame we had to meet like this. We could’ve been friends.”
“Yeah. It is a shame you’re a liar and a thief.”
“Well, we’re leaving Corne-on-the-Kobb in a minute, and I can never come back. You won’t have to worry about me again. Onwards and upwards, I s’pose…” Daisy’s words trailed off and she was left standing there foolishly.
“What ar
e you doing over there, girl? Stop faffing and make yourself useful.” Lavender waved dismissively and Daisy shuffled off into the corner to pack some things.
Lobelia Blight scowled her stony face as she dabbed more glue on the bat. Almost all of the jelly beans were now in place. “Do you suppose it’ll fool them?”
Lavender uncovered Sir Gossamer’s gleaming bejewelled sword from beneath a black cloth and held it beside the be-jellybeaned cricket bat, her head cocked on one side. “Of course it will. They’re a pack of idiots.”
Anger churned up through Casper’s chest like boiling bile and coursed through his veins, prickling and tensing.
Lamp snuffled beside Casper, his feathers all droopy and grey. “S’not fair.”
Casper longed to burst from his ropes and grab the sword, but all he could do was watch as those wicked Blossoms went about their wicked business.
“Ah, finished.” Lavender smiled and snatched the counterfeit sword from Lobelia, inspecting it closely beneath the moonlight. “Very good, girls.” Wrapping it in a second black cloth she returned it to Anemonie. “Now, pip pip, time to get you into your cat cozzies. You’ll need to look just like Le Chat if the villagers are going to believe it is you. And once you’ve been caught red-handed, we’ll go free! Now don’t try anything clever.” She flashed her savage green eyes and ushered the Blights out of the room, following behind with the genuine sword. “Oh, do hurry up, Daisy. You’re being pathetic.”
Daisy shuffled from the shadows, her eyes bleary and red, lower lip wobbling. She turned to Casper and Lamp and just blinked. With a sob, she dashed from the room after her mother, clopping down the stairs and into the darkness.
The only sounds after that were the boys’ breathing and the occasional low moan from Tiddles. Nothing moved, nothing happened.
Eventually Casper sighed. “Well, that’s that then.”
“If only I could just reach my rope cutters,” said Lamp.