The Case of the Phantom Cat

by Holly Webb

  It was difficult to detect someone who was sitting next to you, Maisie realized. She couldn’t stare at Mr Lacey without being rude. She had to make do with quick glances. She thought he must smoke cigars, or perhaps a pipe – his moustache was stained brown at the ends. And his front teeth stuck out a little! A pipe, then, and he’d held it in his teeth so much it had pushed them out. Maisie felt quite proud of herself.

  “So, shall I tell you about my surprise?” Mr Lacey asked, interrupting Maisie’s thoughts.

  “Oh, yes please! I’ve been wondering all day.” Alice sat up further against her lace-edged pillows, watching him eagerly.

  Her father beamed at her. “I’ve rented a house in the country for you to go to, my dear, so that you can breathe the fresh air and get properly well.”

  Alice’s eyes widened. “Are you coming, too?” she asked hopefully.

  “I wish I could,” her father told her. “But I have to be at the office. Miss Sidebotham will go with you.”

  “Oh…” Alice sighed and drooped against her pillows.

  Her father watched her anxiously and tugged his moustache again. “Unless… Unless you would like to go, too, Miss Maisie?”

  Maisie stared at him blankly. Even with all her careful detecting, she’d certainly never expected him to say that. “Me?” she gasped.

  “Oh yes, yes, what a simply perfect plan!” Alice croaked. “Oh, Maisie, please say that you will.”

  “I’d have to ask Gran,” Maisie murmured, but she was smiling hopefully to herself. She had never been out of London – it would be an amazing adventure to travel to the country.

  She could see why Mr Lacey wanted Alice to go. London this winter had been full of thick, choking fog. Sometimes it had been so bad that it was dark even at midday and if Maisie went out in it, the fog seemed to seep into her lungs so that she could taste it for the rest of the day. It seeped into the houses, too, under the doors and through the cracks in the windows, so it was impossible to escape. The thought of somewhere with trees and grass, which Maisie had only seen in the public parks, was wonderful.

  Mr Lacey nodded. “Indeed, you must ask your grandmother.” He patted Eddie’s head, smiling. “And, of course, you’ll take the little dog, too. You two would be the best sort of medicine for my dear girl, I should think. When Alice is feeling stronger, you could go out for walks with this little chap. Can you wait a little longer, Maisie? I will write a letter for you to take back to your grandmother now, with a proper invitation. And I shall promise that Miss Sidebotham will take the very best care of you.”

  Maisie rolled her eyes at Alice while Mr Lacey wasn’t looking and Alice had to stuff the frilled sleeve of her nightgown into her mouth to stop herself laughing.

  “If I come, I can help you stay out of her way,” Maisie whispered.

  Alice nodded hopefully. “It would be such fun!” she whispered back and she put out her thin little hand and held Maisie’s tightly.

  “But you’ve only just come back from that theatre!” Gran said, looking from the letter to Maisie and back again. “You’re getting rather too much in demand, if you ask me.” But she was smiling, so Maisie knew that she was joking.

  Maisie sighed. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell them that I can’t go. I can’t leave you and Sally to do all the work again. Mr Lacey said that he had rented the house for a month.”

  Gran eyed her worriedly. “Having said that, there’s ever such a lot of sickness about… You’re rather old to catch scarlet fever, but even so, I wouldn’t put it past you to come down with it, Maisie. And this fog isn’t good for anyone. It would do you good to have a few weeks in the country, too.”

  “But how will you manage?” Maisie frowned at her.

  Gran sniffed. “Well, there’ll be a good deal less scrubbing of floors without that dog tracking mud all over them. He is invited, too, isn’t he?” she added hopefully.

  Maisie nodded. “Alice’s father said that once she was a little better, we could take him out for country walks!”

  Gran nodded. “And there’s still some of the money left from your job at the theatre. If I have to, I can get someone in to help.”

  “So … yes?” Maisie held her breath.

  “Yes. If you promise me you won’t get yourself mixed up in any more mysteries,” Gran said. “Just try and behave like a young lady. Like that nice Miss Alice.”

  “Alice Honoria Lacey! Sit down this instant!” Miss Sidebotham said, in a sort of strangled shriek. She was far too concerned about manners to actually shout across the platform of Paddington Station, but Maisie could tell that she wanted to. Maisie sighed. They had only meant to walk down the platform to get a closer look at the engine, as she had never been on a train before.

  Miss Sidebotham was clearly still furious about being saddled with Maisie as well as Alice. And she had been horrified that they were taking Eddie with them – so horrified that she kept on pretending that she just couldn’t see him. Maisie could tell Eddie knew that the governess didn’t like him. He kept sitting down next to her and giving her long, soulful looks and then she would trip over him. Maisie couldn’t work out if he was trying to win her over, or if he was just being annoying.

  Miss Sidebotham had protested to Mr Lacey about them coming, or so Alice had told Maisie. Alice had overheard them talking about it. But her father had told Miss Sidebotham that he felt Alice needed another child with her for more interesting company. He said it was important that she was kept amused while she was recovering. Which obviously meant that he thought Miss Sidebotham was boring as well.

  “Which is a great relief to me, Maisie,” Alice had told her seriously, as they’d waited on the steps of the Laceys’ grand house for the cab to take them to the station. “Because Papa is a widower, of course, and one does hear of governesses marrying the master of the house really quite often. Imagine having Miss Sidebotham as a mother!”

  “I don’t want to,” Maisie had said, shuddering.

  “Exactly. But if he thinks she’s a deathly bore as well, then he can’t possibly want to marry her.”

  “He would be mad!” Maisie told Alice reassuringly, watching Miss Sidebotham snapping at the maids as they carried down the luggage. Her own things were in a rather embarrassingly small and battered leather suitcase that Gran had found in the attic. She could see it now in the pile of cases and boxes that was waiting to be put in the luggage van, next to Alice’s smart dressing case, with her initials embossed on it in gilt. She did hope that the house they were going to stay in wasn’t too grand. Miss Sidebotham was already giving her snooty looks all the time. It would be horrible if the maids at Wisteria Lodge despised her because she didn’t have six changes of clothes a day and handmade lace on all of her petticoats.

  “Is Wisteria Lodge very big?” she asked Alice, as Miss Sidebotham shooed them back across the platform to sit down.

  “Quite big,” Alice said thoughtfully. “Papa showed me a drawing of it that the house agent sent. It used to be a hunting lodge that belonged to the Marquis of Walden, but he only stayed there for a few weeks every year. And then it was sold. It gets rented out to people who want a country house to stay in. Like us.”

  Maisie nodded. “What does Wisteria mean? Is it the name of the village near the house?”

  Miss Sidebotham let out a genteel little snort and Maisie went pink.

  “I had to ask Papa what it was,” Alice said, glaring at her governess. “It’s a climbing plant. Very pretty, he said – it has purple flowers. Wisteria Lodge is covered in it in the summer, but we’ll only see the bare branches now, of course. The village is called Little Stoney and that’s where the station is.”

  Maisie looked up at the huge clock hanging above her. “I think the train is due to leave in a few minutes. Look at those great clouds of steam. It’s almost as foggy in here as it is out there! Do you think we’d better get on board?”

  There were at least eight great engines snorting and bellowing out steam and the occasional sp
ark. Maisie was glad that she had Alice with her – and Eddie, although he wasn’t much comfort. He didn’t like the steam engines either and he kept having to bark at everything to make himself feel better. A well-bred and snobbish spaniel was also waiting to get aboard the train and it was giving him the most despising looks.

  “Come along, Alice. And you,” Miss Sidebotham added with a sigh, as though she would quite like to leave Maisie on the platform. “They’ve loaded our baggage now, so we must find the compartment your father reserved.” She hurried them down the platform into a first-class carriage.

  Maisie could hear her muttering that the mongrel should surely be travelling in the guard’s van. She picked Eddie up, determined not to let anyone take him away from her.

  “Don’t let him on the seats!” Miss Sidebotham snapped, as Eddie went sniffing around the compartment.

  “He wouldn’t!” Maisie protested. “He knows he’s not allowed on furniture.”

  “He’s a very well-behaved little dog,” Alice added. It was unfortunate that the spaniel trotted along the corridor just then and Eddie barked so loudly that the spaniel’s grand lady owner asked her maid for smelling salts.

  “We should not have brought that … creature!” Miss Sidebotham hissed. “He is not fit for polite society.”

  “He’ll be good, Miss, I promise,” Maisie said breathlessly, catching Eddie and trying to persuade him to curl up nicely under the seat. “I brought him a bone and a blanket to sleep on. He’ll be quiet.” She rummaged around in the rush basket Gran had given her for odds and ends, and pulled out the bone – George, her friend from the butcher’s shop, had given it to her and it was almost as big as Eddie himself. She reckoned it would last for most of the journey.

  The governess collapsed on to the opposite seat with her handkerchief pressed over her face, which Maisie thought was just rudeness. The bone hardly smelled at all.

  “Little Stoney! Little Stoney!” The station master was striding up and down the platform with his flag, roaring like a foghorn.

  “Do hurry, girls! Have you got all your things, Alice? The travelling chess set? Your Latin Grammar?”

  “Yes, Miss Sidebotham. We really should get off the train now, Miss Sidebotham – the station master is looking most impatient.”

  The girls tumbled off the train with Eddie dancing excitedly round them. Maisie looked around at the tiny village station. She hadn’t really known what to expect – it wasn’t a bit like the huge London terminus. Just one short platform, a little ticket office and a cottage that had to belong to the station master. Miss Sidebotham stood on the platform, counting all the cases. A young boy came over to take them out into the road to be loaded on to a wagon and she fussed around him.

  “We’re just going to stretch our legs,” Alice called, pulling Maisie and Eddie after her out on to the road and ignoring Miss Sidebotham’s worried squeaks.

  They stood watching the boy handing the cases up on to the wagon and Maisie noticed gladly that her suitcase really was there. She wouldn’t have put it past Miss Sidebotham to leave it behind on purpose.

  “So you’re the young ladies going to Wisteria Lodge, then?” the boy asked curiously.

  Alice went pink and Maisie nodded. “Yes. Is it far from here?”

  “No, only a mile or so. But rather you than me.”

  “What do you mean?” Maisie asked, frowning. “Isn’t it a nice house?”

  He shrugged. “It’s big. But I wouldn’t call it nice. It’s haunted for a start.”

  “Haunted?” Alice gasped and grabbed Maisie’s arm.

  Maisie snorted. “No, it isn’t,” she said. “You’re just trying to scare us. You don’t actually believe in ghosts, do you?”

  The boy stopped loading cases and folded his arms, gazing at Maisie and Alice. “The last two – no, three families that took the house have stayed less than a year. Less than a month, the last lot. Strange noises. Odd white shapes in the passageways. The last family went to the vicar and asked him if Wisteria Lodge had been built over a plague pit!”

  “What’s a plague pit?” Alice whispered. She’d gone horribly white again so Maisie slipped an arm around her.

  “It’s a grave for people who died of the plague,” Maisie explained. “But I’m sure the house isn’t built anywhere near one. Who’d build a house on top of something like that? I bet the vicar told them that. Didn’t he?”

  “Yes…” the boy admitted. “He said it was stuff and nonsense. But they still left!” he added triumphantly. “They said the ghosts definitely smelled like a plague pit!”

  “What on earth are you girls doing?” Miss Sidebotham appeared behind them, looking down her nose at the boy. Somehow she managed to make it obvious that she thought it was all Maisie’s fault they had fallen into bad company.

  “Oh, Miss Sidebotham, this boy says Wisteria Lodge is haunted!” Alice told her in a trembly voice.

  “What nonsense,” the governess said, but she sounded almost as trembly as Alice.

  Maisie rolled her eyes at the boy, who was smirking, obviously very pleased with the success of his story. She squeezed Alice’s hand and tried to sound confident. “What a lot of hogwash – there aren’t any such things as ghosts!”

  “It looks haunted…” Alice said faintly, as the hired carriage drew up outside Wisteria Lodge.

  Maisie peered out of the window. The house didn’t look haunted to her. Scarily large and grand, but that was all. It did have a rather neglected air though – there were a few weeds growing in the drive and the windows could have done with a good clean.

  A smartly dressed maid opened the door and Maisie could see a huge chandelier hanging in the entrance hall. She was far more worried about forgetting her manners in such a huge place than she was about any ghosts.

  “There really isn’t any such thing as ghosts,” she said comfortingly to Alice. “That boy was just trying to scare us. Boys do that. George does it to me all the time.”

  “Who is George?” Miss Sidebotham demanded in a shocked voice.

  “The butcher’s boy, Miss,” Maisie replied.

  “Humph.” Miss Sidebotham got down from the carriage and looked over at the house. “Well, it will do, I suppose. I am Miss Sidebotham, Miss Lacey’s governess,” she said to the maid, her nose in the air as she pranced up the marble steps. “Our luggage is following. We will wait in the drawing room, where we shall require tea.” She marched off down the hall, opening doors as she went.

  The maid looked surprised and slightly annoyed by the governess’s hoity-toity manner, but she smiled at Maisie and Alice as they got down from the carriage.

  “Hello!” Maisie smiled back. “This is Miss Alice and I’m Maisie. I’ve come to keep her company.”

  “And I’m Annie, Miss,” the maid told her. “The parlourmaid. So you’re the poor dear who’s been ill?” she said sympathetically to Alice. “Mrs James – that’s the cook – she’s planned some lovely meals to fatten you up again, Miss Alice.”

  Alice beamed at her. “That sounds wonderful. At home they kept trying to make me eat calves’ foot jelly and I hate it.”

  “Have you worked here for a long time?” Maisie asked curiously, as the maid led them into the house and shut the huge front door. The entrance hall made Maisie feel shabby – the marble staircase shone, even on such a grey day, and the chandelier glittered. There were delicate chairs dotted about – chairs that looked too fragile even for Alice to sit on – and dark, ancient-looking paintings. “Did you work for the marquis who used to own the house?” She was wondering if Annie knew about the ghost stories.

  “Goodness no, Miss. It’s been empty for ages, this house. Me and Mrs James and Cissie and Lily, the other maids, we’ve all just come up from the village, only a couple of days before you. We’ve been up all hours, trying to get the old place ready. It’s meant a lot of work, since the house has been empty so long. Some of the rooms are still under dust sheets, but Mr Lawrence, the house agent, he said you might
not need them all, being as there’s only the three of you.”

  Alice giggled. “How many bedrooms are there?”

  “I lost count, Miss,” Annie told her. “We’ve got the nicest ones ready, though. Must be at least fifteen of them altogether, I’d say.”

  Maisie looked at Alice. “Ooh, I don’t know. I think I need at least fifteen bedrooms.”

  “And a couple of parlours and a breakfast room,” Alice added firmly.

  “We’re teasing,” Maisie told Annie hurriedly when she saw a worried expression flit across her face.

  “We made the lilac parlour ready for you, Miss, and the drawing room and the dining room, but the breakfast room’s still all shut up…”

  “You must have worked terribly hard,” Alice said seriously. “We are grateful.”

  “Even if Miss Sidebotham looks like a mouse died under her nose,” Maisie added. “Don’t worry. She’s always like that.” She eyed Annie sideways. “The boy loading the luggage said that the last people here didn’t stay very long. Did you work for them, too?”

  Annie shook her head. “No, in the past people have always brought their own servants with them.”

  “Oh…” Maisie hesitated, but Alice elbowed her in the ribs.

  “Ask her!”

  “The boy said Wisteria Lodge was haunted…” Maisie said. “Is it?” She crossed her fingers under her jacket. She didn’t want Alice even more worried. “It must be just a story, surely.”

  Annie looked round to see if anyone else was listening – perhaps she thought Miss Sidebotham would disapprove of her gossiping with the girls, which was almost certainly true. Maisie glanced over her shoulder to make sure the governess was still safely in the drawing room.

  “The last two lots of lodgers certainly did leave in a tearing hurry, Miss! Last time it was a lady and a gentleman and they left in the middle of the night – their carriage went galloping through the village as though the hounds of hell was after them!”