The Case of the Phantom Cat Page 5

  The ghost cat saw Eddie hurtling towards it. It took a flying leap off the sofa and disappeared behind one of the huge bookcases that stuck out into the room. Eddie went after it.

  Maisie forgot the awfulness of the smell and ran after them. That was no ghost! Surely a ghost cat wouldn’t need to run away? If Eddie tried to catch a ghost cat, he’d just run straight through it, wouldn’t he? And a ghost cat wouldn’t smell like a proper cat either, so Eddie probably wouldn’t want to chase it anyway.

  I should have thought of that before, Maisie told herself crossly. He’s behaving just like he did with that cat in the street. It was a real cat, this proved it for sure.

  She hurried round the bookcase, expecting to find Eddie and the cat hissing and scratching at each other, or maybe the cat halfway up the long velvet curtains that were draped behind the bookcase. Then she stopped in surprise and Alice caught up with her. Eddie and the cat had completely disappeared.

  “Where is he?” Alice asked, and then she gave a horrified gasp. “Oh, Maisie, that ghost cat’s eaten Eddie!”

  “It can’t have done,” Maisie murmured, running her fingers along the bookcase and frowning. “Eddie didn’t think that cat was a ghost and neither do I. They’ve just gone – somewhere.”

  There was a scuttling, scratching noise from behind the bookshelf and both girls took a step back, clutching each other’s hands. A black nose appeared round the edge of the bookcase and Alice took in a panicked breath. Then Eddie came out into the library, looking grumpy.

  “Eddie!” Both girls rushed to hug him, but even that didn’t seem to cheer him up. His ears had gone back to being flat and floppy again and his eyes were gloomy. “Did that cat get away, Eddie?” Maisie said, patting him. “You shouldn’t chase them, anyway. But where did you go?” She stood up and went to look round the edge of the bookcase, pushing the curtain out of the way.

  A narrow, dark gap opened out behind the bookcase – just big enough for a slim person to slip through.

  “Alice! Look! A secret passage!” Maisie poked her head in, holding up the candle so she could look around. “It must lead to the floor above, there’s a little staircase. So this is how that white cat kept appearing and disappearing all over the place! There must be passages like this all over the house!”

  Alice shuddered. “Ooohh. I don’t like the sound of that – people could creep up on us all the time.”

  “I suppose so,” Maisie agreed. “But it’s very clever. I’m going to see where it goes.”

  Alice gulped, but she and Eddie followed Maisie into the black gap and up the winding wooden stairs.

  The stairway grew lighter as they went further up and the awful smell cleared away too. “We must be getting up towards the first floor,” Maisie whispered back to Alice. “There aren’t any shutters over the windows up here, so that’s why it’s lighter. I wonder where the passage comes out?”

  “I hope it’s soon,” Alice whispered. “There are spiders’ webs everywhere. I keep thinking I can feel little legs in my hair.”

  Maisie stopped suddenly, as she reached a flat wooden panel, with only a narrow strip of light down the side – just wide enough for a very thin cat to push its way through.

  Eddie sniffed at it excitedly and as Maisie held the candle closer, she could see white hairs caught on the side of the panel. She hooked her fingers round it and pushed. The wooden panel creaked and stuck, then slid further across, leaving a narrow doorway.

  “Look, it’s my bedroom!” Maisie gasped, as she pushed the panel aside. “We’ve come out just behind that massive wardrobe!”

  They stepped out into the room and Maisie looked back at the door, trying to work out how she’d missed a secret doorway in her own bedroom. She blew out the candle and set it down by her bed, then she went to investigate.

  “Oh! You can’t see the opening unless the door’s pulled across all the way,” she said, pulling at the sliding panel. “When it was only open enough for the cat to get through the open part was still behind the wardrobe.”

  “And the cat could squeeze out under the bottom of the wardrobe, I suppose,” Alice agreed. “Oh, look, it’s still here!”

  The white cat was in the doorway between Maisie’s room and Alice’s, looking back at them curiously. But as soon as it spotted Eddie again, it darted away.

  “Let’s follow it!” Maisie said, dashing across the room with Eddie. “I want to see if there are any more secret passages. I bet that cat knows them all!”

  The cat whisked round the door and into the passage that led one way to the stairs and the other way to the warren of empty bedrooms that the girls hadn’t had time to explore properly. The white cat flitted through a half-open door and Eddie and Maisie and Alice piled after it.

  The room had pretty pale pink wallpaper, printed with little flowers. The curtains tied back on the four-poster bed were pink to match. It reminded Maisie of Alice’s bedroom back in London.

  Eddie raced across the dusty wooden floor after the cat, but for the first time it stood its ground instead of running away from him. It stopped in front of the big wooden wardrobe that stood in the corner of the room, arched its back and hissed.

  Maisie and Alice stopped in surprise. Even Eddie skidded to a halt and stared at it. In his experience, cats ran – they didn’t fight back.

  The cat’s whiskers were bristling and its green eyes were slitted and furious.

  Eddie glanced uncertainly round at Maisie, then took a step towards the wardrobe.

  The cat shot out a paw and raked its claws across Eddie’s nose.

  He whimpered and scuttled back to Maisie, with three red, oozing lines across his nose. The cat jumped through the half-open door of the wardrobe.

  “Maybe there’s another secret passage in there,” Maisie said doubtfully. She couldn’t work out why the cat had suddenly been so angry. It hadn’t tried to attack Eddie until they came into this particular room.

  “No, listen…” Alice edged towards the wardrobe, her eyes shining with excitement. “Can’t you hear?”

  Maisie followed her, with Eddie squashed worriedly up against her boots. “What is it? I can hear something squeaking, I think… Oh, has it caught a mouse?”

  “No, silly!” Alice peeped inside. “Kittens!” She crouched down. “Oh, aren’t they beautiful… Aren’t you a clever cat!”

  “They’re not ghost kittens, then?” Maisie asked her, grinning, but Alice wasn’t listening. She was too busy whispering endearments to the two kittens and their mother. The white cat looked at Alice suspiciously over her babies, but she seemed to understand that this girl didn’t mean them any harm.

  Eddie whined crossly. He didn’t see why all this attention was being paid to the white cat, when it had meanly scratched him. Maisie picked him up and rubbed his ears comfortingly. “I know, it isn’t fair, is it? But she must have thought you were going to hurt her kittens.” She carried Eddie over to an armchair by the window and curled up on top of the dustsheet to cuddle him.

  “We’ve solved our ghost mystery, Eddie,” she murmured. “Some of it, anyway. A white cat hiding up here doesn’t explain the graveyard smell. Or the shrieking noises Cissie and Lily said they heard in the library. I don’t think they were lying, like Annie was. They really did look scared. And I’m sure I did hear something this morning. It was all mixed up in my dream, though. This is such a strange house. I just don’t know what’s real…”

  Maisie gazed out of the window, trying to think what the explanation could be. She refused to believe in ghosts and graveyards, but the smell was definitely getting worse. She could even get a little hint of it all the way up here. Maybe she should open the window and let some fresh air in?

  Maisie knelt up on the armchair and pulled at the window catch. It was very stiff and the window seemed to be stuck. She tried giving it a shove and then noticed that there was a wodge of folded paper stuck into the side of the frame, holding it shut. It must have been rattling. Maisie yanked the paper
out and the window opened jerkily. She sat down again, cuddling Eddie for warmth – the fresh air was nice, but the room was chilly. She’d have to shut the window when they went back downstairs, or the kittens would freeze.

  Alice was still sitting in front of the wardrobe, telling the white cat how clever she was and how beautiful her kittens were.

  “Maisie, is there any fish in the larder?” she asked hopefully, looking round. “This poor cat is so thin and her kittens are getting quite big. She needs feeding up and they must need proper food too, I think.”

  “Miss Sidebotham’s eaten all the anchovy paste. But I think there were some kippers,” Maisie said. “Do cats like kippers?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they do!”

  Maisie sighed. She hated kippers – but perhaps the kipper whiff would hide the awful smell from the library. “I’ll go and cook them, then, shall I?”

  Alice beamed at her. “Would you really? Thank you, Maisie!”

  Maisie wandered back down the stairs to the kitchen. She shushed Eddie and crept carefully past the drawing-room door so as not to be ambushed by Miss Sidebotham and ordered to make more sandwiches. It would be tricky anyway, as she wasn’t at all convinced by Alice’s breadmaking.

  Maisie got the kippers out of the larder – nasty, leathery, bony things, they were. The cat was welcome to them. She went to look at the stove – Alice had let it die down a bit, she wasn’t used to having to look after a fire. Maisie added some more coal and looked at it hopefully. She needed it to burn up, to get it hot enough to boil the water for jugging the kippers. If only they had some newspaper, she could put it over the front of the grate to get the fire to draw up. Maisie looked around the kitchen, but she couldn’t see any – and then she remembered the wodge of paper from the window. She pulled it out of her pocket and started to unfold it, then sighed. It wasn’t newspaper, it was an old letter and the sheets of paper were far too small to lay over the bars of the grate. Maisie was just about to throw the paper on the fire, when a few words caught her eye.

  dreadful smell, really quite choking

  Maisie wasn’t sure if it was right to read other people’s letters, but she was a detective after all. She wasn’t just being nosy. She opened the letter out properly and frowned at the spiky writing. It made her think that the person who wrote the letter had been cross, stabbing the pen at the paper and leaving blots here and there.

  We have been let this house under false pretences and I wish to complain most strongly. Clearly there is something wrong with the drains and the cesspit is blocked. I only hope that we shall not all succumb to some infectious disease. Wisteria Lodge should never have been let in this state. It is a most dreadful smell, really quite choking. We shall be leaving today and I require the return of our rent, at once.

  The drains! Of course! Maisie nodded to herself. This must have been a letter to the house agent, from one of the last people to rent the house. Perhaps the letter writer had made a neater copy afterwards. This one was very hard to read, with lots of angry crossings out and blots all over it.

  How could they have been so stupid? It was all that boy’s fault, filling their heads with ghosts before they even got to the house. They had never thought of the simple explanation for the terrible smell, or the phantom cat.

  Maisie folded her arms, frowning. That only left the shrieking noises and the strange disappearance of Alice’s bracelet and Miss Sidebotham’s spectacles. It was time to solve the last part of the mystery.

  “Maisie! Maisie!”

  “Sorry I took so long!” Maisie hurried up the rest of the stairs to Alice. “I’ve brought some kipper, but the cat’s going to have to eat round the bones, I’m dreadful at getting them out. Oh, whatever’s the matter?” Maisie stopped as she saw her friend shaking on the landing.

  “Maisie, didn’t you hear it?”

  “No.” Maisie stared at her. “No, I didn’t hear a thing. What was it?”

  “Screams! The most awful screams! Like you heard this morning, Maisie. They were like a soul in torment! Maybe Annie was right about the graveyard, after all.”

  “She wasn’t,” Maisie said firmly. “I’ve just found a letter complaining about the state of the drains. That’s all the smell is. Drains. Or lack of them, I suppose. There must be an explanation for the noises, too.”

  “Oh… Do you think so?” Alice asked. Maisie wondered if she had been enjoying being scared, just a little. She sounded a bit disappointed that Maisie was so matter-of-fact.

  “Yes. Where did they come from? Oh, here, you’d better give this to the cat, Eddie’s desperate for it.” She handed a rather pretty china plate full of kipper to Alice. Eddie’s tail drooped sadly.

  “Oh, she’ll be so pleased!” Alice glanced up. “Must we really go and look for whatever made that noise? I think it was in the attics. It definitely came from above me.”

  “The attic stairs are along here, I think,” Maisie said. “Past the cat’s room. You give her the fish, then we’ll go and look upstairs.”

  Alice gulped and darted off to put the plate down in front of the wardrobe. Maisie held on to Eddie, who whined pitifully, as though no one had ever given him so much as a whitebait.

  “Sssshhh,” Maisie told him. “I’ll give you something much, much nicer when we’ve found out what’s making those noises. You did help us solve our ghost mystery, after all.”

  Alice tiptoed reluctantly back into the passage and when Maisie opened the door up to the servants’ rooms and the attic stairs, she shuddered. “I suppose we must…” she whispered, as she followed Maisie.

  The attic floor was enormous, much larger than the attics back at Maisie’s house in London. They were full of broken furniture, dusty old paintings and trunks packed with old clothes. Maisie would have liked to explore properly, and Alice cried out with delight at a box full of old hats, trailing faded feathers and wisps of net.

  “We can look later,” Maisie said firmly. “We have to find where the noise came from, first. Maybe it was just a creaking door, blowing in the wind?”

  “It was not a door, Maisie,” Alice said firmly. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d heard it. And why would the doors creak, anyway? The windows up here aren’t open.”

  “Hmmm. I suppose not… It is chilly, though.” Maisie shivered. “Maybe the draught comes down the chimney.”

  Just then, the most unearthly shrieking noise echoed around the room, a shrill wail that stopped Maisie’s breath and made her and Alice clutch at each other in panic.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Alice whimpered, and even Eddie cowered against the two girls as though he thought something awful was coming after them all.

  “Wait!” Maisie gasped. “I don’t believe in ghosts! I don’t!” she muttered to herself. Although it was very hard to be sure, with the echoes of that dreadful shriek still in her ears. “There’s been an explanation for the other things,” she whispered shakily. “There must be an explanation for this, too.” She took a step towards the fireplace. “Did you think it came from over there?”

  “Maybe,” Alice agreed, but she didn’t follow Maisie. “It seemed to go all round the room. Like a ghost was flying around us.”

  “I think it was from the fireplace,” Maisie muttered. Digging her nails into her palms, she crept over towards the little grate and looked at it curiously. It was full of sticks, as though someone had been trying to light a fire. “Ghosts don’t need fires,” she told herself firmly and leaned further in to peer up the chimney.

  Another terrible scream echoed down and Maisie screamed back, stumbling and slipping on to her side. There was a strange chattering noise and a squawking and another pile of sticks and soot fell into the grate.

  Maisie stared at it and then wriggled closer and looked up the chimney again. Then she coughed as another cloud of soot collapsed down the chimney and left black smuts all over her face.

  “What is it?” Alice gasped. “Come away from it, Maisie!”

  “It’s magpies
!” Maisie began to laugh. “Oh, Alice, that’s all it is! A flock of magpies! I saw them in the big trees on the drive when I went down to the village and they were screeching like anything, but I never thought about it. They must have made nests on top of the other chimneys too, that’s why the fires don’t draw properly!” She leaned forward suddenly and dug about among the sticks in the fireplace. “And look! Your bracelet, Alice! And Miss Sidebotham’s spectacles. And one, two, three, four silver spoons!”

  “How on earth did all that get there?” Alice demanded, running forward. She snatched up her bracelet and slipped it back on to her wrist with a grateful smile.

  “Professor Tobin told me a story about a magpie once,” Maisie said, running the gold chain through her fingers as she tried to remember. “There was a girl who was accused of stealing, but it turned out it was a magpie all along. They like shiny things and they hide them in their nests.” She giggled. “I saw seven of them, I remember now. Seven for a secret, never to be told. But we found their secret after all!”

  “There’s a carriage coming down the drive!” Maisie reported to Alice the next morning, as they were playing with the kittens. The bread had looked rather flat and strange after it had been baked, but it had tasted nice and they had made toast for breakfast. Miss Sidebotham complained bitterly that there wasn’t anything more substantial, but she still wouldn’t even think of descending to the kitchens to help. And she had been grateful for the return of her spectacles, although the first thing she did was to put them on and tell Maisie off for letting the drawing room get so disgracefully dusty.