Pure Dead Batty Read online

  “I beg your pardon?” Mrs. McLachlan’s head jerked upward. She’d been daydreaming, staring intently at Isagoth’s boots but not really seeing them, lost in a world of her own; a world she was struggling to recall. Oh, what were their names? If she could only remember …

  “Oh, come on,” Isagoth insisted. “You know what I mean. Here lies the mortal remains of Flora McLachlan kind of thing? Died saving mankind. Lost at sea. Beloved wife of—? Maker of possibly the best chocolate meringue cake in the known universe, and pretty nifty with the old steamed mussels. There. Whadd’ya say, Flora? Did I leave anything out?”

  On the other side of the fire shadows stirred. A languid hand fanned the air as if trying to bat away the demon’s words like a cloud of insects.

  “You left yourself out, my dear chap,” Death murmured. “You’re frightfully chatty when it comes to planning Flora’s headstone, but what about your own? What should we get the stonemason to write on that? one wonders. Maybe there’s nothing to say about your life? How about, Here lies Isagoth. He smoked a lot of cigars and propped up a lot of bars. It was a cough that carried him off. It was a coffin they carried him offin.”

  “But … but … You’re joking, right?” the demon blustered, staring at Death, whose expression remained impassive. “Aw, come on. You’re kidding. This is a morbid windup. You’re pulling my cloven-footed leg. I don’t need a tombstone. You know that. I won’t ever need a tombstone. I’m an immortal.”

  As if to underline his point, a peal of thunder rumbled far out across the loch, and a sheet of lightning backlit the silent figures of Death’s ferrymen.

  “So are we all,” Death snapped. “Do keep up.”

  “Uhhh.” Isagoth slapped himself on his forehead. “Of course. I’d forgotten about her. She doesn’t act like an immortal, though.”

  “Rrrrreally?” drawled Death, skewering Isagoth with a glare. “And, pray tell, just how are immortals supposed to behave? Like you, Mr. Isagoth? I think not. You and your kind give the League of Immortals a bad name.”

  “My kind? What are you on about?”

  “Bottom-feeders, Mr. Isagoth. Demons, imps, succubi, gremlins, djinnis, and other such lower orders,” Death continued serenely, ignoring the spluttering sounds coming from Isagoth. “Your inclusion in the League of Immortals merely indicates the presence of a divine sense of humor.” Seeing the demon’s face scrunch up into a frown of incomprehension, Death explained, “You’re a cosmic joke, Mr. Isagoth. You provide some much-needed light entertainment for the angels. Think how tedious immortality would be if it weren’t for the antics of your chap S’tan and his legions. At best, you entertain us; at worst … you irritate. And as any oyster could tell you, it’s the bit of gritty irritation that makes the pearl. Every time. And so, Mr. Isagoth, just as the oyster will always overcome the grit, good will always overcome evil and love will conquer all. Don’t you agree, Flora?”

  Mrs. McLachlan’s thoughts were miles away. She’d remembered that she hadn’t made a birthday cake for the girl. Oh, what was her name? Pamela? Anne? Dora? She could see the child in front of her, eyes bright with tears, willing her to remember. “Please,” she was pleading, “you have to remember. Hold on. Don’t lose the thread.”

  But there wasn’t time. That was the problem. The longer she stayed here on the island, the further away she drifted from everything that had gone before. Concentrate, Flora, she told herself. Think about cakes. Chocolate meringue cake. Eggs, butter, cream. In the fridge. Walk to the fridge. What do you see?

  She feels the cool flagstones underfoot, the cracks between them faintly gritty. The floor needs sweeping again, the brushes standing bristle up in the broom cupboard. There is someone sitting at the kitchen table. Sitting with his face half-hidden in his hands. His face—what little she can see of it—is wet with tears. She longs to reach out and comfort him. Longs to. Cannot. Her hands are mist and air. He is beyond her reach. Looking down, she sees her feet have brought her to the other side of the kitchen. To the white wall of the refrigerator. There she finds a note held fast to the door with several fridge magnets. She reads the note in disbelief:

  Latch

  Luciano’s 1st hearing today. I’ve gone to court with lawyer, then I’m going on to ante-natal clinic checkup thingy. I’ll stay over in town, so back tomorrow. Forgot new nanny is coming by taxi @ three. I’ve put her in the Lilac Room—can you show her around? I’ll see her when I get back.

  Many thanks

  B

  New nanny? New nanny? Her mind keeps returning to this, sticks on this. Impaled on the stark words. Even qualified with “Forgot” it still hurts dreadfully. How can she be replaced so quickly? For alongside the pain of reading Baci’s note to Latch comes a tidal race of returning memory. She is Flora McLachlan, she is the old nanny to Baci and Luciano’s children. She is going to make a birthday cake for Pandora—not Pamela, Anne, or even Dora. The man weeping at the kitchen table is Latch. She has promised to marry him. He believes her to be dead. She must comfort him. Without touch or speech she must reach him. Show him that love will never die. Will conquer all.

  Now Baci’s note flutters as the magnetic letters holding it in place move so fast they blur. First they form names: Latch; Damp; Pandora; Titus. Then words: will; love; all. And then, spinning in a spiral, they melt and fuse into new forms. New letters appear, and now the fridge magnets say: “Love will conquer all.”

  and Flora’s eyes open on Death and the demon staring at her across a dimming mound of embers.

  Love on a Cold Climate

  Taking great pains to protect the still-tender stump of her missing leg, Tarantella squeezed herself into the key cupboard and gazed at her daughters in despair. The seven girl-tarantulas peered back blearily through eye-watering encrustations of mascara and attempted to speak through mouth-gumming layers of lipstick smeared across their mouthparts.

  “Mmmm-mmmm,” Novella the first-born managed and then, with a supreme effort, unglued her lips and uttered a desperate, “Mmm-UM!”

  “Give me strength,” groaned Tarantella, reaching for the tiny vial of makeup remover which she always carried with her when visiting her children’s nursery. One by one, she scrubbed her daughters clean. First Novella, then her sisters Epistolia, Anecdota, Trilogia, Epicsaga, Emailia, and finally the unfortunately named Diarya. Stripped of layers of paint and powder, the spider babies looked rather sweet, if a touch bedraggled. Aware that yet again they’d somehow managed to disgrace themselves, they prepared themselves for a long lecture from their Aging Parent.

  Tarantella took a deep breath. “Didn’t I tell you not to babble bibble yibber yibble?” she began.

  “Yeah, Mum,” the spider babies sighed in unison.

  “Blah blah de dum one coat of lippy only mutter mumble drone drone.”

  “Whatever,” they groaned, rolling their multiple eyeballs to startling effect.

  “Yada yada mascara bad nasty blah witter.”

  “Uh-huh,” they grunted, their arachnid minds elsewhere entirely. Then, suddenly, they snapped back to attention. Aging Parent was actually saying something interesting for once. Much to her amazement, Tarantella found she had her daughters’ undivided attention. They were actually listening to her, their many eyeballs keenly focused on her instead of the middle distance. Tarantella rose to the occasion.

  “New nanny, blah hiss, just arrived in a taxi, shock, blah hiss.”

  Respectful silence from the baby spiders, whose earliest memories included seeing the previous nanny, Mrs. McLachlan, hurling herself into Lochnagargoyle, never to return.

  “The missus gone to visit hubby in hiss prison hiss, lawyer blah.”

  Sound of several baby spider jaws dropping in amazement.

  “Spider-phobic Titus biped hiss, hiss, mutter, mutter, ate acanthoid wax—”

  Percussive patter of seven spider baby mouths snapping shut simultaneously, followed by the shuffling sound of their little bodies heaving with barely suppressed laughter. Tiny t
ears of hysteria began to trickle down tiny furry faces as the spiders whooped and squeaked and snorted at the prospect of a biped with legs hairier than theirs. Helpless with laughter, they clung to the rows of ancient keys which had been quietly rusting in the gloom of the cupboard for hundreds of years. The spiderlings were having far too much fun to notice their mother’s throat-cutting mime, or to hear her hissed entreaties to shut up, or even to realize that after commanding them to run for cover, she herself had vanished from sight.

  Suddenly light spilt into the key cupboard and Latch’s voice boomed all around. “I wouldn’t begin to know where to look, Constable.…” Then a massive hand rummaged in the mess of rusting metal lying at the bottom of the cupboard, pulling out tangles of keys fringed with yellowing labels written in a faded copperplate hand.

  Garden Room, Parlor, Scullery, and Maid’s Room, they read, all referring to rooms that had long since ceased to be known by these names. Latch’s voice continued, “Of course, Officer. One could just force the lock. However, the wardrobe in question is early Flemish Van Hausfarben, possibly from the hand of the master carpenter Ikey Yarr himself, from around seventeen hundred, and is probably the only example left in existence. While one appreciates the need to gather any evidence relating to the disappearance of Flor—Mrs. McLachlan, one is nonetheless reluctant to authorize the senseless destruction of such an inestimably precious antique treasure just because you can’t be bothered to wait while I find the—Ah. There it is.”

  Whereupon Latch’s hand brushed the quivering Diarya to one side, closed around a tiny tarnished brass key, and removed it from the cupboard. Outside, the sound of footsteps faded into silence, leaving just the faintest hiss of breathing somewhere nearby. The spider babies listened as first their mother, then Latch, spoke together in whispers.

  “Ikey Yarr indeed. I thought he’d spot that straight away. And what’s all that nonsense about Mrs. McLachlan’s ‘disappearance’? I thought she’d committed suicide. Thrown herself in the lo—wa—I can’t bring myself to say it.”

  “Shhhhhh. Hush, spider. That’s what she wanted most people to think. Or at least I think that’s what she wanted people to think. But not us. Nor the children. Especially not the children. Oh, it’s so hard to explain.”

  “Try,” came Tarantella’s languid drawl. “After all, what else do I have to do all day? Toil and spin? I don’t think so. Come on, butler-biped, I know you’re not telling me the whole story because my daughters witnessed what happened to Mrs. McLachlan. They were there, remember? They saw her hurl herself in the company of a demon into the lo—lo—wa—Nope, can’t say it, but you know what I mean. They waited in the boat for her to come back; they—Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re leaking.”

  Whereupon Latch’s tear-sodden voice choked out, “What do you expect? I loved that woman. I was so sure she hadn’t drowned. For all these weeks I’ve been hoping she’d somehow swum to safety, was alive, hiding, waiting for the right time to return, my wee lassie, my Flora. And—and now you—you have stolen my hope away—”

  After a short silence the spider babies could all hear the voice of Multitudina, the Illiterat, unaware that she was muscling in at an inopportune moment.

  “Honestly. Why is this so hard? I really don’t feel I’ve got the hang of this reading stuff at all, Tarantella. Look—what’s this s’posed to mean? Love will con—love will conger—love will conger eel? What? Tarantella? Help!”

  Embarrassed to be found weeping in front of a rat, Latch turned away and blew his nose. Tarantella scuttled across the kitchen to assist Multitudina, who was peering at the fridge, where someone had laboriously spelled out a message in nursery alphabet magnets.

  “Love weel conger ill? Lav wool clanger ell? Live wall clingon all?” Multitudina squeaked with frustration and slapped herself on her head as if trying to beat understanding into her brain. “Ohhhh, why am I so dumb?”

  Tarantella closed her eyes briefly, took several deep breaths, then gathering her mouthparts into an approximation of a smile said, “If you’d paid more attention to my earlier seminars on correct vowel usage, you’d be reading by now. Sigh. However, I refuse to give up on you, no matter how dumb you appear to be. Rrrrright. From the top. How do we pronounce the one like a nose without whiskers?”

  “A,” muttered Multitudina.

  “And the one like a sideways fork?”

  “E,” the rat sighed.

  “And a single twiglet?”

  “I.”

  “And the inedible bit of a doughnut?”

  “O.”

  “And finally, an empty cup?”

  “Uh.”

  “Now read the message on the fridge,” the spider instructed.

  “Love will conquer all,” Multitudina pronounced slowly, then muttered to herself, “I still don’t understand.”

  Latch, meanwhile, was staring at the fridge as if it had addressed him personally. “Tarantella,” he whispered, “did you write that? Love will conquer all?”

  The spider rolled her eyes in disgust. “Hardly. I didn’t write it and I don’t believe it either. Romantic nonsense. Love doesn’t conquer anything, it’s just something you bipeds have invented to sweeten the bitter truth: life is nasty, brutish, and sho—”

  The kitchen door opened to reveal a weasel-faced detective holding an item of women’s underwear at arm’s length as if he expected it to launch itself at his throat and attempt to throttle him in its lacy folds. Color flooded Latch’s face: He realized that he was probably looking at a garment only intended for the eyes of its missing owner.

  “Would you say that this item belonged to Mrs. Flora McLachlan … sir?”

  “I … um,” Latch began, his face aflame. “I, er … can’t say, Officer. Never having seen Flo—Mrs. McLachlan … in her underwear … not part of one’s official uniform … Oh, for heaven’s sake, man. If that was in her chest of drawers or wherever women keep such … items, then I imagine it must be safe to assume that it was hers, don’t you think?”

  The policeman’s eyes narrowed, making him look even more like a weasel. “Oh, no, sir. In murder cases there’s no such thing as a safe assumption. We in the CID only deal in hard facts and traceable evidence. I must ask you to accompany me to Mrs. McLachlan’s bedroom in order to assist me in finding some item that you can positively identify as having belonged to her. For the DNA, sir. A hairbrush would be perfect. We’ve found traces of human blood inside the boat that you keep down by the loch and we’d like to see if there’s a match.” Noticing Latch’s expression, the detective added, “I appreciate that this is very distressing for you, sir, but we won’t take up more of your time than necessary. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, the sooner we do this, the sooner we’ll be on our way.” And striding toward the kitchen door, the policeman stood to one side to allow Latch to precede him into the hall.

  Freshly Minty

  The doorbell rang in the great hall for the third time. Pandora almost collided with one of the younger plainclothes officers as they reached the door at the same time. Catching sight of his horrified face, she realized her mistake.

  “Titus?” she gasped as the door opened to reveal a complete stranger standing smiling uncertainly on the front step.

  There was an awkward pause; just long enough to bring color to the stranger’s face; plenty of time for Pandora to wish herself elsewhere; and aeons for Titus to discover that the young woman on the doorstep had eyes the exact shade of blue of the bowl of lavender flowers on the table in the great hall. He took a deep and shaky breath.

  “Signor Strega-Borgia?” the stranger guessed, extending a hand.

  “Not exactly.” Titus’s voice had altered, along with his appearance. He risked a look at his sister, then wished he hadn’t. She really ought to close her mouth, he decided. Total strangers simply don’t need to see that kind of acreage of tonsil tissue.

  The stranger faltered, blushed, and turned to the gaping Pandora. “Pavlova?” she inquired hopefully in a cut-gla
ss accent. “Um. I’m looking for Mrs. Baci Borgia. I’m the temporary, the, er, the replacement—Oh, gosh, this is all a bit awkward. Your mummy told me about poor Mrs. McGloughlin—”

  “McLachlan,” Pandora snapped, wondering what on earth this young woman was doing here.

  Titus suddenly remembered that he had promised his mother that he would tell Pandora about the new nanny.

  “Sorry,” the stranger continued. “Gosh, I am so sorry. Mrs. McLachlan. Well, er, your mummy—I mean your mother asked me to stand in for—to, er, just for a while until, um. Yes …” She trailed off, blushing deeply, gazed at her feet for a second, took a deep breath, and tried again.

  “Pavlova. I’m delighted to meet you. Your mum—mother’s told me so much about you. About you both. About all of you. I’m your temporary, replacement, stand-in new nanny, Minty.”

  Pandora stared, aghast, then looked across at Titus, who was looking guilty and somewhat embarrassed. She summoned all her reserves of politeness and managed to say, “Do come inside. I’m sorry but our mother has had to go to co—out for a while.”

  Minty’s smile wobbled as they all simultaneously became aware of a reek of ripe decay rolling in the front door. Titus gagged, Pandora coughed, Minty’s nose wrinkled, and she pointed her face into the air like a well-trained golden retriever scenting spoor. Upwind from where they stood was the moat, now in the process of being drained. Several policemen in full uniform were watching while a large yellow truck sucked up moat water with a shuddering pink hose, before disgorging it into the nearby shrubbery. The smell was indescribably foul, and to add to everyone’s discomfort, the vibrations of the hose made it look like a giant length of throbbing intestine. It pulsed and spluttered and stank as Pandora and Titus hauled Minty’s vast collection of luggage into StregaSchloss, while the owner of all seventeen suitcases, trunks, and rucksacks apologized profusely, got in the way, talked nonstop, and took sneaky peeks at her reflection in the burnished metal of the suit of armor in the hall.