Dial a Ghost

Colonel Mersham put the letter down and looked upriver to where Manuel, the Spaniard who had helped him in his travels, had drawn up the canoe. They had journeyed two days and nights to the place where the fabled golden toads of Costa Rica had last been seen. They had searched every lily leaf, every clump of rushes, every stone, but they had come back empty-handed. The beautiful, palpitating, pop-eyed creatures, who had lit up the dark landscape like shimmering suns, were gone.

The Colonel had found it difficult to be brave about this. It was happening in so many places; marvellous animals that lived on now only as memories: the aye-ayes of Madagascar, the tigers of Bali...

And now the golden toads. It had been his dream to see them ever since he was a boy.

Had he given up too early, he wondered? If he could not find a living toad, might he perhaps find... its ghost? And if so, could it be brought back to Helton and cared for, so that people in the future would know what these marvellous creatures had been like?

The Colonel folded his letter and rose to his feet.

‘Manuel!’ he called to his friend. ‘Get the canoe ready! We’re going back!’

Chapter Sixteen

It was the worst day of their lives, both Miss Pringle and Mrs Mannering were agreed on that.

When Mother Margaret and Sister Phyllida came into Miss Pringle’s office, Miss Pringle was delighted. She liked the nuns enormously and she hoped to get good news of her favourite family.

But one look at their faces and the question died in her throat. Mother Margaret looked as though she hadn’t slept for a week; Sister Phyllida had obviously been crying.

‘The most dreadful thing has happened,’ said Mother Margaret. ‘It has been the most terrible experience!’

‘And frankly we don’t understand how you came to do this to us, Miss Pringle. We only wanted to help.’

Miss Pringle was growing more and more frantic. ‘But what has happened? Are you not satisfied with the Wilkinsons? Surely—’

‘Satisfied!’ Mother Margaret was no longer the kind and placid nun who had been to the agency before. ‘Satisfied! When we have two lambs with dislocated legs and a kid with a gash in its throat still at the vet! When we nearly lost our favourite calf and the chickens will probably never lay again!’

‘But I don’t understand. What has gone wrong? Please explain – I sent you the nicest ghosts in—’

Mother Margaret rose from her chair. ‘The nicest ghosts! The nicest! I admit we are not worldly women but you had no right to play such a trick on us. If nice ghosts swoop down on innocent animals and scratch them with their fingernails... If nice ghosts wear evil pythons round their throats and tear the feathers off baby chicks...’

She couldn’t go on. Tears choked her.

‘And the man, Miss Pringle!’ Sister Phyllida took up the story. ‘That dreadful hoofmark, the vicious knees, the stench! He picked up a goat bodily and would have torn it limb from limb if Sister Felicity hadn’t raised her crucifix. Not only that – poor Sister Bridget hit out at the lady with a rowan branch, and look!’ She felt in the pocket of her habit and took out a small box which she opened. ‘You can imagine how she felt when this dropped on to her head.’

Miss Pringle leant forward and her worst fears were confirmed. Quite clear to those who have an eye for such things, was the decayed and bloodstained toe of Lady Sabrina de Bone.

She covered her face with her hands and moaned. ‘Oh heavens, how terrible. It was a mistake... a ghastly, ghastly mistake. Our mistake of course! We were asked for some really frightening ghosts for a stately home in the north and we sent the Shriekers. At least we thought we had. And you were supposed to get the Wilkinsons. I just can’t understand it – we took such care to match you up.’ She too was almost in tears. ‘Thank goodness you knew about exorcism. I mean rowan twigs and prayers and so on.’

‘We knew about it,’ said Mother Margaret. ‘But it is not a thing we liked to do. We wanted to welcome lost souls, not banish them.’

‘Are they... the Shriekers completely... you know... destroyed?’ asked Miss Pringle nervously.

‘Not they! They just took off cursing and screaming, dragging that wretched blob along behind them. They were coming back to London, I believe.’

Miss Pringle was beside herself. ‘You must let us make it up to you – the cost...’

But the nuns shook their heads. ‘There is no money that can make up to us for the terror and the sadness. Our new litter of puppies simply won’t leave their mother at all. They spend their time underneath her – and the bees will take weeks to recover.’

Though she was quite broken up by what had happened, Miss Pringle made a last plea for her favourite family. ‘You wouldn’t consider trying the Wilkinsons instead? They—’

But she had gone too far. ‘Definitely not, Miss Pringle. Frankly, we are surprised that you can ask it,’ said Mother Margaret.

And leaving Lady de Bone’s toe on Miss Pringle’s desk they went away.