Not Just a Witch

Swinton was coming to Wellbridge on the following Monday, in a motorcade, to make speeches. The police had broken up Swinton’s rallies before; he had even been to prison, but never long enough to keep him and his followers off the streets.

‘He’s staying at the Queen’s Hotel, I see,’ said Heckie. ‘Didn’t you say you had a friend whose mother worked there?’

‘Yes, I did. Henry, he’s called. He’s really nice, and his older brother has just started as a bell-boy. I’m sure he’d help us. Henry’s black, I expect he feels just like Sumi does about the Avengers.’

The Queen’s Hotel was very grand. It stood on the edge of the park with its pretty flower-beds and statues, and the pond where Heckie had found the duck that didn’t want to live. Towers and turrets burst from the roof of the hotel and flags blew in the wind, and there were awnings and waiters rushing about and a whole army of chambermaids.

‘So you think Henry can be trusted? That he can keep a secret?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Good. Then I suggest you go and find him straight away and bring him here.’

Mr Knacksap read Heckie’s note and his eyes glittered with greed. A tiger at last! He was to arrange for a closed horse box and a driver, and get hold of a wire tunnel of the kind that circus trainers use to lead animals into the ring.

‘Because we don’t want the poor dear creature getting scared and muddled,’ Heckie had written.

Henry’s brother was going to meet her in the park at daybreak with the key to Max Swinton’s room and a chambermaid’s uniform belonging to his mother.

‘Then I’ll slip into his room with his early morning tea and change him. By great good luck, he’s got a downstairs room so you’ll be able to park the horse box almost under his window. Remember to have a nice raw steak ready for him. Tigers can get very hungry when they’re on the road.’

Oh, yes, the brute would find a steak all right, thought Mr Knacksap. A drugged steak which would knock him out, then a clean shot between the eyes so as to make the smallest possible hole in the pelt – and off to be skinned! Mr Knacksap had even arranged for a man who made pet food to take the carcass!

Two thousand pounds clear! Alone in his shop, the furrier smiled and rubbed his hands.

Heckie was up before it was light, feeling extremely happy. She had enjoyed changing Mrs Winneypeg and the chicken farmer, but in ridding the world of Max Swinton she was doing more good than she had ever done before and giving her Li-Li the tiger he wanted so much for his friend!

Daniel was waiting for her at the gates of the park. She had promised he could come just till she met Henry’s brother, Clem. But no sooner had Daniel run up to her, than Mr Knacksap came round the corner in his bowler hat and fur-collared coat.

‘Lionel! I didn’t expect you! Why aren’t you with the horse box?’

‘I just wanted to see you safely into the hotel, dear,’ said the furrier.

But what Mr Knacksap really wanted was to make sure that Heckie didn’t change her mind or go all soft. One thing he couldn’t be doing with was a hippopotamus.

Daniel wasn’t at all pleased to see the furrier, but he had to be polite and together they walked past flower-beds and the pond, and between smooth lawns that were still wet with dew.

Clem had kept his promise. He was waiting by the fountain with the key and the uniform.

‘Everything’s okay,’ he whispered. ‘He’s in room seventeen like I said.’

Heckie thanked him and they waited while he ran back to the hotel where all the guests still slept. Then they followed him, making their way along a gravel path between neatly clipped hedges.

‘Funny, there’s a new statue,’ said Mr Knacksap, pointing with his cane.

‘Yes, there is,’ said Daniel.

Heckie had been thinking of the job ahead of her. Now she looked up, stopped, took a step towards the statue . . .

And another . . .

Then she put back her head and screamed.

Daniel reached her first. ‘What is it?’ he gasped. ‘What’s the matter?’

But Heckie couldn’t speak. She just pointed at the statue with a hand which shook as if she had a dreadful fever.

‘It’s Dora,’ she managed to bring out. ‘Dora Mayberry did it. She’s betrayed me, she’s cheated me! She’s done me out of my triumph! This is her work. I’d know it anywhere!’

Daniel went right up to the statue – and then he understood.

It was Max Swinton who stood there, carefully mounted on a marble slab. Max Swinton’s mean little eyes, his silly moustache, his fat chin, were all there in stone. His trousers, tight over his straining thighs, his bulging beer belly, the Avenger’s badge . . . all were there, for ever and ever, caught in white marble now touched by the first rays of the morning sun.

Chapter Fourteen

The night after she found Max Swinton’s statue, Heckie couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking how wicked Dora Mayberry had been, snatching the politician from her and doing poor Mr Knacksap out of his tiger. Copying Heckie’s hat had been bad enough, but this was far, far worse.