Not Just a Witch

At eight o’clock they gave up and left him. Basil went on screaming for a while and then – miracle of miracles – he fell silent. But when Daniel looked across at Sumi for another dose of spelling he saw that she was lying back against the sofa cushions. Her long dark hair streamed across her face and she was fast asleep.

Daniel should now have felt much better. Sumi was asleep, there was no need to spell separate and Basil was quiet. And for about ten minutes he did.

Then he began to worry. Why was Basil so quiet? Had he choked? Had he bitten his tongue out and bled to death?

Daniel waited a little longer. Then he crept upstairs and stood listening by the door.

Basil wasn’t dead. He was snoring. Daniel was about to go downstairs again when something about the noise that Basil was making caught his attention. Basil was snoring, but he was snoring . . . nicely. Daniel couldn’t think of any other way of putting it. It was a cosy, snuffling snore and it surprised Daniel because he didn’t think that Basil could make any noise that wasn’t horrid.

Daniel put his head round the door . . . took a few steps into the room.

And stopped dead.

At first he simply didn’t believe it. What had happened was so amazing, so absolutely wonderful, that it couldn’t be real. Only it was real. Daniel blinked and rubbed his eyes and shook himself, but it was still there, curled up on the silken quilt: not a screaming, disagreeable baby, but the most enchanting bulldog puppy with a flat, wet nose, a furrowed forehead and a blob of a tail.

Daniel stood looking down at it, feeling quite light-headed with happiness, and the puppy opened its eyes. They were the colour of liquorice and brimming with soul. There are people who say that dogs don’t smile, but people who say that are silly. The bulldog grinned. It sat up and wagged its tail. It licked Daniel’s hands.

‘Oh, I do so like you,’ said Daniel to the little, wrinkled dog.

And the dog liked Daniel. He lay on his back so that Daniel could scratch his stomach; he jumped up to try and lick Daniel’s face, but his legs were too short and he collapsed again. Daniel had longed and longed for a dog to keep him company in that tall, grey house to which his parents came back so late. Now it seemed like a miracle, finding this funny, loving, squashed-looking little dog in place of that horrible baby.

Because Basil had gone. There was no doubt about it. He wasn’t in the cot and he wasn’t under it. He wasn’t anywhere. Daniel searched the bathroom, the other bedrooms . . . Nothing. Someone must have come in and taken Basil and put the little dog there instead. A kidnapper? Someone wanting to hold Basil to ransom? But why leave the little dog? The Boothroyds might not be very bright, but they could tell the difference between their baby and a dog.

I must go and tell Sumi, he thought, and it was only then that he became frightened, seeing what was to come. The screaming parents, the police, the accusations. Perhaps they’d be sent to prison for not looking after Basil properly. And where was Basil? He might be an awful baby, but nobody wanted him harmed.

Daniel tore himself away from the bulldog and studied the room.

How could the kidnappers have got in? The front door was locked, so was the back and the window was bolted. He walked over to the fireplace. It was the old-fashioned kind with a wide chimney. But that was ridiculous – even if the kidnappers had managed to come down it, how could they have got the baby off the roof?

Then he caught sight of something spilled in the empty grate: a yellowish coarse powder, like breadcrumbs.

He scooped some up, felt it between his fingers, put it to his nose. Not breadcrumbs. Goldfish food. He knew because the only pet his parents had allowed him to keep was a goldfish he’d won in a fair, and it had died almost at once because of fungus on its fins. And he knew too where the goldfish food came from: the corner pet shop, two streets away from his house. The old man who kept it made it himself; it had red flecks in it and always smelled very odd.

Daniel stood there and his forehead was almost as wrinkled as the little dog’s. For the pet shop had been sold a week ago to a queer-looking woman. Daniel had seen her moving about among the animals and talking to herself. She’d been quite alone, just the sort of woman who might snatch a baby to keep her company. He’d read about women like that taking babies from their prams while their mothers were inside a supermarket. The police usually caught them – they weren’t so much evil as crazy.

Daniel gave the puppy a last pat and went downstairs. Sumi was still asleep, one hand trailing over the side of the sofa. For a moment he wondered whether to wake her. Then he let himself very quietly out of the house and began to run.

Chapter Three