The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

When they got to London they checked into the largest, glitziest hotel in the city and the next day they took a taxi to the largest, glitziest department store, where they bought two long satin wedding dresses and some jars of tomato ketchup. Then they went to a shop which supplied schools and hospitals with specimens for anatomy lessons, and bought half a dozen skeletons.

‘The biggest you’ve got,’ said Lord Trembellow.

After that they looked at rats in a pet shop but they were white and not suitable, so they got the address of a man who trained animals for films and television and he agreed to bring two stunt rats up to Trembellow. Hiring actors to pretend to be the ghosts was easy enough – actors are so often out of work that they will do anything for money – and a man who supplied circuses with their acts said he would try to send them a sawn-up girl.

‘What about the Severed Feet?’ asked Olive. ‘We could ask in a hospital if they could spare any.’

But her father said they wouldn’t bother. ‘We’ve got enough here to scare the living daylights out of everyone.’

When they got back to Trembellow they got to work, but their preparations did not go smoothly. The actor who was supposed to be Ranulf de Torqueville took one look at the rats and fainted and they had to use inflatable rats instead. The two bloodstained brides hated each other on sight, and the sawn-in-half girl got tonsillitis and never turned up at all. To make up for this they ordered another dozen skeletons and got the most expensive computer firm they could find to set the skeletons dancing and leering and leaping out of cupboards.

‘It’ll be all right on the night,’ said Lord Trembellow. ‘It better be, after the money we’ve spent.’

But it wasn’t. The actor who was pretending to be Ranulf was fond of jewellery and as he tore open his shirt, his uncut garnet ring caught on the front rat’s rubber back, causing the animal to deflate with a sad squeak. As the visitors filed past the bloodstained brides, the first bride dug her elbows into her rival, who stumbled forward, causing the bottle of tomato ketchup she had hidden in her bra to fall out and spatter the white shoes of a Mrs Price from Barnsley, who was not amused.

Which left the skeletons. They began well, jumping and clacking and leering and gibbering – but the most expensive computer experts are not always the best. The skeletons danced faster and faster still – there was a high-pitched whining noise, then a whirring … and a jumble of tangled bones came crashing to the floor.

It was unfortunate that the bones were carefully labelled in blue ink for the schools who had ordered them for their studies. A skeleton labelled ‘Property of St Oswald’s College of Further Education’ is not really a very frightening sight.

‘I don’t understand it,’ said Lord Trembellow angrily when the visitors had gone off, jeering and scoffing. ‘Why do the ghosts work at Clawstone and not here?’

Lady Trembellow was lying on the sofa with a hot water bottle on her stomach.

‘Perhaps the Clawstone ghosts are real?’ she suggested timidly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Phyllis,’ snapped her husband.

It was time he sent her off for some more repair work, he thought. Maybe an implant on her lips to give her a bit of a pout. She still didn’t look the way his wife should look.

As for Olive, she looked at her mother with contempt, because she always found it difficult to understand that she herself, who was so clever, had been born to a woman who was completely foolish. A woman who thought that ghosts could possibly exist.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It began like all the summer days at Clawstone since the coming of the ghosts. The children went up to the nursery to say good morning and then all of them went to sit on the wall and look across the park and plan their day.

This particular day promised to be an exceptionally beautiful one, with mist in the valley and a clear pale sky.

‘I was a bit silly, buying wellington boots,’ said Madlyn.

The cattle had become so used to the children that they grazed right under the wall or dozed in the shade of the overhanging elm. The youngest calf, the one that Rollo had seen being born, would look up and twitch his ears when Rollo called down to him.

‘I’m sure I could tame him,’ said Rollo, but he kept to his great-uncle’s rule and did not go into the park alone. ‘In any case they shouldn’t be tamed,’ he said. ‘They have to be wild and free.’

Sunita, of course, could float down into the fields whenever she wanted to, and when she came the cattle just lifted their heads for a moment and went on grazing. Only the oldest cow, the one with the scars and the crumpled horn, limped after her and waited for a special word.

The whole village seemed to share in the happiness of the castle. More visitors to the castle meant more visitors to the hotels and the pubs and the shops, but it wasn’t just that. Ned had been right when he told Madlyn that the cattle who had been saved belonged to everyone.