The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

But Madlyn was a good person, the kind that wanted other people to be happy. Being good like that is bad luck, but there is nothing to be done.

‘Oh, all right,’ said Madlyn at last. ‘But I want proper boots, green ones, and a real oilskin and sou’wester, and an Aran knit sweater, and an electric torch with three different colours...’

She was a person who could always be cheered up by a serious bout of shopping.

CHAPTER TWO

Sir George always woke early on Saturday morning because that was when the castle was open to the public and there was a lot to do.

He lifted his creaking legs out of the four-poster bed, which was propped up at one end with a wooden fish crate to stop it falling down, and padded off to the bathroom. There was no hot water but he was used to that; the boiler was almost as old as Sir George himself and Clawstone was not a place for people who wanted to be comfortable.

It did not take him long to get ready. His hair was so sparse that brushing it was dangerous, so he only passed a comb lightly through what was left of it and put on his long woollen underpants and the mustard-coloured tweed suit he wore summer and winter. But today, because it was Open Day, he also put on a tie. It was a regimental tie because he had served all through the war in the army and got a leg wound which still made him limp.

‘Right! Time to get going,’ he said to himself – and went over to the mantelpiece to fetch the bunch of keys which lived in a box underneath a painting of a large white bull. Once Sir George’s bedroom walls had been covered in valuable paintings, but they had all been sold and only the bull was left. Then he went downstairs to unlock the door of the museum and the dungeon and the armoury, so that the visitors tramping through the castle got their money’s worth.

Sir George’s sister, Miss Emily, also woke early on Open Day, and wound her thin grey plait of hair more carefully round her head than usual. Then she put on the long brown woollen skirt which she had knitted herself. During the many years she had worn it, it had taken on the outlines of her behind, but not at all unpleasantly because she was a thin lady and her behind was small. Today, though, because it was Open Day, she also knotted a scarf round her throat. It was one of those weak-looking chiffon scarves which look as though they need feeding up, but Emily was fond of it. She had found it under a sofa cushion when she went to move a nest of field mice who had decided to breed there, and the slightly mousy smell which clung to it did not trouble her in the least.

Then she fetched her keys, which also lived on the mantelpiece, but not under a painting of a bull – under a painting of a cow. Like her brother George, Emily had once slept in a room full of costly paintings, but now only the cow was left.

The third member of the family never came out of his room on Open Day. This was Howard Percival, a cousin of Sir George’s and Miss Emily’s. He was a middle-aged man with a grey moustache and so shy that if he saw a human being he had not known for at least twenty years he hurried away down the corridors and shut himself up in his room.

Emily always hoped that Howard would decide to help; there were so many things he could have done to interest the visitors, but she knew it was no good asking him. When shyness gets really bad it is like an illness, so she just knocked on his door to tell him that the day had begun and went downstairs to the kitchen where she found Mrs Grove, who came in from the village to help, preparing breakfast.

‘Nothing doing with Mr Howard, then?’ she asked, and Emily sighed and shook her head.

‘His door’s bolted.’

A frown spread over Mrs Grove’s kind, round face. It was her opinion that Sir George and Miss Emily should have been stricter with their cousin. With everyone working so hard for Open Day he could have pulled his weight. But all she said was, ‘I’ll put the coffee on.’

Emily nodded and went through to the storeroom to look at the treasures she had made for the gift shop.