Witch's Business (20 page)

Then the parents swept down on them, and there was kissing and shaking and questions. “What possessed you?” “Why have you been out all night?” “Where have you all
been
?” “Buster, for two pins I'd take my belt to you!”

None of the children could do much except point to the heap of treasure, and say, “Look what we found. It's the Adams's stuff.”

“I believe it
is
, you know,” said the Aunt, striding among the parents and, Jess thought, looking a good deal less vague than usual. The Aunt fetched Vernon a wallop on the back which nearly knocked Mr. Wilkins over, too. “Good for you, shadow!” she said. Frank thought Mr. Wilkins looked cross.

“Can you identify this as yours, sir?” a policeman asked Mr. Adams.

Mr. Adams, very cheerfully, pushed through beside the Aunt. He did not look vague, either. “Yes,” he said. “I can. I've got the list in my desk.”

“Three cheers!” said Martin. “Now they won't mind about the house.”

“Why should we?” said Mr. Adams. “It was far too large for us, you know.” Martin did not know how to answer.

The other policeman was looking at the ruined hut. “Any of you children know what became of Miss Iremonger?” he asked.

“The cat ate her,” said Jess, and of course no one believed her. Her father told her not to make stupid jokes. Jess was nearly in tears at being scolded, when she found someone who did believe her.

It was the lady who had given her the Eyes. She came pushing through the people to Jess, and she had Frankie and Jenny hanging on to each of her arms.

“Well done, Jessica,” she said. Then she winked. “Puss in Boots?” she said.

Jess nodded. The lady looked quite different now—very happy and young and nice.

“This is my mother,” Jenny said proudly. “She's our mother.”

“She came back,” said Frankie. “Daddy went to fetch her, in spite of what Biddy said.”

“Oh, I am glad!” said Jess.

Then, while the policemen were importantly gathering up the treasure, there was more shouting from the direction of the allotments.

“Come back, you little nuisances!” somebody shouted.

Everyone looked round and saw Kevin and Silas, running along the path as hard as they could go, with Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Wilkins after them, as hard as
they
could go.

“Silas ought to be in bed,” Mrs. Wilkins panted. “Stop him!”

Silas would not be stopped. He ran until he reached Vernon, and when he reached him, he threw his arms round him and butted his head into Vernon's stomach. Vernon bent down to hear what he said.

“What's he saying?” asked Frank.

Vernon grinned. “Says he was coming to rescue us,” he said. “They both were.”

“How
brave
!” said Jenny.

Silas turned round, very shyly, and smiled. His face, Jess and Frank were relieved to see, was the right size again.

Kevin had been caught by Mr. Briggs and picked up. But he turned round and shouted down to the Piries, “You did it?”

“Yes,” said Jess.

“Then I owes you five pence,” Kevin said.

“Forget it,” said Frank.

There is not very much more to tell, except that Frank and Jess made some money after all. Mr. Adams called the next day and gave them each two pounds.

“After all,” he said, “I seem to have got my Own Back, so it's only fair you should be paid.”

Jess allowed Frank to take the money this time. They had found the treasure, after all, she said, so that Mr. Adams could pay for the broken chimney and gutter. And Jess had a feeling, too, that it was she who had told Mr. Adams that the lady called Jessica was at Martin's house. So it seemed fair. But they never could discover whether Mr. Adams understood about Biddy or not.

Nobody else could understand where Biddy had got to. Jess gave up trying to explain. She and Frank made a number of efforts to catch the cat, but it would never let anyone come near it. It continued to live on the waste patch, and every time Jess set eyes on it, it seemed to have grown fatter and sleeker. In the end they left it alone. It was obviously quite happy the way it was.

The gang spent a lot of time near the hut searching for more money and treasure. They never found much, but sometimes, other people who least expected it would come across money there and, at times, a brooch or so. No one knew whether these belonged to the Adams family, or whether they were things Biddy had taken from somewhere else, but it made the waste ground very interesting.

As for Buster, he kept his word about being friends with Piries, and with the others, too. Nobody could call him a reformed character. He still had his gang. He still used slimy and disemboweled language. But he was not so much of a bully after that. Perhaps, in some ways, he did learn a lesson. At all events, Frank and Jess, and Vernon, too, became very friendly with the whole gang.

The Aunt's picture did rather well. It got shown by an important gallery in London, and Frank and Jess and Martin and Vernon were allowed to go up to London for the day to meet the Aunt and see the picture. Frank thought it was just as triangular and thick as before, and Martin agreed. But Jess and Vernon thought it had its points.

“We sort of crystallize out of it,” Jess explained.

“Like from a lot of mirrors,” said Vernon.

“Bravo!” said the Aunt.

But, to their intense disgust, the picture was called
Urchins
.

“And we're
not
!” Jess whispered, looking at them all in their best clothes.

“We were that day. A bit,” said Frank.

“Scarlet all over,” said the Aunt, “like Buster's language. Come on. Knickerbocker Glories all round to celebrate. And milk shakes, too, if your innards will stand it.”

“Oh, they will,” said Vernon earnestly.

In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.

Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success! Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies' hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mother died when Sophie was two years old and her sister Lettie was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant, a pretty blonde girl called Fanny. Fanny shortly gave birth to the third sister, Martha. This ought to have made Sophie and Lettie into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Lettie was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Fanny treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor Martha in the least.

Mr. Hatter was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town. Sophie was the most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her sisters and grooming Martha to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Fanny was always busy in the shop, Sophie was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of screaming and hair-pulling between those younger two. Lettie was by no means resigned to being the one who, next to Sophie, was bound to be the least successful.

“It's not fair!” Lettie would shout. “Why should Martha have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!”

To which Martha always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.

Then Sophie would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with her needle. As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she made for Lettie, the May Day before this story really starts, which Fanny said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.

About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again. It was said the Witch had threatened the life of the King's daughter and that the King had commanded his personal magician, Wizard Suliman, to go into the Waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard Suliman had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had got himself killed by her.

So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly sure that the Witch had moved out of the Waste again and was about to terrorize the country the way she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly at night. What made it all the scarier was that the castle did not stay in the same place. Sometimes it was a tall black smudge on the moors to the northwest, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the east, and sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last farm to the north. You could see it actually moving sometimes, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty gray gusts. For a while everyone was certain that the castle would come right down into the valley before long, and the Mayor talked of sending to the King for help.

But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Howl. Wizard Howl was bad enough. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Sophie, Lettie, and Martha, along with all the other girls in Market Chipping, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them. They wondered what use Wizard Howl found for all the souls he collected.

They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Hatter died suddenly just as Sophie was old enough to leave school for good. It then appeared that Mr. Hatter had been altogether too proud of his daughters. The school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Fanny sat down in the parlor in the house next door to the shop and explained the situation.