Three Pickled Herrings: Book Two Read online

  In a dormitory down the long, winding passage, Toff’s Band of Baddies were also tucked up in their beds, snug as bugs in rugs. In the guest room, Elvis the Elf was wide awake.

  He couldn’t sleep, not during the day. It felt all wrong. Everything felt all wrong. Oh, dear, what had he done? He should have kept quiet about the wishes. He rather wished he had. Elvis felt a shiver of deep regret, remembering what had happened to Sir Walter Cross. Oh, what a mess, what a terrible mess. As for Doughnut … at least he’d saved him from Sir Walter’s fate, and if only that dear little creature hadn’t run away, he would have looked after him. Elvis needed a friend. But now it was too late.

  He had been a fool to ask Toff the Terrible for help. Elvis hadn’t wanted to punish the humans for their greed, but Toff had insisted that it was part of the deal. Elvis had to agree, for what was he meant to do without his spotty red and white umbrella, his only means of transport?

  Without that umbrella, he was unable to go home to his mum and dad. It didn’t matter how many wishes Elvis had granted Sir Walter Cross, the man had refused to give it back. Now Toff the Terrible had it, and he wouldn’t give it back either. Elvis didn’t know why.

  “Oh, what a mess,” said Elvis to himself.

  The goblins’ house was a mess too.

  Like many elves, Elvis was very tidy and took great pride in his appearance. He was used to things being just so, not like the goblins, who had no manners whatsoever. They dunked their cookies in tea, threw food onto the floor, fired spitballs at one another, and, worst of all, held farting competitions. It was all too much for a sensitive elf. Elvis decided then and there he wouldn’t stay a moment longer. He would escape, and umbrella or no umbrella, he’d tidy up the mess he’d made as best he could.

  He took his suitcase from under the bed and neatly packed his socks and vests and his new red tweed coat, still wrapped in tissue paper. He put on his orange coat and his bright green hat, wrapped a long purple scarf around his delicate throat, and quietly closed the guest room door behind him. He crept like a mouse in velvet slippers down the long corridor past Toff the Terrible’s quarters. He could hear Toff snoring, an awful sound that shook the roots of the old tree. On he went into the Great Hall. Slumped by the front door, surrounded by half-eaten chocolate cookies, were two goblin guards, asleep on duty. This was the tricky part. Elvis balanced the suitcase on his head and trod daintily between the tangle of legs. Now all he had to do was unbolt the door, and he would be free. The door creaked open, and to Elvis’s relief, the goblin guards snored on. Outside the snow fell. It was much deeper than Elvis had thought, and he tripped. A branch snapped. Underneath him a wire pinged, and a bell started ringing.

  The front door burst open, and there stood two furious-looking goblin guards. Elvis scrambled to his feet and took hold of his suitcase.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked one of them.

  Elvis felt his tummy turn to jelly.

  “Oh, just out to take some air,” said Elvis, backing away.

  The goblin chuckled. “You think you can escape us? Well, think again.”

  Elvis turned and ran as fast as his little legs would carry him.

  The goblin guards chased him for a while but soon gave up. All the chocolate had made them stout, and they ran out of puff quickly. Elvis was now out of reach.

  “I will have you roasted for this!” one shouted after him.

  What a mess, thought Elvis. Oh, dear, what a mess.

  Chapter Twelve

  It had stopped snowing by the time Emily, Buster, and Fidget reached the alleyway that led to Wings & Co. Emily, who was carrying Doughnut, was not in a good mood. Neither, for that matter, was Fidget.

  “It wasn’t my fault we got kicked out of Mountview Drive,” said Buster resentfully.

  “It was,” said Emily. “It most definitely was.”

  “No,” said Buster firmly. “I was only doing what all good detectives do.”

  “What’s that?” asked Fidget.

  “I was thinking,” said Buster.

  “Oh,” sighed Emily, “give me strength.”

  “If you hadn’t gone wandering off and asking questions,” Buster said, “we would still be there. I told you Aunt Lettice had a temper.”

  “At least I found out something,” said Emily, opening the shop door. “And I would have found out a whole lot more if it wasn’t for you. I’m sure the crime at Mountview Drive is connected to our cases.”

  “It’s a lot of fuss over a trifle,” said Buster.

  “Put a fishbone in it,” said Fidget. “If you had stayed put, we might now know what Doughnut has to say. We might even know who murdered Sir Walter.”

  “Look,” said Buster, who was fed up with everyone attacking him, “I hadn’t eaten anything all day.”

  “Oh, whatever,” said Emily, who was so cross that she thought it was hardly worth talking to him at all.

  Inside they were greeted by the magic lamp.

  “At last!” it said. “There’s a right how’s-your-genie going on upstairs. I can’t find the living room, and the keys are locked in.”

  “That’s all we need,” said Fidget. “Even the shop has taken umbrage.”

  “Taken what?” said Buster.

  “Umbrage,” said Emily, putting Doughnut down. “It means it’s taken offense. In other words, it’s as cross with you as I am.”

  “It might just be having an off day,” said Buster.

  “I doubt it,” said Fidget. “Unless…” He stopped, his whiskers twitching.

  The building had been designed many moons ago by a magician. It was, as Emily knew all too well, unlike any other shop. For a start, it was built on four iron legs with griffin’s talons, and when the fancy took it, the shop could get up and walk away. It also had a rather annoying habit of moving the upstairs rooms around, although Emily had thought that recently this particular problem had settled down. She was about to go and see if she could sort it out when Fidget stopped her.

  “Wait, my little ducks,” said Fidget. “I think someone has broken in.”

  “A burglar, you mean?” said Emily.

  “Spot on the fishcake, my little ducks. The shop is in lockdown.”

  “I can’t take it,” said the lamp. “It’s all too much for me. Do you think Harpella—”

  “Pull yourself together,” said Fidget. “Where’s your mettle?”

  “I’m an empty lamp,” it said. “Any old genie or dragon’s tooth could get inside me. Then where would I be? Lost, lost, I tell you!”

  “How irritating you are,” said Buster.

  “Not as irritating as you,” said Emily, picking up the lamp.

  “Sweet mistress,” said the lamp. “Thank you.”

  Doughnut started to growl, his tail out straight, his nose sniffing the air. He stood at the foot of the stairs and barked loudly. Emily was about to call him when there was a noise of something or somebody whirling down the stairs toward them at great speed.

  “Scary,” is what Emily remembered.

  “Hairy,” is how Buster described it.

  “Fishy,” is what Fidget had to say.

  In a flash of red smoke, it was gone, leaving behind a smell of farts and a broken front door.

  Doughnut and the magic lamp were nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mr. Rollo, the tailor, was in his shop studying his account books. Nothing added up. It was hard to believe that everything had gone so terribly wrong. Three days ago, his wife had moved back to her mum’s. Rosalind couldn’t cope with the damp in the house. The carpets were already soggy. It was enough to make the tailor cry. He was about as low as the lowest branch of a weeping willow. When the shop bell rang, he looked around for his glasses, but they, like everything else, had vanished. Unable to see properly, he went to explain that he was closed, but when he opened the door, all he could make out was an explosion of colors—green, orange, and purple—somewhere near his knees.

  “
Yes?” said the tailor to this blurred vision. “How can I help you?”

  “Can I come in?” asked the visitor. “There is something I need to talk to you about.”

  Mr. Rollo didn’t like to be unfriendly, but he wasn’t in the mood for a chat.

  “Well, not now, if you don’t mind.”

  “But I do,” said the visitor. “Do you remember me?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mr. Rollo. “Well, it’s hard to tell. I am, at the moment, well, as blind as a wombat. Are you from the theater?”

  “No,” said Elvis. “Are you sure that you don’t remember me?”

  “Should I?” asked Mr. Rollo.

  Elvis felt a great weight had been lifted from him. If Mr. Rollo didn’t recognize him, he could put things right without anyone knowing he was to blame for the mess in the first place.

  “Can I offer you a cup of tea?” asked Mr. Rollo.

  Elvis, who had been on the run ever since escaping the goblin den, couldn’t think of anything nicer. He put down his suitcase.

  While Mr. Rollo made the tea, Elvis sat in a chair and studied the empty shop. If only he could go home and forget about humans and wishes altogether. Mr. Rollo reappeared carrying a tea tray. He was wearing his glasses.

  “Well,” said the tailor. “There’s a thing. They were on top of my head all along.”

  He handed Elvis a mug. Now he was able to make out who his guest was.

  “Of course I remember you—Mr. Elvis Elf,” said the tailor. “How could I forget? I made you a bright red tweed coat.”

  Elvis sank back into the chair.

  “Well, well. Good days, those were,” continued Mr. Rollo. “I remember I told you all that I wished for. Well, blow my socks off if my wishes didn’t come true. You brought me great luck, Mr. Elf.” He sighed. “Sadly, it’s all gone.” Then he added, “I made you a vest as a way of saying thank you. Silly, I know, but … well … I thought all that good fortune might have had something to do with you.”

  “Me?” said Elvis, his face going bright red. “Most definitely not.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, Mr. Elf,” said Mr. Rollo. He started to search his empty drawers. “I know it’s here. I know it is. Here, I’ve found it.” He handed Elvis a small item wrapped in tissue paper. “This is for you. I would have sent it, but I didn’t have your address.”

  Elvis opened the parcel. Inside was a card on which was written in large handwriting, “Thank you, Mr. Elvis Elf, for all the luck you brought me.”

  “Oh dear,” said Elvis. “What a mess.”

  “You don’t like it?” asked the tailor.

  “It’s perfect. It’s the best present ever. You were really going to thank me?”

  “I was,” said Mr. Rollo.

  They were interrupted by a loud rat-a-tat-tat on the shop door.

  Elvis jumped up, looking not unlike a hedgehog caught in the lights of a three-wheeled car. He was certain that it must be Toff the Terrible, come to make roast beef of him.

  Instead, it was a tall, wiry man in a rather well-cut coat.

  Mr. Rollo greeted him warmly.

  “Mr. Gubbins, a pleasure to see you again. The coat looks, well, very fine indeed.”

  Mr. Gubbins cleared his throat.

  “I am here on official business,” he said. “Mr. Rollo, I must ask you to hand over the keys of the property and then skedaddle.”

  “Couldn’t I just tidy up first?”

  “No. I will say this again without compunction. Get out.”

  Mr. Rollo just managed to grab his coat before he and Elvis were kicked out onto the snowy pavement. Mr. Rollo helped Elvis to his feet.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “No,” said Elvis.

  The shop door opened again, and the elf’s suitcase flew out and landed at his feet, followed by the vest.

  Elvis knew he had been a very foolish elf indeed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Emily lay on her bed watching as the ceiling turned into a sky, all golden, with pink clouds floating past. There’s a lot to be said, she thought, for living above a magic shop.

  Yet something about that sky reminded Emily of airplanes. And airplanes reminded her of her mother and father. And the huge unanswered question that she often asked herself: Why had they never come back to find her?

  Emily had been abandoned as a baby, left in a hatbox at Stansted Airport. The story she always told herself when feeling a touch on the blue side was this: Her mother was a princess, and her father was a Gypsy. They had been trying to escape the fury of the king, who had never wanted his daughter to marry the Gypsy in the first place. They had made it as far as Stansted Airport, where there had been a most terrible fight with the king’s men. The Gypsy, wounded in the arm, had accidentally dropped the hatbox, leaving Emily fast asleep inside with only a trick clock for company. Her parents made good their escape, caught a plane, and flew away.

  The trouble was that Emily couldn’t understand why they had never come back to find her. She wondered if her parents had been kidnapped in some faraway land, or taken hostage by pirates, or were prisoners in the dungeons of a goblin king, a place full of dragons that liked nothing better than to feed on the toes of humans. If that was the case, thought Emily, maybe she needed to rescue them. But how? That was the question.

  The clouds on the ceiling disappeared, and in their place was a red-and-white-striped puppet theater with Mr. Punch holding a baby.

  “Hello, hello,” said Punch.

  “Are you talking to me?” asked Emily.

  “Yes, I am,” said Punch. “Here, catch the baby.”

  It fell with a thud on Emily’s bed.

  “That’s the way to do it,” said Punch.

  Emily laughed out loud as Mr. Punch’s wife, Judy, appeared in the puppet theater.

  “Where’s my baby?” said Judy.

  “Here,” said Emily.

  “No, it’s not,” said Punch.

  “Yes, it is,” said Emily, standing on tiptoe. Judy leaned down and took the baby back.

  “Give me the baby,” said Punch.

  “No,” said Judy. “It’s my baby.”

  Punch grabbed hold of the baby, but Judy held on to its feet and they pulled it one way, then the other.

  “That’s not nice,” said Emily, laughing. “Not nice at all.”

  Punch and Judy stopped what they were doing. Judy leaned over the side of the stage.

  “Who said we were nice?” she said.

  “But you have a baby,” said Emily.

  “That doesn’t make us nice,” said Judy.

  And with that, the Punch and Judy show vanished and the ceiling went back to normal.

  Emily sat down on the bed. It was, she thought, a good point. The princess and the Gypsy might not be at all nice. They might be even worse than her adoptive parents had been, and they were pretty terrible. What if she found them and they didn’t want Emily to live with Fidget? What if they said she couldn’t stay with Wings & Co.? That would be worse than anything she could imagine.

  “Ah, here you are.” Lettice Lovage walked into Emily’s bedroom and sat next to her on the bed. “I’ve had a little chat with my nephew. Now, I just wanted to say, deary, you did a wonderful job with my goddaughter, Pan. No one could have done better. She came out of her room and told me that she had been a fool.”

  “Good,” said Emily. “But that doesn’t solve the mystery of who granted all those wishes.”

  “Quite right, deary,” said Lettice. “So where’s that dog you wanted me to talk to?”

  “He’s gone,” said Emily sadly.

  “What do you mean, gone, deary?”

  “There was this red tornado,” explained Emily. “It whizzed down the stairs, and the next thing we knew, Doughnut and the magic lamp had vanished.”

  “Never! Are the keys safe, deary?”

  “Yes,” said Emily. “The shop locked them in the living room and disappeared it. But what about Doughnu
t and the lamp?”

  “Personally, deary, I was never keen on that lamp. Dogs are a different matter altogether. The dog we must find.”

  “Tea’s ready,” Fidget called up from the kitchen.

  “He’s been busy making cupcakes,” explained Lettice, “with red and green icing. He told me they’re your favorite.”

  Emily stood up and followed Lettice to the door. Before she left her bedroom, Emily glanced up at the ceiling again and saw Judy’s silhouette there.

  “Families come in all shapes and sizes,” she heard the puppet say.

  Chapter Fifteen

  What Lettice Lovage had said to Buster, Emily was never to know, but the result was a transformation of sorts. Now here was the detective of whom James Cardwell had spoken so fondly. Buster Ignatius Spicer was on the case.

  As Emily, Fidget, and he had their tea and cupcakes, Buster went over the facts. First, there was the murder of Sir Walter Cross.

  “It can’t have been a human who bumped him off, for no human has the power to shoot a man into the air just like that. Whoever committed the crime must be from the fairy world. Still, there seems to be no good reason why anyone would want to do away with him.”

  “Perhaps he made wishes, like Pan?” suggested Emily. “James thought Sir Walter was being helped by someone in the fairy realm. But there must be a reason why the fairy was so generous.”