The Mischief of the Mistletoe

Chapter 11

Turnip popped out of the flower bed just in time to see a dark figure loom up in the doorway in front of Miss Dempsey.

It might have been dark, but it was unmistakably male, which didn’t seem at all the thing in an academy for young ladies. As Turnip knew from Sally — and their parents, who had paid close attention to such points — the school was designated a male-free area after dark, with all male teachers and staff packed off back to their respective lodgings. The only man who was allowed to be on the grounds was the gardener, and it seemed highly unlikely he would be in the house when his job was to be active outside it.

As Miss Dempsey held up her candle, the man shied back, flinging up an arm to shield his eyes from the light or his face from view.

Miss Dempsey advanced on the newcomer. “What — ,” she began.

Whoever he was, he wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. Looking left, then right, the intruder summed up his options and charged for the window. There was one slight problem. Miss Dempsey was in his path.

She swerved. He swerved.

Unfortunately, they both swerved in the same direction.

Time to make his daring entrance and charge to the rescue, sweeping away all malefactors with a hey-ho and a heave-to. Turnip flung himself onto the sill, only to find himself tangled in the folds of a white linen curtain that someone had inconveniently drawn across the window. As Turnip struggled against a tangle of curtains, the intruder feinted to the side, trying to make a run around Miss Dempsey. His shoulder banged into her side, sending her flailing for balance, just as Turnip lost the battle with the curtain and went tumbling back into the flower bed. From his semi-prone position, he could see Miss Dempsey’s candlestick arc through the air, trailing a brief plume of flame like a falling star before winking into darkness.

From the black nothingness came a feminine cry of surprise and distress as Miss Dempsey landed with a thump flat on her rump on the drawing-room floor.

“Sorry,” mumbled the thief. His accent was pure Yorkshire. “Sorry. Sorry.”

Turnip groped for the edge of the window frame, banging his hand on the side of the window in the process.

The man in the room appeared to be having similar problems. There was a crashing noise as a small table went over, taking with it the intruder and several china knickknacks.

Turnip clawed away the curtain, shoving the window up high enough that he wouldn’t bang his head on the way through. He had just swung a foot up onto the ledge when a flurry of activity sounded in the hallway. The sound started low, the merest swish and rustle of fabric, like moths battering their wings against a window, and then gained in intensity, with hisses, whispers, and the slap of bare feet against the floor.

Like a cork exploding from a champagne bottle, someone else shot into the room.

“Don’t worry, Miss Dempsey! We’re here now!” cried an exuberant female voice.

Turnip froze, his foot propped at an uncomfortable angle on the window ledge.

“Each for each, that’s what we teach!” caroled another, calling out the school motto. Turnip knew that voice. He knew it far too well. “Ouch! That was my foot! Lizzy!”

“That wasn’t me, it was Agnes,” protested the first voice.

“Sorry,” said Agnes, in a small voice.

“Girls?” ventured Miss Dempsey, from somewhere on the floor. She sounded more than a little bit breathless. Turnip knew just how she felt.

“We’ve come to your rescue,” explained Sally. “We thought you might need us. Ouch!”

“Sorry,” said Lizzy, sounding anything but. “That was me this time. Well, it’s dark in here.”

“Does anyone see the villain?” demanded Sally. “There is a villain, isn’t there?”

The villain had very wisely decided to conduct his own exit. Turnip could hear a low scrabbling sound not far from the window, like someone crawling on his hands and knees.

“Quick!” exclaimed Sally. “He’s trying to escape!”

As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, Turnip could just vaguely make out his sister snatching up a notebook off the windowsill and rushing forward, wielding it like a club, only to go catapulting over the same table the intruder had knocked over before. The notebook spiraled through the air, spewing bits of paper, before landing thwack on the head of the burglar, who let out a loud curse.

“Oooh, there he goes!” squealed Lizzy, and blundered into Agnes, who reeled sideways and stepped on Sally, who was still on the floor in front of the table.

There was a flurry of feet and the sound of more crockery breaking and a good deal of gasping and stumbling and stubbing of toes and “mind the table!” during which Miss Dempsey made an attempt to call the group to order, Sally was stepped on again as she was trying to get up, Lizzy Reid tripped over the hem of her own robe, Sally and Lizzy banged heads, and Agnes exclaimed, in tones of wonder, “I think I’ve got him!”

“Quick, quick, tie him up,” urged Lizzy, jiggling up and down in place rather than risking the scattered furniture.

“Use my sash! Here!” Sally charged forward, a long strip of fabric dangling from her hand, and promptly tripped over the exact same table. Her disembodied voice rose eerily from the floor. “Who left that there?”

“Not me,” said Agnes quickly.

Taking advantage of her inattention, the intruder wrenched himself free from Agnes’s grasp, making a dash for the window.

“Not so fast!” yelled Lizzy, and flung herself chest-first at the intruder. He went down hard, landing with a gasp on the floor, Lizzy on top of him.

Turnip winced in sympathy. That had sounded jolly painful.

“You got him! You got him!” exclaimed Turnip’s sister, jumping up and down like a little girl on Christmas morning.

Lizzy planted her bottom firmly on the intruder’s back. “He’s not going anywhere,” she said smugly.

“Girls!” exclaimed Miss Dempsey, trying belatedly to exert some control over the situation. “Don’t — ”

Lizzy gave a little bounce and the intruder made a sound like a dying accordion as all the air rushed out of his lungs.

“ — squash him.”

“Sorry, Miss Dempsey,” said Sally. “Who has the candle?”

“I do,” pronounced a new voice.

Light washed over the room. It glinted off shards of broken porcelain, pooled in the folds of white linen nightdresses, limned the sides of fallen furniture, and blared like twin beacons off the spectacles of the woman holding the candle.

Miss Climpson stepped into the room, the starched ruffles of her dressing gown rustling stiffly as she moved. Her graying brown hair was confined beneath a nightcap of truly impressive proportions. From his vantage point on the far side of the window, it reminded Turnip of a large muffin. A decidedly distressed muffin.

Furniture and girls in white nightdresses littered the room, none of it where it ought to be. Bits of white porcelain were scattered across the blue carpet from what had once been a particularly ugly china cupid. A Meissen shepherdess lay headless in the hearth. Sally, still lying where she had landed, sprawled on the floor in front of an overturned table, her nightcap squashed to one side and her braid over one shoulder. Lizzy Reid was sitting proudly on the back of some poor sod while Agnes Wooliston attempted to locate his hands so she could string a pink-edged sash around them.

Lizzy looked decidedly pleased with herself. It was impossible to discern how the intruder looked. His face was pressed into the ground, from which emerged, from time to time, the odd moaning noise.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Miss Climpson murmured, surveying the tattered remnants of her domain. “Oh dear. Miss Dempsey?”

Unlike the girls, Miss Dempsey was still fully dressed, but her hair had burst its pins, unraveling down her back in a burst of congealed sunshine. It looked, somehow, more dramatic against the demure gray of her day dress than it would have had she been in a nightdress like the others. Turnip had never seen her hair down before; it had always been ruthlessly coiled away, stuck about with pins, with a bonnet squashed down on top of it for good measure. He had known it was blond, but he would never have imagined it would be quite so exuberant.

But, then, that was Miss Dempsey all over, wasn’t it? She pretended to be all shy and quiet, and then there she was, chasing down prowlers in the middle of the night.

At the moment, she was holding a chair up in front of her like a lion-keeper at the Tower, prepared to hold the villain at bay should he make another rush for the window.

She very slowly lowered the chair to the ground as she turned to face the headmistress. “Miss Climpson? I’m afraid we’ve had something of an, er, incident.”

Lizzy Reid giggled.

Sally flapped a hand to shush her.

Miss Climpson blinked behind her thick spectacles, her candle making a slow arc as she took in the scene in front of her. “Is that my china cupid?” she asked first, and then, “Is that a man beneath Miss Reid?”

“I am afraid so,” said Miss Dempsey.

Miss Climpson shook her head. “Roaming around the school in the middle of the night, breaking objets d’art, sitting on strange men. Girls! What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“The cupid was already broken when we got here?” suggested Agnes.

“Please.” Miss Dempsey placed herself between her charges and the headmistress. “Let me explain.”

Sally stepped forward in front of Miss Dempsey. “We heard noises, Miss Climpson. So we asked Miss Dempsey to investigate.”

“Just to be safe,” chimed in Lizzy Reid from her position on top of the prowler. “One can’t be too careful in these dangerous times.”

“True, true, true,” agreed Miss Climpson, her stiff ruffles rustling. “But there is still no call for sitting on him.”

“It was only until we could find something with which to tie him.” Agnes Wooliston rushed to her friend’s defense.

The intruder groaned.

Miss Climpson released a short exhalation of air that might have been a sigh. “Miss Reid?”

Lizzy looked at her with wide, innocent eyes. “Yes?”

“We do not sit on people in this establishment. Settees are for sitting; chairs are for sitting; not — ”

“Hideous midnight intruders?” suggested Lizzy helpfully.

“Even those, even those.” It was a sign of Miss Climpson’s agitation that she said it only twice, not three times. “Kindly remove yourself from that man’s person, Miss Reid. Not later, not soon, but right now.”

Lizzy scrambled off the recumbent intruder, who seemed considerably flatter than when he had entered. He looked as though he were trying to become one with the carpet.

Miss Climpson wagged a finger at Lizzy. “That sort of thing is dreadful for your posture. You know what I always say. A crooked back makes for a crooked mind!”

“Yes, Miss Climpson,” chorused all three girls.

“But Miss Climpson,” ventured Agnes. “What about the intruder?”

Miss Climpson frowned down at the prone man. “I suppose we could ask the gardener to take him out. He doesn’t go at all with the rest of the drawing room. He would be very hard to explain to parents when they came to call.” Taking up the fireplace poker, which was lying, in the aftermath of the fray, between an overturned chair and the broken shepherdess, she prodded the man gently in the side. “Sir? Sir?”

The man groaned again.

“Now, now,” prodded Miss Climpson. “It isn’t at all healthy to lie on your stomach like that. It impedes both the digestion and the flow of air to the brain.”

It might have been concern for his digestion that got the man moving, or it might have been the tip of the poker being applied to his side. With a little help from Miss Climpson’s poker, he levered himself slowly up onto his elbows, shaking his head from side to side as though to clear it.

Beneath the tousled mess of hair, his lips moved. His voice was scratchy and just barely audible. “I can make-a dee explanation.”

Everyone stared at him.

“Oh, Lord,” gasped Lizzy. “It’s the music master.”

And so it was. His hair was all about his face and one of his mustachios had come loose in the fray, but it was still, unmistakably, the same man who had been playing the lute at Farley Castle the week before.

Turnip frowned at the music master. It wasn’t beyond the realm of comprehension that the music master might be their spy. He had a foreign name, a strange accent, and access to both the school and Farley Castle. But why sneak in at dead of night when he had perfectly legitimate access by day? No one had ever accused Turnip of being a master of common sense — quite the contrary, in fact — but even he could see that.

Miss Climpson waved her candle at the recumbent music master. “Signor Marconi? What are you doing here?”

“Errrrrr,” groaned Signor Marconi.

Not much of an excuse, that, but to be fair, he had until quite recently had a well-fed sixteen-year-old perched on his back.

“Miss Dempsey,” said Miss Climpson. “Help Signor Marconi to a chair. Proper posture is very important to the workings of the mind. It’s all about the flow of the blood.”

Miss Dempsey obediently stepped forward as instructed. The music master clutched at the hand she extended, nearly sending them both reeling as he staggered clumsily to his feet. Miss Dempsey yanked him to his feet with less than complete solicitude.

“What were you doing lurking about down here?” Miss Dempsey demanded, with some asperity. “Why didn’t you simply make yourself known when you saw me?”

“I came-a for da music,” he said in wounded tones. “Den de girls, they jump on me and break-a my bones. It is dee insult to my art.” As he spoke, his right mustachio dropped off entirely.

Miss Dempsey folded her arms across her chest. “No one would have jumped on anyone if you had identified yourself when I asked.”

“Yes, yes,” said Miss Climpson distractedly, waving Miss Dempsey to silence. “You came for your music. Your music?”

“I give-a dee lesson tomorrow morning. I need-a de music.” Signor Marconi seemed to have rediscovered his Italian accent.

Even to Turnip’s ears, his excuse sounded as phony as his mustachios.

“Where,” asked Miss Dempsey, “is this music?”

Signor Marconi looked from left to right, as though hoping that it might materialize of its own accord. “In the music room?” he said hopefully. Belatedly remembering to look aggrieved, he drooped back in his chair. “All I wanted was to fetch-a de music and go, when de harpies, they, er, dey attack-a me, with de tooth and de claw.”

“Tooth?” demanded Sally indignantly. “Claw? I never laid a hand on the man.”

“I only sat on him,” said Lizzy beatifically. “No teeth or claws involved.”

Agnes looked at her fingernails. “Mine are too short to be claws.”

“Girls,” said Miss Dempsey, and they subsided.

“How did you get in, Signor Marconi?” asked Miss Climpson. “The building is meant to be locked.”

“Meant” being the operative word. As far as Turnip could tell, the structure was as porous as a hunk of cheap cheese. They could start charging a toll for all the people coming in and out at night and save on the tuition.

Signor Marconi’s eyes darted around and caught on the flapping curtains. He flung out an arm, pointing at the window for all he was worth. “Through the — er, da window. I came in-a through da window.”

Not this window, he hadn’t. Turnip could have vouched for that if he hadn’t been crouching beneath said window. Of course, if he hadn’t been crouching beneath the window, he wouldn’t have been in a position to vouch for anything of the kind. It was quite the tangle.

“Why would you do a thing like that?” asked Miss Climpson, in what appeared to be genuine confusion.

“Because da door, it was a-closed.”

“I am glad to hear that,” said Miss Climpson with great decision. “It would be quite worry-making to think of the doors being accessible after hours. Nonetheless, the window should be locked.”

Behind Signor Marconi, Miss Dempsey began gesturing wildly with one hand, flapping at the air in a downward motion, mouthing something Turnip couldn’t quite catch. Turnip cocked his head in inquiry.

Down, down, down, flapped Miss Dempsey.

Uh-oh. If she could see him, so could Miss Climpson. And his sister. Turnip wasn’t sure which worried him more. He hastily ducked back down behind the curtain, trusting to his dark clothes to blend into the night.

“Miss Dempsey?” said Miss Climpson. “Are you quite all right?”

“Just, er, shaking out my wrist.” Miss Dempsey smiled weakly at the headmistress. “I believe I might have sprained it when Signor Marconi knocked my candle out of my hand.”

“And your notebook, as well, it seems.” Bending down, Miss Climpson smoothed the pages of a notebook that was splayed open next to a fallen chair. “It does look somewhat the worse for the fall.”

“But I didn’t — ”

“Oh, dear, you seem to be losing pages.” Miss Climpson handed her a piece of paper that had fallen from the notebook.

Miss Dempsey stuffed the paper in her pocket and tucked the book up under her arm.

Signor Marconi pressed a hand to his chest. “I offer to you dee most-a sincere apologies of my heart.” Struck by a sudden inspiration, he added, “I only a-tried to defend-a dee young-a ladies. I thought you were intrrrrrrrruder.”

Miss Dempsey eyed him skeptically. “How very noble of you.”

“Well, well,” said Miss Climpson vaguely. “I’m sure it was all an accident, and an unfortunate one at that. We’ll have stronger locks fitted on all the windows tomorrow. Shouldn’t the girls be in bed? And Signor Marconi, I would appreciate if you would confine your visits to daylight hours. Much less unsettling for everyone. Miss Dempsey, if you would latch the window?”

“What? Oh, yes. Of course.” Miss Dempsey pulled herself together sufficiently to make her way to the window, blocking the aperture with her body as she reached up to pull down the sash.

It was quite a nice view. Turnip took back all the unkind things he had thought about that gray dress. The simple lines molded themselves to her upper body as she reached up to pull down the window sash that he had pushed up some time before. Since he was taller than she, there was a fair amount of reaching involved. He might have jammed it up there just a little too hard, since the window appeared to be stuck. Miss Dempsey’s feminine attributes jiggled interestingly as she yanked at the sash.

Turnip would have helped, of course. But he wasn’t meant to be there.

Turnip shifted uncomfortably in the flower bed. Bloody good thing it was quite so cold outside. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking these sorts of things about his sister’s teacher. He was sure there was some sort of school rule about it. On the other hand, he had known her before she became a teacher — even if he hadn’t quite remembered her name — so oughtn’t there to be some special sort of dispensation for that?

Catching Miss Dempsey’s eye, Turnip grinned up at her and gave a little wave.

Miss Dempsey blinked at him, resting her hands against the sash.

“The world has gone mad,” she said out loud. “And me with it.”

“Miss Dempsey? Do you need help with that?” It was Sally’s voice, at her most butter-wouldn’t-melt.

“No, no. Don’t! It’s just a bit... sticky.” The window finally gave, dragging Miss Dempsey along with it. The sash slammed into the sill with enough force to make the glass quiver. Miss Dempsey’s chest rose and fell as she let out a heartfelt sigh of relief.

From somewhere just behind her, Turnip could hear his sister’s voice. “Are you all right, Miss Dempsey?”

“Ask me again tomorrow.” He could hear the snick of the bolt sliding into place. “I haven’t decided yet whether this is all a very vivid dream.”

“I could pinch you,” offered Sally. “I’m a champion pincher. Just ask Reggie.”

Through the glass, he could see Miss Dempsey look down at him. He nodded emphatically. Sally could pinch for England. Miss Dempsey’s lips twitched and she hastily turned away, blocking the window with her back.

“Thank you for the exceedingly generous offer,” she said politely, taking Sally’s arm, “but I believe I’ll just wait it out.”

“Sometimes,” offered Lizzy, falling in on her other side, “I dream of being a Chinese philosopher pretending to be a butterfly.”

“Dear, oh dear.” Miss Climpson turned around from the doorway. “Nurse has an excellent remedy for that. Extract of castor oil, bean curd, all mixed into barley water. It does wonders for the cerebral passageways. Remind me to tell her to dose you tomorrow.”

Lifting himself cautiously on his haunches, Turnip watched as the ill-assorted procession made its way out of the drawing room. Miss Dempsey took up the rear, flanked by his sister and Lizzy Reid. She cast a last glance over her shoulder before disappearing around the doorway, but she was too far away and the glass too distorted with frost to determine whether she had been trying to tell him anything by it.

Turnip tried the window, but it was well and truly locked. Nice to know that his sister and Miss Dempsey would be safe, but deuced irritating when one needed to get inside. The side doors were probably all locked right and tight and if they hadn’t been, they would be now.

Bother it. He needed to speak to her, and not merely to gloat about having been right about there being something dodgy going on. Oh, all right. Maybe only to gloat a little bit.

Turnip took a step back, scrutinizing the façade of the building. He could see the light move slowly from window to window. Miss Dempsey’s room was on the fourth floor. He knew because he’d had Gerkin ask. The school was made out of a rough stone, hung with ivy.

Where there was ivy, there was generally a trellis.