Stella put down the receiver and tiptoed slowly out of Papa’s study, back along the corridor. With great caution she approached the kitchen. Dinner plates, cups, saucers and bowls were all flying out of cupboards and smashing on the floor. The kitchen was becoming almost knee-deep in broken crockery.
Wagner zoomed around the kitchen chaotically, this way and that, trying to peck at the ghost with his razor-sharp bill. As Stella walked in Soot was fighting the bird off with a gravy boat, before that too went hurtling to the floor, exploding into hundreds of pieces.
To the little girl’s surprise, Aunt Alberta was nowhere to be seen. Stella panicked, perhaps the woman had rushed down to the cellar to check on her?
So without being seen by Wagner, Stella tiptoed through the broken crockery, and over to the coal chute.
Just as she had climbed inside, her eyes peeping out of the top, Aunt Alberta burst into the room. The woman looked utterly confused as to what was going on. “Wagner!” she shouted. “The crockery! What are you doing to the crockery! Bad bird!”
It was clear to Stella that Soot was right, grown-ups couldn’t see ghosts. Rather deliciously, Alberta was blaming her pet owl for all the damage.
The way down the coal chute was harder than the way up. Without Soot’s ghostly light to guide her, it was a terrifying journey downwards in total darkness. At any moment Stella thought she might fall. Eventually her bare feet touched the cold stone floor. Just as they did so, Stella could hear loud footsteps running down the stairs. It was her aunt coming to check on her! As quickly as she could, Stella lay down on the cellar floor and closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. She heard the jangling of keys, then the great steel door was unlocked and slowly creaked open. The girl kept her eyes shut and even attempted a little light snoring to sell the idea that she had been fast asleep for hours.
It was a deeply creepy feeling, sensing her aunt moving around her in the cellar.
For a moment all was still, and Stella could smell the damp leather of Alberta’s boots. She couldn’t resist opening one eye the tiniest bit. Out of the slit of her eye she spied a huge black boot staring back at her.
It couldn’t be any closer to her face. As quickly as she could she shut her eye again. Stella was sure she had given the game away. She could sense the slight flicker of warmth from a candle as it was brought down to her face. All the same she kept deadly still, and soon she heard her aunt’s footsteps moving back to the cellar door. Even now Stella waited, until she heard the door being locked, and the footsteps going back up the stairs. Then she opened her eyes again. The girl breathed a huge sigh of relief. She had convinced her aunt she had been asleep all along.
Stella sat up on the cold stone cellar floor. It was a world away from her comfy old four-poster bed upstairs. Then she heard a scratching sound coming from the coal chute. Next a light glowed dimly in the cellar, before it became brighter and brighter.
It was Soot!
Never did Stella think she would be so happy to see a ghost.
“So, m’lady, did ya make yer call on the old dog and bone?” he asked.
“The what?”
“The telephone!”
“Oh yes!” She was still new at this Cockney rhyming slang malarkey. “Yes, I called the police, they are sending their best detective from Scotland Yard first thing in the morning.”
“That’s tops!” exclaimed Soot. “Well, m’lady, ya try and get some sleep. Ya need to be ready to tell that copper everyfink in the mornin’.”
“You’re right.”
“Now I’ll climb up through all the chimneys in the ’ouse, and wait on the roof as lookout.”
“Thank you, Soot.”
“My pleasure, m’lady. I’ll come straight down and wake ya as soon as I see him comin’.”
“Thank you, Soot,” she said again softly. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
The ghost doffed his cap. “At yer service, m’lady. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” Stella paused for a moment, before admitting, “I’m scared.”
Soot smiled supportively, and rested his hand reassuringly on her shoulder. “Try and feel safe, knowin’ that I’m ’ere,” he said. Because Soot was a ghost Stella couldn’t feel anything when he touched her… except in her heart.
“I will,” she replied.
“Now try and sleep, m’lady. I’ll be on the roof if ya need me!”
With that the ghost disappeared up the chute, and the cellar was once again plunged into darkness.
Soot expertly made his way up through the house. First he scrambled up the coal chute. Then from the kitchen he made his way to the drawing room with its huge fireplace. That chimney took him up to the first floor. It was as if the house was some giant snakes and ladders board to him.
After a while he had made his way to the very top of the house. Once there he squeezed himself out of the chimney pot and on to the roof, which was covered with a thick layer of snow. Soot was determined to spot the policeman before the girl’s wicked auntie did. There he sat alone as the blizzard swirled around him.
Soot looked out across the deserted countryside, waiting and waiting all night for a light in the distance.