“FIRST,” SAYS LADY KRAKEN as I sit down heavily in an armchair, “you are going to tell me exactly what Dr Thalassi and the girl are up to.”
With a swipe of her hand, the old lady flips a switch on her control box. The French windows swing closed behind her, bringing in a last flurry of snow.
“But, Your Ladyness, you’ve got it wrong,” I say. “The doc and Violet aren’t working together at all.”
“Violet?” says Lady Kraken.
“Yes, the girl. She’s Violet Parma. She’s not after any magical egg. She just wants her mum and dad back.”
“Parma?” Lady Kraken taps the arm of her chair. “That name. Where have I heard it before?”
“Her father was – sorry, is – Peter Parma,” I say. “Only he’s missing, and…”
“Now I remember!” Lady Kraken says, cracking all her knuckles at once. “The folklorist, the collector of old tales. He spent many hours here, interviewing me about my family. I liked him well enough at the beginning, but in the end he asked too many questions, pried too deep into my family’s misfortune. I have no doubt he wanted the egg too, and no doubt that the malamander devoured him for his trouble.”
“Oh!” I say. “No doubt at all?”
“None whatsoever,” snaps the old lady. “But it gives this Violet a good motive to get hold of the egg for herself, doesn’t it? She could wish him back to life.”
“But…” I try to say.
“So, what of Dr Thalassi?” Lady K ploughs on. “He’s always been a sly one, that doctor. What part does he play in all this?”
“I think he’s just after evidence,” I say, thinking back to our conversation in the museum. “I think he just wants to prove one way or another whether the creature exists. He’s a scientist.”
“Ha! A likely excuse.”
I sit up straight and put my Lost-and-Founder’s cap firmly back on my head. “Lady Kraken, I promise you, you have got it all wrong. I mean, yes, you’re right: someone is after the egg. But it’s not the doc and it’s not Vi. I think it’s Sebastian Eels.”
Now it’s Lady Kraken’s turn to blink with surprise. “The writer?”
“He’s certainly acting very suspiciously,” I say.
“But then, Mr Lemon, I am mistaken after all,” says Lady K, scratching her chin as she tumbles this new idea around in her mind. “You are right: the girl isn’t working with Dr Thalassi…”
“Exactly,” I say.
“She’s working with Sebastian Eels instead.”
“What?”
“Suddenly it all makes sense.” Lady Kraken brings her fist down on the arm of her wheelchair with a bony thud. “How could I have been so blind? How could I have missed it? And how could you, Mr Lemon, have been such an incorrigible dunderbrain as to allow this to happen?”
“Me?” I say, shrinking back again.
“Yes, you. Can’t you see how you’ve been used? Can’t you see how this girl has tricked you? You’ve been duped, Herbert Lemon. Violet Parma is playing you for a fool.”
“…” I almost manage to say.
“Oh, don’t try to argue,” says Lady K. “It all falls into place; the connections become clear. I know Eels and the Parma girl are in this together. I have proof.”
With a flick of several switches on the old lady’s wheelchair, the curtains in the room swish shut, one after another. The lights go out, and there’s a whirring sound in the ceiling. I look up to see a hole opening in the ornate plaster high above us. Then a shaft of ghostly light flickers on, shining directly down onto the circular table in the centre of the room as the cameraluna hums into life.
“I recorded this three nights ago,” says Lady Kraken, as the moon-bright dust motes begin to dance on the tabletop. “Just after dusk.”
“It can record as well?” I say, but Lady Kraken just waves my surprise away. “Of course it can record. It’s a cameraluna.”
As I watch, the dust and light form into a shimmering model of the town again, in eerie three dimensions. But just as I get my bearings, Lady Kraken begins turning dials, and the image swirls and changes. Little figures of the townsfolk dart around, walking backwards at high speed as if we are going back in time, and the light comes and goes with the passing of the clouds. Then the image stabilizes at last as the lady zeroes in on a particular moment, and a particular place.
“That’s Sebastian Eels’ house!” I say.
Sure enough, the author’s tall, stately townhouse – one of the finest in Eerie-on-Sea – rises up on the table before me, in shimmering, dusty detail. As I watch, amazed, I see a tiny figure of Eels himself emerge from the front door of this model house, straighten his neatly folded scarf and stride off along the tiny street.
“Now watch closely,” says Lady Kraken, dimly lit in the captured moonlight of the past. “Just about … now!”
And she points her crooked finger.
An even smaller figure appears at the end of the miniature street. It darts into a doorway before re-emerging and creeping ahead. Heading always for Eels’ house. I stare in amazement – there’s no mistaking the cat-like way the figure moves, or the mass of crazy curls on her head. Or the woolly bobble hat.
It’s Violet.
“This can’t be dusk three nights ago,” I say. Though, even as I say it, I cannot help believing that it is. Lady Kraken may have some bonkers ideas, but if there’s one thing she’s an expert on, it’s cameralunas. But since Violet didn’t appear at the hotel till long after nightfall, this recording must have been made hours earlier. In other words, hours before I first met her.
“Keep watching,” says Lady Kraken.
So I do. And I see the little figure of Violet stop outside the house. She goes up to the door and rings the bell. Then she rings it again. No one answers. I watch in shocked fascination as the tiny, silvery figure of Violet Parma walks over to a low wall beside the house and lifts herself into the branch of an overhanging tree. She runs up it and drops down the other side of the wall into darkness – an empty patch that the cameraluna can’t reach. A moment or two later she appears again, climbing into the house of Sebastian Eels by an open window and again vanishing from view.
Then, as suddenly as it all began, the light of the cameraluna shuts off and the fairy model of the house collapses into dust. We are plunged into darkness once again. With a flick of a switch, Lady K opens the curtains.
“So, Mr Lemon,” she says. “Still sure about that sneaky little friend of yours? In fact, how can you be certain she’s even looking for her parents at all? How do you know they aren’t here too, hiding, plotting with Sebastian Eels. Yes, I’ll wager they are all in it together, conspiring against me, conspiring to get my malamander egg!”
I stagger to my feet and stumble backwards towards the door. “But … but…”
“Still don’t believe me, Mr Lemon?” Lady Kraken continues, her eyes wild. “Then just ask yourself one question: what is Violet Parma doing when you aren’t with her?”
“But…”
“Just ask yourself, what is Violet Parma doing right now?”
I hear the door swing open behind me. I back out through it in a haze of doubt.
By the time the door is closed again, I’m running.
I run back along the corridor and down the stairs, three at a time. Even in Reception I don’t slow as I dodge around some guests and their cases and hear Amber Griss tut-tutting me. I throw open the desk of my cubbyhole and clatter down to my cellar.
“Violet!” I call. “Vi!”
But there’s no answer.
She isn’t there.
