Nutmeg stood shaking in the broom cupboard as Aunt Ivy pulled and heaved at the dresser. At one point, she made it lurch so far forward that all the plates fell off and smashed on the floor. Nutmeg saw a splinter of china fly through the gate, and then there was a deep thud as the dresser crashed back against the wall.
Exhausted, Aunt Ivy stood awhile, cursing under her breath. She had seen where Nutmeg went, so she was no longer in any doubt that the funny metal grid was some sort of mouse hole. She wanted to block it up so the mice would be imprisoned in their lair and slowly starve to death, but the dresser was too heavy for her to move.
She pondered awhile, then had an idea, which pleased her so much that she said it out loud. “Gas!” she announced, clapping her hands together with glee. “I’ll pump poisonous gas under the dresser, straight into their filthy little hole! We’ll see how they like that!” And just thinking about it made her feel much more cheerful.
On the other side of the door, Nutmeg listened in terror. “Gas! Gas!” she said to herself, quaking. She imagined clouds of foul, blue poison being pumped through the gates, curling in under the front door, and advancing through Nutmouse Hall room by room, slowly choking her and Tumtum to death.
Beside herself, she ran inside and locked the front door behind her, putting the draft excluder in place. Then she raced around each of her thirty-six rooms, upstairs and down, locking all the windows and drawing all the curtains. She found a roll of masking tape in the butler’s pantry, and darted back to the hall, using it to seal around the frame of the front door.
But she knew it was hopeless—the gas would find its own way in. It would advance through the joins in the window frames; it would creep in through the pipes and belch from the taps; it would diffuse down the chimneys.
We must escape! she thought. But Tumtum was much too ill to be moved—the upheaval would kill him, even if the gas didn’t.
Numb with dread, she went back to her husband’s bedside. He was sleeping, and his face looked pale and sallow. All night long the distraught Nutmeg sat beside him, wondering what to do.
If only Tumtum were himself, she felt sure he would be able to think of something. But his mind was still wandering, and when he opened his eyes he appeared not to recognize her. Oh, what is to become of us? Nutmeg thought hopelessly. Tumtum’s delirious and Aunt Ivy might strike at any time! She put her head in her paws and closed her eyes tight, trying to shut out the horror. Their chances of survival seemed horribly slim.
But the truth is that Aunt Ivy had no idea what sort of gas to use, nor where to buy it. The only deadly gas she knew about was cyanide, and she imagined it might be hard to come by. Like Nutmeg, Aunt Ivy spent a restless night dwelling on her difficulties, and she was still dwelling on them the next morning when she locked herself in the bathroom.
Aunt Ivy always locked herself in the bathroom for at least an hour, both in the morning and in the evening, usually at just the time everyone else wanted to use it. And she sprayed so many foul-smelling scents and deodorants on herself that whoever went in afterward had to press a flannel over their noses.
This morning she was applying something particularly revolting, a hair spray with a sweet citrusy aroma, a bit like compost. It came out in dense green clouds and it made her hair very dark and greasy, just as she liked it. When she had applied several layers, she looked at herself approvingly in the mirror, then made to throw the empty canister into the bin. But something on the label caught her eye.
DANGER! it said in big red letters. VERY TOXIC! EXCESSIVE INHALATION MAY CAUSE INJURY OR DEATH!
Aunt Ivy started to feel a delicious tingle in her spine. Why! she thought. If this gas could kill a human, then it shouldn’t be too hard to kill a couple of mice with it! I’ll buy some more and gas them to death tonight!
Then she got dressed much more quickly than usual and went down the lane to the village shop. When she arrived, Mrs. Paterson was behind the counter eating a thick piece of toast. There was butter dribbling down her apron.
“Did the mouse poison do the job, Mrs. Mildew?” she asked good-naturedly.
Aunt Ivy did not appear to hear. “Do you have any more of these?” she asked briskly, slamming the empty hair spray down beside the till. “I bought it here last week.” As Aunt Ivy leaned toward her, Mrs. Paterson picked up a foul, toxic smell, almost like a gas leak. It made her feel quite queasy.
“Sorry,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve none in stock. Next delivery comes at noon on Saturday.”
Aunt Ivy leaned forward on the counter and looked at her piercingly. “Reserve me two canisters,” she demanded icily— but then, as Mrs. Paterson wrote down the order, Aunt Ivy started to wonder whether two canisters would be enough. There might be more mice than the ones she’d seen—they might have brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles…they might have bred! “On second thought, make that five,” she said grimly. Then she stomped back outside, knocking over a pile of newspapers.