“Where did you see him? What did he say? Can he help us? No, just a minute. Does that mean Auntie Necra’s here too? You said Swarme lives with her. Is he helping her to look after Mandoline? She could be nearby.”
Lanthorne had settled himself comfortably on the edge of the bed, but Edwin’s questions stunned him. For a moment, he couldn’t reply. Then he shook his head as if to free it of the idea that Auntie Necra and Mandoline might be under the same roof.
“Trunke would know if she was here with your sister, Edwin. Everybody at the inne would be talking about it. Babies make a lot of noise, don’t they?”
“So what’s Swarme doing here?”
“I don’t know. We’ve got to find out.”
Edwin breathed in and out noisily, to calm himself. What Lanthorne had said made sense. Trunke would have picked up any talk about Auntie Necra turning up at the inne, especially if she was carrying a baby of any kind. She would have wanted to get home to Morting as soon as she could.
“I agree that we have to find Swarme as soon as we can,” Edwin said. “He’s bound to have important information we can use. Sorry, I interrupted your story.”
Lanthorne made himself comfortable again and began. “I saw Swarme, but he didn’t see me. That’s the first thing. He must be working here. My mother sometimes says, ‘I wonder what job our Swarme is doing.’ Now I can tell her! I followed the passage all the way back to the staircase, and I even went halfway down.”
“That was very daring of you.”
Lanthorne smiled at the praise. “At first there was no one about, because I think they were having dinner somewhere. I could hear kitcheny sorts of sounds. Then I heard someone running towards the stairs and I needed a place to hide. I went down the nearest passage and opened a door that looked like a cupboard.”
Edwin took in a loud breath.
“It was a cupboard.”
Edwin relaxed.
“So I shut myself in. I was really frightened because I thought the footsteps were following me. They stopped right in front of where I was hiding, but then the person making the footsteps knocked on a door and a man answered it. The footsteps person said, ‘It’s ready. If you want some, you need to come right away. We’ve got some serious eaters in tonight.’”
“What was ready?” Edwin asked.
“Their dinner, I expect. They walked back to the staircase together and I opened the door just a little bit, because I knew the footsteps’ voice! When he turned sideways as he was going down the stairs, I could see it really was Swarme. He’s taller and a bit fatter now, but it was definitely him.”
“It was dangerous opening that door before they’d completely gone.”
“I’m glad I did. We’ve got a friend now, Edwin. Someone on our side, not like Jugge and Trunke. I’ve got to talk to Swarme. I’ve just got to.”
“Are you sure we’ll be able to trust him?”
Lanthorne stared at Edwin. “Of course we can. He’s my brother.”
“He might not like Shiners.”
“You can’t help being a Shiner. You’re my friend, anyway. That’ll be enough for Swarme.”
Edwin could feel a plan forming. “Trunke said he wouldn’t be back till the morning, so he won’t know if we go looking for your brother. The trouble is…”
They didn’t know who else was staying at the inne, that was the trouble. But if Lanthorne’s brother was happy to work there, surely it couldn’t be half as bad as Trunke made out. It might, despite all Trunke’s warnings, be a common or garden, boring old country inne that happened to be set in the middle of nowhere and where nothing unusual happened—other than people treating rotten food as a delicacy.
“I think Trunke’s been exaggerating,” Edwin said. “He’ll be in the bar buying everyone drinks with our money and laughing at us for being so scared. What must we have looked like, walking along with our hoods right down, blind as bats and falling over? He probably wet himself laughing.”
“Should we just run downstairs?” Lanthorne asked.
They decided it was still wiser to be careful.
“We need a really good plan,” Edwin said.
“Go on, then,” said Lanthorne, happy for Edwin to take the lead.
“We’ve got to sort out the geography, and we need weapons. Good ones.”
“You really know how to do this, Edwin,” said Lanthorne, hugely impressed. “I didn’t bring a weapon, though. Did you?”
“I’ve got the two lemonade cans but we haven’t managed to fill them with dirt yet. Let’s see if I’ve forgotten anything.”
He opened his backpack and rummaged.
“The screwdriver-torch and Mum’s penknife.” He shook the torch but the batteries obviously were completely dead. “I couldn’t stab anyone, but I’ll put the penknife in my pocket just in case.”
He held up the lighter. “I don’t mind threatening to set fire to something.” The lighter went in his other pocket.
“I’m very good at biting,” Lanthorne said.
“Biting it is, then. That can be your weapon. And kicking. And running away. We can both do that.”
They turned their thoughts to the floorplan of the building.
“I think we’re in one corner of the inne, and it’s probably all bedrooms here,” Edwin said.
“The stairs are right in the middle,” Lanthorne added. “And we know the room where they eat can’t be far away, because I heard those noises.”
“That’s where Trunke will be right now,” Edwin said. “He told me he was going to have his supper. Let’s hope he spends ages stuffing himself.”
“And if Swarme serves the food, we could wait for him out of sight and speak to him when he’s on his own.” Suddenly Lanthorne clapped his hands together. “What if his room’s in this part of the inne? It might even be next door!”
Edwin was doubtful. You never knew what to expect in this world, but he didn’t think the inne’s staff would sleep in rooms near the guests. “We can’t just keep an eye on the passage in case Swarme turns up,” he said. “We’re bound to miss him if we do that. We need to go downstairs and actually find him.”
“I can’t wait to see the look on his face,” said Lanthorne excitedly. “I won’t tell him I gave you his clothes, though.”
Or that my mum put them in a bucket of Persil and dumped them in the garden, thought Edwin. He put his gloves back on for the umpteenth time that day.
“Did you come across any other cupboards we could hide in, if we had to?” he asked.
“None I was sure about. What if we opened a door and somebody was there, in bed?”
“Do you think they’d scream if a Shiner suddenly came in, like we scream if we see a ghost?”
“Why do you scream if you see a ghost?”
Edwin wasn’t sure how to answer. It seemed to him the obvious thing to do if an apparition stepped through the wall in front of you. “Wouldn’t you scream?” he asked.
“It depends if I knew the ghost. Some of them are just plain silly.”
Edwin was silent for a long moment. Was Lanthorne suggesting that ghosts regularly popped up all over the place? This was a new thought he couldn’t deal with at the moment. He took an extra-firm grip of his backpack and slipped it over his shoulders. “Hoods down,” he said.
At least half of him hoped that the first door they opened would be a doorway home, but he also knew he couldn’t go through one of those until he had Mandoline safely in his arms. Doors in the inne probably only ever opened into places like the toilette room, in any case.
They crept to the end of the passage outside their room without mishap, and were quickly at the top of the staircase. Here, they had to take the plunge, literally, into near darkness and possibly great danger. Going down was easy for Lanthorne, but Edwin had so much to contend with—a hood, a backpack, near darkness and stairs—that he felt it was inevitable he would slip. After only four steps, he missed his footing and was thrown off balance. He fell sideways against the banister with a scuffling and clattering that must have sounded suspicious to anyone nearby. The two boys froze.
No one came to investigate, so they were able to carry on down—very slowly in Edwin’s case, although he had decided to push his hood halfway back. It was flapping against his face and irritating him.
At the bottom, they found themselves in the hallway that had no windows but four doors leading off it. It was dimly lit by the usual small lanthorne placed on a high shelf.
“What do you think we ought to do now?” Edwin asked. “Should we split up? If we’re both caught, that’s the end of everything. If only one of us gets caught, the other can… I don’t know.”
Lanthorne drew Edwin into the dark space under the stairs. “Why don’t you hide here while I try to find Swarme?” he suggested. “You don’t know him and I do. You can’t see in the dark and I can. We’ll come and collect you.”
“Absolutely not. I should go first, because it’s my fault we’re here.”
“Edwin, I know you’re very brave, but you’re being a bit silly too. What if you go up to someone and say hello, and it’s not Swarme? You mustn’t think you have to do all the dangerous things.”
“All right. I accept, under protest.” He had heard his father say this.
Lanthorne tiptoed back into the hallway and pointed to each of the doors in turn. “Eena meena mango mo, catch a maggot, chew him so.” So it was going to be the left-hand door.
“Good luck,” said Edwin. “Call out in a loud voice if anything goes wrong.”
Lanthorne listened at the door, opened it slightly and closed it again. He made a Nothing doing gesture and moved across to the opposite door. He listened again, opened the door, slipped inside and was gone. As he slipped in, hints of a particularly unpleasant smell slipped out.
Edwin resigned himself to an anxious wait. Minutes passed, and he could feel himself beginning to shake. I’ll give him just a bit more time. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets to keep them still, and tried to think of the best thing that could be happening to Lanthorne… He had met Swarme coming out of the laundry room, carrying a pile of towels. The brothers hugged each other and said, “Great to see you again.” Swarme turned out to be very clever and came up with an astounding plan that meant they wouldn’t need Trunke’s help any more. They would track down Auntie Necra, take back Mandoline, and Swarme would have a door home open and waiting.
Edwin ran through this story several times in his head, and still there was no sign of Lanthorne. He clenched his fists. It was time for him to do something now. Time for the hero to go into the telephone box and come out with all guns blazing. He took the lighter out of his pocket and flicked it on. The bright little flame made him feel better. If anyone threatened him, he would make sure he stood next to the most flammable thing he could find. There was also the penknife if he was backed into a corner.
Edwin approached the door, listened, opened it and slipped inside. It was a heavy door with padding around the edges which served to keep most of this unbelievable new smell from escaping. Once inside, he was pressed back against the door by the overwhelming odour of something undeniably rotten. This wasn’t the rottenness of green bread or squishy apples; it was the very spirit of decay, clinging and almost liquid. It seemed totally wrong.
Yet another passage lay ahead, with doors off it. Sickened by the unidentifiable stink, Edwin set off along it.
He drew level with the first door. This also seemed more solidly built, but he could distinguish sounds behind it. Was there a party of some kind going on? He heard laughter and a cheer or two, which sounded quite ordinary and should have made him feel more at ease, but didn’t. Nobody could have an ordinary party in rooms infected by this vile new smell.
Then things happened in a rush. There was the unmistakable sound of footsteps approaching the door, and the latch moved. At the same time, a figure entered the passage at its far end. Threats were approaching him from every direction. Instinct told Edwin to run and not let anything stand in his way. He charged down the passage, shouldering the figure, a man, into the wall and making him spill whatever he was carrying. Edwin rounded the corner and found himself in the kitchen of the inne.