The Secret of Platform 13 Read online

  Because the bodyguards were so careful, Mrs Trottle soon allowed her son to leave his room. So he sat and giggled in the jacuzzi beside the swimming pool and went to the massage parlour with his mother and bought endless boxes of chocolate from the shop in the entrance hall. In the afternoon, the Trottles ate cream cakes in the Palm Court Lounge which had palm trees in tubs, and a fountain, and at night (still followed by the bodyguards) they went to the restaurant for dinner and watched the girl come out of the Astor cake.

  She was a truly beautiful girl and the dance she did was called the Dance of the Seven Ve ils. When she first jumped out she was completely covered in shimmering gold, but as she danced she dropped off her first veil . . . and then the next . . . and the next one and the next. When she was down to the last layer of cloth, all the lights went out – and when they came on again both the girl and the cake had gone.

  Raymond couldn’t take his eyes off her. He thought he would marry a girl like that when he grew up but when he said so to his mother, she told him not to be silly .

  ‘Girls who come out of cakes are common,’ said Mrs Trottle.

  What she liked was the man who played the double bass. He had a soaring moustache and black soulful eyes and he called himself Roderigo de Roque, but his real name was Neville Potts. Mr Potts had a wife and five children whom he loved very much, but the hotel manager had told him that he must smile at the ladies sitting close by so as to make them feel good, and so he did.

  Mrs Trottle liked him so much that on the second night she decided to go downstairs again after Raymond was in bed and listen to him play.

  First though, she put a call through to her husband.

  ‘Have you done what I told you? About Ben?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mr Trottle sounded tired. ‘Are you sure . . .?’

  ‘Yes, I’m perfectly sure,’ snapped Mrs Trottle. ‘Tell the servants he may leave very suddenly and I don’t want any talk about it.’ She paused for a moment, tapping her fingers on the table. It was important that there weren’t any bumps or bruises on the boy when he was taken away. ‘You can tell them to let him off his work till then – and remember, Ben is to be told nothing. What about the kidnappers – any sign of them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, go on watching,’ said Mrs Trottle. Then she sprayed herself with Maneater and went downstairs to make eyes at Mr Potts as he sawed away on his double bass and wished it was time to go home.

  Thirteen

  Absolutely everyone wanted to help in rescuing Raymond from the Astor. The ghosts wanted to, and so did the banshees and the troll called Henry Prendergast – and Melisande sent a m essage to say that she was moving into the fountain in the Astor so as to keep an eye on things.

  But before they could make a plan to snatch the Prince, there was something they felt had to be done straightaway, and that was to send a message to the Island.

  ‘They’ll be getting so worried, the poor King and Queen,’ said Gurkie. ‘And even if everything goes smoothly it could take another two days to get Raymond out. If they thought he was lost or hurt it would break their hearts.’

  But how to do this? Ernie offered to go through the gump again and speak to the sailors in the Secret Cove, but Cor shook his head.

  ‘Your poor ectoplasm has suffered enough,’ he said.

  This was true. There is nothing worse for ectoplasm than travelling in a wind basket and using ghosts as messengers is simply cruel.

  Luck, however, was on their side. The nice witch who worked as a school cook and had fetched Raymond’s gobstopper during the Magic Show, had decided to go through the gump immediately and make her home on the Island. She’d gone to work on Monday morning and been told she was being made redundant because the school had to save money and she didn’t think there was any point in hanging about Up Here without any work.

  ‘I don’t say as I like Raymond because I don’t, but I dare say by the time he’s on the throne I’ll be under the sod,’ she said, coming to say goodbye.

  Needless to say she was very happy to take a message to the sailors in the Secret Cove, so that problem was solved.

  ‘Tell them there is nothing to worry about. The Prince is found and we hope to bring him very soon,’ said Cor, who actually thought there was quite a lot to worry about, such as how to get into the Astor, how to bop and sack the detestable boy, how to carry the wriggling creature to the gump. But he was determined not to upset the King and Queen.

  So the witch, whose name was Mrs Frampton, said she would certainly tell them that, and made her way to King’s Cross Station, and in no time at all she was stepping out on to the sands of the Secret Cove.

  No one can be a school cook and work with children and be gloomy , a nd Mrs Frampton was perhaps more cheerful than she needed to be. At all events, the message that a sailor (travelling like the wind in a pinnace) carried back to the Island was so encouraging, that the Queen started to laugh once more and the school children put fresh flowers in the classroom and everyone rejoiced. Any day now, any hour, the Prince would come! The nurses opened the crate of bananas again – and most importantly , t he harpies and the sky yelpers and all the other dark people of the North were told that they would not be needed; that the Prince was found, and coming, and all was wonderfully well!

  By the second day of watching Raymond, Bruce was thoroughly fed up. When you are a thug and used to being with gangsters, you aren’t choosy, but he’d never met a boy who opened a whole box of chocolates and guzzled it in front of someone else without offering a single one. Bruce didn’t like the way Raymond whined when he looked like being beaten at ludo and he thought a boy sending up for someone to give him a massage when he hadn’t taken any exercise was thoroughly weird.

  All the same, Bruce did his job. He never let Raymond out of his sight, he kept his gun in its holster, he tasted the food that was sent up in case it was poisoned – and each morning he went into the bathroom as soon as Raymond woke so as to make sure there were no crazed drug fiends lurking behind the tub or in the toilet.

  Now, though, he came out looking rather pale.

  ‘There’s something funny in there. It felt sort of cold, and the curtain moved, I’m sure of it.’

  Doreen Trout went on knitting. She knitted as soon as she woke. This morning it was a pair of baby’s bootees – very pretty, they were, in pink moss stitch, and the steel of the needles glinted in the sun.

  ‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘You’re imagining things.’

  She got up and went into the bathroom. Her empty needle flashed. She waited. No screams followed, no blood oozed from behind the pierced curtains.

  ‘You see,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody there.’

  But she was wrong. Mrs Partridge was there, and a nasty time she was having of it. She was a shy ghost and hated nakedness, but she had set herself to haunt the Trottles’ sleeping quarters and get the lay-out, and though the sight of Mrs Trottle in her underwear spraying Maneater into her armpits had made her feel really sick, she was determined to stick to her job.

  Mrs Partridge was not the only person watching the Trottles. Cor had decided that a day spent studying their movements was necessary before a proper plan to rescue Raymond could be made. So Ernie was floating through the kitchen quarters looking for the exits, peering at the switch boards which controlled the lights . . . The troll called Henry Prendergast, disguised as a waiter, loaded Raymond’s breakfast trolley . . .

  And there were others. Down in the laundry room, an immensely sad lady had got herself taken on as a temporary laundry maid and wept a little as she counted the sheets and studied the chute which sent the dirty washing down into the basement. She didn’t cry because she was particularly troubled, but because she was a banshee, and weeping is what banshees do.

  By ten-thirty, Raymond said he was bored.

  ‘I want to go and buy something,’ he said.

  So the Trottles went down in the lift with their bodyguards and Raymond went into the gift shop in t
he hotel and grumbled.

  ‘They haven’t got the comic I want. And the toys are rubbish.’

  Mrs Trottle went shopping too. She decided to buy a beautiful red rose to tuck into her bosom at dinner so that the double bass player would notice it and smile at her.

  The flower shop though looked different today, and the lady who served in it seemed to be puzzled.

  ‘Everything’s taken off,’ she said. ‘Look at that rubber plant – I’ll swear it’s grown a foot in the night. And that wreath . . . it’s twice the size it was.’

  The wreath was made of greenery and lilies. The hotel always kept wreaths because a lot of the people who stayed at the Astor were old and had friends who died.

  Mrs Trottle bent her head to smell a lily , w o n-dering if the double bass player would prefer her with one of those – and jerked her head back. If it wasn’t impossible, she’d have said that someone had pinched her nose.

  Someone had. Flower fairies look much like they do in the pictures: very , very small with gauzy wings – but they are incredibly bad tempered because of people sticking their faces into the places where they live and sniffing. Seeing the hairy insides of someone’s nostrils is not amusing, and though this particular fairy had offered to go to the Astor and help Gurkie, she certainly wasn’t going to be smelled.

  By lunch time, the secret watchers were feeling thoroughly gloomy. It wasn’t just that the bodyguards never let Raymond out of their sight, it was that Raymond himself was such a horrible boy. But it was Melisande who found out just what they were up against in rescuing him.

  She had got her uncle to move her into the fountain in the Palm Court and she was not having a nice time. This was because of the goldfish. In the Fortlands fountain she had been alone. Here she had to share with a dozen, droopy, goggle-eyed fan-tailed goldfish who flapped their tails in her face and dirtied the water with their droppings and their food.

  But Melisande was a trooper. She peeped out from under the leaves, she watched Raymond and Mrs Trottle guzzle a slab of fudge cake not an hour after they had finished breakfast; she watched the daft way Mrs Trottle leered at the double bass player when the orchestra played for the guests at tea.

  And she watched as Doreen Trout came over to the fountain, sat down on the rim and – with her eyes still fixed on Raymond – took out her knitting bag.

  ‘Knit two, slip one,’ murmured Doreen.

  Then she turned slightly – so slightly that Melis-ande hardly noticed it – and one of her needles plunged down into the water.

  It was all over in a second and then she got up and went back to stand beside Raymond – but the fan-tailed goldfish she had speared lay floating, belly up, between the leaves while his life’s blood, draining away, came down on Melisande’s shocked and bewildered head.

  There was only one thing that cheered up the hidden watchers – and that was the cake!

  The cake was beautiful! The way it came in, all pink and glowing, from a door beside the orchestra, the balloons and streamers that came down on top of it . . . and the lovely girl who burst out of it and danced, tossing away her golden veils, while the band played music so dreamy and romantic that it made you weep.

  And it was the cake which gave Cor his idea.

  All day the watchers had reported to him where he sat in the summer house with his briefcase beside him, taking notes, making maps of the hotel and the street outside – and thinking. Now he was ready to speak.

  It was close on midnight and everyone had come to listen. The Plodger had brought Melisande, carrying her wrapped in a wet towel, and now she sat in the bird bath looking worried because she felt no one knew quite how dreadful Doreen Trout could be. The ghosts hovered on the steps, the troll called Henry Prendergast lay back in a deck chair eating a leek which Gurkie had put into his hand. He did not care for leeks but he cared for Gurkie and was doing his best with it. Ben had crept out of Trottle Towers, and he and Odge were crouched on the wooden floor watching the mistmaker. Among the banshees and the flower fairies were Odge’s great aunt and a couple of ducks.

  Cor’s plan, like all good plans, was simple. They would use the moment when the girl in the cake finished her dance and the lights went out to capture the Prince.

  ‘Hans will bop him – very, very carefully, o f course, using only his little finger – and drop him into the cake as it is wheeled away. No one will think of looking for him there.’

  ‘But won’t the girl in the cake get a shock when the Prince is thrown in on top of her? Won’t she squeak?’ asked Gurkie.

  Cor shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Because the girl in the cake won’t be there. The girl in the cake will be somebody else.’ He looked at Gurkie from under his bushy brows. ‘The girl in the cake,’ said the wizard in a weighty voice, ‘will be – you!’

  ‘Me!’ Gurkie blushed a deep and rosy pink. She had always longed to come out of a cake – always – but when her mother was alive it was no good even thinking about it. Gym mistresses who run about blowing whistles and shouting ‘Play Up and Play the Game’ are not likely to let their daughters within miles of a cake. ‘You mean I’m to do that dance? The one with the Seven Ve ils? Oh, but suppose I was left standing in only my—’ She didn’t say the word knickers – she never had said it. Saying knickers was another thing her mother had not allowed.

  ‘You won’t be,’ said Cor. ‘The lights will go off before that, when you still have one veil on.’

  ‘You’ll do it beautifully , Gurkie,’ said Ben. ‘They’ll go mad for you.’ And everyone agreed.

  ‘But after that?’ said the troll. ‘How will you get the Prince out of the cake and away? Hans may be invisible, but Raymond won’t be, if we’re not allowed to use magic on him, and the cake only gets wheeled as far as the artists’ dressing room.’

  Cor nodded. ‘But there are other things in the dressing room. Such as the instruments that the players in the orchestra use. Among them a large double bass case.’

  He paused, and everyone looked at him expectantly, beginning to get the drift.

  ‘As soon as the cake arrives in there, Hans will transfer the Prince into the case – and the double bass player will carry him out of the hotel by the service stairs where a van will be waiting.’

  ‘But surely he’ll notice,’ said Ernie. ‘Raymond must weigh about five times as much as a double bass.’

  ‘Yes. But you see it won’t be the real double bass player. It’ll be Mr Prendergast.’ He turned to the troll. ‘You shape-shifted yourself into a bank manager and a policeman. Surely you can manage a double bass player with a black moustache and a cow’s lick in the middle of his forehead?’

  The troll nodded. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I got a good look at him tonight.’

  The other details were quickly settled. Since they still had over a thousand pounds in banknotes, they were sure they could pay the real girl in the cake to let Gurkie take her place. ‘And I shall call Mrs Trottle away with a phone message just before the cake comes in,’ said Cor. ‘Odge will pretend to be the double bass player’s little daughter and tell the doorman that her father has to come home early . As for you, Ben, you must wait on the fire escape and signal to the van driver as soon as Raymond is packed and ready, so that he can back up against the entrance. And then off we go, all of us, through the gump with a whole day to spare!’

  Ben, when the jobs were given out, sighed with relief. He’d been afraid that they wouldn’t let him help and he wanted more than anything to be part of the team.

  But he felt guilty too because he knew that Odge thought he was going with them to the island.

  ‘This time you’re coming!’ said Odge. ‘You have to!’

  And Ben had said nothing. It was no good arguing, but you had to do what was right, and leaving Nanny Brown alone, ill as she was, couldn’t ever be right. Only he wouldn’t let himself think what it would be like after the rescuers had gone. He wouldn’t let himself think of anything except how to get Raymond Trottle out o
f the Astor and bring the King and Queen their long-lost son.

  Fourteen

  Nanny Brown moved her head restlessly on the pillow. She was worried stiff. Why had Larina Trottle phoned to ask how she was? Larina didn’t care tuppence how she was, Nanny knew that. Surely she couldn’t be planning to send Ben away already? In which case Ben ought to have the letter now . . . But what if the police came to the hospital to ask questions? Perhaps they’d pull her out of bed and take her to prison? Ben wouldn’t like that; he felt things far too much.

  And here he was now! As he sat down beside her and took her hand, she thought what a handsome boy he was turning out to be.

  ‘You’ve had your hair cut.’

  Ben nodded. Gurkie had pruned his hair with her pruning shears. She’d offered to curl it too, like she curled the petals of a rose, but Ben didn’t think Nanny would like him with curly hair. Thinking of the rescuers made him smile – they were all so excited about tonight and getting Raymond out. Then he looked more closely at Nanny and his heart gave a lurch. She was nothing but skin and bone.

  ‘Does it hurt you, Nanny? Are you in pain?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she lied. They’d offered her some stuff to take away the pain but she’d never let them dope her when Ben came. ‘What about Mrs Trottle? How’s she been?’

  ‘She’s still away – and Raymond too.’

  Nanny nodded. That was all right then. If Larina was away she couldn’t harm Ben, so the letter could wait. The nurses had promised faithfully to give it to Ben when the time came.

  ‘And the servants?’

  ‘They’ve been all right. They seem to let me do what I like, almost.’ But he was puzzled. The servants were almost too nice, and Mr Fulton gave him an odd look now and again, as though he knew something. It made Ben uncomfortable, but he wasn’t going to worry Nanny Brown.