Granny (5 page)

“What's an enzyme?” he asked Mrs. Jinks, remembering the word Granny had used.

“I don't know,” Mrs. Jinks replied, a frown on her face. She sighed. “We'd better look it up.”

And so they did. They went to the library and looked up the word in a medical dictionary and this is what it said:

“What does that all mean?” Joe asked.

Mrs. Jinks slammed the book. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “I don't think your granny knew what she was talking about. We won't mention it again.”

But Mrs. Jinks was never quite the same after this particular encounter with Granny. There was a worried look in her eyes. Loud noises—a slamming door or a car backfiring—jolted her. Joe got the impression that she was walking a tightrope and was afraid of falling off at any time.

And then the thefts began.

It was the second week in February and Granny had come for lunch. Joe hadn't seen her since the tea and he had been dreading it, but in fact she couldn't have been more pleasant. She gave him a smaller-than-usual kiss and a larger-than-usual present of one dollar, which hadn't even been given to her by her daughter in the usual way. She ate her lunch without complaining, complimented Irma (who immediately dropped all the dishes), and left all the knives and forks on the table.

It was only as she was leaving, as Wolfgang handed her her twenty-seven-year-old coat, that she let out a sudden scream.

“My cameo brooch!” she exclaimed. Tears welled in her eyes. “My beautiful cameo brooch. It's gone!”

“Are you sure you were wearing it, Mummy?” Mrs. Warden asked.

“Of course I'm sure. I put it on specially. It was on the lapel of my coat.”

“Well, maybe it's dropped off.”

“No, no,” Granny wailed. “I pinned it quite securely.” She turned to Mrs. Jinks. “You didn't happen to see it, did you, Mrs. Jinks?” she asked with a quizzical smile.

“No, Mrs. Kettle,” the nanny replied. Two pinpricks of pink had appeared in her cheeks. “Why should
I
have seen it?”

“Well…” Granny couldn't have looked more innocent. “You have often admired my cameo brooch. And I did see you looking in the hall closet just before lunch.”

“Are you suggesting—?” Mrs. Jinks didn't know what to say. Her cheeks were now dark red with anger.

“I wasn't suggesting anything,” Granny interrupted. She almost sang the words and her whole body was shaking with pleasure. Once again her lips slid away from her teeth in a yellowy smile. “I'm sure Wolfgang will find it in the garden.”

But Wolfgang never did find the brooch, and the next time Granny came for lunch, the whites of her eyes were quite red from weeping. In fact she was crying so much that instead of her usual tiny lace handkerchief, she had brought along a tea towel.

“Never mind, Mumsy,” Mrs. Warden said. “I'll buy you another one. Don't be so upset. It's only a piece of jewelry.”

That was the day that Mrs. Warden found her diamond earrings had gone missing. She screamed the house down.

“My earrings, Gordon!” she screeched. “My lovely earrings. They matched my ears! How can they have gone? Oh no…!”

“Someone get her a tea towel,” Mr. Warden muttered. He was trying to read the
Financial Times.
“And put it in her mouth.”

“Were they your diamond earrings, darling?” Granny asked. She was sitting in her usual chair, her face a picture of innocence.

“Yes,” Mrs. Warden sobbed.

“How sad. You know, Mrs. Jinks was saying to me only the other day how much she liked those earrings. What a shame that they've suddenly disappeared…”

Joe was as puzzled as anyone by the thefts, but already a nasty thought was forming in his mind. Two thefts. Both had taken place on days when Granny was in the house. And twice Granny had pointed the finger at Mrs. Jinks…

That night, Joe got out of bed and crept downstairs. The hall was dark, but he could see light spilling out underneath the door of the living room. He pressed his ear against the wood. As he had thought, his parents were inside.

“Someone must have taken them,” Mrs. Warden was saying. “They can't have just walked out of the drawer.”

“But who?” That was Mr. Warden's voice.

“Well, Mummy was saying that Mrs. Jinks—”

“Mrs. Jinks would never…!”

“I don't know, Gordon. First Mummy's brooch. Now my earrings. And Mrs. Jinks
was
in the closet.”

Joe was half crouching in the darkness, trying to hear the words through the thick wood. A floorboard creaked just behind him and he spun around as a hand reached out and touched his arm. For a horrible moment he had thought it was Granny, but in fact it was Mrs. Jinks, who had just come down the stairs. Joe opened his mouth to speak, but she touched a finger to her lips and beckoned him back upstairs.

Mrs. Jinks led him all the way to the top floor of the house. Only when she was back in her room with the door shut did she speak.

“Really, Joe!” she scolded him. “I'm sure I've warned you about listening at doors.”

Joe sighed. “I was only—”

“I know what you were doing. And it doesn't matter. Sit down.”

Joe sat down on the bed. Mrs. Jinks sat beside him.

“Listen, my dear,” she began. “I don't want to worry you, but I think we ought to have a little talk—and I'm not sure if I'll have another opportunity.”

“You're not leaving, are you, Mrs. Jinks?”

“No, no, no. Not unless I have to. But I wanted to have a word with you about your granny. Just in case…”

Mrs. Jinks took a deep breath.

“Did I ever tell you about my time in the Amazon basin?” she asked at last. “That time when I went to release my snake back into the wild?”

“Anna, an anaconda!” Joe exclaimed. Mrs. Jinks had often spoken of her snake.

“That's right. Well, I wanted to release her as far away from civilization as I could. People are funny about snakes and I couldn't bear to think of her ending up as a handbag or a pair of shoes or something. So I went to the town of Iquitos, which is on the Amazon River, and paid a fisherman to take me by canoe into the Amazon jungle.

“We sailed for three days—Anna, me, and the fisherman. I can't begin to describe that jungle to you. I've never seen anything like it before—so green and so heavy and so silent. You could feel it pressing in on you on all sides. All that vegetation! Only a river as mighty as the Amazon could have managed to find a way through.

“On the third day we turned off into a tributary. By now the town was a long way behind us. There were no huts or anything and I was certain that Anna would be safe. So I took her out of her basket, gave her a kiss, and released her—”

“But what's this got to do with Granny?” Joe asked.

“You'll find out if you don't interrupt!” Mrs. Jinks paused. “Anna had gone,” she want on, “and I was sitting there in the middle of a clearing feeling rather sorry for myself when suddenly…” She swallowed. “Suddenly the biggest crocodile you've ever seen burst out of the undergrowth and lurched toward me. It must have been at least fifteen feet long. Its scales weren't green (like they are in some of your old picture books) but an ugly gray. And it had the most terrible teeth. Razor sharp and quite revolting. Obviously it had never seen a dentist in its life, and if it had, it had probably eaten him.”

“How come it didn't eat you?” Joe asked.

“Oh, it tried to. But fortunately I was holding my umbrella and managed to force it into the creature's mouth, between its upper and its lower jaw. But that's not the point.”

Mrs. Jinks drew Joe closer to her.

“I have never forgotten that crocodile's eyes, the way it looked at me. And not long ago I saw another pair of eyes just like them. Exactly the same. And I'm ashamed to say, Joe, that it was your granny's eyes at that tea party of hers. I saw them, and quite frankly I would have preferred to have been sitting down with the crocodile.”

“So you believe me!” Joe whispered.

“I'm afraid I do.”

“But what can we do?”

“There's nothing I can do,” Mrs. Jinks said, “except to warn you to look after yourself. And remember this, Joe. In the end, the truth will always come out, no matter how long it takes.”

Joe pulled away. “You're talking as if you're not going to stay!” he cried.

Mrs. Jinks looked at him tiredly. “I don't know,” she said. “I really don't know. But I had to talk to you, Joe. Before it was too late…”

 

The next theft took place on the following Sunday. This time it was Mr. Warden who was the victim. He had dozed off in his chair after lunch, and when he woke up he knew at once that something was wrong. And it was. Someone had stolen two of his gold teeth.

“It'th a thcandal!” he cried out, whistling at the same time. There was a large gap in the front of his mouth. “Thith ith a matter for the polithe!”

Granny, of course, was there. As Mr. Warden raged and whistled, she shook her head as if she were utterly confused. “Who would want to take two gold teeth?” she asked. “Although now that I think about it, Mrs. Jinks was telling me how very much she admired them…”

After that, things happened very fast.

The police arrived in two police cars and an unmarked van. This, when it was opened, revealed two of the most ferocious dogs Joe had seen in his life. They were Alsatians, long-haired with thin, angular bodies and evil black eyes. Their tongues were drooling as they began to pad around the house, sniffing suspiciously.

“There's no meat out, is there?” the dog handler asked.

“Meat? No!” Mrs. Warden replied.

“Good. It's just that Sherlock and Bones here haven't eaten for five days. It keeps them sharp. But I can't let them get a whiff of meat.”

“Please, Officer.” Mrs. Warden gestured. “My husband is in here…”

The policemen followed her into the living room. Irma and Wolfgang went back to the west wing, leaving Joe and Mrs. Jinks in the hall. Mrs. Jinks was looking rather pale.

“I think I'll go and sit outside,” she said. “I need the fresh air.”

As she moved away, Joe heard a door softly close. Had someone been watching them? Granny? Suddenly worried, without knowing why, he opened the door and followed the passage on the other side all the way down to the kitchen.

There was someone there. Afraid of being seen, he peered round the corner just in time to see Granny climbing down from a cabinet with something in her hand. Now she was moving rapidly toward him and Joe ducked into the pantry to hide. He heard a swish of material and caught a whiff of Decomposing Sheep as she passed, but then she was gone. What was she doing? What had she taken?

Joe waited until he was sure she had gone before he went back out into the hall, but now there was no sign of her. In the living room, he could hear his father talking to one of the policemen.

“Yeth, Offither. They were thtolen when I wath athleep!”

He went back to the front door and looked out. Mrs. Jinks was sitting on a bench at the side of the house, and as he watched her, Joe heard a window open on the first floor. He wanted to call out to her, but suddenly the two police dogs appeared, lumbering across the lawn, and he shrank back.

But not before he had seen…

Something was drifting onto Mrs. Jinks. At first Joe thought it was raining. But whatever it was was brown. And it was some sort of powder. Mrs. Jinks hadn't noticed. She was sitting quietly, deep in thought. The powder sprinkled onto her shoulders, her lap, her hair.

And then the police dogs stopped, their bodies rigid. As Joe stared in horror, their eyes lit up and the hair on their backs began to bristle. The one called Sherlock began to growl. The other one—Bones—was panting; short, quick breaths that rasped in its throat.

Slowly, silently, the two of them closed in on Mrs. Jinks.

“Hello, doggies…” Mrs. Jinks had seen them. She stood up, noticing for the first time the brown powder that covered her arms and legs. She smelled it. And that must have been when she knew. The color drained out of her face. Then she screamed, turned, and ran.

“Sherlock! Bones!” The police-dog handler had seen what was happening, but it was too late. Like two bolts fired from a crossbow, the dogs took off after Mrs. Jinks, who had already sprinted across the lawn, through an ornamental pond, and who was now making for the bushes.

“Heel!” the police dog handler cried.

One of the police dogs bit Mrs. Jinks's heel.

Mrs. Jinks screamed again and disappeared into the bushes. With a terrible snarling and snapping, the dogs fell on top of her.

Joe had watched all this in horror and the rest was just a whirl. He vaguely remembered the policemen racing across the lawn when it was already far too late. He heard them all shouting as they blamed one another for what had happened. Someone must have called an ambulance, for a few minutes later one arrived, but then the stretcher bearers refused to get out until the dogs had been chained and muzzled. He saw Sherlock and Bones being led back to the police van, their heads hanging in disgrace, and saw, with a wave of despair, that they looked a lot fatter than they had been when they arrived.

Later on, he heard—and somehow he wasn't surprised—that the cameo brooch, the earrings, and the two gold teeth had all been found in Mrs. Jinks's room. They had, however, found nothing of Mrs. Jinks apart from a few blood-stained scraps of clothing.