Mr. and Mrs. Bunny—Detectives Extraordinaire! (7 page)

“S
o, Mrs. Bunny,” said Mr. Bunny as they hopped over their thirty-third hill. “Don't you wish we had taken the car?”

“Yes, if it came with a driver,” muttered Mrs. Bunny under her breath. Indeed, she had very little breath left to mutter with. “Are you sure we are going in the right direction? I do wish you had let me stop and get a map.”

“Nonsense. All we have to do is hop toward the manor house.”

“Yes, but
have
we been hopping toward it?” panted Mrs. Bunny. “It feels to me like we're hopping around in circles. I'm sure we've been up this hill before.”

“Oh, be quiet, Mrs. Bunny.”

And then Mrs. Bunny, who was hopping ahead of Mr. Bunny, saw a great lump on top of a hill. It looked like someone sitting with a blanket over her head, but this seemed such a ridiculous thing to do at the crest of a hill with a lovely view on a beautiful summer morning that Mrs. Bunny decided she must be wrong.

“Mrs. Bunny,” said Mr. Bunny, “I wish I had a Nerf bat. Do you remember Guess That Lump?”

When the baby Bunnys were small, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny had entertained themselves by letting them hide under blankets and hitting them with the Nerf bat, saying in loud, theatrical tones, “WHAT'S THAT LUMP?” It was endlessly amusing but not apt to have the same effect with strangers, Mrs. Bunny feared.

Nevertheless, Mr. Bunny was willing to give it a try with a poke from a stick in place of the Nerf bat, when suddenly a head popped out and a little girl looked at them blankly.

The Bunnys were used to being looked at blankly. It was seldom a human tried to make eye contact.

“WHAT'S THAT LUMP?” shouted Mr. Bunny anyway, just for the heck of it.

It had a very strange effect. The little girl actually seemed to understand. She gave Mr. Bunny a look of pure terror and went immediately back under the blanket.

Madeline sat quietly waiting for the bunnies to go away. She had been sitting under the blanket all morning. When she had awoken and checked on Uncle Runyon, she'd found him still in his coma. After eating the breakfast Jeeves prepared for her, she had gone outside to try and figure out which things that had taken place the day before had been real and which had been imagined. She had almost decided that she herself was not insane, merely mistaken about the foxes, when the bunnies accosted her. Now she had to rethink. Between this and trying to figure out how to find her parents, her brains were becoming terrifically overworked. She poked one eye out from a corner of the blanket. Yes, there were talking bunnies there, all right. The one in the brown fedora was saying, “For all the world, as if she understood what I said!”

“Oh dear, Mr. Bunny, but if she did, you must have frightened her terribly, shouting ‘What's that lump?' at her.”

“It must be a coincidence,” said Mr. Bunny. “You know humans never understand Bunny language. Maybe she's just afraid of rabbits.”

“I think you may be a hallucination,” said Madeline from under the blanket.

“The idea! That
we
could be a hallucination. If anyone's a hallucination, it's you!” said Mr. Bunny.

“Right back at you,” said Madeline through the blanket. She wasn't usually so rude, but it was okay to be rude to imaginary bunnies.

“Right back at you again!” said Mr. Bunny.

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?” said Mr. Bunny.

Madeline whipped the blanket off and said, “What is the
matter
with you?”

“That's a very good question,” said Mrs. Bunny, trying to pat Madeline reassuringly on the ankle. But it only made Madeline scooch rapidly backward until she lost her balance and rolled down the hill.

“I am always asking myself what is the matter with Mr. Bunny,” Mrs. Bunny called after her in a friendly manner.

Madeline thought that maybe if she lay very still it would all go away. Stress, she thought, it's the stress. She
was
losing her mind. That was the only possible explanation for the talking rabbits and driving foxes. The thing to do was to calm
down. KatyD had taught her self-hypnosis during the lulls at the café in the rainy months when there were never many customers. She had taught Madeline self-hypnosis, Reiki, tae kwon do, and a little Serbo-Croatian, but only the self-hypnosis had stuck. Even though she had never used it before, Madeline remembered what to do. The idea was to think of a place that relaxed you, so Madeline imagined walking through a field on Hornby. She took deep calming breaths. She imagined it in detail. The flowers. The butterflies. The fluffy clouds. She began to feel slightly better.

Now that I am calm, they will have disappeared, she said to herself, and opened one eye. The Bunnys were still there. They had followed her down the hill and were bent over, giving her worried, inquiring looks.

“I think I'll just go for a walk now, and
then
maybe I'll stop hallucinating,” Madeline said.

“For the last time, you are
not
hallucinating,” said Mr. Bunny.

“Never mind hallucinating; do you
live
in the manor house?” asked Mrs. Bunny excitedly.

“Um, why else would I be here on these grounds?” asked
Madeline, hedging. She didn't feel like going into the long explanation of what she was doing there.

“We don't live here and we are on the grounds,” said Mrs. Bunny. “Of course, we didn't know until you mentioned it that we were on the manor house grounds. We
wanted
to be on the grounds, but mostly we were hopping in circles. Because Mr. Bunny wouldn't let me buy a map.”

“We were not hopping in circles. I knew exactly where we were going. Your sense of direction, Mrs. Bunny, is all in your—”

“So, you were coming to the manor house on purpose?” interposed Madeline tactfully.

“Yes, to detect!” said Mrs. Bunny.

“You're not supposed to tell people that,” said Mr. Bunny.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Bunny, and bit on a knuckle. “I forgot.”

“Detect what?” asked Madeline.

“What and why you are burning things!” said Mrs. Bunny. “We're detectives!”

“MRS. BUNNY! You have more enthusiasm than brains.”

“I'm not burning things,” said Madeline. “That's my uncle's butler.”

“Isn't he your butler too?” asked Mr. Bunny.

“Actually, I'm just visiting,” said Madeline.

As they watched from afar, they could see the butler carrying boxes to the fire. He upended them, and a blizzard of old socks hit the flames. Smoke filled the air, and a wind blew it toward them.

Oh, honestly, Uncle, thought Madeline, old socks?

“Is that burning legal?” asked Mrs. Bunny. “It smells very polluting to me.”

“I don't know,” said Madeline. “Suddenly I don't seem to know what's what about anything.”

“I'm sure you know lots of things, dear,” said Mrs. Bunny. “How long are you visiting your uncle?”

“I don't know that either, he's deathly ill,” said Madeline.

“You poor dear. Your uncle is deathly ill and your parents are”—and here Mrs. Bunny bent down to whisper tactfully—“dead.”

“DEAD!” said Madeline, completely hysterical now. “What do you know that I don't know?”

“NOTHING!” said Mrs. Bunny, falling over backward in alarm.

“Then why would you
say
that?” asked Madeline, sitting
up and bending over Mrs. Bunny in a frighteningly crazy manner.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Mr. Bunny, hopping between them. “It was a natural assumption.”

“Why? What do
you
know?” asked Madeline breathlessly, dreading the worst.

“Well …,” said Mrs. Bunny.

She and Mr. Bunny exchanged glances.

“You see,” said Mr. Bunny, “we've never talked to a human before, so really, all we know of them is from books.”

“We read a lot of books. Children's books mostly, because they're always much more truthful than adult books. And much more entertaining,” said Mrs. Bunny.

“And in all of them,” said Mr. Bunny.

“With few exceptions,” said Mrs. Bunny.

“The parents are dead,” they finished together.

“Oh,” said Madeline. “Well, they're not dead, they're just …” And then she stopped. One of the things she had been trying to decide was whom it would be safe to tell about her parents. It was clear she was going to need some help finding them. If these rabbits were real, then foxes might indeed have been the ones to kidnap Flo and Mildred. In which case,
stumbling upon a pair of detectives, even rabbit detectives, was the most fortuitous thing that could have happened to her. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the six dollars she had left. She held it out to Mrs. Bunny. “Is this enough to hire a detective? I mean, if I was going to.”

“Well, dear, first I think we need to discuss the case,” said Mrs. Bunny, trying to remain calm but practically falling back
up
the hill in excitement. Their first client!

“Yes,” said Mr. Bunny. “We must proceed in a businesslike fashion. Put that back in your pocket and follow us.”

Madeline's stomach growled. With all the flurry of activity and adrenaline in the last two days, she was starving. Breakfast seemed like a long time ago. Mr. and Mrs. Bunny averted their eyes politely.

“Why don't you come to our hutch for lunch, dear? It's just over those thirty-seven hills. Hopping, hopping, never stopping, that's our motto,” said Mrs. Bunny.

The prospect of thirty-seven hills was not a welcome one at the moment, but as she started walking, Madeline discovered that there was a certain point in fatigue where it was possible to keep moving one foot after another with little thought to what came next.

The Bunnys came up from behind her now and then and gave her a helpful shove. They said they were tired from their busy day too, and so everyone was very happy when the hutch came into view.

“Scones!” said Mrs. Bunny.

“Tea!” said Mr. Bunny.

“Anything at all!” said Madeline as she followed Mrs. Bunny toward the doorway of the hutch.

“And you can tell us where you learned to speak Bunny,” said Mr. Bunny.

“Learned to speak Bunny?” said Madeline in surprise. “But I don't. I thought you were speaking English.”

“We can
understand
English,” said Mrs. Bunny. “Although we can't yet speak it very fluently.”

“We speak Fox, Marmot, Bird,” said Mr. Bunny. “You know, the Romance languages. All bunnies learn those in grade school. Later we might pick up a little Bear. Some Groundhog, a touch of Prairie Dog.”

“Highly esoteric,” sniffed Mrs. Bunny. “And impractical. I keep telling him he should take a course in Squirrel.”

“But humans never understand Bunny. Not without being taught. Unless …”

They both stared at her wide-eyed, although she could only see Mrs. Bunny. Mr. Bunny was still behind her, outside.

“She's a …,” began Mr. Bunny.

“Bunny whisperer!” said Mrs. Bunny in awed tones.

“Are you?” asked Mr. Bunny.

“I don't know,” said Madeline, who had frozen in the doorway like a statue. “I mean, if I am, I never knew it. Of course, no bunnies have ever spoken to me before.”

“In general, dear, we like to be spoken to first,” said Mrs. Bunny.

“Well, since I've never
learned
Bunny, I guess I must be,” said Madeline.

“Extraordinary,” said Mrs. Bunny.

“Not as extraordinary as it would be if a human finally took the time to actually learn
our
language instead of expecting
us
to speak
theirs
,” said Mr. Bunny.

“Now, now, let's not get political, she's just a little girl,” said Mrs. Bunny. “So, Madeline, tell us what is bothering you so.”

“It's hard to know where to begin—” Madeline said.

“Of course it is,” Mrs. Bunny interrupted soothingly as she put a paw on Madeline's arm and gave her a helpful tug
forward. “Come in and have a nice cup of tea to loosen your lips.”

“I can't,” said Madeline, wiggling helplessly in the doorway. Her eyes filled with tears. Did everything have to go wrong? “I'm stuck.”

 MR. AND MRS. BUNNY ARE HIRED