Return of the Emerald Skull (8 page)

I looked down into the gatekeeper's terror-filled eyes; his lips twitched as he struggled to speak.

‘Evil … Terrible evil …’ he rasped. ‘Beware …’

His head jerked forward urgently, before falling to one side, and his eyes glazed over into a sightless stare as he breathed his last.

A sizeable crowd had now gathered around
the stricken gatekeeper, gawping and chattering. The coachman had climbed down from his seat and was telling anyone who would listen the same thing, over and over.

‘He just ran out in front of me. Just ran out, he did. There was nothing I could do. He just ran out in front of me …’

Others took up the same refrain – an old woman with a basket; a dairymaid with a couple of buckets of milk yoked across her shoulders – everyone seemed in agreement. ‘Didn't look where he was going …’ ‘He just ran out in front of him …’ ‘Looked like a madman, poor soul …’ A police constable, red-faced and wheezing, barged his way through the milling crowd.

‘Mind your backs,’ he shouted as he elbowed onlookers aside. ‘Move along now, please. Nothing more to see.’ Standing over the dead body, he pulled a notebook and a pencil from his back pocket. ‘Now, can anyone tell me exactly what happened?’

‘He didn't look. Just ran out into the street …’ the dairymaid began.

‘There was nothing I could do,’ came the gruff voice of the coachman, repeating himself. ‘Just ran out, he did …’

Slipping back into the crowd, I left them to it. One more crazy beggar coming to grief on the cobbles of Market Street, busiest thoroughfare in the great bustling city. ‘Carriage carrion’, such casualties were called, and this poor wretch was just one more of them. The difference was that a few weeks ago, this madman had been sane and rational and cheerfully tending the gate at a respectable private school.

What had gone wrong?

The incident had brought me down to earth with a bump. While I'd spent all summer with my head full of laundry tickets and Stover's pasties, mental gymnastics and sweet smiles, something had gone badly wrong at Grassington Hall. Of course, I had
to find out what. But first I needed something to settle my nerves.

Crossing the snarled-up traffic of Market Street, I headed down Cannery Row and stepped into the reassuring wood-panelled gloom of Marconi's Coffee House. Ordering a cup of Black Java, I breathed in the rich coffee aroma and tried to make sense of what I'd just witnessed.

‘Barnaby?’ A hearty voice broke into my thoughts. ‘Barnaby Grimes. My dear fellow, good to see you!’

Looking up, I saw that the voice belonged to a regular client of mine – a portly, ruddy-cheeked coal merchant by the name of Sidney Cruikshank – seated at the next table. Together with his brother, he owned Cruikshank and Cruikshank, the coal merchant's next door to Marconi's.

Throughout the autumn and early winter, their huge carthorses would deliver vast loads of coal all over the city, recouping the
money week by week throughout the rest of the year. My job in the last week of summer was to take the advance orders for the season ahead. We tick-tock lads called it ‘coal scuttling’, and it was one of our busiest times of the year.

‘Morning, Mr Cruikshank,’ I said, a little weakly.

‘Good morning to you, Barnaby,’ he said, his loud voice drowning out the babble of conversation in the coffee house. He reached across and thrust out a great ham of a hand, the nails and creases black with coal dust. ‘You must drop by – the new season's almost upon us, my boy.’

‘Certainly,’ I said, and sighed.

Mr Cruikshank frowned and thrust his huge red face close to mine. ‘Are you all right, old son? If you don't mind my saying, you're looking a bit peaky. Not coming down with something, I trust?’

I shook my head. ‘I've just seen a man get
run over on Market Street,’ I told him.

Mr Cruikshank breathed in noisily through his teeth. ‘Dreadful, dreadful,’ he said, shaking his head sympathetically. ‘The roads these days. Not a coal dray, I hope …’

‘A coach-and-four,’ I said. ‘Ran over a beggar.’

‘Carriage carrion!’ said Cruikshank with a snort. ‘When will these people learn? One must take care crossing a busy street …’

‘I knew him, actually,’ I said. ‘Up till quite recently he was the gatekeeper at Grassington Hall School.’

‘Grassington Hall, eh?’ said Cruikshank, arching an eyebrow. ‘Mighty fine academic institution. And I should know. I send young Sidney junior there.’

The news surprised me – although come to think of it, I realized I hadn't seen the young Cruikshank lad at his father's offices for quite some time. He was like a miniature version of his father – though, if anything,

rounder and slightly redder in the face.

‘In his second year,’ Mr Cruikshank continued, nodding. ‘Having a whale of a time, by all accounts – and getting a damn good education into the bargain.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a sheet of folded vellum. ‘In fact, I received this from him not half an hour since.’ He smiled. ‘Tick-tock lad delivered it to me in the yard … Just popped into Marconi's for a cup of the black stuff and a quick read.’ He looked up and flapped the letter in my face. ‘Would you like to hear how he's getting on?’

I nodded – though, to be honest, I suspect he'd have told me whether I wanted to or not. He pulled a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles from his top pocket and put them on, then unfolded the letter and cleared his throat.

‘
Dearest Father and Mother
,’ he began. He paused and peered at me above the
half-moon lenses. ‘Wonderful penmanship they teach them as well.’ He resumed reading, his voice a little slow as he laboured over the words. ‘
Dearest Father and Mother, I trust that this letter finds you in good health. I have settled in well this term. I am working very hard and learning a lot. Lessons are very interesting, the masters treat us well – and there is plenty of food. You mustn't worry about a thing. I'll make you proud of me. Your loving son, Sidney
.’

He looked up and smiled, and I detected a certain moistness in his eyes.

‘You're right,’ I said. ‘It sounds as though he's getting on well.’

‘Working hard and playing hard,’ said Sidney Cruikshank. He pulled a large checked handkerchief from his jacket pocket and blew his nose noisily. ‘Make me proud, he says … I'm telling you, Barnaby, I'm already the proudest father in the whole world. Young Sidney's getting all the advantages of a
good education that I never had.’

I finished my coffee and left the coal merchant re-reading his son's letter, his eyes glistening and his lips moving as he did so. Turning left out of Marconi's, I crossed the road – taking more care than usual as I did so – and turned back down Grevy Lane. I reached the far end and was just about to shin up a conveniently sited drainpipe when I noticed a tick-tock lad looking vaguely about him, a bunch of vellum envelopes in his hand.

He wore a coalstack hat like my own, only a couple of sizes too big, and a battered and patched-up waistcoat that looked like a hand-me-down. Instead of a swordstick, he clutched a gnarled cudgel under one arm – useful for beating off troublesome guard dogs, but for little else. With his muddy boots, worn clothes and sooty face, the lad had ‘cobblestone-creeper’ written all over him.

‘Can I help?’ I said.

The lad had ‘cobblestone-creeper’ written all over him.

The lad turned. He saw at once, of course, that I too was a tick-tock lad, and nodded greetings.

‘I'm looking for number seventy-nine,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘Can't seem to find it anywhere.’

‘There isn't a number seventy-nine on this street,’ I said. ‘It stops at fifty-five.’

‘But there must be,’ he said. ‘It's where’ – he looked down at the envelope at the top of the bundle – ‘a Mr and Mrs Tillstone live. Seventy-nine Garvey Lane …’

I laughed. The lad was either new to this game – or he was as poor with his letters as old Sidney Cruikshank. Either way, taking pity on him, I decided to put him right.

‘This is
Grevy
Lane,’ I said with a smile. ‘Garvey Lane's the next one along. In that direction,’ I added, pointing.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘Thanks, Mr …’

‘Barnaby.’ I smiled, putting out my hand. ‘Barnaby Grimes. Glad to be of service.’

The lad shook my hand enthusiastically. ‘Will,’ he said. ‘Will Farmer.’ Pushing his coalstack hat up with a grimy hand, he shrugged his shoulders. ‘I'm new to this lark. In fact, this is only my second job. I was delivering some duck eggs down south – lovely countryside – when I gets called over to these gates. Big manor house or something … And this kid gives me three gold-uns to deliver this here sack of letters …’

Will stopped and narrowed his eyes as he looked me up and down. ‘You're one of them highstackers, ain't you?’ he said, his voice full of awe.

‘I am,’ I said, a note of pride creeping into my own voice.

He glanced up at the rooftops. ‘I'd
love
to be a highstacker,’ he said. ‘Away from all the noise, the hustle and bustle … Up there among the spires and steeples … ‘ He sighed, long and heartfelt, then turned to me, his face as eager and full of pleading as a Friday
cat's at a fish stall. ‘I don't suppose … sometime … not now, of course … you might teach me highstacking. I mean, you must have had a teacher yourself once …’

I smiled. I liked the kid's cheek.

‘How did
you
get started, Barnaby?’

‘I was taught by a tick-tock lad named Tom Flint,’ I told him.

I heard young Will's sharp intake of breath. ‘Not
the
Tom Flint,’ he said.

‘You've heard of him?’ I said, impressed. ‘Taught me everything I know, did Tom …’

‘Like the Peabody Roll?’ Will said, nodding enthusiastically. ‘And the Flying Fox? What about the Rolling Derby, and the Hobson's Choice … ?’

I laughed. ‘You
have
been doing your homework!’

‘I certainly have,’ he said. ‘I don't want to be a cobblestone-creeper for ever.’ He turned his gaze up towards the chimney stacks high above our heads. ‘I want to be up there …
So, will you teach me? Here's my card.’

Will scrabbled at the pockets of his worn waistcoat and fished out a handwritten card with his name and the address of a dingy mansion block in the cloth-cutters’ district. He handed it to me with an eager smile.

Everybody has to start somewhere, I thought as I took the kid's card. I was a lowly bottle-black, friendless and alone, when Tom Flint crossed my path. Dropped a docket off at the bottle factory and spotted me swinging on the workshop beams while the drunken overseer slept …

Will's expectant eyes were on mine.

‘I'm in the middle of something, kid,’ I said, and saw the disappointment cloud his face like a storm at a church social. ‘But I'll see what I can do …’ I slipped the kid's card into my waistcoat pocket.

‘Promise?’ said Will, his face brightening.

‘Promise,’ I said.

He turned and darted off in the direction
of Garvey Lane as fast as his over-sized muddy boots would take him. I suppose he was afraid I might change my mind – and who knows, he was probably right. The last thing I needed just then was a fresh-faced apprentice still wet behind the ears.

I was about to shin up the drainpipe when something at my feet caught my eye. In his excitement, the young tick-tock lad had dropped one of his letters on the wet cobbles. I stooped and picked it up, only for the sodden envelope to peel open in my hands. I was just about to re-seal it – a dab of wax gum from the tin in my waistcoat would have done the trick – when the crest on the notepaper caught my attention.

Grassington Hall.

Will Farmer must have been the tick-tock lad who'd delivered Cruikshank's son's letter to his coalyard, I realized. Despite myself, with trembling fingers I pulled the letter free from the envelope, unfolded it and started reading.

There was no doubt about it. Apart from the name at the end of the letter, it was identical to the one received by the coal merchant – even down to the penmanship.

I felt sick to my stomach. I'd seen letters like this before. It could mean only one thing. Grassington Hall had become a lock-up academy.

I shook my head. Archimedes Barnett had seemed such a decent headmaster, and his pupils had appeared so well cared for and
happy. But this letter and the countless identical letters in Will's sack, with their soothing words and reassurances for parents and guardians, were ringing alarm bells in my head louder than a fire-wagon. I knew there was only one way to silence them.

I had to return to Grassington Hall to find out what had gone so terribly wrong. I left at once. After all, as we tick-tock lads say, there's no time like the present.