The Fantastic Family Whipple (33 page)

“Yes,” replied Arthur. “Er…who is this?”

After a short pause, the voice answered.

“Somebody who may have some useful information for you…regarding the Cake Catastrophe case…”

Arthur gasped. “What? But how—?”

“Meet me at midnight at the Undertakers’ Graveyard. And come alone…”

“Hang on,” spluttered Arthur. “How will I know—?”

But the line was already dead.

After replacing the receiver, Arthur stood and stared
at the telephone for several moments. What had just happened? To whom had he spoken? Was he really to meet this person in a graveyard at midnight? And honestly, what sort of person scheduled meetings in a graveyard at midnight anyway? Surely, there were much better meeting places. Lunch at a local café would have been nice. Or a picnic on a park bench—that would have been fine. But no. He had to get an informant who preferred to do business amongst crypts and corpses.

And yet, the more Arthur thought about it, the more he knew he had to go.

For a moment, he wondered if he ought to tell his parents or involve the police, but when he recalled the debacle he’d created at the GGDG with D.S. Greenley and Inspector Smudge, he immediately decided against it.

He then began contemplating the best way to contact Ruby, only to be sidetracked a moment later by the memory of Smudge’s warning—and the threat of what would happen to them if they were ever caught working on the case together. As fine a team as Arthur felt he and Ruby had wound up making, the thought of disobeying such a revered world-record holder suddenly gave him pause.

As for his
own
involvement, he could hardly cancel the graveyard appointment
now
; he had no idea how to contact the man—and failing to turn up to a scheduled meeting without first notifying the other party was surely a breach of informer etiquette. Bringing Ruby along, however—after Smudge had expressly prohibited it—was another matter
entirely. The boy had no desire to pick up a conviction for obstruction of justice; he could not imagine Ruby had any either. And of course, the voice on the telephone
had
told him to come alone; the last thing he wanted to do was lose his informant’s trust before the man had even told him anything.

And besides, he thought, Ruby probably wouldn’t have wanted to come with him anyway. It had all sounded nice at the time, what she’d said to him in Greenley’s squad car—but looking back now, he couldn’t help but wonder if she hadn’t merely said those things out of pity. Surely, she hadn’t
really
cared about the investigation, had she?

No, he concluded. This time, he was on his own. If somehow Ruby was still interested, he could fill her in on the details the next time he saw her, without needlessly bothering her or endangering her life or reputation.

His mind made up, Arthur drew a deep breath and proceeded to the study door.

“What was that all about, dear?” his mother asked as he emerged from the room.

“Oh…nothing,” he replied, hurrying past her as nonchalantly as possible. “Just, um, an encyclopedia salesman—after the record for Most Volumes Sold. You know how pushy those guys can be. Well—all right then. See you at lunch….”

He had just reached the stairs when his mother’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Arthur?” she called in an unmistakably suspicious tone.

The boy turned his head, his heart beating suddenly faster. “Yes?”

His mother glared at him through arching eyebrows. “You haven’t bought anything, have you?”

Arthur let out a pent-up breath. “Oh, no,” he said. “I, uh, told him our encyclopedia needs are all well taken care of.”

“Good,” his mother nodded. “We’re still receiving volumes from that
101 Steps to Record Breaking Success
series you signed up for last year.”

“Oh yeah,” said Arthur with further relief. “Sorry about that. I should’ve realized it wasn’t for me at Step 2: ‘Become a
101 Steps
Salesman and Convince Your Friends and Family to Buy This Life-Changing Book Series.’ Somehow, my sales pitch was never even close to as good as the guy who sold it to
me
. Probably would have helped if I’d bought the companion series,
101 Steps to the Perfect Sales Pitch
, like Step 3 recommended.”

“Well,” said his mother, “At least you’re learning from your mistakes.”

“Yep,” Arthur smiled as he started up the stairs. “Oh, by the way,” he added, “on a completely unrelated topic—apparently, there have been some…sightings…of an exceedingly rare bird in the area. The, um, Great Stripy-Eared Musk Owl, I believe. I thought I might have a go at the First Successful Live Capture—you know, before somebody else nabs one. Now, of course, they only come out after dark, so, you know—if it’s all right with you—I’d
like to leave the house for a few hours this evening…at around, say, midnight?”

Gripping a lantern in one hand and a flimsy butterfly net in the other, Arthur approached the towering pair of wrought iron gates and peered up at the sign overhead. In the lantern’s soft glow, he could just make out the words
U
NDERTAKERS
G
RAVEYARD
sculpted in the metal. This was the place.

From Neverfall Hall to the graveyard gates, it had been half an hour’s walk, the first ten minutes of which, Arthur had felt compelled to make stripy-eared-owl calls and actively search the foliage for fluttering feathers, just in case anyone was watching. Once or twice, he’d sworn he’d glimpsed the bird’s characteristic brown-and-white-striped ears and polka-dotted plumage—until, of course, he’d remembered the bird was merely an invention of his own imagination and did not in fact exist.

As awful as Arthur felt lying to his mother, he figured it would all be worth it if that night’s meeting contributed in any way to solving the mystery of the Cake Catastrophe and clearing Sammy’s name. Indeed, had another approach occurred to him, he would have gladly taken it, but it seemed the only way to get to the truth in this case was to tell a lie. He was pretty sure this was that “moral gray area” crime-fighters were always referring to. Still, he knew it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. This time, it was fibbing to his mother about bird catching; next, he’d be
planting evidence and forcing false confessions. Clearly, it was a slippery slope. If he wanted to keep that moral gray area from turning charcoal, he would have to be careful.

Arthur checked his watch. Two minutes past midnight. He looked about him, but saw no sign of anyone. Surely, he wasn’t meant to actually
enter
the graveyard? That did not seem practical at all. Clearly, the best course of action was to station himself outside the gates and wait for his contact to arrive.

After five minutes of this, however, with no such encounter, Arthur decided he would at least have to give the inside a look.

It would be the first time he had ever done so—despite living within walking distance of the graveyard—due largely to his father’s rather strong feelings on the matter. “Intolerable places, graveyards,” Mr. Whipple had told his children. “They’re full of
graves
. We’ve had more than enough burials in our family; we don’t need to be reminded of any others.” Arthur had thought this sounded reasonable at the time, whatever it meant, and had always kept away from the place—but then, he’d never had a reason to do otherwise.

As he pushed on the iron bars, the gate opened with a long, slow
creak
that pierced the silence and made him wonder if creaky hinges were simply a standard option at the cemetery gate factory. Unfortunately, the thought made the sound no less unnerving.

Swallowing hard, Arthur crept underneath the graveyard
sign and into the graveyard itself.

Once inside the gates, he found himself at the edge of a weathered cobblestone square. It contained no visible signs of life, but at its center, he could just make out an imposing statue with outstretched angel’s wings. Somehow, it made him feel just a bit better about his murky situation to see an angel was watching over him. As he raised his lantern and approached the statue, however, it soon became clear this was no angel—or at least not the sort of angel he would ever want to have as a guardian.

The figure carved into the stone was in fact a sunken-cheeked, sullen-faced man, wearing an old-fashioned suit and ascot tie. His straight, shoulder-length hair was capped with a towering top hat, and in his outstretched palms, he cradled a single human skull.

With the discovery of this final detail, the broad, feathery wings that extended from the figure’s back no longer gave the least bit of comfort to Arthur. While it was always nice to think that angels were able to get to him anywhere their wings could carry them, it was not half so pleasant thinking the same of this fellow.

Arthur gulped and shifted his attention to the large monument that served as the statue’s base, where he proceeded to read the following inscription:

Arthur had just read the last word of the closing epigram (which he might have understood to mean, literally: “Who Buried the Dead, Now Buried,” had he spent less time doing things like loitering in graveyards and more time studying his Latin, as his Dead Languages tutor, Dr. Verbabel, had instructed), when the cemetery gate screeched shut behind him. He whirled about—but saw no one.

“Hello?” he called out to the darkness.

There was no reply.

Another standard option at the cemetery gate factory,
he thought to himself.
Always slam shut when you least expect it.

His heart beating faster now, he slowly turned back to the monument, and—in the hopes of occupying his restless mind—began browsing the nearby headstones.

This would prove to be a rather bad idea.

Each tomb, he discovered, belonged to another notable
or record-breaking undertaker. According to one monument, here lay Richard Bawkes, designer of the World’s Most Expensive Coffin; according to another, this was the eternal resting place of Mortimer Curtens, director of the World’s Largest Private Non-Mafia Family Funeral. As Arthur went from one grim record holder to the next, his morbid curiosity quickly got the better of him—and before he knew it, he had wandered deep into the graveyard.

At the tomb of Gideon Balmer, who had achieved the Shortest Time after Death to Prepare and Bury a Single Corpse, Arthur began to wonder again at the sort of person who would choose this for a meeting place. Not only was it a graveyard—it had to be the
Creepiest
Graveyard on the Planet. Top ten, at the very least.

By the time he’d arrived at the gravestone for Jules Drayner, holder of the record for Most Blood Collected from Exsanguinated Corpses in One Year, Arthur’s morbid curiosity had turned to genuine disgust.

Just then, a nearby rustling noise whirled him around a second time.

“Hello?” he called.

Again, there came no answer. Holding his breath, he crept toward the noise.

As he slowly peered around a shovel-shaped grave marker, the source of the noise was revealed, though it took Arthur a moment to discern precisely what it was he was looking at. Two dark shapes shuffled atop the lichen-covered tombstone before him. One of them proved to be a
malformed, greasy-feathered raven, the other, a large black rat—and they appeared to be fighting over something. But what exactly was it? Chalky and slender and—Ah yes, of course: a human finger bone.

Suddenly queasy, Arthur was struck by an overwhelming urge to leave the Undertakers’ Graveyard as soon as possible—at any cost.

Turning away from the battling vermin, he dashed off in what he believed to be the direction of the entrance, scrambling past crooked headstones and crumbling tombs.

He had not traveled ten yards when a low voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Thou canst not escape death,”
it bellowed.
“Why dost thou flee?”

Arthur’s blood turned to ice. His eyes darted to and fro. It seemed the voice was in fact emanating from the decrepit headstone in front of him.

The boy closed his eyes in terror. “I—I would like to leave now,” he stammered.

“But thou hast not completed thy task.”

“I—I’m sorry,” Arthur pleaded, “but what task do you mean exactly—um, sir?”

“That thou shouldst pass not twixt yon gates, ere thou speak’st with that selfsame soul who bade thee journey hither….”

Arthur opened his mouth to reply, then stopped short.

“Wait. What was that now?”

“Blast,”
cursed the voice.
“What I mean to say is—you
really can’t leave before you talk to the person you came here to meet. Sorry about that. Graveyard voice. Force of habit.”