Granny Read online

  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.

  But for Joe, the very worst memory of the day, the one that would keep him awake all of that night and most of the next, was of something he had seen in the middle of all the activity. As he stood in the hall he had heard something and had turned around just in time to see Granny coming down the stairs. At that moment, with just the two of them there, the mask was off again and the crocodile smile that Mrs. Jinks had described was there for him to see.

  But it wasn’t the smile that frightened Joe. It was what Granny was holding in her hand, what she had taken from the kitchen a few minutes before.

  It was a box of instant gravy powder.

  Without saying a word, Granny hurried past him and went into the kitchen to put it back.

  5

  GRANNY MOVES IN

  Nobody felt the death of Mrs. Jinks more keenly than Joe. It was as if he had lost his only friend—which, in a way, he had. And not only was she dead but she had been branded a thief, and that hurt him all the more. The truth will always come out. That was what she had said to him. But how could he go to his parents or the police and tell them that it was Granny who had taken the jewelry and the gold teeth and that it was she who had killed Mrs. Jinks by pouring gravy powder over her when the police dogs were near because…because… What reason could there possibly be? They would think he was crazy.

  Every day when he got home from school, Joe found himself on his own. He took to walking down to the back of the garden, where Mr. Lampy would be waiting for him and the two of them would sit together next to a coal stove with the family of moles watching them through the window of the shed.

  “I’m going to run away,” he would say. “I’ll go to China and work in a rice paddy.”

  “I don’t know, Master Warden,” Mr. Lampy would reply. “China’s a long way away. And who’s this Paddy you’re talking about?”

  Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Warden had problems of their own. The summer vacation was about to start and that meant the departure of Wolfgang and Irma. Every year the cook and her husband went home to Hungary, although, as they only owned a trailer just outside Budapest, Mr. Warden would have much preferred it if the home had come to them. What it meant was that for three weeks there would be no cook and no butler. Worse still, Mrs. Warden had been unable to find a new nanny to look after Joe, even though she’d advertised. The fact that the last nanny had just been eaten by two dogs probably didn’t help.

  “We’ve got to find someone to look after Jordan,” Mrs. Warden said the night after Wolfgang and Irma left.

  “What? What did you say?” Mr. Warden was lying in bed, smoking a cigar and reading The Economist.

  Mrs. Warden pivoted around upside down. She had recently begun a course in escapology, and in addition to being handcuffed, straitjacketed, and Scotch-taped, she was also tied by one foot to the chandelier.

  “I said we’ve got to find someone to look after Jordan.”

  “Oh yes. But who?”

  “I was thinking about Mr. Lampy.”

  “Mr. Lampy? He’s just the gardener. And he’s over eighty. Completely senile…”

  Mrs. Warden tugged with her teeth at one of the ropes that bound her. It wouldn’t give. “We could ask Mabel Butterworth. She’s an angel.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Mr. Warden said. “She died two years ago.”

  “Did she?” Mrs. Warden blinked. “No wonder she hasn’t been returning my calls.” She considered for a moment. “How about Barbara Finegold? She always says how much she likes kids.”

  “But she means goats,” Mr. Warden said. “She’s always had a fondness for goats. She keeps two of the brutes as pets.”

  “Well, there must be someone.”

  “How about you?” Mr. Warden suggested. “After all, you are the boy’s mother.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Mrs. Warden muttered. “I suppose it is an idea…I mean, I could look after him for a few days.”

  Mrs. Warden twisted around again, trying to release a hand from the straitjacket without dislocating her shoulder. Nothing happened. “This isn’t working.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Gordon, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to untie me. Gordon? Gordon…?”

  But Mr. Warden had fallen sound asleep.

  The next day did not begin well. Mrs. Warden had a headache (from sleeping upside down) and had no wish to be left alone with Joe. Mr. Warden had left early for the office, even though —as Mrs. Warden realized an hour after he was gone—it was Saturday. Joe was waiting for her in the kitchen, studying a map of China.

  “Good morning, Jordan,” she said.

  Joe looked up. He had been thinking about life in Chwannping.

  “Now,” Mrs. Warden went on. “I’m just going to make you some breakfast. Then I’m afraid I have an appointment at the hairdresser’s and then my bridge lesson with Dr. Vitebski. This week we’re learning about suspension bridges. So will you be all right on your own until lunch?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Good.” Mrs. Warden was in a hurry. She threw a s
poonful of coffee granules into her mouth and sipped some boiling water from the kettle. “I’d love to have lunch with you,” she went on, “but I’m meeting Jane for elevenses and as she’s always late it’s bound to be twelveses. The poor dear is all at sixes and sevens! Maybe I’ll buy her some After Eights.”

  Joe had lost count of trying to figure this out, but his mother went on anyway. “I’m going shopping this afternoon,” she said. “I thought I’d go to the spring sales. The sofa in the living room needs some new springs. Then tea at the Ritz and I should be home in time for supper.”

  “Do you want me to make the supper?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t think so, darling!” Mrs. Warden giggled. “Leave that to me!”

  But in fact she was so exhausted after her day’s shopping that she quite forgot to cook. That evening, Mr. Warden and Joe sat at the table staring gloomily at three cans of pink salmon. Mrs. Warden was even gloomier. She couldn’t find the can opener.

  “This house is going to the dogs!” Mr. Warden muttered. “And I’m going to a hotel!”

  Mrs. Warden burst into tears. “It’s not my fault,” she wept. “I’ve been so busy! How can I be expected to do everything?”

  “Well, is there no food in the house?” Mr. Warden asked.

  “There was a chicken and some peas.”

  “You could at least have cooked the peas,” Mr. Warden growled.

  “I tried to. But the chicken ate them. And then I tried to cook the chicken, but it ran away.”

  The days without Wolfgang and Irma crawled slowly by. Mrs. Warden filled the house with frozen meals. Mr. Warden spent longer and longer at the office. And Joe began to teach himself Chinese. But quite rapidly things began to fall apart.

  On Tuesday night, the dishwasher broke down, much to the horror of Mrs. Warden, who hadn’t washed a dish herself since 1963 (and then she had only rinsed it). The next day she went out and bought a hundred paper plates, which were fine with the main courses and desserts but caused problems with the soup. On Wednesday, Mr. Warden attempted to dry his shoes by placing them in the microwave. His feet were actually glowing as he took the subway to work and he caused a bomb scare at Charing Cross station. On Thursday, the toaster exploded when Mr. Warden tried to light it with a match. On Friday, it was the vacuum. Mrs. Warden barely escaped a terrible injury when she tried to use it to blow-dry her hair.