“It’s your stupid van that shouldn’t be allowed,” retorted Uncle Drac.
Wanda and I grinned at each other. If they were arguing, they were all right.
Mathilda hurried over to us. “Does the van still go?” she asked Barry.
“Of course it does,” Barry said. “It takes more than a little bump to stop a van of this quality.”
“Quality!” Uncle Drac snorted.
It was then I saw that good old Mathilda had the school register! She pushed it into Uncle Drac’s arms and told him, “Take this back to the school and make sure you give it to Miss Gargoyle.”
Barry’s van went kangaroo-hopping up the drive, carrying its precious cargo.
I was very impressed. “Wow,” I said to Mathilda, “how did you get that?”
Mathilda grinned. “The Vultures can’t get out. The car is wedged between the trees. So I just reached in through the broken window and grabbed it.”
The Vultures may have been stuck but that didn’t stop them screaming some very rude words at us. We reckoned that meant they were all right too, because no one screams so many different rude words if they are not feeling perfectly OK.
Matron arrived just in time to help us push their car out from the trees. It had huge dents down each side but it still worked. It went spluttering off down the drive and we all waved it goodbye.
We were all really tired, but before anyone went to bed there was something that had to be done. Back in Miss Gargoyle’s study we all watched as Miss Gargoyle handed Wanda a pen. “Sign here, Wanda, dear,” she said.
So Wanda signed her spidery squiggle in the big red school register:
Wanda Wizzard
Miss Gargoyle gave a big smile. “Gargoyle Academy for Girls is back in business,” she said.
Barry and Uncle Drac stayed the night in what Miss Gargoyle called the Guest Wing. The next morning Wanda and I were woken up by a knock on our cabin door. It was Mathilda.
“Miss Gargoyle says will you come down for breakfast, please?”
We got dressed in our school uniforms, then I picked up my little suitcase, emptied out the cheese and onion crisps, and we headed off. We could smell bacon and eggs and we were both really hungry, but first there was something we had to do. We went down our twisty stairs to the floor below and headed along to the bathroom where Wanda had sprayed the werebat. There was a big puddle of water outside the door. We stopped and listened.
“Are you sure it will be tiny again?” Wanda whispered.
“Yes,” I said. “The moon set ages ago. Come on, Wanda.”
I pushed open the bathroom door and we padded in through the water.
“There it is!” Wanda whispered.
And there, upside down on the shower curtain, hung the smallest, cutest, shiniest blue bat ever. I very gently pulled it off the curtain and put it into my case, quickly closing the lid because I could see its little orange eyes opening and I didn’t want it flying away and disappearing again. Then we set off downstairs for breakfast.
We went into the dining room and stopped dead.
“Oh!” Wanda gasped. Sitting at the table were not only Miss Gargoyle, Matron, Mathilda, Uncle Drac and Barry, but also Aunt Tabby and Brenda (with Pusskins).
“Hello, Mum,” Wanda said, sounding embarrassed. Because it is always embarrassing when your mother comes to your school, particularly if your mother is Brenda Wizzard.
“Hello, Wandy-woo-woo!” Brenda trilled.
Wanda went as pink as her rabbit suit had been before it got covered in spiders’ webs.
Miss Gargoyle was looking at my suitcase. “Araminta, dear,” she said. “Please don’t pay any attention to what that awful Vulture girl said last night. You don’t have to leave the school. Do please stay.”
“Thank you, Miss Gargoyle,” I said. “I would love to stay.” I caught a surprised glance from Aunt Tabby but I ignored it. “Actually, this suitcase is for Uncle Drac. There is something in here that belongs to him.” And I walked over to Uncle Drac and very carefully laid the case in front of him. Uncle Drac went to open it.
“No!” I yelled just in time. “Don’t open it!”
Uncle Drac jumped in surprise. And then he understood. “Oh,” he said. “Is it what I think it is?”
“If what you think it is is small and blue with little orange eyes, then yes it is what you think it is,” I said.
Uncle Drac broke into a huge smile, so wide that I could see his lovely pointy teeth. “Minty, you are amazing. I don’t know how you did it.”
“Did what?” asked Aunt Tabby suspiciously.
“Minty has just trapped the werebat. It is here, in her suitcase.”
Everyone stared at my suitcase as if it was going to bite them.
“Drac,” said Aunt Tabby. “I think you have an apology to make.”
Uncle Drac did a little cough. “Ahem. Er. I am very sorry, Minty.”
“Uncle Drac,” I said, staring pointedly at Aunt Tabby, “there is no need for you to apologise.”
“Er, yes there is,” said Uncle Drac. “You see, when I was on that bat holiday I brought back a souvenir—a very pretty little blue bat with orange eyes.”
“I know,” I said.
Uncle Drac sighed. “I thought it was the sweetest bat I’d ever seen. And it was so tiny, I just put it in my suitcase and no one knew. And it was fine in there. And it was fine back home too—until it saw moonlight. And then it turned into a huge monster bat with horrible orange eyes and began eating all the baby bats in the turret. Then it moved on to the bigger ones. The more it ate, the stronger it became. My bats were terrified, which was why they kept trying to escape.”
“So it wasn’t my fault that they all flew out and covered Wanda?” I said, looking straight at Aunt Tabby.
“No, Minty, it wasn’t,” Uncle Drac agreed. “They were flying away from the werebat. And then, when I realised the werebat had escaped from the turret, I was afraid it might attack you and Wanda. That is why Aunt Tabby and I agreed with Mummy—I mean your great-aunt Emilene—to let you go away to school. I thought it was safer until I caught the blue bat.”
“But you all made it seem like I was being sent away was because I was bad,” I said. “Which is not fair.”
Uncle Drac sighed. “Life is not always fair, Minty.”
Meanwhile, Wanda was looking very cross. “You didn’t care about me being safe,” she said to Brenda and Barry. “That is very unfair indeed.”
“But you had Pusskins to protect you,” Brenda said indignantly.
“Pusskins!” Wanda said in a disgusted voice. “Huh!”
I was still thinking about things being fair. “But it is a good thing that the werebat came here,” I said. “Because it meant that the Vultures got scared by a monster just as much as they had scared everyone else with their monster. And that was totally fair.”
And no one disagreed with that.
After breakfast, Miss Gargoyle gave me and Wanda the Vultures’ Beast suit as a thankyou present. Then she set about ringing around all the girls who had left the school to tell them that the Beast of Gargoyle Hall and the Vultures had gone and were never coming back. Ever. By the end of the day, Miss Gargoyle had more than fifty girls signed up to the school. There was no way the Bonkers Baron was going to get hold of it now.
That evening, Great-aunt Emilene arrived. She came sweeping up the steps with her double-ended ferret bouncing along, gave Miss Gargoyle a hug and said, “Ermintrude, I am so pleased it has all turned out well. I knew that once I managed to get Araminta here, she would sort it out. She is quite the young detective.” Then, to my total amazement, my great-aunt turned to me and winked.
I was shocked.
It was then that I realised that Mysteries are mysterious things. Sometimes when you solve one Mystery, you find another one lurking underneath—a hidden Mystery that you did not suspect at all. I smiled—I had learned something really important for a Chief Detective to know. And I now knew the real answer t
o The Mystery of Why Chief Detective Spook Was Sent to Boarding School. I felt really happy—until suddenly, Great-aunt Emilene said to me, “You remind me so much of myself as a girl, Araminta.”
I felt a lot less happy after that.
Wanda looked at me and grinned. “Now I know what to get you for your next birthday,” she said. “A double-ended ferret.”
“There are worse things,” I told her.
“Like what?” Wanda asked.
“Like a pink rabbit suit.”
But later, as we stood on the steps waving goodbye to Uncle Drac, Aunt Tabby, Brenda, Barry and Great-aunt Emilene, I thought what fun it was to be at boarding school with Wanda.
And to be sharing—and wearing—the best Beast suit in the whole wide world.
By the Same Author
ANGIE SAGE, the celebrated author of the Septimus Heap series, lives in a big spooky house in Somerset, where there are ghostly footsteps, mysterious smells of burning paper and a small, friendly ghost who loves to listen to music.
VISIT ARAMINTA ONLINE!
Go to www.aramintaspook.co.uk to download
spooky colouring sheets and learn more
about the inhabitants of Spook House.
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in June 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
This electronic edition published in June 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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Text copyright © Angie Sage 2014
Illustrations copyright © John Kelly 2014
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You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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eISBN 978 1 4088 5129 6
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Angie Sage, Gargoyle Hall
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