Part 12 (1/2)

Well, of course, you could have knockedadventures? Involved in investigations? Helping out a personage such as this Maude? For a second I experienced a slight dizziness Did everyone I know get themselves involved in curious adventures behinde

”Crimes, indeed-” Maude nodded ”-also supernatural and unexplained phenonet for occult and devilish practices, sches, y'know”

”Really?”

”Oh, yes-” Maude sniffed, giving me a very dark look indeed as I fumbled for my keys to Nellie's house ”-it's to do with the presence of an interstitial dirounds of the old Abbey, you see A kind of gateway into hell Very nasty indeed”

I'm afraid my mouth dropped open at her words and I busied e, which sly of newly brewed coffee and fresh wood s lunatic to the rescue, I was delighted to see thatabout in the kitchen in her nightie and pouring coffee for us all

”I'm so sorry to call you out, Maude,” she said, as her visitor produced the Victoria sponge fro ”Ooh, lovely I'll fetch plates No, I thought I'd better call you over, because of this funny do that we had last night at the Exorcis,” Maude growled, slicing the cake and dolloping wodges of it messily onto dainty china

”I know, I couldn't help s are about charlatans fleecing the public But the thing is I went there because Raphael orried He had felt a vibration There was a genuinely powerful psychic up there at the hotel last night He could feel the their wicked selves away aht So I could flush this person out”

I sat there withat er sister, Nellie Nellie with one eye, a crooked back and a clubfoot Nellie ould never say boo to a goose My poor Nellie was sitting there in her nightgown, eating cake for breakfast, and coook, easy as you like And that bullish Maude wo as if they had little chats like this all the ti entirely reasonable

Before they could carry on saying s, I broke in, ”Erm, who is Raphael?”

My dear sister Nellie looked at le eye She was pitying me! ”Oh dear,” she said ”Well I suppose needs must After all these years, I must come clean I must tell you the truth After a lifetiht,” said Maude ”It's about time your sister knew the truth”

Nellie took a deep breath and looked at le one Which incing with pity She said- in a very calm voice indeed-”You see, Raphael is uide He's been inside me all my life and he's been my little secret And when that dreadful woave Raphael quite a turn, I can tell you”

I stared at her I really didn't knohat to say What does one say, Dr Waston, in circumstances like these?

Yours, Mrs Hudson

Dear Dr Watson, I hope both your good self and ourrather better than I am this week I have been in a whirl of perturbation for several days Never have I been so steeped in strangeness and such eerie goings-on Well, it turns out that my malformed sister and her bluff and hearty best friend are very well accustos I assuood friend Hiood, plain co probles in my philosophy-as the Danish prince would say-than I could shake a stick at

Today is Thursday-honestly, I don't knohere the ti led around by our about her, now that she is eation I was co cereant park across the other side of town This was for the stuffed squid that Maude's sisters had spent day and night stitching back into some semblance of life When we arrived for the sherry cocktail reception this evening in that rather musty, dusty municipal establishment, the squid was suspended in a delicate cat's cradle of silver threads, which gave it the appearance of swireat and good in their finery-stoodup at the frozen tentacles and the shi+ny carapace of its purple skin

I nodded politely and sabbled away at Maude's sisters, ere attired in suitably witchy-and rather scandalous-gowns for the evening They smiled demurely and seemed to be the toast of the town I wandered about the other display cabinets, finding a bewildering selection of ed bears There were Valentine's cards froloves and shoes; stuffed woodland beasts and seabirds It was a shabby ht, with hardly any rhyme or reason

Anyhow, there was a proper ballyhoo when the Mayor of Whitby got up in all his robes and chains and inous Mr Danby, as they called hie I was staring into the eyes of the monstrous beast, but its celestial orbs had been replaced, naturally enough, with solass plates and, indeed, Maude leaned in toplatters she had brought back from a holiday on the island of Murano, near Venice Oh, my heart leapt up at the mention of Venice, dear Dr Watson And then I shi+vered as I recalled some of the deadlier details of our adventure there, last autu to the end of his windy speech that I noticed so to the suspended squid One of its attenuated limbs seemed to flex and lash, of its own accord There was a sharp cry as so Then, all of a sudden, its other li out inside the stuffy museum It was at this point that I noticed it was all due to the wires which suspended the beast: they were snapping, one by one, and the thick, heavy body of the squid aying and then galloping about in mid-air There was such a panderabme backwards into the alcove where the shi+ps-in-bottles were tidily arrayed

With a treiant squid ca down Some innocent bystanders had been transfixed with horror-including the Mayor-and they were soon pinned and wriggling under that giant, piscine for clouds of dust

I heard Maude Sturgeon cry out, ”Sabotage!”

And soon ere checking around to see as hurt Maude's witchy sisters were shaken, but not injured The squid itself had barely a scratch on it The Mayor's ancient, wizenedand had to be taken hoht to the nearest hotel, where we sat in the bar and took a fortifyingly stiff nip of brandy ”Who would want to sabotage the unveiling of a squid?” I asked her

She gave me a very dark look ”Perhaps it's not the squid itself Perhaps it is all about as inside the squid”

I raised my eyebrow at her as she downed her drink ”What could be inside a squid?” I laughed

”Whatever it was, it isn't there now,” she said cryptically ”The squid was, as we know, ra rather drunkenly, and I thought I could detect a touch of Raphael, her supposed spirit guide, in her eyes ”Are you saying so was re?”

She tapped her nose ”I a; what did they take out?”

”I don't know,” she said pri across the elegant lounge bar of the Miramar Hotel at someone who had just stepped in, alone ”Isn't that Denise?” she said ”From Denise and Wheatley?”

And it was, Dr Watson Away froe and out of her finery, Denise was a rather shabby genteel figure, all bundled up in worsted and tweed

”She's entering the bar on her own,” I observed

”Oh, no one cares about that kind of propriety,” said Nellie ”Not at the Mira to call her over”

I wasn't sure I even wanted to be sociable with an exorcist, but voice my concerns about this I could not, for Nellie was on her feet and beckoning Denise by waving her skinny arood eye

”My life is in tatters” Denise wept copiously once

”Why is that?” asked Nellie, agog at the spectacle of the blue-haired lady sobbing into her libation

”He can be terrible, terrible-” her voice trembled ”-when he's in a fury” Fear ainst her rotten stumps of teeth

”Who, my dear?” Nellie pressed

”Why, him My husband My terrible husband” Then Denise clapped a hand over her ued and kept badgering the old dear, and I feltso close? Hadn't Denise been one of the reasons Nellie had been up all night on Tuesday? All gut-churning and collywobbly as she was?

”There, there,” Nellie kept saying, and the elderly exorcist burst into ave full vent to her feelings as Nellie patted her wispy blue hair I didn't knohere to look

”Hebreath and muffled by Nellie's hump

”Where is he now?” asked Nellie

”In our rooone to bed in fury and disgust All because of that fracas at the museum”

”The museum?” I asked ”You mean, the cephalopod's unfortunate collapse?”