Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [6]
The voice stopped. By this time, Cat was so frightened that he dared not move. He could only wait until Miss Larkins came to herself, yawned, and let go of him in order to cover her mouth elegantly with one hand.
“There,” she said, in her usual voice. “That was it. What did I say?”
Finding Miss Larkins had no idea what she had said brought Cat out in goose pimples. All he wanted to do was to run away. He dashed for the door.
Miss Larkins pursued him, seized his arms again, and shook him. “Tell me! Tell me! What did I say?” With the violence of her shaking, her red hair came down in sheets. Her corsets sounded like bending planks. She was terrifying. “What voice did I use?” she demanded.
“A—a man’s voice,” Cat faltered. “Sort of nice, and no nonsense about it.”
Miss Larkins seemed dumbfounded. “A man? Not Bobby or Doddo—not a child’s voice, I mean?”
“No,” said Cat.
“How peculiar!” said Miss Larkins. “I never use a man. What did he say?”
Cat repeated what the voice had said. He thought he would never forget it if he lived to ninety.
It was some consolation to find that Miss Larkins was quite as puzzled by it as he was. “Well, I suppose it was a warning,” she said dubiously. She also seemed disappointed. “And nothing else? Nothing about your sister?”
“No, nothing,” said Cat.
“Oh well, can’t be helped,” Miss Larkins said discontentedly, and she let go of Cat in order to put her hair up again.
As soon as both her hands were safely occupied in pinning her bun, Cat ran. He shot out into the street, feeling very shaken.
And he was caught by two more people almost at once.
“Ah. Here is young Eric Chant now,” said Mr. Nostrum, advancing down the pavement. “You are acquainted with my brother, William, are you, Young Chant?”
Cat was once more caught by an arm. He tried to smile. It was not that he disliked Mr. Nostrum. It was just that Mr. Nostrum always talked in this jocular way and called him Young Chant every few words, which made it very difficult to talk to Mr. Nostrum in return. Mr. Nostrum was small and plumpish, with two wings of grizzled hair. He had a cast in his left eye too, which always stared out sideways. Cat found that added to the difficulty of talking to Mr. Nostrum. Was he looking and listening? Or was his mind elsewhere with that wandering eye?
“Yes—yes, I’ve met your brother,” Cat reminded Mr. Nostrum. Mr. William Nostrum came to visit his brother regularly. Cat saw him almost once a month. He was quite a well-to-do wizard, with a practice in Eastbourne. Mrs. Sharp claimed that Mr. Henry Nostrum sponged on his wealthier brother, both for money and for spells that worked. Whatever the truth of that, Cat found Mr. William Nostrum even harder to talk to than his brother. He was half as large again as Mr. Henry and always wore morning dress with a huge silver watch-chain across his tubby waistcoat. Otherwise, he was the image of Mr. Henry Nostrum, except that both his eyes were out of true. Cat always wondered how Mr. William saw anything. “How do you do, sir,” he said to him politely.
“Very well,” said Mr. William in a deep, gloomy voice, as if the opposite was true.
Mr. Henry Nostrum glanced up at him apologetically. “The fact is, Young Chant,” he explained, “we have met with a little setback. My brother is upset.” He lowered his voice, and his wandering eye wandered all around Cat’s right side. “It’s about those letters from—You Know Who. We can find out nothing. It seems Gwendolen knows nothing. Do you, Young Chant, perchance know why your esteemed and lamented father should be acquainted with—with, let us call him, the August Personage who signed them?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, I’m afraid,” said Cat.
“Could he have been some relation?” suggested Mr. Henry Nostrum. “Chant is a Good Name.”
“I think it must be a bad name too,” Cat answered. “We haven’t any relations.”
“But what of your dear mother?” persisted Mr. Nostrum, his odd eye traveling away, while his brother managed to stare gloomily at the pavement and the rooftops at once.
“You can see the poor boy knows nothing,