I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett [102]
At last the cranky doorknob turned, opening into a long corridor that smelled of … that smelled of … that smelled of old. That was the only way to describe it, but if you had enough time to think, you would say it was a mix of dry fungi, damp wood, dust, mice, dead time and old books, which have an intriguing smell of their own. That was it, Tiffany decided. Days and hours had died quietly in here while nobody noticed.
Letitia fumbled on a shelf inside the door, and lit a lamp. ‘No one ever comes in here these days except me,’ she said, ‘because it’s haunted.’
‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, trying to keep her voice matter-of-fact. ‘By a headless lady with a pumpkin under her arm. She is walking towards us right now.’
Had she expected shock? Or tears? Tiffany certainly hadn’t expected Letitia to say, ‘That would be Mavis. I shall have to change her pumpkin as soon as the new ones are ripe. They start to get all, well, manky after a while.’ She raised her voice. ‘It’s only me, Mavis, nothing to be frightened of!’
With a sound like a sigh, the headless woman turned and began to walk back up the corridor.
‘The pumpkin was my idea,’ Letitia continued chattily. ‘She was just impossible to deal with before that. Looking for her head, you know? The pumpkin gives her some comfort, and frankly I don’t think she knows the difference, poor soul. She wasn’t executed, by the way. I think she wants everybody to know that. It was simply a freak accident involving a flight of stairs, a cat and a scythe.’
And this is the girl who spends all her time in tears, thought Tiffany. But this is her place. Aloud, she said, ‘Any more ghosts to show me, just in case I want to wet myself again?’
‘Well, not now,’ said Letitia, setting off along the corridor. ‘The screaming skeleton stopped screaming when I gave him an old teddy bear, although I’m not certain why that worked and, oh yes, the ghost of the first duke now sticks to haunting the lavatory next to the dining room, which we don’t use very often. He has a habit of pulling the chain at inconvenient moments, but that’s better than the rains of blood we used to have.’
‘You are a witch.’ The words came out of Tiffany’s mouth all by themselves, unable to stay in the privacy of her mind.
The girl looked at her in astonishment. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘We both know how it goes, don’t we? Long blonde hair, milk-white skin, noble – well, a reasonably noble birth – and rich, at least technically. I’m officially a lady.’
‘You know,’ said Tiffany, ‘maybe it’s wrong to base one’s future on a book of fairy stories. Normally, girls of the princess persuasion don’t help out distressed headless ghosts by giving them a pumpkin to carry. As for stopping the screaming skeleton screaming by giving it a teddy bear, I have to say I am impressed. That is what Granny Weatherwax calls headology. Most of the craft is headology, when you get right down to it: headology and boffo.’
Letitia looked flustered and gratified at the same time, making her face blotch white and pink. It was, Tiffany had to agree, the kind of face that peered out of tower windows, waiting for a knight with nothing better to do with his time than save its owner from dragons, monsters and, if all else failed, boredom.
‘You don’t have to do anything about it,’ Tiffany added. ‘The pointy hat is optional. But if Miss Tick was here, she would definitely suggest a career. It is not good to be a witch alone.’
They had reached the end of the corridor. Letitia turned another creaky doorknob, which complained as the door opened, and so did the door. ‘I’ve certainly found that out,’ said Letitia. ‘And Miss Tick is … ?’
‘She travels around the country finding girls who have the talent for the craft,’ said Tiffany. ‘They say that you don’t find witchcraft, it finds you, and generally it’s Miss Tick who taps you on the shoulder. She’s a witchfinder, but I don’t suppose she goes into many big houses. They make witches nervous. Oh my!’ And this was because Letitia had lit an oil lamp.