The Midnight Peacock Read online

  First published in Great Britain 2017

  by Egmont UK Limited

  The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

  Copyright © Katherine Woodfine, 2017

  Illustrations copyright © Karl James Mountford, 2017

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

  First e-book edition 2017

  ISBN 978 1 4052 8290 1

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1749 6

  www.egmont.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

  For Anna and Sara –

  Three Amigos forever!

  The Sinclair’s Mysteries

  The Clockwork Sparrow

  The Jewelled Moth

  The Painted Dragon

  The Midnight Peacock

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Front series promotional page

  PART I: The Mystery of the Haunted Mansion

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  PART II: The Case of the Hidden Passage

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PART III: The Body in the Library

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PART IV: The Clue in the Secret Plans

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  PART V: Murder at the Ball

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  PART VI: Montgomery Baxter’s Casebook

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Back series promotional page

  PART I

  The Mystery of the Haunted Mansion

  ‘Who goes there? Show yourself!’ declaimed Montgomery Baxter, the courageous boy detective.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tilly knew quite well that there were no such things as ghosts. She said so, very plainly – much to the annoyance of Lizzie Hughes, who had come rushing into the Servants’ Hall, eager to pour out her tall tale.

  Some people would do anything to get out of a spot of dusting, Tilly thought.

  ‘The East Wing’s not haunted,’ she said, from where she was sitting at the table, finishing off a bit of mending. ‘That’s just a lot of old nonsense.’

  Lizzie turned on her at once, hands on hips, nose in the air. ‘That’s all very well for you to say. You weren’t there. I’ll have you know I heard it myself – with my own ears!’

  Sarah and Ella, the scullery maids, were both staring at Lizzie. ‘What was it?’ Ella asked.

  Lizzie lowered her voice to an important whisper. ‘The sound of the ghost’s footsteps!’ she announced.

  ‘Oooh!’ they exclaimed together.

  ‘What did they sound like?’ gasped Sarah. Her eyes were as big and round as the plates in Her Ladyship’s best dinner service.

  ‘Loud – and echoing – and coming closer and closer by the minute! Then the most terrible chill swept over me. It was as if my blood froze! I dropped my duster and ran away as fast as my legs could carry me!’ Lizzie collapsed into a chair, as though the very memory of it would make her swoon. ‘It didn’t half make me feel peculiar!’ she finished up.

  Tilly rolled her eyes. ‘You didn’t actually see this “ghost” at all, then?’ she demanded.

  ‘I was hardly going to go looking for it, was I?’ exclaimed Lizzie indignantly. ‘Who knows what might have happened to me?’

  ‘So how can you be so sure that what you heard was a ghost? There’s bound to be a completely ordinary explanation,’ said Tilly. ‘Maybe it was mice.’

  ‘It couldn’t possibly have been mice! No mouse could have made a sound like that!’

  ‘Well, then, it was probably one of the under-footmen playing a trick. I’ll bet it was Charlie. He thought it was a great lark to put salt in William’s tea last week – remember? Pretending to be a ghost to give you a fright is just the sort of stupid thing he’d do.’

  But Lizzie shook her head. ‘It couldn’t have been a trick. That terrible chill – why, I’ve never felt anything like it in my life!’

  The other two looked awestruck, but Tilly just snorted. ‘It’s December, Lizzie. It’s cold – and the East Wing is freezing. I think that probably explains your terrible chill.’

  Lizzie turned her back on Tilly and addressed her next remarks to Ella and Sarah: ‘I s’pose you’ve heard the old story about the ghost that walks at night in the East Wing?’

  ‘No – do tell us,’ Ella urged.

  In a low voice, Lizzie began: ‘Hundreds of years ago, the old Lord who lived here at Winter Hall had a daughter that he loved like no other. She was good and sweet and as beautiful as the day. But then, on her sixteenth birthday, she fell ill and died. The old Lord went mad with grief. He locked himself up in the East Wing and never came out again.’ She paused and then went on: ‘When they finally managed to break through the doors, they found that he was dead – as dead as a doornail. And ever since then his ghost has walked up and down the long passage of the East Wing. If ever a young girl is to go alone to the East Wing at night, the ghost will lure her to her death, as vengeance for his own lost daughter,’ she finished up with a flourish.

  ‘Oh heavens! I shall never dare set foot in the East Wing again!’ exclaimed Sarah.

  ‘There’s no ghost in the East Wing,’ interrupted Tilly. ‘You ought to know better than to believe that sort of codswallop.’

  Lizzie turned on her. ‘Well, Tilly Black, if you’re so clever, then why don’t you go into the East Wing and see for yourself?’ She stared at Tilly crossly for a moment, and then added: ‘Right now – on your own. Go on – I dare you – or are you too afraid?’

  Sarah and Ella exchanged wide-eyed glances.

  ‘She doesn’t really mean it,’ said Ella after a moment. ‘It’s so late – and dark – no one would blame you if you didn’t fancy it, not after what Lizzie just told us.’

  ‘What Lizzie just told you is a pack of nonsense,’ said Tilly, getting to her feet. She was going to nip this in the bud at once – otherwise Sarah would probably keep her awake half the night having nightmares. ‘I’m not in the least bit afraid to go to the East Wing,’ she declared. ‘I can tell you for certain that I won’t find any ghosts there – but perhaps, if you’re lucky, Lizzie, I’ll be able to finish that dusting you’re in such a hurry to avoid.’

  With that, Tilly walked swiftly out of the Servants’ Hall, and into the passageway.

  Sarah came running after her. She had only been at Winter Hall for two months, and she still looked very small and unsure in her starched white
apron and cap.

  ‘Tilly!’ she burst out. ‘You aren’t really going to the East Wing are you?’

  ‘I’ve said I will, and so I will,’ said Tilly crisply.

  ‘But – but – you can’t!’ exclaimed Sarah, hastening to keep up with Tilly’s longer strides. ‘There really is something funny about the East Wing, honestly there is. Old Mary told me she’d heard noises there late at night. And Jamie, the gardener’s boy, said that he’d seen lights floating around high up in the windows. Even Mrs Dawes thinks there’s something queer about it. I heard her saying so to Mr Stokes.’

  This was quite a long speech for Sarah. Tilly stopped and contemplated her for a moment. ‘They’re just rumours,’ she said, more gently. ‘The East Wing isn’t haunted. There are no such things as ghosts, Sarah.’ She added in a sharper tone: ‘And don’t start hanging about with the gardener’s boy. Mrs Dawes won’t like it.’

  ‘But how can you be sure that there are no such things as ghosts?’ Sarah persisted.

  ‘Because it isn’t scientific,’ explained Tilly, striding off again. ‘There isn’t a single spot of proof that ghosts exist, you know. I read a book all about it. All the scientists agree. Ghosts are just . . . made up.’

  ‘Well, you should at least let me come with you,’ spoke up Sarah bravely, as she scuttled along beside her. ‘You can’t go there all alone!’

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Tilly. ‘I’ve been in the East Wing at night alone dozens of times – and nothing terrible has happened to me before, has it?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but went on: ‘Anyway, you should get back to the Servants’ Hall, or Ma will be wondering where you’ve got to. I’ll be back in no time – promise.’

  At that, Sarah nodded reluctantly, and disappeared back towards the Servants’ Hall. Tilly grinned to herself. She knew Sarah wouldn’t want to risk trouble with Ma, who was Cook at Winter Hall, and ruled all the kitchen and scullery maids with a rod of iron.

  Of course, Ma wasn’t really Tilly’s mother. She’d worked that out for herself before she was five years old. It was plain as day to anyone with half a brain that they couldn’t possibly be related. Ma was small, round and rosy, with fairish hair that was always pinned back smoothly into a neat knot under her cap. Tilly, on the other hand, was tall and rather bony, with a lot of curly black hair that was a struggle to twist into anything even halfway resembling a neat knot. Her eyes were dark brown, her eyebrows were black and bushy, and her skin was brown too. It wasn’t just that she didn’t look like Ma, she stood out like a sore thumb amongst the other maids, with their blonde hair and pink and white complexions.

  Tilly’s real mother had been a lady’s maid in this very house. She’d died here, giving birth to Tilly, fourteen years ago. No one seemed to have any idea who Tilly’s father was; Ma said he was probably just some common good-for-nothing who had turned her poor mother’s head, God rest her soul. ‘And let that be a lesson to you,’ she would say to Tilly, although Tilly was never quite sure what the lesson was supposed to be.

  But it didn’t really matter to Tilly that she didn’t have a father. After all, Ma and the other servants at Winter Hall had been all the family she had ever needed. She’d been helping Ma in the kitchens since before she could walk properly, and now that she was almost fifteen, she was a proper housemaid with a frilly white apron for when she served tea in the Drawing Room. She felt quite grownup – certainly far too grown-up to pay any heed to Lizzie’s nonsense about things that go bump in the night.

  Now, she pushed open the green baize door that separated the servants’ quarters from the main part of the house. From here, she could hear the familiar sounds of the family and their guests in the Dining Room: the clinking of glasses; the rumble of conversation; Her Ladyship’s tinkling laughter. The big hallway looked exactly as it always did, with the enormous grandfather clock ticking, and the faces of generations of Fitzgeralds gazing down upon her from the oil paintings that hung on the walls.

  Tilly couldn’t recall a time when she didn’t know every inch of Winter Hall – from the cobwebby wine cellars down below to the attic bedrooms up in the rooftops. She knew each creaking floorboard and each of the old leather-bound books in the Library. When she had been very small, she had even given names to every one of the stuffed foxes and birds in His Lordship’s study. Now, she was different: taller, almost grown-up, but nothing at Winter Hall had changed a bit. In spite of the recently installed electric lights and the wonderful new motor car, everything always felt exactly the same.

  Once, she had loved that sense of comforting familiarity. It had meant home. But lately, the sameness of Winter Hall had begun to get on her nerves. Tilly longed for something new and different, but her days just kept on going like clockwork: the gong sounding for luncheon; tea served promptly at half past four; Her Ladyship scolding her maid as she dressed for dinner; and below stairs, the maids ironing and the footmen polishing the silver and His Lordship’s valet brushing his shoes. Even the story of the supposedly haunted East Wing was an old tale that she’d heard half a dozen times before.

  Just the same, as she went down the corridor, Tilly suddenly wished she had let Sarah come with her after all. It wasn’t that she was scared – of course she wasn’t, she wasn’t an idiot. But this part of the house did feel rather dark and lonely.

  The East Wing was the oldest part of Winter Hall. Once in a blue moon, Her Ladyship would bring some visitors to look around; they would exclaim in delight over the antique furniture, the beautiful carved chimney-piece, the canopied bed upon which it was said Queen Elizabeth herself had slept. But most of the time, the family didn’t come here, preferring to keep to the plush comfort of the more modern West Wing with its electric light and running hot and cold water. The only one who was really interested in the East Wing was the youngest Fitzgerald daughter, Miss Leo: Tilly knew she sometimes spent hours here, looking at the pictures or making drawings of the old curiosities she found.

  Now, Tilly pushed open the door to the East Wing. It did not creak exactly: Mrs Dawes was far too particular for that. Instead, it made a strange little sighing sound – rather like someone letting out a breath. The dark passageway yawned ahead of her. As she stepped over the threshold the flame of her candle guttered in a breath of air, and for a moment, she thought it would go out.

  She could hear all the little noises of the house settling, a window rattling, and the wind howling outside, whirling about the house like a wild creature trying to get in. It sounded ghostly enough, and in spite of herself, Tilly shivered.

  But immediately she reminded herself that there was nothing to shiver about. It might be cold, but that was because fires were not usually lit in this part of the house. There might be an odd, sour smell in the air, but that was nothing that a good airing wouldn’t soon fix. And it might feel a little strange and old – but that was no surprise, as this part of the house had been built well over three hundred years ago.

  A small light glinting a little way along the passage made her stop short for a moment, her heart thumping. But no sooner had she halted than she realised it was just the reflection of her own candle in an old looking glass. She shook her head at herself: she was being jumpy and silly.

  ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts,’ she muttered, as she went on, feeling colder than ever, as the wind howled louder outside.

  Halfway along the corridor, she glimpsed something lying on the floor, and realised it was Lizzie’s duster. She reached down to pick it up, and as she did so, she felt a sudden rush of air that made her skin bristle. It was ice cold.

  Nothing more than a window left open somewhere, she thought – but then she heard something else. It was a sound – quite loud and unmistakable in this empty, dark, creaking part of the house. The hollow, echoing pad of footsteps. Footsteps that were moving slowly but purposefully towards her along the corridor, growing louder and louder all the time.

  It was a trick – it had to be. ‘Charlie, I know it’s you!’ she called.
‘Come out and stop playing the fool!’

  But there was no reply, no answering snigger. Instead, the footsteps just kept coming towards her along the passageway – slow and heavy. Too heavy to be the steps of a young under-footman. Her chest tightened.

  ‘If this is your idea of a stupid joke . . .’ she began, but the words seemed to choke her, and fell away.

  As she stared, she saw to her horror that a dark shape was moving steadily towards her. A tall, billowing, unearthly shadow, stretched into the shape of a human figure, advancing closer and closer along the wall.

  A bitter cold wind swept over her. Every instinct was screaming at her to run, but she seemed to be frozen to the ground.

  The shadow stretched towards her – a long, thin, black shape like an arm, reaching, reaching, until it could almost touch her.

  Then the candle suddenly snuffed out, and in the icy darkness, Tilly screamed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘We shall be delighted to welcome our special guests to the first Sinclair’s New Year’s Eve Ball.’ Mr Sinclair’s voice – clear and strong, with a hint of American twang – rang out across the Press Club Room at Sinclair’s, London’s most famous department store. ‘I intend this new event to become a regular fixture of London’s social calendar.’

  It was a few days before Christmas, and outside, the London streets were very cold, the first flakes of snow beginning to fall from a heavy grey sky. Inside, the wood-panelled room was warm and brightly lit, and crowded with journalists, all of them listening intently to Mr Sinclair. A thick cloud of cigar smoke hung above their heads, blending with the rich aroma of Sinclair’s at Christmas. It was the warm smell of cinnamon and toffee and spiced oranges, the sharp metallic tang of tinsel and silver paper – and something else too, something more difficult to identify: the tingling scent of anticipation.

  From where he stood at the very back of the room, Billy Parker, the youngest Sinclair’s office boy, could sense a buzz of excitement in the air. All around him people busily scribbled down Mr Sinclair’s words in their notebooks, whilst at the front, several photographers with cameras and tripods were jostling for position, each hoping to get the perfect shot of the man himself.