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- Herausgeber: Frouse Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Serie: Chronicles of Vexx
- Sprache: Englisch
Cold Days at Castle Drax:
Hellfire. Brimstone. Awkward family dinners.
No one in their right mind wants to live at Castle Drax.
That’s okay. The Vexx family aren’t.
On a crumbling cliff overlooking a dark, emerald sea looms the forbidding Castle Drax. It’s ancient, it’s freezing, it’s falling apart—and it’s home.
But hard times have come around, and the demonically dysfunctional Vexx family’s in dire straits. There’s nothing for it but to sell the castle and move on—if they can find a buyer.
And if, in their heart of hearts, they can really bear to leave…
Come pay a visit, if you’d like. Meet the sinister Count Vexx and his charming daughter, Lulu. Make pastries in the kitchen with Magwell, and buff up the motorcar with Stormdust. Ring the lugubrious doorbell, if you want to give everyone a fright (including yourself).
Just don’t, whatever you do, go down into the cellar…
That’s life at Castle Drax. It’s:
“A fate worse than death.” – Count Vexx
“I have seen worse. Much worse.” – Fane
“It really isn’t all that bad, lovie. Not once you’ve got used to it.” – Magwell
“Everything will be alright! Definitely!” – Luna Vexx
A glittering, Decopunk mosaic unfolds in sixteen tales of life, love, and curses, laced with Charlotte E. English’s trademark humour and quirky charm. Cosy and comforting, strange and wise, stylish and surprising; Castle Drax is a Hell of a time…
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Seitenzahl: 304
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Cold Days at Castle Drax (Chronicles of Vexx, 1)
by Charlotte E. English
Published by SpellBounde Press
Copyright © 2024 by Charlotte E. English
Cover design by MiblArt
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by EU copyright law.
Ebook: 978-9-49282-473-8
Paperback: 978-9-49282-474-5
Hardback: 978-9-49282-475-2
Contents
The Vexxed Question
In a land far from anywhere you know, in a town by an emerald sea, atop a cliff overlooking prismatic green waves, there’s a castle looming. A dark and stormy castle, thoroughly forbidding, which is unfortunate: for among the crumbling parapets and grime-ridden spires, a hand-lettered sign reads: FOR SALE (Enquiries: Percy and Bell, Estate Agents).
‘You have set it far too high up,’ said Miss Luna Vexx to her father, the Count. ‘No one will see it. Ask Fane to bring it down.’
‘Nonsense,’ answered Count Vexx, waving this off. ‘Fane has enough to do.’ This was true, the old manservant being a prominent part of a much-reduced household staff, in these straitened times.
‘Then I shall fetch it down myself,’ decided the damsel, and rose from her threadbare seat before the pleasingly blazing hearth. The flames were as cold as the sea, and at least as green, which rather compromised its comforts; but the effect, Lulu considered, was delightful. The light flickered off the black marble floor most attractively.
‘It is fine where it is,’ the Count drawled, slumped and idle in the familiar embrace of a chair he’d favoured for a century at least (and it showed). ‘It’s jaunty. Like a flag.’
Lulu frowned down at her feet. They were bare; she’d forgotten shoes, again. It only now occurred to her to notice the penetrating cold. ‘You do want to sell Castle Drax, I suppose?’
‘Of course!’
‘Well! You never will, if nobody knows it is for sale.’
Count Vexx waved this off, too. ‘They know.’
It is possible no one intended for the place to be so lugubrious. The town above which it loomed, Andirac, offered several advantages to its residents: bracing sea air, sulphuric hot springs, and a deep quarry of black lava stone, now much depleted. A long-ago Count Vexx, finding the local stone economical, had plundered it liberally; Castle Drax was the striking result.
Furnishing every inch of the interior in marble as black as the depths of Hell, though, there could be no excuse for that.
Lulu acquired for herself a sock (not black), and then another to match it (near enough). She trotted up the three winding flights of stairs to what had once been Aunt Maud’s painting-tower, and stretched her long, strong arms out of the window (three of its diamond-shaped panes absent, and letting in the wind). Retrieving the FOR SALE sign was the work of a moment, and she soon had it installed by the front door. The Count rarely left the house; it’d take him at least a week to notice.
It took everyone else a week to notice, too, or rather more. Lulu soon forgot about the prospective sale of the castle, busily occupied (as always) with her favourite springtime pursuits. She’d be down in the kitchens with Magwell, the cook, baking up batches of gooseberry pies (which her father declined to eat). She’d be out in the walled garden pruning the peach trees, neatly espaliered, or gathering fat peonies to put in glass vases (the Count tended to throw them away again, if he chanced to notice them at all). She’d even be up in Aunt Maud’s painting tower, with a canvas before her, and a box of watercolours; the Count threw her paintings away, too, whenever she was so bold as to display them, though in this, at least, he had the right of it. Lulu had neither talent nor taste, though was never so poor-spirited as to let it stop her.
Her days proceeded so much as usual, that when a tinny ringing sound shattered the sepulchral silence at Castle Drax she could not immediately identify what it was.
The morning had barely started. Lulu was down in the cloakroom, removing the curl clamps from her bobbed blonde hair. The mirror warped her reflection somewhat, age-spotted as it was, but every other mirror in the house being long since shattered, it sufficed. The ringing began when she was only halfway finished; she froze with her arms raised over her head, staring at her own wide green eyes in the mirror.
Fane’s heavy footsteps added to the tumult. He was crossing the hall, towards the—
‘Gracious! The telephone!’
Lulu abandoned her hair, ran out into the hall with half her head bristling with metal, like a semi-styled porcupine. ‘I’ll get it, Fane!’ she called, and trotted past him.
‘Very good, Miss,’ said the slow-moving Fane, placid as always, and paced away again.
Lulu caught up the heavy black receiver and clamped it to her ear. ‘Hello!’
A voice buzzed and rattled in answer. ‘Hello, is that Castle Drax?’
‘Ha! See! It still works!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Lulu performed a little dance of victory. ‘I am sorry. Only I’m so delighted to receive a telephone call! I had begun to think that the device was irreparably broken.’
‘To whom am I speaking?’ Her interlocuter was male, and sounded severe. Well, she could hardly expect him to understand her point of view; he probably lived in a house where everything worked.
‘Sorry,’ Lulu said again. ‘This is Luna Vexx.’
‘Miss Vexx. This is Percival Percy, of Percy and Bell’s. We have received a request to view your delightful home—’ he could not suppress a slight, embarrassed cough after the word “delightful” —’And I would like to conduct this interested person around this afternoon.’
Lulu suppressed an impulse to say “sorry” again, she had said it twice already—what came out instead was scarcely any better—’What?’ she blurted.
‘Oh dear, is there something wrong with the connection? Can you hear me? Operator—’
‘I hear you,’ Lulu hastened to interrupt. ‘At least, I believe I do. You said somebody wants to buy the castle.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Mr. Percy at once. ‘Somebody wants to see the castle.’
‘Aha.’
‘If they are sufficiently pleased with the place, then, I imagine, an offer of purchase will naturally follow.’
‘Aha.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well.’ Lulu cast a brief, desperate glance around the great, empty hall in all its dilapidated glory. The distant ceiling thick with dust-ridden cobwebs; chilly black marble walls and floor, all of it shimmering with warped old magic, and grime; an acid-green witchfire crackling in the hearth, spitting frost in a halo over the floor.
Fane, hovering in the far doorway, his black jacket threadbare and his craggy skin reminiscent, in hue and texture, of mould.
‘What time shall we expect you?’ said Lulu, brightly.
‘At two o’clock,’ said Mr. Percy, and her doom was sealed.
‘Six hours!’ said Lulu, five minutes later, to the obliging (if unresponsive) Mr. Fane. ‘We ought to be able to do a lot with the place in that kind of time, no?’ They’d had over a week to “do a lot with the place,” of course, and now she wished they had; only she’d never thought anyone would actually visit. Putting up a sign was all very well, but when the property in question was Castle Drax—
‘Get rid of a few of those spider’s webs, for starters,’ she suggested, pointing. ‘Will you, Fane? You’re by far the tallest of us, and there’s a ladder in the cellar, I believe. Only do take care not to stray into Father’s summoning circle, he will keep leaving it lying around—’ She wandered off before she had quite finished this speech, in quest of a bucket, and a mop. It surely couldn’t take more than half an hour to spruce up the dark marble floor; it could even look quite elegant, if she put her back into it.
Lulu put her back into it, and everything else, too. By two o’clock, half of the floor gleamed glossily black, Fane had dislodged a small colony of spiders from the vaulted ceiling, and Lulu was only just getting around to taking the rest of the curl clamps out of her hair.
Mr. Percy was prompt, as always, to a fault. As the six or seven ancient clocks across Castle Drax weightily tolled the hour, the doorbell clanged. Fane had been waiting; he heaved the heavy iron door open (it groaned), and there stood Percy, with a stranger.
Mr. Percy’s appearance varied as little as his manner. Lulu had met him twice before, and found him curiously colourless: pale of face and hair and eyes, clothes, even, with a crumpled ivory jacket and a white cravat. ‘Miss Vexx,’ he said tonelessly, as Lulu sallied forth to meet him. ‘You’re looking very well.’
Lulu dimpled at him. ‘Mr. Percy. May I compliment you on your excellent time-keeping?’
‘This is Lady Rondel,’ he announced. Lulu dimpled at her ladyship, too, and hoped (far too late) that she had not missed any of her curl clamps. The back of her head did feel oddly weighty...
‘Charmed to meet you, Miss Vexx,’ said Lady Rondel, and swept past her and Mr. Percy both. She planted herself in the centre of the hall like a gnarled old tree, and loomed. Gracious, she was almost as tall as Fane, and very nearly as elderly. Wealthy, judging from her lavishly embroidered gown and sumptuously condescending manner.
‘Excellent bones,’ she declared, subjecting the great hall and everything in it to narrow-eyed scrutiny.
‘Thank you,’ said Lulu.
‘Sadly out-dated,’ continued her ladyship. ‘One expects as much with these grand old places, of course. Now, with new fittings I really think we could achieve something very tolerable. There’s a charming ivory-coloured marble quarried down at Pedieu, with the merest suggestion of gold about it. All of this must go—’ Lady Rondel, equipped with a sharp-pointed walking stick, rapped this article smartly against the cold-black marble hearth— ‘New fireplaces throughout—green flames, I never saw so tasteless a conceit—white and gold, I rather think, with the new marble—’
She swept out of the hall, Mr. Percy (and Lulu) trailing after. ‘I suppose there is little to be done about the cold,’ she opined as she went, opening every door she passed, and dismissing the chambers beyond with a series of contemptuous sniffs. ‘Hopeless to heat, castles, but something might be managed—’
‘—Various options your ladyship might like to consider—’ Mr. Percy concurred, and so it went: Lady Rondel, tireless in spite of her antiquity, escorting herself over every inch of Castle Drax, and transforming it, in her own mind at least, into the epitome of modern glamour.
Lulu, unattended to, felt her spirits sink lower by the minute, though she could not have said quite why. Impressed or not, Lady Rondel clearly meant to buy the place, which had, after all, been the goal—or at least, the necessity. Even Mr. Percy and Mrs. Bell had cautioned the Vexx family to expect a long wait, before an eligible purchaser might be found—’Owing to the, er, disarray,’ Mrs. Bell had said, with some tact. What luck, then! A buyer, and after only a week. Lulu had not even considered the question of where the Vexxes were to go, afterwards.
The tour concluded in Count Vexx’s library, where (perhaps unfortunately) the Count himself happened to be at that moment in residence. ‘Aha!’ carolled Lady Rondel, advancing upon the Count like a general upon the enemy. ‘Count Vexx, I declare! Delightful. The past owner and the next ought to get acquainted with one another, no?’
‘No,’ said Count Vexx. The library was ill-lit, as always, only a single lamp poised upon an ebony table at the Count’s elbow. The dim emerald glow cast lurid shadows over his pallid face, as he sat still and sombre in his black wing-backed chair. Even the gilded, leather-bound tomes crowding upon the shelves seemed to loom with disapproval.
‘And Lady Vexx?’ persisted Lady Rondel. ‘I should very much like to—she is in residence, I suppose?’
‘No,’ said Count Vexx again.
‘Yes,’ corrected Lulu. ‘After a fashion. She went down to the cellar.’
‘Oh? You confuse me, my dear. When exactly was that?’
‘About 1912, wasn’t it?’
‘About that,’ agreed her father.
‘A jest. Very droll, I declare.’ Her ladyship’s face pinched with disapproval. ‘Well, perhaps you are right to spurn my acquaintance,’ she said with a forced little laugh, already turning away. ‘It is unlikely we should ever meet again, after all—Percy, these bookcases! Have you ever seen the like?’
‘Rarely, my lady,’ said Mr. Percy with cool disdain.
‘They must all go, and at once. Blonde wood, I think—high varnish—handsome collection of ivory-bound volumes, titles stamped in gold—very charming—’
Count Vexx came alive, his marble countenance flooding suddenly with vigour. He leapt from his chair, and made his bow to Lady Rondel. He had the silver-grey hair of a wolf’s pelt, and a smile to match it, when he chose: he was wearing the latter now.
Lulu’s heart sank a little further.
‘I see your ladyship possesses a most discerning eye,’ smiled the Count, his teeth glinting white and sharp. ‘I really must apologise for the state of the old place. The times, you know, the lamentable times... I trust you are not too daunted?’
‘My dear fellow, I? Daunted?’ Lady Rondel gave another of her little laughs. ‘No, no. I shall soon have this place in order. Why, you will not even recognise it yourselves!’
‘Ah, but the cellars,’ answered the Count, shaking his handsome head. ‘They will all have to be rebuilt, naturally. So often flooded—no keeping the water out, I’m afraid, it is quite the problem. You have seen the cellars?’
‘I have not! Percy, the cellars, and at once.’
‘Papa—’ Lulu remonstrated.
Her noble parent held up an admonishing hand. ‘No, Lulu. It would not be right to conceal anything from our eminent purchaser, now would it? She must know exactly what she will be getting for her money. Warts and all.’ He smiled his wolf’s smile.
‘I commend you for your honesty, Count Vexx,’ said Lady Rondel, already halfway out the door. ‘I believe we shall deal extremely well together, in spite of—’ She was gone, without saying what, exactly, she was to spite. Mr. Percy went with her, leaving Lulu and her reprehensible parent alone.
The Count raised one of his expressive brows at his disapproving offspring. ‘Well, Lulu?’
Lulu threw up her hands; there was no arguing with her father when he got into this sort of mood. ‘I shall go and see if there is anything to be done,’ she said, severely.
Count Vexx laughed, and accompanied her along a passage or two, gloom-shrouded and achingly cold (the passage, that is. Well, and also the Count). Lulu wrapped her shawl more tightly around herself, without much effect; Count Vexx stuck his hands into his jacket pockets, and whistled a thin, jaunty tune.
Lady Rondel’s resonant tones emanated from somewhere below, echoing hollowly. ‘—Truly deplorable—shocking neglect—all have to be rebuilt, to the last brick—’
‘—Significant impact on the purchase price—’ agreed Mr. Percy. ‘—Offer to be much reduced—cost of renovations—’
‘What’s this?’ said Lady Rondel. ‘A pentagram? Daubed in blood, I declare! Dear me, how dreadfully vulgar—’ A thin shriek followed, and then silence.
Count Vexx grinned, and dusted off his long white hands. ‘I’ll be in the library,’ he informed Lulu. ‘Do send Magwell up with some wine, will you? And cakes. Those little marzipan ones.’
‘Papa.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘We do want to sell Castle Drax, recall?’
‘Of course we do!’ He beamed upon his daughter, and wandered off, whistling.
Lulu rested her shoulders against the frigid blackstone wall, permitting herself a long sigh. She was quite tired, what with one thing and another. Her arms and back ached.
Half an hour drifted past before Lulu heard the footsteps. Someone was coming up the cellar stairs, very slowly, and with a heavy tread. Iron hinges squealed, spraying rust: the oaken door opened.
Lulu shook herself awake. ‘Hello!’ she said brightly. ‘Welcome to Castle Drax.’
The newcomer was short and stout, with well-muscled arms and leathery, bone-white skin. He wore his white hair cropped short, and had an ivory jacket on rather like Mr. Percy’s. He sniffed his broad nose, idly swinging a sharp-pointed walking stick in one large hand. ‘I am Stormdust,’ he informed her. ‘What is your desire?’
Lulu thought of the floor in the hall, only half polished. Her lower back twinged. ‘Well,’ she ventured. ‘Are you perhaps any good at cleaning?’
Simply Storming
The talents of Stormdust, newest inhabitant of Castle Drax, were myriad, eclectic, and, in the main, useless. His size and bulk might have lent themselves well to the more pugnacious arts, were it not for the absolute lack in him of anything resembling a fighting spirit. He had gently shepherded the pestersome mice of Castle Drax out of the great front door, rather than slaughter the creatures, even if they had got into Magwell’s flour store.
Fresh from Count Vexx’s summoning circle in the cellar, Stormdust would not be parted either from his ivory jacket or his sharp-pointed walking stick. He whistled much more melodically than the Count, possessed a smooth baritone singing voice which he often exercised, displayed a surprising talent for watercolour painting (much more so than Miss Lulu Vexx, to her mild regret), and could recite reams of presumably ancient poetry in a snarling language nobody understood but himself—not even Fane.
He had neither the skill nor the inclination for any of the various cleaning arts, to Lulu’s greater regret. His one useful quality was a decided interest in motor cars and an accompanying facility for the piloting of them. Thus did Castle Drax acquire a chauffeur for its sole vehicle, should the family ever be minded to actually go anywhere—and if the car should consent ever again to function. It was at least restored to its former, gleaming-green glory, once Stormdust had had a go at it (the one thing he consented to clean, soaping its bodywork lovingly as he sang a succession of old ballads, and polishing its headlamps with the softest chamois leather).
After the escapade with Lady Rondel, Lulu set herself a daily task of housekeeping. There would be more prospective purchasers turning up at the castle in time, and the place ought to look a little brighter for its eventual new owners. Well, cleaner, anyway; there was no brightening an edifice built from black lava stone, and kitted out inside with polished midnight marble, to boot.
She half expected someone to enquire after Lady Rondel, her ladyship last seen sweeping through the heavy iron doors of Castle Drax, and never (yet) seen to emerge. No one did, however (yet), and a week or two drifted past in a happy haze of scrubbing, polishing, and landscape painting.
Count Vexx, as was his wont, remained inflexibly opposed to cleaning, or any other pursuit, save reading. His favoured emerald flames roared in the library’s hearth, spitting frost over the Count’s shoes as he sat with a succession of slim volumes, large folios, and weighty tomes; he hardly noticed. He was impervious to cold and entreaty, both.
Spring was wearing on, and the world beyond the castle flourishing in green and gold, before the next visitor manifested. The telephone shrilled, for the first time in a fortnight; Luna was halfway up the massive marble staircase, with her bobbed hair wrapped up in cloth and wielding a feathery duster in both hands. ‘Coming!’ she shouted, forgetting for a moment that neither the telephone nor the caller could hear her. She had just polished the glinting black stairs, and was then engaged in dusting the elaborate banisters; the former hindered her as she attempted to run for the telephone, and she slipped.
Stormdust’s heavy tread sounded. ‘Castle Drax, goodest of mornings,’ he rumbled in his forbidding baritone.
A voice answered, faintly, tinnily. Lulu picked herself up off the frigid marble steps, straining to hear.
Garble, garble; then Stormdust said, ‘Eleven o’clock. It shall be the best of days for your presence in it, madam,’ and set down the receiver.
He would have thundered away again without remark, save that Lulu got herself down into the hall again, and intercepted him. ‘Well, Stormdust? Who was it?’
‘A Mrs. Bell,’ he answered, and began a song, something lugubrious.
‘And? She is coming here at eleven?’
Stormdust declined to break off his ballad, only nodded, and went away, leaving Lulu wondering.
Mrs. Bell was a partner in the firm of Percy and Bell, Estate Agents. They had in their management the selling of Castle Drax, a monumental task. If Mrs. Bell was coming, then she was likely bringing a prospective buyer with her: delightful! Only this time, Lulu would contrive to keep her father out of the business, if she could. Perhaps she would stock the library with wine, and cakes—the little ones, with marzipan in them—and then quietly lock the door. That should hold him.
The hall, at least, glimmered, sumptuous and elegantly dark (she hoped; alternatively heavy and miserably depressing; it all depended on one’s taste). The rest of the castle retained all its shabbier, grimier characteristics, there being few to tackle these, only Lulu. Ah well.
Lulu hastened to the cloakroom, to take the cloth wrappings from her hair, and primp it: she looked passable, so the spotted mirror informed her. This time, she would butter up the visitors with hospitality; accordingly, she ran down to the kitchens to consult with Magwell, about the cakes (and the wine).
‘Well, isn’t this lovely,’ proclaimed Mrs. Bell at eleven, entering the castle with a false smile on, and a young gentleman at her heels.
Lulu hoped she was referring to the state of the vast and echoing hall, freshly polished, the proud product of so much labour. More likely she was speaking of Fane, looming though he was, hard of feature, and the approximate colour of mould, yet he was carrying in his capable hands a silver tray, and on it were glasses of the Count’s best vintage, really a rather good one. Magwell had made chocolate truffles for the occasion.
Luly eyed Mrs. Bell with a little unease. The lady didn’t appear distressed, at least, or even wary. She had a comfortable bulk about her, worn with the greatest pride, her chin high. Her hair had not been permitted to grey, and was swept up in a chic chestnut chignon; her dress, mauve jacquard trimmed in ebony, must surely have been made by Madame Neve. She absorbed three truffles with great relish, and took up one of the Count’s heavy silver goblets, brimming with wine.
Lulu expected a certain question, any moment now, prepared herself to meet it. But Mrs. Bell smiled, gulped her wine, and said: ‘My client, Mr. Florrin.’
Lulu had scarcely glanced at their new buyer (possibly). He came forward with a bright, open face, and shook her hand much too heartily. ‘Miss Vexx, goodness. You are a local legend!’ he said, much too enthusiastically.
Lulu discovered him to be a head shorter than herself, his hair slicked back with too much brilliantine, and his face shining with the fresh glow of unimpeded youth. In short, he was only a boy.
‘Mr. Florrin,’ she said, recovering herself enough to smile, though she couldn’t match the bruising alacrity of his handshake. ‘You would like to buy a castle, would you?’
‘Who wouldn’t!’ He adjusted the dark waves of his hair, a gesture Lulu interpreted as nervous, and beamed at Mrs. Bell. ‘I suppose I might..?’ He gestured at the tray of truffles, and wine.
‘It would be rude not to,’ said Mrs. Bell gravely, with the faintest wink for Lulu. ‘I shan’t tell.’
Young Mr. Florrin seized a goblet with what appeared to be his customary enthusiasm, and a truffle, too. ‘Well,’ he said with his mouth full, ‘Let’s get on!’
Either Mr. Florrin (‘It’s Boris!’ he insisted after five minutes) experienced unmitigated delight from every feature of the capacious and gloomy Castle Drax, or he was accustomed to manifesting a mendacious facsimile of it. He followed Mrs. Bell and Lulu down every draughty passage, through a succession of creaking old doors with the hinges half rusted away, into disused antechambers, and the craggy old ballroom, with its peeling wallpaper and cracked flooring. He bounded up and down shadowed staircases to all the attic garrets and turret-top rooms; he even managed the water-logged and mildewed cellars with apparent aplomb (Lulu was careful to avoid the bit with her father’s summoning-circle in it).
Mrs. Bell did her best to talk the place up, not that she needed to bother herself overmuch: Mr. Florrin declared himself entranced. ‘I am delighted!’ he said, more than once. ‘Positively enchanted! I don’t know how you could bear to part with the place!’
Lulu laughed politely, incredulously, and hoped her father hadn’t managed to get himself out of the library. There hadn’t been a peep out of him, which might be a good or a bad thing, depending.
They saw all of the castle, really very almost all of it, and arrived at last back in the hall. Fane had caused the great hearth to be lit, and a cheerful, electric-green fire cast unearthly shadows over the gleaming marble surround. Lulu, shivering, trusted that this at least would impress itself suitably upon the young master, especially after he dashed straight over to it and held out his hands to the fire, to warm them. As well he might, after a lengthy, near hour-long trek over Castle Drax; he could hardly help but be half-perished with cold.
‘Ha!’ he said. ‘A cold flame! Fascinating,’ and fell, apparently, to deciphering how such a marvel worked.
Lulu could not help the look of pure incredulity she directed at Mrs. Bell. There was a question in it, or several, all of which the estate agent plainly read; she coughed. ‘Boris.’
‘Yes.’ The young man ceased his scrutiny of the fireplace, snapping upright like a willow sapling in a high wind. ‘I’ll take it,’ he beamed. ‘All of it. It’s perfect.’
‘Perfect?’ echoed Lulu faintly, curiously appalled.
‘Down to its last brick! I won’t need to change a thing.’ Mr. Florrin smiled upon the world as though it had personally gone out of its way to please him. ‘No! I tell a lie. There is one thing—I suppose you do have a library?’
‘Well, yes,’ Lulu admitted.
‘You see? Perfect!’ He waited, smilingly, to be taken there, and Lulu couldn’t think of a single excuse not to do so.
‘Oh yes, the library,’ put in Mrs. Bell. ‘It seemed shut up, but I suppose it isn’t, is it?’
Lulu entertained wild visions of dissembling: ‘Oh, entirely shut up, quite infested with rats, the books all eaten, we never go in there now,’ she would say, or, ‘I’m afraid it burned down yesterday, it’s a marvel the castle survived.’ No, that wouldn’t do.
At least they had already tackled the cellars.
‘Well then,’ she sighed, with a strange feeling of impending doom. ‘Come this way.’
The lock turned, and the door opened, with traitorous ease; not even a pretence at sticking fast. Lulu peeked inside, hoping, by some inexplicable miracle, to find the room empty.
It was rather dark. Shadow-drowned, one might even say sepulchral; nothing much to be wondered at in that. Count Vexx stood leaning one hand against the mantelpiece, staring into the leaping flames illuminating the dark maw of the hearth. He looked up, smiled, and green fire seemed to leap in his eyes. Just a reflection, no doubt. ‘Come in,’ he invited.
Mr. Florrin didn’t hesitate. Lulu winced as the door closed behind him, with a bang and a cloud of dust.
She and Mrs. Bell eyed one another.
Lulu’s composure crumbled a bit around the edges. ‘About Mr. Percy—’
‘Yes, much obliged to you for that,’ interrupted Mrs. Bell.
Lulu’s silence spoke a couple of volumes.
‘I shall just mention, however,’ continued that lady, ‘I shan’t be thanking you if anything were to happen to Boris.’
Lulu sighed. ‘Does he really want to buy a castle?’
‘Oh, passionately. Last week he was wild to take up horse-racing, and become a jockey. Next week it will be motor cars, I expect, or something else altogether.’
‘Motor cars,’ said Lulu. ‘I see.’
The library door wafted open again; voices emerged. ‘…Chasuble’s treatise on economics—’ came Mr. Florrin’s excitable tones. ‘Positively ripping stuff, though it did have one or two weaknesses—’
‘Ah yes, well, if you’re a Chasuble enthusiast then you must read—if you would just fetch that volume down from the third shelf above your head there—that’s the one—’ Count Vexx, this, almost as boyish as Boris.
‘I think he’ll be fine,’ Lulu observed to Mrs. Bell, meaning Boris (or her father, or both).
‘He’s very likeable, Boris,’ Mrs. Bell replied. ‘It’s one of his faults.’
‘The Count isn’t, in the least. Usually.’
Mrs. Bell snapped her fingers with lazy authority; Fane appeared, with admirable promptitude and a drinks tray, freshly refilled.
‘I hope you are going to tell me what became of darling Percy,’ she said, selecting a goblet. ‘And in detail.’
‘Father took him down into the cellars,’ said Lulu, with meaning.
‘Too unfortunate,’ murmured Mrs. Bell.
‘Quite. Though Stormdust is a perfect delight. And so well-dressed.’
Count Vexx came out into the passage, glossily handsome, and supremely pleased. Boris was with him, a bounce in his step, despite the weight of the seven or eight tomes in his arms. ‘Ah, Fane,’ said the Count, swiping a goblet off the tray. ‘Just the person. Be a good fellow and take Boris out to the garage, will you? He’d like to play with the motor car.’
‘And a few books, I see,’ put in Lulu.
‘Oh, yes. He’s to enroll at Devervale in the autumn. Economics. Clever chap.’ He clapped Mr. Florrin on the shoulder with brutal heartiness, and disappeared back into his library.
The door closed.
‘Devervale?’ Lulu queried, of Boris and Mrs. Bell both.
‘Oh, yes. The Count’s going to arrange it. I never heard he was such a capital fellow!’ This, of course, was young Mr. Florrin; Mrs. Bell merely looked bemused, or amused, or likely both.
‘I never heard that he was, either,’ said Lulu. ‘I suppose you won’t be needing a castle when you’re at university?’
‘I suppose not. Marvellous place, though. Simply storming.’ He went off with Fane and a goblet of wine, chattering about opera seats, and horsepower.
‘I’ll show myself out,’ said Mrs. Bell, and did so, without further remark.
Lulu permitted herself just one, little sigh, and went back to her watercolours.
The Counting
There can be no doubt that the sinister and silent Castle Drax has seen its fair share of terrible events. A succession of unwanted visitors, tiresome guests and an occasional family member have disappeared into the cellars, never to be seen again (so far); a Lady Vexx, a century past, was stabbed to death with a steak knife in the middle of a particularly disharmonious society dinner; and a past Count Vexx, out on his morning constitutional, slipped on a slick of unfortunately positioned mud and fell into the dark waves of the emerald sea, which promptly swallowed him.
There are still greater calamities afoot, however. While the weather had continued fair through much of the spring—a strengthening sunshine only occasionally enlivened by a sprightly and invigorating shower—there came a lowering week, a week of impending doom presaged by the massing of black clouds over that same malachite-green sea.
In short, it began to rain, and in earnest.
Monday wasn’t so bad; by the end of it, only half the contents of the kitchen cupboards had been pressed into alternative service, positioned at disparate intervals around the castle’s draughty corridors and vault-ceilinged rooms, wherever the leaks were the most severe.
By Wednesday, Magwell had scarcely a pan left to cook in, or a dish to serve anything onto. Every lacquered vase, porcelain tea cup or disused chamber pot in the castle had been requisitioned, and sat quietly spilling the relentless rainwater onto the mouldering floors of the first, second and third best parlours, the guest bedrooms, the long gallery, and the attic garrets (long devoid of guests and inhabitants alike).
By Friday, the determined efforts of Miss Luna Vexx, Magwell the cook, Fane the butler and Stormdust the chauffeur to preserve Castle Drax from a relentless washing-away had ebbed. For five days together, a dark sky boiling with storms had entrenched itself over the village of Andirac. The ocean had lost its prismatic quality in a frothing rage, sending up walls of water near as high as the turrets; a gale of furious currents had whistled and howled and screamed down all the twisted chimneys of the castle, plunging the customarily frigid temperatures down into the regions of the arctic; and, of course, a malevolent rain, intent on destruction, had driven itself in a mad frenzy against the rattling windows until the corridors were awash with rivulets of rainwater slowly washing the dust away. And since, by Friday evening, there was no sign of it letting up, not the slightest sliver of a silver lining to lighten the glowering sky, really there was no point anymore.
‘I dare say it will clear up tomorrow,’ declared Miss Luna, a bright hope ringing in her clear, low voice and wreathing itself in a smile about the elegant bones of her face. Her blonde hair in its stylish bob was wringing wet, like everything else in the castle; remarkable, really, how she could muster anything like cheer under the circumstances, but some people are marvellous like that.
She was addressing her father, the current Count Vexx, who sat in a miserable huddle in his library (as usual), glowering as darkly as the storm outside, and radiating displeasure.
‘By what possible logic can you suppose any such thing?’ answered that gentleman, pausing in his anxious scrutiny of his collection of books to shoot a look of wondering exasperation at the light of his life (his daughter). And well he might worry: though his several hundred excellent volumes were arranged with great care over the tall, deep, ebony shelves of his book-room, and were dusted regularly (with his own hands, no less), nothing could keep the roof from leaking, or the rain from seeping in, and trickling in gleaming streams down the walls. As any book lover will know, little is as fatal to a library as water.
Lulu knew this all too well, and regarded the storm’s intrusion into her father’s sanctuary with feelings as anxious as his own. But since it was out of her power—or his, apparently—to do much about it, it was not in her nature to fall into a sulk.
Several articles of ancient bed-linen, full of holes and thick with dust, had already been spread over the black-glittering floor, and wedged against the walls, in the vague and fading hope that they might somehow preserve every book in the room by absorbing all the rainwater themselves. They were wringing-wet, of course, and there was nothing dry to replace them with.
It was in this state of mutual dissatisfaction and mounting despair that something extraordinary happened.
The doorbell rang.
