Chapter Four #2
She’s nodded throughout my pep talk and picks up a pen and grins.
“Sign me up.”
“Artie, you’re prong three, aka our secret weapon. Leo might have his TV slot and his production team, but he doesn’t have an Artie Elliott.”
Now who’s regretting that barracuda quip? He looks massively alarmed. I let him stew for a second before I carry on.
“Remember our last job? You were crucial in helping us gain the Scarboroughs’ trust. People relate to you in a different way from me and Marina.”
Marina curls her lip but doesn’t argue because she knows I’m right.
“They do?” Artie frowns.
I nod. “You bring the respectable. Just be the best version of you, Artie, that’s all I need.”
He looks mollified. Proud, even.
“I’ll do as much as I can to be their ghost hunter of choice, and you guys show them that my backup team is their dream team. Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Glenda fires me a look over her glasses and Marina chokes on her second mini Mars Bar.
“Have you been reading that 1970s handbook of hippie-dippy-shite management phrases again?”
I shake my head and mutter, “Late-night reruns of The Office.”
I watch Glenda switch to her red pen and write Melody is strongly advised not to draw management advice from David Brent in the meetings book.
I take a glug of coffee, then stand up and half yell, “Action!” while making clapboard motions with my forearms.
Glenda draws a neat line to signify the end of the meeting before closing the book, Marina salutes me, and Artie lowers Lestat to the floor and sits up at attention. Oh my God. I think I’m actually turning into the boss, and it’s got hardly anything at all to do with David Brent.
Approaching Maplemead is slightly less straightforward.
We were expected yesterday; this time around we’re going to be unwelcome arrivals.
The security guy scowls as he recognizes us and grants us access over the bridge, barking an order to park at the back of the forecourt out of the way.
It’s not as if I’m turning up with armfuls of new information; last night’s research hasn’t unearthed any new details about a juicy secret circus from the past whose members all died there mysteriously.
There must have been though; they’re stuck haunting the castle because it was presumably the scene of their demise.
My first thought was that there might have been a fire for them all to lose their lives together, but I can’t find any reference to a notable fire at the castle.
It’s perplexing; I’ve pretty much established the timeline of the castle’s inhabitants, and I’d love to get into the library again to speak to the card-playing couple.
Going on their appearance and the approximate era of their clothes, I’ve pinned them down as most probably Lord Alistair Shilling and his wife, Eleanor.
They seem to be the least volatile of the castle’s ghostly inhabitants and therefore a good place to start investigations.
I’m disheartened but not surprised to see that we’re not the only visitors at Maplemead today. I’d hoped we might get there before Leo and wow Lois and Barty with our renewed enthusiasm and pronginess, but his flashy black sedan is already parked in pride of place at the bottom of the stone steps.
“We could always just wait until he’s gone,” Marina says.
“We could, if we’re cowards,” I say. “Are we cowards?”
Marina nudges Artie beside her on the double passenger bench seat.
“Glove box.”
He obliges, smacking it with his knee twice until it flies open.
“Magic 8.” Marina nods for him to grab it, and it’s handed along the front of the van until it reaches me.
I roll my eyes, turn the ball once, and ask my question out loud with a sigh.
“Should we be brave and go inside before Leo leaves?”
“Yes.”
I hold it out for them to see. Even though the odds are the same for all of the random answers to pop up, it’s statistically quite rare for the single yes to appear.
Unlike some of the other answers, it’s unequivocal, not open to interpretation or ambiguity.
I pass the ball silently back along the line to Artie, who places it back in the glove compartment and closes it.
He isn’t violent enough with it and it drops open again; Marina reaches over and slams it hard.
“For the record, I wasn’t being a coward,” she grumbles, using the camera on her phone as a mirror to reapply her lipstick because the one in Babs’s sun visor is long gone.
“I just don’t trust myself not to murder the creepy twins, and I don’t want a stretch in prison.
” She slides her phone back into her bra and jerks her head at Artie.
“Get out, prong three.”
He slides the door back and unfolds his gangly limbs out onto the driveway, then turns back to offer Marina a hand down.
“Who do you think I am, your gran?” she grouches, harsher than she’d normally be because she’s still in a grump.
“The drive’s uneven,” he says, abashed, looking at her electric-blue high heels. “I thought you might like some help.”
I cough like I’m dying to alert Artie to the fact that Marina isn’t the only damsel who might require a hand. Chivalry and Converse clearly don’t go together though, because he just scratches his head and then digs into his pocket.
“Mint?” he says, offering the pack to me.
“What am I, a Shetland pony?” I bark and then jump down from the driver’s side without assistance and round the van to join them.
Marina sticks a fresh tab of gum into her mouth and pops another button on her blouse. It’s the same color as her shoes, a stark contrast against her loose dark curls and fresh slick of red-for-danger lipstick.
“Eyes on my face at all times, prong three,” she says, shooting Artie a dark look.
“Message received, prong two,” he says, looking awkwardly at the sky. “You definitely don’t look like my gran now.”
Marina’s shoulders start to shake with suppressed laughter. “I’d rather be your gran than a midget horse,” she says, and I find I’m laughing too. Artie laughs with us out of sheer relief at having not upset either of us.
“Sorry, Artie,” I mumble, poking the gravel with the toe of my Converse.
He glances at Marina, who flicks her eyes to the skies and then apologizes too.
We start to walk, and beside me, Marina uncharacteristically stumbles on the uneven surface. She turns to Artie on her other side and crooks her elbow.
“Well, take my arm then,” she exclaims, and he falters for a second and then does as he’s told.
“I’ll never understand women,” he mumbles as she hangs on to him until we get to the safety of the steps.
“Don’t even try,” someone says, and I wish I had a Taser in my pocket because, for the second time today, it’s Fletcher sodding Gunn.