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XXVII: Battle of the Billiards Room
XXVIII: Under the Cover of Darkness
XXXII: “My Bottom! My Bottom!”
XXXIII: A Game of Cat and Mouse
Do you have an awful auntie? One that never allows you to stay up to watch your favourite television programme? Or an aunt who makes you eat up every last spoonful of her revolting rhubarb crumble, even though she knows you hate rhubarb? Maybe your aunt gives her pet poodle a big slobbering wet kiss and then immediately gives you a big slobbering wet kiss too? Or does your aunt scoff all the most delicious chocolates from the box, leaving you with just the dreaded black cherry liqueur? Perhaps your aunt demands you wear that horrendously itchy jumper she knitted for you at Christmas? The one which reads ‘I Love My Auntie’ in huge purple letters on the front?
However awful your auntie might be, she will never be in the same league of awfulness as Aunt Alberta.
Aunt Alberta is the most awful aunt who ever lived.
Would you like to meet her?
Yes? I thought you would.
Here she is in all her awful awfulness…
Are you sitting uncomfortably? Then I will begin…
Meet the other characters in this story…
The young Lady Stella Saxby.
This is Soot. He is a chimney sweep.
Wagner is a Great Bavarian Mountain Owl.
Gibbon is the ancient butler of Saxby Hall.
Detective Strauss is a policeman.
It was all a blur.
At first there were only colours.
Then lines.
Slowly through the haze of Stella’s gaze the room eventually took shape.
The little girl realised she was lying in her own bed. Her bedroom was just one of countless in this vast country house. To her right side stood her wardrobe, on her left sat a tiny dressing table, framed by a tall window. Stella knew her bedroom as well as she knew her own face. Saxby Hall had always been her home. But somehow, at this moment, everything seemed strange.
Outside there was not a sound. The house had never been this quiet before. All was silent. From her bed Stella turned her head to look out of the window.
All was white. Thick snow had fallen. It had covered everything within sight – the long sloping lawn, the huge deep lake, and the empty fields beyond the estate. Icicles hung from the branches of trees. Everything was frozen.
The sun was nowhere to be seen. The sky was as pale as clay. It seemed to be not quite night, not quite day. Was it early morning or late evening? The little girl had no idea.
Stella felt as if she had been asleep forever. Was it days? Months? Years? Her mouth was as dry as a desert. Her body felt as heavy as stone. As still as a statue.
For a moment the little girl thought she might still be asleep and dreaming. Dreaming she was awake in her bedroom. Stella had experienced that dream before, and it was frightening because