The Mystery of the Cupboard. Lynne Banks Reid

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       3

       Hidden in the Thatch

      Omri’s father lost little time in getting the re-thatching of the roof underway.

      He had been making enquiries among neighbours and people in their local village and pretty soon some men arrived in a beaten-up old car to inspect and measure the roof and talk money. A very great deal of it. That evening Omri saw his mother carrying a large tumbler of brown liquid across the lane to the big workshop his father had adopted as a painting studio.

      “Is that whisky, Mum?” asked Omri with interest. (The cowboy, Boone, had been a great whisky drinker, but his father wasn’t.)

      “Yes,” said his mother somewhat grimly. “Your father has had a shock. Alcohol was invented for times like this.”

      “How much of a shock?”

      “Fifteen thousand pounds’ worth,” she replied.

      “Blimey! Just for a bit of straw?”

      “Just for a bit of straw.”

      But it wasn’t only for that, of course. Thatching was a skilled craft, and not many people still knew how to do it properly. And it wasn’t straw. It was reeds, and the right sort only came from a particular place in France, because in Britain the reed beds were protected and couldn’t be used. The work would take about four weeks. And they had to do it at once because it couldn’t be done in winter - the whole of the old roof had to come off.

      “Like when the storm blew our other roof off!” said Omri the next day at tea when all this was being gone into.

      “Dad, it’s going to be so cold!” said Gillon.

      But their father said tersely, “We’ll all have to be terribly brave about that, won’t we, Gillon?”

      “Lucky old Ad, safe and snug at school,” muttered Gillon, who certainly hadn’t shown any envy for his older brother so far.

      “Look out of the window, boys,” said their mother suddenly. “We’ve got visitors.”

      They went to the window. On the lawn were three large magpies, gleaming black and white in the sun, strutting about and pecking at something that lay in the long grass.

      Omri had a moment of absolute horror. He knew magpies were scavenger birds — he’d seen them pecking at the remains of one of the fox-killed hens. What could be lying there, dead?

      He rushed out of the house, his heart in his throat. The birds flapped unconcernedly away just as he reached them. Hardly able to bear his apprehension, Omri parted the grass and looked at the corpse.

      It was a half-grown rabbit without a head.

      The others, belatedly realizing what Omri had feared, trailed out after him.

      “It’s not her, is it?” called his mother.

      “It’s a dead rabbit,” said Omri.

      “Yuck,” said Gillon. “Those magpies have eaten half of it.”

      Their father bent down to look at it more closely.

      “I don’t think the magpies killed it,” he said. “Too big for them. It would take a fox to kill that, and why would he have left it half eaten? Looks more like a cat’s work to me.”

      Omri gazed at the dead half-rabbit with entirely new eyes.

      “You mean - a cat could kill a thing that size? You mean maybe Kitsa could have hunted it?”

      “It’s possible,” he said.

      Omri’s heart did an upward lurch. The hope he had abandoned rushed back, painfully, like the blood coming back into a numbed limb.

      “But if she’s around, why doesn’t she come home?”

      “Maybe she’s gone feral,” said his father.

      “Gone feral? What’s that?”

      “Wild. Cats do. Mainly tomcats, but queens do as well sometimes, when they’re moved. I bet she’s around, Omri. Keep your eyes open for her, and keep putting out her milk.”

      Omri put not milk but clotted cream out for her that night. In the morning it was gone.

      “Probably a hedgehog,” said Gillon.

      Omri wanted to hit him, but he felt too relieved. There was hope, after all.

      The thatchers arrived to begin work, and chaos came again to the just-organized-after-moving household.

      The garden, the hedge, the border of the lane, and all the paths vanished under masses of mouldy old thatch as the thatching team tore it off the roof beams. There was no point in clearing most of it till the job was СКАЧАТЬ