The Beasts of Clawstone Castle by Eva Ibbotson Read Free Book Online

poetry like he did, and it was now that Howard, stammering a little, explained how difficult things were at Clawstone and that the children who had come to stay at the castle had had an idea which they thought might make more people come to Open Day.
    But when he had finished the ancient figures filling the room looked at him with amazement.
    ‘My dear Howard,’ said Admiral Hardmann, ‘I hope you don’t think that we would come and haunt Clawstone?’
    ‘We would hardly be suitable for that kind of thing,’ said Miss Netherfield, who had been a headmistress. ‘It sounds like romping about and we are definitely not . . . rompers.’
    ‘No, no!’ said Cousin Howard, and his ectoplasm became quite pink with embarrassment. And indeed the room full of elderly and respectable ghosts, with their hearing aids and walking sticks, would not have done much to bring people in on Open Day. ‘Oh, dear me no, not at all. But they wanted me to find . . . those rather vulgar ghosts . . . the kind that, er . . . scream and . . . take off their heads and so on. And I don’t get about much. I wondered if any of you . . . the Admiral might know more people . . . or have servants who know . . . ’
    Poor Howard stammered and was silent. But Mrs Lee-Perry smiled at him kindly. She had known the Percivals all her life.
    ‘Come, come,’ she said to her ghostly friends. ‘Surely you can think of a few suitable ones.’
    Fifi Fenwick sighed. ‘I do remember some story about a stabbed bride . . . Or perhaps she was shot. Cynthia’s girl. It was a while ago but she’s probably around somewhere.’
    ‘And there was some young man over near Carlisle, ended in a dungeon,’ said Colonel Hickley. ‘Can’t quite remember it now but it was a nasty story.’
    ‘Well, see what you can do,’ said Mrs Lee-Perry. And her guests thanked her for a lovely evening and glided out into the night.

C HAPTER N INE
     
    ‘S he’s had her calf !’ said Rollo, rushing upstairs to find Madlyn. ‘The cow who eats stinging nettles... It tried to stand up at once and then it fell down and stood up again and started to drink but the mother kept licking it so hard that it fell over again. I saw it all from the top of the wall.’ Rollo had found a flat place on the top of the wall round the park which he could reach from the overhanging branch of an elm tree. ‘The herd’s the biggest now it’s been for ten years.’
    Yes, but for how long? thought Madlyn. H ow long will there be a herd? And for the first time since she had come, she was wishing it was time to go back home to London. Because nothing as far as she could see could now save Clawstone. At the last Open Day there had been five visitors and one of them was an old man who lived in the village and was sorry for the Percivals.
    And Cousin Howard had been useless. The few times they had seen him since they’d asked for his help he had hurried away without speaking.
    But the next morning, just as the children were making their way downstairs, they met him again and this time he didn’t glide away; he actually stopped and beckoned to them.
    ‘There are a few . . . people . . . you might like to see,’ he said in his quiet, shy voice. ‘This afternoon, perhaps?’
    So they went to tell Ned and as soon as lunch was over they made their way to Cousin Howard’s library.
    As they sat down, facing the big wall of books at one end of the room, they didn’t really know what they were expecting, but in fact they had been invited to hold an audition.
    ‘I don’t want you to choose anyone . . . er . . . unsuitable,’ said Cousin Howard. ‘If . . . somebody . . . doesn’t fit your requirements they can be sent back. But the . . . ones that will appear are willing to come and . . . do what you ask.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I shall call them one by one if that is convenient.’
    The children nodded and Madlyn moved her chair a little closer to Rollo’s. She didn’t think he would be nervous; he