“What the hell are you doing here?” I’m confounded.
“I’m here to rescue Boo Boo and blow the villain up. And you?”
“We’re here to steal his favourite butterfly. Can we at least accomplish that before you blow the building up?”
“I’m getting confused,” says Walnut, still gripping the ferret leg, “If he’s blowing the Professor up, then we don’t need to steal the butterfly, do we?”
“Why don’t we all go in together. Make it a group effort,” says Loveheart, glancing with suspicion at the object in Walnut’s hand,
Walnut breaks the side window using a rock and we climb through into one of the hallways and sneak along the passageway, the butterflies above our heads, row upon row like ancestral portraits. The moon is our only light. Walnut occasionally bumps into me.
“What a slum he lives in,” Loveheart remarks. “He has no understanding of décor.”
“We need to get Boo Boo first,” I say, and we ascend a small spiral staircase leading to the upper floor where there are six doors and yet more butterflies. The first room is an empty bedroom used to store the killing jars and poison for the butterflies. Walnut opens the second room, which creaks softly like a haunted house. The room is empty except for the walls where seven photographs in frames sit, each one with a picture of a woman. Each woman wearing a wedding dress. White lace, white smiles, white ghosts. I recognize Lucy Dewdoll immediately: smile shy, awkward, ill-fitting dress, a lizard cream frill round her neck, ruffled, suffocating.
It is the picture that is next to her that worries me more. It is Boo Boo. She is sitting on a chair in the photograph, her little legs dangling. Her shoe wonky, her eyes glazed over as though lost deep in space.
Loveheart glances over my shoulder. “Bride number seven?”
I feel sick to my stomach. We leave that room and proceed to the third. Walnut trips over the carpet, Loveheart commenting, “I feel secure in the knowledge that I am working with professionals.”
The third room is an empty nursery with butterfly wallpaper. The fourth room is filled with shelves with hundreds of jars. Loveheart picks one up and examines it curiously.
“What’s inside them?” I whisper.
“Dead butterflies,” he replies.
“I have this bad feeling, sir,” says Constable Walnut.
“Keep it to yourself, Walnut.”
It is Loveheart who opens the fifth door, which reveals a massive bedroom where the Professor lies asleep on a huge black four poster bed. His favourite butterfly hangs above his head, as black as space. Soft-footedly Loveheart creeps round the bed and takes the butterfly off the wall while the Professor snores.
I go straight into the last room and find Boo Boo. I pick her up in my arms and carry her down the corridor. Walnut is holding the butterfly and Mr Loveheart is busy placing the bomb under the Professor’s bed.
Loveheart comes running out. “Quickly!” he cries, and we all run down the stairs and towards the window. I manage to push Boo Boo out through the window and then turn to see Professor Hummingbird and he’s opening his mouth and butterflies are flying out, zooming towards us.
The six wives of Professor Hummingbird
1. Elizabeth: poisoned with arsenic
2. Rowena: pushed down the stairs
3. Guinevere: buried alive
4. Pandora: committed to an asylum
5. Lottie: strangled
6. Lucy: committed to an asylum and then escaped
Detective Waxford returns to Darkwound
I hate this bloody village. My foot has not healed properly and I’m limping about. The morphine takes the pain away at least. I’m on a pony and trap heading for the Professor’s home. Detective White, Constable Walnut and Mr Loveheart have been missing for the last week. I am prepared for any eventuality as this part of England is full of mad people. The forests are sinister, dense, stuffed with strange plant life. I was really hoping never to come back to this backwater village with its abnormally high criminal activity.
I had been considering an early retirement from the force: a nice little cottage and an overweight cat for company.
Where are you, Detective White?
We cross the bridge and enter the courtyard to the Hummingbird moated castle, and there’s a little girl drawing with a piece of chalk on the stone slabs.
“Miss,” I say.
She ignores me and so I step closer. I see she’s drawing butterflies, hundreds of them.
“Miss,” I repeat.
She looks up.
“Who are you?” I say.
“My name is Boo Boo. The Professor adopted me.”
“Oh, has he now. I am Detective Waxford and I am looking for Detective White, Constable Walnut and Mr Loveheart, who are all currently missing. Have you seen them?”
“Yes. They tried to rescue me and blow the Professor up.”
“BLOODY HELL. Where are they?”
She doesn’t reply.
“Where is the Professor, Boo Boo?”