Meanwhile, Abigail had Latin with Nightingale, which I’m not going to say she enjoys exactly, but I think she gets more satisfaction out of it than I do.
Once we were both done and we’d had late tea I tackled her about the foxes.
“Serves you right for eavesdropping,” said Abigail. “Don’t it?”
The evening had turned warm and muggy and Bedford Way was full of traffic and exhaust fumes. I was running Abigail to her parents’ house because it’s part of the agreement, but also because I’d promised to pop in and see my mum. My parents live on the same estate as Abigail’s so I often combine both the chores.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” I said. “I was gathering intelligence. And you’re supposed to notify me when you talk to weird creatures.”
“But they’re not weird, are they?” said Abigail. “They’re just foxes—nothing more London than foxes.”
“Foxes that talk?”
“So, they’ve got a descended larynx and tongue,” said Abigail. “Big deal.”
“And bigger brains,” I said.
“That’s an assumption,” she said. “Some other mechanism could be involved.”
“But they only talk to you,” I said. “How come?”
“Maybe if you stopped rushing about and stayed still for five minutes you might spot all the stuff going on around you,” she said.
“And?” I asked, because there’s always an “and” with Abigail.
“I used to buy them kebabs,” she said.
“Kebabs?”
“Well, you can’t feed them stockfish can you?” she said. “It’s too spicy.”
“Obviously.”
“Because they’re English foxes, right?”
“So Nando’s is fine?”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Abigail. “I can’t afford Nando’s.”
I was going to ask Abigail whether the foxes preferred their takeaway delivered or à la rubbish bin, but then I found myself thinking of Nightingale’s fairy spotting hide and decided that maybe Abigail was right. Maybe it was time to slow down and see if I couldn’t lure my railways ghosts out to me.
Only I figured I was going to need something a bit more mystical than a kebab.
So, when I got back from my parents’ I hunted out Nightingale who was shining his shoes in the kitchen. Molly had spread newspapers across the big oak farmhouse table and, I estimated, about a quarter of all Nightingale’s good shoes were arrayed along it like an exhibit from the Victoria and Albert Museum—men’s footwear; a history.
Nightingale was sitting at the end of the table dressed in a white dress shirt with silver and black sleeve garters and an Edwardian butler’s apron, attacking a wicked pair of Barker Alderney, which I supposed were there to represent the early 21st century.
Molly was in a seat beside him, polishing a parallel line of silverware. With her in her maid’s outfit, the pair of them looked like something from a Japanese manga—presumably they kept their weapons hidden under the table.
“I met a chap in India,” said Nightingale as he buffed up the toes, “who told me that a wise man takes time to pay attention to the things he uses in his everyday life. He believed that even inanimate objects had souls that responded to nurturing.”
“Was he a practitioner?” I asked.
“Good Lord no,” said Nightingale. “A street typist in Calcutta. He made a living typing legal documents and letters for people who didn’t own their own typewriter. The occasional love poem, too, I believe.”
He paused to examine the finish on the shoes and, satisfied he could use it as an emergency shaving mirror, replaced it on the table and picked up the next pair.
“The natives held a festival every year where they venerated their tools,” said Nightingale. His friend, he never did learn his proper name, would carefully clean his British Empire Model 12, daub it with turmeric paste, bedeck it with flowers and, on the day of the festival, worship it as if it were a household idol.
“And the moral of this story is?” I asked.
“I don’t think there is one,” said Nightingale. “Except that one should always look after one’s kit.”
“Is there a way to attract ghosts?” I asked.
“In what sense?” asked Nightingale.
I explained about our evidence that at least one ghost per day was riding down the Metropolitan Line each morning and then disintegrating messily. He’d never heard of ghosts “dying” in quite that fashion before.
“Odd,” he said. “Do you think their condition grew worse as a function of time or distance?”
“Impossible to tell,” I said, mentally giving him full marks for use of the word “function.” “Since they’ve all been travelling—it could be both.”
“So we’d really want to intercept them as early as possible.” Nightingale put down his brush and used a white linen cloth to clean excess polish off the edges of the soles. “Harrow on the Hill is the last stop before the line divides. Since we don’t know which branch they’re coming down, I suggest we establish our lure there.”
“So you can lure ghosts,” I said.
“You have yourself,” said Nightingale. “The ritual you used to summon Wallpenny at Covent Garden, remember?”
“I remember almost getting sucked into a pit,” I said. And then bouncing off a tree.
“That was a particularly difficult situation, and an oversight on my part,” said Nightingale. “I misapprehended the nature of the threat. What we shall do tomorrow is literally child’s play.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Back at my old school,” he said. “During the summer term when it was light in the evenings.”
The younger boys would sneak off the grounds and into the adjacent woods, build a campfire and see what they could attract in the way of the local supernatural.
“And swap comics and tuck of course,” he said. “Everybody did it, and the masters must have been aware. Because there could be as many as five campfires going in the woods on some nights.”
Each one a group of boys from a different year. As they got older, the focus used to change—with the older boys drinking and smoking and occasionally playing pranks on the younger.
“Did it work?” I asked.
“Oh, undoubtedly,” said Nightingale. “Ballantine junior and I once managed to induce the whole of 3B to wet themselves by pretending to be werewolves. Matron was not pleased, and I was caned by the headmaster personally.” Which apparently was a great honour because the headmaster was known to have progressive views and to be against caning in principle. Although obviously not in practice.
“I meant attracting the supernatural,” I said.
Nightingale shook his hand from side to side.
“Mixed results there, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m sure Spotty was hoping for a wood nymph. And there were always rumours of giant spiders and centaurs. I would have liked to have met a centaur, still…” He caught my expression and quickly added, “But any number of ghosts. They must have been the best fed spirits in the whole of England.”
“You didn’t start this tradition, right?”