Lauren Child - Pick Your Poison

‘You won’t thank me when you’re dead.’

‘But I might come back to haunt you,’ said Ruby.

‘Of that I’m certain,’ said the housekeeper. ‘You haunt my every waking hour, why give up the habit when you’re dead?’

Ruby opened the refrigerator, took out a carton and poured herself a glass of banana milk, then headed up to her room.

Inspired by the breakfast conversation about The Rigors of Mortis Square , Ruby flicked on the TV, tuned to channel 17 and waited for the next episode to begin. They were rerunning the entire series to coincide with Halloween fever.

The Rigor family was having trouble with the plumbing and Cordelia Rigor, who had died in a drowning incident, was wading through the kitchen wearing water wings. Toadstool was hovering in swimming goggles and barking a lot.

The telephone rang and Ruby reached out for the receiver.

‘You rang?’ she said.

‘Look Rube, can I come over? My sister Olive is driving me crazy.’

‘What’s she doing?’ asked Ruby.

‘The usual,’ said Clancy. ‘She’s eaten all my Spy Scoundrel figurines.’

‘Actually eaten them?’ said Ruby.

‘Chewed their heads off,’ said Clancy.

It was when Ruby heard things like this that she was relieved that she didn’t have a little sister or in fact siblings of any age.

‘Sure Clance, come on over, but you better make it quick, the weather guy just said the rain’s coming in.’

‘I’ll bring my galoshes,’ said Clancy.

An hour later, Ruby and Clancy were sitting on her rooftop looking at the sky. They were both wearing their parkas, hoods pulled up over woollen hats to protect them from the wind.

‘Boy, this is about as stormy as I can remember,’ said Clancy. ‘When do you suppose the rain’s gonna hit?’

They could see the lightning way off over the ocean, but it was moving their way.

‘Maybe ten minutes, maybe fifteen,’ said Ruby.

It was like watching a badly dubbed movie, the sound was so far behind the action that it didn’t seem to relate to what was going on.

‘So what new case have Spectrum given you?’ asked Clancy.

‘That’s the thing,’ said Ruby. ‘They aren’t handing out cases to junior agents right now, at least that’s what they’re saying, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just me.’

‘That doesn’t sound very likely,’ said Clancy, ‘not after everything you’ve been through – on Spectrum’s behalf, I mean.’

‘Well, I had a meeting yesterday and I got a strange feeling like they sort of didn’t quite trust that I was telling the truth. If you’d been there, you’d know what I was talking about.’

‘So what exactly happened?’ said Clancy.

‘I was interrogated is what happened. They wanted to know all about Lorelei von Leyden and what occurred on top of that roof,’ said Ruby. ‘They brought this agent in from Spectrum 1 and he was all busy with his little notebook writing everything down and looking at me with his squirrelly eyes.’

‘Don’t you think this is actually what spies like to call a debriefing? I mean, it’s their way of getting to the bottom of things, right?’

‘I told them what happened several times in triplicate. I was the one who got the darned invisibility skin back to the Department of Defence, so why am I under suspicion?’

‘Maybe you’re not, or maybe everyone is. You gotta see that something is going on here, right? That someone in Spectrum is involved in something they shouldn’t be. So they have to clear everyone before they can see what might be the cause of the leak.’

‘It might not be someone on the inside,’ argued Ruby. ‘It could just as easily be a security breakdown caused by a faulty computer program.’

‘Exactly my point,’ said Clancy, ‘but until they know for sure then they can’t discount the idea that it’s one of you guys.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Ruby. ‘If they don’t trust me then how can I trust them?’ She stuffed her hands in her pockets and looked out at the approaching storm. Neither of them spoke for a while, until Ruby finally looked at Clancy.

‘What?’ she said.

‘You’re taking this too personally,’ he said.

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘A professional agent wouldn’t,’ said Clancy. ‘This is just business to them. Spectrum are there to protect justice and prevent evil doing.’

‘This isn’t a Spy Scoundrel comic,’ said Ruby.

‘Exactly,’ said Clancy, ‘which is why they have to conduct an investigation rather than lasso villains and zap people with laser guns – you should see that what the guy from Spectrum 1 is doing is simply his job.’

Ruby sighed. ‘I know you’re right, OK, I guess it just freaked me out because now Spectrum doesn’t feel like the safe place it was. It could be anyone and it might be no one. I look around HQ and think to myself, if there is a double agent in the building then I am 100% sure it isn’t me, which means it has to be one of these other people, all of whom I trust, even Froghorn I guess, and it gives me the shivers.’

Just then a fork of lightning split the sky above them, thunder cracked a split second later and the rain began to pour.

‘Time to go,’ shouted Ruby.

Clancy fumbled with the hatch.

‘Jeepers Clancy, would you open it already.’

‘It won’t budge,’ shouted Clancy, ‘it’s completely jammed.’

‘Let me have a try,’ said Ruby, and she began sliding the catch back and forth in an effort to get it free of whatever had caught it.

‘It’s no use, it’s totally stuck.’

‘I told you,’ said Clancy. ‘So what are we gonna do now?’

Ruby peered over the top of the roof and into the tree’s branches – it looked perilous, but possible. ‘We could climb down,’ she suggested.

A fork of lightning lit the sky just overhead. She remembered her Dr Selgood conversation and suddenly that didn’t seem like the greatest idea.

‘How about we shout?’ said Clancy.

‘Good idea,’ said Ruby, and they began to yell at the tops of their voices, which made no impact whatsoever.

Five minutes later, they heard a scratching sound on the underside of the hatch door and a faint yelping.

Ten minutes later, Mrs Digby stuck her head through the hatch.

‘What are you, a couple of fools? Get yourselves down here and inside before I lock this hatch closed once and for good.’

Ruby and Clancy bundled down as fast as they could but still a fair amount of rainwater came with them.

‘Thanks Mrs Digby,’ said Ruby, whose teeth were chattering so much she could barely be understood.

‘Don’t thank me, thank that hound of yours,’ said the housekeeper. ‘If that dog hadn’t been howling himself hoarse, you might have been up there all night.’

Mrs Digby sent Clancy to the guest bathroom to dry off while Ruby struggled to peel off her drenched clothing.

When she saw the handwriting on her arm she exclaimed: ‘Del Lasco, I am going to strangle you!’

‘RUBY!’ Her mother’s voice came through the house intercom, small, tinny, yet authoritative.

Ruby groped for her glasses and pushed them onto her nose; they sat there unhappily, bent out of shape. She peered at the alarm clock.

‘6.32,’ she muttered, ‘not even breakfast time.’ It was unlike her mother to shout through the intercom unless there was a matter of some urgency.

‘Is the house sinking, on fire, falling down?’ Ruby grumbled. Ruby fell from her bed, stumbled to her feet, staggered to the intercom and spoke into it. ‘Hello caller, please divulge the nature of your query?’