Maskerade

Walter stared at his feet. “There's going to be a lot of trouble Mrs Ogg.”

“Oh, me and Granny will sort it all out,” said Nanny.

“It's wrong to tell lies,” said Walter.

“Probably,” said Nanny, who'd never let it worry her up to now.

“It wouldn't be right for our mum to lose her job Mrs Ogg.”

“It wouldn't be right, no.”

The feeling drifted over Nanny that Walter was trying to put across some sort of message. “Er… what sort of lies would it be wrong to tell, Walter?”

Walter's eyes bulged. “Lies… about things you see Mrs Ogg! Even if you did see them!”

Nanny thought it was probably time to present the Oggish point of view. “It's all right to tell lies if you don't think lies,” she said.

“He said our mum would lose her job and I'd be locked up if I said Mrs Ogg!”

“Did he? Which 'he' was he?”

“The Ghost Mrs Ogg!”

“I reckon Granny ought to have a good look at you, Walter,” said Nanny. “I reckon your mind's all tangled up like a ball of string what's been dropped.” She pedalled the harmonium thoughtfully. “Was it the Ghost that wrote all this music, Walter?”

“It's wrong to tell lies about the room with the sacks in it Mrs Ogg!”

Ah, thought Nanny. “That'd be down here, would it?”

“He said I wasn't to tell anyone!”

“Who did?”

“The Ghost Mrs Ogg!”

“But you're—” Nanny began, and then tried another way. “Ah, but I ain't anyone,” she said. “Anyway, if you was to go to this room with the sacks and I was to follow you, that wouldn't be telling anyone, would it? It wouldn't be your fault if some ole woman followed you, would it?”

Walter's face was an agony of indecision but, erratic though his thinking might have been, it was no match for Nanny Ogg's meretricious duplicity. He was up against a mind that regarded truth as a reference point but certainly not as a shackle. Nanny Ogg could think her way through a corkscrew in a tornado without touching the sides.

“Anyway, it's all right if it's me,” she added for good measure. “In fact, he prob'ly meant to say 'except for Mrs Ogg', only he forgot.”

Slowly, Walter reached out and picked up a candle. Without saying a word he walked out of the door and into the damp darkness of the cellars.

Nanny Ogg followed him, her boots making squelching noises in the mud.

It didn't seem like much of a distance. As far as Nanny could work out they were no longer under the Opera House, but it was hard to be sure. Their shadows danced around them and they walked through other rooms, even more dark and dripping than the ones they'd been in. Walter stopped in front of a pile of timber that glistened with rot, and pulled a few of the spongy planks aside.

There were some sacks neatly piled.

Nanny kicked one, and it broke.

In the flickering candlelight all that she could really see were sparkles of light as the cascade poured out, but there was no mistaking the gentle metallic scraping of lots of money. Lots and lots of money. Enough money to suggest very clearly that it belonged to either a thief or a publisher, and there didn't seem to be any books around.

“What's this, Walter?”

“It's the Ghost's money Mrs Ogg!”

There was a square hole in the opposite corner of the room. Water glinted a few inches below. Beside the hole were half a dozen containers of various sorts — old biscuit tins, broken bowls and the like. There was a stick, or possibly a dead shrub, in each one.

“And those, Walter? What are those?”

“Rose bushes Mrs Ogg!”

“Down here? But nothing could gr—”

Nanny stopped.

She squelched over to the pots. They'd been filled with muck scraped from the floor. The dead stems glistened with slime.

Nothing could grow down here, of course. There was no light. Everything that grew needed something else to feed on. And…she moved the candle closer, and sniffed the fragrance. Yes. It was subtle, but it was there. Roses in darkness.

“Well, my word, Walter Plinge,” she said. “Always one for the surprises, you are.”

Books were piled on Mr Bucket's desk.

“What you're doing is wrong, Granny Weatherwax,” said Agnes from the doorway.

Granny glanced up. “Wrong as living other people's lives for them?” she said. “S' matter of fact, there's something even worse than that, which is living other people's lives for yourself. That kind of wrong?”

Agnes said nothing. Granny Weatherwax couldn't know.

Granny turned back to the books. “Anyway, this only looks wrong. Appearances is deceivin'. You just pay attention to watching the corridor, madam.”

She riffled through the bits of torn envelope and scribbled notes that seemed to be the Opera House's equivalent of proper accounts. It was a mess. In fact, it was more than a mess. It was far too much of a mess to be a real mess, because a real mess has occasional bits of coherence, bits of what might be called random order. Rather, it was the kind of erratic mess that suggested that someone had set out to be messy.

Take the account books. They were full of tiny rows and columns, but someone hadn't thought it worthwhile to invest in lined paper and had handwriting that wandered a bit. There were forty rows on the left?hand side but only thirty?six by the time they reached the other side of the page. It was hard to spot because of the way your eyes watered.

“What are you doing?” said Agnes, tearing her gaze away from the corridor.

“Amazin',” said Granny. “Some things is entered twice! And I reckon there's a page here where someone's added the month and taken away the time of day!”

“I thought you didn't like books,” said Agnes.

“I don't,” said Granny, turning a page. “They can look you right in the face and still lie. How many fiddle players are there in the band?”

“I think there are nine violinists in the orchestra.”

The correction appeared to pass unnoticed.

“Well, there's a thing,” said Granny, without moving her head. “Seems that twelve of 'em are drawing wages, but three of 'em is over the page, so you mightn't notice.” She looked up and rubbed her hands happily. “Unless you've got a good memory, that is.”

She ran a skinny finger down another erratic column. “What's a flying ratchet?”

“I don't know!”

“Says here 'Repairs to flying ratchet, new springs for rotation cog assembly, and making good. Hundred and sixty dollars and sixty?three pence.' Hah!”

She licked her finger and tried another page –

“Even Nanny ain't this bad at numbers,” she said. “To be this bad at numbers you've got to be good. Hah! No wonder this place never makes any money. You might as well try to fill a sieve.”

Agnes darted into the room. “There's someone coming!”

Granny got up and blew out the lamp. “You get behind the curtains,” she commanded.

“What're you going to do?”

“Oh… I'll just have to make myself inconspicuous…”