Jasper and the Green Marvel Read online

  For Lara Marlowe, with love

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Jasper Walks Free!

  2 Breakfast

  3 The Waitress’s Granny

  4 At Haverford-Snuffley Hall

  5 Meet Mrs Knuttmegg

  6 Jasper Settles In

  7 Rags and Bags Go Exploring

  8 Nelly

  9 The Green Marvel

  10 Mrs Haverford-Snuffley Explains

  11 Two Surprises for Rags and Bags

  12 Jasper Gets a Scolding

  13 Strange Music

  14 Nelly Has an Idea

  15 Georgiana

  16 Jasper in the Garden

  17 How Do We Get There?

  18 The Folly

  19 Jasper Starts Searching

  20 Georgiana Is Upset

  21 An Invitation from Nelly

  22 Mrs Knutmegg and the Carrots

  23 Sing Your Heart Out!

  24 A Surprise for Jasper

  25 Georgiana Is Upset

  26 Toby

  27 Treasure Seekers

  28 Jasper Shows His True Colours

  29 To the Rescue!

  30 Whoosh!

  31 Shocks and Surprises for Everyone

  32 How the Night Ended

  33 The End

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Just after dawn one fine summer morning the great door of Woodford prison swung open. A prison warder stuck his head out and had a good look around. ‘There’s no one there,’ he said turning back into the prison. ‘You can go out now.’

  A tall man with a big black beard and carrying a suitcase stepped out into the morning light. ‘Now then, Jasper,’ said the prison officer, ‘are you going to be a good boy from now on?’ Jasper nodded. ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’ But Jasper had his fingers crossed behind his back when he said this, so perhaps he didn’t mean it.

  How Jasper Jellit came to be in Woodford prison in the first place is such an extraordinary story that you could write a book about it. In fact I’ve already done just that. The book is called Snakes’ Elbows, and if you’ve read it you will know what a bad lad Jasper is. If you haven’t read it, don’t worry, you’ll still be able to follow this new story with no trouble at all.

  The prison officer handed Jasper a paper bag and an envelope. ‘Here’s some money to get you started and a couple of sandwiches. Goodbye! Good luck!’

  ‘Good riddance!’ Jasper said, as the door of the prison closed behind him, leaving him standing there alone on the step. He immediately opened the envelope and counted the banknotes it contained. ‘What a swizz! Talk about mean! I’ll have that spent in no time.’ Then he looked into the paper bag. ‘Oh no! Yuk! Egg and onion! Double yuk! I’m not eating that!’ He threw the paper bag high in the air, back over the prison wall. ‘Keep your manky sarnies!’ he cried. ‘I’m going to have a proper breakfast.’

  And then Jasper did something very odd indeed. He opened his jacket and spoke to his inside pocket. ‘Are you going to be good boys? Are you going to behave yourselves?’ Two little heads popped up from inside the pocket, with whiskered snouts and beady bright eyes. This was Toe-Rag and Scum-Bag and they were rats. Jasper had made pets of them while he was in prison and decided to take them with him when he left. You’ll be glad to hear that over the years their horrible names had been shortened to Rags and Bags. ‘Well then, I’m waiting. Are you going to be good?’

  The two rats nodded, but deep in the pocket they had their claws crossed behind their backs, so perhaps, like Jasper, they didn’t really mean it either. They were annoyed with him for having thrown away the sandwiches. Rags and Bags would have eaten them, but then again, they’d have eaten anything. Can you imagine the stink of a rat that’s just had an egg and onion sandwich? You can hardly blame Jasper for not wanting to have a couple of creatures like that in his pocket.

  Closing over his jacket again, Jasper picked up his suitcase and walked off through the silent empty streets of the little town in search of breakfast.

  He pushed open the door of the first café he came to and was met by the rich tempting smell of fried food. He sat down at a table and the waitress came over to him. She wore a dirty apron covered in greasy stains and had a tiny net hat balanced on top of her curly hair.

  ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘What d’you have?’

  ‘Sausages an’ rashers an’ baked beans an’ mushrooms an’ fried eggs an’ fried potatoes an’ fried tomatoes an’ fried bread,’ said the waitress.

  ‘I’ll take the lot!’ cried Jasper. ‘With toast and a big pot of tea.’

  ‘Magic word?’ the woman said.

  ‘Please,’ replied Jasper in a sulky voice.

  Before long he was tucking into a monster fry-up, with a shiny brown pot of tea and a great hot haystack of buttered toast. From time to time he slipped the odd bit of food into his jacket pocket: a bacon rind, a crust or two, the end of a sausage. Over the years Jasper had become very skilful at sneaking food to the rats in this way. You could have been sitting right in front of him and you wouldn’t have seen him doing it; he was like a magician.

  But Bags and Rags were annoyed because he wasn’t giving them anything like as much food as they wanted. All their lives they had known nothing but prison grub, porridge, and dry bread and hard biscuits. Compared to that, the little tasty-bites they were getting this morning were so yummy! They wanted more.

  After he had finished eating, Jasper poured himself a fourth cup of tea and started to think about what he was going to do. When he went into prison he had lost everything. The money in the envelope wasn’t going to last very long. He was going to have to find a place to live and he was going to have to find a job and all of this was going to be a great big problem. Jasper loved luxury and the best of everything, but he hated having to work. He picked up a copy of the local newspaper, the Woodford Trumpet, from a nearby table and turned to the pages where the jobs were advertised.

  These are the kind of things he was hoping to find there:

  WANTED

  SOFA TESTER

  Must be very lazy and good at doing nothing for hours on end.

  Excellent pay

  No experience necessary

  Apply to: Sofas 4 U, Woodford.

  We are looking for an assistant to the chef in our

  FIVE STAR RESTAURANT

  The successful candidate will be required to eat lunch and dinner every day and then tell the chef whether or not he’s any good at his job.

  This is what he actually found:

  INCREDIBLY HARD WORKER WANTED

  TO DIG HOLES IN THE ROAD

  WHATEVER THE WEATHER.

  MUST HAVE OWN SHOVEL.

  THE HARDER YOU DIG …… THE MORE YOU EARN!

  Washer-upper

  wanted for busy hotel.

  Must be prepared to start early, finish late, and work all weekend.

  No sense of smell an advantage.

  There were other jobs too but they all seemed to offer long hours, hard dull work and measly wages. Jasper didn’t like the look of this at all. He called to the waitress to bring him a fresh pot of tea, and as he turned back to the newspaper he saw an advertisement that he hadn’t noticed earlier.

  Gardener wanted for Haverford-Snuffley Hall.

  Live-in position. Good salary. All meals provided.

  Must like bats!

  Apply to Mrs Haverford-Snuffley, Haverford-Snuffley Hall, Woodford.

  Jasper knew who Mrs Haverford-Snuffley was. She had been an important part
of the whole adventure that had led to his being in prison in the first place. He studied the newspaper carefully.

  The thing that appealed to him most in the advertisement was the ‘live-in’ bit. Haverford-Snuffley Hall was a gorgeous house, almost as nice as the place in which Jasper himself had once lived. He liked the sound of the good pay and the meals as well. He couldn’t stand bats – nasty black things with their wings and their horrible pointed teeth. Ugh, he thought, they were so creepy! But he could always pretend to like them. Mrs Haverford-Snuffley was a daft old coot, it would be easy to fool her. He didn’t much like the thought of gardening but it couldn’t be that difficult, could it? Even if you didn’t bother to do anything at all to them, flowers and trees kept on growing, didn’t they? Mrs Haverford-Snuffley wouldn’t be able to follow him around the garden, she would be too busy looking after her wretched bats. He could sit and read a newspaper in the greenhouse when he was supposed to be doing the tomatoes, or he might be able to snooze in the potting shed.

  He was still thinking about all of this when the waitress came back with a fresh pot of tea.

  The waitress set the teapot on the table and then, much to Jasper’s annoyance, she plonked herself down in a chair beside him. ‘Haverford-Snuffley Hall!’ she said, noticing where Jasper had the paper folded open at the advertisement. ‘Now that’s a place I haven’t been to for years. Oooh, that brings back such memories! When I was a nipper I used to go there every single Sunday afternoon to visit my granny.’

  ‘Your granny?’ said Jasper? ‘Your granny used to live in Haverford-Snuffley Hall?’ The woman nodded. Jasper was impressed, because on top of everything else, he was a ferocious snob.

  ‘She was a laundry maid. Live-in, you see. Oh, there was never anybody like Granny with the old soap and starch. Famous for it, she was,’ the woman said dreamily. ‘There was no stain she couldn’t get out; her whites would have dazzled your eyes. There was no other laundry maid who could get a tablecloth or an apron as crisp and white as Granny could.’

  What would your granny say if she could see you now? Jasper thought, gazing sourly at the waitress’s greasy pinny, with its egg and ketchup stains. Do you think she’d be proud of you? You’re not exactly following in the family tradition.

  ‘What were the gardens at Haverford-Snuffley Hall like then?’ he asked aloud, and his heart sank when the woman said, ‘Immense. They seemed to me to go on forever. Orchards and a walled garden, a kitchen garden full of vegetables and soft fruit, glass houses, shrubberies and more flower beds than you ever could count. And everything was kept to the pitch of perfection: not so much as a daisy on the lawn, not a single petal or leaf out of place.’ Jasper listened to her in dismay. ‘The house had got a bit crumbly in recent years, but it was done up a while back.’ Yes, Jasper knew that it had been done up.

  ‘The thing Granny didn’t like about being there was that the house was haunted.’ Jasper gave a little snort of contempt at this – he didn’t believe in ghosts, not for a minute. ‘Oh, you can scoff,’ the waitress said, ‘but it’s the truth. Granny never actually saw a ghost there, but she heard it. It used to wake her up, moaning and wailing, in the middle of the night. What was really strange was that it wasn’t just the house that was haunted, there was a ghost in the garden too.’

  ‘And it wailed too, I suppose?’ Jasper asked sarcastically.

  ‘No,’ the waitress admitted. ‘It was very odd, it was musical. You’d be walking in the garden, Granny used to say, with not a bother on you, and the next thing you’d hear music coming from nowhere – the saddest music you can imagine. Oooh, it used to break her heart to hear it. She said that the wailing in the night frightened her out of her wits, but that the music was worse.’

  ‘You’ll be telling me next you can smell ghosts,’ Jasper said. He was fed up now listening to this woman ramble on, and was just about to suggest that she go back to her grill-plate and frying pans when she said, ‘There’s hidden treasure in that house too. Well, there’s supposed to be.’

  ‘Treasure?’ Jasper said. ‘What kind of treasure?’

  ‘An emerald necklace,’ the woman said. ‘It was known as the Green Marvel because all the jewels in it were so big, especially the central stone. It was just enormous.’ Now Jasper was really interested.

  ‘Hidden, you say?’

  ‘Well, it’s supposed to be lost somewhere in the house. But maybe there was no such thing. You know the way people make up stories. I believe in the ghost, but I’m not sure that I believe in the Green Marvel.’

  Jasper thought the exact opposite. He was convinced now that there were jewels hidden in Haverford-Snuffley Hall, but he didn’t believe for a moment that there were ghosts. The gardening job was beginning to look most attractive to him.

  Just with that, the strangest thing happened. The woman’s face went a funny purple colour and she jumped up on to her chair. She opened her mouth wide and she screamed. ‘AAAARRRGH!’

  What’s got into her all of a sudden? Jasper wondered. She pulled her pinny up over her head and stood on one leg, then she screamed again. ‘AAAAARGH! RATS! AAAAARGH!’

  There on the table, as bold as you like, were Rags and Bags! Jasper had been so busy listening to the woman’s stories about Haverford-Snuffley Hall and the Green Marvel that he had forgotten all about them. The rats had sneaked out of his pocket and had eaten all the leftovers on the table, all the rinds and crusts. By the time the waitress noticed them, Rags was tucking into the sugar lumps in the china sugar bowl, and Bags had his head deep in the milk jug. The woman screamed one last time and then she fainted out cold, falling off the chair and on to the floor.

  ‘What did I say to you two about behaving yourselves?’ Jasper bellowed. ‘What did I say about being good? Get in here now!’ He held his jacket open and the two rats quickly slunk back into the inside pocket. Jasper fastened his buttons so that they wouldn’t be able to get out again without his noticing. The woman gave a little moan. She was coming round. Quick as a flash Jasper picked up his suitcase and ran out of the café.

  He raced off down the street, ran and ran through the little town until he was completely out of puff, by which stage he was at the edge of Woodford, where the fields and the farms began. Stopping to catch his breath, he reflected that things had turned out rather well after all. He had had a jolly good breakfast and he hadn’t had to pay a penny for it. He still had all the money the prison officer had given him safe in the envelope. Opposite where he was standing he could see a signpost, hidden in the hedge. He moved the branches aside and read:

  ‘HAVERFORD-SNUFFLEY HALL 4 MILES’

  There was a painted hand pointing in the right direction.

  That’ll be a long walk, he thought, and then a hay cart appeared. Jasper waited until it had passed and then he ran behind it. He tossed his suitcase up on the hay, then he took a flying leap and jumped on himself.

  ‘Well done me!’ he crowed. ‘First a free breakfast and now a free ride to where I’m going.’ He unbuttoned his jacket and the two rats popped out of his pocket. Jasper was too cheerful now to be cross with them any longer. ‘Everything’s going our way, lads,’ he cried. ‘Everything’s going to be fine!’ The two rats bounced up and down on the hay with delight. The sunlight sparkled down through the trees as the cart trundled along the country road, taking Jasper to his destination: Haverford-Snuffley Hall.

  The hay cart seemed to Jasper to be going slowly, but when he got to his destination and tried to get down from it, it appeared to be going very fast indeed. Just as he had jumped on to it, there now seemed nothing for it but to jump off. ‘One, two three …’ Crump! And he landed on his back in the dusty road, with his suitcase beside him and the two rats sitting on his head. They at least had made sure of a soft landing. He struggled to his feet and limped through the gates of Haverford-Snuffley Hall, which were marked by two big pillars with a stone dragon sitting on top of each one. He walked up the driveway but as he came within sight of the house somethi
ng rather strange happened.

  He could see Haverford-Snuffley Hall there before him but it was green. The door was green and the windows were green, even the walls and the roof appeared green to him. This was because Jasper was seeing the place through a haze of envy. The house might well have been called ‘Thisreallyshouldbemyplace Hall’ or ‘Snotfairthatitisntmine Court’ as far as Jasper was concerned. Once he had had a house every bit as special as this and it filled him with rage to think that he had lost it. But then he told himself he would have to try to hide his feelings. He would have to try to be charming and friendly. He blinked hard twice and the house now looked to him as it really was.

  Haverford-Snuffley Hall was a big, square, peach-coloured house with white window frames and a flowering plant growing up a trellis beside the front door. It sat in the middle of spectacular gardens – immense, as the waitress had remarked, with every kind of tree and flower you could imagine. As Jasper approached, he noticed an elderly lady sitting on a wooden chair by the front step, reading a book. She had grey hair and a sweet-natured face. Her clothes were quite unremarkable but for one detail. She was wearing a straw hat with a long brown feather in it and from the end of this feather dangled a tiny bat. Stranger still, the bat was also wearing a hat: a little pale bonnet tied firmly under its chin with a green ribbon so that it wouldn’t fall off, for the bat was hanging upside down, as bats do.

  Jasper knew that this was Mrs Haverford-Snuffley because he had met her in the past. She, however, did not recognise Jasper, because of the big black beard he had grown in prison, and he was happy about this.

  ‘Good morning, young man,’ she said politely. ‘How may I help you?’

  ‘Why no, madam,’ said Jasper gallantly, flashing a brilliant smile at her. ‘The question is this: how may I help you? A little bird told me that you were looking for a gardener, and I believe myself to be just the man for the job.’