Maskerade

you don’t mean it. Come along, boy, here’s some lovely fish eggs for you…”
    Greebo pulled himself farther into the shadows.

    There was a little sigh from Christine and she folded up into a faint. But she managed, Agnes noticed sourly, to collapse in a way that probably didn’t hurt when she hit the ground and which showed off her dress to the best effect. It was beginning to dawn on Agnes that Christine was remarkably clever in some specialized ways.
    She looked back at the mask.
    “It’s all right,” she said, her voice sounding hoarse even to her. “I know why you’re doing it. I really do.”
    No expression could cross that ivory face, but the eyes flickered.
    Agnes swallowed. The Perdita part of her wanted to give in right now, because that would be more exciting, but she stood her ground.
    “You want to be something else and you’re stuck with what you are,” said Agnes. “I know all about that. You’re lucky. All you have to do is put on a mask. At least you’re the right shape. But why did you have to go and kill people? Why? Mr. Pounder couldn’t have done you any harm! But…he poked around in odd places, didn’t he, and he…found something?”
    The Ghost nodded slightly, and then held out his ebony cane. He grasped both ends and pulled, so that a long thin sword slid out.
    “I know who you are!” Agnes burst out, as he stepped forward. “I…I could probably help you! It might not have been your fault!” She backed away. “ I haven’t done anything to you! You don’t have to be afraid of me!”
    She backed away farther as the figure advanced. The eyes, in the dark hollows of the mask, glinted like tiny jewels.
    “I’m your friend , don’t you see? Please, Walter! Walter! ”
    There was, far off, an answering sound that seemed as loud as thunder and as impossible, in the circumstances, as a chocolate kettle.
    It was the clank of a bucket handle.
    “What’s the matter Miss Perdita Nitt?”
    The Ghost hesitated.
    There was the sound of footsteps. Irregular footsteps.
    The Ghost lowered the sword, opened a door in a piece of scenery painted to represent a castle wall, bowed ironically and slipped away.
    Walter rounded a corner.
    He was an unlikely knight errant. For one thing, he had on evening dress obviously designed for someone of a different shape. He was still wearing his beret. He also wore an apron and was carrying a mop and bucket. But no heroic lance-wielding rescuer ever galloped over a drawbridge more happily. He was practically surrounded by a golden glow.
    “…Walter?”
    “What’s the matter with Miss Christine?”
    “She…er…she fainted,” said Agnes. “Er. Probably…yes, probably the excitement. With the opera. Tonight. Yes. Probably. The excitement. Because of the opera tonight.”
    Walter gave her a slightly worried look. “Yes,” he said, and added patiently, “I know where there’s a medicine box shall I get it?”
    Christine groaned and fluttered her eyelashes. “Where am I?”
    Perdita gritted Agnes’s teeth. Where am I? That didn’t sound the sort of thing someone said when they woke up from a faint; it sounded more like the sort of thing they said because they’d heard it was the sort of thing people said.
    “You fainted,” she said. She looked hard at Walter. “Why were you in here, Walter?”
    “Got to mop out the stagehands’ privy Miss Nitt. Always having trouble I’ve been working on it for months!”
    “But you’re wearing evening dress!”
    “Yes then I got to be a waiter afterward because we’re short-handed and there’s no one else to be a waiter when they have drinks and sausages on poles before the opera.”
    No one could have moved that fast. True, Walter and the Ghost hadn’t both been in the room at the same time, but she’d heard his voice. No one could have had time to duck around behind the piles of flats and turn up at the opposite side of the room in seconds, unless they were some sort of wizard. Some of the girls did say the Ghost could almost seem to be in two places at once. Perhaps there were other secret places like the old staircase. Perhaps he—
    She stopped herself. Walter Plinge wasn’t the Ghost, then. There was no sense in trying to find some excitable explanation to prove wrong right.
    She’d told Christine. Well, Christine was giving her just a slightly bemused look as Walter helped her up. And she’d told André, but he hadn’t seemed to believe her so probably that was all