The creature – for it was surely a creature rather than a man – stared at Harry through small, deep-set dark eyes. A bloodless tongue licked equally bloodless lips. The face was entirely devoid of hair, wider than it was high, and seemed to emerge directly from the shoulders without the beneficial support of a neck.
Harry took a step backwards, ready to turn and run from the nightmare apparition before him. But the ‘troll’ grabbed him by the shoulders again, holding him fast in an iron grip.
‘Explain,’ the troll hissed.
‘Explain what? I was just…’ Harry pointed back the way he’d come. ‘Let me go, please, sir. I won’t breathe a word about what I seen. Not about you nor the dead body.’
‘Explain the dead body,’ the troll said, shaking Harry so violently that his teeth rattled.
‘It’s a body,’ he said when he could finally draw breath. ‘And it’s dead. A woman, in a coat, bleeding.’
‘What colour fur?’ the troll demanded.
‘It’s not fur, it’s probably wool.’
The creature’s eyes narrowed even further. ‘Not the coat,’ it rasped. ‘On its head – what colour was the fur on the female’s head?’
Harry frowned, struggling to understand. ‘You mean her hair?’
‘Hair, fur, protective cranial grafting – whatever term you use on this primitive planet. What colour was it?’
‘Sort of… brownish.’
‘Brownish.’
‘And quite long. I think.’ Despite the tight grip that the troll maintained on his shoulders, Harry managed to get one hand up high enough to show how long the dead woman’s hair had been. ‘About this long.’
The grip on his shoulders loosened and Harry felt himself sag. Then he stumbled forwards under a near-crippling slap on his back.
‘Good lad,’ the troll said. ‘Your observational skills are adequate. You would make a good forward sniper.’
‘Oh, um, thank you, sir.’ Harry swallowed. ‘Can I go now?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘You must deliver your report in person. The probability is that it has a significant bearing on the matter in hand. Come with me.’
Harry hesitated. The troll had raised his own hand as he spoke – and Harry saw that it was a hand that boasted only three fingers. Or possibly two fingers and a thumb.
‘Where are we going, sir?’
The troll regarded him in the manner which a nanny might reserve for an especially slowwitted infant. ‘To Paternoster Row,’ he said, as if that should be obvious. ‘To see the Great Detective.’
And with that, the troll caught hold of the back of Harry’s coat and lifted him with one hand to carry him down the street towards a waiting carriage.
Harry’s plan, such as he had one, was to climb into the carriage then immediately out again on the other side, and so escape the inhuman clutches of the troll. It was a trick he had worked before with some effect. But on this occasion, lamentably, it was destined to fail.
The troll opened the carriage door with his free hand and hurled Harry inside. The boy landed upside down on the seat, his feet grazing the upholstered ceiling of what was indeed a rather plush conveyance.
Harry’s plan was thwarted the moment he managed to grasp the handle of the door – it was locked. The carriage started moving at speed, rattling over the cobbles, and Harry found himself being flung unceremoniously around the carriage interior.
As the carriage lurched around another steep corner, he contrived to fall towards the door through which he had entered. But this egress too was secured. For the duration, Harry was trapped inside, tumbling back and forth as the troll drove like a veritable demon through the London streets.
After several minutes, Harry could do nothing but resign himself to the journey and give thanks that the interior of the carriage was so heavily padded.
Harry had never been on a ship, or even the smallest river boat. But by the time the carriage drew to a halt, he felt certain he knew what sea sickness must feel like. It was not a positive experience by any measure.
He did not have long to recover, however, between the termination of the vehicle’s motion and the door opening. A pair of inhuman hands reached in and hauled him out, upside down. He was then placed – in an upright orientation, mercifully – on the pavement.
The troll grunted something that ended with: ‘… after you.’
‘That’s kind,’ Harry managed to say.
The troll stared at him, lip curling slightly. ‘I said: “If you run I shall come after you.”’ The hairless ogre gave Harry a shove in the direction of the front door of the nearest house.
It was a tall townhouse, with steps up to the main entrance. Harry staggered up, and the troll reached past him to pull the bell. It jangled distantly within the domicile.
To Harry’s surprise, the door was opened not by another creature drawn from the realms of nightmare and fantasy, but by a very ordinary-looking maid servant. Ordinary, but even to Harry’s juvenile sensibilities decidedly pretty, with dark hair. The only thing about her that might have derived from a fantastical creature of myth or folklore was her imp-ish smile.
Her manner and tone, however, was decidedly earthly. ‘Cor strewth, Strax,’ she intoned, ‘how many times do I have to tell you the difference between a lady and a fellah?’
‘I know the difference full well, boy,’ the troll told her. Without waiting for further comment, he shoved Harry though the door into a well-apportioned if slightly narrow hallway.
The straitened nature of the vestibule was of no concern to either the maid or Harry, but he saw that Strax, as the maid had addressed the troll, took some trouble negotiating the doorway and subsequent side table, ornaments, and other bespoke furnishings.
Ignoring the crash of breaking china, the maid ushered Harry into a large drawing room. He hurried over to the fire to warm himself while the maid and the troll argued in the doorway.
‘He is a witness. I have brought him to give his report,’ Strax said.
‘His report? Into what – mistaken identity and child abduction?’
‘No, into… murder.’
‘Murder – whose murder?’ The maid put her hands on her hips and stared at Strax through eyes even narrower than the troll himself had deployed. ‘Who did you kill?’
‘No one,’ Strax insisted. ‘Well, no one recently.’
‘It weren’t him,’ Harry called out. As much as correcting a possible injustice, he felt he should remind them of his presence. ‘It were a lady. Killed inside my snowman – well,’ he admitted, ‘mine and Jim’s snowman. We made it,’ he said proudly. Then his face crumpled as he remembered. ‘And this dead body fell out of it. All covered in blood and everything.’
And with that, the full enormity of his situation finally came home to Harry, and he sank to the heavy pile carpet in a flood of tears.
The maid introduced herself as Jenny Flint, and she brought Harry a bowl of hot soup with thick slices of warm, fresh bread. To eat it he sat at a table that was bigger than the area he had to live in at the workhouse. The wood was so highly polished he could see his face reflected in it. Grimy and tear-streaked, he realised that he looked as out of place in this establishment as did the troll-like Strax.
‘So who are you?’ Harry demanded as Jenny sat and watched him eat.
The words were rather indistinct, spoken as they were though a mouthful of bread.
Jenny dabbed at the soup and breadcrumbs now strewn across the table with the napkin which Harry had spurned.
‘I told you, I’m Jenny. And don’t mind Strax – his bark’s worse than his bite.’
‘He’s a dog?’
‘No, course not. And actually…’ Jenny frowned. ‘Actually his bite is probably worse than his bark. Forget I said that. We both work for…’ She paused to bring home the full effect of her next words. ‘The Great Detective.’
Harry nodded. ‘That’s nice.’
‘You never heard of the Great Detective?’ Jenny asked.
‘Sherlock Holmes, isn’t he? But everyone knows that’s just a story.’
Jenny sniffed and did some more napkin-mopping. ‘Not that great detective. A real one. Madame Vastra.’
Harry shook his head. He’d never heard of her.
‘Just so long as she ain’t another troll or ogre or anything.’
Jenny smiled. ‘She’s nothing like Strax, if that’s what you mean.’
As she spoke, there came the sound of the front door slamming shut.
‘That’ll be her now,’ Jenny said. ‘I’d better go and explain that the guest we have staying ain’t the guest she was expecting.’
Harry finished his soup alone. He could hear voices in the hallway outside – Jenny and another woman. He could not make out the words, but the other woman sounded friendly and warm. Harry finished the last of the bread, wiped his mouth carefully on the tablecloth, and got up from the table.
Jenny was standing in the hallway. The other woman – who could only be the aforementioned Madame Vastra – had her back to Harry. She was wearing a cape with a hood, not unlike Strax. But Madame Vastra’s attire evidently covered a taller, more elegant and feminine figure.
Then Madame Vastra turned, and Harry saw her face.
It was green, and scaled in the manner of a cold-blooded reptile. Her eyes were slanted catlike, and a long, forked tongue hung from her thin lips.
It was the face of the fabled Lizard Woman.