Hide and Seek
“…And so… All but one of the hide-and-seek players had been found. All but one, because…” A pause for effect, “The bride, the new duchess herself, was still missing.”
Around the campfire, the twelve boys were sitting in rapt attention to his tale. Walter, the new Scout troop leader, was certain that, as usual, the starry sky, the smell of woodsmoke, and the crackling flames were working their magic — along with his skilfully smooth narration, of course — drawing the boys into the traditional jamboree story night that he felt sure he did as well as, if not better than, anyone.
“She was not found that evening,” Walter continued confidently. “Nor indeed through the days and weeks and years that followed — though the heartbroken duke, the bereft new husband, searched anxiously high and low, diligently through every room, every corner, every cupboard of the enormous manor house. He searched from the loft to the cellar and everyplace between.” Whispering as the boys leaned closer, “She had simply, quite undeniably, wholly inexplicably… vanished.”
There was silence around the troop as Walter paused to let the revelation sink in. And then, a voice from the far side of the fire piped up. “So, she was declared the winner?”
“Don’t be daft, Spud!” That was their patrol leader, Andrew, the oldest of the boys. “She’d cheated; done a runner or been abducted by aliens or something — she can’t be the winner then, can she?”
“In fact,” interjected Walter, waving his hands for emphasis. “In fact, no — No, you see, she hadn’t run away. No… Years and years later, after his lordship had pined away and died…”
“But Sir…” Spud interrupted Walter’s attempt to reweave the magic, smudged round glasses reflecting the firelight, an obstinate expression on his face. “Just to be clear. She was the winner, wasn’t she? She must’ve got some kind of record for longest-ever hide-and-seek hider, surely!? Like in the Guinness Book of World Records?”
“When the duke had pined away and died,” Walter, attempting to ignore Spud, continued doggedly. “He had no heir, and so the manor and its contents were auctioned off — and that was when a gruesome discovery was made… Inside an old trunk, when its lid was forced open, there — to their horror and astonishment! — was the mummified corpse of the missing duchess, desiccated face contorted in a final, terrible, silent scream… But most shocking of all,” again, now whispering, “She was still in her wedding dress!”
Walter sat back triumphantly. And once more, silence… Broken yet again by an incredulous Spud, “It must’ve been a huge trunk!” he announced. The other Scouts nodded and muttered their agreement.
“What do you mean?” asked Walter, disappointed by the troop’s somewhat muted reaction to his story’s shocking conclusion.
“Well, when my cousin Janine got married last year, she had on a dress that was enormous. Couldn’t hardly fit in the car. Couldn’t hardly fit through the church door! She looked like a giant meringue trundling down the aisle, Mum said!”
“Yeah, but Spud, be fair,” interrupted Andrew. “Your cousin Janine is not a small girl by any means, is she?”
“Big bones, Auntie Meg says,” Spud allowed. “Bigger appetite, Mum reckons! You wouldn’t squash Janine in no trunk in her wedding dress!”
“I’d pay good money to see somebody try it, though,” Danny, one of the other scouts, contributed cheerfully.
“So anyway,” Spud continued. “How big was this trunk, Sir? Or…” Sudden inspiration, “Was the bride really little? Like a dwarf, maybe?”
“Now that,” guffawed Andrew. “That, I would definitely pay to see… Pack a dwarf in a wedding gown in a suitcase in thirty seconds! That’s got game show gold written all over it, right there!”
Around the fire circle, the Scouts collapsed in fits of laughter.
“But what happened to all the stuff that was in the trunk before the dwarf bride squashed herself in there?” wondered Spud when he eventually recovered himself and could be heard.
“We don’t say ‘dwarf’ anymore, do we?” insisted Walter awkwardly. “Remember? We say, ‘person of short stature’ now. And anyway, the bride in the story wasn’t a dwarf — I mean, a person of short stature. She was normal — I mean, not normal; we shouldn’t say ‘normal’ either, I don’t think.” Flustered now, Walter tried to recover. “I mean, she was not a ‘person of short stature’.”
“So, the trunk was enormous then?” asked Andrew. “How big was it!?”
“It was… Erm, I imagine it was just a normal-sized trunk,” said Walter, holding his hands to demonstrate.
“Was the bride maybe a contortionist?” suggested Danny excitedly. “I saw one on Britain’s Got Talent, I think it was. Or maybe Circa der Sollay? Anyway, this girl looked normal but quite skinny, and she squashed herself in a plastic cube that you could see through. It was a really little cube, and she was packed in there and smiling at the camera. It was weird! Dad said that was how Russian Internet Brides get delivered by Amazon, and Mum punched him, but she was laughing… So then, he said that the contortionists dislocate their own joints! And Mum said it made her feel sick to think about! It was brilliant!”
“Was she wearing a big wedding dress?”
“The contorted girl? Um, no?” Danny admitted. “Like a leotard, I think? I remember it was really tight, and you could see her… You know, her you-know-what’s! Dad said it must’ve been really cold in the studio, and Mum hit him then as well!”
“So, it’s not the same thing then is it!?” insisted Spud, while the other scouts gave due consideration to the contortionist’s you-know-what’s and Walter reddened with embarrassment. “And anyway, was she a contortionist, Sir?”
“How can she have been a contortionist?” interrupted Andrew before Walter could think of a reply. “All those girls who become duchesses and princesses and things, they’re all ‘Debit-Ants’ — like proper posh. You wouldn’t find any of them on Britain’s Got Talent!”
“Debutantes,” said Walter weakly. “The word is debutantes. Erm… And no, she wasn’t a contortionist.”
“Anyway,” continued Spud. “To get back to the story… What happened to all the stuff that was in the trunk before she squished herself in there?”
“I… I don’t know,” admitted Walter. “The story didn’t say, and nobody’s asked before.”
“Maybe it was empty?” suggested Andrew.
“Unlikely. But, okay,” Spud conceded. “So, it was empty, say, and the not-a-dwarf, not-a-contortionist ex-debut-ante bride jumps in and shuts the lid, and it locks on her, yes? Well… so how did she open it, to begin with? Did she have a key for it already?”
“Yeah, maybe she did,” offered Danny. “Maybe she had the only key and she opened it, and then got in the trunk and it shut with her and the key inside. And,” triumphantly punching the air, “that’s why they had to force it open all those years later.”
For a moment, Spud was silent, turning the idea around in his head. “That sort of makes sense,” he allowed, pushing his glasses back up his face. “But still, the trunk must’ve had something in it like blankets and sheets and stuff that she shifted so she could fit in there. Who keeps a locked trunk with nothing in it? Wouldn’t the people looking for her see those things and wonder why they were… Oh, under the bed, say, rather than in the huge, squished-not-a-dwarf-bride-sized trunk in the corner of the room!?”
Aware that his audience was now lost to him, Walter shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe there hadn’t been anything in the trunk before, after all?” he suggested tentatively, feeling somewhat deflated. “Maybe it really was empty, waiting to have wedding present stuff put in it? Or perhaps only a little bit full?”
Again, Spud considered the suggestion. “Okay,” he commented. “I’ll allow it for the sake of argument. But, what about the search that this duke fellow did? What did you say, from the attic to the cellar, all diligently? Well, maybe it should’ve included looking in the possibly empty or barely used trunk?”
“He has a point, Sir,” insisted Danny, while the others nodded agreement. “I mean, it’s a pretty rubbish search that doesn’t include looking inside something big enough to hold a full-size duchess in a bridal gown when that’s what you’re looking for.”
“And even if they couldn’t open it ‘cos they didn’t have the key,” said Andrew. “They could at least knock on the lid and ask if her ladyship was in there and stuck. Couldn’t they?”
“And didn’t the daft duchess think to shout or knock or kick or something?” added Spud. “I mean, I would if I got stuck in a trunk. I’d kick and knock and yell myself silly!”
“Maybe if the trunk had blankets and sheets and stuff in it, she perhaps just fell asleep?” suggested Danny, shrugging. “We had a cat once that was always falling asleep in the drawer where we keep the sheets.”
“Well, in that case, it’s her own silly fault!” decreed Spud emphatically. “There. That’s that one done. Right, whose turn is it now!?”
Danny eagerly stuck his hand in the air. “So, there’s this couple driving across the desert in Australia, when they see two hitchhikers in the distance….”
“Severed fingers on the back seat,” Spud interrupted. “Or stuck in the bumper or on the front grill! Boring! Next…?”
