“Now hang on a sec, Grandmamma,” I said. “There’s no way an English policeman is going to believe that you are the Head of the Norwegian Police.”
“I am very good at imitating a man’s voice,” she said. “Of course he believed me. The policeman in Bournemouth was honoured to get a call from the Chief of Police for the whole of Norway.”
“So what did you ask him?”
“I asked him for the name and address of the lady who had been living in Room 454 in the Hotel Magnificent, the one who disappeared.”
“You mean The Grand High Witch!” I cried.
“Yes, my darling.”
“And did he give it to you?”
“Naturally he gave it to me. One policeman will always help another policeman.”
“By golly, you’ve got a nerve, Grandmamma!”
“I wanted her address,” my grandmother said.
“But did he know her address?”
“He did indeed. They had found her passport in her room and her address was in it. It was also in the hotel register. Everyone who stays in an hotel has to put a name and address in the book.”
“But surely The Grand High Witch wouldn’t have put her real name and address in the hotel register?” I said.
“Why ever not?” my grandmother said. “Nobody in the world had the faintest idea who she was except the other witches. Wherever she went, people simply knew her as a nice lady. You, my darling, and you alone, were the only non-witch ever to see her with her mask off. Even in her home district, in the village where she lived, people knew her as a kindly and very wealthy Baroness who gave large sums of money to charity. I have checked up on that.”
I was getting excited now. “And that address you got, Grandmamma, that must have been the secret Headquarters of The Grand High Witch.”
“It still is,” my grandmother said. “And that will be where the new Grand High Witch is certain to be living at this very moment with her retinue of special Assistant Witches. Important rulers are always surrounded by a large retinue of assistants.”
“Where is her Headquarters, Grandmamma?” I cried. “Tell me quick where it is!”
“It is a Castle,” my grandmother said. “And the fascinating thing is that in that Castle will be all the names and addresses of all the witches in the world! How else could a Grand High Witch run her business? How else could she summon the witches of the various countries to their Annual Meetings?”
“Where is the Castle, Grandmamma?” I cried impatiently. “Which country? Tell me quick!”
“Guess,” she said.
“Norway!” I cried.
“Right first time!” she answered. “High up in the mountains above a small village.”
This was thrilling news. I did a little dance of excitement on the table-top. My grandmother was getting pretty worked up herself and now she heaved herself out of her chair and began pacing up and down the room, thumping the carpet with her stick.
“So we have work to do, you and I!” she cried out. “We have a great task ahead of us! Thank heavens you are a mouse! A mouse can go anywhere! All I’ll have to do is put you down somewhere near The Grand High Witch’s Castle and you will very easily be able to get inside it and creep around looking and listening to your heart’s content!”
“I will! I will!” I answered. “No one will ever see me! Moving about in a big Castle will be child’s play compared with going into a crowded kitchen full of cooks and waiters!”
“You could spend days in there if necessary!” my grandmother cried. In her excitement she was waving her stick all over the place, and suddenly she knocked over a tall and very beautiful vase that went crashing on to the floor and smashed into a million pieces. “Forget it,” she said. “It’s only Ming. You could spend weeks in that Castle if you wanted to and they’d never know you were there! I myself would get a room in the village and you could sneak out of the Castle and have supper with me every night and tell me what was going on.”