Chaos At Christmas – Episode 17
Chaos At Christmas by Ewan Smith
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- 1. Chaos At Christmas – Episode 17
“I trust they won’t be using sirens,” Erik said with an expression of deep distaste. Ferelith got the impression that the very idea of police officers turning up at the Manor appalled him.
Lionel gave a rueful laugh. “I suspect not. When I spoke to them, they seemed to find the matter rather a joke.”
“A joke?” Franklyn retorted in fury. He pulled out his phone. “I’ll going to speak to the Chief Constable. Then we’ll see who’s joking!” He strode away angrily and, moments later, they heard him barking into the phone.
“Geraint and I are going to have a look at the CCTV,” Ferelith said.
Lionel nodded. “Good. The sooner we find out what happened to the penguins the better. I’ve had everywhere checked, including the pool area, but there’s no sign of them. They must have left the grounds, though you would have thought that someone would have heard something. They aren’t exactly the quietest of creatures.”
A couple of youngsters had stopped nearby and were listening. “Has something happened to the penguins?” one of them asked in shock.
Lionel smiled reassuringly. “We’re not entirely sure where they are right at the moment. But I’m sure they’ll soon turn up.” Ferelith felt herself crossing her fingers. She seemed to have been doing that a lot over the past few days.
In fact, their inspection of the CCTV footage didn’t get them anywhere at all. The trouble was that the cameras were situated in and around the hotel buildings. There were none covering the grounds themselves.
“There didn’t seem to be any need for that when the system was being set up,” Geraint explained. “The purpose of the cameras is to keep an eye out for people trying to break into the hotel. It didn’t occur to anyone that we might have penguins in the grounds needing protecting as well.”
They looked through the footage from the cameras outside the hotel buildings but there was no sign of anything suspicious. In the late evening, there were occasional glimpses of hotel guests and members of staff but their behaviour seemed perfectly normal.
And later on, there was no one to be seen at all. “I know that the penguin area is away from cameras but I thought that we would find out something,” Ferelith said in disappointment. “Now what do we do?”
“Let’s have a look at it ourselves,” Geraint suggested.
The penguins can’t have disappeared without leaving some sort of trace behind.
Ferelith grinned. “We should be keeping notes. They might make a TV series about this one day.”
Geraint’s eyes narrowed. “If they do, I insist on Brad Pitt playing my part.” The suggestion sent Ferelith’s thoughts into a tumble. It wasn’t until they were back out on the lawn that some semblance of sense returned to her mind.
“Penguins are quite messy creatures, aren’t they?” she murmured, looking around. There were white squirts scattered about all over the ground.
“Though we can use that to follow them,” Geraint said eagerly. He pointed at a trail he had spotted. “When they left the enclosure, they must have gone in that direction.”
Ferelith had assumed that the penguins had been put into a vehicle and driven away. But it soon became clear that they had walked off themselves, presumably being herded by someone. The trail led towards the entrance to the hotel grounds.
As the two of them hurried after it, Ferelith remembered her wish from earlier. She had been hoping to spend a bit of time with Geraint and now that was happening. Though she’d had something rather more romantic in mind than following a trail of penguin poop.
They stopped when they reached the open gates at the end of the drive. The trail continued past the entrance. “This is a bit worrying for the Manor’s reputation,” Geraint said with a grin.
Ferelith frowned. “How do you mean?”
“It looks like the penguins have walked out on us.”
Ferelith looked around, trying to work out where the penguins might have gone. “What do you think happened last night?”
Geraint frowned. “It certainly looks as if the birds were freed by animal activists. I can’t imagine that they would have left the hotel grounds by themselves. The activists must have taken them away in a group.”
“Would that have been an easy thing to do? The penguins are wild creatures. Wouldn’t they have scattered all over the place as soon they were free from their enclosure?”
“These penguins are pretty tame. They’ve spent all their lives in captivity so they’re used to being with humans.” He thought to himself for a moment. “If it was me, I would have brought along a bucket of fresh fish. Once I’d handed a few of those out, the penguins would have followed me anywhere.”
Ferelith’s eyes suddenly lit up. She had spotted a splash of white on the pavement.
Geraint, penguin poop!
“That’s the way they must have gone. Let’s go.”
But at that very moment, a police car turned off the road in front of them. It nosed its way through the entrance of the grounds and parked by the side of the drive. Ferelith and Geraint hurried over. A grey-haired officer climbed out of the passenger seat and straightened his uniform carefully.
“Are you here about the penguins?” Ferelith asked him eagerly.
“We think we know the direction they went in,” Geraint added.
“Hold your horses,” the officer retorted. He gave a slow laugh. “Or do I mean penguins? That was an odd report we received about some of them going missing. As I said to PC Lyons here, I had to check the date to make sure that it wasn’t April 1st.” He let out another rumbling laugh and the young constable with him smiled dutifully.
“The trail should be easy to follow,” Geraint said. “But they were taken a while ago. We should hurry.”
The officer held up his hands. “Steady on now. PC Lyons is new to the force and she’s still learning the trade. So let’s do this by the book.” He turned to her. “What’s the first step, PC Lyons?”
The constable took out her notebook and a pen. She smiled at Ferelith and Geraint. “Could I have your names, addresses and contact details, please?”
The next half hour or so was very frustrating. The grey-haired officer, Sergeant Banks, led PC Lyons methodically through the process of gathering all the relevant information about the incident, ensuring that she recorded it accurately in her notebook.
She noted down countless names, addresses and dates of birth along with copious details about the penguins and the zoo they had come from. The two officers then took ages to minutely examine the ground around the penguin enclosure and spent even longer discussing how and why the penguins might have been released.
