Free Not Just a Witch by Eva Ibbotson Page A

would do anything to lie on a tiger skin or wear a coat like no other in the world. But it wasn’t easy to get hold of such skins. Mr Knacksap was finding it very hard to supply his customers and he had been getting into debt.
    And then he saw Heckie fasten her hands round the bank robber’s ankle and realized that he had been lying next to a very powerful witch. A witch who could change people into animals. But any animal? Mr Knacksap meant to find out.

Chapter Twelve
    Heckie was worrying about the mouse. Suppose they set mouse-traps in the bank and it got caught?
    ‘Or killed,’ she said, looking desperate. ‘Imagine it! An animal I produced, lying dead! I had no time to think, you see, but that’s no excuse.’
    ‘I’m sure they don’t use traps,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ve never seen a mouse-trap in a bank.’
    ‘It’ll be perfectly happy behind the panelling, eating the crumbs from the cashier’s sandwiches,’ said Sumi.
    But it was hard to comfort Heckie. Dora had known how to do it; she’d just told Heckie to shut up and not be so daft, but the children couldn’t do that, and Heckie went on pacing up and down and saying that if anybody she’d changed into an animal got hurt, she’d never know another moment’s happiness again.
    ‘Why don’t we take the dragworm for a walk?’ said Joe, who was used to dealing with gorillas when they went over the top. ‘Then you can go to the bank and ask about mouse-traps.’
    Heckie thought this was a good idea – she wanted to enquire anyway about the girl who’d been shot in the shoulder. As for the dragworm, he only had to hear the word ‘walk’ and he was already inside the tartan shopping basket on wheels. It fitted him just like a house with a roof and he was never happier than when he was rattling and bumping through the streets of Wellbridge.
    When they had gone, Heckie went to change her batskin robe for something more suitable, but she never got to the bank, for just then the doorbell rang.
    Out in the hall, holding a bunch of flowers, stood the tall, distinguished man that Heckie had seen in the bank.
    ‘Forgive me for calling,’ he said. ‘My name is Knacksap. Lionel Knacksap. May I come in?’
    Mr Knacksap was wearing his dark coat with the raccoon collar and his bowler hat, and smelled strongly of a toilet water called Male.
    ‘Yes, please do.’ Heckie was quite overcome. ‘I was just going to . . . change.’
    ‘You look delightful as you are,’ said Mr Knacksap in an oily voice, and handed her the flowers which he had stolen from the garden of an old lady who was blind. ‘I came to congratulate you. I saw, you see. I saw what you did in the bank.’ And as Heckie frowned: ‘But don’t worry, Miss . . . er . . . Tenbury-Smith. Your secret is safe with me.’
    Heckie now offered him a cup of tea. This time she put in three tea-bags because she had never been alone before with such a handsome gentleman, but Mr Knacksap said that was just how he liked it.
    ‘Tell me,’ he said, resting his cup genteelly on his knee. ‘Can you turn people into any kind of animal? Or only little things like mice?’
    ‘Oh, yes, pretty well any animal,’ said Heckie, looking modest. ‘But of course I have to think of what will happen to it afterwards.’
    Mr Knacksap’s eyes glittered with excitement. ‘Could you, for example, could you . . . say . . . turn someone into a tiger? A large tiger?’
    Heckie nodded. ‘I’d have to make sure they wanted a tiger in the zoo.’
    She then went on to tell the furrier of her plans for making Wellbridge a better place. ‘I have such wonderful helpers. Wizards and witches – and children. The children in particular! And a most wonderful familiar – a dragworm. He’s just out for a walk, but you must meet him. He’s a wickedness detector and he can sniff out even the tiniest bit of evil!’
    Mr Knacksap didn’t like the sound of that at all. ‘I’m afraid I’m completely allergic to dragons . . . and .