Free Floods 5 by Colin Thompson Page A

machine he’s building real?’ said Morbid. ‘Because if it is, I was wonderingif we could use it to go back to just before the dead professor appeared at school and wait by the graveyard gates and do something about it.’
    â€˜The last I heard from Clacton was that it was working, but he had forgotten to get inside it before he sent it back in time, so now he doesn’t know where it is,’ said Winchflat.
    â€˜Ah.’
    â€˜But I like your idea, so maybe we should help his lordship recover the machine,’ said Winchflat.
    â€˜Wouldn’t it be simpler to make another one?’ Merlinmary suggested. ‘He must have drawn up some plans.’
    â€˜I did indeed, old chap. Safely locked away, they are,’ said Lord Clacton when they went upstairs to try to help him.
    â€˜Well, there you are then, problem solved,’ said Merlinmary.
    â€˜Not really,’ said Lord Clacton.
    â€˜You’ve lost the key?’
    â€˜No, I have it right here,’ said his lordship. ‘I’ve lost the drawer the key fits into.’
    â€˜It’s part of the time machine, isn’t it?’ said Winchflat.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I’ve got an idea,’ said Satanella. ‘Why don’t we make a time machine and go back in time until just before his lordship sent his time machine away … Oh.’
    â€˜Couldn’t we just go back in your Zoomy Thing?’ said Morbid.
    â€˜Well, theoretically we could,’ said Winchflat. ‘But we would need to know the exact date to go back to, otherwise we could end up completely lost.’
    â€˜So what’s the problem?’ said Merlimary. ‘Just get his lordship to tell you what time he sent it to and go back just before that.’
    Lord Clacton blushed and began fiddling with a cactus growing in a pot on the windowsill.
    â€˜He can’t tell the time,’ Winchflat whispered to the others. ‘He’s a brilliant genius, but totally useless about things that have numbers in them, like times tables and clocks.’

‘Gone? What do you mean, gone?’ said the headmaster.
    â€˜We were, umm, well, briefly distracted,’ said Grusom. ‘And when we stopped being distracted the body had vanished.’
    â€˜Maybe it just wandered off,’ said the headmaster. ‘Have you checked the grounds?’
    â€˜It was dead,’ said Avid. ‘How could it wander off?’
    â€˜My dear young lady,’ said the headmaster, ‘you are forgetting that this is a wizard school – several of our students have been dead for years. Infact, if a student fails their exams, they can re-do the whole year as a corpse so that when they get to the next year, they haven’t got any older.’
    Avid nodded, blushing slightly, partly at the idea that some of the things wandering around the school could be dead, partly due to the memory of writhing around on the floor in hysterics, partly because of where the magic beans that had fallen down her blouse had ended up, 34 and partly from feeling stupid at losing an entire dead body.
    â€˜Bodies don’t just vanish,’ continued the headmaster. ‘Have you checked with Elanora Bedlam? She didn’t make it into soup, did she? She does love her Corpse and Onion Soup. Can’t stand it myself. The onions give me wind, though I adore the gristle.’
    Avid wondered which she would rather do, faint or throw up. Unable to decide, she did neither.
    â€˜So I suppose, if you wanted to,’ Grusom suggested, ‘seeing as how there is no dead body as evidence, you could actually sort of pretend that there had never been a murder here at all and we could just quietly leave and keep quiet about the whole thing.’

    He was hoping the headmaster would like this plan, because he knew that if word ever got out that he and Avid had had a corpse vanish from right under their noses – though it was actually above their noses