It was the clearest sight yet anyone had had of the ghostly rider that’s been terrorizing the people at Dendringham Hall. But now she’s seen the ghoulish horseman, Dot’s far from impressed…
Really, thought Dot, as she snuggled down for the night, that was pretty pathetic. Anyone who’d seen… what… well maybe ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ or even ‘Caspar The Friendly Ghost’ wouldn’t’ve been scared by that!
But then, of course, hardly anyone had seen any films in 1896.
But where was the film coming from? Think, Dot think!
OF COURSE! It had to be from somewhere inside the Hall itself! How silly of her! That was why, when it was projected, it showed up against the Dendringham Woods across the lawn and the ha-ha in front of the big house. And that would be why the ghostly rider was only ever seen in the dark, when the pictures would be clearest!
She sat up in bed in her excitement. Mr Mouse, who was snuggled up under a little doll’s house blanket on the pillow next to her, woke up immediately. He smiled up at her with his shiny little back eyes.
“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” he said. “Some kinda movie?”
“Yes!” said Dot. “But how would anyone have a cinema projector out here, in the middle of the countryside in 1896? It’d be really hard!”
“Well, whoever, whatever, they did it!” said Mr Mouse. “It’d have to be someone who understood those gizmos, though… someone who could fix that kind of thing up and make it work… someone who knew all about the newest stuff… ”
Ping! They looked at each other and had the same idea at the same time.
“Giles Langton!” they said together.
Dot got up and started pacing up and down on the sheepskin rug next to her bed. Creak creak went the old floorboards under her feet. She remembered her conversation with Mr Holmes. It was another clue that seemed to point straight at the inventor.
But could someone as jolly and nice as him really be doing all these bad things – the ghostly rider, the howling, the giant paw print?
But, first things first. “I wonder where that projector might be?” she said aloud, half to herself.
Something that might help was jogging her memory… what was it… oh yes!
It was a camping holiday she’d been on with her Mum and Dad when she was very small. They were in France, and one night at the camp site, they’d had an outside film show when it got dark – an old Disney film, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. The camp site owner had had to put the projector really high up so the film was projected over the tops of all the camper vans at the site – in the top windows of his house in fact, he was a farmer who lived on the site.
The house had had these little windows, each like a kind of little house of its own, in the slope of the roof. They opened into one of his daughters’ bedrooms and he’d poked the projector out of one of them so everyone could see the film.
The wicked witch was really scary. Dot remembered hiding behind her Mum when she came on!
She gasped. Ping! That was it!
“Whatcha got, kid?” asked Mr Mouse, hopping up into her hand.
“Aren’t there windows up in the slope of the roof, in the floor above us?” she said.
“Yeah” said Mr M. “What do they call them? Doors… dawn… dormer windows, that’s it! Those ones that kinda stick out from the roof. Cute, real historic!”
He sighed. “But they’re all locked, those rooms – no-one ever goes there. Heard Angharad talking about the time she tried to explore up there with Victor once when some guy left a door open. Ya go up a little dark stairway, and when you get there it’s really dusty and spooky… bare boards on the corridor and lotsa spiders’ webs and stuff.”
“So… I couldn’t get into any of those rooms to see if there might be a projector there... ” said Dot, her shoulders slumping with disappointment.
“Nope” said Mr Mouse. Then he grinned at her. “But I could!”
And before she could say anything, he was gone, jumping down from her hand and running out of the bedroom through the gap under the door!
