574. Chapter 574

After Castle, P.I.

Episode 7.11

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: If I owned Castle, would I have allowed Sleeper? Rating: K+ Time: See above.

Detective Inspector Katherine Beckett of the Metropolitan Police Service, sometimes known as Scotland Yard, banged repeatedly on the door, but got no reply. She was just about to look for another entrance when the door opened a crack and a wizened old man stuck his nose out. "Go away! You have the wrong place. You want the Snyde-Bytch School for Young Ladies which is just down the lane. This is the Snobbington School for Young Gentlemen!" And before Beckett could say a word, he slammed the door closed.

She grabbed the brass doorknocker and was prepared to pound on it hard enough to wake the young ladies down the lane when a familiar voice called to her.

"I say. What a lovely pair of knockers."

She turned to face Sir Richard Castle, first looking down at hers and blushing. "Thank you, but you've seen…"

Caste laughed. "No, the doorknockers. They're from Italy. General Sir William Snobbington, the school's founder, brought them back after the Napoleonic Wars." Castle stepped closer and kissed her softly, then whispered in her ear. "But yours aren't merely lovely, they're perfect."

Beckett blushed furiously. "Thank you." She muttered.

"But what are you doing here? I thought you were stuck at the Yard, doing some ghastly police paperwork. You weren't supposed to come down until the weekend."

"A young lady is missing from the Snyde-Bytch school. She was last seen in the company of a young lad from Snobbington. They sent me down to investigate."

Castle nodded. "It must be serious if they sent their very best detective."

Beckett smiled at the compliment. "The missing girl is Amanda Herry-Beaver, the daughter of Lord Herry-Beaver, one of the wealthiest men in all England. But what are you doing here, Rick?"

"Why I'm a Snobbington Old Boy. Well, I almost graduated from here."

"Oh Dear! Is there a bit of a scandal there?" She teased.

"No. When the war came in 1914, I left school to join up. By the time I was de-mobbed after the war, I was really too old to come back here and finish up, so I went up to Oxford."

"And quickly was sent back down." Said a male voice.

Castle turned and smiled at the man standing in the doorway. "Sir James! How good to see you again. Sir James, may I introduce you to my very good friend, Detective Inspector Kate Beckett, Scotland Yard. Kate, this is the longtime Headmaster, Sir James Pook-Hill."

"Ah!" Sir James said as they shook hands. "You must be here about Miss Herry-Beaver. Shocking, I'm sure. But I'm sure that no student from Snobbington was involved."

Kate opened her purse and pulled out a drawing. "There was a witness, a Miss Tooloose Lautrec. She made a sketch of the fellow seen with Miss Herry-Beaver and described in great detail his school uniform. He was from here."

Sir James carefully examined the drawing. "It bears a striking resemblance to young Mister Swade-Shoos, but all of our students were inside when the young lady disappeared."

"And none of them could have snuck out?" Castle suggested.

Sir James' face reddened slightly. "You mean as you did so many times?"

"Exactly." Castle said with a smile.

"Perhaps I should let you speak to Mister Swade –Shoos."

Suddenly the man who had originally answered the door and shut it in Kate's face stuck his nose out again. "No! You can't. No woman has been inside the hallowed halls of Snobbington School for Young Gentlemen since Queen Victoria back in 1859. We can't allow it."

"Nonsense, Demming." Castle said, escorting Kate inside. "She's not just a woman, she's a lady." Demming promptly fainted as Kate crossed the threshold.

"Poor fellow." Said Sir James. "Terrified of the female of the species. He was once missing for eight days. We found him hiding in the pantry. He'd seen a female cat."

"He has a pathological fear of pussies?" Kate guessed.

"Something like that." Castle said.

They found young Swade-Shoos in his rooms, reading a ripping yarn by G.A. Henty. Kate began interrogating him at once, but adopting a quiet demeanor, as if she was a favorite sister of young Swade-Shoos. "Were you with Amanda Herry-Beaver the other night? You can tell me, you know. You won't get into any trouble. I can protect you."

The young lad shook his head. "No, ma'am. We were all inside, studying."

Meanwhile, Castle had been examining the contents of the young man's closet. "You might as well confess, lad. An examination of the grass stains on your trousers shows that you recently crossed the cricket pitch. This mark here indicates you bumped your knee on the pump at the old horse trough. See the rust stains? And these leaves are from the hedge on the north end of the school. You used the same route I used back in '12 when I…" Castle stopped and looked away from Beckett. "Anyway, you left the school and at night, otherwise you wouldn't have walked right into the horse trough."

Young Swade-Shoos began to cry. "Yes, I crept out and saw Amanda. But I had nothing to do with her disappearance. We just talked. She told me how hard it was to be a Herry-Beaver. There was a lot of pressure on her from her father."

"And what did you two do?" Beckett asked softly.

"Nothing! I only held her hand."

"Then what happened?"

"You won't believe me. No one will."

"We won't believe that you had nothing to do with her disappearance if you don't talk to us." Kate said.

"All of a sudden a huge, monstrous dog came out of nowhere, growling at us. I yelled at her to run. I thought she was right behind me, but when I turned around, both Amanda and the dog were gone."

"Preposterous!" Cried Sir James. "The story of a giant dog out on the moors is a myth, and we don't believe in mythology here, either old mythology or new mythology."

"But it's true."

"I think we can find out easily enough." Castle said. "When I served in South West Africa I helped out a tribe of Khoisan, also called Bushmen. Fantastic trackers, and several of them just happen to be visiting me right now. If I can use your telephone, I can have them here by morning."

Sir Richard was as good as his word. In the morning, Sir Richard, Kate Beckett, Sir James and young Swade-Shoos as well as two young Khoisans went searching for Amanda Herry-Beaver. Swade-Shoos took them to where he had been with Amanda. The two Khoisans knelt down and examined the ground.

"Sir Richard, you can clearly see the young man's footprints going in one direction and then a smaller pair of prints going the other way."

They followed the smaller tracks, which must have been Amanda's and saw that the tracks of a large dog paralleled hers. "That's one big puppy." Said one tracker. "He must weigh at least three hundred pounds."

They walked further, then the trackers knelt and said "Aha!"

"Look at that!" Castle cried. "That must be the track of a giant serpent!"

The trackers rolled their eyes. "Dude! That's a bicycle's tracks. From the tracks around it and the depth of the bicycle tracks, the girl and the dog were on the bike together."

"A bicycle riding dog abducts a young girl! What a plot for my next book!"

This time Kate rolled her eyes. No one was supposed to know that Sir Richard Castle wrote mystery novels under a nom de plume.

"If I were to write a book, that is." Castle hastily tried to cover his mistake,

"The tracks head for the cave over here." One of the trackers pointed to a cave.

As they approached, a truly gigantic dog rushed out of the cave and growled at them. Kate, who was usually unarmed, had her .38 Webley revolver which she now drew.

"NO! Don't shoot Fluffy!" Screamed a girl.

"Fluffy?" Rick and Kate said together.

Amanda Herry-Beaver walked out of the cave and put her arms around the dog. "This is my dog, Fluffy."

"Much of a Gabriel Iglesias fan are you?" Muttered Castle.

"Why did you run away and live in this cave?" Demanded Sir James.

"Do you have any idea what it's like being a girl named Herry-Beaver? It's terrible! Everybody teases me. But Father insists I must be a proud Herry-Beaver."

Kate nodded sympathetically while the men tried to stifle giggles. Kate glared at Castle which quieted him down at least.

"And then there was Demming."Amanda continued.

"What about Demming?" Asked Kate.

"He saw me with Swade-Shoes, holding hands. He threatened to tell Father if I didn't pay him twenty pounds a week. But my allowance is only ten a week, so I had to run away."

"The scoundrel!" Cried Sir Richard.

"Can you prove this?" Kate asked.

She nodded. "I can. I grew up quick and I grew up mean, my fists got hard and my wits got keen. I tell you, life isn't easy for a girl named Herry-Beaver. So I wrote my name and the date in invisible ink on each of the twenty pound notes I gave him."

Once back at Snobbington, Kate searched Demming's rooms and found the money. Demming was hauled off to jail.

And so Sir Richard Castle had the pleasure of the company of Detective Inspector Kate Beckett, of the Yard, at his country home that evening.

"I do love you, Kate." He said, holding her close.

She blushed, but said firmly. "I love you, too. But how long will a wealthy aristocrat love some cop?"

"Always."