Quentin Bopsidy was late. It was Wednesday morning, the day after the night before, and he was late.

How could this be? He lived not a Lig's leap from the school, yet he still managed to end up running up the front path, crunching the gravel and struggling not to slip if it had been raining (or even if it had not), desperate to be there for morning assembly. He was late, full stop and that be the end of it. Even Old Missus Wigan, the cleaner, bless her little woolly socks, managed to beat him to his office on a daily basis. That wouldn't have been so bad, but she couldn't walk more than two steps an hour or so and constantly had to ask passers-by directions because "My eyesight isn't what it used to be, dearie."

Old Missus Wigan, whose skin was like parchment and whose voice was the same, was only really still employed because no one had the heart to let her go. She didn't want to be put out to pasture like a sad old horse that couldn't pull the plough all around the field anymore. The fact was, even though everyone thought her name really was 'Old Missus Wigan', she did manage to pull that plough all around the field, or in this case, the mop around the school. It took her a while to do so, but by the end of the day, the school was as spotless as Mrs. Mead's stove. Proud of that stove, was merry Mrs. Mead. Couldn't be baking on a mucky-yucky stove, no way no how.

The bell had gone before Quentin had even opened his bleary eyes. The bell, a great brass instrument that could be heard all over Little Whimsy if it was given enough welly, should have been donged by the headmaster himself. The task had been passed onto Prefect Benjamin Waddle, top of his class in every class and the only boy who was big enough to heft the thing. He was also the only pupil who got to school early enough to ring it. Prefect Benjamin, top of each of his classes and punctual as a nine-penny piece, was early to everything. He'd been a week early to his birth and his dad, William Waddle the gardener ("Cut and sow, trim and mow, I'm the man to make your garden grow!"), said he'd chance be early to his own funeral. It was his donging of the bell's ding that woke up the headmaster, and not for the first time.

Three times a week, at least that was the usual count. The pupils ran a little bet as to how many times Mr. Bopsidy would be late, the winner getting sweets for a week. It had been Fenella Caroline, daughter of Arthur Burrows' second cousin, a very unsavoury character by the name of Brian, who had won the past two weeks. Brian Caroline was well known as a scoundrel and a layabout, but Fenella was quite the opposite. She was cheerful and polite and as friendly as they came. She had guessed correctly that Quentin would be late four times last week and four times the week before. Her school satchel was fair bursting at the seams with chocolates and boiled sweets.

Quentin rubbed his eyes wearily. He yawned and stretched, his joints cracking in protest. He scratched his head, sleepily sure there was something he had to do. He crawled out of bed and shambled into the bathroom. As was usual for the headmaster, he scribbled his fingers through his wild hair – his version of brushing it – and splashed his face with cold water. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, pulling at the skin on his face, vainly hoping that he could perhaps stretch the wrinkles out, and then shambled back into the bedroom. Just another five minutes. He had crawled back into bed, pulling the covers up to his neck, when he realised what, exactly, he had to do.

Headmaster. That was it. School.

LATE!

Ah.

He threw the covers off and leaped back out of bed. He stood for a long moment, his head swimming. Bad idea, jumping up like that. Your head didn't have chance to keep up. Once his brain had settled back into his head, Quentin grabbed his clothes and dragged them on. He scrambled about for a matching pair of clean socks, and pulled on a mismatched pair of one black and one stripy green pair when he couldn't find any. He glanced in the long mirror that hung on the far bedroom wall, not really seeing himself He just barely registered that he, at least, wasn't going to walk out of the house with his jumper on back to front or with no trousers. Then he ran to the front door.

Quentin Bopsidy was what some might call a beanpole. That description was close, but it lacked something – not least that no one really knew just what a beanpole looked like. He was more like a few bamboo shoots thrown together. His body and arms were long, gangly stretches with knobbly bits along the way for his hips, ankles and wrists and his head was like a big peanut balancing precariously on top. His hair was an insane mix of grey, black and orange as if someone had dropped a tin of paint on his head when he was a baby, and it had never washed out. He didn't run, he loped. His long legs extended out, making him look like a scarecrow that had been scared by a murder of crows. He slammed the front door on his way out and pelted up the path towards the school, almost tripping over Marilyn the moggie, one of Ethel Ribblesbottom's cats, in his haste.

Somewhere between Marilyn the moggie and the school gates, something happened.

Quentin never made it to school that day.

There was no kafuffle. There was no noise or anything so notable. Simply, Quentin Bopsidy, headmaster and Captain of the Unpunctuality team (or he would be if there was one), didn't arrive to take morning assembly. He had still not turned up to take afternoon register. The only witness to what really happened was Marilyn the moggie who, quite frankly, had seen better days and who, whoever Frank was, couldn't see much of anything anyway.

By mid-afternoon, it was obvious something had happened to the headmaster. Granted he was rarely on time, but he at least always managed to get there in the end. Mr. Cowling, the arithmetic teacher who hated to be called the maths teacher, spent three quarters of an hour knocking alternatively on Quentin's front door, back door and windows. There was no sign of him.

By three o'clock, almost everyone in Little Whimsy knew that he'd disappeared. On the other side of the town hall from the bakery, was the Tea Shop, owned for many years by Edward Corrigan and his dear wife Brenda. It served tea, buttered scones and three kinds of gossip at very reasonable prices. On this occasion, it was having one of its busiest days ever. It was as if the local constabulary had moved offices into the tea shop as what could easily have been an incident room had been set up. Brenda was holding court while Edward kept the tea flowing and the scones buttered. There was standing room only and not a lot of that.

The fact that they were discussing Quentin Bopsidy was really a mere side issue. Certainly the residents of Little Whimsy were concerned about the headmaster, but come on people! Juicy gossip like this didn't come along very often so when it did, you grabbed it by the horns, gave it a good yank and sank your teeth in deep!

"Doesn't he have a sister over in Harpston?" asked Pole. Pole was a short stumpy man who only shaved once a month and then only because he got fed up of his wife's moaning about the fact that his whiskers tickled. "Maybe he's just gone visiting."

Brenda stared at Pole as if she'd been slapped. How dare he have a reasonable explanation for something like this! The idea that the headmaster had just climbed aboard the inter-village wagon and had taken himself off for a few days was unthinkable!

"Pole, dear," she said in an even voice. "Quentin's cousin lives in Harpston, and they haven't spoken in three years. Please check your facts before jumping in."

Pole bit his tongue. He couldn't see that facts had much to do with anything in this situation. They were more of an inconvenience. And he knew it was Quentin's sister living in Harpston, not his cousin. His cousin lived in Wilma, aways over the other side of Townston. And the reason he hadn't spoken to her for three years was because it took a week to get there by wagon and he couldn't be away from school for too long, and his cousin couldn't read, so there was no point in writing. He knew this because he and Quentin played kickball together on a Friday night.

So there.

"Now," said Brenda. She raised her voice a little to make sure she could be heard, but she didn't need to. Everyone in the room was listening intently. "Do we have any constructive ideas?"

"Maybe he was eaten by wolves," said Lem Artthorpe (that's two T's, thank you very much). "What if they dragged him into his garden and chewed him to pieces? Maybe we should dig up his garden to be sure!"

A bustle of oohs and aahs and gasps was quickly followed by half the men in the tea shop rising to their feet, ready to grab shovels and uproot the headmaster's extremely well-kept garden. Brenda cleared her throat and the bustle died to a few anxious whispers.

"Lemon Artthorpe! Do you have to?" Brenda eyed him sternly. "You remember that word I taught you? Tact?"

Lem was usually about as tactful as a brick. He didn't see the point in soft soaping hard edges 'cos, he reckoned, you'd get cut all the same.

"Well, you all want something bad to happen to him anyways," Lem insisted. "You want to rub your hands and mop your teary eyes and say what a nice man he was. If he turned up tomorrow having drunk one too many pints of ale, you'd all feel hard done by."

The truth, more often than not, hurts. It did in this instance, so Brenda gave Lemon a quick cuff about the ear.

"You mind your ways, Lemon Artthorpe. Time was we had to go looking for you. Time was you'd had one too many pints of ale yourself. Time was, if we hadn't been woritin ourselves over your sorry hide, you'd probably still be asleep under that fallen willow. So you just mind, 'kay?"

Lem looked sheepishly at the floor, avoiding the smirks and giggles.

Could've been wolves, he thought. Could've been.

Not everyone was laughing at Lem, though. One or two, like Arthur Burrows and Brian Mead, Mrs. Mead's husband, were still thinking about the wolves. Granted, wolves hadn't been seen hereabouts for a good many years, but that didn't mean there wasn't any coal in the bunker, and a great big pile of it at that!

Wendy Plumrose stood up. She was young and pretty and never really thought anything through. Her sister Julia was also young and pretty, but she thought everything through, often not getting round to doing things because she was still deep in thought two days after whatever thing it was had needed to be done.

"I heard," she said, speaking as if she was addressing the Town Council (most of whom where here anyway), "that he was carrying on with..."

A tumble of grumbles drowned out the rest of her sentence. Wendy thought that everyone was carrying on with everyone else, except who they were meant to be carrying on with, so much so that she frequently managed to tangle herself up in the web of him-and-her-and-they-and-ohdidyousee that she'd created. As soon as she started off on one of her infamous scandals, pretty much everyone remembered something else they had to be doing, even if they didn't have anything else to do.

Brenda held up her hand to calm the hubbub.

"Does anyone else have anything to add?"

A small, crinkly man at the back stood up. Ingle Faltering was not everyone's idea of an ideal citizen. In fact, Fenella Caroline's father was almost a prince in comparison. He wasn't tolerated, as Mr. Caroline was, he was just ignored. People were so used to turning their noses up at him and pretending he wasn't there, they often really did forget he was there.

His voice was as crumpled as his appearance, but it had an underlying slimy texture that, if he said anything within earshot, made you want to wipe your hands because they felt dirty.

"What about the witches?"