Black Maria Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nobody really knows

Mig and Chris's dad had been seeing another woman, Vera Bland. He was driving to see Aunt Maria after their mother told him she wanted a divorce. His car skidded on some ice and drove off a cliff in Cranbury. The car was found in the sea but he was not found. Nobody knows if he is dead or alive.

Aunt Maria asks Mig and Chris and their mother to come and stay with her as they are now her only relatives. None of them really want to go.

Answer: Naomi

Mig's real name is Naomi, named after Aunt Maria's daughter who (allegedly) died. Mig is taken from her middle name, Margaret.

Answer: the "Mrs Urs"

The "Mrs Urs" are various friends of Aunt Maria's. Mig, Chris, and their mother have trouble remembering their names at first, and privately call them "the Mrs Urs" because they find themselves saying, "Hello, Mrs...er...Green".

Chris and Mig suspect that Lavinia is not really looking after her mum and has really left Aunt Maria because she is so difficult to live with.

Answer: Antony

Antony Green disappeared and nobody will say what happened, although everyone knows. Eventually we discover that Antony is not dead - he was buried alive by Aunt Maria's daughter 20 years ago.

Answer: Neighbour John

Chris and Mig are walking by the sea with the waves roaring loudly. Mig can't hear what Chris is saying and thinks he says the ghost is called "Neighbour John". They find this so funny that they decide to keep the nickname.

We later find out that the ghost is really Antony Green, and is not actually a ghost but Antony's soul, projected out from beneath the ground where he is buried.

Answer: They look different but seem to be acting exactly the same

Mig and Chris get lost in the woods and find themselves, somehow, on the other side of town but don't know how they got there. They come across the orphanage which has a yard full of about 40 children. They all seem to act exactly the same as if they have been cloned, but they all look different.

Answer: 0

In all the time they are in Cranbury, no other children are seen, only adults.

Answer: They look straight ahead and walk like zombies

When Mig and Chris stop at the station to clean the mud off their shoes, a train comes in and men start to get off. None of them look at Mig and Chris but just keep walking straight ahead in a group, not seeming to see where they're going. Mig and Chris joke that they are the husbands of the 'Mrs Urs' who have taken their souls and turned them into zombies, which is not far from the truth.

Answer: It looks exactly the same as Chris and Mig's dad's car

One of the men drives off in a blue car - it looks just like their family car which their dad drove off the cliff! Chris tells Mig that it isn't the same car because the number plates were different. Mig isn't so sure, because it even had dents in the same places as theirs did.

While out shopping with her mum, Mig sees the car again. She goes for a closer look and there is a lady sitting in the car. Mig thinks it could be Verena Bland, the lady her dad was seeing, but the woman says she's called Zenobia Bayley. Mig still suspects it's their car.

Answer: Aunt Maria's home help, Lavinia

The cat is very friendly and the family don't understand why Aunt Maria keeps shouting at it to go away. Betty can't work out why the cat's face looks familiar. One night the cat comes into the room Betty and Mig share, which used to be Lavinia's room. Betty realises that the cat looks just like Lavinia in a photo. Lavinia was turned into a cat after she saw the 'ghost' of Antony Green and accused Aunt Maria of having killed him.

Answer: Nathaniel tells them he is in love with Aunt Maria

Miss Phelps seems different to all Aunt Maria's friends. She won't tell them about what happened with Aunt Maria, or what happened to Anthony Green, but she does confirm that Lavinia won't be coming back. She introduces them to her brother, Nathaniel.

He is a bit mad and is standing in a room pointing a sword at them as they enter. Just then, Miss Phelps falls over - she is quite unsteady on her feet. Nathaniel is quite hostile at first until Chris tells him about the ghost. Nathaniel is suddenly keen to talk to him alone.

Answer: An exercise book with a story she wrote last year

Lavinia the cat asks to be let into the garden and insists that Mig go out too. It leads her into the shed and jumps up, staying just out of Mig's reach. The shelf falls down and there is Mig's old exercise book with a story she had written years ago.

The exercise book had been hidden in a secret space behind the radio in the family car when her dad ran away with Verena Bland. It should have still been in the car when it fell off the cliff into the sea, but the book has never been wet and still smells of their old car.

This means that her dad did visit Cranbury before he disappeared and Aunt Maria has never told them.

Answer: A green patterned box

Nathaniel told Chris about a missing box that is the key to undoing what is wrong in Cranbury. He says it is his only hope. When Mig shows Chris the exercise book that had been hidden in the car, they know that their dad must have been in Cranbury. They think he would have taken the exercise book out of the hiding place to put something else there - the box. They break into the car parked at the railway station, which IS their old car, and Mig finds the box.

Chris gives Nathaniel the signal and they meet on top of the hill by the orphanage. Mig opens the box slightly and some strange smoke escapes and starts swirling around them. It takes both Chris and Mig to close it again. Nathaniel is very annoyed that Mig, a female, has let some of it escape, but it is perhaps because she does this that some of the men in Cranbury have a small 'awakening'.

Answer: Aunt Maria turns Chris into a wolf

Unwisely, Mig leaves Chris alone with Aunt Maria. He gets so fed up of her that he starts telling her what he thinks of her and accuses her of killing people or "doing away with" them. Aunt Maria bangs her walking stick on the floor and says a spell, turning him into a wolf. Chris the wolf sees Mig watching on the stairs and runs out of the back door.

Answer: She doesn't seem to notice that he's not there

When she first comes home, Betty asks where Chris is and Aunt Maria tells her he has just gone out. Betty believes her. From that moment, it is as if she has been brainwashed and she won't believe Mig when she tries to tell her that Chris has gone, always believing that he is just in the next room or in the garden. It seems the more Mig mentions Chris, the more mum forgets him.

Answer: Her dad

Frustrated that she can no longer talk to her mum and Chris is out in the wild, Mig goes out for a walk. She decides to visit the family car, perhaps for some comfort. When the men arrive from work on the train, her dad opens the door and gets in! He seems to be in a bit of a daze, but they have a conversation.

He doesn't understand why Mig would think he was dead. He has been living in Cranbury with Zenobia Bayley, but has been kept away from his family. Zenobia and her mother suddenly pull up in the carpark, so Mig sneaks out of the car and goes home.

Answer: They killed the wrong wolf

Aunt Maria organises the whole town to search for Chris the wolf, after he supposedly bit one of the orphans. (This is a lie.) Mig warns Chris that they will be looking for him so she panics when the men shoot a wolf in the woods. It isn't Chris - it is a female wolf.

When Aunt Maria finds out, she is inconsolable. The wolf was really Naomi, her daughter. Mig starts to see that the people of Cranbury are not as faithful to Aunt Maria as they first appeared, as they knew they had killed the wrong wolf.

Answer: They turn into wolves

Mig manages to bring Betty back to her senses by showing her the ghost (Antony Green) in Chris's room. Betty works out that it isn't really a ghost but the projected soul of a man who is still alive. She asks him to tell her where he is buried and he does, although only Betty can hear him.

Mig and Betty go to Nathaniel Phelps for help. He uses the green box's power to transform them into cats, and they travel back in time to the hill by the orphanage. They watch as Naomi Laker (Aunt Maria's daughter) tricks Antony Green into letting her bury him alive. She then says a spell to seal him in with the power of her name. (Luckily for Antony, this happens to be Mig's real name too!) Aunt Maria then appears and gets into an argument with Naomi. Aunt Maria turns her into a wolf and sends her to the woods, making it so she is unable to leave.

Answer: Betty and Mig from the future

As they leave to go to the hill by the orphanage to rescue Anthony, some other visitors have just arrived and been taken into the back room. We later discover that it is their future selves, having returned from rescuing Antony.

When they get to the hill, it is being excavated with large diggers and there is no sign of Antony. They return to the Phelps' and go back in time to that morning before the diggers arrived, and Mig says the spell (using her name) to bring him up from the earth where he has been buried for 20 years.

Answer: She is a tiny, frozen statue, floating in the sea on a box

After rescuing Antony Green, they return to the Phelps' house where he retrieves the green box he has been searching for. The box contains all the Cranbury men's mental powers, and Antony is the one who has been chosen to 'manage' the box. Anthony turns Chris back into a human, and then rescues all the children from the orphanage.

There is a showdown at the seafront between all the Cranbury folk and Aunt Maria and her friends. The women use a 'guilt' spell to try and regain control, but Antony tries to shame them by showing them the misery they have caused over the years. On showing her the death of her own daughter, Naomi, Aunt Maria says "Upon reflection, I have nothing in my life to reproach myself with, young man".

At that point, Antony closes the green box and suddenly, Aunt Maria is a tiny, frozen statue. He later sails out in a boat and leaves her floating on top of the opened box in the middle of the sea.