I tried to free myself, but he only held my wrist more firmly. “What sort of things?” I asked, although I would rather have shrieked, “Ouch!”
“I don’t know exactly, not yet. But it could turn out that I was wrong about Lucy and Paul and their intentions. So it’s important for you to—” He stopped, let go of me, and looked at the palm of his hand. “Is that blood?”
Damn. I mustn’t look guilty. “Nothing to speak of. I cut myself on the edge of a piece of paper at school this morning. So to stick to the subject. Until you can be more specific”—I felt really proud of coming out with that phrase!—“I’m definitely not working with you on anything.”
Gideon tried to take my arm again. “Here, that cut looks nasty. Let me look.… We’d better go to see Dr. White. He may still be in the building.”
“You probably mean you don’t want to say anything more precise about what you claim to have discovered.” I had my arm stretched right out, to keep him away and so that he couldn’t examine my wound.
“Because I’m not quite sure myself what to make of it yet,” said Gideon. And like Lucas just now, he added in a rather desperate tone of voice, “I need more time!”
“Who doesn’t?” I started off again. We had already reached Madame Rossini’s studio, and it wasn’t far from there to the front door. “Good-bye, Gideon. See you tomorrow—unfortunately.”
I was secretly waiting for him to grab me and hold me back again, but he didn’t. He didn’t follow me, either. I’d have loved to see the expression on his face, but I didn’t turn back to look at him. Anyway, that would have been a silly thing to do, because then he’d have seen the tears pouring down my cheeks once more.
* * *
NICK WAS WAITING at the front door of our house for me. “At last!” he said. “I wanted us to start without you, but Mr. Bernard said we ought to wait. He’s made sure the flush of the toilet in the blue bathroom is out of order, so no one can use it, and he says he’ll have to take out the tiles there to dismantle the cistern. We’ve bolted the secret door on the inside. Clever, eh?”
“Very clever.”
“But Lady Arista and Aunt Glenda will be home in an hour’s time, and they’re sure to say he’d better put off the repair work until tomorrow.”
“Then we’ll have to hurry.” I gave him a quick hug and dropped a kiss on his untidy red hair. There had to be time for that! “You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
Nick looked a little guilty. “Only Caroline. She was so … oh, well, you know how she always knows when there’s something in the air, and she asked lots of questions. But she’ll keep quiet and help us to throw Mum, Aunt Maddy, and Charlotte off the scent.”
“Particularly Charlotte,” I said, talking more to myself than Nick.
“They’re all still upstairs in the dining room. Mum invited Lesley to stay to supper.”
In the dining room, they were just leaving the table. Which meant that Aunt Maddy moved to her armchair by the fireplace and put her feet up while Mr. Bernard and Mum cleared the supper things away. They were all pleased to see me, all but Charlotte, that is. Oh, well, maybe she was just very good at hiding her delight.
Xemerius came down from the chandelier and cried, “There you are at last! I was nearly dying of boredom.”
Although there was still a delicious smell of supper and Mum said she was keeping something hot for me, I heroically claimed that I wasn’t hungry because I’d already had supper at the Temple. My stomach cramped indignantly at this shocking lie, but I couldn’t possibly waste time satisfying its demands.
Lesley grinned at me. “It was a wonderful curry. I could hardly stop eating. My mum is in one of her terrible experimental phases right now. Even our dog won’t eat the macrobiotic stuff she cooks these days.”
“All the same, you look quite … well, let’s say well nourished,” said Charlotte sharply. She’d braided her hair and pinned it up again, but a few little locks had come loose and were framing her face very prettily. How could anyone look so beautiful and be so mean?
“You’re lucky. I wish I had a dog, too,” said Caroline. “Or any kind of pet.”
“Never mind. We have Nick,” said Charlotte. “That’s almost like having a monkey.”
“Not forgetting you, you nasty, poisonous spider!” said Nick.
“Well said, young man!” crowed Xemerius, back up on the chandelier. He clapped his paws.
Mum was helping Mr. Bernard to stack the dirty dishes in the dumbwaiter. “You know you can’t have a pet because Aunt Glenda’s allergic to animals, Caroline.”
“We could get a nak*d mole rat,” said Caroline. “That would be better than nothing.”
Charlotte opened her mouth and then shut it again, obviously because she couldn’t think of anything nasty to say about nak*d mole rats.
Aunt Maddy had made herself comfortable in her chair. She pointed sleepily to her round, rosy cheek. “Give your old great-aunt a kiss, Gwyneth. It’s a shame we see so little of you these days. Last night I had another dream about you, and I have to say it wasn’t a nice dream.…”
“Could you tell me about it later?” As I kissed her, I whispered in her ear, “And could you please help to keep Charlotte away from the blue bathroom?”
Aunt Maddy’s dimples deepened, and she winked at me. All of a sudden, she looked wide awake again.
Mum, who had a date to meet a friend of hers, was in a much better mood today than for the last few days. No worried expression, no exaggerated sighing when she looked at me. To my surprise, she even said Lesley could stay a bit longer and spared us the usual lecture on the dangers of traveling by bus at night. Even better, she said Nick could help Mr. Bernard to repair the lavatory cistern that was supposed to have gone wrong, however long it took. Caroline was the only one out of luck. She was sent to bed. “But I want to be there when they discover the tr—when they dismantle the cistern,” she begged, holding back a tear when she couldn’t soften Mum’s heart.
“I’m going to bed now too,” Charlotte told Caroline. “With a good book.”
“In the Shadow of Vampire Mountain,” said Xemerius. “She’s reached page 413, where the young, although also undead, Christopher St. Ives finally gets beautiful Mary Lou into bed.”
I looked at him with amusement, and to my surprise, he suddenly seemed slightly embarrassed. “I only peeked at it, honest,” he said, jumping off the chandelier and down to the windowsill.
Aunt Maddy quickly moved in on Charlotte’s announcement. “Oh, my dear, I thought you might keep me company in the music room for a while,” she said. “I’d love a game of Scrabble.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Last time we had to throw you out of the game because you insisted that there was such a word as earcat.”
“And so there is. It’s a cat with ears.” Aunt Maddy got up and took Charlotte’s arm. “But I don’t mind if you say it doesn’t count today.”
“Nor do springbird and cowjuice,” said Charlotte.
“Oh, but there’s definitely a springbird, darling,” said Aunt Maddy, winking at me again.
I hugged my mum before going up to my room with Lesley. “And by the way, I’m to give you regards from Falk de Villiers. He wanted to know if you have a steady boyfriend.”
I’d have done better to keep this message until Charlotte and Aunt Maddy had left the room, because they both stopped dead, rooted to the spot, and looked at Mum with great interest.
“What?” Mum blushed slightly. “And what did you tell him?”
“Well, I said it was ages since you’d been out with a man, and the last guy you did see regularly was always scratching himself when he thought no one was looking.”
“You never said that!”
I laughed. “No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, are you two talking about that good-looking banker Arista wanted to marry you off to, Grace? Mr. Itchman,” said Aunt Maddy. “Bet you he had lice or something.”
Lesley giggled.
“His name was Hitchman, Aunt Maddy.” My mother rubbed her arms, shivering. “A good thing I never got to find out for sure about the lice or whatever he had. What did you really tell him, then? Falk, I mean.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Want me to ask him next time I get the chance whether he has a steady girlfriend?”
“Don’t you dare,” said Mum. Then she grinned and added, “He doesn’t. I happen to know that from a friend. She has a friend who knows him quite well … not that I’d be interested in any of that.”
“No, of course not!” said Xemerius. He flew off the windowsill and settled in the middle of the dining table. “Can we finally get a move on?”
* * *
HALF AN HOUR later, Lesley was up to date with the latest developments, and Caroline was the owner of a genuine vintage pink crochet piglet from the year 1929. When I told her where it came from, she was very impressed and said she was going to call her pig Margaret in honor of Lady Tilney. She dropped happily off to sleep cuddling the piglet when everything was quiet again.
Except for Mr. Bernard’s hammering and chiseling, of course. That could be heard all over the house. We’d never have managed to get any bricks out of the wall in secret. And Mr. Bernard and Nick didn’t get the little chest up to my room in secret either. Aunt Maddy came in right behind them.
“She caught us on the stairs,” said Nick apologetically.
“And she recognized that little chest at once,” said Aunt Maddy. She sounded excited. “Oh, it belonged to my brother Lucas! It stood in the library for years, and then—just before his death—it suddenly disappeared. So I think I have a right to know what you’re planning to do with it.”
Mr. Bernard sighed. “I’m afraid we had no choice,” he told me. “Lady Arista and Miss Glenda were coming home at that very moment.”
“Yes, so I was the lesser of two evils, right?” Aunt Maddy smiled with self-satisfaction.
“Just so long as Charlotte doesn’t know what was going on,” said Lesley.
“Don’t worry, she went to her room in a fury just because I put down the word cardscissors.”
“Which as everyone knows are scissors for cutting card,” said Xemerius. “Essential in every household.”
Aunt Maddy knelt beside the chest on the floor and stroked its dusty lid. “Wherever did you find it?”
Mr. Bernard looked inquiringly at me, and I shrugged my shoulders. Since she was here anyway, we might as well let her in on the whole story.
“I walled it up on your brother’s instructions,” said Mr. Bernard, with dignity. “That was on the evening before his death.”
“Only the evening before his death?” I echoed him. It was news to me too.
“And what’s in it?” Aunt Maddy wanted to know. She was standing up again, looking for somewhere to sit. Since she couldn’t see anywhere else, she sat down beside Lesley on the edge of my bed.