Horten's Incredible Illusions Page 16

  had been the answer.

  ANYTHING I CAN DO?

  asked Stuart.

  YES. TELL ME WHAT LETTER CLUE YOU GOT OUT Of THE BOOK OF PERIL.

  E, wrote Stuart in reply.

  On the second morning, a grinning April had brandished a sign reading:

  SENTENCE REDUCED ON ACCOUNT OF ME PLAYING “DANCE OF THE SHEPHERD GIRLS” 313 TIMES IN A ROW, WHICH MOM SAID WAS DRIVING HER TOTALLY MAD. OUT AT 11 O’CLOCK.

  It was five to eleven now.

  Stuart looked at the triplets’ yard, still marveling that he could actually see over the fence. He had grown nearly one and a half inches—which meant that although he was still short for his age, for the time being he was only a bit short.

  “A sudden growth spurt,” his mother had decided, after measuring him. “Unusual but not unprecedented. I expect it was the combination of the heat stress you endured and Dad’s splendidly healthy cooking. I’ve actually read a recent paper about the positive effects of spinach and kale on human bone growth—I think we should definitely keep them on the menu.”

  Which meant that Stuart wasn’t particularly looking forward to the sort of meals he’d be getting from now on.

  The Kingleys’ back door opened and one of the triplets came out.

  “Hi, June,” said Stuart.

  She looked surprised and slightly gratified that he’d identified her correctly.

  “April says to tell you that she’s coming,” she said. “She has been working on something to show you. And I just wanted to say thank you for coming to get us. I’ve realized now that it wasn’t a dream.”

  “Oh, right,” said Stuart, impressed. He hadn’t realized that June ever changed her mind.

  “No, it wasn’t a dream,” she continued, “it was an extremely vivid hallucination—probably brought on by inhaling the fumes from the old-fashioned lead-based paint that your great-uncle used in the illusions.”

  “Oh.” He couldn’t be bothered to argue. “Okay.”

  “But you snapped us out of it and got us home. So thanks.”

  She disappeared back into the house, and after a moment April came out. Stuart felt ridiculously pleased to see her; they’d only known each other for just over a month, but he felt as if they’d been friends for years and years and years. She grinned back at him over the fence and then held up a piece of paper for him to see:

  THE COMPLETED CLUES:

  The pharaoh’s pyramid S

  The Arch of Mirrors W

  The fan of fantasticality O

  The Reappearing Rose Bower T

  The Cabinet of Blood I

  The Book of peril E

  ”I’ve been working and working on this,” she said. “I tried every anagram possible and then gave up on that idea, and then thought that they might be initials for something. SWOT could stand for South West Of The.”

  “‘South West Of The’ what?” asked Stuart.

  “That’s the trouble—I could only think of stupid things. Icelandic Egg. Idiotic Exhibition.”

  “Irish Elephant,” suggested Stuart.

  “So then I wondered if it was a number thing—you know, S is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet, and W is the twenty-third, and so on, so I added up all the numbers and got two hundred and twenty-five. Does that seem a significant number to you at all?”

  Stuart shook his head.

  “Nor me,” said April. “So then I read a code book that June got for Christmas, and there’s hundreds of ways to write codes: you can substitute one letter for another, or decide to move them so many places up or down the alphabet, or swap them around, or count backward, and I tried loads and loads and loads of them—I mean, I didn’t have anything else to do apart from practice “Dance of the Shepherd Girls”—and in the end I came to a conclusion.”

  “What?” asked Stuart.

  “That it’s not a code. Because in the end, all a code would give you is a six-letter word, and that wouldn’t be enough of a clue. Even if it was inside or behind or mirror or swivel. I mean, we’ve pretty much explored every nook and cranny of those illusions and we haven’t found the will, have we? It must be hidden somewhere complicated and hard to find, and one word just isn’t going to give us the answer.”

  She was probably right, Stuart thought—she generally was, about most things. But there was something else nagging at the back of his mind.

  “I had another phone call,” he said. “It was from Miss Edie. When you were trapped with your sisters. I didn’t have time to talk to her properly, but she said she’d remembered a couple of things that might help with the search.”

  “What?”

  “She said that her grandma told her that the will was well hidden, but that we should use the male to find it.”

  “The male?”

  “Yes.”

  “What, as in man? Does that mean only you can find it, and not me? Or does she mean that only a grown-up can get it?”

  “I don’t know. And she said something else—something really, really odd. She said that her grandma hadn’t liked me much.”

  “Her grandma who died eighty years ago?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “How could she ever have met you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what do you know about her?”

  “That she was a very clever businesswoman. She came to Canada from England. And she said that I was nothing but trouble.”

  Stuart and April looked at each other across the top of the fence—stared at each other really hard—and the same idea came to them simultaneously, so that they both gave a little hop, as if electrocuted, and spoke the two syllables at the same time.

  “Jeannie!”

  CHAPTER 39

  Jeannie Carr, the mayoress of Beeton, was Miss Edie’s grandmother!

  Jeannie Carr, who had been so desperate to find Great-Uncle Tony’s workshop that she had threatened and bribed and followed Stuart, and had finally been catapulted back into Victorian England by the Well of Wishes—a Victorian England that had also contained Great-Uncle Tony, who had gone back in search of his fiancée. That’s where Jeannie had found out about the hidden will.

  “She never stopped wanting to get the tricks,” said April, eyes wide, “her whole life long!”

  Stuart thought about the last time he’d seen Jeannie, standing furious and aghast on the stage of a Victorian theater, doomed to remain in the past. A tiny part of him felt slightly relieved that she had not only survived being flung back into history but had actually flourished—had emigrated and founded a family and a vast fortune. She left England with ten pounds in her pocket and a head full of ideas, Miss Edie had said, and she set up a factory in Canada and made more money than you would ever believe….

  “So did Miss Edie tell you how much she was prepared to pay for the tricks?” asked April.

  Stuart hesitated before answering. April and he had been through so much together; he felt that he owed her the truth.

  “Enough to make me very, very rich. Enough for limousines and first class on airplanes and months in Disneyland.”

  “Oh,” said April, for once lost for words. “Wow. I didn’t realize.”

  A silence fell between them, broken only by Charlie growling at Stuart’s shoelace.

  “I expect you’d move,” said April,”to somewhere bigger. With a swimming pool and stuff.”

  “Well,” said Stuart awkwardly, “it’s too early to say. And I haven’t even found the will yet, have I? And I can’t really ask Elaine to keep breaking into your dad’s builder’s yard, and I don’t suppose he’ll let us just walk in, will he?”

  “No.” April smiled ruefully. “He says that’s the last time he’ll ever do us a favor, ever. He’s keeping the key until the museum’s got room for the illusions again.”

  “And when’s that going to be?”

  “When the Roman Beeton exhibition opens on Saturday. Rod Felton rang Dad to say he was going to try and squeeze them into the st
oreroom, since so many people had signed the Beech Road Guardian‘s petition.”

  She bridled at Stuart’s amazed expression. “I know you don’t think much of our newspaper,” she said, rather huffily, “but it’s actually read by people as far away as Chestnut Avenue. And May sold the photo of Rod Felton crashing into that reporter to a national newspaper for a two-figure sum. Eleven pounds, to be exact.”

  “So you’re going to keep on writing for it?”

  “Of course. I’ll be reviewing the exhibition. And while we’re there we should get a chance to look at the tricks again—and maybe by then we’ll have worked out what the clues mean.”

  In the days that followed, Stuart was kept occupied with ordinary things—buying supplies and a new uniform for his new school, and visiting his grandparents—but the ordinary things felt extraordinary, since the new uniform was two sizes larger than he’d needed at the beginning of the summer, and his grandparents kept going on and on about how much he’d shot up. And all the while, the letters SWOTIE seemed to rattle around inside his head, like marbles in a tin.

  On the day before the opening he heard a familiar voice from the living room, and he hurried in to look at the TV.

  “And that’s all from Midlands Midday” announced Rowena Allsopp, smiling toothily. “Tomorrow I’m off to the museum in the historic town of Beeton to sign copies of my autobiography, Rowena’s Way, and also to open two brand-new exhibitions.“

  “And what are those exhibitions about, Rowena?” asked the man in the suit sitting next to her.

  “One of them is a fascinating display of the outfits I’ve worn over the years on this very program, and the other one’s about, er, history or something. So see you tomorrow!” She waved and then pretended to tidy up her papers.

  “Yup,” said Stuart to the television. “See you tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 40

  There was a surprisingly large crowd waiting outside the museum the next day, and quite a lot of dissatisfied muttering when Stuart and April and Stuart’s father went straight to the head of the line and were let in by the receptionist.

  “How come you’re getting in early?” asked one man, who was holding a black-and-gold autograph book and wearing a badge with a smiling picture of Rowena Allsopp on it.

  “I’m a reporter,” said April, holding up her notebook.

  “I’m a mini-curator,” said Stuart, pointing to his badge.

  “I’m merely the possessor of an ardent and enduring curiosity about the pre-Christian antecedents of contemporary Midland conurbations,” said Stuart’s father.

  “Oh,” said the Rowena fan. “Fair enough.”

  Rod Felton met them in the foyer. He was wearing a mustard-colored tweed suit and a tie covered in Roman numerals, and he was practically dancing with excitement. “Just wait till you see the centerpiece,” he said. “We have a full-sized ballista, and a replica apodyterium with adjoining balneae with niches for subligaculae!”

  “A replica what?” asked April, scribbling frantically.

  “And we have a gastraphetes!”

  “A gastraphetes?” gasped Stuart’s father, apparently awestruck.

  “A replica what?” repeated April patiently.

  “And an oxybeles!”

  “An oxybeles?”

  “Excuse me,” said Stuart. “Do you think I could possibly see where you’ve put my great-uncle’s tricks?”

  It took a moment or two for Rod Felton to re-focus his attention, and then he waved his arm vaguely toward a door labeled STAFF ONLY. “Down there,” he said. “They’ve only just arrived so I’ve not seen them yet.”

  “An oxybeles!” repeated Stuart’s father dreamily.

  “I’ll be with you in five minutes,” mouthed April. Stuart nodded and slipped through the door.

  A flight of concrete steps led down to a basement, lit by a skylight that ran the length of the room. At first glance it looked like an overcrowded junk shop. A large stuffed antelope stood at the bottom of the stairs next to a faded mummy case. There were suits of armor and leather buckets, gas masks, spinning wheels, a red motorcycle, and a black high-wheeled bicycle. There was even the giant fake cart horse that only a few weeks before had been accidentally knocked over and broken. By Stuart. Twice. And crammed into a far corner, right next to the freight elevator, were Great-Uncle Tony’s illusions.

  They were huddled together like nervous visitors, and Stuart approached them slowly and with growing dismay.

  Two trips in a van had chipped and dented them. Paint had flaked, wires were bent, metallic edges curled or blunted. The Pharaoh’s Pyramid had a broken door, the Book of Peril had no door at all, the swords in the Cabinet of Blood were twisted, the silver stems of the Reappearing Rose Bower looked wild and windblown, the Fan of Fantasticality drooped on one side, and the Arch of Mirrors was blotched with black patches where mirrors had dropped off or smashed. They sat dully in the bright morning light, like unloved tin toys.

  Stuart felt heavy with guilt; he had found the workshop and used up all the magic, but he had failed to look after its contents. They needed care and skill and love and knowledge and time.

  “Stuart!” It was April, calling over the banister. “The opening ceremony’s about to start. Have you found anything?”

  He shook his head and followed her up the stairs. “I don’t know where to begin,” he said as they hurried along the corridor.

  “We’re missing something obvious,” said April, frowning. “I just know we are.”

  They emerged into the large central room of the museum.

  One end was dominated by the Roman catapult (or ballista, as Rod Felton insisted on calling it). It looked a bit like a giant wooden seesaw with—instead of a seat—a saucer-shaped platform for loading boulders onto. The other end of the room had a mini–Roman bath, with a changing room hung with togas, and a round, high-sided pool filled with water. In between was a mosaic floor, and a table with a fake banquet, including piles of plastic grapes and a plateful of cardboard chickens.

  The crowd had been ushered in and was standing in a roped-off area to one side of the room. Behind the rows of autograph hunters, Stuart could see his father, and also a gray-haired man with a large black mustache: Maxwell Lacey, Miss Edie’s lawyer, who was looking directly at Stuart.

  “Welcome, everybody,” said Rod Felton, stepping onto a small stage at the catapult end of the room, and speaking (much too loudly) into a microphone. “Or should I say,” he added, with the expression of someone about to tell a joke, “Amici, Romani, Cives?”

  Stuart’s father (and only Stuart’s father) laughed heartily. Everyone turned to look at him.

  “As chief curator,” Rod continued, “I’d like to say a few words about all the incredibly hard work and intense research that has gone into mounting this marvelous exhibition, so before I introduce our special—”

  There was the clatter of heels as Rowena Allsopp suddenly appeared on the stage. She was wearing a bright orange-colored suit with metal buttons that gleamed like gold coins, and she was waving at the audience.

  “Oh,” said Rod, “I was just—”

  “Hello, Beeton!” called Rowena Allsopp, taking the microphone from him. A camera flashed, and Stuart saw that it belonged to May, who was crouching in front of the stage.

  “It’s so lovely to see so many of my wonderful fans here on this very, very special occasion—the unique chance to view some of my favorite outfits, which are on display in a room just down the corridor from this one, followed by an opportunity to purchase signed copies of my very own autobiography—and there’s an exciting discount if you buy more than three copies. I just can’t wait to meet you all!”

  She gave the microphone back to a stunned-looking Rod Felton. He cleared his throat and leaned across to her.

  “The Roman Beeton exhibition?” he whispered plaintively.

  “Oh yes.” Rowena grabbed the microphone back again. “I now declare this exhibition open,” she announced briskly and
unenthusiastically.

  May’s camera flashed several times in succession, and Rowena smiled and posed, blinking glassily in the brilliant light.

  “That’s enough,” Rowena ordered after a minute or so. “I can’t see a thing,” and she tottered off the stage toward the exit.

  “Mind the ballista!” called Rod.

  “The whatsit?” said Rowena, looking around irritably and walking straight past a sign that read: CAUTION—DO NOT WALK BEYOND THIS SIGN.

  “The ballista!” Rod repeated.

  “For heaven’s sake, why can’t you speak Eng—?”

  The photographs of what happened next ended up on the front page of every newspaper in the country. They resulted in record-breaking numbers of visitors to the Roman Beeton exhibition and eventually led to May getting a special junior prize in the European News Photo-Journalism Action Sequence of the Year awards. They were as follows:

  Photo 1: showed Rowena tripping over one of her heels.

  Photo 2: showed her sitting down heavily on a saucer-shaped wooden platform.

  Photo 3: showed her struggling to get up and grabbing at what looked like a convenient lever.

  Photo 4: showed her being catapulted through the air like a giant gold-and-orange firework.

  Photo 5: showed her landing, with a massive splash, in the circular Roman bath at the far end of the room.

  What the pictures didn’t convey was the disbelieving silence that blanketed the room as Rowena struggled to her feet in the waist-high water. For a moment she seemed too shocked to speak, and simply stood, mouth hanging open, hair like dank seaweed, jacket sodden, buttons half hanging off. And then the silence was broken by one of her golden buttons dropping into the pool with a teeny-tiny splish. Like a coin dropping into a fountain.

  “Make a wish,” said someone at the back of the crowd.

  There was a smothered giggle, and then Rod Felton rushed forward and everyone started talking and squawking and shrieking at once. Everyone except Stuart, who stood as if rooted; in his head, though, an idea was beginning to grow.

  “Throw in a coin and make a wish,” he muttered to himself. “Make a wish.” And then his eyes widened, and he turned and grabbed April’s shoulder and said, “I’ve got it.”