Kitty clapped her hands. “That’s one of my favorites! I haven’t heard it for decades. It was arranged by a friend of ours who used to play at St. Mark’s, you know. The rhythm’s a bit tricky, as I recall.”
Chloe nodded weakly. “Well,” she breathed, “here goes.”
The first notes sounded awkward to Chloe. Her arms felt like wood. “I’m sorry. I messed that up,” Chloe said as she came to an abrupt stop just seconds after she’d started.
“It was sounding good to me,” said Abigail.
Kitty waved her hand in the air. “Just start over, dear. We don’t mind.”
Chloe had to fight to catch her breath again. Her stomach was churning, but she ignored it and raised her hands to the keyboard. She started again, forcing her fingers to travel across the keys and her eyes to find the notes written on the pages in front of her. She was almost halfway through Petticoat Joe before the music began to feel natural. Gradually her body relaxed and she grew more confident. By the final page, Chloe’s fingers were flying.
When she finished, her small audience broke into applause immediately. “That was wonderful,” Kitty cried, her hands clasped in delight.
“Bravo!” said Abigail. Even Bess was nodding.
“You have to play at the festival,” said Nyssa. “That’s exactly what the judges are looking for.”
Chloe’s body was still tense, and her face was hot. “I’m not finished yet,” she said anxiously. “I still have two pieces to get through.”
Kitty raised her hands for silence. “All right. We’ll save our adulation for the end.”
With the first piece out of the way, the remaining pieces were a little less agonizing. Chloe continued her short program with a ragtime melody she’d modified called Sticks and Bones. She finished with her favorite piece, Chopin’s Nocturne in F-sharp Major.
“That was very impressive,” Bess said with a nod of her chin when the clapping had subsided.
Abigail’s eyes were wide behind her glasses. “Brilliant, just brilliant.”
“Thanks,” Chloe murmured, trembling and smiling at the same time.
“I did it—I survived!” Chloe said to Nyssa afterward, when the others were gone.
“You didn’t just survive, you were awesome!” said Nyssa. She held out a piece of paper. “There’s no way I’m letting you out of this room until you’ve filled out this entry form. You have to do the talent show.”
“Look at my hands,” said Chloe. “Look how much they’re shaking. And that’s just from playing in front of four people!”
“You can do it, you know you can.”
“But the show’s just a few days away now!”
“Exactly,” said Nyssa. “My dad’s sending the program to the printer tomorrow morning.” She waved the entry form in the air. “This is your last chance.”
Chloe shook her head vigorously. “I can’t. There’s no way I’d be ready.”
“C’mon, you’re ready now! Just fill it out, okay? You can always drop out later if you have to.”
“Has anyone ever told you how pushy you are?” Chloe asked as Nyssa held the paper directly in front of her face.
“Just take it.”
Chloe stared at her friend for a moment before grabbing the paper out of her hand. “All right. I’m taking it. But I’m not committing to anything. If I have to back out at the last minute, I will. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Nyssa.
Chapter Ten
I think I’ll do some more exploring upstairs this evening,” Chloe told her great-aunts after supper.
“Good idea,” said Kitty. “You could use a break from that piano. You’ve been practicing so much lately, you must have calluses on your fingers.”
Chloe made her way up to the third floor and let herself into what at one time must have been the master bedroom. It was a spacious room with large shuttered windows and high ceilings, dominated by a giant canopied bed.
Chloe examined every item in the room, removing drawers and checking for secret compartments in each piece of furniture. She’d just removed some quilts from a large wooden chest next to the bed when she discovered the chest had a false bottom. She pushed at the boards, and then she tried to pry up a loose board with her fingernails. When she couldn’t quite lift it, she reached for a silver letter opener on a nearby desk and inserted it into the crack. Carefully she pulled one end of the board up, holding it just high enough so that she could squeeze her free hand through the gap.
At first Chloe felt nothing, but as she moved her hand around the hidden space, her fingers made contact with the curled edges of a piece of paper. Chloe withdrew the document carefully. It was a letter from Magdala to Dante, dated February 13, 1918.
My Dear Dante,
I am not sure why I am writing to you, since I have nowhere to send a letter. Perhaps it is because the baby that I am carrying is almost due. I cannot speak with you, to remind you of our child, so instead I set my words down on this page.
You have been missing for two months now. Though the officers assigned to your case are sympathetic to our family’s plight, their official investigation has all but come to a close. I cannot fault them. They followed every lead, no matter how unlikely, but in the end they learned nothing new.
The police released your few things to me yesterday: the posters, the painting of the carnival and the rosewood box. I hung the painting on the first-floor landing, but I didn’t know what to do with Monsieur Lucien’s box. I was going to throw it in the fire, but when I took it in my hands I found that I could not destroy it. If the box is indeed linked with your disappearance, as I believe in my heart, then it remains my only connection to you, my only hope, dark as that hope might be. And so, instead of burning the box, I have hidden it away in the secret attic. Now I can only pray that its evil influence will remain contained, that its taint will not spread through this house.
Do you think of us wherever you are, Dante? Every day the girls ask where you are and when you will return. As they kneel beside their beds at night, I hear them praying, begging God to keep you safe, to bring you home. Though my own faith has almost disappeared, I can never resist making a silent appeal of my own.
Where did you go, Dante? Where did your terrible ambition take you?
Chloe’s heart was beating furiously as she let her great-grandmother’s letter fall to the floor. In the failing light, her hand found the tiny golden key that hung at her throat. The rosewood wishing box had not been destroyed. It was hidden in this very house. It was waiting for her; Chloe could feel it.
Chloe slept fitfully that night. She rose at dawn the next morning, grabbed a quick bowl of cereal before anyone else was up and rushed upstairs to begin hunting for the secret attic.
She started in the master bedroom. When she spied a trapdoor in the ceiling of an alcove off the main room, she was sure her search was over. But the enclosed space at the top of the turret was empty and led nowhere.
From the bedroom, Chloe moved down the hall to a storage room crammed with magic paraphernalia. She made a mental note to tell Nyssa about it. Chloe would have liked to spend some time examining her great-grandfather’s bits and pieces, but her eagerness to find the hidden attic kept her focused. She inspected every square inch of the floor, ceiling and walls, opening wardrobes and chests, tapping everywhere for false bottoms or panels.
When she was finished with the storage room, Chloe moved on to the small library next door. Leather-bound books in tall shelves covered all four walls of the room. A spiral staircase led to a book-filled loft. Chloe pushed and pulled a few sections of each bookcase experimentally. Then she began removing books systematically, shelf by shelf, as she’d done in the nursery downstairs. She’d explored most of one wall in this fashion before she was called down to lunch.
Chloe returned to the library in the afternoon, completing her circuit of the first level and starting up the spiral stairs to the loft. She had more luck on the second floor of the library. A revolvin
g door built into one of the bookcases led her to a tiny hidden alcove and out onto a narrow balcony. But like the space above the turret in the master bedroom, both the alcove and the balcony were empty.
“It’s so frustrating,” Chloe told Nyssa as the two girls sat together on the front steps after lunch the next day. “Dante’s box is in this house somewhere. I just can’t find it.”
“Tell me you aren’t taking the story of the wishing box seriously,” said Nyssa. “Remember, magicians exaggerate everything. It’s part of their mystique; they build up a larger-than-life history for themselves.”
“But I didn’t read about it in Dante’s memoir,” Chloe argued. “My aunts told me about the wishing box.”
“Don’t you think they might have embellished the facts a little to make the family history more interesting?”
“Kitty might embellish things, but Bess wouldn’t. Besides, you’ve read Magdala’s letter. She not only mentioned the box; she believed it had something to do with Dante’s disappearance.”
“Right,” said Nyssa. “I can only pray that its evil influence will remain contained, that its taint will not spread through this house.” She rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Chloe. It sounds like a line from a really sappy ghost story. People don’t talk like that in real life.”
“Whatever,” Chloe said stubbornly, folding her arms across her chest. “But I’m not going to stop looking for the secret attic or the rosewood box.”
“Don’t you have more important things to worry about right now, like getting ready for the show? It’s just a few days away.”
“I’m still practicing,” said Chloe. “I’m capable of doing both, you know. Preparing for the show and searching the house.”
“All right, all right,” said Nyssa. “So where have you looked so far?”
“Everywhere,” Chloe sighed. “I’ve searched every room in the house.”
“Have you looked for it outside the house?”
Chloe stared at her friend. A smile spread slowly across her face.
“What?” said Nyssa.
“That’s it! It’s that simple! Three generations of McBrides have already explored the house. If the secret attic could be reached from the inside, someone would have found it already. The entrance to Magdala’s attic must be on the outside!”
Nyssa raised her eyebrows. “So what are we waiting for?”
Exploring the outside of the old Victorian mansion was not a simple task. Nyssa and Chloe made a circuit of the building at ground level first, but it was clear they’d have to climb considerably higher if they wanted to find an exterior entrance to a hidden attic.
“Do your great-aunts have a ladder?” Nyssa asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen one anywhere,” said Chloe. “But there’s a perfectly good trellis on the other side of this lilac bush.”
Nyssa squeezed in after Chloe and gave the ivy-covered trellis an experimental tug. “You think it will hold us?”
“It’s mostly solid. We’ll go one at a time. I’ll go first,” said Chloe. She found a handhold and began pulling herself up.
“How is it?” Nyssa asked from below.
“Stable, so far. There’s a ledge here. If I can just get my leg over—”
“Hey, be careful. I’m the one who’s going to have to explain this to your aunts if you fall.”
“Don’t worry, I made it,” Chloe called back. “I’m on the first roof.”
“I’m right behind you.”
Climbing from the small first-floor overhang to the next level proved to be even more challenging. Chloe had to hang on to a series of window ledges and old pipes to get to the top of the second story. Nyssa followed a few moves behind. From the second story, the roofline became more complicated and therefore easier to climb.
“There’s quite a view from up here,” Nyssa said shakily as she swung her leg over the railing of a third-story balcony after Chloe.
“Look what I found!” said Chloe. “There’s a ladder on the wall just on the other side of this shutter. I never would have noticed it if we hadn’t climbed out here. This could be it, the entrance to Magdala’s secret attic!”
“Be careful,” Nyssa cautioned as Chloe reached across the shutter for the nearest ladder rung. With her right hand gripping the bottom of the ladder, Chloe climbed back up onto the ledge of the balcony. From there she was able to reach for the next rung with her left hand. She wedged her feet against the side of the shutters and began climbing.
“I’ve found something,” Chloe called down when she’d reached the fifth rung. “There’s a small window hidden under the roof overhang.”
“What do you see?”
“Not much,” Chloe said as she tried to peer in. “The glass is filthy. I’m going to try to open it.” She turned the window’s exterior latch and gently pulled the handle on the side of the frame. It refused to budge. She tightened the grip of her left hand on the ladder and pulled the handle harder with her right hand. After a few seconds of continuous tugging, the window frame gave a reluctant creak and slowly swung out. “I’ve got it open,” Chloe called down, her heart pounding. “I’m going in.”
The window opening was small, but Chloe was able to wriggle through without getting stuck. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, she saw that she was crouched in a tiny chamber. There was a dusty pile in the far corner of the dark space. “I’ve found something,” she called out the window, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.
“What?”
“Just a second. It’s hard to see in here.” Chloe knelt on the plank floor. “There’s a wooden box and some papers. Can you climb up partway so I can pass them out to you?”
Chloe had just made her way back down the ladder to the balcony when Abigail’s head appeared in a window one story below them, startling both girls.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” said the housekeeper. “I heard some thumping and banging as I was dusting in here. Weren’t you going to the beach this afternoon? Anyway, I’m glad I found you. If you call your mother right away, Nyssa, you’ll save her a trip down to the lake to search for you. Your grandparents have just arrived.”
“Great timing,” Nyssa muttered when Abigail had pulled her head back in. “Sorry—they weren’t supposed to be here until dinnertime.”
“You don’t have to go right away, do you?” Chloe asked. “This could be it—this could be Dante’s rosewood box!”
Nyssa nodded reluctantly. “I know, but I’d better go. My grandparents just flew back from a trek in New Zealand. They’re on their way home to Thunder Bay. Sorry. You’ll have to check it out without me.”
Chloe walked Nyssa downstairs and took the wooden box and the papers to the back garden. She set everything down on one of the stone benches in the clearing, sat down beside the pile and took a deep breath.
The stack of papers she’d rescued was a collection of letters from Dante to Magdala. Chloe riffled through them briefly before setting them aside. Her palms damp, she reached for the small, ornately carved, dark wooden box. She wiped the lid carefully with the hem of her T-shirt, admiring the intricate vines and exotic fruits that appeared from underneath layers of dust. She lifted the box to study it more closely and caught the faint but unmistakable scent of roses.
The box was locked. Somehow Chloe knew that her key would be a match even before she removed it from around her neck and tried it in the keyhole. The key turned without any trouble, and the latch was released. She paused to wipe her hands on her shorts, and then she slowly lifted the lid. The box was empty.
Chloe put the box down on the bench and considered her next move. What she wanted to do was write down a wish, place it in the box and see what happened. But if Magdala was right, the box was dangerous. Chloe removed the tiny key from the box and clutched it in her fist. A few minutes passed as she wrestled with her choices. I have to do it, she told herself silently. I have to see if it’s real.
She ran back to the house for some paper
and a pen. When she returned, she scribbled down the first wish that came into her head, pushed the folded paper inside the box, closed the lid and quickly inserted the key. “There,” she said aloud to break the silence that hung heavily over the clearing. “It’s done.”
Five minutes passed and nothing happened. “This is ridiculous,” Chloe told herself at last. She gathered together the box and Dante’s letters and got up.
“Chloe!” Abigail called out as the girl came through the back door. “I was just about to go looking for you.”
Chloe clutched the bundle in her arms self-consciously. “What is it?”
The housekeeper gave a short laugh and nodded toward the kitchen. “Come see.”
As Chloe entered the kitchen behind Abigail, a man was just hanging up the phone that hung by the refrigerator. “Like I was saying,” the man said to the housekeeper, “you might as well fill up your freezer. The tow truck won’t be here for at least another forty-five minutes, according to the dispatcher. On a hot day like this, it’s all going to melt if it stays where it is.”
“Mr. Shambhu’s ice-cream truck just broke down on the road right in front of the house,” Abigail explained to Chloe.
“Strangest thing,” the man said, scratching the back of his head. “The truck engine, the generator for my freezers, and my cell phone all went dead at the same time. I guess my bad luck is your good luck.”
“Are you sure about this?” said Abigail. “We could return everything to your truck after it’s been repaired.”
Mr. Shambhu waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. My truck could be in the shop for a while.”
“Well, thank you. It’s very generous of you.” Abigail turned back to Chloe. “There you go. Give Mr. Shambhu a hand, and you and Nyssa will have all the ice-cream bars and Popsicles you can eat for the rest of your visit.”
When the Curtain Rises Page 7