Franklin's Emporium: The Pet Shop Mystery

by Gill Vickery

‘Nooo!’ I drummed the side of the bath with my heels in frustration.

  Magic was a dangerous business – it could go wrong and if it did, I just knew I’d end up in a worse state than I already was. I’d have to be very, very careful.

  *

  I covered myself up as much as I could. I pulled on a hoodie and rolled my sleeves down, crept out of my room and sneaked quietly through the front door. Once I was outside I tucked my hands into my armpits and hurried through the back streets to the Emporium.

  Franklin’s was busy and it was easy to slip through the lobby without attracting attention. I waited in a corner by the lift and watched it go up and down, letting people out and taking them in. At last a man got out and no one got in. I rushed inside.

  ‘Close the doors!’

  The liftman pulled the iron grid across the door and pressed the ‘close’ button. The doors slid shut.

  I pulled my hoodie back and held out my transparent hands.

  ‘I need your help,’ I told the liftman.

  ‘I thought you might,’ he said.

  Chapter Six

  THE POLTERGEIST

  While I’d been waiting I’d had plenty of time to plan what I was going to say to the liftman. The rules of his magic were very simple, even if they did have a habit of going wrong. I had to ask for something and make a wish – and the wish had to be in rhyme.

  I was feeling embarrassed. The liftman must’ve known I’d spent weeks trying to avoid him yet now I was going to ask him a big favour. I realised I was staring at his shoes again. I flipped my hood back and made myself make eye contact. It was only polite.

  ‘I want you to work some magic for me.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Bartholomew Magus cast a spell to make me invisible. He was interrupted and it’s only half-worked.’

  I lifted a hand again. In the light of the lift lamps it looked like a cloudy, full-colour x-ray.

  ‘Can you reverse the spell that did this?’

  The liftman was silent, patient as an ancient rock on the beach. He nodded.

  All right, I thought, here we go. I crossed my fingers behind my back and hoped I’d got everything covered.

  ‘I wish to be just like before

  So free me from this evil curse.

  Make me visible once more

  And please, this wicked spell reverse.’

  The lift abruptly shot up a floor and stopped. Even though I knew the new spell wasn’t going to work immediately, I couldn’t help wondering how long it would take for me to get back to normal. When I had needed a spell undone last summer, it had taken the time it took to walk down the stairs to the ground floor to take effect.

  I pulled my hood up. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  The old man’s sharp eyes peered from under his beetling white eyebrows. ‘Are you sure there is nothing else you wish to ask for?’

  I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Yes, I’m positive,’ I said.

  ‘Then perhaps one day I may ask a favour of you.’

  I didn’t like the sound of that either. From what I’d read, magicians had a habit of asking really difficult favours that got you into lots of trouble. You should never be beholden to a wizard.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said cautiously.

  The liftman opened the grille and the doors. I kept my head down and wove my way through the shoppers to the stairs. I walked down them slowly to give the magic plenty of time to work. Sure enough, when I went back into the foyer and held out my hands they were solid again.

  I practically skipped across the lobby, glad to be back to normal. ‘’Scuse me,’ I said to a man standing in the doorway.

  He didn’t move. I stepped to one side and he glided in front of me. It was Bartholomew Magus and he was scowling.

  Although I knew he wouldn’t risk performing magic in public I wasn’t going to hang around, just in case. I saw a gap in the steady trickle of customers leaving and dashed into it. In moments I was outside, skimming down the marble steps and onto the promenade.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Magus standing on the steps, watching me. I ran faster than ever, making sure I went home by the network of twisting, back streets. Magus didn’t follow me, which was a relief.

  I went through the door in the wall round our garden, closed it and leaned back. I basked in the sun and got my breath back. A blackbird perched on top of Dad’s workshop and sang. It was peaceful and serene.

  Crash!

  A huge smashing noise came from Dad’s workshop. I dashed inside and found him standing bemused, a pile of plates and goblets on the floor underneath a shelf. Good job they were made of wood and not china.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Dad said. ‘I think we’ve got a poltergeist.’

  ‘A poltergeist!’

  ‘A ghost that throws things.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad. I’ve read enough ghost stories to know what a poltergeist is. They’re not real.’

  I started picking up the things on the floor.‘What really happened?’

  Dad joined me. We put the plates and goblets on a bench near his lathe. ‘I was carrying some stuff to the shelf when I heard Cesare mewing. I didn’t want him doing any damage and I made shooing noises. Then. . .’

  Dad paused as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen. He scratched his head.

  ‘One by one, all the things on the shelf fell off. It was exactly like they were being pushed off, except there wasn’t anything there to push them. It must’ve been a poltergeist. My workshop is haunted!’

  Dad was only half-joking. He didn’t believe in ghosts any more than I did but he had no idea what else it could’ve been.

  I knew. It was the invisicat. It must have wandered out of the house and down the garden into Dad’s workshop, jumped on the shelf, mewed and been frightened when Dad made shooing noises. It had panicked and run along the shelf, knocking all Dad’s precious work onto the floor.

  ‘I bet it was Cesare,’ I said heartily. ‘He moves like greased lightning. You didn’t see him, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re humouring me,’ Dad said. ‘I know what I saw – or didn’t see.’

  At that moment Cesare sauntered in and leapt lithely onto the bench. He regarded Dad insolently.

  ‘You’re asking for trouble,’ Dad said, glaring at the cat.

  Appearing tentatively round the door came two floaty yellow eyes.

  I wasn’t going to let the invisicat make more mischief. It was going back to my room.

  I scooped Cesare up. ‘I’ll take him to the house before he causes any more damage.’

  ‘It wasn’t Cesare,’ Dad insisted.

  I stroked the cat’s head. ‘Come on kitty,’ I cooed, trying to imitate Mum’s soppy cat voice. ‘Let’s go and find your treats.’

  I left as quickly as possible hoping that the eyes would follow Cesare and me. They did.

  Mum was still in her kitchen and I had no bother getting upstairs without being seen.

  Cesare writhed and tried to escape. I got scratched – a lot – but I held onto him until we were safely in my room. I washed my scratches and then gave the cats yet more snacks.

  While they were occupied I settled back on my bed with my book. I got so absorbed I hardly noticed the cats glide on to the bed and cuddle up next to me. I did notice when Cesare started scratching himself vigorously and, from the way the bed was vibrating, so did the invisicat. I hoped it didn’t have fleas. I wondered if fleas would be visible if they jumped off the invisicat. And disappear again when they burrowed into its fur.

  Another thought trampled over the others: I should’ve asked the liftman to make the invisicat visible as well as me.

  Maybe that’s what he meant when he asked if I wanted to make another wish. But how could he know about the invisicat? I was certain I hadn’t told him.

  It was no good going back to Franklin’s on my own now that Bartholomew Magus was watching for me, so I couldn’t take the invisicat to the liftm
an.

  There was no point in worrying. I couldn’t do anything. I paid attention to my book instead and the cats stopped scratching and purred themselves to sleep.

  I finished my book at the same moment my stomach started to tell me it was empty and Dad banged on the door.

  ‘Mum says dinner’s ready!’ he boomed and his footsteps plonked off down the landing.

  The cats woke with a start and went berserk. They ran round the bedroom, up the curtains, into the bathroom.

  Smash! Smash!

  Soap and tooth mugs went flying, bathmats went skidding over the floor, talc got knocked over and fell in a cloud over the invisicat. It instantly became visible, in a spectral sort of way: ghostly white with a pair of startled, glowing yellow eyes.

  The two animals stopped dead in surprise. Cesare tentatively offered his nose and the cats sniffed each other. The talc went up their noses and they sneezed.

  Panic set in again. The cats screeched, shot into the air and launched themselves like small furry battering rams at the door. It flew open. The cats hurtled onto the landing and torpedoed towards the stairs. From halfway down I heard Dad bellow something really rude.

  Poor Dad. I knew he was going to have a hard time trying to convince everyone that he’d seen a poltergeist and a ghost cat. I was right.

  Chapter Seven

  THE SEVEN MYSTERIES OF GOLDEN BAY

  ‘Really, Peter,’ Mum said, helping herself to a heap of salad, ‘first you see a poltergeist and now you see a ghost cat. Are you sure it wasn’t Cesare?’

  Dad gloomily ladled a second helping of risotto onto his plate.

  ‘I didn’t see the poltergeist – they’re invisible by nature. This ghost cat was just that – a cat that’s a ghost. It was a transparent white with giant yellow eyes. And it wasn’t Cesare because he was chasing it.’

  Ben and Sam were too busy eating to make fun of Dad. They just smirked at each other and raised their eyebrows.

  I kept my head down and ate. I was worried. If the invisicat was anything like Cesare it was going to be attracted by the smell of food. Food was a cat magnet. I surreptitiously glanced round the kitchen. To my horror Cesare was entering the room closely followed by the familiar floaty eyes. The thin film of talc had gone. Cesare and the invisicat must’ve groomed it away.

  The eyes assessed the height of a big old kitchen dresser where Mum had laid pudding out. There was lots of cream.

  The invisicat sprang. It couldn’t get a grip on the polished surface, skidded right across the top and flew off the other end. On the way it knocked off the pudding, the dishes and the spoons. Everyone span round and stared as, one by one, things cascaded to the floor.

  The invisicat yowled, ran for the cat flap and burst through with Cesare close behind.

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘I told you there was a poltergeist,’ Dad said smugly.

  *

  We were all unusually quiet that night. The boys went up to their studio and Mum put the finishing touches to the food for the grand preview. I was roped in to help her and so was Dad. He was the only cheerful one. He was happy to be vindicated over the poltergeist and whistled as he helped Mum.

  Afterwards I tried to find the cats. There were in hiding and I gave up. At least, I thought, if they do anything awful now it won’t come back on me.

  I left the cat flap unlocked and went up to bed. Before I started reading, I made up a rhyme to chant to the liftman next day. I was going to talk to him while my family was in Franklin’s. I wanted to ask him to make the invisicat, and the other pets in Paws 4 Thought, return to normal. The rhyme had been harder to make up than usual and had Latin in it. I felt pleased with myself after I double-checked the spelling and the meaning. It was perfect.

  I settled cosily in bed, finished my book and started on the next one in the series. I read about halfway, to where the mechanisms for keeping airships aloft broke down and they all sank, quicker and quicker, through the clouds.

  It seemed a good place to stop and I went to sleep dreaming of airships manned by invisible cats with ginormous yellow eyes.

  *

  The next morning Mum and Dad had everything ready for the preview but since it wasn’t due to open until four in the afternoon they weren’t going to set up the catering things until one. I wanted to check on the pet shop animals but I still felt uneasy about Magus – he was definitely after me. I decided to wait until the afternoon, so that I could go to Franklin’s with my parents, and spend the morning doing more research at the library. If the Emporium had a history of magic, I might learn something to help me avoid making mistakes when I spoke to the liftman again.

  I did look for the cats first but there was still no sign of them. I was at the library when it opened at ten. I was first in.

  ‘You’re keen,’ the librarian said.

  ‘I want to find out about the history of Franklin’s Emporium,’ I told him. ‘Right from the beginning.’

  ‘Ok.’ He led me to a section labelled ‘Local History’. A marble bust with ‘HERODOTUS’ chiselled round the plinth stared down sternly from blank white eyes.

  The librarian piled huge leather books on the table and put two pamphlets next to them. One was old and speckly. The other looked newer, though not that new, and had an unusual cover.

  ‘These leaflets are the only documentation we’ve got. They’re quite basic,’ he said and grinned. ‘They were a secretive lot, the Franklins, even when the Emporium was at its most famous. You’ll probably get more information from these.’

  He nodded toward the massive leather books. They were bound copies of the local newspaper, The Golden Bay Bugle.

  ‘If you read this,’ he tapped the newer pamphlet, ‘and find any interesting events, you can check them against the newspapers to see if there’s more information there. Anything else you want to know, come and ask me.’

  I said thanks and picked up the old, blotchy pamphlet.

  It showed the grand opening of Franklin’s and had a picture of the founder, Eli Franklin. I thought he might look like the liftman, and scrutinised his face carefully. I couldn’t see a resemblance.

  Inside there were more pictures: the mayor in his robes; the right honourable someone or other cutting a ribbon stretched across the front entrance and old adverts for all sorts of things to buy in Franklin’s. They sounded very expensive. There were descriptions like: ‘sewn from the finest silk’ and ‘diamonds by Tiffany’s’.

  I looked at the second booklet. It was fatter than the first one and classy. The white cover had a blue border like the one running round the entrance to the store. Across the front it said:

  FRANKLIN’S EMPORIUM

  1925 – 1956

  I opened it.

  It said the building went up in 1925 in the latest art deco style. It belonged to old Mr Eli Franklin. There was the same picture of him as the one in the other pamphlet. The Emporium was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales. There was a picture of him too.

  After the opening, other royal people, and even film stars of the time, stayed in Golden Bay and shopped at Franklin’s. There were lots of pictures of them.

  I skipped through most of the rest until I got to the end.

  The last thing the pamphlet said was that there’d been a dispute between the two sons who had inherited the store when old Eli died in 1932. The elder son, Arthur, didn’t want to sell the Emporium but the younger son, Walter did. Walter won and the store was eventually sold. It went out of fashion, fell into disrepair and closed down. There were no pictures of Arthur or Walter.

  It was interesting there was no mention of magic.

  I picked up one of the massive books, The Golden Bay Bugle – 1932. It was like lifting a paving slab. The newspapers were yellowed and crinkly. The pages smelled musty and rustled loudly when I turned them.

  The report on Arthur and Walter’s fight was front-page news.

  ‘FRANKLIN BROS COME TO BLOWS DURING BOARD MEETING!’ the headline
yelled above a photograph of the Emporium.

  ‘Police were called to Franklin’s Emporium yesterday after a board meeting descended into a tempestuous bout of fisticuffs between the two senior partners, Mr Arthur Franklin and Mr Walter Franklin.

  Mr Walter Franklin had eloquently persuaded the other board members to vote in accordance with his wish to sell the Emporium. Mr Arthur Franklin took such violent exception to this decision that he flung himself upon his defenceless brother, eventually pinioning him to the boardroom table.

  So fierce had the pugilism become that another board member summoned the police whilst several others were obliged to wrest Mr Arthur Franklin from the hapless form of his brother.

  Once Mr Walter Franklin had regained his breath and composure, he ordered his brother to leave the premises before the arrival of the constabulary. Nothing has been seen of him since.’

  There was still nothing about magic. I read a bit further on and found out that Walter soon disappeared with his share of the money from the sale of Franklin’s. Neither brother was ever seen again.

  I closed the book with a thud that made the table shake and slumped forward, my head on the leather cover.

  ‘Have you gone to sleep or are you in despair?’ It was the librarian.

  ‘In despair. I didn’t find what I was looking for.’

  ‘Which was?’

  I hesitated. Even though librarians were great and always found you what you wanted, I wasn’t sure about mentioning magic. I decided to go for it.

  ‘I heard that Franklin’s Emporium might be a magic sort of place but these,’ I nodded at the pamphlets and newspapers, ‘don’t mention magical things. I guess I was wrong.’

  ‘Ah ha! Don’t give up so easily.’ The librarian plucked a book off the shelf behind me. ‘This is called ‘The Seven Mysteries of Golden Bay.’

  He flicked through the pages. ‘Now where is it? Yep, here we go: Chapter Two – The Strange Disappearance of Arthur Franklin.’

  ‘Have a go at that.’ He gave me the book and went off with that smile of satisfaction librarians have when they find you what you want.