by Lissa Evans
He eventually squeezed into a narrow space between a large trunk, a doll’s house and a stack of hat-boxes, and began to edge around, coughing slightly at the dust he’d raised.
‘I can’t see a thing,’ he shouted. ‘There’s too much junk in here. Where’s the next door?’
‘To your right,’ called his father. ‘To the back of the rolled-up red rug. Half way up the wall.’
When Stuart eventually spotted it, he saw that it was more of a hatch than a door – the sort of hatch that in a house would lead to a water tank – but it looked easily wide enough for him to get into. He pulled at the handle.
‘It’s locked!’ he shouted up at his father.
‘Oh.’
‘There’s writing on it,’ called Stuart, pushing aside a cobweb obscuring the top of the door, and then groaning. ‘It says, The key is hidden in this room.’ He looked around despairingly.
There was a cardboard box right next to him, and he lifted the flaps at the top and glanced at the jumbled contents – some old light bulbs, odd tools, nails, tangled string, a loose pack of cards, a clock, a bag of curtain fittings: it would take him twenty minutes to go through this alone, and the room had forty or fifty other boxes, suitcases, bin-bags and bits of furniture. There were a million places to hide a key.
He turned back to pull at the door again, just in case he could wrench it open by force, and as he grabbed the handle, the rest of the cobweb fell down.
‘There’s more writing,’ shouted Stuart, frowning at the peculiar collection of words in front of him, ‘but I don’t know what it means. And you can’t say anything longer than a syllable so you won’t be able to explain it to me.’
‘I can try,’ replied his father. ‘Read it out.’
‘OK. It says: Cipher in mazarine coffret nigh pigmean demesne. I wonder if it’s a code?’
His father laughed.
‘What?’ asked Stuart.
‘It’s not a code. The words are rare and old, just the sort I like best. They mean: The key is in a small blue box near the doll’s house.’
‘Really?’ Stuart scrambled to get it. The blue box rattled as soon as he picked it up, and he took out the key.
‘And the next room is the last,’ shouted his father triumphantly.
Stuart turned the key, opened the hatch and looked through. Everything was grey: a long, very narrow room, like a corridor, with grey walls, a smooth grey floor … and a grey ceiling made of a billowing fabric that bunched and shuddered in the breeze.
‘A strange thing,’ called his father; his voice was muffled by the cloth.
‘I know,’ said Stuart. ‘It’s got a ceiling.’ At the very far end of the room was another door, and he could see a heavy bolt near the top of it. He wondered instantly if he’d actually be able to reach the bolt – though he could always come back to the attic room and fetch a box to stand on.
He wriggled through the hatch and dropped to the floor. It felt rubbery and slightly springy. He started to walk towards the far door, and he’d only gone a few steps when the whole floor began to move backwards – smoothly, like a conveyor belt. Stuart quickened his pace, but the floor speeded up as well. He broke into a run, and the floor whizzed along too, keeping him in exactly the same place, as if he were on a giant treadmill. Frustrated, he slowed to a halt again, and the floor stopped moving too. He was no nearer the far door than when he’d started.
‘I can’t get there!’ he shouted. ‘The floor won’t let me.’
His dad said something in reply, but it was difficult to hear through the cloth ceiling.
‘What?’ called Stuart.
‘Ape bars.’
‘What?’
‘Bars for apes. On top of the cloth.’
‘I don’t get what you mean. Shout louder.’
‘PULL THE CLOTH DOWN.’
Stuart walked back, hoisted himself up into the hatch again, and reached upwards. He could just snag the cloth with his fingers.
‘PULL IT DOWN?’ he asked.
‘YES!’
Stuart gave it a yank. The whole ceiling ripped softly away and fell in gentle folds onto the floor. And above it was a set of monkey bars, bridging the room from one end to the other. Stuart shouted in surprise, and then looked up at where his father stood, practically directly above him now.
‘Did you say there are steps down the inside of the tower?’ he called out.
‘Yes.’
‘See you at the bottom then, Dad.’ Gripping the first rung, Stuart began to swing himself along – being good at the monkey bars was one of the few advantages of being small and light. It only took him half a minute to get to the door at the far end, and now he could see why the bolt was so high up – he could reach it from above, with one hand. He slid it loose, and at the centre of the grey door, a purple O suddenly appeared.
Stuart gave the door a kick. It opened inwards, but only a couple of centimetres. He gave it a second, much harder kick; it shot open, and hit something that sounded horribly like someone’s head.
There was a groan and a nasty thud.
‘Dad?’ called Stuart, horrified. ‘Are you all right?’
‘MR HORTEN?’ SAID another voice. ‘Are you all right?’
Stuart looked round, and realized that in that fraction of a second he’d come back to the museum again, and April was peering concernedly over his shoulder.
He looked back and saw his father lying on the floor beside the Fan of Fantasticness, his eyes open and a red mark on his forehead.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Stuart, bobbing down beside him.
‘That was so odd,’ said his father. ‘So odd …’
A cold hand seemed to grip Stuart’s heart. Had his father’s speech changed for ever? ‘What was odd, Dad?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘I hallucinated that I was solely able to communicate in monosyllables, which led to considerable bafflement in my attempts to disseminate information to you. However, as I appear to have sustained a frontal cranial contusion, I was presumably experiencing a series of hypnagogic images which have now effectively dissipated.’
The cold hand let go of Stuart’s heart again; his father was obviously going to be absolutely fine.
‘You’re right,’ said Stuart. ‘You got a bit of a knock when the fan folded up.’
‘The Fan of Fantasticness?’ asked his father, getting slowly to his feet.
‘You told me that fantasticness isn’t a real word. We should call it the Fan of Fantasticality.’
‘But I thought you wished me to favour a more curtailed approach to vocabulary?’
‘Shorter words, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘No,’ said Stuart firmly. ‘Definitely not. I want you to stick to the usual mad long stuff that I can’t understand any of.’
April had been watching the conversation, her expression puzzled. ‘What’s been going on?’ she asked.
Stuart grabbed the Magic Star from its socket and beckoned her over to a corner.
‘Dad used the star,’ he whispered, holding it up so she could see that there were only three spokes left.
‘What?’
‘Accidentally. And I caught hold of him and managed to go along too. Sorry, it was an accident – it happened when we were trying to fold the fan. And you were right about how it’s done.’
He could see her struggling with disappointment. ‘So what was the adventure like?’ she asked, a bit glumly.
He thought for a moment; it was hard to describe it in the kind of words that he normally used. ‘Peculiar, unpredictable, frustrating, extraordinary,’ he said.
‘You’re sounding like your dad,’ remarked April, managing a small smile.
The door opened with a bang, and Rod Felton strode in.
‘Splendid news,’ he said in his usual enthusiastic bellow. ‘TV are interested. Midlands at Midday want to do a live feature on our special magical exhibition and they’re sending a camera crew round in the morning. Can you be here at nine
sharp?’ he asked, glancing from Stuart to April.
They nodded, and then looked at each other. ‘We’re going to be famous!’ whispered April, grinning with excitement. ‘I must tell May and June,’ she added. ‘They can come along and report on it for the Beech Road Guardian.’
‘And could you be here too?’ the curator asked Stuart’s father. ‘Only I’ve had a rather brilliant idea about how to drum up advance interest in the Roman Beeton exhibition as well, and I need someone who can tell a strigil from a hypocaust.’ He laughed as if he’d just told a joke, and Stuart’s father laughed as if he’d just heard one.
‘I should be honoured to assume such a role,’ said Stuart’s father, and Rod Felton bounced happily out of the room again.
‘Actually,’ said April, ‘I’ve got another invitation. My mum says do you two want to come over for a barbecue this evening? Dad’s cooking steaks.’
While April’s dad filled the back garden with smoke, and May and June chopped up vegetables for coleslaw, April dragged Stuart into a corner by the shed and made him tell her every detail of the Amazing Maze.
‘So the letters so far are S, W and O,’ she said, and chewed her lip for a moment or two. ‘And what about the mysterious phone call? You haven’t told me about that yet, either.’
‘Oh, right …’ Stuart hesitated. The thought of that strange and tempting conversation made him feel uncomfortable. ‘It was from a very old Canadian lady called Miss Edie who wants to buy all Great-Uncle Tony’s tricks.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, that’s the odd thing. She said she’d promised her grandmother, and that her grandmother had told her that Great-Uncle Tony hid a will in one of the tricks, leaving everything to the person who finds it, and—’
‘Hang on,’ interrupted April, flapping her hands. ‘You said that this Miss Edie was really old.’
‘Yes.’
‘So when did her grandmother die?’
‘Eighty-five years ago.’
‘So before Great-Uncle Tony was even born?’
‘Yes.’
There was a long pause.
‘Did she seem a bit mad?’ asked April tentatively.
‘Not specially,’ said Stuart.
‘OK, well, let’s ignore the grandma thing for the time being, it’s just too strange. This hidden will, though – presumably it’s the thing that all the letter clues are taking us towards. It said: Lead you to my w— didn’t it, in the note? And I bet Miss Edie wants you to find it because then you’d be able to prove the tricks are yours, and you’d be free to sell them to her. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?’
‘Wouldn’t do what?’ asked Stuart, still flabbergasted (as ever) by how quick and clever April was.
She spoke again, her voice confident. ‘You wouldn’t sell your great-uncle’s fantastic legacy – which you had to work so incredibly hard to find – to some woman you’d never met just because she offered you a bit of money?’
Stuart didn’t answer. In his head he could still hear Miss Edie’s crackly, insistent voice: Being rich means you can get anything you want. What do you want, Stuart?
Over by the barbecue, Mr Kingley was forking the steaks onto plates, and Stuart’s father was setting up a table and chairs. May (or June) lugged a bowl of salad from the house, and June (or May) started pouring out drinks.
‘Grub’s up,’ shouted Mr Kingley.
Stuart got to his feet, his stomach rumbling.
‘I’ve just thought of something quite funny,’ said April, following him up the garden. ‘What if I found the will? Then the tricks would belong to me!’
Grinning, she went to sit down, but Stuart remained standing, and he wasn’t grinning at all. Though part of him knew that April was only joking, another part was seething with panic and jealousy.
They’re mine, he thought, not April’s. They’re mine to keep. And mine to sell.
WHEN ROD FELTON had said that a camera crew from Midlands at Midday would be turning up at the museum, Stuart had expected:
a) a cameraman;
and, possibly,
b) a soundman.
What he hadn’t expected was:
c) an assistant to the cameraman;
d) an assistant to the soundman;
e) a man with a bag of tools and three hundred metres of cable;
f) an assistant to the man with the bag of tools and three hundred metres of cable;
g) an assistant to the assistant to the man with the bag of tools and three hundred metres of cable;
h) a woman with a clipboard and a stopwatch;
i) a man with headphones and a beard;
j) another man who introduced himself as the producer and then stood around doing nothing;
k) a teenage boy who got everybody a coffee and then stood around doing nothing;
l) a woman who introduced herself as the director and then wandered around anxiously doing nothing, but saying things like, ‘I don’t like the light in here,’ and, ‘How am I supposed to get my angles?’ in a voice that sounded as if some terrible tragedy had just taken place;
and finally,
m) a small dog.
For an hour Stuart and April stood in a corner and watched the producer and the director walk randomly around the room, pointing at things. They saw the assistant to the cameraman move a large lamp six times, before replacing it with a small lamp. They saw the dog investigate every single item in the room before lying down in a patch of sunlight and going to sleep.
‘What’s wrong with these people?’ muttered April. ‘They’re so slow. Why can’t they make any decisions?’
‘Hi there,’ said the producer, at last ambling over to see them. ‘We’re just waiting for our presenter to arrive. When she comes, we’ll stick her in front of one of these trick thingies for the interview. Maybe she can sit on the big throne with all the flowers.’
‘It’s actually called the Reappearing Rose Bower,’ said April.
‘Is it?’ he asked, not sounding terribly interested. ‘Or we might go for that Wishing Well thingy. She could throw a coin in. Or maybe the red cupboard thingy with the swords.’
‘You mean the Cabinet of Blood,’ said April. ‘They’ve all got names, you know. And seeing as you haven’t decided yet, can I suggest you use the Fan of Fantasticality as a background? It’s really beautiful when it’s open, and we’ve worked out how to shut it as well. Do you want us to show you?’
‘No, that’s OK,’ said the producer.
‘It’s no trouble. And it would definitely look really good. And the mirror arch is really impressive as well – maybe you could start with a shot of that, and then one of us could actually hide inside the Pharaoh’s Pyramid and—’
The producer was beginning to look a bit irritated by April’s stream of suggestions, and Stuart was just about to give her a nudge to shut her up when the door opened and yet another person came in.
This time it was a tall and glamorous-looking woman with glossy hair the colour of conkers, a cream suit, and shoes with heels so high that she was practically walking on tiptoe.
‘What a drive I’ve had!’ she exclaimed. ‘I barely knew that this town existed. Miles and miles and miles from anywhere!’
The producer hurried over to her, and so did the boy who got coffees, and there was some gesturing towards Stuart and April, and a fair amount of whispering. Then the woman came over to them, her heels clacking on the wooden floor.
‘Hi!’ she said, looking down at Stuart. ‘I’m Rowena Allsopp.’
It was obvious from the way she said it that Stuart was supposed to know who she was. He glanced at April.
‘Famous Midlands TV presenter,’ muttered April out of the side of her mouth.
‘Hello,’ said Stuart. ‘You’re a famous Midlands TV presenter, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right, and you’re the one who found Tiddly Tom’s magic tricks, are you?’
‘We both did,’ corrected April quickly. ‘And he wasn’t called Ti
ddly Tom, he was called Teeny-tiny Tony Horten.’
‘And how old are you?’ asked Rowena, not even glancing at April. ‘Eight?’
‘Ten.’
‘Oh.’ Rowena sounded a bit disappointed.
‘I’m ten too,’ said April.
‘OK.’ Rowena nodded, totally ignoring her. ‘Let me go and have a word with my producer.’ She click-clacked off again, and odd bits of the conversation floated back: ‘… see what you mean about the girl … more impact if the story’s just about the small fellow – we needn’t mention his age …’ and then, rather faintly, ‘I can’t bear bossy kids …’
Stuart didn’t dare look at April, but out of the corner of his eye he could see her turning pink. ‘I was just trying to help,’ she said, a bit huffily. ‘I thought they should get their facts straight.’
Around them, things suddenly started getting busy. Rod Felton appeared, beaming at everyone. May and June Kingley sneaked in, May with her camera, June with a notebook. Plugs were plugged in, lights went on, the microphone was waved around, the dog was ushered away from the Fan of Fantasticality, where it had been sniffing interestedly, the producer shouted, ‘Going live in three minutes,’ and Stuart found himself shoved in front of the Well of Wishes, with Rowena beside him. Feeling half proud and half embarrassed, he grinned nervously at April, who was watching from the corner. She gave him a rather miserable thumbs-up in return.
‘Counting down,’ said the man with the beard. A red light blinked on the side of the camera. ‘Going live in ten seconds. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four …’ He held up three fingers, then two, then one, then pointed dramatically at Rowena.
‘Incredible as it may seem,’ she said, gazing into the lens, ‘the little town of Beeton, not previously known for anything of interest, has turned out to be the hiding place for a fantastic magician’s workshop. The magician was called Teeny-tiddly Tommy Norten, and it was his very own grandson who made the dramatic discovery while watching a talent contest in Beeton Park. Here to tell us his incredible story is little Stuart Norten, who has gone from being a museum-hating vandal to being the curator of this exhibition.’