Walls within Walls

by Maureen Sherry

  “So you think the treasure is in the walls?” Brid asked. Then, changing the subject, she said, “I wonder what Eloise and Julian were like when they were our ages. And I wonder what happened to them.”

  “I wonder why they never returned that book.”

  “We don’t always do what we’re asked. I get that,” Brid replied.

  “I wonder what this key is for,” CJ muttered. “You know who we need to ask, right?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Brid said.

  “We’ve got to get to them before they go back to boarding school,” said CJ.

  CHAPTER 6

  When they returned home, Ray, the afternoon elevator man, was on duty. His thick eyebrows grew straight across his face and touched in the middle, as if someone had drawn a hairy gray line above his eyes. Brid and CJ quickly returned to the apartment and collected Patrick, who was playing with his Legos, looking bored. Then they summoned the elevator again.

  “Take us to the Williamsons, please,” said Brid when Ray appeared.

  “They expecting you?” is what Ray asked, but because his words all ran together, it sounded like, “Theyespecktinyou?”

  The kids had started to call Ray’s talk the “uniword,” a sentence all pushed into one long word. So when CJ answered, “Not sure,” he said, “Nahsure.”

  Apparently that was good enough for Ray. He rotated the round brass throttle to the right to engage the elevator gears, and they lifted off.

  On the south side of the building—the fourteenth floor—Ray rotated the wheel left, pushed the sliding brass door right, and leaned on the lever to finally pull back the wooden door to reveal the Williamsons’ apartment.

  “Haveaniceday,” came the uniword, and in an instant Ray was gone.

  The Williamsons’ apartment, like many others, used the space right up to the elevator door as part of their entrance. So when the elevator door opened, the Smithforks found themselves immediately in someone else’s home—someone who wasn’t expecting them.

  This apartment was much grander than theirs. The walls were paneled in wood that smelled like oil. There were statues that seemed to belong in a museum. This was not a home where footballs were tossed around. Pat’s eyes grew wide and frightened, and he motioned back toward the elevator, pointing his finger to indicate he thought they should leave before they were found out.

  “Hello?” Brid called softly. She wished Ray hadn’t left them, and that she could go back home and call the Williamsons properly, but it was too late for that. A small white dog came running at them with the ferocious bravery of a rottweiler. It stood about ten inches off the ground and appeared to have fur that was blown dry. It jumped at Patrick with its teeth bared, easily reaching his thighs.

  “Whoa, killer!” said Pat, raising his arms and stepping backward, away from the tiny beast. It was a bad move. He bumped into a stone pedestal that held an enormous and expensive-looking stone statue. The statue fell forward. For one horrifying second, it leaned, as they all realized it was about to smash on the unforgiving stone floor.

  “Watch it!” yelled CJ. He dove toward the statue, grabbing it in a bear hug and landing on his knees. All three children exhaled in relief, and the little dog stopped yapping and ran back down the hall, his poofy fur forming a halo around his head.

  Just as CJ was about to say something sharp to Pat about watching his clumsy self, Pat preempted him by giggling. Brid soon joined him, as they both realized that CJ was hugging a bone-white, headless, naked woman made of stone. It was at this moment that a woman came padding down the hall toward them. She did not look pleased.

  “Hello?” CJ said in a meek voice, unsure where to begin explaining.

  The woman was dressed in a gray-and-white maid’s uniform. Her silvery hair was constricted inside a hairnet. Her legs were thick inside her stockings, and her feet were covered in the same blue surgical booties that the Williamson children had worn to the Smithfork apartment. Brid seemed to remember Lily saying their housekeeper was named Sonia.

  “Where are you going with that statue?” she hissed in an accusing voice.

  CJ was trying to get off the floor while not dropping the headless naked woman. “Um, my brother fell into the pedestal when the dog came running at him, and he knocked the statue over, and I caught it.”

  The woman looked skeptical. Brid tried to lift the statue out of CJ’s arms, but it was heavier than it looked. “A little help here?” Brid asked the maid.

  “Who let you people into this home?” she asked as Pat came to the aid of Brid and CJ. It was then that the maid realized how close the statue was to being dropped, and she grabbed it. “I asked, who let you children into this home?”

  “We showed ourselves in. We live on the other side of the wall. We wanted to talk to Lukas and Lily,” Brid said meekly.

  The woman raised eyeglasses from a chain around her neck to get a better look at the Smithforks. Brid felt raggedy and underdressed.

  “Lukas and Lily came over to our house unannounced this morning. We thought it worked both ways,” CJ said. “We are really sorry. We thought it would be okay.”

  The woman’s face softened a notch. “Really, they didn’t call first?” she asked. “I’m surprised. I will speak to them about that right now.”

  “Wait.” CJ didn’t mean to get Lukas and Lily in trouble, but the maid had already turned to a small panel near the door, and pressed Lukas’s name on an LED screen. The screen seemed so out of place, so cutting-edge and modern compared to the antiques, but it did the trick.

  Lukas’s voice emerged from the wall. “Oui, madame?”

  Unbelievable, CJ thought, when the maid replied to this in French. They speak French, and they aren’t even French. What is up with this family?

  “Toute de suite,” came the reply. “I’ll be right there.”

  Soon they heard the familiar sound of padding feet, and Lukas appeared.

  “What a grand surprise!” he said.

  “Yes, well, we were surprised, too!” Patrick said. Lukas just looked at him quizzically.

  Brid had never heard kids talk the way the Williamsons did, who weren’t kidding around. “We were just hanging out at home, and we thought if you had a moment you could show us around a little. We haven’t seen the servants’ rooms you told us about, and we’d like to.”

  “Of course, that would be a real pleasure,” Lukas replied. “Let me get Lily. She would love to see you again. Sonia, do you have the keys for downstairs storage?” he asked the maid. “Also, we will be needing shoes,” he added. “Something casual, such as loafers, would be perfect. I’m going to take our new neighbors to see the bowels of the building.”

  While Brid was still wondering how someone their age could use the word bowels to describe the basement, Sonia went away and returned with Lily, keys, and some shoes. She placed the shoes directly in front of the elevator so that the children would take only one step in the home while wearing them.

  The servants’ quarters, comprised of a long, dark row of rooms, were on a dusty and deserted floor, halfway underground. Many of the rooms had padlocks on them. Brid imagined how simply the servants must have lived compared to the splendid surroundings of the people they served.

  “Does anyone live down here anymore?” CJ asked.

  “No,” said Lukas. “It really was a different time. This hall used to be filled with drivers, cooks, nannies, butlers, and housekeepers. Now it’s filled with people’s belongings.” At the room on the end, he held up an antique-looking key Sonia had given him, and turned it in the lock. The door made a complaining, squealing noise. “Anyway, here are the quarters for the fourteenth-floor servants. Not much to look at, but it would make a good clubhouse.”

  “Clubhouse,” said CJ flatly, “like for a six-year-old?”

  Pat gave one of his electric-blue, wide-eyed head shakes. “Cool.”

  Brid knew why CJ was so irritable. He had hoped to see a keyhole, a place that would accept the massive k
ey bulging from his front pocket—the key from the library. Instead, when Lukas opened the door, they all took in the endless shelves, which were stuffed with brown boxes and piles of books with titles like Tiffin Glass Collectors Club, Garden of Earth Book of Plant Life, and Great Homes of Chicago 1871–1929. Brid raised an eyebrow toward CJ, wondering if he thought any of this was relevant to the treasure hinted at in the book they picked up from the library.

  “It looks like they moved out in a pretty disorganized way,” Brid said.

  “Or really quickly,” said CJ.

  “Or just didn’t care much about their stuff,” said Brid.

  “Or what if they had just already read these books and left them for the new people?” Pat added.

  “Or,” said Lukas, “maybe the owner passed away.” His voice was so respectful and matter-of-fact that the Smithforks immediately felt bad about their manners.

  “Is that what happened?” asked Brid finally. “Did they die?”

  “Not ‘they,’ but ‘he,’” said Lukas. “You see, Mr. Post was a huge collector, a man who loved architecture, poetry, and paintings. He had a friend named J. P. Morgan. Morgan was a financier and philanthropist, and both men were known for their incredible collections.”

  “Collections of what?” asked Brid.

  “Mr. Morgan had art, sculptures, rare manuscripts, and early children’s books; Mr. Post had architectural renderings, jewelry, and poetry. The two men hosted a monthly salon of smart, fancy people to share and discuss some of their acquisitions—to show them off. It was the hot ticket of the time.”

  “How do you know all that?” CJ asked him.

  Lukas didn’t answer but continued, “You see, Post also loved puzzles. He sometimes used to send invitations to his salons in riddle form. If you couldn’t solve the riddle, you didn’t know where and when the salon would be held. Apparently he never went easy on anyone or just gave them the information. When he passed on, the story was that he had a will, but it was such a riddle, his heirs couldn’t collect their inheritance. He died before he had a chance to leave all the clues his family needed in order to figure out where their inheritance was.”

  “But what about the apartment—those rules that said the walls of the apartment had to stay the same?” Brid asked.

  “Yes, obviously Post didn’t want anyone to mess with his original building, but that made it hard for his family to sell. Instead, they just ordered the apartment sectioned in four and had new walls put up for the next tenants, and moved out. But that was a long time ago; your apartment was empty for years. I’m sure Mr. Post’s desire to maintain the apartments’ original style and beauty was a sincere one. Maybe he just couldn’t bear to think of his place being destroyed.

  “Want to see a photo of Post?” Lukas asked.

  “Sure,” the kids said in unison.

  Lukas went rummaging in a box before pulling something out.

  “Here it is,” he said, wielding a large portrait in a wooden frame. “Behold, the Post family.”

  CJ and Brid gasped in a most uncool and transparent way.

  CHAPTER 7

  The picture that Lukas held up was a photograph. It showed a woman and a man standing expressionlessly behind their daughter, who appeared to be about eight or nine. They stood in front of a massive two-story library, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. In the midst of the shelving was a large painting of a solemn woman with doleful eyes. One of those eyes appeared to be the same one that looked into CJ’s bedroom. Logically, the other eye still lay behind the wall in fourteen south, the Williamsons’ apartment. Brid wondered if that other eye contained skip-seven writing, too.

  Halfway up the wall in the photograph was a very wide shelf, and propped against that shelf in the corner was a wooden ladder—a means by which someone could retrieve a book from a high shelf. That shelf had to be the narrow ledge that held the copy of Treasure Island.

  Lukas spoke first. “The Post family must have taken down all that shelving by the time our family bought our apartment and changed the upper floors from a library to bedrooms.”

  Lukas continued, “This is the father and mother, and I believe their daughter’s name was Eloise.” He pointed to the skinny girl who wore a coat buttoned to her chin and carried a muff. Brid and CJ gave each other a knowing glance. They knew her name was Eloise.

  Looking closely at the photograph, Patrick asked, “Why is she the only one dressed to go outside while her parents are dressed to be inside?”

  The Williamsons looked thoughtful. “She seems like she’s about to go somewhere,” said Lily.

  “She looks a little familiar,” said Brid, to change the subject and keep Pat from talking too much. “Did she become famous later in life?”

  “That’s the puzzle,” said Lukas. “I once had to write a biography for a homework assignment, and I chose to write about Mr. Post, her father. But their family history came to a halt when he died in 1937. The rest of the family seemed to have just disappeared.”

  “What do you mean?” Brid asked, thinking that 1937 was the same year the copy of Treasure Island had been borrowed from the library.

  “Well, they were wildly rich and social. They held magnificent parties, gave a lot of money to charity, and were always in the newspaper. One summer, the father died suddenly of a heart attack, and little was written about the family ever again, except as regards his fortune. He left the apartment to his wife and to his son and daughter, with the demand about keeping the walls intact. As we know, they did that, but then they seem to have vanished. There were newspaper stories wondering what happened to their fortune, but that was about it. Mrs. Post moved down to Washington, DC, and dropped from the party scene. The story simply ended for the Post family.”

  “Wait,” said Patrick. “They had a son, too? He’s not in the picture.”

  “Yes, he’s hardly in any pictures, and there’s little mention of him anywhere. The rumor was that he died in an accident of some sort.”

  “Sad,” Pat said simply.

  Brid looked again at the thin, solemn girl. “She doesn’t look very happy, and neither do her parents. So much for my mom’s idea that our apartment has happy-family karma.”

  Lily interjected, “People didn’t smile in photographs in those days, so we cannot judge happiness by that fact. They certainly didn’t yell ‘cheese’ the way you Americans do.”

  Brid answered, “First of all, you’re American, too, and maybe some of us like to say ‘cheese.’ Second, maybe Eloise was just about to step outside, but something made them all stop and take a photo.”

  “Maybe she was about to go on a trip without them,” said Patrick.

  “Maybe boarding school,” Lukas said.

  “No, she’s too young to be going off to school alone,” said Brid.

  “She looks as though she is about eight,” said Lily.

  “Old enough,” said Lukas.

  “That’s old enough?” asked Brid.

  “We left for boarding school when we were eight. But our school takes children as young as six.”

  “Six-year-olds at boarding school?” said Patrick, imagining himself heading overseas alone. “No way.”

  “But Mr. Post loved Eloise,” said Brid. “Why would he ever send her away?”

  “Children at boarding school are loved very much,” said Lukas. “It’s just that our parents like the structure of our education.”

  “The class of it,” added Lily.

  “What do you mean by class?” said CJ, who was suddenly missing his Brooklyn school more than ever.

  “In England, people of a certain rank in society mostly attend boarding school, and back when the Posts were alive, Americans with English roots often did the same.”

  The children were silent for a moment while CJ fingered the photo frame. “So why do you go?” he asked.

  “Go?”

  “To boarding school?” said CJ.

  “As I told you, our parents travel so much. It’s easier on eve
ryone this way,” Lukas said.

  Brid and CJ looked at each other. Maybe a nanny like Maricel wasn’t so bad after all.

  Before they parted ways, Lukas gave the key to the servants’ quarters to Brid. “We leave in the morning for England. Why don’t you use these in our absence? We’ll see you again at winter holiday, right?”

  Brid took the key and impulsively hugged Lily, who stood with her arms stoically at her sides.

  That night, Pat lay on CJ’s floor with thousands of Lego pieces spread around him. Nobody could tell what he was building. It was a flat structure, with giant spikes in the air.

  CJ lay on his bed with Mr. Post’s book of poetry. It contained only seven poems, and he had read and reread all of them and was starting to get some ideas about how Mr. Post’s treasure hunt might work, but he didn’t want to tell the others yet. He looked at the seven titles, some famous and some not.

  “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes

  “Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  “Faint Heart in a Rail Way Train” by Thomas Hardy

  “Recuerdo” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

  “A Crowded Trolley Car” by Elinor Wylie

  “Ota Benga” by anonymous

  Meanwhile, Brid had taped poster board to the wall, where she was transcribing the skip-seven message from the eye behind the wall. CJ kept glancing over at it:

  SEVEN CLUES ON SEVEN STRUCTURES

  GET WATER FROM ABOVE TO RUPTURE.

  CJ broke the quiet hum in the room. “Guys, do you know how many poems are in this book?”

  “No idea,” Brid remarked. “Too many?”

  “Seven, probably,” said Pat without looking up.

  CJ laughed. “Exactly. I’m seeing a pattern here with that number seven. In his letter, Mr. Post tells Eloise and Julian to visit some sites in New York City, sites they’d visited together in the past. Then he gives them a book that has seven poems in it. The message from the eye talks about seven structures, and the message was in skip-seven code. Wouldn’t it make sense if there was one clue in each poem that points us to a specific place, like a building or structure? Maybe we just need to find seven places or buildings here in New York City.”