She was the retired schoolteacher who was living at Angela Harrall’s house while the family was away.
“She seemed to know something when we saw her last winter,” Poco said. “Remember how she said, ‘So, you are Walter Kew!’ as if something had happened long ago. Walter was always too scared to ask any more about it.”
“Let’s go and see her this afternoon. She’s halfway to the park anyway. Afterward we can go and find Walter.”
They went to tell Poco’s mother their plans, then started off. But they were hardly out the door when Mrs. Lambert called them back and insisted that Juliette go with them on her leash.
“Juliette! But how …” Georgina spun around. She caught sight of the cat spying on them from the living room. The old fleabag was watching their every move.
“But we can’t take her!” Poco protested. “Juliette never wants to walk in a straight line.”
Mrs. Lambert’s mind was made up, though. Or had been made up for her, Georgina thought grimly.
“Miss Bone has been asking for Juliette,” Mrs. Lambert said. “She took a special interest in her after the poor thing was lost for all those months in the cold. This is the perfect time to bring her by.”
“Oh, all right!” Poco stamped into the living room.
Juliette looked at them smugly as they hooked on her leash. The cat had aged since her odd disappearance and even stranger return last winter. Her fur wasn’t so neat and well-groomed. She slept a lot more and stayed closer to home. Now, however, some new mood had struck. Outside, on the sidewalk, she padded along with bright eyes, never once veering off course. This made Georgina so nervous that she slowed down and walked several steps behind.
“Is Juliette still wearing that weird charm that was on her when she came back from being lost?” she asked.
“Right here on her collar.” Poco smoothed away the fur under the cat’s chin to reveal a little silver box. “Angela didn’t believe me when I told her, but I know invisible beings put it there. Juliette is a cat in touch with the unknown.” She noted with pleasure that Georgina had dropped back a little farther.
“How is Angela anyway?” Georgina shouted up. “She never calls me anymore.”
“She was sick with a terrible stomachache. For months and months she couldn’t eat anything. But now she’s better, except her voice sounds different. Thinner, sort of.”
“Hmm.”
“George, why are you walking back there?” Poco asked in a voice that was not entirely sincere. “Are you scared of something? I can hardly hear you.”
There was no answer at all to this question. Poco pressed her lips together with satisfaction and strode ahead energetically.
It was not easy to be going back to Angela’s house after all the trouble there last winter. When the friends knocked on Miss Bone’s garage apartment door, their hearts began to race. Luckily, she did not make them wait. Poco’s careful mother had phoned ahead, and the old woman opened the door immediately.
“Hello. Hello. How sweet of you to come!”
She was wearing a turban on her head, and a long black skirt with old-fashioned lace-up shoes. This was the sort of outfit that once would have convinced the friends of dark plots and evil intent. Now:
“Hello, Miss Bone. You look great! Just like yourself.”
“Why, thank you! I’m so pleased to see you both. And Juliette! You old sorceress. Have you recovered from your vanishing act?”
“Yes she has. A little too well, we are beginning to think. She’s back to her old mysterious ways,” Poco said. She saw how Miss Bone’s knobby hand went directly to the cat’s neck and felt around in the thick fur.
Georgina saw it, too. “I guess you heard about the charm Juliette had on when she came home,” she told Miss Bone pointedly. “It has catnip inside. A sign of invisibles. Poco believes they are keeping Juliette safe.”
“Invisibles, did you say? As in fairies and elves?” Miss Bone smiled. “Well, why not? I’m sure it’s so.”
“I’m not,” Georgina said as they walked upstairs. “I think someone in the real world put the charm on her.”
“Good heavens, why do a thing like that?” Miss Bone held open the door. “You are far too suspicious, Georgina. Always on the trail of something. Or someone,” she added sharply, causing both girls to blush. “But where is your third investigator, that nice boy Walter Kew?”
“It’s about Walter that we’ve come,” Poco said. “He’s having a problem with his mother. We wondered if you knew something about her.”
“His mother!” Miss Bone turned abruptly on her heel. “Has she come back, then, after all these years?”
“Well, yes,” Poco said. “In a way, she has.”
SIX
“OF COURSE I KNOW nothing. Nothing that Walter hasn’t heard a hundred times, I’m sure,” Miss Bone said, settling into a kitchen chair. She reached down and picked up Juliette, who was pleased and immediately curled up in her lap.
“But that’s the trouble. He hasn’t heard anything,” Georgina said. “His grandmother has never told him one fact about his parents. There are no photos either, nothing passed down or left behind. Walter doesn’t have the slightest clue where he comes from.”
“It’s made him a little crazy, if you want to know,” Poco added.
“I can understand,” Miss Bone said. “I’d feel unsettled myself if I’d arrived that way on a doorstep. And in a casserole dish! Now there’s a recipe for mystery.”
“A casserole dish!” Poco and Georgina cried together.
“Hasn’t Walter ever told you? I’m sorry I spoke. Perhaps he’s sensitive about it.”
“No he’s not! He doesn’t know,” Georgina exclaimed.
“Doesn’t know! That’s impossible. It’s not the kind of thing you can keep from a child.”
But apparently it was. Granny Docker had never breathed a word, as Walter himself was soon explaining. While Juliette stayed and was petted by Miss Bone, Poco and Georgina ran to the park and found him. He was hovering as usual by the Little Match Girl.
“Come, quick! Miss Bone’s told us something about you.”
“Miss Bone?”
“She knows how you came to your grandmother’s house.”
He was suspicious and went unwillingly at first. But half an hour later, with everyone gathered in Miss Bone’s little kitchen, he gazed in astonishment at the elderly woman.
“A casserole dish! But how could I fit in?” he asked, as if there weren’t a hundred more important questions.
“Oh, well, it was a large one,” Miss Bone replied. “Your grandmother was famous for it. Whenever a big dinner was given in town, she was asked to cook something in that dish. I remember that her Macaroni and Cheese took two women to carry. Her Chicken Tetrazzini needed three.”
Carried by three women! Walter trembled at the thought. He had set his sights so firmly on one. “But how … but where … my mother … when?”
“Of course the casserole had been emptied, and the dish washed and dried, by the time you got into it,” Miss Bone assured him. “I forget what it was we had for dinner that night. Noodles Romanov, maybe. Or Tuna Supreme?” She tapped her finger thoughtfully on the table.
“It was a plain old church supper, you see. Your grandmother went home early without the dish, leaving it to the washup crew. Which happened that night to be only me.” Miss Bone gave an embarrassed laugh. “I hardly knew old Mrs. Docker—and still don’t, I’m afraid—but when she came to me the next day to ask if I had seen …”
Miss Bone stopped and shook her head. “You must go to her yourself,” she said to Walter. “It’s not my place to be telling such things.”
“Oh yes! Please!” Walter grasped her arm. “My grandmother won’t tell me anything. I think she’s forgotten. If you could just say how I got in the dish …”
“Well, that’s the whole problem, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Walter’s eyes were wide as saucers.
“I mean no one knows. Or at least I don’t. It’s a puzzle to this very day. I left the dish in the church pantry, clean as a whistle. The next morning, there it was at your granny’s front door, filled to the brim with little pink you. Until now, I never told anyone. It was a touchy subject, and not my affair.”
They had to carry Juliette home. Something came over her at Miss Bone’s apartment, and when they got up to leave, she would not walk. She just sat and blinked at Walter in a dazed sort of way, no matter how they yanked on her leash.
“It was hearing about the casserole being carried by three women,” gasped Georgina, staggering along the sidewalk under the cat’s weight. “Juliette suddenly realized there was a better way to travel.” Angela’s pet was twice as large as an ordinary Siamese. Like Angela herself, she had always gone in for extra helpings at mealtimes.
“Please don’t make jokes when Juliette can hear,” Poco said severely. She was walking alongside, holding on to the leash, which was still attached to Juliette’s collar, for some reason. “The trip to Miss Bone’s was too far for her, that’s all. She’s not as young as she used to be.”
They turned around to look for Walter, who was lagging behind in a daze himself.
“He’s just begun to figure out that if Miss Bone’s story is true, his grandmother is not his real grandmother,” Poco whispered to Georgina.
“Good grief. That’s right!”
“Next he’ll see that his grandfather was not his real grandfather.”
Georgina took this opportunity to hand Juliette to Poco, who was so short that the cat’s tail hung below her knees as they walked along. For a few minutes neither one of them could talk—Georgina because she was recovering her strength, and Poco because she was about to fall over. Finally, Georgina got her wind back.
“There is something else—Walter’s parents’ terrible accident. If Granny Docker never knew who left Walter at the door, how could she know how his parents died?”
“She couldn’t. Maybe they just got sick.”
“Or hanged themselves or jumped off a cliff.” Georgina tended to think in more drastic terms. “No one would want to tell a little child that. Or maybe they never were killed at all.”
Poco was shocked. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I guess they might still be somewhere alive.”
This was such a startling thought that Poco’s grip loosened. Suddenly Juliette was slipping through her arms. With a terrific thud, the cat landed. And lay still.
“Oh no! Juliette! I’m so sorry!”
“Is she dead?” Georgina asked, leaning over hopefully.
Walter came up then. Without a word, he gathered Juliette into his arms. He carried her the rest of the way, far more easily—and more comfortably, no doubt—than either of the girls. Walter was thin, but his arms were strong. By the time they arrived at Poco’s house, the cat was smiling and cuddling up to him, as if this was where she’d wanted to be from the beginning.
Georgina looked on in disgust. “I think Juliette is a cat who gets what she wants.”
“Oh, she is,” Poco agreed. “She always has been.”
Walter nodded. “Juliette has powers we can’t even imagine.”
“She told me once that she expects to live hundreds of lives,” Poco said. “Not just the miserable nine usually handed out to cats. She even asked if I’d consider coming along.”
“Along where?” Georgina said in alarm.
“To the next life. Wasn’t that sweet? I told her I’d have to think about it. I wouldn’t want to leave now, anyway, not when I’m just in the middle of this one.”
“You wouldn’t?” asked Georgina, with a look of relief.
“Oh no. But how nice of you to worry. I wouldn’t have thought you really cared.”
“Who says I do?” Georgina humphed, but without much force. She’d had a sudden vision of Poco vanishing through the walls into dazzling, invisible, unknown worlds—while she was left stranded on the dull, earthly side. Perhaps Georgina had grown more used to Poco than she knew, because the idea of being without her, even for a day, seemed all at once very upsetting.
“Will you teach me how to talk to Juliette?” she found herself asking a minute later.
Poco’s mouth all but dropped open. “Georgina!” she cried in a sort of horror. It was so completely unlike her friend. “When do you think you’d want to start?”
“Oh, no hurry.” Georgina seemed suddenly to have second thoughts. She even began to look embarrassed. “I’d just sometime like to hear what thoughts go on inside a pelt.”
“A pelt! Wait a minute. That is not very nice …”
They passed the rest of the walk in a more comfortable state of battle.
Walter Kew had no sooner heard Miss Bone’s story about the casserole dish than he knew what he had to do. He had to find it. He had to touch it and lift it and look inside, and generally make sure that it truly did exist.
“But why?” Georgina could not understand. And she was tired. They had all just come into Poco’s house after the long walk from Miss Bone’s apartment. “By now it’s probably a cracked, greasy old thing.”
“I don’t care,” Walter said. “I have to see where I was.” He looked down at Juliette, who lay like a great furry baby in his arms. “And you and Poco have to see, too.”
Georgina groaned. “Can’t we look the next time we’re there?”
Walter shook his head. They must see it right now. Only someone delivered to a strange house in the middle of the night could appreciate why.
“Your grandmother’s house isn’t strange. It’s the only place you’ve ever lived!” Georgina sat down in Poco’s living room.
“It was strange when Walter was first left on the porch,” Poco said. “Imagine how he must have felt lying there and waiting in the casserole dish. I hope they didn’t put the lid on.”
Georgina yawned. “I don’t believe he felt anything. He was much too little to know what was happening.”
“Oh no I wasn’t!” Walter’s pale eyes flashed. “I might not have been able to talk yet, but I felt things. I worried about why I was outside in the cold instead of in my usual warm bed. I worried about where my mother had gone. I worried about when she was coming back and what was going to happen to me next. Babies get worried and frightened, you know, even if later they can’t exactly remember.”
Several minutes passed before Georgina could get this idea into her head. Babies had always seemed like pink lumps to her. Cute, yes, but completely stupid. “As long as they’re fed and have their diapers changed—”
She was drowned out by protests from Poco and Walter. Even Juliette turned to glare at her.
“All right. I’ll go!” Georgina hastily stood up.
And so, not long after the friends had arrived, they set out again, this time for Walter’s house. Walter was in such a state of impatience that he galloped ahead on the sidewalk. He took off his baseball cap and ran fearless under the sun, a thing Georgina and Poco had never seen him do. They followed at a distance, wondering at the power of one casserole dish to so change the behavior of their shy and shadowy friend.
SEVEN
MRS. DOCKER WAS SUCH a dear, frail, gentle old granny that it was impossible to enter her house in any way other than on tiptoes. She was quite deaf, and the silence in her head had gradually, over the years, spilled out to make a silence all around her—a silence in which the hall clock ticked, and mice scrambled in the walls, and everyone spoke in whispers—unless you spoke to Granny, that is. Then you shouted at the top of your lungs. This is what Walter did as soon as he found his grandmother in the kitchen, her deep-lined face bent close over an ironing board.
“Granny!”
“Oh!”
“It’s me, Walter!”
“Oh, Walter! You scared me. I was just ironing your shirts.”
“This is Georgina!”
“Who?”
“And Poco!”
“What?”
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��My friends. You’ve met them before, remember?”
Granny peered cautiously around Walter. Suddenly her face brightened.
“Oh, Georgina. And Poco. How nice to see you. I was just ironing Walter’s shirts.”
They shook hands pleasantly. Mrs. Docker was an old-fashioned sort of granny who liked that sort of thing. She had wonderful manners, though, and was soon offering them lemonade and a jar full of homemade cookies. Then she went back to her ironing board, and for a few minutes the silence poured out of her again, and every creak and chew could be heard in the kitchen. Georgina and Poco looked nervously at Walter.
“Granny!” he shouted at last. They all jumped. More softly, but urgently, he said, “Granny, I want to see the big casserole dish.”
Something new in the tone of his voice must have come through to her, because the old woman set the iron down and stared at him. All at once, from beneath her oldness and wrinkles, a younger woman seemed to look out with anxious eyes.
“What do you want it for?” she asked. “It’s been stored away since your grandfather died.”
“Just to look.”
Granny gazed at him for a second more, then nodded. “Well, why not?” she muttered, more to herself than to him. “I’d like a look myself after all this time. It’s in the pantry,” she said, turning to Georgina, “pushed back a good way under the counter.”
The casserole was there, all right. From a distant corner came a glint, as if a large, mysterious animal had blinked in the dark. It was far too heavy for one person to pick up, or even to drag out into daylight. The efforts of all three children were necessary to hold the low pantry door open and to yank and pull the old cooking dish through. Poco lifted the huge ceramic cover off while the others hoisted the bottom part onto the kitchen table. Then she lowered the top back on and—there it stood.
“My casserole dish,” Walter announced proudly. “Not cracked or greasy at all. Just a little dusty.”
Creepy, Georgina might have said, but she kept quiet.
Walter brought a sponge from the sink and wiped the dish down a bit. The sides were a deep blue with wavy white lines painted around them. The cover matched, except that its lines were spokes that fanned out from the center knob. Walter lifted the top again and gazed inside for a long moment; then he turned to his grandmother, who seemed rooted in place.
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