Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  ‘Clement, my old friend,’ she greeted him.

  ‘Hey, Phyll, what’re you doing?’

  ‘Just . . . looking for something.’

  ‘Looking for what?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much.’

  ‘Okay.’ Phyllis thought she detected a note of flatness in his voice. ‘Hey, do you want some help?’ he asked.

  ‘No thanks, Clem, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said again, his voice a bit more flat. ‘Want to hang out, then? I’ve got all my warts off now, and I don’t feel like xylophone practice.’

  ‘You never feel like xylophone practice.’

  ‘Nope, that is the state of my life.’ He sighed. ‘I wish Mum had never heard of a xylophone. D’you know, she’s got this idea into her head that I should become a concert xylophonist! Man, if she wants that, I’d have to practise so much they may as well lock me in my room and throw away the key!’

  ‘Ha. Somehow I can’t see you ever becoming a concert xylophonist.’

  ‘So how about we go and see a movie? There’s that new one about the vampires and the zombies and the mix-up at the hospital when they’re born, Creche of the Living Deadoids—’

  ‘I’d love to, Clem, but not today. I’m just a bit busy.’

  ‘Okay. Well, tomorrow?’

  She stroked Daisy’s ears. ‘How about I give you a call?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I’ve found what I’m looking for.’

  There was a long pause. Then Clement said, ‘Yeah, you do that. Gotta go. Have fun.’ And he rang off.

  Phyllis put the phone away, and she felt a knot of squeamishness—she got the feeling that Clem was upset, and she hated being the cause of that. ‘Oh, Daisy girl,’ she said.

  Daisy looked up and blinked her large brown eyes. She gave Phyllis’s hand a gentle snouting, and Phyllis giggled at the feel of the little moist nose tickling her palm.

  ‘I wish I knew what I was looking for,’ she said to Daisy. ‘I wish I knew where I could find something from Shakespeare’s time. I wish I knew where to start looking for it . . .’

  She stopped, as an idea came upon her. She smiled. ‘Hey, Daisy, I mightn’t know where to start looking, but I know someone who can surely point me in the right direction.’

  Phyllis Wong had a special sort of status down at Police Headquarters. It came about because she had helped Chief Inspector Barry Inglis with a case—a most perplexing case, the most perplexing in his career so far—very recently. It meant that Phyllis could turn up at the station and see him, if he were not tied up with a case, whenever she needed.

  So now, the first thing on Monday morning, Phyllis walked downtown, past all the shops and stores with their windows bursting with Christmas decorations and Hanukkah menorahs, straight up the steps of Police Headquarters and to the front desk. There she was welcomed by a familiar face.

  ‘Season’s greetings,’ said Constable Olofsson, a young, down-to-earth member of the constabulary. ‘What can we do for you today, Phyllis Wong?’

  ‘Three guesses,’ winked Phyllis.

  ‘You want to join the force?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want to borrow some handcuffs to practise an escape routine with? I’ve already told you I can’t lend you any of those; they’d have my badge quicker than you could whistle—’

  ‘Nope, try again.’

  ‘Now let me think . . .’ Constable Olofsson looked skywards (or she would have looked skywards if the flaking ceiling of the police station hadn’t been in the way) and pulled a thoughtful face. ‘Ah! You want to see that Chief Inspector friend of yours?’

  ‘You got it, Constable.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Constable Olofsson, matter-of-factly. ‘I am very on the ball. I can anticipate any situation, no matter how unpredictable it may be. It’s all part of my extensive training in the fine art of detection.’ She winked at Phyllis. ‘I’ll see if he’s free.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The Constable picked up the phone. ‘Chief Inspector? Olofsson. I have a young magician here. Says she wants to see you.’ Phyllis waited as Constable Olofsson listened. Then the Constable took her ear from the phone and asked Phyllis, ‘He says do you have your dog with you?’

  ‘No,’ answered Phyllis. ‘She’s at home.’

  ‘No,’ Constable Olofsson told Barry Inglis. ‘Right. Will do. Yes. Thanks, Chief.’ She put the phone down. ‘He’ll see you now,’ she said. ‘But he’s only got a few minutes.’

  ‘Swell,’ said Phyllis, quickly displaying her empty hand, front and back, to Constable Olofsson. With a quick flick of her wrist, Phyllis produced a playing card—an ace of clubs, with THANK YOU handwritten across the front. She dropped it down on the desk. ‘Thanks, Constable,’ she called over her shoulder as she headed for the stairs.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Constable Olofsson called back, picking up the card and shaking her head before returning to her computer screen and her game of Dungeons of the Deadly.

  Phyllis bounded up the three flights of stairs to Barry’s office and rapped on the door.

  ‘Come,’ he called.

  ‘Hi, Chief Inspector!’ She entered his messy domain and promptly went and sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. He was sitting in the big leather chair on the other side.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Wong. And what brings you down to my neck of the woods?’

  ‘I need to know something.’

  ‘Do you?’ Barry moved some papers on his desk, and Phyllis saw, in the pile, some photocopied images of Shakespeare’s First Folio and some other images that looked similar. ‘What is it you’d like to be enlightened about?’

  ‘It’s sort of weird,’ she said.

  ‘I’m head of the Fine Arts and Antiques Squad. Weird is commonplace to me, like putting on my shoes. Go ahead, ask.’

  ‘Well, where would someone go if someone wanted to find something that came from London, early seventeenth century?’

  Barry Inglis stopped arranging the papers and looked at her, his left eyebrow arching.

  ‘Like from Shakespeare’s time?’ he asked.

  Phyllis smiled. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘I . . . I’ve sort of got interested since we went to the auction. I don’t know . . . something about the era fascinates me . . .’

  ‘I see. What sort of object did you have in mind?’

  ‘Oh, anything. Anything that really dates back to that Time and place.’

  The Chief Inspector regarded her carefully. ‘Anything?’

  ‘As long as it’s genuine.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He gave her a go on, tell me more sort of look—a look he often used to draw out information from suspects during questioning.

  Phyllis put her hands under her legs and pressed down on them. ‘I . . . I’d just like to touch something from way back then,’ she tried to explain. ‘To help me feel . . . well, closer to the Time, I guess.’

  He nodded. He had always, ever since he had first met her when she was a small child, been aware that she thought differently to many other people. Even though sometimes she seemed to say highly unusual things, or do out-of-the-ordinary things, he had come to appreciate the fact that she was different, and he respected the way her mind enquired about things. (Secretly, he believed that one day she would make a first-class detective, but he kept this opinion firmly to himself.)

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, it may not be so simple. Objects that old—objects that we know are that old—aren’t that easy to come by nowadays. Oh, sure, artworks turn up every now and then, and sometimes furniture, and recently these First Folios—’ he pulled a small grimace at the mention of them—‘but they usually turn up in the bigger and better auction houses.’

  ‘Like Wendlebury’s?’

  ‘Like Wendlebury’s. Those are the kinds of places that collectors buy seventeenth-century antiques and artworks. Of course, one could be lucky, and find something in a junk shop or sec
ond-hand store or antiques store, but not often. And if you did find something in that sort of place, you’d have to know what it was, or hope that the seller knew what it was.’

  ‘I see.’ Phyllis thought. Perhaps that’s what she needed to do: haunt the shops over on the street that had all the antiques places and curios and second-hand stores all in the same block. She frowned—that would take forever, and she wanted to get on to this quickly. Besides, there was no guarantee that any of those shops would have anything from the seventeenth century for sale, and even if they did, would Phyllis be able to afford it? And what if all she could find was some big old table or wardrobe or something? How would she Transit with something like that?

  Barry saw her frowning. ‘Actually—’ he began, and paused.

  From this point on in her life, Phyllis Wong would always love the word actually. She looked up.

  ‘Actually,’ Barry said again, ‘I think I can help. You said you just wanted to touch something from the time, yes?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  From another pile of papers at the far side of his desk he withdrew a large blue plastic folder. This he placed on the desk between him and Phyllis. ‘You’re in luck. I have to return this to Wendlebury’s this afternoon . . . should’ve done it days ago, but I’ve been snowed under.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Phyllis, staring at the folder.

  ‘Open it and find out.’

  Phyllis leant forward and did so. Inside the folder was a large sheet of thick, slightly creamy-coloured paper. Phyllis noticed that it had a weave to it, as though it had been made from some sort of linen or similar material. There was no writing on it, only a few small, pale ink blots, and two of its corners had become torn and separated from the main part of the page. The corners were sitting there with the rest of the page, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that were about to be put together.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a fragment of paper from that First Folio you saw auctioned the other night. It was found tucked into the inside back cover when the seller brought the Folio to Wendlebury’s. The experts at Wendlebury’s called me in to get a test done on it to make sure it was genuine and not a fake. It’s the same sort of paper—the exact same sort of paper—that the rest of the Folio was printed on.’

  ‘And is it genuine?’ Phyllis could feel her heart pumping a bit faster.

  ‘To all intents and purposes, it is. We dated it back to the early 1600s.’

  ‘Wow.’ She looked up through her fringe at Barry.

  ‘Go ahead, touch it,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He took a pair of white cotton gloves out of a top drawer of his desk and handed them to her. ‘Pop these on first, though. We can’t have the oils from our skin spoiling something so old.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Phyllis slipped her hands into the gloves—they were too big and she felt like she had frogs’ fingers. Gently she touched the paper.

  As she did so, something special happened: a tiny zing of something like electricity went through the glove, into her hand, along her arm and down her spine. She scarcely breathed as she rested her gloved hand on the page.

  Then Barry Inglis’s phone rang loudly, breaking the Time-stopping silence, and Phyllis jumped. Barry reached for the phone quickly.

  ‘Inglis here. Really? Good lord! When . . .?’ He swivelled his chair around to face the window as he listened carefully.

  Phyllis looked back down to the old page, and she saw that one of the separated corners of the page—the corner closest to the edge of the desk—was not there. When she had jumped, her hand must have accidentally knocked it off the folder, off the desk and onto the floor. She gave a small gasp as she realised what had happened.

  Barry was still busy with his conversation; it seemed he hadn’t noticed the fallen corner. Quietly, Phyllis bent down and looked on the floor. There was the corner, just by her feet. Delicately, she picked it up and, keeping her eye on the Chief Inspector, went to place it back in the blue folder.

  But a thought ricocheted into her brain. She didn’t put the corner back there. Instead, she slipped it into her bag, which was on the floor by her feet. Silently, smoothly, as only a magician can, she straightened, and gently she closed the blue folder. She slipped off the gloves and folded them neatly, placing them on top of the folder.

  It fell onto the floor, she thought. Now I’ll borrow it, and bring it back when I’ve done what I need to do. I’ll explain that it must’ve fallen . . . into my bag. It’s not like I’m stealing it or anything. It can’t do any harm. I need to know about all these First Folios . . .

  ‘I’ll get some of my people down there straightaway, and I’ll be along directly,’ said Barry Inglis into the phone. ‘Don’t let anyone enter the scene. Thanks, Chatterton.’

  He put the phone down and turned back to face Phyllis. ‘Miss Wong, I’m afraid I have to go. Detective Pinkie Chatterton has uncovered something that needs my attention. Ah, I see you’re finished.’

  ‘No, Chief Inspector, I’m only just beginning.’

  He gave her a quizzical look. ‘Huh?’

  She grabbed her bag and stood. ‘Thanks for your time, you’ve been a fabbo help. See you round!’ And, with a big smile, she was out the door in seconds.

  ‘Hmm,’ hmmed Barry Inglis, looking at the gloves on the blue folder before starting another search for his car keys which were buried somewhere in the mountains and valleys of paperwork covering his desk.

  Using her Pockets

  Phyllis decided on black for her first expedition alone.

  From her History lessons at school she knew a little about the clothes they wore back in Shakespeare’s time. One of her teachers had shown Phyllis and her classmates a slideshow of the types of clothing people wore back then: the men’s tight-fitting button jackets they called doublets, the bodices and the skirts worn by the women and the framework that went under their skirts (Phyllis had liked the name of the framework—it was known as a farthingale, and was made of whalebone or wire), and the tube-shaped bundle that women wore to give them the appearance of having bigger hips (the boys in her class had enjoyed a good sniggerfest when they’d learnt that this was called a bumroll).

  Phyllis decided that she couldn’t hope to dress in the authentic fashion of the time, but wearing black would be the next best thing if she didn’t want to stand out in the crowds. The last thing she needed was to draw too much attention to herself. So she dressed in a dark shirt, black sweater and jeans, and a pair of dark runners. She chose her long black coat that came down past her knees, and tied her hair back in a ponytail. She didn’t want to be choking on mouthfuls of it when the wind picked up in the Pocket.

  Daisy lay on the bed, watching her as she got dressed. ‘You’re a good girl,’ Phyllis said to her. ‘I’m going to be gone for a little while—’

  At the sound of the word gone, Daisy sat up and extended a paw, her little face crinkling in the way it always crinkled when she heard words that unsettled her.

  ‘But,’ said Phyllis, taking Daisy’s paw and shaking it gently, ‘you’ll hardly even notice. Time will fly and I’ll be back before you can sneeze.’

  Daisy gave a little gargling-of-marbles sound.

  Phyllis held her paw. ‘Maybe I’ll take you with me another time. But not now. Not this time. I have to get used to this, and I don’t want anything happening to you that shouldn’t . . .’

  Phyllis stopped and, still clasping Daisy’s paw, she took a deep breath. ‘Okay, Miss Daisy, it’s time.’

  She took one of Daisy’s favourite treats from a tin on her dresser and gave it to her. Daisy wagged her tail and settled down with the biscuit. She was enjoying it so much—as she always did—that she didn’t notice Phyllis picking up her shoulder bag and quietly leaving the bedroom.

  The elevator was waiting, and Phyllis went straight in. She inserted her key in the basement lock on the control panel and turned it. The doors closed and the old contraption began descending.

  As she went ju
dderingly down, Phyllis wished that the journey through the Pockets could be like this. Even though the old elevator didn’t give the smoothest ride, it was way smoother than some of the turbulence she’d go through if she Transited through an Anamygduleon or another Andruseon.

  Then, with a final lurch, she was in the basement. The doors slid open and Phyllis walked out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. She flicked on the lights and reached back into the elevator to shut its doors so that it could go back up, in case other people wanted to use it to travel to their floors.

  After it had gone, Phyllis peered down the staircase and into the basement.

  From above, she couldn’t see any sign of the TimePocket. There was nothing strange about the light or the space on the stairs—no shimmering, or molecules of matter that shouldn’t be there. Phyllis bit her lip and frowned. Maybe the Pocket wasn’t there any more? W.W. had said things were constantly shifting . . .

  She realised then that she had never seen the Pocket here from above; she had entered it with W.W. by coming up the stairs. She smiled, slung her bag over her neck, across her shoulder, and held its strap securely. Then she went down the stairs two at a time.

  She stopped at the bottom and took a moment to check herself. She registered what she was feeling: excited and scared. There was an enormous, exhilarating current of excitement flowing through her veins—she was about to do something huge, something so huge that her brain was still coming to terms with it all, and she was about to do it by herself. That was an almost dizzying thought. And, rushing around inside her, as though it were chasing the excitement in there, was a soft feeling of fear. Yes, she admitted to herself, she was scared. Uncertain things do that to you, she thought. But she was reassured to feel that the excitement was outweighing the fear, and this gave her extra courage.

  She found that she was breathing fast, so she took a few deep lungfuls of air and steadied herself. That’s when she remembered that she didn’t have something she needed to take with her: her Transiting journal. She’d been writing details of the Pockets in it, and also the details of the publisher of Shakespeare’s First Folios. She’d totally forgotten to put the journal in her bag, and she felt the zing of the just-rescued-from-the-clutches-of-dread feeling that you get when you’ve just avoided forgetting something important.