Horten's Incredible Illusions (24 page)

“It might have been twenty-eight seconds for you, Stuart, but we were away for
ages
,” grumbled May, getting to her feet. “When we went back to unglue April from that path, everything got sort of fuzzy, and then we found ourselves in our house—but it wasn’t really our house at all, it was like a stage set. There was no upstairs, the front yard was just mist, and there was nothing on the TV except static. We were just waiting and waiting and waiting, and it was all because no one listened to me when I said it would be dangerous, and then it
was
, and no one listened to me when I said we’d get stuck there, and then we
did
! Is it the same day, even?”

Stuart nodded.

“Well, thank goodness for that!”

“It was boring and weird and horrid,” added April quietly. “But I knew you’d come and get us. Thanks.”

“Yes, thanks, Stuart,” said May, giving him a deeply embarrassing hug.

“That’s all right,” he said gruffly, “and I couldn’t have done it without help.” He gestured to Clifford and Elaine.

“We’d better get you all out of here,” said Elaine. “Before we get caught.”

“And before our mom freaks out,” added April. She held out a hand to help up June, who was still sitting on the floor.

“I’ve had the oddest dream,” she said.

“Oh, for
goodness’ sake
,” screeched May, “it was
not
a dream. When are you
ever
going to admit it?”

April rolled her eyes at Stuart. “
It’s been like this the whole time
,” she whispered. “
I’ve had to be incredibly tolerant and patient, and then when she …
” She paused and frowned.

“What?” asked Stuart.

She looked at him, tilting her head. “You look different,” she said. “Apart from being covered in dust, I mean.”

“What sort of different?”

“Older.”

“What?”

“No, not older …” She paused, and her eyes widened. “Taller.”

“
What?
“

“Taller. A bit, anyway.”

“Come on, everybody,” said Elaine firmly. “Out. And let’s be as quiet as cats.”

Stuart, light-headed with shock, was scarcely aware of the tiptoed journey across the yard, the scurry over the ladder, the rushed farewells to Elaine and Clifford, the jog through the darkened town, with Charlie drooping tiredly in his arms.

What April said couldn’t be true, could it? And yet … in the Book of Peril, when he had dashed outside for the last time, he had spotted the triplets in their yard. Which meant that
he had been able to see over the fence
. Without jumping. Without standing on a box. And maybe the kitchen in that world had looked different, not because of anything in it, but because he’d suddenly been viewing it
from a different height
. And maybe the wrong factor in that particular world hadn’t been his dad or his mom, or even the triplets—it had been
him
.

“There’s Mom,” said April rather nervously, jerking Stuart out of his thoughts. They had reached Beech Road, and Mrs. Kingley was standing on the front doorstep, her arms folded. She said nothing at all as they approached but simply pointed inside.

“
Bye
,” mouthed April to Stuart. “
See you tomorrow
.”

He watched them file silently into their house. The front door clicked shut, there was a brief pause … and then the sound of Mrs. Kingley shouting. Stuart scuttled off to his own front door, and bent his knees slightly before ringing the bell—just in case his father spotted anything different.

But it was his mother who answered the door.

“Surprise!” she said. “I was actually phoning from the airport, but I didn’t—” She stopped speaking and stared at him.

“You’ve
grown
,” she said. “And you’ve found a dog.”

“I know,” replied Stuart, his voice coming out a bit wobbly. “Surprise!”

CHAPTER 38

It was two days later, and Stuart was hanging around in the backyard, waiting for April to appear.

Charlie was also in the yard. Apart from eating, the dog’s main occupation was following Stuart around, gazing up at him adoringly—so adoringly that even Stuart’s mother (who wasn’t particularly keen on pets) had agreed to keep him for the time being.

“Until we can find the
original
owner,” she’d insisted, and Stuart had happily gone along with that condition. At the present moment Charlie was resting his head on Stuart’s right shoe and nibbling the shoelace.

“Good dog,” said Stuart. The stump of Charlie’s tail wagged vigorously.

Stuart looked at his watch. Since their return, April and her sisters had been confined to the house as a punishment for staying out late without permission, and April had communicated with Stuart by means of written messages held up to the window of her bedroom.

MY MOM SAYS WE ARE NEVER ALLOWED OUT AGAIN UNTIL WE ARE 18.

had been the first one, followed, a few hours later, by:

SHE’S NOW REDUCED IT TO A WEEK, BUT WE HAVE TO WORK FOR OUR FREEDOM.

Stuart had gone and gotten paper of his own, and had written the word:

HOW?

and held it up to her.

UNNECESSARY HOMEWORK, HOUSEWORK, AND PIANO PRACTICE.

had been the answer.

ANYTHING I CAN DO?

asked Stuart.

YES. TELL ME WHAT LETTER CLUE YOU GOT OUT Of THE BOOK OF PERIL.

E, wrote Stuart in reply.

On the second morning, a grinning April had brandished a sign reading:

SENTENCE REDUCED ON ACCOUNT OF ME PLAYING “DANCE OF THE SHEPHERD GIRLS” 313 TIMES IN A ROW, WHICH MOM SAID WAS DRIVING HER TOTALLY MAD. OUT AT 11 O’CLOCK.

It was five to eleven now.

Stuart looked at the triplets’ yard, still marveling that he could actually see over the fence. He had grown nearly one and a half inches—which meant that although he was still short for his age, for the time being he was only a
bit
short.

“A sudden growth spurt,” his mother had decided, after measuring him. “Unusual but not unprecedented. I expect it was the combination of the heat stress you endured and Dad’s splendidly healthy cooking. I’ve actually read a recent paper about the positive effects of spinach and kale on human bone growth—I think we should definitely keep them on the menu.”

Which meant that Stuart wasn’t particularly looking forward to the sort of meals he’d be getting from now on.

The Kingleys’ back door opened and one of the triplets came out.

“Hi, June,” said Stuart.

She looked surprised and slightly gratified that he’d identified her correctly.

“April says to tell you that she’s coming,” she said. “She has been working on something to show you. And I just wanted to say thank you for coming to get us. I’ve realized now that it wasn’t a dream.”

“Oh, right,” said Stuart, impressed. He hadn’t realized that June
ever
changed her mind.

“No, it wasn’t a dream,” she continued, “it was an extremely vivid hallucination—probably brought on by inhaling the fumes from the old-fashioned lead-based paint that your great-uncle used in the illusions.”

“Oh.” He couldn’t be bothered to argue. “Okay.”

“But you snapped us out of it and got us home. So thanks.”

She disappeared back into the house, and after a moment April came out. Stuart felt ridiculously pleased to see her; they’d only known each other for just over a month, but he felt as if they’d been friends for years and years and years. She grinned back at him over the fence and then held up a piece of paper for him to see:

  THE COMPLETED CLUES:

”I’ve been working and working on this,” she said. “I tried every anagram possible and then gave up on that idea, and then thought that they might be initials for something. SWOT could stand for
South West Of The
.”

“‘South West Of The’ what?” asked Stuart.

“That’s the trouble—I could only think of stupid things. Icelandic Egg. Idiotic Exhibition.”

“Irish Elephant,” suggested Stuart.

“So
then
I wondered if it was a number thing—you know,
S
is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet, and
W
is the twenty-third, and so on, so I added up all the numbers and got two hundred and twenty-five. Does that seem a significant number to you at all?”

Stuart shook his head.

“Nor me,” said April. “So then I read a code book that June got for Christmas, and there’s hundreds of ways to write codes: you can substitute one letter for another, or decide to move them so many places up or down the alphabet, or swap them around, or count backward, and I tried loads and loads and loads of them—I mean, I didn’t have anything else to do apart from practice “Dance of the Shepherd Girls”—and in the end I came to a conclusion.”

“What?” asked Stuart.

“That it’s not a code. Because in the end, all a code would give you is a six-letter word, and that wouldn’t be enough of a clue. Even if it was
inside
or
behind
or
mirror
or
swivel
. I mean, we’ve pretty much explored every nook and cranny of those illusions and we haven’t found the will, have we? It must be hidden somewhere complicated and hard to find, and one word just isn’t going to give us the answer.”

She was probably right, Stuart thought—she generally was, about most things. But there was something else nagging at the back of his mind.

“I had another phone call,” he said. “It was from Miss Edie. When you were trapped with your sisters. I didn’t have time to talk to her properly, but she said she’d remembered a couple of things that might help with the search.”

“What?”

“She said that her grandma told her that the will was well hidden, but that we should use the male to find it.”

“The
male
?”

“Yes.”

“What, as in
man
? Does that mean only
you
can find it, and not
me
? Or does she mean that only a grown-up can get it?”

“I don’t know. And she said something else—something really,
really
odd. She said that her grandma hadn’t liked me much.”

“Her grandma who died eighty years ago?”

“That’s the one.”

“How could she ever have met you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what
do
you know about her?”

“That she was a very clever businesswoman. She came to Canada from England. And she said that I was nothing but trouble.”

Stuart and April looked at each other across the top of the fence—stared at each other really hard—and the same idea came to them simultaneously, so that they both gave a little hop, as if electrocuted, and spoke the two syllables at the same time.

“
Jeannie!
”

CHAPTER 39

Jeannie Carr, the mayoress of Beeton, was Miss Edie’s grandmother!

Jeannie Carr, who had been so desperate to find Great-Uncle Tony’s workshop that she had threatened and bribed and followed Stuart, and had finally been catapulted back into Victorian England by the Well of Wishes—a Victorian England that had also contained Great-Uncle Tony, who had gone back in search of his fiancée. That’s where Jeannie had found out about the hidden will.

“She never stopped wanting to get the tricks,” said April, eyes wide, “her whole life long!”

Stuart thought about the last time he’d seen Jeannie, standing furious and aghast on the stage of a Victorian theater, doomed to remain in the past. A tiny part of him felt slightly relieved that she had not only survived being flung back into history but had actually flourished—had emigrated and founded a family and a vast fortune.
She left England with ten pounds in her pocket and a head full of ideas
, Miss Edie had said,
and she set up a factory in Canada and made more money than you would ever believe….