The Puzzler's Mansion (19 page)

“I didn't know real princesses wore tiaras,” said Amanda. Winston
had been thinking the same thing. Cartoon princesses, sure, but real ones?

“Oh, they most definitely do,” said Richard.

“Absolutely,” Kimberly agreed. She placed the tiara gently on her head. It transformed her immediately into a beauty pageant contestant. “I might never take this off,” she said. She thanked Richard and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

IT HAD BEEN
a good day—a fun day—but it had also been very long, and Winston could feel the tiredness setting in behind his eyes. For a while, however, the entire party moved to the reading room, which is where he and Mal and Jake would eventually go to sleep. The grown-ups wanted to sit and drink coffee and tell stories. Winston sat quietly and tried to keep his eyes open, and he was grateful when Penrose talked about possibly turning in, reminding the rest of the group that they were technically sitting in the boys' bedroom.

Richard looked startled and then abashed. “Of course we are—I didn't think. My apologies.” None of the boys knew what to do with this apology. This was Richard's house, after all.

That brought the evening to its official end. “There are two more puzzles tomorrow,” Richard said as people began standing up and stretching. “One after breakfast, and then a final wrap-up sort of puzzle after that.”

People said good night to each other and wandered off to all corners of the house. The Deburghs left to find their daughter, who was
probably off hiding somewhere, and Betty went to get her sons, who were sleeping in an upstairs bedroom. Somehow she was going to have to transport them back to the guesthouse. Zook started downstairs to his room, but his father stopped him. “No,” Chase said, taking Zook by the arm. He turned to Norma and said, “I'd like Zook in my room with me tonight. Do you have a cot or something we can roll in?”

“Dad!” Zook protested. His constant anger had drained away, and now he only looked wounded by his father's lack of trust.

“We do, yes,” Norma said, casting a chilly smile on Zook. “Let me get that set up for you.” They all went upstairs together, Zook trailing behind, glaring at the floor.

The boys slid their bags out from under various sofas and took turns in the bathroom. By the time they were done, the house had more or less closed down—Derek and Kimberly were chatting quietly in the kitchen, but that was about it. Betty had come down the stairs with one sleeping brat in her arms. The other brat was just awake enough to be led along by the hand, a child-sized zombie. Norma helped Betty drape jackets around her kids, and they all went out the front door and back to the guesthouse. When the door opened briefly, Winston could hear the wind picking up out there.

The three boys didn't talk nearly as long tonight. Jake joked that Mr. Russell, the school's music teacher, would have a heart attack when they told him where they'd been this weekend. Mal said that before they left, they would have to get a photograph of the three of them with Richard Overton. Maybe they could all pose with different musical instruments, with Richard at the piano, like they were playing a deep and important sonata.

Despite his exhaustion, sleep took a while to settle over Winston. He finally drifted off and had jumbled, confused dreams. When the
thunder started rolling in the middle of the night, it woke him easily. He looked out the window as lightning lit up the sky, a gigantic flashlight flickering somewhere in the distance. It wasn't raining yet, but the deluge was sure to happen soon. He hoped tomorrow morning's puzzle wouldn't be outside, because it was going to be a muddy, sloppy mess out there.

Winston stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep to creep back over him. The world had just started fading away again when he heard a sound—footsteps? Coming down the stairs? He was instantly awake again.

Yes. A form was skulking through the entrance hall. Winston couldn't tell who it was, and he wished another bolt of lightning would illuminate the house.

For a moment, Winston thought this person was going to go out the front door. Instead, the door to the music room opened and then closed. Whoever it was turned on a light. The doors to that room had glass windows, but vellum shades had been pulled down. Against the shades Winston could see only a fuzzy silhouette walking around.

There was a lot of valuable stuff in that room, Winston thought.

He wondered if he should wake up Mal and Jake, and decided against it. He untangled himself from his blanket and stood up, a little unsteadily. There was a clock on one of the shelves—it was three forty-five
A.M.
Had Winston ever been awake to greet such a terrible hour?

Winston tiptoed over to the music room door. Was he about to catch the thief in action? If so, he planned on yelling loud enough to wake the house.

He put a hand on the curved brass door handle, gently pushed down, and eased the door open. Just a crack so he could see into the room.

Richard Overton was sitting at the piano, his hands splayed out on the keys. His back was to the door, and his head was bent as if in deep concentration. Winston wondered if he had been sleepwalking. Didn't sleepwalking overeaters wake up to discover themselves standing at an open refrigerator? Maybe this was sort of like that. Where else would a sleepwalking piano player end up?

Winston wasn't sure what to do. Leave him alone? See if he was okay?

He opened the door a little further. Something about the movement caught Richard's attention, and he straightened and looked around, a bit startled. He looked much older now, and he was plenty old to begin with. With his rumpled light-blue pajamas and white hair tufting this way and that, he might have been an escaped patient from a nearby hospital.

“Winston,” Richard said in a creaky voice. The confusion in his eyes drained away. He had been woolgathering, in some kind of sleepless trance, but now he was back in the world. “It's okay. Come in, come in.” He turned away and stared again at the piano keys.

Winston took a couple of steps into the room. “Are you all right?”

Richard thought about the question before answering. “Yes,” he said slowly. “But some of the pills I take . . . sometimes I can't sleep.”

“You haven't slept at all?”

There was another silence before Richard said, “I may have dozed off for a little while. Sometimes I'm not sure if I've slept or not. Isn't that funny? Norma will ask me if I've slept, and I don't always know the answer.” Richard looked at him. “And what are you doing awake at such an ungodly hour?”

“I heard footsteps.”

“Tch,” Richard said, chiding himself. “I apologize. When I can't sleep, I often come down here to play. I can't do that now, of course.
Not with a houseful of guests. But somehow I made it all the way to my piano before I realized that. Thank goodness I came to my senses before I started in with Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto.” He saw the blank look on Winston's face and explained, “That one gets off to a rather thunderous start.”

“Oh,” Winston said.

“Are you enjoying yourself this weekend?”

“I am,” Winston told him. “Your puzzles are fun.”

“I'm very glad you think so. And you're quite good at solving them. You're not a musician as well, are you?”

“Me?” Winston asked, surprised. “No!”

“No? Well, no matter,” said Richard. “I ask because many puzzle people are musicians, and many musicians are puzzle people. Some of my favorite people are in that overlap. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a puzzler of sorts, did you know that?”

Winston shook his head and shrugged. He knew Mozart was a classical composer, and that was the beginning and the end of his knowledge.

“Oh, it's true,” Richard said. “Mozart once wrote a piece called ‘Table Music.' It's a duet. The two musicians stand on either side of a table and play the sheet music, which is laid out between them.”

Winston squinted. Something was wrong with that. “Wouldn't the music be upside down for one of them?”

Richard beamed. “Exactly! They play at the same time, and even though one of them performs it right side up and the other one upside down, it comes out sounding wonderful. Isn't that delightful? It's as much a puzzle as a piece of music.”

“The musicians don't have to solve it, do they?” Winston asked. “They just have to play it.”

“Of course,” said Richard, waving a finger. “But don't you see, it
was a puzzle for Mozart to create it. A challenge for that amazing brain of his.” Richard, now looking more awake, regarded Winston for a moment and then said lightly, “Arthur mentioned to me that you are considering giving up puzzles.”

“He did?” Word traveled fast in this house.

Richard said with some concern, “I hope it was nothing this weekend that made you think such a thing.”

Winston looked up, surprised. “Oh—no!” he said. He considered whether or not to say anything more. “I got in trouble in school,” he said.

“For solving puzzles?” Richard said, with a bewildered smile. “That hardly seems like—”

“During class.”

“Ah.” Richard leaned back. “Teachers do like to be the center of attention, don't they? I had problems with that myself, once upon a time.”

Winston added, “And I . . . sort of broke some school equipment.”

That questioning smile returned. “This sounds like a very interesting story,” Richard said.

So Winston told him everything—about shattering the beakers in science lab, his notes home from his history teacher, his parents' increasing frustration, and finally the missed day at Adventureland. It occurred to him that these problems must have sounded ridiculous to a man like Richard Overton, who was famous for traveling the world and playing music for millions of people. But he listened quietly to Winston's tale, interrupting only to ask the occasional question.

Richard seemed to consider it all very seriously. He frowned and stared at the piano keys. Winston was surprised and a little uneasy that his story inspired this much contemplation.

After some time, Richard said, “Let me tell you what I think.”

And at that moment, incredibly, the door opened again. Richard and Winston turned to look as Amanda stuck her head in. She was holding a glass of milk, and she looked surprised and a little lost. “I couldn't sleep,” she said.

“There's a lot of that going around,” said Richard, smiling. “Come join us.”

Amanda stepped into the room. “I thought I heard voices, so I . . .” She trailed off.

“It's fine,” said Richard. “Winston and I were just chatting about puzzles.”

Winston and Amanda regarded each other. At their first meeting, they had agreed—silently but immediately—that they were from different planets and could never be friends. But now they might have been brother and sister: They were dressed almost exactly alike in dark blue sweatpants with loose, white T-shirts, each displaying a school logo. They weren't advertising the same schools, and Winston's sweatpants had a hole in the knee, while Amanda's looked like they had just been taken off a hanger. But still, it was kind of strange.

“Puzzles,” Amanda repeated. She said to Winston, “Do you really do puzzles, like, all day?”

Feeling defensive, Winston said, “Not
all
day
 . . .”

“How long then?”

Winston blinked. “How long what?”

“How many hours a day do you do puzzles?”

She seemed genuinely curious, though she was probably making fun of him on some level, too. Winston had to admit it was a pretty good question. Between solving them and creating them, it was a
lot
of time, wasn't it? That was the basic reason why he was so troubled. So how many hours were we talking? In the morning over
breakfast . . . between classes (and, let's face it, during) . . . after school and after his homework . . . maybe solving one more puzzle before bed or playing some fun new puzzle game online . . . Boy, it really added up. “I don't know,” he said, unable to get a real total. “Four hours a day? Five?”

Her jaw dropped. “You sit around solving puzzles four hours a day?”

Before Winston could defend himself, Richard interrupted in a calm voice. “How many hours a day do you play piano?”

Amanda raised her eyebrows. “That's totally different.”

Richard shrugged. “But what's the answer?”

She looked like she had caught herself in some kind of trap. Unwillingly, she said, “Four hours. Maybe more. But that's totally different!”

“It's not different at all,” Richard said. “You have a passion for music and spend a great deal of time learning about it and practicing. Winston has a passion for puzzles.” He shook his head. “No difference.”

Amanda squinted and frowned, like she wanted to say there was
too
a difference, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was, not at four o'clock in the morning.