Peril at Owl Park Read online

  “It is a model of the electric variety,” said Hector. “Very popular for city driving, and no need for a hand crank to start the engine.”

  “Let’s watch from inside,” said Lucy. “It’s too cold out here.”

  Within a minute we were perched on a window seat in the breakfast room, happily nestled on damask cushions instead of shivering on the doorstep like the frostbitten servants.

  A footman tugged uselessly on the handle of the door beside Mrs. Sivam. Her husband hurried around from the driver’s side to show how it was done. He assisted his wife in stepping down. They both wore fur coats nearly to their ankles and a bearskin rug was tossed across the back of the seat.

  “The vehicle is entirely open to the wind and snow!” said Hector. “They must dress like bears to survive the journey.” He shuddered.

  “And they’ve been visiting the tropics!” I said. “England must feel like an Arctic wasteland.”

  “He has an excellent mustache!” said Hector.

  “She looks like the Snow Queen,” I said. “Her hair is like…” Spun gold? A cloud in the dawn sky? Lemon meringues?

  James introduced Marjorie to his old friend, and Marjorie introduced her school chum to James. Everyone seemed very jolly. Marjorie and Mrs. Sivam, arm in arm, paused to meet Mrs. Frost, the housekeeper, and Pressman, the butler.

  “The Sivams didn’t bring their servants either,” said Lucy, “because of traveling. They need to borrow also.”

  “There is a trouble with the motorcar.” Hector pointed. Mr. Pressman and the footmen were all shaking their heads in response to a question from James.

  “I expect it’s just that none of the servants knows how to drive,” I said. “The owner will have to park it himself.”

  Mr. Sivam retrieved an ornate wooden box from the front seat and handed it carefully to James. He climbed in behind the wheel, steered the car backward in an elegant turn, and then drove out of our sight around the side of the manor. James stepped through a drift of deepening snow, carrying Mr. Sivam’s box with both hands.

  “What do you suppose is in that box?” I said.

  “Let’s find out!” Lucy hopped off the window seat and we did likewise.

  When we came into the Great Hall, my sister was leading Mrs. Sivam up the stairs. Lucy beetled over to James before he could disappear. He showed her the box but held it out of reach of her curious fingers.

  “She’s very bold,” I murmured.

  “Indeed,” said Hector.

  “I’ve put you in the Juliet suite,” came Marjorie’s voice from the landing, as she explained to Mrs. Sivam. “You have connecting rooms with a little balcony that overlooks the conservatory.”

  Lucy bounded back to join us. James strode away toward his study, the box tucked under his elbow.

  “Uncle James says that if we’re lucky, Mr. Sivam will tell us the spooky family legend about the contents of that box…something so precious that it has been hidden away in a bank vault for many long years. And now…it’s here at Owl Park!”

  CHAPTER 2

  A BREACH OF MANNERS

  A SPOOKY FAMILY LEGEND? A precious something inside a vault for eighteen years?

  But Lucy was not one to pause or ponder. She corralled us for a tour of the house.

  “We’ll start with the best bits,” she said, “because we won’t have time to see the whole place now. I know everything because I’ve been here hundreds of times, visiting Grandmamma.”

  I had a quick rush of gratitude that Dowager Lady Greyson was not my grandmother. So stiff and forbidding! Grannie Jane was nearly perfect, being quite observant about other people and often willing to answer questions.

  Lucy led us speedily along a passage painted forest green and lined with portraits of many pudding-faced ancestors. “You can look at them later,” she said. “They’ve been here for a hundred years and will likely stay another hundred. This door is the lavatory, in case you need to know that. See?” She opened it to show us a sink and a toilet in a room painted the color of a sunset. “Grandmamma might die if she knew I’d shown you a toilet.”

  She explained that some of the rooms had been updated with electrical wiring, but others still were lit with gas lamps. James was all for modernizing, but Grandmamma…was not so eager.

  “This”—Lucy tapped on a set of double doors but didn’t stop—“is the drawing room. You can see the ordinary rooms tomorrow. The drawing room, the music room, the Avon Room, the conservatory, all those and thirty more.” We went a few steps farther. “This”—she tapped on a tall, narrow door that began at waist height—“is the drawing room wood cupboard.” It was painted the same dark green as the wall, only a small knob making it visible.

  “What, please, is a wood cupboard?” Hector asked.

  Lucy paused her march and opened the door to show us rows of neatly stacked logs. “The servants fill the cupboard from out here in the passage,” she explained, “so they don’t disturb the family and guests. There’s a door on the other side, next to the fireplace, so Uncle James—or whoever—can add wood to the fire when we need it. Do you not have them where you come from?”

  “Not in any house I know,” said Hector, “but is most ingenious.”

  “Let’s go to the kitchen,” said Lucy, “and see if we can swipe a biscuit. This way!”

  Lucy thundered ahead of us around a corner, chattering long past when we could distinguish her words.

  I glanced at Hector.

  “She is a bit much, isn’t she?” I whispered.

  He lifted one eyebrow and then the other, making me laugh.

  “She’s only ten,” I said.

  “And I am pleased,” he said, “to think of biscuits.”

  Lucy’s head popped back around the corner. “Are you coming?”

  Yes, we were coming.

  * * *

  —

  “This,” said Lucy, “is the kitchen!” She opened the baize door that separated the main house—the Upstairs—from the domain of the servants—the Downstairs—though it was really only four stairs in this case. The kitchen was on the ground floor, not in a basement the way it often is in a town house. The room we came into was the actual kitchen, with a big fire, and the ovens, the sinks and worktables. Stepping from the quiet passage to the buzzing world within was like arriving at a village fete. Girls in caps and aprons chopped vegetables and stirred soup; a footman polished cutlery; another footman, very blond, came whistling in from the courtyard with a block of ice wrapped in a towel; a boy a bit younger, and certainly skinnier than we were, sat on a stool near the fire rubbing the toe of a man’s boot to a high sheen. The cook, Mrs. Hornby, had a row of featherless dead birds on the table in front of her, while a scullery maid frantically plucked another.

  The servants’ hall, where they ate their meals, was a second room that mirrored the kitchen, with windows the length of the dividing wall, so that anyone sitting at the table in the hall could see what was happening in the kitchen.

  “There’s the pantry over there,” said Lucy, “where some of the food is stored. And the butler’s pantry there…” She pointed. “Where Mr. Pressman has his headquarters and locks up things that no one’s meant to touch. Scullery’s in there, bakehouse is out in the courtyard, same as ice and wood and coal. Mrs. Frost’s sitting room is that one. She and Mr. Pressman are the head servants, like king and queen of Downstairs.”

  “Well, I’m queen of the kitchen,” said Cook, “and I’m telling you that no one is welcome to hang about gawking. We’re making your dinner and we’ll thank you to move along.”

  “Have you got any biscuits, dear Mrs. Hornby?” said Lucy.

  “There’s squashed flies in the jar, Miss Lucy,” said Mrs. Hornby. “And that’s all before your supper. Now get along out of my hair.”

  “Better than nothing, I suppose.” Lucy p
outed but I could see it was all for show. She reached for the porcelain cookie jar with eager hands.

  “Squashed flies?” Hector murmured, looking miserable. “An English specialty?”

  “A delicacy,” I whispered. “Much more difficult to catch than ants.”

  Lucy removed the lid and offered the open jar to Hector. He waved his hand with a polite “Non, merci,” before Lucy and I laughed.

  “They’re having you on,” called the boot-polishing boy. “It’s not real flies in there, only currants. Go on! Try one!”

  Hector bravely nibbled at a corner. Then he bowed to Mrs. Hornby. “My first squashed fly!” he said. “A memorable occasion.”

  A clock chimed the quarter hour in sharp notes. The cook pulled a handkerchief from her apron pocket to wipe the perspiration from her face.

  “Nearly time for the dressing bell,” she said.

  Lucy tugged me toward the stairs. Hector caught my hand and off we galloped, through the green baize door, along a passage and then another passage until Lucy took us into a dim room. Tall windows were draped with graceful swaths of a pale lavender silk that seemed to reflect the snow outside.

  “This is the morning room,” said Lucy. “The fire’s not lit because it’s not morning. Only Aunt Marjorie ever comes in here, to write her letters or to give servants their orders. Grandmamma does letters in her bedroom now that she’s so old. This room is very pretty when the sun is shining.”

  “Let’s come back in the morning,” I said, with a shiver.

  “Wait!” said Lucy. Her voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “This is where the real tour begins.”

  She hurried across the carpet to an ornate cabinet standing against the wall. On the upper shelves, behind a paned glass door, were rows of teapots. None was the ordinary sort that a person might find in a kitchen. No Brown Bettys here. They were shaped like cats and temples, elfin heads and beehives. A matching pair of elephants with raised trunks that worked as spouts. The glazes were Japanese red and glimmering gold, ancient green and cobalt blue.

  “These are beautiful,” I said. “May we come back when there is light and heat? To look properly?”

  “We’re not here for the silly old teapots,” said Lucy. With a flourish, she turned the handle on one of the lower drawers.

  The entire cabinet seemed suddenly to sigh. It swung away from the wall, a thick, oversized door, so quietly and gently that the teapots barely trembled.

  “Ohh!”

  A secret passage!

  We gaped at the entrance to a tunnel, as black and uninviting as a coal chute. Like the throat of an ogre. Like the opening to a cave that promised a colony of bats…

  “May we go in?” said Hector.

  “That’s why we’re here!” Lucy grinned as if she’d built it herself. “There’s a torch…just…here.” She retrieved it from a ledge and pressed the button on its side. “The battery’s quite low, but it will get us there and back.”

  “Where is there?” said Hector. “If I may ask?”

  “Just follow me,” said Lucy. “It’s narrow, but you don’t need to bend over. Even Uncle James can nearly stand up. He’s the one who showed me this, on my tenth birthday. No one else knows, Uncle James says, now that his father’s dead, not even Grandmamma. Not even my mother, because it was meant to be for boys only.” Worry flashed across her face. “I hope he doesn’t regret showing me, now that I have a baby brother.”

  “You’ll be the one to show Robert,” I assured her.

  “But not for ten more years,” Lucy said.

  She stepped blithely into the passage, the torch beam fluttering like the flight of a lightning bug. I followed, expecting cobwebs to hit my face. Hector came behind, both of us shuffling in the near dark.

  “Pull the cabinet shut, will you, Hector?” said Lucy. “We can’t have a maid coming in and finding it!”

  “Ugh, Lucy!” I said. “It’s shining right into my eyes.”

  “Sorry!” The light swooped down.

  Hector ran his hand along the edge of the door, groping for something to hold onto without smashing his fingers.

  “It’s higher than you’d expect,” said Lucy. “Shaped like the handle of a suitcase.”

  “I have it now.” We were plunged into night with a wheezing thud. The weak shaft of light from Lucy’s torch made a circle the size of an orange on the floor.

  “Don’t be bothered if the light goes out,” said Lucy. “I know the way. Keep one hand on the wall and stay close. It’s not far, but we need to be very quiet. If we can hear them, you know they can hear us.”

  “They?” I said.

  “You’ll see,” said Lucy. “Now ssh, and follow me.”

  We inched forward. I rather wished I could hold one of her plaits for guidance. Instead, I told a story in my head, making us as brave as brave.

  Only the long-lost sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh, studded with gems and gleaming with gold, could make this fearsome venture worth the risk. A noise ahead sent a shudder through the small, courageous company of explorers. What might be moving in such a place as this? A colony of ravening bats? Or ghosts, perhaps? The phantom remains of travelers who had come before, lost and starved to death in the perilous underground maze—

  “I’m going to turn off the light,” Lucy whispered, “to save what little is left.”

  Click. I blinked several times but could see nothing. I reached out a finger to touch the folds of Lucy’s dress in front of me. Her voice sounded hollow when it came out of the dark.

  “There’s a corner just ahead, and then—oof—watch it, right turn here.”

  We’d inched around the sharp bend when Lucy paused again, her words hushed. “The passage has spy-holes into two different rooms. We’ll stop at the first, where the study is, because the men are always there before the dressing bell rings. Absolute silence, right?”

  I should not have been surprised at the word spy. The purpose of a passage is to lead a person somewhere. And the purpose of a secret passage is that no one knows you’re there. Lucy squeezed herself aside to let me have the first go. She nudged my face into alignment before a narrow slot where I had quite a good view of one slice of James’s study.

  James stood behind his desk, laughing as he poured amber liquid from a decanter into three glasses on a tray. I was so close that I could hear the ice clinking as it shifted. No wonder Lucy had warned us to be quiet! James handed a drink to Mr. Sivam, who sat in front of the desk on an upright chair. Mr. Sivam passed it along to another man whose back was to me and then accepted a glass for himself. The other man was old, I saw, because what little hair he had was gray and tufty, poking out around drooping ears.

  “A toast!” James lifted his glass. “To new friends and old.”

  “To renewed family honor,” said Mr. Sivam, raising his glass in return.

  “Hear, hear!” agreed the other man, slurping his drink.

  “Dr. Musselman,” murmured Lucy, into my ear. “Grandmamma’s physician. So dull!”

  “You were saying, Lakshay?” said James. “Your intentions for…” He tapped the carved box that sat beside the ice bucket on his desk.

  Mr. Sivam sighed. “My wife and I differ on this matter, but I feel duty bound…to correct a historic wrong, I suppose, by returning the treasure to its original home.”

  Lucy poked me. “Treasure!” she whispered. “Give Hector a turn.”

  Reluctantly, I traded places. Luckily, the voices were still audible even when not watching. I pressed my ear to the wall, not wanting to miss a single word.

  “Honor is a personal matter,” said James. “We each of us knows what feels right, but it can be difficult to uphold when others declare us mistaken.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the doctor. “Whole wars are fought to avenge honor. I could tell you tales that would make your blood run cold
.”

  “Perhaps not now, Dr. Musselman,” said James, quickly. “Would you like to keep your treasure secure inside my safe, Lakshay?”

  “A safe is the first place a thief would look,” muttered Dr. Musselman.

  “I thank you for understanding, gentlemen,” said Mr. Sivam. “The notion of a curse is absurd, but I am compelled to return what does not belong to me. Until then, I shall keep it near me at all times, and guard it with my very life!”

  “Hear, hear!” said the doctor.

  A sudden echoing bong made us jump like rabbits after a gunshot. We clamped hands over our mouths to stifle the giggles and scurried back along the darkened passage.

  “That was the dressing bell!” cried Lucy, as we emerged. “We have thirty minutes, and half of them will be spent climbing the stairs!” She maneuvered shut the cabinet to hide the secret passage and then rushed to the door.

  “Come on!” she cried, and was gone.

  “It is not calm, an English visit,” said Hector. “Here is much activity.”

  “And mystery!” I said.

  “Does he mention there is a curse?” Hector’s voice deepened dramatically as he quoted Mr. Sivam. “ ‘I shall guard it—’ ”

  “ ‘With my very life!’ ” I finished.

  “What can he be hiding?” said Hector.

  “We are honor bound to find out,” I said. “But first we must dress for dinner.”

  CHAPTER 3

  A TALE OF WOE

  WE ARRIVED, PANTING, at our rooms on the third floor of Main House, without being seen or scolded for our dishevelment and dirt-smudged hands. Poor Hector was most dismayed at the ruffling of his hair and the grimy state of his sailor collar.

  As neither Lucy nor I had a nursemaid in attendance, an under-parlormaid had been assigned to assist with our dressing and undressing. Hector was not considered old enough to have a valet, but he was well accustomed to looking after his own grooming. One luxury was that Stephen, the boot boy, would polish our shoes each night. We had only to leave them in the hallway outside our doors before going to bed, and they would appear as shiny as brand-new by morning.