Alex and the Ironic Gentleman

by Adrienne Kress

  “I’m sorry?” asked Alex. She didn’t quite understand.

  “It’s too late for apologies now, ducky. You just hold this mug over your head, and Grace will stay and make sure you don’t put it down. Because if you do . . .” Poppy took her pen out from behind her ear and poked Alex’s arm.

  “Ow!” Alex rubbed the spot where she had been poked.

  “Now, I’ll be back once it’s closing time.”

  “Um, I don’t think so,” said Alex again, putting down the mug and walking toward the door. “Look, I understand what I did was wrong, but my uncle is going to worry if I don’t come home soon, and . . .”

  “What? What?” Poppy wheeled around. She grabbed Alex by her shirt and flung her to the ground. Alex lay there shocked. “You leave, ducky, and I’ll call the police and tell them about your little trespassing jaunt! Perhaps you’d feel more comfortable in a jail cell!”

  Alex shook her head.

  “What was that?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Better. Grace, I leave her to you.” She pointed to the mug, and, with a final sneer, swept out of the room.

  “You heard her,” giggled Grace. Alex looked at her. Didn’t she see what Poppy had just done?

  “This is wrong!” she stuttered as she rose to her feet.

  “Do it!”

  Slowly, Alex picked up the mug and held it above her head, desperately thinking of what she could do to get herself out of this situation. She didn’t want the police to be called—after all, she had been doing something wrong—and what would be her defense? “I’m sorry, officer, I was looking for a treasure map” was no excuse for breaking the law. Or, at least, the rules.

  As she stood there thinking hard, it suddenly occurred to her that her hands were going numb. Holding that mug above her head had caused the blood to drain from her hands and down her arms, and to collect somewhere about her shoulders. The unfairness of the situation burned in Alex’s cheeks.

  Hours passed before Poppy returned. Now, I forgot to mention that Poppy wore flat brown shoes with a wooden heel. And I am sorry I forgot, because this is important. Wherever she would go there would be this dull click with each step she took. And when Alex heard the click-click of her shoes getting steadily louder down the hall, she couldn’t decide if it would be better for Poppy to come back so she could put down her arms, or worse because of what might yet happen to her. Philosophy is sort of silly like that. We spend all this time wondering why things exist, instead of dealing with the fact that they do. And, in any event, there wasn’t much point in Alex questioning her situation because Poppy was coming back whether she liked it or not.

  “Did it cheat?” Poppy asked Grace when she stepped into the room carrying the box containing the day’s receipts.

  “Oh, it tried, but,” and Grace gave a giggle, “I made sure it didn’t.”

  “That’s a lie!” said Alex, who, if anything, was always very proud that she did what she was told by authority figures.

  “You be quiet, small person,” snapped Poppy, sitting down. She opened the box and began to count the money. Which was not a lot since it was Sunday and was even less after she pocketed half of it. “Oh, put your arms down, for goodness sake,” she said glancing up at Alex. “Don’t be tiresome.”

  Alex lowered her arms and felt all the blood rushing back to her fingertips, causing an overwhelming tingling sensation.

  Poppy sat back in her chair and sighed luxuriously. “Grace, get a bottle, would you? The others should be finished locking up soon,” she said. “And you,” she turned to Alex, “give an old lady a foot massage.” Then she propped her feet up on a lime-colored ottoman and Grace slowly stood and left the room.

  Alex walked over and sat on the floor. “Um . . . ma’am . . . ?”

  “Speak up! Show some respect for your elders!” wheezed Poppy.

  “I was wondering . . . you know, why you were keeping me here and stuff?”

  Poppy looked down her chin at her and snorted.

  Alex sighed inwardly. “Fine, then maybe I should call my uncle. If I’m going to be here a while. He’s probably concerned about me.”

  Poppy snorted again. “I don’t think we need to worry about that. Bad children such as you usually result from poor parenting. I doubt he knows you’ve gone. And even if he knows, I doubt he cares. Now massage my feet before I lose my temper!”

  Alex took off Poppy’s click-click shoes and pulled off her beige stockings, which had gathered around her ankles. Her feet were very smelly and very wrinkled and very, very moist. Yes, her feet were as disgusting as you could possibly imagine, and since that is the case there is no need to describe the horror of the foot massage that followed. Let’s just say it went on for far too long and stopped only when the other four ladies finally joined them.

  So let me introduce you formally to all five Daughters of the Founding Fathers’ Preservation Society. There was Poppy—we know her well. She was the leader. And Grace with her little book. And then there was Mabel. You might remember her telling Alex about the treasure island painting and that she spat a lot when she talked, and her breath smelled of garlic and she had bright-blue hair. And next there was Gladys, who worked in the gift shop. Alex concluded that she must have been rather paranoid because she would jump at the slightest sound, and would nervously examine the door every five minutes. And finally there was Rose, who was quite tall for an old lady, and had long white hair and wore overalls, and the reason for this was that she was in charge of fixing things when they broke. Which was very often. And which she wasn’t any good at. In fact, she just made things worse. And all Daughters wore the same flat, click-click shoes so that when they walked in a group they sounded like a herd of sheep wearing tap shoes.

  They all made themselves comfortable in the cushy chairs while Poppy passed out their share of the pocketed receipts.

  “Ooh, this is lovely,” crooned Mabel. “I bet Grace is going to go right out and buy herself a pair of frilly knickers!” And all the little old ladies laughed and then coughed and then laughed some more.

  “Well, pour the wine, urchin!” screeched Poppy, remembering Alex and indicating the bottle Grace had brought back with her. Alex, who had never opened a bottle of wine in her life, approached it with trepidation. There was a rusty, sharp, and twisted corkscrew sitting next to it. The bottle was covered in a thick layer of dust apart from where Grace’s firm (but not particularly strong) grip had left fingerprints. Alex suddenly recognized what she was looking at.

  “You’re stealing Mr. Steele’s wine,” she said indignantly. She had an idea. “And if you don’t let me go, when the police come, I’ll tell them all about it!”

  “How dare you threaten us with such a thing?” said Poppy coldly. “We are responsible for all the items in this house. If we didn’t drink the wine, it would go bad.”

  “That would be awful,” squeaked Gladys, who was curled into a tight ball in a brown-and-white chair, eyeing Alex with deep suspicion.

  “But a full bottle of wine doesn’t go bad!” insisted Alex.

  “Everything goes bad. Even sticky sweet children turn bad, don’t they, Alex dear?” said Poppy, the tone of her voice becoming dangerously soft.

  To ease her frustration, Alex picked up the rusted cork-screw and jammed it into the bottle. With much effort she managed to free the cork from the bottle. She looked at the dirty mugs with caked-on tea in the bottom and lipstick on the rim sitting on the table in front of her.

  “What are you waiting for? We aren’t getting any younger, you know!” shouted Rose with a deep voice.

  Alex made a face and poured five mugs of wine. She handed one to each of the Daughters, who grabbed it out of her hands greedily, not seeming to notice that the mugs had not been cleaned yet. They slurped and chugged and held out their mugs for more, and Alex ran from Daughter to Daughter, pouring mug after mug, until the bottle was empty and Grace disappeared to bring back another from the Secret Room. When she returned the
whole thing started again.

  Alex had just finished filling Gladys’s glass again, which was a tricky task considering her tender nerves caused her to shake constantly, and was heading to fill Mabel’s when it happened.

  Mabel had been talking about her latest trip to Italy: “There were days I just had to sit around in my birthday suit it was so hot!” A puddle had accumulated at the base of her chair from the spit that flew freely from her mouth as she spoke. But Alex hadn’t noticed, and suddenly she found herself skidding, landing on Mabel, and spilling the contents of the wine bottle on her lap.

  Alex was up in an instant, apologizing profusely. Staggering to a standing position, Mabel slapped Alex hard across the face. “You clumsy oaf!” She looked down at herself. “You’ve ruined my best blouse!” She collapsed back into her chair and, pulling the base of her shirt up to her mouth, began to suck off the wine.

  Alex was stunned. She had never been hit before. What sort of grown-up hits a child? Her shock quickly vanished and soon she was shaking with rage. That was it!

  Sometimes our bodies do things without our instructing them to. So it was that, in this case, Alex found her body running toward the door to the room, flinging it open, and racing down the hall to the grand stairwell. Only when her body reached the front entrance did it decide to relinquish control over Alex and wait patiently for her to tell it what to do next. This was an unfortunate turn of events because, in this brief transition of power, Alex found herself rooted to the spot, giving Poppy and Rose ample time to catch up to her.

  Poppy sneered at her as she grabbed Alex by the shoulder. Then Rose pinned Alex’s arms roughly behind her, and the two of them dragged Alex back to the staff room.

  “Never do that again, ducky,” panted Poppy, “or I swear you will live to regret it.” She turned to Rose. “Go solder all those bloody exits shut. Every last one of them!”

  Brandishing her soldering iron, Rose gave a small nod and left the room.

  “Go sit in the corner and make yourself invisible until we can think of what to do with you next,” said Poppy, pointing a bony finger toward a dark corner across the room. “And not a peep or . . .” and she brandished her pen.

  Alex nodded numbly, went to where Poppy had directed her, and sat down. In the corner with her were three books and a mousetrap with a dead mouse in it, and the carpet felt damp and smelled of mold (not that sparkling green mold that it would be fun to eat a bowl of, but that real mold that is harmful to your health).

  She could feel tears welling up in her eyes. But she knew she mustn’t cry, despite all the unfairness. Alex always had worked very hard to do the right thing in her life, and the one time she crossed the line, or the rope as the case may be, she got held hostage and abused horribly! All she wanted now was to go home. Alex couldn’t stop thinking about her uncle. Why hadn’t he come for her yet? If only she had left a note. He was probably very anxious and would be very angry when she got back. And Mr. Underwood would be very disappointed in her as well.

  But then when she told them about how she had been treated . . . that she had had to hold a mug of water over her head, and massage Poppy’s feet, and serve stolen wine, and above all been slapped in the face!—well, they would be so upset that they would forget about getting angry at her. They would immediately Take Legal Action against the Daughters of the Founding Fathers’ Preservation Society. This made Alex smile. Hope has that effect on a person.

  As Alex tried to make herself as comfortable as she could in her little corner, she decided that, while she waited, perhaps there was a way to take advantage of her situation. After all, here she was trapped in a building that she knew somewhere housed a treasure map. There must be a way to convince the old ladies to allow her to wander through the house, especially now that the exits had all been soldered shut. She wasn’t sure yet how, but she was just going to have to figure it out.

  However, first she must look nonchalant. Alex reached over the mousetrap and picked up the three books.

  And that’s when Alex found the map.

  THE NINTH CHAPTER

  In which Alex finds the map.

  Of the three books Alex had picked up, she had chosen to look at a worn copy of The Glorious History of the Steele Estate because, as we know, she quite enjoyed looking at the pictures in it. She had inadvertently flipped open the book to that same page about the library she had studied only just the night before. And her eyes had hazily scanned down to the portrait of the lady of the house in the bottom left corner. Everything then had suddenly come into focus. The sharp look behind those bright green eyes, the curls in her long dark hair, and the letter “N” on the fan she held coyly half open by her ear.

  The letter “N”?

  And . . .

  A little arrow . . .

  Of course! Alex knew from Geography class that every map had an “N” and an arrow to indicate which way was North. Alex thought more. The mere fact that a little old lady said the painting had been put up to keep an eye on the master of the house didn’t mean that it was true. What if the painting had been put up after he had died? What if the lady of the house wanted to leave a clue behind, just in case something happened to her? And a lady as selfish as she was would have wanted to keep that map in her sights at every moment. What better way than to put it on her fan, something she would keep with her all the time?

  Alex’s heart began to race. It was perfectly clear to her where the fan was. She had seen it, but she had been so preoccupied by the painting of the island that she hadn’t really focused on it. But she now clearly remembered the fan sitting on the small table directly beneath it.

  She glanced up at the Daughters, fearing that somehow they could read her mind, but they were laughing and lolling in their revolting armchairs and didn’t seem to remember she was still in the room. Alex wasn’t sure what to do. Oh, come on, she begged her brain, how are we going to get that fan? If only she had noticed the picture last night. If only she had gone straight to the lady of the house’s bedroom and grabbed the fan. She wouldn’t have gone to the library, and she wouldn’t have gone behind the door. She wouldn’t have been unsure whether or not it was safe to come back into the library, and she wouldn’t have rushed to get back to the correct side of the red rope, and then she wouldn’t have dropped her toothbrush.

  Toothbrush.

  She stood up and walked over to Poppy who, when she saw her, automatically poked her in the arm with her pen.

  Alex winced.

  “What do you want?” she slurred, her eyes closed.

  “I need to brush my teeth,” said Alex.

  “Tough.”

  “If you don’t let me brush my teeth, when the police come I’ll tell them all about how Mabel hit me and stuff and maybe I would even say that you kicked me, too,” she said.

  Grace giggled.

  Poppy opened her eyes.

  “Look, I just want to brush my teeth. If you want, you could let someone take me. How about Gladys? She’s only had two glasses of wine.” Alex prepared herself for another poke.

  But Poppy just looked at her with a sneer. After a long look, she relaxed back into her chair, closing her eyes. “Oh, go on then. Gladys, take her.”

  Gladys opened her eyes wide. “But, Poppy, it’s all dark out there now.”

  “I said do it, Gladys.”

  Gladys uncurled herself nervously and stood up.

  She and Alex left the room and walked down the dark corridor toward the toilets. With each step they took, the floor creaked, and with each creak Gladys whimpered. They reached the toilets, and Gladys stood over her as Alex opened the blue carrying case and took out her toothbrush and brushed her teeth. Then they turned around and headed back to the room. And when they were halfway down the hall by the grand staircase, Alex stopped suddenly.

  “What, what is it?” asked Gladys, jumping.

  “I thought I heard a noise from upstairs. It was probably nothing, though.” Alex looked up the dark staircase and shudd
ered.

  “What . . . what did it sound like?” whispered Gladys, grabbing onto her arm.

  “I don’t know. A little like an axe murderer trying to be very quiet so he could wait for us all to be asleep and then kill us. But I could be wrong,” whispered Alex in return.

  Gladys began to moan softly to herself. “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, I could go up and look, I guess.”

  “But you could be killed!”

  “Or we could wait until later tonight . . .”

  “Oh go look! I’ll stay here.”

  Alex nodded and gave Gladys’s hand a comforting pat. She took a deep breath and headed up the dark stairs. Everything was going exactly as she had planned, but Alex couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there actually was an axe murderer hiding, waiting for her in the darkness ahead. She turned down the darkened hallway, and instead of going into the library, which just a few hours ago would have been her first choice, she turned the other way and entered the lady’s boudoir.

  A stream of moonlight filtered through the window onto the floor. Alex’s heart began to race again, and Alex took that as a sign that she was nervous. And when she had crossed the room and picked up the lady of the house’s fan, the one that sat beneath the painting of the island, she noticed her hand was shaking as well.

  Delicately, Alex opened the fan, half afraid it might crumble in her hands, as old things have a tendency to do. But it didn’t, thank goodness, or we wouldn’t have had much of a story from now on. She opened it. First she saw the “N” and the arrow, and then some writing and then a drawing that was shaped not entirely unlike, but not entirely like, the painting that was hanging directly above her head. Alex felt giddy, like when you get a perfect grade on your math test. Here, after generations of Wigpowders and Steeles had fruitlessly searched, a ten-and-a-half-year-old girl had found the Infamous Wigpowder’s treasure map!