The Mystery of the Cupboard

by Lynne Reid Banks

  And our Great Day was over.

  I took Lottie home in another cab. What an expense, two in one day! Well, it was only once… She was exhausted, but she couldn’t stop chattering and telling me how she had loved it, every moment, and all I said was, “You won’t forget it, Lottie, will you? Never never never? Promise me.” And she promised. And when we reached her familiar door, she hugged and kissed me again and rushed out of the cab, and then stopped and came back. “Aren’t you coming to help me tell them, Aunt?” “No, darling. I’m tired. You tell them for me. Goodbye.”

  I said it cheerfully because I am an actress. But as I waved at her smiling figure on the doorstep, I felt my heart break.

  I made my key that night, as pretty and dainty as the original, and something stronger than I kept my tears at bay so I could finish it off with my nail file, smoothing the rough bits.

  And as I fashioned it, I fed into it some of my Gift.

  I know now that I did this, though I hardly knew it then — I only knew I was bending all my strength on making the key perfect, and I felt something go out of me, and then the key grew warm again in my hands as if freshly poured, and I knew it had power in it to do more than open boxes. But I didn’t know what. I only knew my heart had broken and that I would have given anything to have it be yesterday and not today.

  I looked at it. It shone like silver and behind it I seemed to see the aquamarine drops, frozen like my tears that I had not shed yet. I saw in it a thing of power into which I had poured more than lead.

  And when it was finished, I cried at last. I cried myself to sleep. And had a very strange dream that even now I can remember, so clearly that I believe it was no dream… But it is not part of this story. Perhaps the future reader will know what I am speaking of…

  Maria and Matthew had a telephone now. The next day I made my very first telephone call, from a public instrument.

  Maria answered. “Oh, Jessie, I’m glad you telephoned! I wanted to thank you. Our little girl was so thrilled!” For a moment I thought she would relent, but to make matters crystal clear, she said sweetly, “It was the best parting gift in the world.”

  I felt my heart grow hard again. “I didn’t telephone to be thanked. I want to come and say goodbye.”

  “But — we agreed — in any case, Matt has taken her to visit his sister.”

  “To say goodbye to you”

  “To me?” she said, startled. “But - but Matt doesn’t mean that you and I may never see each other!”

  “I am going abroad,” I said grandly. Of course this was a lie.

  “Oh! Where?”

  “Far away — you don’t need to know where.”

  “But I do!”

  “You’ve never needed to know where I live in London,” I said with a trace of bitterness.

  She was silent. Then she said, “Well, come then. Come now. And we’ll talk. It won’t be goodbye — surely we’ll meet again, I couldn’t imagine life without you!”

  Silly, shallow girl, I thought. You seriously imagined you could deprive me of Lottie but keep me for yourself. You want it all, as you always did. But now you’ll find everything has its price.

  I went to her beautiful house, where I had known the only happiness of my adult life, for the last time. And there, in her boudoir, I did the deed. She once told me the word boudoir means ‘a sulking room’ in French. Is there a word for a stealing room?

  I sat calmly, waiting for her to leave me alone. I knew she would. I had arranged it.

  The maid who always let me into the house was also the one who would bring us our usual tray of tea. When she had opened the door to me I pressed a pound note into her hand - a fortune! — and said, “Millie, when the mistress rings for the tea, pretend not to hear.”

  “Yes, Miss,” she said, looking absolutely dumbfounded.

  And she gave me my pound’s worth. Maria had to leave the room to find out why no one came when she rang. And in those few minutes I crept into the adjoining bedroom, opened the jewel case whose hiding place I knew well, snatched the aquamarine earrings, and closed it again. Then I slipped back to my usual chair by the window.

  I had done it so often in imagination, my heart was not even beating fast nor my breath coming short. I remember thinking calmly, I seem to be a born thief. I felt then not one trace of guilt. Not then.

  I said my farewells to my sister, quite coolly. I pretended I was going to America. My mind and heart were numb of thought and feeling. The earrings were mine. The score seemed settled.

  A pair of earrings in payment for my darling Lottie? Well, I was mad at the time. Mad against my sister, against my life, mad with a grief that, even after last night’s outburst of weeping, I hadn’t let myself feel yet.

  You, reader of the future, before you judge me: Be sure you are not subject to fits of temporary madness during which you may do terrible deeds, with consequences as yet undreamed of.

  8

  The Old Bottle

  At teatime one of the thatchers came to the window, gesturing. He had something in his hand - it looked like a dirty glass jar.

  “Look, Lionel! They’ve found the bottle!” exclaimed Omri’s mother excitedly.

  Everyone hurried out into the sunny, reed-strewn garden. The whole team was there, grinning broadly. ‘The oul’ bottle’ didn’t look particularly old. It was a half-gallon cider jar with a wide neck closed by a screw top, and there was something in it down the middle.

  The head thatcher opened it and fished this out. It was a stiff brown roll of paper or something like paper.

  “Parchment!” said Omri’s father reverently. They carefully unrolled it on the garden table. There were a number of smaller pieces of ordinary paper rolled up inside it.

  The parents went quite crazy over these. They were mainly lists of names, and the only halfway interesting thing for Omri at first was a few scrawled comments at various dates, such as: ‘June 12 had to stop work till more thatch come’ and ‘Sep 20 thunderstorm blew the half we done away tarpaulin and all, right across field. Mr S beside hiself though it weren’t our fault’ and ‘Bob T. fell off rooftree luckily on a pile of reeds so only cracked his leg.’ One of the men read this aloud and they all roared with laughter. “Seemingly Bob must’ve had too much cider with his lunch!”

  Then Omri’s mother picked up one of the newer pieces of paper and said, “Oh, here’s the one from the last thatching, back in 1950!” And suddenly Omri was interested.

  “Let me see that, Mum!” he cried, almost snatching it from her hands.

  There was the list of names, and a few comments that made Omri’s heart beat faster.

  ‘Missus D’ (Driscoll, thought Omri, that’s her!) ‘still gives us our tea though we trys to stop her troubling herself when she should keep to her bed.’ ‘Doctor come. Missus D. weaker.’ And, at the bottom, one last comment that chilled Omri’s heart: ‘We did the last trim very quiet. Finished October 10, 1950. She won’t see the job, poor lady.’

  “Omri,” said his mother, who was reading over his shoulder, “could ‘Missus D’ have been Jessica Charlotte?”

  Omri opened his mouth to say, “Of course it was,” but he mustn’t give away that he knew anything, so he said, “Maybe, Mum.”

  “She did die that year. You know, I’ve been thinking about it all, since you came up with your idea about Jessica Charlotte living in this house. It’s all coming back… I was about nine, and Granny Marie got a letter telling her her sister had died. She was very upset about it. ‘She was here in England!’ she kept saying. ‘So near, so near, all this time!’ She’d always thought she was abroad. I remember her crying, which she never did usually, and me trying to make her feel better, and her saying, ‘Here all the time, and never a word or a sign! And now it’s too late!’ Then she put on what she called her blacks — her funeral clothes — marched me in to the next-door neighbour’s, and was gone for two days.”

  She broke off, frowning.

  “Then something else happ
ened. Just after she got back, the postman brought a big package. I remember her getting it. She tore the paper off it — it was a box of some kind — but she wasn’t interested in that. There was a note with it, and when she read it she just broke down. It was awful. She wouldn’t show it to me. I remember her sobbing and crumpling it up, and after that for days and days she just kept bursting into tears. ‘Oh, how could she! How could she be so wicked!’ she kept saying. ‘My own sister to be the cause of it all!’ And I kept on at her to tell me what her wicked sister had done, but she never would. And after that she refused to speak about her. So I always thought about her as my wicked great-aunt Jessica Charlotte.”

  Omri said nothing. He couldn’t. He was thinking, She was wicked, then. Really wicked. But he didn’t want to think that. The notebook had said to him, don’t judge. He didn’t know everything yet. He kept his mouth shut and picked up another bit of paper from the bottle without seeing it.

  The older bits of paper that were fascinating Omri’s father didn’t seem to mean much to the thatchers. They were mulling over the latest bit. One of them pointed and said, quite excitedly, “Here, look, here be ol’ Jack ’Obbs, ’e didn’t retire till a year or two back. Still plays a good game of skittles does Jack.”

  “And here’s Tom Towsler’s signature, he’s still goin’ strong, saw him in the Red Lion last week.”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘strong’,” said another. “Not up ‘ere, he ent,” and he pointed to his own head. The others gave a sympathetic chuckle.

  Omri could hardly believe his ears.

  “Do — do you mean, some of the men who thatched the roof last time, who signed the bottle paper, are still around?”

  “Why not? ‘Tweren’t much more’n thirty year ago. Tom ent above sixty, if he’s that much.”

  “It’s extraordinary!” said his mother suddenly. “They might have known my great-aunt! Don’t you think it’s thrilling, Omri?”

  Omri frowned and said nothing. He was thinking.

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re all rabbiting on about,” grumbled Gillon, heading back into the house. “Ask me, it’s a dead bore. And I do mean ‘dead’!”

  After the others had gone off, Omri sought out the chief thatcher.

  He was halfway up one of the long ladders. The new thatch had come - huge piles of it, beautiful, golden, and straight, in bundles — and the real thatching work was beginning.

  “Could you take me to meet those men — Tom Towsler and Jack Hobbs?”

  The thatcher paused and looked down at Omri. “Well, I dunno… Jack’s on holiday… I s’pose you could try the Red Lion. That’s Tom’s local. They got a garden kids is allowed in. If he was there, of a Sunday like, you could have a word, maybe. He’s a bit funny in the head though, is Tom. You mustn’t take all he says but with a pinch of salt like.”

  On Friday, school finished for half-term — that was nine blissful days of freedom. No homework need be worried about until the night before school restarted. As soon as he got home, Omri snatched a scone, raced to his room, blocked the doors, and opened the notebook. Patrick was coming tomorrow and he was to meet Tom Towsler the next day. It was more important than ever now that he should read to the end of the story. But he was still only halfway through the notebook. The writing was getting more difficult to read. He supposed Jessica Charlotte was getting weaker and iller.

  I went home on the omnibus as if nothing had happened. The aquamarine earrings were in my pocket and I kept putting my hand in to feel them. I had done it. I had taken my revenge. And I could never be caught — never. Maria had left the room for under two minutes, and the desk where her key was kept was downstairs. She couldn’t suspect me. I had got clean away with it! I remember feeling madly excited and wanting to tell everyone on the omnibus how clever I’d been.

  This feeling of elation lasted for one week. But it was mixed with another feeling, very disturbing.

  I remember that week as one might remember a week of drunkenness or madness when one is not in a normal state of mind, when in fact the mind is not working properly. Later its function returns — one returns to oneself — and looks back in wonder and horror, thinking “Was that I? Was that creature revelling in her vile deed, that conscience-less monster — was that myself?”

  And all the time I felt that part of my mind that contains my Gift pulling, dragging at me, urging me to listen to it, to switch ‘on’ and listen. The strange thing was that throughout the entire week, waking and sleeping, the word ‘lead’ kept coming into my mind. ‘Lead.’ ‘Pour the lead, Jessica Charlotte!’ I had a great urge — an urge I’d never had — to cast my own future in the lead. It was my Gift, warning me! If I had heeded, could I have changed anything? That is what tortures me.

  But I rejected the call. I would not hear it.

  Exactly one week after I had stolen the earrings, I left my basement rooms to walk through the streets to the shops. I remember every detail of that day: the weather, my clothes, the look of my hand in its old kid glove as I handed over a penny for an evening newspaper. I remember the newsboy’s face.

  I glanced at the front page. And there was Matthew.

  Matthew photographed on his wedding day, in a top hat and morning dress, with Maria, a radiant bride, on his arm. And before I could brace myself I had read the words under it, the words that burst that evil bubble of elation and shattered my peace for ever.

  EX-COLONIAL DIES UNDER WHEELS OF CAB

  Half paralysed with horror, I read on. But what was written in the paper was obviously only part of the story. Why should Lottie have run out into the street, making Matthew run after her, straight under a taxi cab? It made no sense — I couldn’t take it in. “It’s a mistake! A mistake!” I kept thinking. Matthew, dead! It was unthinkable!

  I ran in blind panic to a telephone. Maria’s maid, Millie, answered. She said what she always said, “Mr Darren’s residence,” and then burst into tears.

  “Millie, Millie! It’s Mrs Darren’s sister, tell me what happened, please, tell me at once!”

  “Oh, Miss Driscoll, it’s too dreadful! I can’t tell you!”

  “Do as you’re told, girl!” I shouted at her down the line.

  My sudden anger made her control herself. She lowered her voice, still shaken with sobs.

  “It was them earrings, Miss. The bluey-green ones Mrs Darren set such store by. They was lost, Miss. She couldn’t find them. And it seems no one could have taken them except Miss Lottie.”

  Something seemed to burst in my head. I nearly fainted where I stood. Lottie! Lottie take the earrings! What madness was this? My Lottie?

  “Mrs Darren let her play with her jewels sometimes for a special treat. She said Miss Lottie was the only one who knew the secret of the hiding place where she kept the key. She called the child into her room (I was in the room next door, I couldn’t help but hear, Miss, really I couldn’t!). She questioned her, and poor Miss Lottie kept crying and saying she never took them and Mrs Darren said she wouldn’t be angry if she’d own up, but she wouldn’t, and all of a sudden she run straight out of the room and down the stairs.

  “Mr Darren was just coming in through the front door, and Miss Lottie - she was crying something awful, Miss, crying and shouting out ‘I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t!’ hysterical-like, and she run right straight out through the front door under her father’s arm, and down the steps into the street! And her father run after her calling her to come back. And then there was a kind of screech in the road as the cab tried to stop, and a thump, and then it was all over.”

  I hadn’t breathed. But now I did, in gasps. I cried out, “And did she come back - Miss Lottie - is she safe at least?”

  And Millie said, “Yes, Miss, Miss Lottie is safe and sound. But the mistress is near to going out of her mind. The doctor’s given her something to make her sleep, but God knows what will happen to us all when she wakes up.”

  Omri stopped reading and looked out over the garden. The view was peaceful
and beautiful, nine days of holiday lay ahead, Patrick was coming. But Omri saw and thought of none of it. He was inside Jessica Charlotte’s head, feeling what she must have felt when she learnt that by stealing the earrings, she had killed Matthew. That was how she would look at it. And through Lottie! Through suspicion falling on Lottie, the person she loved best.

  It was too awful. He couldn’t bear to think of how she must have felt.

  He tried to read on but he couldn’t, partly because he was so wound up and partly because the writing on the following page was suddenly very faint. Perhaps Jessica Charlotte had left the notebook open in the sun, because the ink had faded almost completely. He managed to decipher a few words: ‘alone’… ‘wandering’… ‘despair’… ‘river’… ‘coward’… ‘never’. And then, again, ‘alone’.

  He turned the page, cautiously, as if afraid of what he would find there. And he gasped with surprise.

  The writing was strong again - stronger and clearer than it had ever been. But it was quite different!

  It was written with a different pen, one with a thicker nib, and blue ink instead of brown. It was surely a man’s handwriting, sharp, hard, and full of jutting points and steeply sloping lines.

  Omri felt almost sick. Someone else had taken over the writing! Had she died - Jessica Charlotte - just at that point? Was he never going to find out now the secret of the cupboard?

  9

  Frederick

  I am Frederick Anthony Driscoll. I was born in this house nearly fifty years ago, the son of an unknown father. I am a plain businessman who does not pretend to any talent for this kind of writing. I do it only because my mother is dying and has made it her last request.

  She has sent for me because she wants this account she has begun completed, and she is no longer able to hold a pen. She says there is no one else.

  I am aware of my debt to her, and that I have not been the son she would have wanted. We have never got along. It is a sad thing to say, but it is the truth and she acknowledges it as she lies there. We are different kinds of people.