As for your invitation to be your personal guest for the big night, I couldn’t be more thrilled to accept. I will bring a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne, vintage 1959, to toast your achievement.
Sincerely,
Markus Iger, Esq.
A DINNER TO DIE FOR
THE foyer of the mansion was roughly the size and height of a racquetball court, decorated from floor to ceiling with dozens of life-size portraits of Victorian ladies and gentlemen. There, Miss Reynolds made the formal acquaintance of Uncle Jack, who shook her hand, and Aunt Judith, who actually started to curtsy.
Roderick sat formally before her.
“Ah, and this is your famous cat,” Miss Reynolds observed politely as she bent to pat his head.
“Roderick Usher,” the twins said as an introduction.
“Delightful!” she said, rising.
But the twins noticed that she wiped her hands as if, despite her consistent smile, she found something distasteful about having touched their cat.
They wondered about her sincerity.
“And, of course, I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting your wonderful boys,” she said to Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith. “Such outstanding public speakers. To say nothing of their skills as . . . amateur detectives.”
“Yes, their interests are diverse,” Aunt Judith answered proudly.
“We’re grateful that you’re willing to settle this old family matter for us,” Uncle Jack said.
“I’d call answering for the murder of America’s greatest writer more than a mere family matter,” Miss Reynolds replied. “And I mean that both for you Poes and for me.”
“Well, honesty is the best policy,” Aunt Judith said, reverting to the comfort of one of her many favorite sayings.
“Please join me in the parlor,” Miss Reynolds said, leading them out of the foyer. “We’ll get to the more serious matter of justice shortly. But first, you are my dinner guests, and I have delightful surprises for all of you.”
The parlor was sumptuously decorated, but it was not the tasteful art on the walls or the antique curios in the chiffonier or the eighteenth-century Persian rugs or the early-twentieth-century Tiffany lamps that grabbed the Poe family’s attention. Rather, it was the delicious and aromatic spread of appetizers arranged elegantly on a long, antique Oriental table set against one wall.
“Mmmm,” Uncle Jack murmured. “Beignets.”
The New Orleans pastry had become his favorite food during the recent movie shoot in the French Quarter. Judging from the aroma, these were just out of the deep fryer.
“And Camembert cheese with water crackers,” Aunt Judith marveled, turning wide-eyed to Miss Reynolds. “How’d you know that was my favorite?”
Miss Reynolds merely smiled.
For Edgar and Allan, there were dark chocolate truffles, the twins’ favorite.
“Nothing sets a welcoming tone better than good, personally chosen hors d’oeuvres,” Miss Reynolds said, beaming. With a wave of her hand, she motioned the family toward the opulent spread. “Please.”
Uncle Jack was first to oblige. “With beignets and chocolate as appetizers, I can hardly imagine what’s for dessert,” he commented, confectioners’ sugar showering down on his suit jacket as he took his first bite.
“I believe in sometimes mixing courses in unconventional ways,” Miss Reynolds said. “Oh, I’m happy to serve ordinary appetizers for most people, but if your preference happens to be for sweets, then why not start with them?” She stood near Uncle Jack and lowered her voice as if sharing a confidence. “Some of my society friends call me uncouth, but none of them ever leaves my home without a full belly and a smile.”
Uncle Jack swallowed a bite. “Uncouth? I call you commonsensical.”
“Yes, Miss Reynolds,” Aunt Judith agreed. “You’re most generous.” She picked up a small sterling silver knife, spread a layer of Camembert cheese onto a water cracker, and took a ladylike bite.
“Boys?” Miss Reynolds asked, turning to them.
They shook their heads no.
“What’s wrong?” she inquired.
“It’s thoughtful of you to have all this here for us,” Edgar said.
“But what about Roderick?” Allan asked.
Roderick sat at the twins’ feet. He bore an expression of injured neglect.
Miss Reynolds smiled and turned back to the laden table. She removed a sterling silver cover from a small serving plate, revealing rows of glistening pink flesh sliced almost as thin as paper.
“Sashimi-grade tuna,” she said, addressing Roderick.
Roderick’s expression of neglect turned to one of delight.
Miss Reynolds put the serving plate on the floor.
Roderick sprang forward.
Edgar and Allan joined in at the table, delighting in truffle after chocolate truffle. Delicious! The rich truffles were so good that they even wrapped a few in a napkin and snuck them into their pockets for later.
Miss Reynolds poured imported water into crystal glasses for the Poes and set one on the floor for Roderick.
“And what about you, Miss Reynolds?” Aunt Judith asked, spreading more Camembert on another cracker. “Aren’t you joining us in your wonderful banquet?”
Miss Reynolds shook her head regretfully. “I’ve a health condition that severely limits my diet.”
“Oh!” Aunt Judith exclaimed. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Miss Reynolds replied. “I enjoy watching all of you enjoy.”
“How’d you know what we all liked?” Uncle Jack asked. The twins had wondered that too.
“Oh, your family is quite famous since the adventures in Kansas and New Orleans,” she said. “I read about you in the newspaper and on the Internet. The articles were full of those personal details.”
“Ah, I see,” Uncle Jack said, satisfied by her answer—and by his second beignet.
But Edgar and Allan looked at each other, suspicious.
Their shared thoughts raced through the possibilities. Yes, they’d mentioned in a newspaper article that they liked dark chocolate truffles and that Roderick’s favorite dish was tuna sashimi. And, yes, Uncle Jack had waxed eloquent to New Orleans Dining Monthly about his love of beignets. But had Aunt Judith ever mentioned how fond she was of Camembert cheese with water crackers anywhere?
They looked at Miss Reynolds cautiously.
Had they been careless?
This reminded them of the mysterious greeting cards they’d discovered in the limousine and from which they’d been distracted almost immediately.
It was no time to stay distracted.
“You boys suddenly look so serious,” Miss Reynolds commented, her voice oozing hospitality. “Isn’t the food to your liking? The truffles come from a famous chocolatier in Turin, Italy.”
Turin! the boys thought, their memory jogged.
That was the city pictured on the identical greeting cards. And if the town was Turin, then that would make the river pictured flowing through it the Po.
Spelled differently, yes.
But, still, P-O as in P-O-E.
Next, the boys recalled what had been written inside, the quote from their great-great-great-great granduncle’s story “William Wilson”:
Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist . . . not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!
In a flash, the twins realized what the greeting cards were warning them—that the figure in the library, whom they’d taken for the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, was an identical double. And, worse, that he was their antagonist, Professor Perry, who’d slipped back into the country in disguise.
“Gee, I’m not feeling so well,” murmured Uncle Jack.
“Maybe you shouldn’t start
a meal with sugary doughnuts,” Aunt Judith whispered to him.
“They’re beignets, not doughnuts,” he whispered back.
She began to answer, but then her expression changed. “Actually, I’m feeling a little light-headed myself.”
The boys paid scant attention to their aunt and uncle, continuing to analyze their sudden new understanding:
If the ghost in the library was a fraud, then the clue, “Reynolds,” must likewise be false, meaning that the Poes’ presence in this mansion had nothing to do with solving any 165-year-old murder. Their great-great-great-great granduncle probably hadn’t even been murdered! And so this woman had no ancient family secret to confess. They doubted her name was even Reynolds.
The twins looked at each other, identically disconcerted.
And mortified.
She had lured them here in the only way that was possible—by letting Edgar and Allan think that they were the ones being clever.
“We have to get out of here, Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith,” Allan told them. “Now!”
“It’s a trap!” added Edgar.
But their uncle and aunt looked at them with seeming incomprehension, their expressions hazy.
Miss Reynolds, or whoever she really was, turned to the twins. “Enjoy your chocolates, boys?” she asked, not bothering to conceal a new, devious joy. “They really are imported. Just like the tasteless, odorless Mickey that the professor and I injected into all your family’s lovely appetizers.”
Roderick Usher dropped unconscious on the luxurious Persian rug.
Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith stumbled toward the couch, falling like rag dolls across its stiff brocade, out cold.
“Do you know what a Mickey is, boys?” she asked.
“It’s slang for a knockout drug,” Allan managed to answer.
“Excellent,” she said sarcastically. “Vocab champs right to the very end.”
Edgar and Allan started toward her.
But they didn’t get far.
The last thing they glimpsed as they collapsed to the floor was their great-great-great-great granduncle entering the room; the last thing they thought before losing consciousness was that, of course, it was not the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, but their nemesis, Professor S. Pangborn Perry in disguise.
And then all went black.
WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW . . .
GUEST LIST FOR PROFESSOR PERRY’S CELEBRATORY DINNER PARTY
1. Me
2. Barbara Bainbridge, actress (aka Miss Birdy Reynolds)
3. Markus Iger, coffin maker
4. Dr. Psufo, cosmetic surgeon (from Shanghai)
5. Ian Archer, personal assistant (recently freed from Leavenworth prison, Kansas—by me, of course!)
CAPTIVE AUDIENCE
WHEN a groggy Edgar and Allan simultaneously opened their eyes, they found themselves in a filthy basement illuminated only by the moonlight that streamed through a small window fifteen feet overhead. Worse, they were tied beside one another, faceup, on narrow tables. Worse yet, a few feet above them was a glittering, sharp, foot-long curved blade at the bottom of a long pole that reached up into the shadows. They tried to pull themselves free, but the ropes held them tight.
This was not a good way to wake up.
“Feeling a little headachy?” asked a husky, unfamiliar female voice.
Edgar and Allan turned their heads, which indeed ached from the knockout drug. It was Miss Reynolds, standing in the open doorway at the foot of the stairs that led up to the house.
“Yes, this is my real voice, boys,” she said, kicking up dust as she moved into the basement. “I have many voices and dialects, as I am a professional actress known off-Broadway and in regional theaters as Barbara Bainbridge.”
She waited a moment, as if the name might mean something to the twins.
It didn’t.
“My performance in Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl at the Princess Theater in Spokane, Washington, is still legendary,” she said huffily. “Of course, of late I’ve enjoyed bringing a little blue-blooded vulnerability to my most recent role as Birdy Reynolds.”
The boys tried to speak, but their heads were still too cloudy.
“Actually, I’m from Duluth, Minnesota,” she continued. “I’m no millionaire’s daughter. But Professor Perry is a marvelous director. He helped me to make my character truly convincing. I fooled you two, right?”
“Was Mrs. Rosecrans in on this?” Allan managed.
“No, I fooled her too.”
“Why would you do this?” Edgar asked, straining to get the words out.
“Because the professor paid me a lot of money,” she answered. “Besides, I’m always up for a professional challenge. Acting is, after all, my life. And truthfully, I don’t like children very much.”
“Fine, you fooled us,” Edgar murmured. Once again he strained uselessly at the ropes that held him to the table. “You’re an excellent actress. So, now you can untie us.”
She shook her head. “My part in this drama may be over, my place relegated now to the wings—but yours is just beginning, boys.” She placed one of her manicured hands gently on Allan’s shoe. Then she looked up. “Since you two are such precocious readers, and Poes to boot, I’m sure I don’t have to explain the purpose of that glittering scythe suspended above you.”
Naturally, the twins had read “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
They knew a deadly torture device when they saw one.
“Where are our aunt and uncle?” Edgar mumbled, shaking his head hard to clear it.
“And Roderick?” Allan added, managing to move his foot just enough to dislodge her hand.
“What admirable characters you are,” she said melodramatically. “Concerned about the welfare of others, even as a truly horrible fate hangs just a few feet above you.”
From upstairs, someplace far off in the mansion, a melodious handbell rang.
“Ah, that’ll be the appetizers being served,” she said. Then she winked. “The real appetizers. No Mickeys.”
The bell rang again, this time more emphatically.
She held her finger to her lips. “He doesn’t know I’m down here,” she stage-whispered. “But I couldn’t resist coming. After all, I do so enjoy meeting my public. Nonetheless, I must go back upstairs. You see, we’re sharing a celebratory dinner with the professor’s colleagues and admirers. Oh, there’ll be delicacies from all over the world.” She looked from one tied-down boy to the other. “Adieu, adieu—parting is such sweet sorrow, boys.”
Then she moved across the basement, closed a heavy door after herself, and went up the stairs.
In the silence, the twins now heard only the scampering and squeaking of rats.
“We have to do something,” Allan murmured.
“Right,” Edgar agreed.
But with their heads still polluted by the knockout drug, the twins couldn’t do much.
Thirty minutes later, the door to the basement opened again. Edgar and Allan felt much clearer of mind, though they remained tightly lashed to their respective tabletops. All that their twisting and tugging had accomplished was to deepen the rope burns at their wrists. Now, turning their heads toward the sound, they saw in the light of the open door the image of Edgar Allan Poe. It was a strange and disconcerting sight. But they no longer had any doubts as to this man’s true identity.
“Professor Perry,” Edgar said, spitting out the words as if they held a bad taste.
“Hello, brats,” the professor answered, closing the door behind him. Stopping beside his captives, he reached up and pulled a string that hung parallel to the arm of the deadly pendulum. A single exposed lightbulb illuminated the ill-tended basement—spiders and rats scurried for the shadows. “Comfortable?” the professor asked.
“I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment,” Edgar said
boldly.
The professor chuckled. “Oh?”
The twins had failed to loosen their bonds, but they had not wasted their time in this dank place. Returning to their senses, they’d come to a startling realization.
“Your plan to kill one of us and keep the other as a communications channel to the next world won’t work, Professor Perry,” Allan said almost gleefully.
“So you may as well let us go, along with Roderick and our aunt and uncle, and then we might be willing to call it even,” Edgar added, lifting his head to get a look at the professor’s expression. “Assuming you vow never to bother us again.”
The professor’s chuckle turned to a full guffaw.
The twins were not discouraged.
“As you know, Professor, my brother and I learned in New Orleans how it works with the dead,” Edgar continued. “Your spy, Miss Reynolds—or Miss Bainbridge, or whoever she is—heard our speech about Monsieur and Madame Du Valier. All about how it works with murder victims. She must have reported back, and you, being of passable intelligence, planned the ruse that brought us here in pursuit of our own great-great-great-great granduncle’s murderer, even though he’d never been murdered.”
“Yes, a beautiful trap, isn’t it?” he asked, crossing his arms and leaning back with utmost satisfaction. It was truly disgusting to see that expression on their ancestor’s face. “Particularly as I’d already chosen Poe’s likeness for the reconstructive facial surgery I’d had done in Shanghai to fool the authorities when I reentered the USA.”
“Admittedly clever,” Allan acknowledged. “And fortuitous for you. But don’t you see? If you murder one of us, then he’ll be trapped in this world as a ghost, unable to move on until his murder has been solved or avenged. We didn’t know that in Kansas, when you first explained your deviant plan. But now we do. Thus, even if you keep one of us prisoner, you’ll have no contact with the next world because the murder victim will be trapped here. Do you understand, Professor?”
The Pet and the Pendulum Page 7
