Winterhouse

by Ben Guterson

  Freddy had an anxious expression on his face when she finished. “I don’t think you should have spied on them,” he said, “but all of that does sound suspicious. Still, there’s gotta be some explanation other than Norbridge being a thief.”

  “There’s definitely something strange about Marcus Q. Hiems and his wife,” Elizabeth said, “but I think we should hold off on telling Norbridge what he said for now. I just don’t know what’s going on or who to believe.”

  “But if we think it over,” Freddy said as he ate his eggs, “maybe Norbridge and Leona are just doing some kind of review of the books in the library. Maybe they’re trying to see if anyone is stealing stuff. I don’t know. I just can’t believe he’d be involved in anything shady.”

  “But the way he acted, and the things he said!”

  “It’s probably nothing. It could just be regular old hotel stuff that we don’t know about. Like … I don’t know, security stuff or something that Norbridge needs to take care of.” He paused. “Maybe you’re letting your imagination run away.”

  “But you said you saw him a few nights ago, too, coming back from the library.” Elizabeth felt a little frustrated that Freddy wasn’t seeing things her way. “And you said you thought it was kind of funny.”

  Freddy frowned and thought it over for a moment while Elizabeth stared at him. “Maybe something is going on,” he said. “Still, this is Norbridge we’re talking about. We don’t have to tell him about what that man told you, but I don’t think he’s stealing books or anything like that.”

  Elizabeth didn’t like to hear this and was about to tell Freddy he might be wrong; but then she stopped herself and thought better about being too hasty.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. She drummed her fingers on the Granger book. “Okay, but get this,” she said. “Different subject. In this book there’s a chapter about this code called the Vig … Vig…” She couldn’t remember the name and was reaching for the book.

  “The Vigenère Cipher,” Freddy said casually.

  Elizabeth stopped fumbling with the book. “You’ve heard of it?”

  “Sure, it’s a famous code. They used it in the Civil War.” Freddy stopped chewing his muffin; he looked as though he’d figured out the answer to a difficult question. “Hey, does this connect to the message we saw in the painting yesterday?”

  “Exactly!” Elizabeth said. “Look at this!” And after she showed him the chapter in the book, with the example sentence and the keyword, he was as convinced as she was that there was a connection and that the coded words in Nestor’s painting could be solved by using the Vigenère Cipher.

  “But how can we figure out the keyword?” Freddy said.

  Elizabeth ran a finger over the alphabet grid in the book. “That’s the mystery. And I think we should try to figure it out. It’s like in The Westing Game or something.”

  Freddy spooned up some oatmeal and remained silent.

  “What are you thinking about?” Elizabeth asked. She had barely touched her food.

  “One thing I don’t understand,” Freddy said, “is why you took that book. I guess what I mean is, if I saw a sign that said not to take a book from the library, I’d probably just leave it there.”

  “I should probably put it back. It just looked so interesting, and it didn’t seem like a big deal to borrow it when I know I’ll return it.” Maybe Freddy thought she had gone overboard with everything—spying on Norbridge, taking the book from the library, getting caught up in what Marcus Q. Hiems had told her. A flicker of concern went through her that perhaps Freddy was wondering if she was the type of person he could trust.

  “Oh, hey, look at this,” she said, wanting to move on to a new subject. From her pocket she took out the piece of paper on which she’d written her coded message. “For you. The keyword is ‘log.’”

  He picked up the book, examined the table of contents, turned to the Vigenère Square, and began scanning the rows and columns. Within two minutes he said, “You wrote ‘Do you want to go swimming?’”

  “You got it!” Elizabeth said. She looked at him. “Well? Do you?”

  He said nothing, but he took a pen out of his pocket and wrote SWIM on her paper.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Just watch,” he said. He handed her the paper and the pen. “If you’re kind of on the skinny side you are…”

  Elizabeth gave him a perplexed look, but then it all made sense to her and beneath SWIM she wrote SLIM.

  Freddy gave her a thumbs-up. “And if you tripped on a banana peel you…”

  She wrote SLID.

  Freddy gave her two thumbs-up. “And if you were outside in the snow at the top of a hill, you would need a…”

  “Sled!” Elizabeth said. “Okay—got it! I want to go swimming. You want to go sledding. Coin flip time!”

  “Hey, now that I think about it,” Freddy said, “there was something interesting I noticed in that book.” He picked it up and began thumbing through it. “Here’s a good one. ‘How to organize a scavenger hunt.’” He looked up at her with excitement. “We should do this!”

  “Yeah?” Elizabeth said. “Want to try it?”

  “Let’s.” He handed the book to her. “And let’s try to figure out the keyword for the code in that painting.”

  CHAPTER 17

  PREPARATIONS FOR A GAME

  GAVE

  GIVE

  FIVE

  FINE

  FIND

  Elizabeth and Freddy studied the chapter about scavenger hunts in A Guide for Children and decided they would spend the morning scouting locations together around Winterhouse. Freddy could show her more of the hotel, Elizabeth—with her notebook in hand—could jot down ideas, and then separately they could spend the afternoon creating clues for the scavenger hunt they would begin the next day. The rules they settled on for the hunt were simple: They would hide ten items apiece, each accompanied by a note indicating where the next item could be found. The fun part would be in thinking of the cleverest clues—not so hard that they would be impossible to figure out, but not so easy that they were obvious—and the most interesting hiding spots.

  The first stop they made was Freddy’s workshop on the third floor.

  “Norbridge gave me this,” Freddy said, as he took out a silver key and put it in the lock, “so I can come work here anytime I want.” He tapped a red-and-white sign on the door that read SAFETY FIRST! and said, “Resist taffy in here!”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Freddy Knox: inventor and anagramizer,” she said. “But that’s actually a pretty good one you came up with.”

  “Anagramizer,” Freddy said approvingly as he opened the door. “I like that.”

  The workshop was a small converted storage room with a workbench at its center and a wall hung with hammers and wrenches and screwdrivers in trim rows on little hooks. Pieces of plywood rested here and there against a second wall, four barrels of walnut shells stood in a line, and a few piles of sawdust dotted the floor. A steel fire ring sat off to one side, with a few pieces of charred wood in it. A third wall was entirely obscured by a pile of wood crates and boards. On the table in the middle of the room lay a half dozen sections of what looked like cut limbs of a tree branch, and all around these sat pots of glue and vise clamps and chisels.

  “See, the Walnut WonderLog is kind of like those compressed logs you may have seen before,” Freddy said, lifting one of the logs from the table. “Those are made with a bunch of sawdust and stuff, and they mash it all together,” he said. “I’m kind of trying to do the same thing, but with walnut shells.” He looked up with a huge grin. “It will be an amazing feeling when I can take all the shells from the candy kitchen and convert them into something useful!”

  He showed Elizabeth some of the tools he used and how he mixed the glue and compacted the shells. She was impressed. At her aunt and uncle’s house, she had to do a lot of chores—sweeping and mopping and dishwashing and more—and at school she
sometimes got to help the librarian shelve books; but she had never been entrusted by an adult to do something really important. That Norbridge had asked Freddy to work on the WonderLog indicated so much genuine responsibility it made her feel both a little envious of Freddy—but in a good way, a sort of proud envy—and kindly toward Norbridge.

  “It’s pretty nice of Norbridge to let you work on this,” Elizabeth said.

  “You see what I mean about him?” Freddy said. “That’s why I don’t want to do anything that…” he began, but then seemed to backtrack. “The main thing is he wants to cut down on all the waste in the candy kitchen, and I’m hoping I can help him out.”

  “Hey, I was wondering if you’ve heard from your parents since you’ve been here,” Elizabeth said. Freddy had shared several things with her about himself thus far—that he was a year older than her and in sixth grade, that he hardly ever saw his parents because the mansion his family lived in was so huge, and that this year his parents had gone to Venice for vacation.

  Freddy shook his head. “They really sort of hate me.”

  “I bet they don’t,” Elizabeth said.

  “They’re always going places and having dinners with people or going on vacations. My mom’s from Mexico, so they go there a lot. I just like to study on my computer and think up inventions and stuff. Sometimes I think I’m a little boring, but it’s just how I like to do things.”

  “I don’t think that’s boring. I love to read, but my aunt and uncle love to watch TV all the time.”

  “All I know is my parents never want to have me around.” He frowned. “I don’t really care, anyway. I know they don’t like me.”

  Elizabeth was certain he didn’t mean what he said. “When you think about it, they could have sent you anywhere when they went on their Christmas vacation, but they know you like it here, so they let you come. That must mean they don’t hate you.”

  “I wish they would just let me stay at Winterhouse.”

  “I don’t even have parents.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They got killed in an accident when I was four.” Once again, the jumble of memories swirled through her mind: the fire, the confusion, the screams, the fear. Without thinking, she pressed a hand to the pendant around her neck. Freddy didn’t seem inclined to ask her anything specific about how her parents had died, and she was glad of this. “I’ve lived with my aunt and uncle ever since.”

  She pictured Aunt Purdy and Uncle Burlap at some hotel, maybe. She couldn’t imagine them actually enjoying themselves, no matter where they were. “But I can’t wait until I’m old enough to leave them. You’re really lucky you have parents, you know.”

  Freddy said nothing in response, merely adjusted one of the logs on the table before saying, “Hey, I’ll show you where they make the Flurschen. Come on.”

  * * *

  The candy kitchen was so much larger than anything Elizabeth had imagined from her few minutes outside it her first night at Winterhouse, she could hardly believe her eyes once she and Freddy stepped through the door. Inside was a spread of more than a dozen large rooms with counters and shelves designed specifically for the making of Winterhouse’s world-famous confection. There was one room where twenty women sat and shelled walnuts with small hammers and sorting knives; another room where a dozen men, as fit as bodybuilders, tended kettles that hovered over wood-fueled fires and cooked up a sugary jelly of apricots picked in the orchards from the valleys far below; a room where sugar was sifted and whisked and jostled and tossed by three “Powder Masters” until it was just the right airy consistency; a mixing room; a cooling room; a packaging room; a stacking room; and a half dozen others where ingredients were chopped or cooked or sorted or bundled. Elizabeth and Freddy spent an hour in the kitchen, looking around, tasting samples, and talking to the women who put the Flurschen in boxes and tied ribbons around them before they were shipped all over the world.

  “I think if I worked there,” Elizabeth said to Freddy as they departed, “I would eat more Flurschen than I made.”

  “Best candy in the world,” Freddy said. He looked sidelong at her. “Getting some good ideas for hiding places?”

  She hugged her notebook to her chest and gave him an imperious look. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

  He shook his head. “Okay, okay. We’ll see who stumps who.”

  “Whom,” Elizabeth said.

  He sighed. “Bookworms.” With a snap of his fingers he said, “Hey—idea! Let’s go to the thirteenth floor, up to the Tower. From there we can work our way down.”

  “Lead the way,” Elizabeth said.

  * * *

  The Tower was a large round room at the very top of the hotel with windows all around, flags set in stands in all directions, and with a view so endless it took Elizabeth’s breath away. Mountains marched to the horizon on three sides, Lake Luna spread like an emerald jewel far below, and the valley lay behind them where Elizabeth could make out the thin and winding thread of the road up to Winterhouse. The day was sparkling and blue, which made the snow-covered mountains appear even more brilliantly white. Elizabeth stood gazing as though she’d climbed to the top of the tallest peak in the range and could see the whole world beneath her.

  “Amazing, huh?” Freddy said. “Sometimes I just like to come up here to look around.”

  “I can see why,” Elizabeth said. She added “The Tower at Winterhouse” in her notebook on a page headed “Possible Locations for Stories I’ll Write Someday.” Freddy studied her. “I’m getting some good ideas for clues,” she said.

  “Any guesses about the keyword for Nestor’s painting?” Freddy said.

  Elizabeth had been thinking about this very thing throughout the morning. “Nothing yet, but I’m going to figure it out sooner or later.”

  “It has to have something to do with Winterhouse, don’t you think? Like Nestor’s wife’s name or ‘Luna’ for the lake, you know?”

  “I’m gonna try out all the possibilities,” Elizabeth said.

  “I’ll work on it, too.”

  Freddy glanced at his watch. “Lunch is in forty-five minutes. Why don’t we separate now and figure out our own hiding places? I’m gonna go poke around, but I’ll see you at lunch.” Freddy waved as he left the room. “Happy scavenger-clue-location hunting!”

  On the thirteenth floor, after studying the photographs and paintings on the walls, Elizabeth examined a case that held a charcoal-colored rock the size of a baseball. The placard beside it read METEORITE FRAGMENT FROM THE TANGUSKA EVENT (POSSIBLY).

  I’m going to look that up, Elizabeth thought, before heading to the twelfth floor to admire a five-foot-high aquarium set in an alcove with broad windows. The fish inside it were silver or violet or a combination of the two, and Elizabeth stood marveling at the incongruous beauty of hundreds of graceful fish in their watery little universe while the snow-covered mountains rose behind them in the windows.

  This fish tank alone probably costs more than my aunt and uncle’s house, Elizabeth thought as the chimes sounded for lunch.

  * * *

  Once she and Freddy had eaten, Elizabeth resumed her exploration of Winterhouse, picking back up at the aquarium and working her way down. It was after she had found a twenty-pocket, thirty-foot-long billiard table in a corner on the eleventh floor; a statue of Nostradamus on the tenth floor that said “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” if you asked it a question and pushed a button on the wall; and a map of a place called Uqbar—with no locations or names she recognized—on the wall of the ninth floor, that Elizabeth departed the stairwell onto the eighth floor and saw Marcus Q. Hiems turning his key in the door of a guestroom and entering. She ducked back into the little alcove by the stairs and stood watching, half expecting to see him come out again at any moment. Finally, she stepped into the corridor and walked cautiously ahead, all the while considering what she might say should Marcus Q. Hiems or his wife suddenly appear. She drew nearer to their room, when the eleva
tor doors beside her opened and a young, blond-haired cleaning lady dressed in a trim purple-and-black outfit stepped off, rolling a cart loaded with towels and scrub brushes and a large vacuum.

  The woman nodded to Elizabeth. “Good afternoon,” she said.

  “Good afternoon to you,” Elizabeth said, though she felt awkward, as though she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been doing.

  “Enjoying your stay?” the woman said.

  “Very much.” She pointed to the door Marcus Q. Hiems had entered—Room 808. “I just met the couple staying in there,” she said on impulse. And then, hoping she sounded believable, “He’s a bookseller, and I love books.”

  The woman shifted her eyes to the door of the room. She looked anxious. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. She leaned forward and said confidentially, “They asked us not to come into their room.”

  “Not at all?” Elizabeth said.

  “Not at all,” the woman said. “Not to clean or anything. They gave orders that no one was supposed to go in there.” She stood up straight again and then pushed her cart forward. “I hope you have a great day, and I’m glad you are enjoying Winterhouse.”

  Elizabeth watched the woman depart and then examined the closed door of the Hiemses’ room. The only reason they wouldn’t want anyone in their room, she thought, recalling the crate she’d seen when she arrived two nights before, is because they’re hiding something.

  She headed back to the staircase and decided to skip the eighth floor altogether.

  * * *

  By midafternoon, Elizabeth had made her way down to the fourth floor and had enough notes, she was sure, to put together a good ten clues. She found Freddy and, after telling him what the cleaning lady had told her, they decided to take a break from their scavenger-hunt planning to go cross-country skiing. They checked out skis from the shed and headed off on the trail along the east side of Lake Luna until dusk set in and then returned to watch a movie (Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday was the title, and Elizabeth decided to add it to her list of “Movies I Want to See Again”) in the small Winterhouse theater before dinner. When dinner was over they listened to the lecture held in Winter Hall once the tables were cleared (“Sir Ernest Shackleton: Antarctic Explorer and Enduring Hero” was the topic, delivered by a Mr. Dexter Blavatsky) and then Elizabeth spent forty-five minutes puzzling with Mr. Wellington and Mr. Rajput in the lobby, finding five pieces that fit. After saying good night to Freddy and checking in with Jackson, Elizabeth retreated to her room to work on her clues for the next day’s scavenger hunt. She realized she hadn’t seen Norbridge all day.