Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things: Mister Max 1

by Cynthia Voigt

  Max was assembling the details in his mind. “You noticed it exactly when?”

  “The next day, as soon as I entered the room for my midday meal. There it was. Or, rather, there it wasn’t.”

  “And the Martha?”

  “In the kitchen, if you can imagine the gall of the girl, just going on with her duties as if I wouldn’t know who was guilty. I summoned her and she denied it, even pretended shock, surprise. She actually asked that my great-nephew give his word that she wouldn’t have taken it, wouldn’t do such a thing. But what could he say? As I pointed out to him, we knew nothing of her family, and that stopped him in his tracks. And she … She asked that the police be called in to prove her innocence. As if she really were innocent. I knew she had merely hidden the spoon away, somewhere, although she denied that, too. She even wept. The boy had fallen in love with a woman who wept when things went against her. He saw her tears, but he didn’t say a word, just opened and closed his mouth like a fish in a tank. I thought he was silent for shame, and I was glad. I admit it.”

  “Had Martha left the house at any time that night?”

  “Not possible. The doors and windows were all locked and shuttered. I see to that myself, every night, as I have every night since my father’s death. What is truly important must never be left to others.”

  “Where is Martha—that Martha, I mean—now?” Max asked. He thought it would be useful to have somebody else’s version of the story. “And your great-nephew, where is he?”

  “Gone, both of them. I turned her out, watched her pack her belongings myself. The next morning he was nowhere to be found. He’d left everything behind, except for what he wore out of the house—left all his fine clothing, the pictures and the books, even the books for his university courses. He wasn’t to be found at the University, nor anywhere in the city. The last words he spoke to me—after all my years of care, the ungrateful wretch—were ‘You are a fool.’ I did not deign to respond.”

  “You haven’t heard from him since?”

  “He seems to have vanished from the face of the earth, just as she has.”

  “They might be together, then.” They might, Max thought, have stolen the spoon together, sold it, and fled with the proceeds to South America or Mozambique, Ceylon or Bali.

  She shook her head. “That, at least, was accomplished. When he was standing there, pale and silent as if some cat had in fact got his tongue, as if he couldn’t remember how to talk even, she told him he was spineless—as of course he was, otherwise how could she have gotten her claws into him? She would have spoken up for him, she said. She never wanted to see him again, she actually told him that, in front of me. I would have laughed—who was she to reject the next Baron Barthold?—except that I was so disturbed by the loss of the Cellini Spoon, by the success of her thieving scheme …” The Baroness’s mouth worked but no more words came out, the ones she wanted to utter being so huge and hard that they couldn’t make their way up her throat, as if those words were bricks or stones or chunks of wood.

  Max waited until the red angry spots had faded from her cheeks, then asked, “Are you certain that the Cellini Spoon didn’t leave the house? With one of your guests, perhaps?”

  “Not with one of my guests, I’m sure of that. But I have also Zenobia’s word that the spoon was in her dishpan at the end of the evening. She knew the spoon’s value to me. She knew its importance, even if she knows nothing of Cellini, or any history to speak of. She had washed the spoon as usual that evening, she remembered.”

  Max nodded, and considered the situation. He tried to imagine the night the spoon disappeared, but his imaginings were too sketchy and uninformed to be useful in solving this mystery.

  The Baroness grew impatient. “Can you find it for me?”

  Max put his finger to his lips—Patience. Let me think—and thought.

  The Baroness did not wait well. She shifted in her chair. She puffed out irritated breaths. Luckily for him, before long Max had a plan.

  “Can you tell Zenobia you are giving a dinner party?” he suggested. “Or a luncheon, it doesn’t matter which.”

  “I haven’t entertained in years,” the Baroness protested. “Zenobia is grown old.”

  “So that you can bring me into the house, to help her in the kitchen, just for the occasion,” Max continued. “I need to be here in the house, where it happened. To study the actual scene.”

  “I’ve been too long absent from the social and political world of the city,” the Baroness protested. “Many of my acquaintances are no longer alive. How will I know who to invite?”

  “You don’t need to actually give the party,” Max explained. “The party is only an excuse for me to be in the house. If I’m here in the kitchen, I’ll have a chance to look around. To see how things work.”

  “No man sleeps in my house,” the Baroness announced.

  “Agreed,” Max said.

  “Are you a trained cook? No, I didn’t think so. You’re a fakir, a pretender, a …” She waited for the most accurate, most insulting word to come to her, and it did. “An actor.” She drummed her fingers on the arms of her chair, then decided, “I’ll do it. I’ll hire you to be the scullery maid. Maid, I said. Not boy.”

  Max looked right at her, his expression giving nothing away. “After a day or two of working here, of being here, I may know something.”

  The Baroness sniffed. She huffed. “I won’t have Zenobia upset. I do not, as anyone can tell you, have a warm heart hidden within this imposing exterior, but I am a good mistress to those who serve me well.”

  Max said nothing. He believed her.

  “Those who do not serve me well, like that Martha? They do not remain long in my service. Nor,” she did not need to add but she added anyway, “if I have anything to say about it, in the service of anyone who cares about my good opinion.” She glared at Max. “Point taken?”

  Max nodded. “My fees—”

  “I wondered how long you would wait before mentioning those.”

  Max was not about to be bullied, or distracted, by her rudeness. “Twenty-five at the start, another twenty-five if I am successful.”

  “And if you fail?”

  “If I fail there is nothing more due to me.”

  The demand came quick and sharp: “Will you fail?”

  What kind of a question was that? The kind of question designed to get him in trouble, Max decided. “You can give me the first payment when I arrive to work” was all he said.

  She nodded, apparently satisfied, apparently agreeing. “You may go now. An envelope will be waiting for you in the kitchen. I will tell Zenobia to expect you Thursday morning. At the servants’ entrance, and early,” she told him. She rang a little long-handled silver bell set out on the dark mahogany table beside her to summon the servant, Martha. As he followed the woman out through the door, the Baroness called after him, “In this house, early means before eight and no later.”

  The Lost Dog

  • ACT II •

  SCENE 1

  It was not until Max had ridden his bicycle back along The Lakeview, across the wide drawbridge, and through the Royal Gate into the old city that he remembered the dog. How could he have forgotten the dog? he asked himself, changing direction and riding as fast as traffic allowed through the Bishop’s Gate and out into the New Town. The Baroness had so filled the room with who she was and what she wanted that everything else had been driven out of Max’s mind. How did she do that? he wondered, and he wondered—who wouldn’t?—if he could learn to do it himself. He’d like that, he thought, as he dismounted and turned the latch.

  Joachim’s gate was locked.

  But the gate was never locked during the day. During the day, Joachim worked in his garden, especially on a bright, warm day like the one that was pouring sunlight over Max’s shoulders.

  Max called out, but there was no response. Leaving his bicycle in the alley, he hurried back to the street and around to Joachim’s front door. He pulled at th
e bell, then knocked, loudly. Still no response. Puzzled, he tried the doorknob—and it turned. The door swung open.

  Joachim never left his front door unlocked.

  Why would Joachim lock the garden and leave the house open? And where would Joachim be in the late morning of a sunny day, if not at work? Not to mention the most urgent question: Where was the dog? The house was empty, no Joachim, no dog, all the rooms as usual, everything put away in the sitting room and kitchen, the studio filled with light, painted canvases leaning against the wall and one on the easel, the bedroom tidied, and towels folded neatly in the bathroom. Max went through the house and out into the garden, looking around for any sign of man or dog. He was getting worried.

  Then he saw what had happened. Or, rather, saw something that had happened in that garden, and when he went back inside, he saw that it had happened in the studio, too. The paint on the picture on the easel outside, and also on three of the paintings set on the floor against the studio wall, seemed to have been swept across by soft brooms. These had blurred the images and stretched out their shapes. Joachim’s careful, clear lines had—some of them, many of them—been ruined. His bright colors had overflowed into one another and grown muted. The flowers now seemed to be seen through a veil, or looked at through a lacy curtain, or hidden behind thin clouds.

  Max could imagine Joachim’s reaction to this ruination. His teacher was already uneasy about both his inspiration and his eyesight; this destruction of his work might break his spirit. Or drive him into a rage. Max closed his eyes and hoped the dog was not to blame.

  But he knew. The dog had to be to blame. He was to blame.

  Max stood motionless in the garden, horrified, his back turned to the painting because he didn’t like to look at what had been done to his teacher’s work. He could imagine it happening—the dog somehow finding her way into the house, tempted to enter the studio by the presence of a person working in there, wagging a hopeful tail, brushing it across the wet surface of pictures Joachim had set down against the studio wall to dry. It was all too easy to imagine. He should have thought of that before he left the poor dog with Joachim, whose temper these days was even touchier than usual. He should have thought longer about all of it, before leaping into that solution to his doggy difficulty.

  He didn’t know if he should wait for Joachim to return—and where would his teacher have gone, with the dog? Where might he have taken her? Maybe Max should assume that Joachim had dragged the poor dog to Max’s house, or maybe even to Grammie at her library, and get over there on his bicycle as fast as he could. But if he did that, and Joachim had not taken the dog to Max’s or to the library, Max would have wasted precious time. Where else might an angry man go to get rid of an unwanted animal? What else might he do? Think, Max urged himself. He wanted more than anything to ride off, fast, ride off anywhere, just to be doing something, but he made himself stay where he was, and think.

  At the end, he could see that he had to make a choice. He could stay where he was, waiting, or he could go looking. If he went off, he could leave Joachim a note, and he would be able to swing back by his teacher’s house at regular intervals while he searched the New Town, the old city, the lakefront, the riverside, in hopes of seeing a large, friendly, sun-colored dog wandering around loose. If he waited, it might be hours before Joachim returned, although he could be sure that the painter would eventually return.

  Max didn’t like any of his choices, which made it hard to decide between them. He stood in Joachim’s garden, uncomfortable in the ill-fitting brown suit and tight, bright blue vest, his pork-pie hat in his hand, the sun warm on the top of his head, and tried to make up his mind.

  They burst in on him, almost before he had time to turn at the sounds of their arrival and see them. Joachim came to an abrupt halt in the doorway, a cloth shopping bag in his hand, staring as if he had never seen the person standing there, but the dog pulled forward, pulled her new green leather leash free from the painter’s hand, and jumped up on Max’s chest. She almost knocked him over with her big paws and heavy head. “Down,” Max said, then more firmly, “Down!” He smiled weakly at his teacher over the dog’s wriggling body, then stared. “You’re wearing glasses?”

  “Max?” asked Joachim, taking the glasses off to see if this unexpected sight was what it used to look like. When Joachim was working, painting, he never wore any hat and he protected his clothing with a long artist’s smock, but when he went out he liked to wear a beret as well as paint-streaked trousers, so that everybody could know what he was and keep to a distance, as people do when an artist or beggar or crazy person comes into view, someone you can’t count on to behave by the rules. “You are Max, I can see that.” He replaced the round, gold-framed glasses. “What about this dog? This dog is trouble,” Joachim announced.

  “I know and I’m—” Max started to say.

  “I had to go out and get glasses,” Joachim complained. “How else could I really look at what she’s done to my paintings?”

  “I saw and I’m really—”

  “I could see that the paintings had been changed, but I couldn’t tell exactly how, so— Don’t you see?”

  “I do.”

  Bored by the conversation, the dog was sniffing around the garden wall, tail high in the air.

  “I’ve had to get an entire set of new brushes.”

  “She chewed your brushes?”

  “Why would she do that?” Joachim demanded. “Dogs have more sense than to try to eat turpentine. Even golden retrievers know better than that, and everyone knows they don’t grow a brain until they’re seven.”

  Max made himself say it: “It’s my fault she’s here. So it’s my fault this happened. I’m sorry, Joachim.”

  “And I had to buy her a leash and replace that collar, too. What does a dog want with glass jewels in her collar? What is wrong with the people who own her? She’s not yours, I take it, and now I think of it …” He looked at Max, surprised. “Do I take it that your parents changed their mind about your much-vaunted tour?”

  “Things changed, yes. Things have changed and I’m still here, at home, and I want to continue the lessons if you— I really am sorry about the pictures.”

  Joachim walked over to the altered picture on the easel. “Are you? I’m not. I don’t think I am, anyway. I think—I’ll have to study it carefully, the effect—it’s like a curtain waving, or as if you could see the wind. The sunlight is flowing over those clematis blooms, don’t you think? I might have to work with a feather. A peacock feather might give that effect,” he said, speaking to himself. Then he turned to Max. “It’s not as if I can train her to wag her tail on cue. It’s not as if she’s my dog. Sunny?” he called, and the dog trotted over. Joachim scratched her behind the ears as she pushed her muzzle into his leg.

  Then Max felt a faint hope fluttering inside him. He asked, hesitantly, “So you could keep her a little longer?”

  “She’d better stay for a day or two at least. I spent good money getting food for her, and a bowl. It’ll be entirely wasted if she leaves right away. So, are you going to come for a lesson at the usual time? Because I’d like it if you left now. I’ve got a lot of work to do and— There’s a technique I can use to duplicate this, I’m sure there is, but I have to figure it out.”

  Joachim had taken off his beret and was standing bareheaded in the sunlight of the garden, in front of the easel, staring at the painting with his glasses on, then taking them off to stare some more.

  Curious, Max went to stand beside his teacher and study the picture. Wind, Joachim had said, and Max saw that. He wondered if, somehow, that feathered brushing of the damp surface could be used to create the impression of wind blowing through heavy gray clouds. He wondered how he could try to reproduce it in watercolors for his stormy skyscape. He turned to look at his teacher and did not ask what he’d meant to. Instead, he wondered, “When did you get the glasses?”

  “I’m not going blind, whatever you were thinking. I know what
you were thinking, Max, but I’m just getting older. Doctor says. He says I’m healthier than I have any right to be, although what health has to do with rights he couldn’t tell me. And I’ve asked you once to go away. I’ve got work to do, even if you don’t.”

  Just as Max was going out the gate into the alley, Joachim called after him, “And get out of that ridiculous costume. You look like some … some middle-aged lowlife, some detective. Don’t you have someplace to be? Like school?”

  The Lost Dog

  • ACT II •

  SCENE 2

  That first Wednesday in May, the bell in the town hall had just rung twelve times when the substitute teacher strode through the Hilliard gates and up the steps into the school building, without even a glance for the children who chased one another about in some game or, in the case of the older students, stood talking in the spring sunlight. The two teachers assigned to watch over noon recess that day paid him no attention. He could have been a university student, in his light gray trousers, seersucker jacket, and a round straw boater on his head. He was skinny, as so many young men are, and long-legged. He might have been applying for a position in the school, or maybe putting his name down in hopes of finding tutoring work. But the two teachers had enough to do keeping an eye on things, and the young man was nothing to do with them. When, however, he emerged from a side door onto the playground, with its climbing bar and swing sets and sandboxes, with its benches and tables where children could gather and gossip, overlooking the long field where boys of all ages kicked a ball and ran after it, the teachers tried to think of which teacher might have fallen ill and had to go home. But didn’t the young man know that he wasn’t required to take recess duty? Hadn’t anyone told him? Perhaps he preferred being outside to waiting inside for the long recess to end. Young men had almost as much energy to get rid of as did schoolchildren. It would do no harm to have him join their vigil.