Thomas felt a surge of guilt. Mr. Dumfrey was covering for him—for all of them.
“Business,” Hardaway repeated disdainfully, as though it were a dirty word. Thomas saw Hardaway lean forward over Dumfrey’s desk. “What kind of business, Dumfrey? Were they cleaning up some of your mess? Finishing what you started? Pocketing the evidence?”
“Evidence?” Mr. Dumfrey jerked backward. “What— How dare you— What are you insinuating?”
Hardaway reached into the pocket of his trench coat. A second later, he slammed a leather-bound appointment book on Mr. Dumfrey’s desk.
“Mr. Anderson died on Tuesday, April twenty-third, between five and seven o’clock. The medical examiner can tell us these things, Dumfrey. It looks as though he wasn’t alone. He was expecting a visitor. See for yourself.”
Hardaway opened the book and flipped forward a few pages.
“‘Four thirty p.m., Tuesday, April twenty-third. Appointment with D.’ What do you have to say about that?”
“I have nothing to say,” Mr. Dumfrey said. “I haven’t seen Mr. Anderson in several weeks. An initial means nothing.”
“I can’t say as I agree with you, Mr. D.,” Hardaway said, putting a faint and unpleasant emphasis on the letter. “And the commissioner don’t agree with you neither.”
“Then he is mistaken,” Mr. Dumfrey said. “You both are. I can’t imagine it’s the first time.”
“Now listen up,” Hardaway said, practically growling. “I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, in this—this—this . . .” Hardaway gestured helplessly around him, obviously at a loss for words.
“House of Wonders?” Mr. Dumfrey suggested. “Museum of Marvels?”
“This freak show!” Hardaway exploded. “This flophouse! This dump of depravity!”
“Dump of depravity,” Dumfrey murmured. “I like that.”
Hardaway jabbed a finger at Mr. Dumfrey’s chest. “I know what you types are like. You circus types. Weirdos, losers, and—and unnaturals! If it was up to me, you’d all be put in a cage—especially these so-called children. Little monsters, each and every one of them!”
Thomas realized he was shaking. There was a sick taste in his mouth. Of course he had always known he was different. In his darkest moments, he had even wondered whether that was why his parents had abandoned him.
But mostly he had never thought of different as a bad thing. He had thought of it as being special—like rolling snake eyes with a pair of dice, or finding four maraschino cherries in a dish of fruit cocktail.
But in that instant, he had a whole other vision. It was as though Hardaway’s words had lifted a veil, and he saw Hugo and Phoebe and Danny and the rest of them as Hardaway saw them: Disgusting. Deformed. Abnormal.
What did that make him? What did that make Max, Pippa, and Sam? They were the freakiest of all the freaks.
Anger rose in his throat, choking him.
Hardaway was still talking. “I pay my taxes, Dumfrey. I work for the state. I got a wife and kids. I’m normal.”
“Get to your point,” Mr. Dumfrey said, his voice quivering with anger.
“My point,” Hardaway said, “is I don’t like freaks, and I don’t like you.”
Mr. Dumfrey stood up. “Are you accusing me of anything?”
There was a short pause. Hardaway said grudgingly, “No. Not yet.”
“Then I suggest you leave. Immediately.” Dumfrey moved around his desk and out of Thomas’s view. Thomas heard the door creak open.
Hardaway rammed his hat even more firmly on his head. “I’m warning you, Dumfrey. If I get one whiff of something foul—one sprinkle of funny business from you or any of your collection of freaks—”
“They. Are. Not. Freaks. They are marvels.”
“I’ll haul you into the clink faster than you can say—”
But Thomas never heard Hardaway finish his sentence.
Because at that moment an ear-shattering scream came drilling through the walls, and Thomas, in his shock, tried to turn; and the grate gave way beneath him, and he went tumbling in a shower of dust directly onto Mr. Dumfrey’s desk.
“Hello, Thomas,” Mr. Dumfrey said, with barely a glance in his direction.
“Hello, Mr. Dumfrey,” Thomas said, sitting up with a little groan.
Hardaway had already vaulted into the hall. Dumfrey sprinted after him, his robe flapping behind him like two scarlet wings, and Thomas followed.
The screaming continued. It was like an ice pick aimed directly between the ears. As they rounded the second-floor landing, Thomas saw Sam emerge from the Hall of Wax, white-faced.
“What is that?” he said. When he reached out to grab the banister, a chunk of wood splintered off in his hand.
“Nice one,” Thomas said, as he raced down the stairs.
Doors slammed; footsteps pounded from all sides; a confusion of voices rose up together.
“What’s going on?”
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“Mercy! The old cow won’t stop!”
As though sucked downward by gravitational force, the residents of the museum spiraled down the performers’ staircase and made their way to the basement, where the screams continued, punctuated by brief gasping sobs and cries of “Help! Somebody! Oh, it’s awful!” By now, Thomas recognized Miss Fitch’s voice.
The hall outside Potts’s room was narrow and packed with people. Hugo was standing just outside Potts’s closed door, as though uncertain whether to go in. Inside the room, Miss Fitch continued to sob.
“Let me through.” Hardaway was elbowing his way through the crowd. “Police. Coming through.”
Everyone had gone quiet, with the exception of Miss Fitch, who was still blubbering and screeching behind the door. Thomas felt an awful sense of dread. He caught Sam’s eye and Sam shook his head. He, too, looked afraid. Thomas pressed forward, following Mr. Dumfrey, who was trying to push his way past Hardaway.
“This is my museum,” he was saying, and “You have no right.”
Hardaway reached the door first and shoved it open.
Thomas felt like the world had turned a somersault around him.
Miss Fitch was standing in the middle of the room, her cheeks coated with black tracks of mascara, her lipstick smudged nearly to her chin.
“I just came in to see why he hadn’t emptied the bins like usual,” she said, with another sob. She brought a handkerchief to her mouth. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly wipe her nose. “He didn’t knock when I answered so I . . . so I . . . and I found him just lying there. Just like that.”
And she pointed to Mr. Potts, stretched out, fully clothed, on his mattress, mouth open, eyes open.
Dead.
“Almonds,” Hardaway said, leaning down toward Potts’s ghastly white face and sniffing like a hound dog. “Smell that? Almonds. Unmistakable.”
Webb grunted. “You think he had some kinda allergy?”
Hardaway shot his partner a scathing look. “I think he had a cyanide allergy. That smell is a sign of cyanide poisoning. I’d bet my badge on it.”
Cyanide. The word was like a cold sliver of rain down Sam’s spine. It spread through the assembled crowd, hissing from lip to lip. And slowly, everyone turned to face Mr. Dumfrey.
Mr. Dumfrey, who kept an old tin of cyanide from the famous Morrison murder trial of 1843 on one of the shelves above his desk.
“Why is everyone looking at me?” Mr. Dumfrey’s frown slowly transformed to a look of horror. “Surely you don’t think . . . For God’s sake . . . I had nothing to do with this!”
There was another awkward pause. Then Hugo broke the silence.
“We know you didn’t, Mr. D.,” he said, patting Mr. Dumfrey on the shoulder. Relief and guilt commingled in Sam’s chest—he had, for just one second, been wondering . . . But of course Mr. Dumfrey could not have killed Potts. Why would he?
The other performers murmured their agreement.
A very
unpleasant light was shining in Hardaway’s eyes. “But you keep cyanide, don’t you, Mr. Dumfrey? I saw it there myself.”
“It was part of an old exhibit,” he said, waving a hand. “‘Pernicious Poisoners’—a nice little tableau—very popular.”
Lieutenant Webb, who was still standing in the hallway, grunted. “Sounds like bunk to me.”
Mr. Dumfrey whirled on him. “It isn’t bunk, young man,” he said, in an exasperated voice. “I’ll have you know that the ‘Malevolent Murders’ section of the Hall of Wax attracts more visitors than—”
“Dumfrey!” Hardaway snapped, and Dumfrey quickly shut up. Hardaway took two steps toward Dumfrey, past a still-quivering Miss Fitch. His large jaw was working back and forth, and it reminded Sam of the fossilized jaw of the prehistoric ferret they kept in the Hall of Worldwide Wonders. “Get your things together You’re coming with us.”
“Are you arresting me?” For a second, Mr. Dumfrey looked truly afraid.
Hardaway smiled meanly. “Should I?”
“Of course not!” Mr. Dumfrey said. “I told you, I had nothing to do with poor Potts’s death.”
“Then you got nothing to worry about,” Hardaway said. But he didn’t sound as if he meant it. “Now step on it.”
“Mr. Dumfrey!” Sam burst out. He wanted to say something—anything—to show Mr. Dumfrey they were all on his side. But the words had caught in his throat.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Dumfrey assured him in a whisper. “It’s just a matter of routine. Some questions and quibbles. I’ll be back in no time. You’ll see.”
He placed a reassuring hand on Sam’s shoulder, and then he was gone.
But hours passed, and Mr. Dumfrey did not return. Instead, more police officers arrived. The street was bathed in rotating red lights, and Sam watched from the windows as a crowd gathered outside the museum. He saw Billy the sidewalk apple peddler and Sol from the corner candy store and Sergio pushing his pretzel cart—all of them whispering and pointing and shaking their heads. He could only imagine what they were saying.
Two men lifted Potts onto a wheeled stretcher and covered his face with a white sheet. They carried him outside and loaded the body into a waiting van, and when the front door opened, Sam heard the roar of conversation from the crowd gathered outside.
“Poisoned . . .”
“Police took Mr. Dumfrey . . .”
“There was always something off about him . . .”
“About all of them . . .”
He turned away from the windows, letting the curtains swing closed, feeling sick. He turned around and saw Pippa standing right behind him.
“Mr. Dumfrey will be okay, Sam,” she said. Sometimes it did really seem as though she could read minds, even though he knew that her gift was fuzzy, undirected, and usually only allowed her to see matchbooks and penknives in pockets and loose paper clips at the bottom of briefcases. In this instance, however, he knew she was probably just as worried about Mr. Dumfrey as he was.
“You’d have to be dumber than a dung beetle to think Mr. Dumfrey could kill anyone,” she continued.
Sam did not say that he wouldn’t be surprised if Hardaway and Webb were dumber than dung beetles. He just said, “Who did kill him, then?”
“You heard what Mr. Dumfrey said. It’s not our business anymore.” She sucked a strand of dark hair into her mouth, as she did when she was anxious or upset. Funny that they had spent so many years living here, side by side, but had only recently started to become close.
Started to become friends.
“Mr. Dumfrey needs our help, Pip. You were the one who said so.”
“Mr. Dumfrey can take care of himself,” she said, but she didn’t sound totally convinced.
No one bothered to open the museum for the day. There seemed no point, with Dumfrey gone. Besides, they would only attract gawkers and gossips, people who wanted to point and sniff around and see the room where Potts had died. At 2:00 p.m., a policeman arrived and, in a high voice trembling with its own self-importance, instructed them that the museum would stay closed pending an investigation.
“Until when?” Monsieur Cabillaud cried.
“Until we say so,” the policeman said. Before leaving, he posted a large sign on the double-fronted glass doors: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE BY ORDER OF THE POLICE.
There was nothing to do but wait. Thomas tried to distract them with a game of DeathTrap, but Sam had trouble understanding the rules and an argument broke out after Pippa accused Max of moving around the pieces when no one was looking.
Later on, as evening fell, Danny retrieved his violin, but after he launched into a mournful rendition of “My Love Was Sent to Hang for Murder,” everyone begged him to stop. Phoebe made pancakes for dinner, and Miss Fitch was too distracted to lecture the children about sugar consumption. In fact, she even served them extra-large portions of whipped cream, which made Sam feel somehow worse.
“‘The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails,’” Smalls said solemnly, laying one of his massive hands on Sam’s head, as if Sam were still a child. “Shakespeare.”
It might have made Sam feel better, if he understood what it meant.
At nine o’clock, Sam once again went to the window, and saw that although the crowd had mostly dispersed, there were still a half dozen people gathered in the street, including Bill Evans. Almost as soon as Sam had parted the curtains to peek out, a woman with a face so narrow it looked as though it had been compressed between two heavy metal plates, pointed at him and screeched “Look! It’s one of them freaks! Right there, see? A face like the devil.”
Sam stepped back from the window, his heart beating very fast.
At ten o’clock, when Mr. Dumfrey still hadn’t returned, Monsieur Cabillaud wrapped his small head in a voluminous scarf, straightened his bow tie, and affixed a small gold pin to the front of his lapel, which he had allegedly earned for secret acts of bravery related to the Belgian government.
“I, Monsieur Cabillaud, will go and speak to your American police,” he said grandly. “I will tell zem that zey have made a gravest error.”
At ten thirty, Miss Fitch appeared in the attic, and in a shrill voice commanded everyone to go to bed. But no sooner had she left the room than Monsieur Cabillaud burst into the room, his bow tie crooked, his scarf in disarray, his face drained of color.
“It is too late,” he panted out, leaning against the doorway, sucking in deep breaths of air. “Zee police have arrested Mr. Dumfrey. Zey have arrested him for zee murder of Mr. Potts.”
“Evans,” Thomas announced the next morning, slapping a folded newspaper down on the foot of Pippa’s bed.
“Good morning to you, too,” she mumbled, sitting up. For a second, she thought that everything that had happened yesterday—Potts’s death, the police, Mr. Dumfrey’s arrest—must have been part of a horrible dream. She rubbed her eyes and the attic came into focus, as did the newspaper headline.
DERANGED PROFESSOR RATTIGAN STILL MISSING FROM PRISON.
“Who’s Professor Rattigan?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Oops.” Thomas flipped the paper over, and Pippa saw an even larger headline, trumpeted practically across the whole page.
MURDER MUSEUM!
DEATH STRIKES AGAIN AT DUMFREY’S HOUSE OF HORRORS!
by Bill Evans
“What did that skunk write about us now?” Max, who was still in her pajamas, said.
“About what you’d expect. Dumfrey went crazy over the stolen head. Thought Potts might be to blame. So Dumfrey killed him. And we’re all in on it.” Thomas frowned and was quiet for several moments. “We have to go see him,” he announced.
“Dumfrey?” Pippa asked.
Thomas shook his head. “Evans.”
“Are you crazy?” Max burst out. “No way. He hates us.”
“He doesn’t hate us,” Thomas said. “He’s just trying to sell papers.”
“Well, I hate him.” Max crossed her arms
.
“Listen.” Thomas lowered his voice. “We’ve got to help Mr. Dumfrey. We all know there’s no way he killed Potts, right? But somebody did. And Evans can help us. He’s been sniffing around this story from the start. He has the facts.”
Max made a harrumphing sound but said nothing. In the quiet, Pippa heard Sam snoring peacefully on the other side of the bookcase that divided the girls’ sleeping area from the boys’. She wondered how he could sleep so well after everything that had happened.
“Mr. Dumfrey would do it for us,” Thomas said, this time turning pleadingly to Pippa. His hair, she noticed, was sticking almost straight up from his head. “Mr. Dumfrey would do anything for us. He treats us like family. He is family.”
“But . . .” Pippa shook her head. Thinking of Mr. Dumfrey in jail made her feel angry and hopeless and then angry again. Who would warm his slippers by the radiator for him? Who would make sure he remembered not to eat any chocolate before bedtime? Would he even get any chocolate? “How can we help him? What are we supposed to do? We’re nobodies.”
Thomas cracked a smile. “We’re the freaks of Dumfrey’s Dime Museum,” he said. “That has to count for something.”
Max stood up, scrubbing her eyes with a fist. “All right,” she said. “But don’t blame me if Evans ends up with a knife between his tongue and his tonsils.”
Pippa forced a small smile back. “You in, Sam?” she asked, raising her voice.
He grunted something that sounded like “steel leaping” but she recognized as “still sleeping.” Thomas grabbed a copy of Statistics for Everybody and chucked it over the bookcase. It landed with a thunk.
“Ow!” Sam exclaimed. A second later his head appeared over the bookshelf. “What was that for?” he asked.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Pippa said. This time, she smiled for real.
Getting out of the museum proved more difficult than Pippa had expected. No sooner had she opened the front door than an explosion of voices began screeching—“There she is! That’s one of ’em!”—and she was blinded by a series of flashes as dozens of cameras went off simultaneously. Sam leaned over and shoved the door closed so forcefully, it rattled on its frame.
The Shrunken Head Page 9
