The Mystery of the Cupboard (19 page)

“What
are
you doing? Who've you got in there?”

The voice came from the other side of the door, which began moving inward against the pile of bricks. The two boys froze.

“Quick! It's Gillon!” hissed Omri.

Patrick, who was fractionally nearer than Omri, snatched Jessica Charlotte up in his hand, upended the cashbox, thrust her into it, and slammed it shut.

“The key! Where's the key!”

“Here!”

They turned it, just as Gillon and Tony came pushing their way in, the bricks sliding across the floorboards.

“Have you got a radio in here?” asked Tony, looking round.

“Hey, Ton,” said Patrick. “I'm back! Aren't you going to ask me how I am?”

“Oh, yeah! How are you? Who was singing?”

“We were,” said Omri.

“Yeah, but someone else was as well, a tiny little squeaky voice.”

“It wasn't—” began Omri, but Patrick nudged him and said, “That was me. You want to hear me sing a music hall song?”

The other two boys gaped at him. “A what song?”

“A song from the old music hall. I — I learnt it from an old boy in the hospital who used to be on the - on the boards. Listen!” And he began to sing in a fair imitation of Jessica Charlotte's high-pitched little-big voice:

“My admirers I don't count in scores, he-he
—”

The other two roared and groaned and held their ears.

“What kind of garbage is that?” said Gillon. “Knock it off! Come on, Mum's going to take us to the wildlife park!”

I
t should have been a wonderful afternoon out. The wildlife park was part of a local country estate, where they also made the most delicious ice cream. There was a really good adventure playground there too, as well as a nature trail, and the animals included elephants and a rhino.

Gillon and Tony had a whale of a time. They couldn't understand why Omri and Patrick were so down. They soon took off on their own and weren't seen again till teatime.

Omri had got Patrick alone outside the big cats' area
early on, and told him what he'd done. Patrick hadn't been much comfort.

“None of the mad things I did last year were half as mad as that,” was all he could find to say. “We'll have to hope this Bert bottles out of it.”

“He swore on his mother's grave!”

“Big deal. He probably doesn't even know where it is. Obviously about as trustworthy as a sewer rat.”

“Do you think I should have brought him back and told him not to bother?”

“I don't know. It's all too much for me. I wish we could just forget it now and enjoy this!” They stared at a leopard for a while. It was lying motionless in the grass about fifty yards beyond the fence. It didn't look at all dangerous, as if you could just go up and stroke it and it would purr.

“Wasn't she terrific, though — your Jessica Charlotte,” said Patrick.

“Yes,” said Omri.

“You'd never think she was a thief.”

“You shouldn't judge, if you've ever done anything mad yourself,” said Omri. “And you have and so have I.”

Patrick looked round at him. “Did you think of that?”

“No. It's in the Account.”

“I think I'll read that after all,” Patrick said. “Now I've met her. She seemed like… quite a woman. Pity we can't bring her back for an encore!”

“Or just to talk to her.”

“Yeah.” He straightened up. “Hey, I could murder an ice cream. I'm going back to the shop. D'you want me to bring you one?”

“Yes. No. I dunno. No, don't bother. See you later.”

Patrick dashed off, and Omri went the other way. The jewel case… it all hung on that. If only he knew…! Something about the jewel case was tickling the back of his mind, something reassuring, if only he could think of it… but it eluded him. He felt a shadow hanging over him that he couldn't get out from under.

He thought that no one in the world before him had had to worry that at any time he could not just disappear but
never have been.
No. Surely that couldn't happen. Could it? Time was so weird, so — ungraspable. Clocks and watches made it seem simple but it was just like with these animals. You put fences round them and thought you had them tamed but there was so much more to them than that. You couldn't tame time.

He saw his mother at a distance and swerved to walk towards her. She was standing close to a high mesh fence.

“I hate monkeys,” she said, gazing intently at a group of baboons. Most of them were picking fleas out of each other's fur, but two big males suddenly began jumping up and down, snarling and screeching. The mother baboons snatched up their babies and scattered.

“So why aren't you looking at some other animal, like the giraffes? You like giraffes.”

“Only because of their crazy-paving coats,” she said
obscurely. “Look at those urky beasts, how disgustingly like us they are! I wish they were all in Africa.”

“I wish we were too!” said Omri fervently. Although it wouldn't make any difference to his anxiety. If it turned out he'd never been born, he could just as easily disappear in Africa as here.

“Have you seen the bison?” his mother asked.

“Are there bison? I'd like to see those,” said Omri. He always liked anything that reminded him of American Indians, although Little Bull's tribe was not from the plains and didn't hunt buffalo.

They wandered off to another part of the park. It was a lovely afternoon. The English countryside stretched away on all sides, with the strangeness of wild animals from faraway countries dotted about in it. A herd of zebra grazed on a green hill, and you could hear the screech of peacocks from near the big house.

Omri had a strong urge to put his hand into his mother's, but he thought it would look babyish. He just needed to hang onto her, suddenly. There was so much fear inside him.

“Mum.”

“Mm?”

“Are you sure you grew up in the East End? Are you sure your gran was poor?”

She looked at him, puzzled. “What a funny question! Did you think I was making it up?”

Bert hadn't done it yet.
Well, it was only a few hours
since he'd sent them back. If only the little burglar decided to break his solemn vow! If only he just kept the swag, like a good thief!

But then he might be afraid Omri would bring him back. Of course he could do that. But somehow Omri felt a deep reluctance to bring any of the three of them back again. It was as if he'd burnt his fingers last time he'd touched them and now he was afraid, in a very deep place inside, to touch them again. Of course Bert couldn't know that, so he might do what he'd promised just in case. Or because he was afraid of Elsie turning him in…

“Mum,” Omri said. “You know the red leather jewel case that my key belonged to.”

“Yes.”

“Funny that when that was stolen, the burglar left the key behind.”

“But he didn't. The key was in the lock that night. Nice work, eh? Meant he didn't even have to break the box to get at the jewels.”

“But - but - but you said Maria left
you
the key - for - for your legacy! The one you gave me—”

“No, no, that wasn't that one! That was a spare.”

“Is that what she told you? That she'd had a spare key?”

His mother had a funny look. Her eyes had gone narrow, as if she were watching something.

“Come to think of it…”

“What?”

“When she was dying… she called it ‘Jessie's key'. She said…” She stopped. She stopped walking too, as if to help her concentrate.

“
What,
Mum?” Omri almost shouted.

“Omri, don't… Don't yell at me now… I'm trying to remember. She was so pitiful…” Suddenly she began to cry.

“Mum!” Omri burst out, shocked.

“I'm sorry.” She tried to pull herself together, blowing her nose. “You see, I never knew my mother. I was only a baby when she was killed by the bomb. And Daddy was killed in the Navy, at the battle of St Nazaire. Granny Marie was the only real family I had. I loved her so very much, and she loved me. I was all she had left too.”

Omri said nothing. Slowly his mother began to walk again, and he kept beside her. Something was coming out of her deepest memory, something very, very important to him.

“She was quite well, till near the end, and then she suddenly had a heart attack. She was taken into hospital. Adiel was only about a month old at the time. I was running to and fro like mad, to visit her. I felt frantic. I knew she was going to die — she was in her eighties — and I couldn't bear it somehow. I wanted her to live for ever… And she was so distressed, so upset, and I couldn't find out what was bothering her. I wanted her at least to die in peace. And then at last, she came out with it.”

“What?”

She walked for a long time in silence. His impatience was almost too much to bear, but he did bear it.

“Simply that she had nothing to leave me. I couldn't believe it! As if I cared! And that was when she started going on about all the things that had been stolen. The silver tea service, the emerald bracelet, the diamond brooch… Of course it was absurd. They'd all have been sold long ago, but it was as if she'd forgotten the years between and all she could think of was that I should have had them, that she should have been able to hand them on to me.

“It's so clear in my memory… Her lying there, so — frail, the life in her petering out… desperately longing to give me a treasure, an heirloom. And giving me this little old grey key! ‘It's worthless,' she said. ‘It's not even the proper one… it's Jessie's key, the one Jessie sent, that happened to fit… It's a skeleton key, it opens any lock…' And she pressed it into my hand and whispered, ‘My sweet girl, may it open doors for you, all your life…'”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Does it open the jewel case?' and she said it did. So I said that the key and the jewel case were all the inheritance anyone could want.”

Omri stopped dead in his tracks.

“What did you say?”

“I told her she could give me the jewel case. What was left of it… The red leather was beginning to rot, the sides
had come unglued, and the lid and the little trays were hanging off, but it was still a box, and it still had its key. And Granny Marie said, what was the use of an old empty box, and I said, but it's much more than that! It was given to her by Matthew on their honeymoon.”

Omri could scarcely speak. He clutched her arm.

“But it was stolen,” he managed to scrape out of a dry throat. “The burglar - stole it.”

“Oh, yes, but didn't I tell you? The case was found afterwards, thrown away in the garden. Of course, empty, but you know, she was so glad at least to have that back. She'd often told me the story of how an old Cockney lady who happened to be passing, and saw it under the front hedge, brought it in to her a couple of days after the burglary, all muddy and bedraggled, and she hugged it and cried over it, and forgot for the moment that everything valuable had gone. It was a bit of Matt for her to treasure.”

Omri felt the sweet fresh air going down into his lungs as he breathed deeply. Of course.
Of course.
That was it - that was what he'd been trying to remember! His mother had told him - long ago, when he'd first had the key — that the jewel case had
fallen to pieces
! If she knew that, she must have kept it until then. It must have been returned!

He was alive. He wasn't going to disappear, even though Bert had kept his oath — to the letter. “I will return the
jewel case…”
And that was just what he had
done! The crafty little crook… And who was the “old Cockney lady who happened to be passing?” Could that have been Elsie? What would she have done to Bert afterwards? Poor old Bert! Omri suddenly began to laugh and cry at once.

“Omri! Darling, what is it?”

“Oh, Mum! It's okay, nothing, I'm okay, don't mind me…”

She was holding him tight. Gradually he calmed down. He pulled away and wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

“I don't fancy seeing the bison just now,” he said. “Can we have an ice cream?”

They walked back to the big house with their arms around each other. Omri didn't feel there was anything childish about that at all. In fact, he felt extremely grown-up.