Big Change for Stuart (26 page)

IT WAS TWO
days later, and Stuart was hanging around in the back garden, waiting for April to appear.

Charlie was also in the garden. Apart from eating, the little dog's main occupation was following Stuart around, gazing up at him adoringly – so adoringly that even Stuart's mother (who wasn't particularly keen on pets) had agreed to keep him for the time being.

‘Until we can find the
original
owner,' she'd insisted, and Stuart had happily gone along with that condition. At the present moment Charlie was resting his head on Stuart's right shoe and nibbling the shoe-lace.

‘Good dog,' said Stuart. The stump of tail wagged keenly.

Stuart looked at his watch. Since their return, April and her sisters had been confined to the house as a punishment for staying out late without permission, and April had communicated with Stuart by means of written messages held up to the window of her bedroom.

had been the first one, followed – a few hours later – by:

Stuart had gone and got paper of his own, and had written the word
HOW?
and held it up to her.

had been the answer.

asked Stuart
.

wrote Stuart in reply.

On the second morning, a grinning April had brandished a sign reading:

It was five to eleven now.

Stuart looked at the triplets' garden, still marvelling that he could actually see over the fence; he'd grown nearly four centimetres – which meant that although he was still short for his age, for the time being he was only a
bit
short. ‘A sudden growth spurt,' his mother had decided, after measuring him. ‘Unusual but not unprecedented. I expect it
was
the combination of the heat stress you endured and Dad's splendidly healthy cooking. I've actually read a recent paper about the positive effects of spinach and kale on human bone growth – I think we should definitely keep them on the menu.'

Which meant that Stuart wasn't particularly looking forward to the sort of meals he'd be getting from now on.

The Kingleys' back door opened and one of the triplets came out.

‘Hi, June,' said Stuart.

She looked surprised, and slightly gratified that he'd identified her correctly. ‘April says to tell you that she's just coming. She's been working on something to show you. And I wanted to say thank you for coming to get us. I've realized now that it wasn't a dream.'

‘Oh, right,' said Stuart, impressed. He hadn't realized that June
ever
changed her mind.

‘No, it wasn't a dream,' she continued, ‘it was an extremely vivid hallucination probably brought on by inhaling fumes from the old-fashioned lead-based paint your great-uncle used in the illusions.'

‘Oh.' He couldn't be bothered to argue. ‘OK.'

‘But you snapped us out of it and got us home. So thanks.'

She disappeared back into the house, and after a moment April came out. Stuart felt ridiculously pleased to see her; they'd only known each other for just over a month, but he felt as if they'd been friends for years and years and years. She grinned back at him over the fence and then held up a piece of paper for him to see.

‘I've been working and working on this,' she said. ‘I tried every anagram possible and then gave up on that idea, and then I thought that they might
be
initials for something. SWOT could stand for
South West Of The
.'

‘South West Of The what?' asked Stuart.

‘That's the trouble – I could only think of stupid things. Icelandic Egg. Idiotic Exhibition.'

‘Irish Elephant,' suggested Stuart.

‘So
then
I wondered if it was a number thing – you know, S is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet, and W is the twenty-third, and so on, so I added up all the numbers and got two hundred and twenty-five. Does that seem a significant number to you at all?'

Stuart shook his head.

‘Nor me,' said April. ‘So then I read a code book that June got for Christmas, and there's hundreds of ways to write codes: you can substitute one letter for another, or decide to move them so many places up or down the alphabet, or swap them round, or count backwards, and I tried loads and loads and loads of them – I mean, I didn't have anything else to do apart from practise “Dance of the Shepherd Girls” – and in the end I came to a conclusion.'

‘What?' asked Stuart.

‘That it's not a code. Because in the end, all a code would give you is a six-letter word, and that wouldn't be enough of a clue. Even if it was
inside
or
behind
or
mirror
or
swivel
. I mean, we've pretty much explored every nook and cranny of those illusions and we haven't found the will, have we? It must be hidden somewhere complicated and hard to find, and one word just isn't going to give us the answer.'

She was probably right, Stuart thought – she generally was, about most things. But there was something else nagging at the back of his mind.

‘I had another phone call,' he said, ‘from Miss Edie. When you were trapped with your sisters. I didn't have time to talk to her properly, but she said she'd remembered a couple of things that might help with the search.'

‘What?'

‘She said that her grandma told her that the will was well hidden, but that we should use the male to find it.'

‘The
male
?'

‘Yes.'

‘What, as in
man
? Does that mean only
you
can find it, and not
me
? Or does she mean that only a grown-up can get it?'

‘I don't know. And she said something else – something really,
really
odd. She said that her grandma hadn't liked me much.'

‘Her grandma who died eighty years ago?'

‘That's the one.'

‘How could she ever have met you?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well, what
do
you know about her?'

‘That she was a very clever businesswoman. She came to Canada from England. And she said that I was nothing but trouble.'