When the Curtain Rises (10 page)
“That was very impressive,” Bess said with a nod of her chin when the clapping had subsided.
Abigail's eyes were wide behind her glasses. “Brilliant, just brilliant.”
“Thanks,” Chloe murmured, trembling and smiling at the same time.
“I did itâI survived!” Chloe said to Nyssa afterward, when the others were gone.
“You didn't just survive, you were awesome!” said Nyssa. She held out a piece of paper. “There's no way I'm letting you out of this room until you've filled out this entry form. You
have
to do the talent show.”
“Look at my hands,” said Chloe. “Look how much they're shaking. And that's just from playing in front of four people!”
“You can do it, you
know
you can.”
“But the show's just a few days away now!”
“Exactly,” said Nyssa. “My dad's sending the program to the printer tomorrow morning.” She waved the entry form in the air. “This is your last chance.”
Chloe shook her head vigorously. “I can't. There's no way I'd be ready.”
“C'mon, you're ready now! Just fill it out, okay? You can always drop out later if you have to.”
“Has anyone ever told you how pushy you are?” Chloe asked as Nyssa held the paper directly in front of her face.
“Just take it.”
Chloe stared at her friend for a moment before grabbing the paper out of her hand. “All right. I'm taking it. But I'm not committing to anything. If I have to back out at the last minute, I will. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Nyssa.
I
think I'll do some more exploring upstairs this evening,” Chloe told her great-aunts after supper.
“Good idea,” said Kitty. “You could use a break from that piano. You've been practicing so much lately, you must have calluses on your fingers.”
Chloe made her way up to the third floor and let herself into what at one time must have been the master bedroom. It was a spacious room with large shuttered windows and high ceilings, dominated by a giant canopied bed.
Chloe examined every item in the room, removing drawers and checking for secret compartments in each piece of furniture. She'd just removed some quilts from a large wooden chest next to the bed when she discovered the chest had a false bottom. She pushed at the boards, and then she tried to pry up a loose board with her fingernails. When she couldn't quite lift it, she reached for a silver letter opener on a nearby desk and inserted it into the crack. Carefully she pulled one end of the board up, holding it just high enough so that she could squeeze her free hand through the gap.
At first Chloe felt nothing, but as she moved her hand around the hidden space, her fingers made contact with the curled edges of a piece of paper. Chloe withdrew the document carefully. It was a letter from Magdala to Dante, dated February 13, 1918.
My Dear Dante,
I am not sure why I am writing to you, since I have
nowhere to send a letter. Perhaps it is because the baby
that I am carrying is almost due. I cannot speak with
you, to remind you of our child, so instead I set my
words down on this page.
You have been missing for two months now. Though
the officers assigned to your case are sympathetic to
our family's plight, their official investigation has all
but come to a close. I cannot fault them. They followed
every lead, no matter how unlikely, but in the end they
learned nothing new.
The police released your few things to me yesterday: the posters, the painting of the carnival and the rose
wood box. I hung the painting on the first-floor landing,
but I didn't know what to do with Monsieur Lucien's
box. I was going to throw it in the fire, but when I took
it in my hands I found that I could not destroy it. If
the box is indeed linked with your disappearance, as I
believe in my heart, then it remains my only connection
to you, my only hope, dark as that hope might be. And
so, instead of burning the box, I have hidden it away in
the secret attic. Now I can only pray that its evil influence will remain contained, that its taint will not spread
through this house.
Do you think of us wherever you are, Dante? Every
day the girls ask where you are and when you will
return. As they kneel beside their beds at night, I hear
them praying, begging God to keep you safe, to bring you
home. Though my own faith has almost disappeared, I
can never resist making a silent appeal of my own.
Where did you go, Dante? Where did your terrible
ambition take you?
Chloe's heart was beating furiously as she let her great-grandmother's letter fall to the floor. In the failing light, her hand found the tiny golden key that hung at her throat. The rosewood wishing box had not been destroyed. It was hidden in this very house. It was waiting for her; Chloe could feel it.
Chloe slept fitfully that night. She rose at dawn the next morning, grabbed a quick bowl of cereal before anyone else was up and rushed upstairs to begin hunting for the secret attic.
She started in the master bedroom. When she spied a trapdoor in the ceiling of an alcove off the main room, she was sure her search was over. But the enclosed space at the top of the turret was empty and led nowhere.
From the bedroom, Chloe moved down the hall to a storage room crammed with magic paraphernalia. She made a mental note to tell Nyssa about it. Chloe would have liked to spend some time examining her great-grandfather's bits and pieces, but her eagerness to find the hidden attic kept her focused. She inspected every square inch of the floor, ceiling and walls, opening wardrobes and chests, tapping everywhere for false bottoms or panels.
When she was finished with the storage room, Chloe moved on to the small library next door. Leather-bound books in tall shelves covered all four walls of the room. A spiral staircase led to a book-filled loft. Chloe pushed and pulled a few sections of each bookcase experimentally. Then she began removing books systematically, shelf by shelf, as she'd done in the nursery downstairs. She'd explored most of one wall in this fashion before she was called down to lunch.
Chloe returned to the library in the afternoon, completing her circuit of the first level and starting up the spiral stairs to the loft. She had more luck on the second floor of the library. A revolving door built into one of the bookcases led her to a tiny hidden alcove and out onto a narrow balcony. But like the space above the turret in the master bedroom, both the alcove and the balcony were empty.
“It's so frustrating,” Chloe told Nyssa as the two girls sat together on the front steps after lunch the next day. “Dante's box is in this house somewhere. I just can't find it.”
“Tell me you aren't taking the story of the wishing box seriously,” said Nyssa. “Remember, magicians exaggerate everything. It's part of their mystique; they build up a larger-than-life history for themselves.”
“But I didn't read about it in Dante's memoir,” Chloe argued. “My aunts told me about the wishing box.”
“Don't you think they might have embellished the facts a little to make the family history more interesting?”
“Kitty might embellish things, but Bess wouldn't. Besides, you've read Magdala's letter. She not only mentioned the box; she believed it had something to do with Dante's disappearance.”
“Right,” said Nyssa. “
I can only pray that its evil influence
will remain contained, that its taint will not spread through
this house
.” She rolled her eyes. “C'mon, Chloe. It sounds like a line from a really sappy ghost story. People don't talk like that in real life.”
“Whatever,” Chloe said stubbornly, folding her arms across her chest. “But I'm
not
going to stop looking for the secret attic or the rosewood box.”
“Don't you have more important things to worry about right now, like getting ready for the show? It's just a few days away.”
“I'm still practicing,” said Chloe. “I'm capable of doing both, you know. Preparing for the show
and
searching the house.”
“All right, all right,” said Nyssa. “So where have you looked so far?”
“Everywhere,” Chloe sighed. “I've searched every room in the house.”
“Have you looked for it outside the house?”
Chloe stared at her friend. A smile spread slowly across her face.
“What?” said Nyssa.
“That's it! It's that simple! Three generations of McBrides have already explored the house. If the secret attic could be reached from the inside, someone would have found it already. The entrance to Magdala's attic must be on the outside!”
Nyssa raised her eyebrows. “So what are we waiting for?”
Exploring the outside of the old Victorian mansion was not a simple task. Nyssa and Chloe made a circuit of the building at ground level first, but it was clear they'd have to climb considerably higher if they wanted to find an exterior entrance to a hidden attic.
“Do your great-aunts have a ladder?” Nyssa asked.
“I don't know. I haven't seen one anywhere,” said Chloe. “But there's a perfectly good trellis on the other side of this lilac bush.”
Nyssa squeezed in after Chloe and gave the ivy-covered trellis an experimental tug. “You think it will hold us?”
“It's mostly solid. We'll go one at a time. I'll go first,” said Chloe. She found a handhold and began pulling herself up.
“How is it?” Nyssa asked from below.
“Stable, so far. There's a ledge here. If I can just get my leg overâ”
“Hey, be careful. I'm the one who's going to have to explain this to your aunts if you fall.”
“Don't worry, I made it,” Chloe called back. “I'm on the first roof.”
“I'm right behind you.”
Climbing from the small first-floor overhang to the next level proved to be even more challenging. Chloe had to hang on to a series of window ledges and old pipes to get to the top of the second story. Nyssa followed a few moves behind. From the second story, the roofline became more complicated and therefore easier to climb.
“There's quite a view from up here,” Nyssa said shakily as she swung her leg over the railing of a third-story balcony after Chloe.
“Look what I found!” said Chloe. “There's a ladder on the wall just on the other side of this shutter. I never would have noticed it if we hadn't climbed out here. This could be it, the entrance to Magdala's secret attic!”
“Be careful,” Nyssa cautioned as Chloe reached across the shutter for the nearest ladder rung. With her right hand gripping the bottom of the ladder, Chloe climbed back up onto the ledge of the balcony. From there she was able to reach for the next rung with her left hand. She wedged her feet against the side of the shutters and began climbing.
“I've found something,” Chloe called down when she'd reached the fifth rung. “There's a small window hidden under the roof overhang.”
“What do you see?”
“Not much,” Chloe said as she tried to peer in. “The glass is filthy. I'm going to try to open it.” She turned the window's exterior latch and gently pulled the handle on the side of the frame. It refused to budge. She tightened the grip of her left hand on the ladder and pulled the handle harder with her right hand. After a few seconds of continuous tugging, the window frame gave a reluctant creak and slowly swung out. “I've got it open,” Chloe called down, her heart pounding. “I'm going in.”
The window opening was small, but Chloe was able to wriggle through without getting stuck. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, she saw that she was crouched in a tiny chamber. There was a dusty pile in the far corner of the dark space. “I've found something,” she called out the window, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.
“What?”
“Just a second. It's hard to see in here.” Chloe knelt on the plank floor. “There's a wooden box and some papers. Can you climb up partway so I can pass them out to you?”
Chloe had just made her way back down the ladder to the balcony when Abigail's head appeared in a window one story below them, startling both girls.
“Didn't mean to scare you,” said the housekeeper. “I heard some thumping and banging as I was dusting in here. Weren't you going to the beach this afternoon? Anyway, I'm glad I found you. If you call your mother right away, Nyssa, you'll save her a trip down to the lake to search for you. Your grandparents have just arrived.”
“Great timing,” Nyssa muttered when Abigail had pulled her head back in. “Sorryâthey weren't supposed to be here until dinnertime.”
“You don't have to go right away, do you?” Chloe asked. “This could be itâthis could be Dante's rosewood box!”
