The Unseen Guest Read online

  Done gathering his plans, he closed his satchel. “Double-crosser! I thought he was a businessman looking to make a profit, like me. You should have seen how excited he was at the notion of putting the children in a PIE. That was the most profitable idea I’ve ever had! But it seems there’s something else he wants more than money. What, I don’t know.”

  Penelope’s mind raced. All along she had believed the admiral to be a danger to the children, and he was—but he was simply being used by Quinzy. Why? Why had Quinzy gone to so much trouble to bring this fortune hunter and his ostrich to Ashton Place? She thought of the children racing on wolfback through the forest, with Lord Fredrick and his hounds in pursuit.

  The hunt is on…. Madame Ionesco’s warning came back to her like a voice from some invisible dimension. This was the third time since coming to live at Ashton Place that the children had been forced to flee a wild armed mob. The first was at the Christmas ball, when the gentlemen set up a late-night hunting party to find the presumably missing Incorrigibles (luckily the children were hiding in the house all along, thanks to Nutsawoo, who had cleverly led them upstairs to a secret attic). The second time was in London, at the disastrous opening night of Pirates on Holiday. And now the third: the Bertha Derby, for want of a better name for it. If not for Old Timothy leading the hounds astray until she and the children had nearly reached the house, they would have been at the mercy of Lord Fredrick’s wild shots.

  “Yes, the hunt is on,” she thought to herself. “But why?” She turned to Admiral Faucet. “One more thing, Admiral. Did you ever discover how Bertha got loose to begin with?”

  “A funny business, that. The latch on the cage wasn’t damaged at all. It’d simply been opened, and I know I closed it up properly.” He shrugged. “Someone must have let her out.”

  IT WAS TOO LATE FOR Simon to travel back to the farmhouse to sleep, so he bunked with Jasper in the servants’ quarters, where he was able to get an hour or two of rest, at least. Penelope scarcely slept at all, for her mind was whirring with all that had happened, and she wondered how all the pieces of this strange puzzle might fit together. Eventually she drifted off out of sheer exhaustion, and did not wake again until Margaret tiptoed into her bedchamber with a jug of fresh water for the washbasin. Quinzy was already gone from Ashton Place, Margaret told her, and the admiral was, too.

  As planned, Penelope, Simon, and the children met Madame Ionesco in the Egyptian Room for a late breakfast of Gypsy cakes and tea. The cakes had been carried from London and were a bit crushed, but even in pieces they were delicious, and the crumbs would make excellent treats for Nutsawoo, not to mention the pigeons, warblers, nuthatches, and other creatures that were likely to come by the nursery windows later on for a taste.

  The children found the cheetah statues amusing and busied themselves doing math problems with the spots. Madame Ionesco was still aglow with pride about her ability to summon Edward Ashton back from the dead. Penelope did not have the heart to tell her that it had all been a trick, but she and Simon exchanged private, knowing looks. “I’ve outdone myself this time,” the soothsayer crowed. “Never had one actually come marching through the Veil before! Wait’ll this story gets around. I’ll have to double my price.”

  Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.

  “Who’s going to turn up next—Cleopatra?” the Gypsy merrily and rhetorically cried. But it was not the ruler of all Egypt, nor any other long-dead person knocking on the door. It was the Widow Ashton, looking very much alive. There was color in her cheeks and a serene expression on her face. She had shed her mourning dress and wore an attractive powder-blue gown. Instead of a black veiled cap, a sprig of fresh flowers was tucked into her hair. The sparkle in her eyes made her seem ten years younger than before.

  “Try some Gypsy cake?” Alexander offered politely.

  “Sorry. Only crumbs.” Beowulf sounded apologetic, but held out the plate.

  “Yum yum crumbs!” Cassiopeia insisted, dribbling some into her mouth.

  “No, thank you, children. I do not mean to interrupt your breakfast. I simply came to offer my thanks to Madame Ionesco.” She turned to the fortune-teller with shining eyes. “Once I finally regained my senses, all I could do was think: What if I had remarried, only to discover later that Edward was still alive? It would have been a tragedy beyond imagining. I am so grateful, dear soothsayer! You have saved me from a gruesome fate, indeed.”

  Madame Ionesco grinned her semitoothless grin. “I’m glad you’re happy, honey. I have to be honest; I was worried. Crossing the Veil is not done so often. I was afraid that husband of yours might evaporate.”

  “He has, in a way.” The Widow Ashton held up a letter. “He is already gone; he took his leave early this morning, before I could see him again. But he left this letter for me. In it he tells me things I have longed to hear for many a moon. Finally, my heart is at peace. My Edward is alive—and someday, I know, he will return.”

  Gently, Penelope asked, “Forgive me, my lady, but are you certain it was your husband? He appeared so briefly, and the room was so dim….”

  “There is no doubt in my mind.” The widow smiled and pressed the letter to her heart. “In these pages, he says things that only my Edward would know. And I would recognize his eyes anywhere. That is why I fainted last night when he suddenly appeared. Oh, to look into his eyes once more! Madame Ionesco, for that alone, I can never thank you enough.”

  “Don’t worry about it, honey.” Madame Ionesco patted the widow’s hand. “But take my advice: Leave the prognosticating to professionals. What the future holds is anybody’s guess. Even if your husband does come back, he may not be the same Edward who left. People change, darling. People change.”

  Penelope and Simon glanced at each other. Did Madame Ionesco know more than she was letting on?

  The widow just smiled. “I’m sure you are wise, Madame. But I prefer to live in hope. The day will come when he finally appears at the door. What a happy reunion that will be!”

  “Maybe happy, maybe not. Keep an open mind! You know what they say, Lady No-Longer-Widow. No matter how big the egg, don’t count your ostriches before they hatch, eh?”

  Penelope gasped. “If I am not mistaken, Agatha Swanburne once uttered the very same words, but it was certainly not one of her more popular sayings. Wherever did you hear it?”

  Madame Ionesco rose from the table. “During the séance. Remember when I said I was getting a message from someone long dead? Whose name starts with the letter A?”

  “That was it?”

  “That was it.” Idly she tapped the obelisk clock with the handle of her teaspoon. There was a soft whirr as the hands of the ancient clock spun ’round and ’round; they did not stop until they told the exact right time (which was quarter past ten, to be precise).

  Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, said the clock, as if it had been running perfectly all along.

  The fortune-teller licked the spoon and dropped it into her purse. “Interesting woman, that Agatha Swanburne. Will you look at the time! Better call the carriage for me now, darlings. I have a train to catch.”

  SIMON HAD A TRAIN TO catch as well. “Wish I could stay longer, but I received some urgent news about my great-uncle Pudge just before I left London. He’s not in good health, and he’s been asking for me. I’ll ride with Madame to the station and catch the train in the other direction.”

  As Penelope already knew, Simon’s great-uncle Pudge was very old and had been a seafarer in his youth; now he lived in a home for old sailors in the city of Brighton, near the sea. “I am sure he will appreciate the visit,” Penelope said warmly, but in truth she was sorry that Simon had to leave so soon; she felt there was something important she had forgotten to tell him in all the excitement, but she could not think what it was. At her request, Old Timothy readied the big landau carriage and took them all for a ride to Ashton Station, so that she might spend at least a little more time with her friend. But with Madame Ionesco snoring in
the opposite seat, and the children climbing over them and pointing at the scenery on either side of the road, all she and Simon could do was sit in silence and smile shyly at each other now and then.

  Once at the station they walked Madame Ionesco to the platform. Simon lifted the fortune-teller’s bag onto the London-bound train, and Penelope finally worked up the courage to pose the question that had been taking shape in her heart for some time now.

  “Madame Ionesco, if a person—two persons to be precise—are not actually dead, but merely absent, would your soothsaying powers still enable you to send them a message?”

  The wizened lady patted her cheek. “Messages to the living? That’s what the post office is for, honey. So long, wolf babies! Come visit when you’re in the neighborhood.”

  The Incorrigible children hugged the fortune-teller and danced in and out of her countless billowing scarves as they caught the puffs of steam from the awakening locomotive like so many wind-filled sails. Penelope watched the children play with a fond heart and considered the Gypsy’s reply. She could write a letter to her parents, but where could she send it? To the Long-Lost Lumleys, care of Alpine Scenery, Somewhere in Europe? Even the London General Post Office, which was the swiftest and most reliable postal service in the world, would be flummoxed by that address.

  Madame Ionesco’s train departed right on schedule. Simon’s train waited on the opposite platform. Once aboard, he secured a window seat so he could continue to wave many highly theatrical farewells to Penelope and the children. In fact, he was hanging so far out the window that Penelope could not help but think of Beowulf and the warbler. How could she ever have thought it was a nuthatch? “Distracted by a book,” she thought wryly. A silly book about a silly pony contest that she knew from the very first page Rainbow would win, for Rainbow always won. If, just once, something wildly dramatic could happen to Edith-Anne and Rainbow—something truly unexpected, like an attack by cannibals—

  “Cannibals!” she exclaimed. Penelope reached up and grabbed Simon’s hand, which dangled just within reach. “I meant to tell you: I found an unusual book in Lord Fredrick’s library, written by a cabin boy,” she said in a rush, for the conductor had already shouted “All aboard!” and closed up the doors, which meant the train was ready to leave. “It has to do with cannibals, but it is so smudged with age and seawater I can barely read a word of it.”

  “Cannibals?” Simon laughed (although of course, there is nothing particularly amusing about cannibals). “That’s funny. Uncle Pudge is always talking about cannibals. Claims he met some once, when he was only a cabin boy. Something to do with a shipwreck.”

  “This book deals with a shipwreck, too.” She felt suddenly lightheaded, and would not let go of Simon’s hand.

  “What’s it called?”

  “The title is An Encounter with the Man-Eating Savages of Ahwoo-Ahwoo, as Told by the Cabin Boy—”

  Whoo whoo!

  Whoo whoo!

  The train whistle blew as soon as she started to speak, and she was drowned out.

  “Didn’t get any of that,” Simon yelled over the rumble of the engine. “Say again?”

  She coughed from all the steam; when she found her voice, she yelled, “—and Sole Survivor of a Gruesomely Failed Seafaring Expedition Through Parts Unknown: Absolutely Not to Be Read by Children—”

  Whoo whoo!

  Whoo whoo!

  Once more she was drowned out by the whistle’s blast. “Never mind,” she shouted when the din stopped. “It is a long title. But it is definitely about a cabin boy. In a shipwreck. With cannibals.”

  Whoo whoo!

  Whoo whoo!

  “A cabin boy in a shipwreck, you say?” Simon was shouting now, too. “That’d be a funny coincidence. If it were the same shipwreck, I mean.”

  “It certainly would. Yet I think I would have noticed if the author’s name was Pudge. Unless I was distracted.” Penelope shivered, for that slippery, icy feeling was trickling down her spine again. “Is Pudge your great-uncle’s real name?”

  He grinned. “I doubt it. Who’d name their child Pudge? But it’s the only name I’ve ever known for him. I’ll ask him when I see him. I do remember the name of the island where this shipwreck happened, though; he’s told me the story many times. It’s—”

  Whoo whoo!

  Whoo whoo!

  The train began to move, and Penelope was forced to let go. Simon shouted, and she tried to read his lips. But the train whistle hooted and the engine roared, and a thick, rolling fog of steam blanketed the station platform. The train lumbered off, slowly at first, and then gained speed.

  “Stay there, children!” she shouted, breaking into a run. “Do not move!” Penelope raced along the platform, neck and neck with the train, until it pulled ahead and she could not keep up anymore. Through the fog she saw Simon’s head craned out the window, mouthing the name of this mysterious island in time to the train whistle:

  Simon shouted, and she tried to read his lips.

  Whoo whoo!

  Whoo whoo!

  “Ahwoo-Ahwoo,” she whispered to herself. “Of course.”

  EPILOGUE

  IN THE WORDS OF AGATHA Swanburne, “Many are happy to give advice; few are happy to take it.” As usual, the wise old founder was right, for most people tend to trust their own opinions far more than they should and are stubborn, recalcitrant, unyielding, and even obstinate when someone helpfully suggests that they wipe the fog off their pince-nez and have a good look at hard truths that have been staring them in the face all along.

  Of course, there is such a thing as bad advice, and not every pithy nugget of wisdom is worth stitching onto a pillow. Consider the old saying “Out of sight, out of mind,” otherwise known as OOS, OOM. OOS, OOM absurdly suggests that things that cannot be seen are quickly forgotten, but nothing could be further from the truth. Objects that are out of sight are rarely out of mind, and things unseen can be more present than that which is right in front of one’s nose. Just ask a long-grieving widow whose husband drowned in a medicinal tar pit, or a plucky young governess who spent more than half her life wondering whether she might someday see her parents again.

  To put it bluntly: OOS, OOM is poppycock, balderdash, rubbish, and nonsense. Even the clumsy, unattractive, and bad-tasting dodos have occupied people’s thoughts far more in extinction than they ever did when they were alive.

  And speaking of dodos, and tar pits, and things unseen: Edward Ashton had long been thought dead, or even very dead, but apparently he was not as dead as a dodo. Thanks to the skill of a soothsayer, the scheming of an impostor (or two), and the optoomuchstic hopes of the woman who loved him, Edward Ashton had become, not quite living, but somehow less dead than before.

  Penelope was up to her elbows in suds, but her mind wandered, as minds tend to do, and the topic of Edward Ashton was where it settled. “He is still lost, one could say, but not long lost,” she thought as she poured a pitcher of fresh water over Beowulf’s head.

  “Ow,” said Beowulf, squirming in the tub. “Soap in eyes. Rinse again, please.”

  “Ahoy, shipmates.” Alexander popped up from beneath the bubbles. “Sunken treasure!” He offered up the washcloth, which he had just retrieved from the bottom of the tub.

  It was not their usual bath night, but the Incorrigible children had been itching and scratching with increasing frequency since their adventure in the forest. At first Penelope panicked; she thought they might have somehow caught the strange moon sickness endured by Lord Fredrick Ashton, but the true explanation was simpler: The children had fleas. Within days the whole nursery had become infested. The rugs were brought outside to be swept and beaten on the lawn; the children’s bedding and clothes were laundered; and everything in the room was scrubbed by hand in hot water and strong soap, including the Incorrigibles themselves.

  Cassiopeia was done with her bath and had slipped on her nightgown, but her long auburn hair was still very wet.

  “Careful, Cass
iopeia—use a towel, please; do not shake—oh!”

  It was too late. Cassiopeia put her head down and shook her wet hair vigorously, like a dog that has just come out of a lake. Water droplets flew everywhere and needed to be mopped up. This task finally tore Penelope’s mind away from her ruminations about how many degrees of dead there might be, and back to the bright, cozy nursery and the extremely lively children who lived there.

  Afterward, the children asked for a chapter from one of the Giddy-Yap, Rainbow! books. Penelope agreed, but even in performing this happy task, a note of melancholy crept in. The book pleased her, of course, but it pleased her in a different way than it had in the past. It pleased her because it made her think of how much she had always loved these stories, all the many times she had read them over the years. It pleased her because she liked feeling, just for a while, like the girl she was when she first met and loved Edith-Anne and Rainbow. It made her remember how sweet it had been to curl up among the hand-stitched pillows in the window seat at the Swanburne Academy (she would scarcely be able to fit into it now, of course) and imagine that she herself was a character in the books—a character who was partly Edith-Anne and partly Penelope, too.

  She would always find these books delightful; of that she had no doubt. But after her recent thrilling adventures, and in light of the somber questions that now flooded her mind at odd moments, demanding answers, the Giddy-Yap, Rainbow! books did not seem to offer quite the right range of experiences to be of practical use to her anymore. All except the one about Edith-Anne and Albert, of course. That one continued to fascinate.