“Vanished!” I declared. “Into thin air no less!”
The ballroom had me baffled. Though I had searched the vast chamber, high and low, I could not solve the mystery. Estelle had disappeared. So had Lady Elizabeth. The ballroom was shaped like a chocolate box; along one wall was a bank of windows; along the other, a row of paneled mirrors. There had to be a hidden door somewhere. But I could not find it.
With the sun creeping up over the woodlands, spilling early morning light into the ballroom, I climbed out the window (the ballroom door was locked), sneaked back through the kitchen, and went up to my bedroom chamber. Where I promptly woke Bertha and told her what I had witnessed.
“What a strange business,” she said, adjusting my wig in the mirror (my disguise was in need of refreshing after the long night). “People creeping about in the night and vanishing without a trace—gives me the chills, it does.”
“If I had any doubts that Lady Elizabeth and Estelle are in cahoots, last night settled the matter. The tray of food had to be for Anastasia. What a fiendish pair they are!”
“What are you going to do, miss?”
“That’s the easy part, dear,” I said, fixing a dab of glue to my nose and sticking it back on. “I shall return to the ballroom before breakfast and snoop about until I find the secret door.”
“Shall I come with you?” said the maid hopefully.
“No, thank you, dear.” I threw on a white dress with a lovely silk collar. “I want you to stay as close to Estelle as possible today—see where she goes, what she does, who she talks to.”
Bertha nodded. “Yes, miss.”
With no time to waste, I set off for the ballroom again. But my hopes of having the place to myself were dashed. As the ball was tomorrow, the servants were swarming like locusts, setting up the long banqueting table where the food and drink would be served.
In fact, I didn’t get much farther than the ballroom’s carved oak doors. For it was here that I came upon Matilda and her mother having a rather heated discussion. About the sort of entrance Matilda wished to make at the ball. Namely, that she wanted to be carried in on a gilded throne.
“That seems rather excessive, darling,” said Lady Amelia meekly.
“Excessive?” Matilda stomped her foot. “I’m to inherit this great pile when Grandmother kicks the bucket. Don’t I deserve a little respect?”
“Of course you do, my sweet.” Lady Amelia began to fan herself manically. “But I fear that Lady Elizabeth might object if you are carried in by eight footmen.”
Matilda folded her arms. “Doesn’t she want me to feel special?”
“Aren’t entrances marvelous things?” I said, butting in helpfully. “I once saw Queen Victoria arrive for morning tea on the back of twelve eagles—smashing stuff.” I smiled at Matilda. “But perhaps Lady Elizabeth would prefer you didn’t enter the ballroom like an Egyptian princess riding her slaves.”
“Who asked you?” snarled Matilda.
Before I could answer, Lady Elizabeth’s voice came bellowing down the hallway. “Where is my blasted daughter-in-law?” she thundered. “Lady Amelia, come and rub my bunions, you indolent woman!”
I saw Lady Amelia’s petite nostrils flare. Just slightly. The smallest flash of irritation shadowing her round face. Then she groaned wearily. “Coming, Lady Elizabeth!”
“Lady Amelia,” I said, “I’m not one to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
“Liar,” snapped Matilda.
“But you really should stand up to Lady Elizabeth. Show her you won’t be pushed around.” I patted her fleshy arm. “The old bat will thank you for it.”
“No, she won’t,” said Matilda with a grin.
“You really think so, Esmeralda?” said Lady Amelia meekly.
“Why ever not?” I asked. “The only way to defeat a bully is to bash them senseless.”
“Oh, my,” whispered Lady Amelia. “What a thought!”
Lady Elizabeth bellowed again, and her daughter-in-law took off down the hall like a puppy. As she departed, I felt Matilda glaring at me with terrific interest. Studying my face as if it were a wall hanging. I prayed she had not recognized me.
“You’re the ugliest girl I ever saw, Cabbage,” she declared at last. “Are you really related to the King of Spain?”
“Most certainly,” I said. “We’re violently close. Practically sisters.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Matilda. “But as all of my friends hate me, I suppose you’ll have to do.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m practically positive I’ll end up hating you too.”
Matilda frowned. “You remind me of someone.”
“I’m sure she was glorious. And violently misunderstood.”
“She was unhinged.” Matilda glanced in at the ballroom. “Do you know why we haven’t had a party in this house for ten whole months, Cabbage?”
I nodded. “It was in all the papers—about your cousin Rebecca’s sudden death.”
Matilda undid and retied the ribbon in her hair, her hazel eyes sparkling. “She shriveled up right before our eyes and died. At least, I think she did.”
“You’re not sure?” I said gently.
“Of course I am.” Matilda glared at me again. “Follow me, Cabbage. I want to show you something completely bonkers.”
Matilda unlocked the door and ushered me inside. It was just as I remembered, yet it still made me gasp. A neat bedroom with a pretty brass bed—and a wonderland of clocks. They crowded the walls and the floor, the tables and drawers and cabinets. Brass clocks, silver ones, cuckoos and carriage clocks. Each timepiece ticking as one, like the heartbeat of this abandoned bedroom.
“Are you shocked, Cabbage?” said Matilda.
I wasn’t shocked. I was sad. Horribly sad. Thinking of how my friend was suffering in Prospa House. A place without hope, that’s what she had told me. I didn’t know all the grisly details, but her life as a remedy was beastly—curing those in Prospa dying of the Shadow and, with each healing, fading a little more until there would be nothing left of her.
“Whose room is this?” I asked.
“My cousin’s,” said Matilda.
“And the clocks?”
“Some foolishness about her mother.” Matilda wandered between the clocks toward the window. “But then, this is a strange house. Things happen here.”
“How thrilling!” I cleared my throat. “Such as?”
“I’m not really sure.” She gazed out at the parkland below. “But I have my suspicions.”
I had wondered whether Matilda was in on the wicked scheme involving Anastasia. After all, hadn’t she conspired with her grandmother to trap me at Lashwood? The girl was certainly capable of skulduggery. Yet she seemed to be as mystified as I was about the goings-on at Butterfield Park.
“Grandmother hated the clocks,” said Matilda. “Yet after my cousin died, she ordered this room to be locked up like a vault.” She walked back toward me. “Everything is just as my cousin left it.”
Except that wasn’t completely true. The last time I had been in Rebecca’s room, after the awful events of the birthday ball, the clocks had been knocked over and scattered about. And that wasn’t all. The timepieces had no longer ticked as one—they had been horribly out of sync. Yet now all of the clocks had been put to rights, just as Rebecca kept them, and they ticked with a single beat. Which begged an interesting question. “Someone is keeping the clocks ticking,” I said. “Is it you, dear?”
Matilda reached out and touched a gold carriage clock on the table beside her, her pretty face etched with melancholy. It only lasted a second. Then it was gone. “Don’t be stupid, Cabbage.” She turned and stomped out of the room. “I’m bored, let’s go.”
When Matilda tired of my delightful company shortly after lunch—muttering something about me being too nosy for my own good—I returned to the ballroom. It was unlocked and wonderfully deserted. I slipped in and closed the door behind me. A long banqueting table ran down the middle of the room. I walked around it, making a beeline for the wall of mirrored panels. Each mirror was surrounded by a gilded frame, and between every third panel was a candelabra wrapped in gold ivy.
I started at one end and moved down, pushing and poking each panel, looking for any sign of a secret door. Or a handle. It wasn’t a great success. The glass did not budge. There was no sign of a concealed entrance. But not willing to give up, I walked quickly back to the first panel and started again.
“Miss Cabbage?”
I jumped, startled. Lady Elizabeth was standing at the far end of the banqueting table. Which was rather odd, as I was just a few feet from the ballroom door—it was still closed. And I would surely have heard her come in.
“What are you doing in here, Miss Cabbage?” she said next.
“I was just admiring your glorious ballroom. But I must ask, Lady Elizabeth—how did you get in here?”
“Well, I didn’t fly in on my broomstick, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she barked.
“Of course you didn’t,” I said, moving toward her. “I never imagined for a moment that you were the sort of witch that used a broom.”
She huffed. “Is that what passes for flattery in India these days?”
“Oh, yes. It’s all the rage.” I stopped a few feet from old Walnut Head. “I’m still rather puzzled about how you got in here—I was standing right by the door.”
It made my blood boil to think that Anastasia was somewhere close. I was tempted to call out her name and pound on the mirrors. But if I did, the game would be up—and I might never secure that poor woman’s freedom.
“Puzzled, are you?” said Lady Elizabeth. “Well, don’t trouble yourself, Miss Cabbage. I was here long before you entered the room.”
“But I did not see you.”
“Then I suggest you consult a physician.” Then she pointed with her cane. “I was over there, inspecting the rostrum. Tomorrow night there will be a full orchestra playing for my guests.”
It was true there was a stage at the far end of the room, but I would surely have noticed if Lady Elizabeth had been up there. She didn’t fool me for a moment. The ballroom had been empty when I walked in. Which could only mean one thing. And Lady Elizabeth knew it.
“Do you imagine,” she said softly, “that I have some secret way of popping in and out of this ballroom?” Her beady eyes, lost in the folds of her wrinkly flesh, seemed to gaze into my very soul. “Is that what you think, Miss Cabbage?”
“Heavens no.” If this were a game of chess, I would have to move my next piece most carefully. “Though if you did have a secret entrance, where do you suppose it might be? If you don’t wish to say it aloud—for fear of your life and whatnot—just point with your stick or shake some of the dust from your hair and carve an arrow into it, showing the way.”
“Dust from my what?” Lady Elizabeth cupped her ear and huffed again. “Gibberish, that’s what you talk!”
The old bat was getting rather testy, so I felt it best to make a hasty retreat. I would return for another look around the ballroom at the next opportunity. As I turned to depart, I glanced out the window and noticed something odd. Someone odd, to be more exact. A woman. She was dressed in black, a veil covering her face. And she stood at the mouth of the woodlands, facing Butterfield Park. Perhaps she was a ghost. I’d seen Rebecca’s mother haunting that same woodland on my last visit. So it was something of a shock when Lady Elizabeth fell in beside me and said, “Who the blazes is that?”
“I haven’t a clue.” And between the time it took for me to glance at Lady Elizabeth and then back at the window, the veiled woman had vanished. “But it’s frightfully interesting, don’t you think?”
“Claptrap! What are you up to, Miss Cabbage? Why were you lurking about my ballroom as if you were looking for something?”
“I could ask you the same question, Lizzy.”
“Wretched girl!” she thundered. “My name is Lady Elizabeth.”
“Of course it is, you poor, delirious fossil.” I spoke loudly, as one does to a halfwit with poor hearing. “And this is Butterfield Park—your home.” I began nudging her toward the door. “What about some fresh air? It might clear the cobwebs from your mind. Though I think it would be wise if I tethered you to a tree—so you don’t wander off and fall in a hole.”
“Poke me again,” she said, raising her cane to my throat, “and I will have your head, Miss Cabbage.”
And I could tell she meant it. But at least I had succeeded in derailing her interrogation. The last thing I wanted was for Lady Elizabeth to realize I was on to her.
I made a dignified exit—offering a cheery wave and then cartwheeling out the door (which felt like something Esmeralda Cabbage would do). Then I set off to find Bertha, eager to share what I had learned. Lady Elizabeth’s sudden appearance in the ballroom confirmed my deepest suspicions. There was a secret doorway somewhere in that room. The only question—Where?
