Andrew spent the night turning and twitching, tugging his duvet up, then down, trying to sleep. But it was no use. He could almost feel Mum’s unhappiness, like a damp fog in the air creeping under his door.
The first light of dawn was welcome. Might as well get up. He crept out of his room and peeped around Mum’s door. She still slept.
He made some toast and ate quietly, watching the world stir beyond the flats: an early postman, someone coming home from a late night, the first workers of the day heading off to clean offices, open market stalls, cook cafe breakfasts. Morning people. He was never normally Morning People.
Neither was Mum. He’d finished breakfast and washed up before she wandered in.
‘Sleep well?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Like a log.’
‘So, do you think you’ll go back to Tilda’s today?’
‘No,’ she said brightly. ‘Not today. It’s only meant to be part-time, voluntary, until I feel well enough to start looking for a proper job. After yesterday, I don’t want to rush it.’
Her eyes sparkled with a frantic energy.
Andrew didn’t like it. But he forced himself not to say anything. Well, almost nothing. Hardly anything. ‘But you do want to go back sometime? You didn’t have any more nightmares? You feel all right? Or not? Do I need to call a doctor or the physio? Do you want an appointment today?’
Mum raised her hands at the onslaught of questions. ‘Wait! Wait!’
But she was saved from answering by the sudden trill of the phone in the hallway.
They looked at each other. A staring stand-off.
The phone kept ringing.
Andrew broke first. ‘I’ll get it!’ He grabbed the receiver. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘And good morning to you too!’ Minnie’s voice.
‘Sorry. Morning.’
‘Listen, something … interesting has happened on Marsh Road.’
‘Gossip?’ Andrew loved gossip. Celebrity gossip was the best, but market gossip would do too. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Well, this morning, just when the market traders were setting up, Tilda came out to open the shop shutters. Anyway, next thing anyone knew, she was screaming!’
‘Screaming? Why?’ Andrew gripped the receiver tighter. There was way too much screaming going on for his liking these last twenty-four hours.
‘No one knows. She yelled blue murder, then ran straight back into her shop and slammed the door behind her. No one’s seen her since.’
‘Have you called Flora?’ Andrew said.
‘No.’
‘I think you should. There’s something weird going on. And it isn’t just my cooking.’
‘You think there’s a mystery?’
‘Well, my mum had a nightmare yesterday, and she won’t go to work this morning. Which doesn’t seem to matter because the place she’s meant to be working at hasn’t even opened its doors because the owner was yelling in the street.’
‘Oh. Is your mum OK?’
‘She will be, I’ll make sure of it. You call Flora. I’ll get Piotr. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
‘A mummified cat,’ Flora said fifteen minutes later in Marsh Road cafe. ‘I wish you’d called us. I’d have loved to see it.’ She crossed her arms and dropped her chin. If it were her twin sister, Sylvie, Andrew would have supposed that she was sulking. But Flora wasn’t Sylvie.
Sylvie was definitely sulking. ‘We never get to see the good stuff!’ she said, sticking out her bottom lip.
‘That’s not true!’ Minnie said. ‘Flora tried the Breeze 5000 before anyone else, and you got kidnapped by art smugglers!’ Minnie was referring to old cases they’d solved.
‘It’s not a mummified cat though, is it?’ Sylvie said.
‘The cat’s probably still there,’ Piotr said, trying to cheer everyone up. ‘I didn’t get to see it either. But I’m sure Tilda will let us look, if we ask.’
‘No she won’t,’ Sylvie said. ‘The shop was all locked up when we walked past. No sign of Tilda at all. Whatever it was that gave her the screaming habdabs this morning hasn’t worn off. If you ask me, I think she was drunk.’
Minnie gave her a pot-plant-withering stare. ‘No she was not. There’s something odd going on. Think about it. Tilda takes delivery of a creepy cat. Then loses her new employee. And seems to lose it in the street.’
‘Is it a case, though?’ Flora asked.
‘It could be,’ Minnie replied. ‘I’ve got a feeling.’
That seemed to satisfy Flora. She was smiling a full Pollyanna smile, her freckles dotting her apple cheeks. ‘Then this seems like the perfect time to buy a new notebook!’ she said. She rifled in her backpack for a second before pulling out her purse; then she raced over to the second-hand book stall. They also sold blank notebooks, of the sort she loved for keeping their discoveries straight.
Was Minnie right? Was there a mystery here? Or was it just coincidence that Tilda and Mum were behaving oddly at the same time? Was Mum just overtired by trying to go back to work too soon? Andrew didn’t think it was a coincidence. His mystery sense was tingling.
It wasn’t long before Flora was back. She’d picked out a notebook with a gold and purple cover. It looked like a good place to store strange goings-on.
‘First things first,’ Piotr said. ‘We need to talk to Tilda to see what she was so scared of. Where did she go after you saw her?’ he asked Minnie.
‘Into the shop.’
‘Let’s see if she’ll let us in.’
They left the cafe and strolled past Minnie’s mum’s salon. They stopped outside Meeke and Sons Curios and Gimcracks. Andrew had no idea what a gimcrack was, but he wanted one.
The dark glass in the shop window was unlit. The usual trays of battered cutlery, mismatched crockery and weird Victorian curling irons were missing from outside the shop. It looked as though it had been abandoned. This impression wasn’t helped by the fact that Tilda had never repainted the old sign that curled and flaked above the door like the wood had dandruff.
‘Is she in there?’ Flora said doubtfully.
Minnie went to the door and tried the handle. Locked. She rang the bell. They heard its timorous trill somewhere deep inside the shop.
Nothing.
And then, movement.
A shadow at the back of the shop scurried like something afraid of the light. It got closer. Andrew pressed his face up to the glass so that he could see better. Tilda. Her head was stooped, her shoulders hunched up to her ears. She was a tight packet of a person. She paused and flashed a look at the door, before rushing over to open it.
‘Tilda, are you OK?’ Minnie asked.
‘Fine.’ She held on to the door with both hands, not opening it enough to allow them in.
‘Well,’ Minnie said slowly. ‘I was a bit worried. We all were. Because you seemed not really fine outside earlier …’
Tilda leaned out of the shop doorway, just a fraction, and glanced quickly up and down the street.
Andrew had no idea what she was looking for, but whatever is was, it apparently wasn’t there, because Tilda stepped back into the shop and pulled the door open just enough for them all to slip inside.
It was cold inside the shop after the bright sunshine of the street. Andrew wrapped his arms around his middle. It took a moment too for his eyes to get used to the dark. The piles of stuff made it difficult for the light to get in. Green and purple spots floated in his vision for a while.
He stepped forward and hoped he wouldn’t barge into anything too valuable.
Tilda led them towards the counter. Then she dropped into the wooden chair beside it as though the weight of the world were pushing her down. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.
‘How about you tell us what happened?’ Piotr said.
‘I don’t know. You won’t believe me. No one will, not even children.’
‘Try us,’ Piotr said.
Tilda shook her head. ‘What happened today was a silly old woman imagining things.’
‘What things? You can trust us,’ Piotr said.
‘Well,’ Tilda said uncertainly.
‘Please?’ Flora tucked her pencil away; notes could be made later.
Tilda sighed. ‘I was opening up the shop. It was a lovely morning, bright and sunny. I’d planned on nipping to the veg stall to get some nice tomatoes for lunch. But then I saw it …’ Tilda’s hands creased around a handkerchief in her lap.
‘Saw what?’ Andrew asked.
‘A bright flash, and then, the Eye of Ra,’ Tilda whispered.
They all looked at each other with looks more blank than Flora’s notebook.
‘What does that mean?’ Sylvie asked.
Tilda twisted the knot of fabric in her palms and shook her head. ‘I must have been imagining things. But it seemed so real, so solid.’
‘What is the Eye of Ra?’ Andrew asked impatiently. Minnie shot him a look.
‘An ancient symbol,’ Tilda said. ‘It comes from Egypt. It’s a representation of the god Ra. It’s drawn as an eye, outlined in thick black eye make-up. It was used as a violent charm, to ward off evil by causing pain and destruction.’
Andrew felt the skin on his arms tighten into goosebumps. He wasn’t a fan of violent charms. Especially not angry ancient-god ones. He gripped his elbows and glanced at the dark floor, at the shadows. He wondered what an ancient, evil charm might get up to.
‘When you say you saw it,’ Piotr said, ‘what did you mean, exactly?’
Tilda looked towards the window. Outside the sunshine splattered Marsh Road in cheetah-coat patterns, speckling the stalls and the surface of the street.
Inside, in the dark, Andrew still watched the shadows.
‘It was there,’ Tilda pointed, ‘on the glass, like it was hovering in front of it. An apparition. It was transparent, ghostly. And it was big too; it filled the frame. It just came from nowhere. It was looking right at me. I felt an icy hand squeezing at my heart. I just screamed. I couldn’t help it. As soon as I opened my mouth, the Eye disappeared.’
Andrew moved over to the glass. It looked perfectly ordinary. A bit grimy in places maybe, the dust of the street gathering in small peaks along the outside sill. But no sign of a spectral shape, or strange symbol.
Flora stood beside him, eyeing the glass keenly. ‘It might have been some kind of optical illusion,’ she said softly. ‘She might just have seen something reflected on the dark glass.’
‘What about the icy hands? The squozen heart?’
Flora shrugged. ‘It’s too soon to be sure about anything.’ She turned to the counter and held out her notebook. ‘Do you think you could draw the Eye of Ra?’
Tilda nodded. She took the book and began to sketch quickly. She scribbled out a few lines, tried again and then handed the notebook back. ‘Here. It’s quite a simple shape, but was once considered one of the most powerful symbols on earth.’
Flora looked at the sheet, then passed it around.
‘Wait!’ Minnie said. ‘I think I’ve seen this before!’ Her eyes scanned the gloomy space. ‘Where’s the cat? The mummy we saw yesterday?’
Tilda stood up. She shuffled across the room towards a big dresser; the black wood was stained with age and patterns had been cut into its knots and whorls, faces emerging from the timber. ‘I put it in here, for safekeeping until someone claims it.’
She lifted the heavy bundle from the shelf and carried it over to the counter.
Minnie leaned in close and peered at the dark wooden casing. It was scratched and battered with age. She clicked the clasps and raised the lid gently. In a cobra move, she dipped side to side, examining the cat from every angle.
Then she reached into the case and very gently, very carefully, moved aside the tissue paper and lifted the cat. Andrew gasped and looked at Tilda – would she object? No, she seemed so dazed, the fact that Minnie was touching the tabby didn’t seem to register.
‘There!’ Minnie said, standing it upright. ‘I knew I’d seen it.’ She pointed at its bound chest. The bandages formed a tight chevron pattern, but marked faintly, in a worn grey, was the Eye.
‘That was it!’ Tilda said. ‘That was it exactly!’
Everyone else gathered around the cat. Flora peering in for a closer look; Sylvie sniffing with disgust; Minnie and Piotr careful but curious.
Andrew still wanted to unwrap it.
‘There’s something else in here,’ Flora said. She reached into the case and lifted out a folded sheet of paper. It had yellowed with age and wear; along the folds it was as thin as fabric. Flora was gentle as she opened it.
Andrew looked over her shoulder.
It was a handwritten letter on a small sheet of paper. A black-and-white line drawing in the top right showed a Sphinx’s head, under which was printed Cairo Hotel. The note itself was hard to read, the handwriting was joined-up and loopy, but Flora read aloud to the others.
‘“Dear Sirs, A further specimen for your collection. Pay no heed to the tall tales of the diggers. No gentleman fears a curse. Payment on delivery, as agreed.” I can’t read the signature, it’s way too squiggly.’
A curse?
A curse?
Gentlemen might not fear curses. Andrew guessed this meant he wasn’t a gentleman.
Flora held the letter up towards the light. ‘There’s a watermark on the paper. It’s faded and worn. But I can make out a word that begins with “V” and ends in “y”.’
‘Very?’ Sylvie suggested. ‘Victory? Verity?’
‘Valley,’ Tilda said from her chair. ‘Is it Valley?’
‘It might be,’ Flora agreed.
‘Valley of the Kings,’ Tilda said. ‘It’s where Egyptian pharaohs were buried. With their treasures. And their pets.’
They all looked at the cat. ‘Poor Tibbles,’ Minnie muttered.
‘Poor Tibbles?’ Andrew exclaimed. ‘Poor Tibbles? That cat is cursed! The Eye of Ra appeared this morning. Tilda is terrified. Mum’s having nightmares again. Who knows what might happen next. We all might die in our beds. Or have our teeth fall out!’
Flora folded the note and laid it carefully back in the box. ‘Andrew, there’s no such thing as curses.’
Andrew glanced back at Tilda, whose pale fingers gripped the edge of her chair. Even the bright clothes and bold jewellery couldn’t disguise how ashen she looked. Tilda, at this moment, reminded Andrew of a circus tent left out in a storm. ‘How do you explain that, then?’ he hissed, gesturing at Tilda.
‘I can’t. Yet,’ Flora said. ‘But whatever’s going on, we’re going to get to the bottom of it.’