Peculiar Events
PORTIA 
Later that afternoon, Portia sat in the living room at Afallon, drumming her fingers on the arm of her wing-backed chair. She had just gotten off the phone with her mum, and it had been nice to hear her voice—most of all because Gwen had sounded like she was in good spirits again, up for anything. Portia had told her all about the trip to Conwy: the old town filled with the smell of sea salt and spindrift, the giant seagulls, the narrow lanes, and the fish and chips she and the aunts had enjoyed on the harbor.
The day had been a busy one, and Portia hadn’t had much time to ponder the events of the previous night, but now her gaze wandered to the closed door of Bramble’s study.
Thoughts of the fox had been flitting through her mind all day. The aunts had dodged all her questions about the incident, which obviously piqued her curiosity even more.
Portia got up from her chair and went over to the study door. She was alone in the house—Rose had retreated to her writing shed in the garden to work on an editing project, and Bramble was walking Marlowe—so no one would know if she went into the study now.
Forget it. It’s a ridiculous idea, Portia told herself. But then again, it wasn’t like Bramble and Rose had explicitly forbidden her to go into the room. And hadn’t Rose told her to make herself at home? So, what harm could it possibly do if she took a quick look?
Portia peeked through the open conservatory door to make sure that neither aunt was around, and then she stepped into Bramble’s study.
Bramble had an old-fashioned desk: a bureau with a front that folded down to give a writing surface, revealing lots of compartments and drawers behind it. Unlike her car, her workspace was neat and tidy. Notebooks were lined up along the open compartments, a fountain pen and pencils had been tucked into two mugs, and a Welsh dictionary sat at the edge of the desktop. An empty vase stood on top of the bureau next to a shoebox.
Portia placed both hands on the desktop. That’s where the fox had been, and that’s where Bramble had been poking around right after chasing it away. Curiosity killed the cat, said the voice of reason in her head, but she ignored it. The mystery surrounding the fox in the study was just too intriguing.
She felt along the desktop edge with her fingertips until she found a thin join in the polished wood. A smile crept over her face. Bingo. She pushed lightly against it and heard a clicking noise. When she pulled back her hand, the secret compartment slid out from the desktop.
“Abracadabra,” Portia whispered. In the secret drawer, she found a flat metal box. Her heart beating with excitement, she opened the lid—and raised her eyebrows in surprise. Inside the box lay an antique, ornately decorated key, with a tatty green silk ribbon tied to it. The wide bit at the end didn’t look like it would fit any modern lock. Portia picked up the key and ran her thumb over the knot in the ribbon. Why was Bramble hiding a key? And more importantly, had the fox been looking for it? No way. Impossible.
Portia ran her fingers along the metal. Would Bramble tell her what it was for? Probably not, she decided. Especially since Portia would have to confess to snooping around her desk before she asked. But perhaps there were more clues to be found elsewhere in the study?
She put the key down, letting her eyes wander around the room and over the drawers and compartments, before picking up the shoebox sitting next to the vase. Inside was a wild jumble of odds and ends. On top sat a pincushion with a single needle stuck in it, and next to it a small jewelry box made of blue velvet that Portia opened to discover a silver locket. Inside it, instead of a photograph, there was a flower pressed under the glass. Portia held it up against the light. Unless she was mistaken, they were the faded white petals of a dog rose. Portia put the locket back in its case and continued to search through the shoebox.
Underneath the pincushion were two postcards from a Greek island, and a photograph showing Bramble and Rose at a beach. She put them aside and flipped through a pile of old newspaper clippings. Bramble had kept a book review, and a magazine article with pictures of Afallon’s garden. And there was an older cutting with the headline SEARCH FOR MISSING STUDENTS CONTINUES.
Deeper down, she found a photo of Marlowe as a puppy, and another of a group of seven friends in hippie clothes, posing in front of a theatre. And a more serious scene, too: six students in long black gowns, wearing mortarboard caps as if at a graduation.
Portia turned the group pictures over. Something was scribbled on the back of each one: The Order of the Needle, 1963 on the first and The Order of the Needle, 1966 on the second. She frowned. What was the Order of the Needle? She inspected the photos more closely. The group of students consisted of five women and one man. Portia stopped short. The woman in the middle looked just like her mother—she had Gwen’s pitch-black hair and the same heart-shaped face. But the young woman in the photo was arching her right eyebrow in a way that reminded Portia of somebody else. Then she realized—it had to be Rose on her graduation day. Portia was just about to put the photo aside when she saw another familiar face: Bramble! She was standing next to Rose in the picture, but Portia hadn’t recognized her right away. This Bramble was all smiles, with her hair down, wearing an embroidered cap instead of a mortarboard.
Portia saw that she had come to the bottom of the box. She contemplated the keepsakes spread out on the desk in front of her. There was no explanation for the secret key to be found here. Portia picked it up again and weighed it in her hand. Did she dare to keep on trawling through the desk?
The sensible thing would be to tidy up all this mess. Before she got caught. Then again, another five minutes of searching might just unearth the clue she was looking for.
She was already reaching for one of the notebooks when she heard the soft jingle of the wind chimes in the conservatory. Portia turned around and then froze. The fox was sitting in the study doorway, looking up at her with pricked ears. No, not at her…. He was staring at the key in her hand.
“Portia,” Rose called from the conservatory. “Is that you?”
Portia felt a jolt of cold fear shooting through her body. What if Rose found her here? Fox or no fox, she spun around, collected Bramble’s keepsakes, returned them to the shoebox, and hurried to place it back on top of the desk. She was about to put away the key as well, when she heard footsteps in the living room.
“Portia?”
She turned around, quickly stuffing the key into the pocket of her jeans. The fox had disappeared once more, and instead Rose appeared in the doorway.
“Ah, there you are. What are you doing in here?”
“I was looking for a pen,” Portia improvised. She prayed that her body was concealing the still-open secret drawer behind her. “I’m sorry.”
“No problem. Take whatever you need.” Rose was carrying a bunch of freshly cut roses, hydrangeas, and euphorbias, and now absent-mindedly sucked one of her thumbs, which must have been pricked by a thorn. Portia saw her chance and groped behind her back for the edge of the desk and closed the drawer.
“What do you think?” Rose asked. “Time for dinner?”
“Sounds great.” Portia’s heart was in her mouth, but luckily, Rose didn’t seem to notice anything.
“Wonderful.” She pointed at the desk with her elbow. “Could you bring along that vase, please?”
Portia was hoping Rose would go ahead, but she waited in the doorway for Portia to leave the study before shutting the door behind her. The key felt as heavy as lead in her pocket.
BEN
Ben and Megan lived in Trefriw, in a narrow terraced house on the hillside above the church. The entire row had been whitewashed, but the Reeses’ house alone had blue window frames and a blue front door.
With their bags of takeout food from the pub in one hand, Megan used the other to unlock the door. Ben slipped past her, holding the cage containing the injured blackbird carefully so as not to shake it.
In the hallway, Megan set the food down on the telephone table: chicken tikka for herself, and fish and chips for Ben. She threw the keys into a little wicker basket and peeled off her denim jacket.
“Dinner in five minutes?” she asked.
“Let me just take the blackbird upstairs,” said Ben.
“All right, but hurry up. Otherwise your chips will get soggy, and you know there’s a No Returns policy.”
Ben grinned and went upstairs with the cage. His room faced the street. It wasn’t exactly big to begin with, and the piles of books on the floor, as well as on the shelves and the desk by the window, made it seem even smaller. There were posters on the door and above his desk, but the wall next to his bed was still covered by the forest his parents had painted for him when he was little.
Ben placed the blackbird on his desk and pulled away the cloth he had used to cover the cage. The bird immediately started hopping from one perch to the other, trying to flap its wings.
“Easy,” Ben said softly. “No one here is going to hurt you.” He stood still and waited a moment until the bird had calmed down. The vet, Dr. Davies, had splinted its broken wing.
“It’s a miracle that it’s still alive,” he had said. “Most birds that fly into windows get a concussion and die.”
His mother had shot the vet a sharp look, and Dr. Davies had instantly turned bright red. “This little fellow is looking quite tough, though,” he had hastened to add. “He’ll be flying again in no time, easy-peasy!”
That kind of exchange between his mum and Dr. Davies was nothing new to Ben. Since his dad had passed away the previous year, grown-ups seemed to think they had to handle him with kid gloves. Ben wasn’t exactly annoyed by it—he simply didn’t like all the attention.
He took off his backpack, pulled out the bag of birdseed he’d just purchased, and dug around for the small plastic bowl and water bottle that Dr. Davies had given him. On the wall next to him, shaggy, round-eyed monsters peered out from between the trunks of red- and green-leaved trees. Where the Wild Things Are had been his favorite book when he was little. He had asked his dad, Tom, to read it aloud to him so many times that one day, Tom had looked Ben in the eyes and said, “If you want to spend that much time in a story, boy, you’ve got no choice but to learn how to read yourself.” Three months later, Ben was reading the book aloud to his dad. Every now and then, Tom had needed to help him with longer words, but from then on they’d worked their way through dozens of books together, taking turns to read aloud. Tom’s well-worn copy of The Hobbit still lay under Ben’s pillow. Even though he had not opened it for a while, he could still hear his dad’s voice as he read Bilbo’s adventures to him: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Ben put the plastic bowl on the desk and filled the bottle on the side of the cage with fresh water. The blackbird nervously scuttled back and forth on his perch, but it didn’t seem too panicky anymore.
“You’ll feel better soon, I promise,” Ben assured the bird.
“Ben!” his mother called from downstairs. “Soggy chips in T-minus ten seconds.”
Ben ripped open the bag of birdseed, poured a generous amount into the little bowl, and carefully placed it in the cage.
“Enjoy,” he said, and headed downstairs.