But he was very practical. He had been orphaned at a young age. He knew in all probability his real parents were dead. Or maybe they weren’t. Maybe they just hadn’t wanted him, because he was different, because he could make his joints bend backward and his heels touch his head.
He wasn’t troubled by this idea—at least, he was not troubled by it very much. That was real life. He knew that people were afraid, and they disliked difference, and they sometimes acted cowardly.
He knew, too, that in real life, curses did not kill people. People killed people.
But why?
He got up. He would never sleep this way—not until he warmed up. He decided to go down to the kitchen and search for some milk in the icebox. Mrs. Cobble had sometimes heated it on the stove for him, with a little cinnamon and honey, to help him sleep.
It was very dark, and moonlight filtering through the high windows cast enormous shadows everywhere. He moved silently down the stairs, and had almost reached the ground floor when he heard muffled sounds of weeping. He froze, then inched forward, around the bend, holding his breath.
It was Phoebe.
She was crouched in the middle of the Hall of Wax, her bulging back and shoulders touched with silvery light. Her long hair was loose and she was cradling her head in her hands. Hugo was crouching next to her. He kept one hand several inches from her back, as though he wanted to touch her but was afraid that, for all her bulk, she would shatter.
“Shhh,” he was saying. “It’ll be all right.”
“It won’t be all right,” she whispered fiercely, snapping up her head to glare at him. “How can you say that?” She let out another low moan, an animal sound, and covered her face again. “Poor Mr. Dumfrey! After everything he did for us . . . and now he’s in jail! I’ll never live it down. I won’t.”
“Bee,” Hugo said—a nickname Thomas had never heard. “Bee, please. We’re only doing what we must. To be happy. We deserve to be happy, don’t we?”
Phoebe only responded by sobbing harder.
Thomas drew back and retreated up the stairs, abandoning his plan for warm milk. He would never be able to sleep tonight, anyway, even if he were bathed in a tub of it.
There was no longer any doubt. Phoebe and Hugo were involved, somehow, in some way, in this mess.
It was up to him to prove it.
Breakfast was getting worse and worse. When Max made it downstairs the following morning, she found Thomas, Pippa, and Sam sharing a plate of hard cheese and saltine crackers.
Sam slid over as soon as he saw her to make room for her on the bench. Ignoring him completely—she was still angry at him, mostly because he had told her she looked pretty with her hair tugged and pulled like a poodle’s—she elbowed in next to Pippa.
Thomas was bent over a newspaper and every so often he groaned.
“What’s the matter?” Max asked, popping a saltine in her mouth.
“What do you think’s the matter?” Pippa said, and, whipping the newspaper out of Thomas’s hands, slammed it down in front of Max.
Max was not a strong reader, but she recognized the name of the paper, The Daily Screamer, and could just spell out the headline that dominated the front page.
VILLAINS OR VICTIMS?
DUMFREY’S HORROR-HOUSE—A DANGER FOR OUR YOUTH
“So what’s it all about?” Max said, shoving the paper back, so she wouldn’t have to read the whole article herself. She didn’t actually know how to read—at least, nothing more than a few street signs—though Monsieur Cabillaud was threatening to teach her.
“It’s about us,” Thomas said. He read: “‘Dressed in foul-smelling rags, the children of Mr. Dumfrey’s Dime Museum have been so systematically abused, they do not appear to know how pathetic they appear. . . .’”
“Pathetic?” Max screeched. “Smelly?” True, she did not often wash her hair. And true, she liked to wear her lucky jacket on a daily basis, the one with several pockets for her knives. But she was positive she didn’t smell.
“‘Isolated from children their own age, forced into the most despicable tasks, like cleaning the museum of spiders’—I never said he forced us to, did I? Just that he liked them released outside—”
“Go on, Thomas,” Pippa said.
Thomas continued, “‘and denied a basic education’”—Thomas frowned and lowered his voice, since Monsieur Cabillaud was sitting nearby—“‘the children confuse major European countries and are unable to complete the most basic arithmetic’—he’s twisted everything around, you see?—‘and defend Mr. Dumfrey as if he were a father and not the man who has kept them in captivity all these years.’”
Max slammed a fist against the table, causing the cheese to levitate temporarily off its crackers. “I’ll have him skinned!” she said. Then: “What’s captivity mean?”