“The polish goes on clockwise, Betty! Otherwise it’s sure to look spotty. Quinn, where did Danny get to with that mop? Who moved Napoléon Bonaparte’s riding boots? They go to the left of Pocahontas’s moccasins. Hugo. Hugo!”
Hugo emerged, red-faced, from the Odditorium. “Yes, Miss Fitch?”
“Fetch me my sewing basket, please. Marie Antoinette’s dress has developed an awful tear. I’ll have to patch it.”
“Have you seen Mr. Dumfrey, Miss Fitch?” Pippa asked.
“Holed up in his office,” she said, without turning from the historical figures portion of the Hall of Wax. “Of course he would be, and leave us to do all the work. . . .” Suddenly, she spun around and scowled. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you for hours.”
“Quick,” Sam whispered, “before she puts us to work.”
“There’s so much to be done.” Miss Fitch was counting tasks on her fingers. “The toilets need cleaning and the beds must be stripped and—”
“Thanks, Miss F.!” Max said loudly. They darted up the spiral stairs, ignoring Miss Fitch’s cries of protest.
“Mr. Dumfrey—” Pippa burst through Mr. Dumfrey’s office door first and then stopped abruptly, so that first Thomas, then Max, and finally Sam collided with her. She stumbled forward several feet. Max let out a sharp cry. “Watch it, you big oaf!” she said. “You nearly snapped my back in two.” They saw Mr. Dumfrey standing by the window, partially concealed by a towering stack of ancient Cambodian burial urns.
“Pippa!” When Mr. Dumfrey spun around, his face was very white and there was a look in his eyes she had never seen before—as though he’d been staring at a ghost. “You scared me, children.”
The radio was playing very loudly. “Rattigan was last sighted on the morning of April twenty-fourth,” said the announcer, “wearing a felt hat pulled low and the rags of a beggar. . . .” Mr. Dumfrey switched it off with a trembling hand, and the resulting silence was even louder.
“Well,” he said, coughing. “Well. Back so soon, are we? Didn’t fancy a movie?”
No one bothered trying to explain what had happened. Instead, Thomas tossed the newspaper down on Mr. Dumfrey’s desk. “Did you hear?” he said. “Bill Evans nearly got killed last night. They’re saying it’s the curse again.”
Mr. Dumfrey barely glanced at the headline. “Oh, yes, yes,” he said, with a dismissive wave of one hand. “I heard it on the radio. Unfortunate. Terrible. Poor man. We should really send a card.” And he turned back to the window and lapsed into silence.
“Are—are you okay, Mr. Dumfrey?” Pippa ventured. She had never in all her life known him to ignore the possibility of press, whether good or bad. And Bill Evans’s near death was, she had no doubt, a great opportunity for a ton of bad press.
Mr. Dumfrey jumped. He cracked his head on the edge of one of his shelves, and an avalanche of papers began to sift down around him. “What? Me? Oh—I’m fine.” A brass paperweight, supposedly from the desk of Abraham Lincoln, conked him on the head, and he winced. “I’m absolutely fine. Wonderful, in fact.”
“O-o-o-kay,” Thomas said, drawing out the syllables. He cleared his throat. “Listen, Mr. Dumfrey, we were thinking of going down to the hospital to drop in on Bill Evans.”
“We were?” Max said. Thomas shot her a warning look.
Pippa jumped in, “We can bring him a card.”
Mr. Dumfrey, who was trying to shuffle his papers into a pile, straightened up. “Oh,” he said, jogging the stack of papers once in his arms. “Oh.” He moved woodenly toward the desk, set the papers down with a thump, and patted his tie. “Oh,” he said, a third time.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Pippa said again.
Mr. Dumfrey whipped off his glasses and began furiously polishing them with a corner of his scarlet robe. “I’m absolutely fine, Pippa. It’s just . . . I don’t think you should be out and about today. It’ll be dark soon.”
Pippa exchanged a bewildered look with the others. “It’s only three o’clock,” she pointed out.
“Is it?” Dumfrey slipped the glasses back on his nose upside down and then corrected their arrangement. “Well. Time flies, doesn’t it? Or perhaps it doesn’t. No matter. Miss Fitch needs you here. And the streets are full of criminals.”
“You just sent us to the movies,” Thomas said.
“Did I? Well, well.” He managed a weak smile. “I suppose I’m just upset, you know, about everything that’s happened. We’re having a memorial for Potts tomorrow, at the museum, at noon on the dot. I expect you all to be wearing your best funeral faces. Miss Fitch can make you something appropriately bleak to wear.” He sighed. “Poor Potts . . . he wasn’t the brightest of the lot, or the nicest, either, or the best looking . . .”