“Married?” both albino twins cried at once.
“‘As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,’” quoted Smalls, wiping away a tear with a gigantic thumb. “Robert Burns,” he clarified.
Only then did Pippa notice that Hugo was wearing a very dark suit, cut especially to accommodate his monstrous neck and shoulders, and a hat the size of a pumpkin, made to fit over his huge, bulbous head. Phoebe was wearing a voluminous white dress that made her look like a large ball of cotton.
“It’s true,” Hugo said, removing his hat. His smile was so big, Pippa thought it might split his face in two. “Phoebe is my wife.”
“A marriage!” Mr. Evans cried, and cameras began to flash again.
Pippa’s jaw fell open. “That’s your big secret?”
Hugo smiled sheepishly. Phoebe jumped in. “We were afraid to tell anyone at first,” she said, squeezing Hugo’s arm. “We felt terrible about leaving the act after everything Mr. Dumfrey has done for us.”
“Pshaw.” Mr. Dumfrey waved a hand dismissively. “I didn’t do so much. Still, now that you mention it,” he added, turning to a collection of reporters still clustered around the stage, “I suppose that the public will be happy to learn that no showplace on earth treats its performers better than the one-and-only Dumfrey’s Dime Museum!”
“You’re . . . you’re leaving the act?” Pippa said. She remembered the conversation Thomas had relayed. Pippa had assumed Hugo and Phoebe felt guilty because they were involved in the theft of the head. But all along, they had merely planned to get married.
Hugo took a deep breath. “Do you remember Mrs. Weathersby? Old as the hills with a face like a lemon?”
It was Mr. Evans who spoke up. “Mrs. Weathersby? She was the very first victim of the curse!” His voice echoed through the Odditorium. “I went to interview the old girl myself. She kicked the bucket not fifteen minutes later. I broke the story. You can read all about it in the Screamer.” He raised his voice even louder, to be heard above the murmuring of the crowd.
“That’s the one.” Hugo looked at Phoebe. Phoebe nodded at him. “She . . . she was my mother.”
Mr. Evans looked about ready to swoon from joy. He began scribbling furiously in his notebook.
“Your mother?” This time it was all the residents of the museum—except Mr. Dumfrey—who spoke the words at once.
Hugo nodded. “She didn’t like to tell anyone about me, of course,” he said. “Because of . . .” He gestured to his oversize head and his nose the size of an onion, and Pippa’s heart ached for him. Poor, kind Hugo. She couldn’t believe they had ever suspected him of murder. “She told everyone her son was dead. But she came to see the show sometimes. Never said a word to me, but slipped me a ten-spot every now and then. And she remembered me in her will.”
“She remembered you very well,” Phoebe said. Her face was flushed with pleasure. “Hugo can retire. And I can open a little bakery, like I’ve always dreamed.”
Hugo ducked his head. “It didn’t seem right to ask her to marry me when I didn’t have an extra nickel,” he said. “But now . . .”
“Ah, yes. But now,” Mr. Dumfrey said, “you can live happily ever after.”
“You knew,” Sam said accusatorily. “You knew all along.”
Mr. Dumfrey spread his hands as if to say, Of course.
“But you were there,” Max said, “the day Thomas was pushed under the train.”
This time, it was Hugo’s turn to look stunned. He turned to Thomas. “You—you were pushed under a train? When? How?”
Thomas looked uneasily at the group of newspaper reporters, standing with their pens hovering over their notepads. “It was an accident,” he said quickly. “It happened yesterday.”
“Yesterday.” Hugo continued to look bewildered. “Yesterday was the day I went to settle my mother’s affairs with her lawyer on Center Street in Brooklyn. Phoebe and I met at the courthouse.”
Another mystery solved. They must have caught him leaving the lawyer’s office on his way to get married.
“Well, well.” Mr. Dumfrey opened his arms as though to embrace the entire crowd. “A wedding and a funeral! How absolutely remarkable. I really couldn’t have planned it better myself.”
But the way his eyes twinkled made Pippa wonder if planning it was exactly what Mr. Dumfrey had done.
Potts’s memorial service, which turned into a celebration of Phoebe and Hugo’s wedding, lasted well into the evening, and Pippa was exhausted by the time everyone had at last cleared out and all the exhibit halls had been swept of debris. Her cheeks ached from smiling for photographers. Her teeth ached from all the soda she had consumed.
And her heart ached when she thought of the hideous Andrea von Stikk.