But no one knew about Rattigan. No one except Max, Thomas, Sam, Pippa, and Mr. Dumfrey. And Miss Fitch—but even Miss Fitch wasn’t that evil.
“Do you think—?” she started to ask, but Thomas hushed her quickly.
“Listen,” he whispered.
Almost immediately, she heard it: someone was moving in the shadows. Like a someone who had just delivered a threatening note, and now didn’t want to be seen.
Max could hardly swallow. Was Rattigan here, even now, watching from the darkness? Once more, her hand went reflexively to her pocket before she remembered that she was totally unarmed. She thought of calling out for help—surely, someone would wake up and come running.
All these thoughts passed through her head in the space of one second, and before she could resolve to do anything, a shape materialized from the shadows, face concealed by a hat. Max shouted and Thomas sprang.
The stranger turned and bolted up the stairs that led to the street.
“Stop him!” Max shouted, feeling helpless and naked without her knives.
Thomas was still suffering from his injury and had miscalculated his jump; he barely clipped a trash can with his foot and went tumbling to the ground. The trash can clattered down into the courtyard, spilling a mess of bones and pulpy produce onto the stone.
“Thomas!” Max shrieked. But he was up again, unhurt, dashing up the stairs. She sprinted after him, pausing when she saw something glinting in the mess of spilled trash: a metal fork, with two tines missing, but better than nothing. She scooped it up and kept running. Bolting up the stairs, she saw the shadowy figure pass briefly under a streetlamp and careen around the corner of Forty-Fifth Street.
But Thomas, though moving more slowly than usual, was not far behind him. Max watched as he threw himself into the air and vaulted off the side of the corner building, transforming himself into a tumbling ball of momentum, like a human bullet. He disappeared from view. Max pumped her arms faster, tearing around the corner, just in time to see Thomas spread his arms . . .
. . . and belly flop to the ground, a few short inches behind the escaping stranger, with a loud oof.
“Don’t let him get away,” Thomas groaned, rolling onto his side, as Max sprinted by him.
“I won’t!” she huffed back. She hoped he wasn’t too hurt. She didn’t have time to stop and check. She dodged an overturned trash barrel and leaped over a lumpy series of cardboard boxes that had been left in the street for pickup, barely avoiding the tail of an alley cat that was sniffing around in the gutter. The cat let out a startled yowl.
“Sorry!” Max panted out.
Just then, Max had the strangest feeling. It was as if her mind was a curtain and suddenly, a giant elbow had shoved it aside. All at once, she saw Pippa’s face, pinched with disapproval, in front of her. You’ll never catch him that way, Pippa seemed to be saying. As quickly as the impression came, it disappeared.
The stranger was fast—much faster than Max was. Already, he had turned west onto Forty-Third Street. Max knew that once the intruder had reached the shadowed and abandoned avenues near the river, he could easily slip undetected into an empty warehouse, or hide in a darkened doorway, like a rat passing invisibly through the shadows.
She skidded around the corner and spotted the stranger fifty feet ahead, passing in front of Cupid’s Dance Hall. Bernie, the night porter, was nowhere to be seen, and the street was empty—no chance that Max could call out for help. She blinked sweat from her eyes. The dark figure seemed to pass in and out of reality as he threaded between the shadows. It was risky—too dark, and the fork was untested—but she had no choice. She had to throw. Otherwise, the stranger would get away.
He passed into a dark spot between streetlamps. She squinted, trying to distinguish his silhouette from the shadows. There! He moved into the light again. He was directly in front of the museum’s steps. Max took aim . . .
Just as a giant black bird came swooping down from the sky . . .
And before the fork even left her hand, the bird and the stranger went tumbling to the ground.
Of course, it wasn’t a bird. That, Max realized almost immediately. It was Pippa, wearing her dark bathrobe. She had leaped onto the stranger from the museum’s front stoop and pinned him to the sidewalk underneath her.
“Let me go,” the stranger was howling as Max approached. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Max said. She dropped to her knees and shoved the remaining tines of the fork into the soft flesh of the stranger’s neck. He instantly went still. With her other hand, she reached up and tore the cap off his head.
She was seized by the sudden, hysterical desire to laugh. She had been half expecting Rattigan himself, or someone with Rattigan’s cold blue eyes and pale lips, the color of a dead fish’s belly. This boy wasn’t much older than she was. He had a flat, stupid face, as if his features had been shaped with a shovel, and he was missing a front tooth.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”
“They call me Bits,” the boy said, his eyes ticking nervously from Pippa to Max. He began squirming again. “Let me go! Get off me. I’ll call for the police. I’ll have you locked up for salting a battery!”
“It’s assault and battery, you moron,” Pippa said, rolling her eyes. “And we’re not letting you go until you explain yourself.”
Bits licked his lips. “Look, someone paid me a dollar to bring a letter to the freak museum—”
Max dug the tines of her fork a little deeper into Bits’s neck. He yelped and hurriedly added, “That’s all I know. I was supposed to go down the stairs, knock on the door, and make the drop. I wasn’t halfway there and all of a sudden I got two maniacs screaming their heads off and trying to clobber me. I turned tail and ran.”
“You’re a liar,” Max spat out to conceal her confusion. The boy admitted to bringing the note. So why wouldn’t he admit to leaving it on the door? “Who paid you to deliver the note?”
Bits’s eyes turned suddenly wary. “I ain’t supposed to say,” he said. “I promised.”
“I promise you I’ll turn your throat into spaghetti if you don’t answer the question.”
“All right, all right!” Bits howled as Max leaned into him. “It was my friend Chubby. He’s been laying low. So I been doing some errands for him.”
“Chubby?” Max repeated. She was increasingly baffled. It didn’t make sense. Why would Chubby have paid Bits to leave a threatening letter on the museum door?
“Go on,” Bits said. “The letter’s in my left pocket. Read it if you don’t believe me.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Pippa said quietly. “I can see it.”
“But—but—” Max shook her head. “What about the other note?”
Now both Bits and Pippa looked as confused as Max felt.
“What other note?” they said at the same time.
Just then, Thomas came limping up behind them, clutching his injured side. “Let him up,” he panted, wincing. Max hesitated. “Go on, Max. He didn’t do anything.”
Max withdrew the fork from Bits’s neck. Pippa stood up and extended a hand to help Bits to his feet. He shot her an injured look before accepting.
“That’s more like it,” he muttered, dusting off his pants—which were quite filthy anyway. “Some thanks I get for doing Chubby a favor.”
He fished a wrinkled envelope from his pocket. PERSONAL was written across the front in clumsy letters, though the word had been crossed out and replaced with the words: TOP SECRET. DELIVER TO THOMAS AT 344 W. 43RD STREET.
Thomas took the letter from Bits. “Did you see anyone when you were on your way to the museum? Anyone at all?”
Bits shrugged. “Took Broadway all the way to Fortieth Street. I saw lots of people. Saw a big fat lady stuck trying to get out of a cab. Saw a man with a dog the size of a rat. Saw two kids pick the pocket of an old guy wearing a cape.”
“But no one hanging around the
museum?” Thomas pressed.
Bits shook his head. “No one. Not until you came rushing at me and screaming like you wanted to swallow my head.”
“Yeah, er, sorry about that.” Thomas bent down and scooped up Bits’s hat from the ground. “We thought you were somebody else. Anyway, tell Chubby we said thanks.”
Bits scowled and rammed his hat on his head. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’ll give him a black eye, too.” And he turned and stomped away.
Pippa turned to them almost immediately. “Do you want to explain to me what’s going on?” she said, crossing her arms.
Thomas hesitated for only a second. “We found this,” he said, and passed over the three-word note: SOON, MY CHILDREN. Pippa glanced at it quickly, then balled it up in a fist and practically hurled it back to him.
“Where?” she said.
“Outside the kitchen,” Thomas answered. “Stuck to the door.”
“What were you doing in the kitchen?” A look of suspicion crossed Pippa’s face. Max was glad it was dark outside. She could feel herself blushing.
“I was waiting for a note,” Thomas said, sighing. “But not that one.”
“What about you?” Pippa said accusatorily, turning to Max.
“What about you?” Max said. She would sooner spend her life as a nun than let Pippa in on her secret. “What are you doing skulking around and leaping off of stoops?”
Pippa snorted. “Is that a thank-you? If it wasn’t for me, Bits would have gotten away.”
“I would of pinned him,” Max said.
“Not likely. I saw the way you were aiming—you would have been miles off. Even you were scared you wouldn’t—” Pippa broke off suddenly, biting her lip.
Max felt a creeping, tingling heat start at her stomach, and radiate up toward her neck. “You,” she whispered. She remembered, now, the strange sensation in her mind—as if her thoughts had been forcibly pushed aside. And directly afterward, she had seen Pippa’s face. “You . . . you were in my mind.”
Pippa looked uncomfortable. But she didn’t deny it. “I didn’t mean to,” she mumbled. “It just happened. I woke up and you weren’t in your bed. I started to wonder where you were and then . . .” She shrugged. She was doing a terrible job of pretending to be sorry. In fact, she looked almost pleased with herself. “It’s never happened before. Not like that. It was easy.”
“You . . . you sneak.” Max squeezed her hands into fists. Bright lights were exploding behind her eyeballs. She felt as if Pippa had split her stomach open and gone picking through her guts. “You sleazy, slippery, no-good snake!”
Now Pippa was growing angry. “I told you,” she said. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Yeah, right. Like I’m supposed to believe a snake like you.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“That’s what you are.”
“Stop!” Before Max could lunge at Pippa, Thomas stepped between them. “Enough, okay? Max, Pippa’s sorry. She is,” he said quickly, before Pippa could protest. “And Max is sorry, too.”
“For what?” Max cried.
“For calling Pippa names. And because Pippa was only trying to help.” Thomas looked from Max to Pippa and back again. “Okay?”
There was a long moment of silence.
“Fine,” Pippa said with a sigh.
“Fine,” Max grumbled.
“Good,” Thomas said. “We have bigger things to worry about.”
“Oh yeah?” Max was still feeling grumpy. “You gonna spill your big secret now, and tell us why Chubby’s sending you love notes in the middle of the night?”
“The letter isn’t from Chubby,” Thomas said. “He was just the go-between.” He sucked in a deep breath, and said in a rush: “The letter’s from Manfred Richstone.”
“What?” Max screeched. High in an apartment above them, several of Miss Groenovelt’s cats began to howl. Pippa, Max noticed, didn’t react to the news at all. Her eyes were unfocused, soft-looking. Max knew Pippa was reading, feeling her way into Thomas’s fingers, into the paper and the ink. No matter how often Max saw Pippa read, she never quite got used to it. It was creepy—there was no other word for it.
Oh yeah? Pippa had replied when Max had once told her so. Says the girl who sleeps with knives under her pillow.
Thomas lowered his voice. “You know how I told you I wrote to Manfred Richstone at Sing Sing? Well, Chubby delivered it for me. And he’s written back.” Thomas shook his head. “I don’t think he did it, Max. I’m sure of it.”
“Is that why you wrote him? You wanted him to cross his heart and hope to die?” Max said sarcastically.
Thomas ignored her tone. “I wanted him to tell me about the photograph of Rachel Richstone missing from Eckleberger’s house,” Thomas said. “I think . . . I think it might have been a clue to Rachel’s murder. Which means it might be a clue to Freckles’s murder.”
Max shivered involuntarily. She thought of poor Freckles, his head staved in like a rotten fruit, and his beautiful, light-filled studio, destroyed. “All right,” she said, hugging her arms to her chest. “What does he have to say about it?”
Thomas ripped open the envelope with his teeth. Inside of it were two sheets of paper. The first was stained with what looked like tomato sauce and contained only a short message, badly misspelled.
Look i did what you ask and got the mesage to and fro Like you ask me too so now you Better keep up your end of the bargin bargan bargain your the Only hope I got
—Chubby
The second piece of paper was much cleaner, and covered in a fine web of dense printing. They had to huddle under a streetlamp so that Thomas could read it out loud.
Dear Thomas,
I’ve received many letters in the short term of my imprisonment—none of them, I’m afraid, very pleasant. Ah, well. I don’t blame them. There is no doubt in my mind that my dear Rachel was murdered by a monster, a fiend of only the most evil inclinations.
Unfortunately, most people believe that I am that monster.
Your letter was, as you can imagine, quite an unexpected surprise, and I was relieved to know that someone, somewhere, believes in my innocence—because I am innocent. I swear it to God and heaven and every angel with the power to hear.
I will do my best to answer your questions, though I admit to some confusion as to their importance. Yes, Rachel had a gap in her front teeth when we first met. I thought it charming; she thought it too “country.” (Though she comes from a very good family, she was raised primarily in Virginia, and was particularly eager not to appear unworldly once we moved to New York City.) She insisted on having her teeth fixed after we married—a bit of harmless vanity.
As to your second question, I confess to being slightly baffled. Yes, Rachel did indeed keep a photograph on her nightstand table, in a frame very much like the one you describe: it was wood inlaid with marble, and had a very bad nick on the upper right hand corner. If you’re surprised that I should remember it in so much detail, I can explain: the photograph was, in fact, the source of one of our more uncomfortable disagreements. You see, along with Rachel, the people in the photograph were Jennifer Clayton, Rachel’s childhood best friend; Jennifer’s fiancé, Mark Haskell; and Rachel’s first boyfriend, Ian Grantt, who was later killed in the war. And although the photograph dated from well before Rachel and I had even met—she was only sixteen when the photo was taken—and though it was a stupid bit of envy, I disliked that she kept a picture of Ian so close to her bed. I admit that I was the source of the nick on the corner of the frame, which originated after I once threw the photograph during an unattractive fit of jealousy.
Did Rachel and I fight? Yes. It’s no secret that I have a beast of a temper, and did not always treat her fairly. Did she infuriate me on purpose, tease me with stories of her past loves, her dalliances, her male admirers? Rachel knew how to anger me, and she knew, just as easily, how to soothe my temper, and turn our storms into easy sunshine. I knew that she was friendly with Edmund S
nyder, and I suspected she maintained the friendship just to infuriate me. But I also knew that she loved me and me alone.
What I’m trying to say is: I would never have hurt Rachel any more than I would have split open my own chest to remove my heart.
She was my everything.
Perhaps that’s why I did not, at first, have more energy to proclaim my innocence. With Rachel dead, all of life seems like a form of dull imprisonment anyway. Still, so long as the world believes in my guilt it means that out there, somewhere, her real killer goes free, an idea I cannot tolerate. Should my conviction be overturned, I will dedicate my life to hunting down the monster who returned my beautiful angel to heaven long before her due.
It gives me untold comfort to know that there is at least one person in the world who believes in my innocence. Though in all likelihood we will never meet—if my appeals fail, I may breathe my last before this letter reaches your hands—I want to thank you for that.
Sincerely,
Manfred Richstone
There was a long silence after Thomas finished reading. The wind had picked up, and carried with it sounds of distant laughter and car traffic from Broadway. But the street in front of Dumfrey’s Dime Museum was still.
“I don’t get it,” Max said to break the silence. Her voice sounded overloud. She crossed her arms so the others wouldn’t notice the gooseflesh on her arms. She didn’t like standing out in the open, when they still didn’t know how and when the first note had appeared magically on the kitchen door. They were like sitting ducks. “So Manfred didn’t bump off his wife? Someone else did?”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “I’d stake my life on it.”
“And you think the same person did Freckles in?” Max said.
Thomas nodded.
Pippa was white-faced under the streetlamp. “Even if Manfred is innocent,” she said, “he isn’t very much help. He says so himself. He has no idea who might have killed his wife.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Thomas folded up the letter and once again carefully pocketed it. “He was plenty helpful. There were three other people in that photograph with Rachel. That means there are three other people who might know why it’s so important.”