The Calder Game Read online

  The policeman cleared his throat. “It’s the man in the boat. He was found in a grove of bamboo — I’ve always said we should trim that stuff — halfway between the Cascade and the bridge. Hidden. We’ve identified him. A businessman by the name of Arthur Wish, an American. We hope he’ll live. Ever heard the name before?”

  The news about the man by the lake spread like wildfire in Woodstock. Miss Knowsley, who had been shopping at the butcher’s, dropped her bag of partridge breasts with a whump into the sawdust underfoot. She clapped both hands over her mouth and wailed, “My Artie! Oh, my poor laddie!” She had to be helped outside and then back to her house on Alehouse Lane. The police who now filled the town had heard her words, and two detectives escorted her back to her house.

  She sat in her front room and wept for a good half hour, every few minutes muttering things like “Should have known!” or “Should never!” over and over. The detectives waited patiently.

  When both detectives had offered their pocket handkerchiefs and she had used most parts of both, she settled down and told this story:

  Her nephew, Arthur Wish, had grown up in America. Miss Knowsley’s sister, Rosamund, had gone to school in Chicago, at an arts college, and there met a man and married him. He made lots of money, but apparently it wasn’t a happy marriage, and he never allowed his wife to return to England. (“Knew she wouldn’t come back from there!” Miss Knowsley sobbed. “A prisoner, just like the other Rosamund!” More sobs, and then, “A prisoner in that nasty place, an endless maze of city streets shaped in a grid. Oh, I’ve seen pictures!”)

  At age ten, Arthur Wish was allowed to come to Woodstock for a summer, on his own, and stay with his aunt. Miss Knowsley rocked back and forth in her chair and moaned, “Fishing in the Queen Pool, oh, he loved that! And the woods, and all the places to play, the Grand Cascade and all.… It was a paradise to him, poor little fellow, being brought up in that dirty city.”

  “He — he —” A fresh round of tears started, and the detectives waited patiently. “He wanted to give something back to England, you know? He never forgot about Woodstock.” More tears.

  “He came to see me, and told me about the Minotaur. I’m afraid I didn’t like it.” Here there were more tears, and Miss Knowsley had to wipe her glasses on her skirt. “I told him so. I don’t approve of modern art, and I told him it didn’t belong!” Miss Knowsley broke off and rocked back and forth miserably.

  “But I never told my neighbors here who he was, I swear it! He said he wanted the gift to be anonymous, and I never told!” Miss Knowsley rocked some more.

  “I don’t know if he realized, being from a big American city and all, how close a community like this can be. How close …” Here Miss Knowsley wept so loudly that one of the detectives got up and patted her on the shoulder.

  His cell phone bleeped just then, and the detective excused himself and answered it in the kitchen. When he returned, his face was troubled.

  “I regret telling you this, ma’am, but it looks like Arthur Wish was injured by a blow to the head, a nasty blow that came from behind. It doesn’t look like an accident. In addition, it seems he was dragged into the bamboo and left there. This is now an assault-and-battery investigation, possibly with intent to kill. We’ll need to ask you a few questions.”

  After delivering the news about Arthur Wish, the police drove Walter Pillay and Mrs. Sharpe back to Woodstock. Mrs. Sharpe needed a nap, and Walter Pillay went directly to the hospital. If the injured American regained consciousness, Calder’s dad wanted to be there to ask him if he’d met or seen Calder.

  There was a spooky, hide-and-seek symmetry to the appearance of the collector who had anonymously given Minotaur, a man who admired the secretive Banksy, and the disappearance

  Walter Pillay wondered if he could identify Art Wish. Was this the man Calder had shaken hands with in the town square? If so, there wasn’t a moment to lose.

  Petra and Tommy headed off in the direction of the Cascade, which they were sure Calder would have wanted to explore.

  It was a long walk. They passed a giant grove of rhododendron bushes, one with dark rooms lurking behind shiny leaves. Looking for Calder, the kids ducked inside: only spiders. Out again, they passed a round rose garden encircled by a lacy trellis, and a bunch of exotic fruit and evergreen trees. They were then able to touch the largest tree either of them had ever seen, one with a sign that read, CEDAR OF LEBANON. It was as wide as a road, and seemed to reach upward forever.

  The path marched on through a field filled with amazingly unworried pheasants, and soon they heard running water. As they hurried down a steep hill and around a corner, the sound of the Cascade grew louder and louder.

  The River Glyme pounded cheerfully over a rough tumble of boulders; the falls raced downhill for a stretch of twenty to thirty feet. At the base, a narrow footbridge was being repaired. Boards were missing from the center, and the bridge was blocked with a DO NOT CROSS sign. Petra and Tommy walked as close to the rocks as they dared, and then stood side by side, thinking.

  “The bridge looks fine. What do you think? Should we?” Tommy said.

  Petra shrugged. “What would Calder do?”

  Tommy grinned. “He probably already did.”

  Petra nodded.

  They started across, balancing only on the metal supports along the edges, in the same way they’d walked in the hall outside their rooms the day before.

  “Hey! You there!” a voice shouted. “Back to the bank!”

  A police officer charged down the path behind them. Tommy and Petra froze, and the bridge beneath them slowly began to move. It buckled, it swayed, the kids yelled, and suddenly everything around them was dark and green — dark and green and very cold.

  When Petra went in, her glasses came off. By the time she bobbed to the surface, looking for Tommy, everything around her was a blur. The officer had waded in up to his chest, grabbed both of them firmly, and was dragging them out of the water as if they were two bad babies. All three slipped and fell on the moss and algae by the bank.

  “Hey!” Tommy said. “Let go!”

  “My glasses, I know where they came off!” Petra said, her teeth beginning to chatter. “Right there, the minute I hit the water. Let me go back for them, I’ve got to have them, I can’t see a thing! I don’t have another pair with me! Please!”

  “We’ll have to send a diver back for them, I’m afraid,” the police officer said firmly. “Right, we’re calling for a boat. Got to get you two back, no waiting around. You’ll catch your death of cold, you will!” The officer made a call on his walkie-talkie, then marched them up the bank to the top of the falls and pushed them down on a rock to wait.

  “But what if her glasses drift downstream?” Tommy asked. “I could jump back in and take a quick look. It isn’t deep, you know.”

  “And have you drift downstream? Not on your life!” the officer said.

  Petra and Tommy huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, instinctively trying to stay warm. Petra took a last, blurry look at the top of the Cascade, and suddenly thought she saw a flash of color by the top of the falls.

  “Tommy! I could swear there’s something yellow over there near the big rock. Bright yellow. See it?”

  Just as Tommy turned to look, the police motorboat roared into the shallow water nearby, stirring up mud from the bottom and clouding the water. The moment was over; Tommy and Petra had to climb in. They were wrapped in heavy blankets, the officer who rescued them poured water out of his boots and accepted some brandy, and the boat sped off, headed back toward the town.

  Woodstock was packed with curious faces, now that an ambulance had gone by. Some looked worried, some sad, some pleased. When the police car pulled up at the guesthouse and Petra and Tommy climbed out, there was lots of tsk-tsking and oh-mys. Petra, without her glasses on, couldn’t be sure if a dark blur on a bicycle was the eavesdropper — but the thin, black shape did pause at the back of a group of people as the kids squelched toward
their door, and seemed to be staring at the two of them. When Petra squinted hard in that direction, pffft! the figure was off, blond hair fluttering, with a quickness that reminded Petra of the way the girl had spun around yesterday in the square.

  Mrs. Sharpe didn’t respond to a knock on her door, and no one answered Miss Knowsley’s phone. Petra and Tommy took hot showers, changed, and met half an hour later in the hallway outside their rooms.

  Tommy stared at Petra. “You look different,” he said.

  “I know, my hair’s wet so I wrapped it up with this stupid scarf.” Petra looked embarrassed. “To keep it from getting too crazy.”

  Tommy shrugged. “You look kind of like that picture. You know, the one with the girl looking over her shoulder. The one on Ms. Hussey’s wall at school.”

  “The Vermeer?” Petra’s eyebrows shot up happily, and she turned away to hide her face. “Okay,” she went on quickly, “let’s find someone to bother about my glasses, and maybe that will get us back in the park. Hey, did you put your passport out to dry on the heater?”

  They talked all the way down the stairs and out into the street. Tommy complimented her on trying to dive back into the Glyme to get her glasses, and she thanked him for offering to do the same. Together, they were different people than they had been the day before; together, they had become parts of something larger than themselves, something that was slowly becoming visible.

  The number at the Temple of Diana that afternoon hadn’t really been four; it had been five. After Walter Pillay, Mrs. Sharpe, Petra, and Tommy left that afternoon, an ovoid creature, black against the yellows and reds of fall, hustled over to where the group had been sitting. He licked up several chunks of scone, as well as a number of ants who had arrived first.

  Pummy now sat on a rock at the edge of the Cascades, looking intently into a shallow pool. Miss Knowsley, who had been busy with her own worries that day, had forgotten to feed him.

  Pat, pat — one paw went in and out of the running water, in and out. Pat, pat — he pulled the paw back, shook it, and licked it vigorously.

  He tried again. Whatever Pummy was watching moved gently in the current. The yellow floated to one side, caught in a pile of red leaves, then drifted back down against the black rock, feathering back and forth like a small fish. The water above the yellow sparkled, catching first blue and then flashes of bright white.

  Pummy watched. “Yeow,” he said, and blinked his eye slowly, thoughtfully.

  He looked up, hearing the rumble of a car approaching through the park. He licked his paw again and turned back to the pool.

  “Yeow,” he said to the three men in black approaching the bank.

  “You’re a big thing,” one man said. He marched past Pummy and down the hill, got his mask and tank in place, and waded in to the Glyme at the foot of the Cascade. The other two policemen watched from the edge.

  Pummy went back to fishing in his pool. Pat, pat … pat, pat …

  Below the broken footbridge, the diver swam back and forth for several minutes. Then he popped upright and waved Petra’s glasses in the air. The roar of the Cascade drowned out voices, but the divers standing on the bank waved back.

  As the three drove by in the police van, Pummy sat quietly, his yellow eye following until they vanished into the woods.

  Miss Knowsley was rocking. Back and forth, back and forth — rocking as her mother had before her, and her mother’s mother. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the chair.

  She’d been angry. But what had she said?

  Her nephew had promised to give a delightful piece of art to the town. She had pictured a nice little nymph, or something like the sculptures in the gardens at Blenheim. But when she’d seen the Minotaur …

  She’d told Artie it wasn’t appropriate, it was an outrage. When he’d argued back, insisting that Woodstock would grow to love it, that the British had a marvelous sense of humor and that a naked garden sculpture was much more inappropriate than this, she’d told him that he didn’t understand.

  “You’re not from Woodstock. You don’t recognize the importance of tradition,” she had snapped. Then, meanly, she’d said, “Americans make a mess of everything. They think having money means they can behave in any way they like, and that the things they prefer can and should be forced on everyone else. Well, they’re wrong, dead wrong!”

  Artie had looked so hurt. She had seen the flatness in his eyes. “So you’re against it,” he had said. “Maybe with time —”

  “Never.” She had cut him off, and then had left the room. She hadn’t even said good-bye; he had let himself out. That was just over two weeks ago, and the last time he’d set foot in the house on Alehouse Lane. Tears ran down Miss Knowsley’s cheeks as she remembered it.

  But what exactly had she said in the village that day? What had she said, that day she was so angry?

  Everyone talked … talked over tea in the shops, or while buying onions or posting a letter. Everyone talked in Woodstock, and nothing went unnoticed. And a little town like Woodstock was used to taking care of things in its own way.

  Chilled, Miss Knowsley thought back to a man from the United States who had moved into the area ten years ago and talked loudly about how to improve this and that — water pressure, food deliveries, even church services. He’d disappeared, hadn’t he? There had been Missing Person signs up for days, then someone had scrawled GOOD RIDDANCE, in black, over the pictures. The man had never been found.

  Artie! She should have defended him. But he didn’t understand, did he? Well, he’d been warned.

  He was, in truth, an American. And did Americans understand a warning? They sometimes didn’t know when to stop.

  And then the news she’d just gotten from the girl, a distant cousin whose father had called to say he wouldn’t be home for several days, maybe longer. Family was family, but Posy Knowsley knew that the girl’s father, Nashton Rip, was no saint, even though he was a relative. Nashy had been saying things around town ever since the Minotaur appeared in the square. Now he was mysteriously gone, along with the sculpture and boy. Something made her not want to tell Walter Pillay that the girl would be staying at the bed-and-breakfast until her dad returned. Oh, dear, another thing to hide!

  Oh, the dreadfulness of it all! How had everything gone so wrong?

  Miss Knowsley squeezed her eyes tight as the tears dripped off her chin.

  “You two are to stay out of Blenheim Park from now on. No special permissions.” The officer who reached out of the van to hand Petra her glasses jerked his head in the direction of the park.

  “Nothing but trouble in there,” he added.

  “Thanks for returning these to me,” Petra said, and looked at the ground. Tommy kicked at a pebble.

  “That’s right, mates, solid ground is where you belong. No more of this detective nonsense. We’ll find the boy, don’t you worry, and meanwhile the two of you run off. That’s it, no reason to stand around the entrance here.”

  “And how is Mr. Wish?” Petra asked politely.

  “In hospital. Coma,” the policeman said.

  Petra and Tommy were silent. Art Wish … unable to speak, unable to tell or explain.

  The van drove on, and the police at the gates turned their backs on Tommy and Petra.

  Tommy pulled the map out of his pocket. The two studied it, whispered for several minutes, then headed off down a side street that ran parallel to the park wall.

  “We’ll flip the coin,” Tommy suggested. “If it’s the lady, you go over. If it’s King George, it’s me.”

  “And whoever goes in first gets that delivery door in the wall open. There’s probably a single bolt on the inside.”

  “Right. Simple. You ready?” Tommy pulled the 1752 coin out of his pocket, spat on it, then rubbed it vigorously on his pants.

  Petra’s mouth twisted into an eeuw shape, but she stayed quiet.

  “Gotta get all the dirt off it before flipping,” Tommy said. “Okay.”
He blew on the coin once, then cupped it in his hands.

  “Superstitious?” Petra asked. Tommy shrugged.

  “How about I flip it?” she added.

  Tommy, to her surprise, handed it over.

  The coin felt warm. “I’ll let it fall on the ground,” she said.

  “Afraid you can’t catch it?” Tommy grinned.

  Petra shrugged, then tossed the coin into the air. She stepped back, and it bounced once on the dirt and rolled. It landed with the woman up.

  “Guess that’s me,” Petra murmured.

  “Let’s do it,” was all Tommy said. He popped the coin back into his pocket.

  Eyes peering out of a nearby window saw the boy brace himself against the wall, facing the layers of stone. He stood between two parked motorbikes. The girl looked both ways, then climbed up on the seat of one of the bikes, which wobbled. The eyes watching blinked once, then again.

  From there, she placed one knee on the boy’s shoulders, then the other. Slowly, holding on to the wall, she stood, one foot on each shoulder.

  The boy looked up, and the girl hissed, “Don’t!”

  “Hurry, you’re heavy!” the boy whispered.

  The girl placed both hands on the mossy top of the wall and slowly inched one leg up and over. Then she stopped. “Uh-oh, I’m stuck!” she whispered down.

  The boy placed both hands on her ankle and gave a mighty heave upward.

  There was an “OOF!” and then a whump, and then silence. The boy anxiously looked both ways. “You okay?” he whispered.

  He stood quietly in front of the wall, listening. A minute went by. The door didn’t open. “You okay?” he repeated, louder this time.

  The eyes watching from behind a lace curtain blinked again.

  The boy waited. He called again. Still no answer. Soon a police car approached, driving slowly toward the boy. It stopped. The boy talked to the driver for several minutes, then climbed into the backseat.