Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms (9 page)

Slowly, he took another threepence from his pocket and placed it in the slot. Then he leaned against the rung of the turnstile and pushed. Nothing happened. He pushed harder. There was a horrible grating noise followed by the clatter of the coin dropping into the mechanism, and then the rung turned suddenly and Stuart shot through, tripped on a root, and fell flat on his face. He picked himself up—his jeans, his T-shirt, his entire body
covered
with mud—and looked back toward the turnstile. Nothing seemed to have changed.

He gave the rung another tug, but it didn’t move. He looked at the slot and at the little box into which the money must have fallen. It looked different; one side was now sticking out slightly, like the edge of a door. He pried it open, reached inside for the threepence, and felt something that wasn’t a coin.

He took out the object and stared at it.

It was a key. A large, heavy back-door key.

CHAPTER 13

He meant to go immediately to Uncle Tony’s house—he meant to cycle there as fast as he possibly could, climb over the gate, and try that key in the lock—but as soon as he got out of the park, people began to point at him and laugh.

“Help! Help! It’s the creature from the Planet Ooze!” called out a sniggering teenage girl, and it was clear that until he cleaned himself up, he was just too noticeable for secretive activities.

He biked home on the quietest streets he could find. He’d have a shower, he thought, and change his clothes, and then he could go right out again without everyone in Beeton noticing him.

The front door was open. He took off his shoes and made a dash for the stairs.

“Oh,
there
you are!” said his mother, opening the door from the kitchen.

“Hello!” He was surprised. She wasn’t usually at home until halfway through the evening.

“We had a flood in the lab,” she told him. “A pipe burst, so I thought I would take an afternoon off, for once.”

“Aha!” said his father, looking over her shoulder. “I thought I could detect a somewhat mephitic odor, and now I can see its alluvial origin.”

“I fell over in some smelly mud,” said Stuart.

“Oh, so you did,” acknowledged his mother, apparently noticing his head-to-foot sludge coating for the first time. “Anyway, we’re expecting guests,” she continued. “I was just thinking that it must be a bit lonely for you here in Beeton, and then I bumped into some children, exactly your age, right on this street, and I thought, seize the moment …”

Oh, no
, thought Stuart.
Oh, no
.

“… and I invited them around for tea.”

The doorbell rang.

“And here they are!” said his mother.

She opened the front door—and there stood the Kingley triplets. Three sets of eyes gazed at Stuart. Three faces registered disgust and horror at his appearance. Three noses wrinkled at the smell.

“Hello, Stuart,” said the one with glasses.

“I’ll just go and get washed,” he said, and fled up the stairs.

He took as long as he possibly could, but when his mother called up to him for the third time, Stuart knew he could avoid it no longer.

“Your guests are in the dining room,” she said to him as he came down the stairs with incredible slowness. “I’m not going to bother you,” she added. “I know there’s nothing worse than parents interfering. I’ll leave you alone to enjoy yourselves.”

Stuart opened the door.

The triplets were sitting around the table. They looked at him in silence.

Avoiding their gaze, he sat down on the only empty chair. On the table was a plate of peanut-butter sandwiches, a plate of scones with jam and cream, a plate of chocolate brownies, and a plate of mini cupcakes. He took two of everything and began to eat.

One of the triplets tutted disapprovingly. “
Manners makyth man
,” she said.

“What?” asked Stuart, his mouth full.

“It’s a quote,” she said. “It means you shouldn’t speak with your mouth full, and you should offer food to guests before you start eating yourself.”

Stuart shrugged. “You can die of starvation, for all I care. And if you’re talking about manners, then what do you call following someone around and taking pictures of them and writing horrible things about them in a stupid newspaper?”

“We call it investigative journalism,” said one of the triplets.

“I call it snooping,” said Stuart.

“We at the
Beech Road Guardian
—” began a triplet.

“You at the
Nosy Parker Weekly
,” interrupted Stuart, imitating her prissy little voice.

“Now you’re being rude,” said another triplet. “And if we’re going to—”

The door opened, and they all stopped talking and sat upright. Stuart’s mom poked her head into the room. “Everyone having a good time?” she asked.

They all nodded. Mrs. Horten shut the door again.

“Now, where were we?” asked a triplet.

“I was being rude to you,” said Stuart.

“No, you were being rude to
her
,” said the triplet, nodding at one of her sisters.

Stuart shrugged again. “Can’t see it makes any difference. You’re all exactly the same.”

“No, we’re
not
!” screamed the girls.

The door opened again. “Still having a good time?” asked Stuart’s mother. They all nodded. “I forgot to say,” she added, “there was a phone call for you from the library, Stuart. They wanted to tell you that the missing photo from the book has turned up. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” said Stuart. “Thanks.”

His mother closed the door again.

“We’re nothing like each other,” continued one of the triplets immediately. “June’s hair has got a parting on the left, mine’s got a parting on the right, and April has got
glasses
.”

“Well, you all
sound
the same,” said Stuart.

“Not when you get to know us.”

“But I’ve already known you for
three months
,” said Stuart. “Get it?” he added. “April, May, and June?”

“Oh, very funny,” said April, the one with the glasses. “And if you’re going to make jokes about names, then you’d better be careful, Mr. S. Horten. Bet you get called ‘
Shorty
.’”

“Bet you get called ‘
Speccy
,’” snapped Stuart. He could tell from her expression—a wince—that she did.

The door opened again. This time it was Stuart’s father. “I’m here to take an order for potables,” he said. “We have a wide choice of citrus cordials and also a gaseous syrup-based libation.”

“Cola, please,” said Stuart.

“Same for us, please,” said June.

“I shall be back precipitately with your chosen beverages,” announced his father, leaving the room.

There was a pause, and then May and June looked at each other and sniggered.

“He’s weird!” said May.

Stuart took a breath and was about to say something really, truly, incredibly rude to her (because, although she was right that his dad was weird, it was still
his dad
) when April unexpectedly spoke up.

“It’s not fair to laugh,” she said sharply to her sisters. “No one can help their parents. What about when our mom sings? What about our dad’s shorts that he wore to the school party last year, which had a hole in the butt? We hated it when people made fun of him.”

May and June looked a tiny bit shamefaced.

“So, anyway,” said April, turning to Stuart. “Why
were
you trying to break into that house?”

“Don’t you ever give up?” asked Stuart. He’d just at that moment been beginning to think that perhaps April wasn’t quite as bad as the other two.

She shook her head. “A good crime reporter never wastes an opportunity.”

“Okay,” he said tiredly. “My great-uncle Tony used to live there, so I was curious about it. I just wanted to look around.” He sat back and folded his arms.

“That’s it?” asked April.

“That’s it.”

“Simple curiosity?”

“Simple curiosity.”

“I see.” She reached into her pocket and took out a very small glittery notepad, and leafed back through the pages. “So at that point, were you already aware that the building in question was the subject of a demolition order?”

Stuart gaped at her. “
What
?” he managed to say.

“Your great-uncle’s house is going to be knocked down,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”

CHAPTER 14

“What are you talking about?” asked Stuart. “What do you mean?”

“The land’s been taken over by the local council,” said April. “The house has been empty for more than forty years, so they’re going to knock it down and put up a block of apartments instead.”

“When?”

“Next week. Monday, I think.”

“But how do you know?”

She shook her head. “A good journalist doesn’t reveal her sources.”

“You’re ten,” snapped Stuart. “You don’t have any sources.”

April flushed and tossed her head. “Well, as a matter of fact, I heard my dad tell a friend of his,” she said.

“And how does your dad know?” asked Stuart.

“He’s a builder,” said all the triplets simultaneously.

At that point, Stuart’s father came in with the drinks and said, “Behold, I bring hydration for your powwow,” and May and June started giggling again and didn’t stop until the dreadful tea party was over.

But Stuart barely noticed. He was too busy working out exactly when he could get back to Great-Uncle Tony’s house. Because now he was running out of time.

That night, he set the alarm on his wristwatch for four a.m., and it was still beeping away madly when he eventually woke at ten past six. He hauled himself out of bed and looked through the window. His mother was just wheeling her bicycle up the drive, and he watched her cycle away along the road, orange helmet bobbing. Then he dressed quickly, hung the key on a piece of string around his neck, stuck two of the threepences in his pocket, just in case, and very quietly left the house. He had, he calculated, an hour and a half before his father woke up.

It took him only five minutes to get to Uncle Tony’s house, whizzing along empty roads in the pale morning light, but when he turned the corner into the street, he braked hard. Work had already started. There was scaffolding up the side of the house and a front loader—empty as yet—squatting in the road outside.

Someone had unwired the front gate. Stuart pushed it open and waded through the dewy grass to the door. There were still planks nailed across it, but above them a sheet of paper in a plastic envelope had been stapled to the frame. It was too high up for him to read properly, but he could see the words
DEMOLITION ORDER
in large letters near the top.

There was still no one about. Quickly he made his way to the back of the house and lifted the key from around his neck. It slid smoothly into the keyhole and turned with a sharp click. He opened the door.

The first thing Stuart noticed was that it was very, very dark. He’d completely forgotten that all the windows were boarded up, and stupidly he hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight.

He opened the back door as widely as possible and looked around. He was standing in a large square kitchen, lined with cupboards. He opened one of the cupboards at random and found a chipped mug and a box of matches. Unable to believe his luck, he shook the box and then looked inside: three matches, bent like bananas, lay within. He opened a few more cupboards, but found nothing except old dishes and dead flies, and then he tried under the sink, and unearthed the stub of an old candle.