Читать книгу Intruders at Rivermead Manor - Kathryn Reiss - Страница 8

KIT KNOCKED ON the front door of Rivermead Manor. Through the colored glass she could see Miss Mundis limping down the hallway.

Miss Mundis greeted Kit with a weak smile. “Oh, good! I thought you might be that man again.”

“What man?” Kit offered Miss Mundis her arm to lean on as they walked to the kitchen.

“He came last week and again today, trying to convince me to turn Rivermead into a boarding house! The fellow believes it is the civic duty of people with big houses to provide low-cost places for the homeless.” She sighed, looking around her large kitchen. “Maybe he’s right. But I just don’t have the strength on my own.”

“We have a new boarder at our house who was just talking about that same thing.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize your family took in boarders.”

“We had to—after my father lost his business.”

“Well, bless your heart.” Miss Mundis pursed her lips. “I believe the man who came here told me his name was Mr. West. He’s a tall, gray-haired fellow.”

“That’s our new boarder!” said Kit.

“Your mother has her hands full, then,” Miss Mundis chortled. “Now here’s an idea. I’ll take in lodgers who pay their rent in home repairs! Something always needs doing around here. Lightbulbs are always burning out, and now I can’t get to the store for new ones. There’s a water pipe leaking in the cellar, and it’s left a puddle of water on the floor. This old house will be the death of me!” She shook her head. “I wish I had the money to hire a handyman. But I’m sure you’ll be a great help.”

“Well, I’ll mop up the water in the cellar for you,” Kit offered, a bit hesitantly. “But I don’t know how to fix pipes…”

“Now don’t you worry. I’ve lived here since I was born, and I’m sure I’ll find a way to keep the house holding up for the next generation. This house has quite a history, you know. My ancestor, Edgar Mundis, built Rivermead over a hundred years ago, and it was part of the Underground Railroad.”

Kit seized this opening. “Mrs. Newcomb, the librarian, told us that,” she said. “And she said it had a secret hiding place. Is that true?”

“Well…yes.”

“May I see it?” asked Kit eagerly. She explained about the article she hoped to write for the newspaper.

“I’m afraid I cannot show it to you now,” Miss Mundis answered, lowering her voice. “I don’t want to frighten the time travelers away.” She sank into a chair at the table. Her cat leaped into her lap.

Time travelers again! “Tell me about them,” urged Kit.

“They came last week. I nearly telephoned the police when I first heard noises—bumps in the night, and footsteps on the stairs. Then I saw them with my own eyes, running through the garden! I only saw them from the back, but I could see they were wearing long dresses and old-timey bonnets like my grandmother used to wear. Later when I went down in the cellar to check that leaking pipe, I saw that the entrance to the secret room was open.” Her voice was a whisper now. “The secret room must be a time portal! People from the past must be using it to come to the present day.”

“Time portal?” Kit repeated, bewildered.

Miss Mundis raised her eyebrows. “Are you a skeptic like your great-uncle?”

“I don’t know.” Kit shrugged. “I just like things to make sense.” She hesitated, watching Miss Mundis’s smile broaden. “That’s why I want to be a reporter when I grow up. Reporters deal with facts.”

“Yes, of course,” said the old woman, settling herself in her armchair and putting her feet up on the footstool. “But what are facts, really, except things we’ve already proven? There could be lots of other almost-facts out there, still waiting for proof. It’s as William Shakespeare wrote in his play Hamlet: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Prince Hamlet is saying there are things we can’t even begin to dream of, because we don’t have the concepts for them. But that doesn’t mean they’re not possible. We just don’t see the big picture.”

Kit frowned, thinking this over. “And the big picture has time portals in it? Like—time doorways?”

“Maybe so.” Miss Mundis nodded approvingly. “Now tell me, have you ever heard of the writer H.G. Wells?”

Kit shook her head.

“You must read some of his books! My favorite is The Time Machine.”

And as Kit cracked eggs into a skillet for Miss Mundis’s supper, Miss Mundis talked about time travel. “Science fiction is based on possibilities of science,” Miss Mundis explained eagerly. “We always think we know what’s true and what’s false, but people once believed that the sun revolved around the earth, and the earth was flat, and the stars in the sky were gods! Today, most people think time travel happens only in fiction. I think someday science will prove otherwise.”

Kit flipped the eggs, thinking about stepping through a door into a time when buggies pulled by horses drove along the roads, with hoopskirted ladies riding inside. The back of her neck prickled. Was time travel possible? Or was Miss Mundis as batty as Uncle Hendrick believed?

Kit washed the frying pan and then glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. “I’m forgetting I still need to help Uncle Hendrick! Will you be all right here on your own—I mean, can you get around on your bad foot?”

“The doctor came this morning and assured me rest will heal it,” Miss Mundis said. “But he did say I should keep off my foot. So, my dear, I’m wondering whether you might sleep here for a night this weekend. It would be helpful to have an able-bodied girl to look after me for a day or two.”

Kit felt a tingle of excitement along her shoulder blades. “Yes, I’d like to! I’ll ask my parents.” She was eager to help Miss Mundis, but even more eager to find out more about Rivermead Manor and whatever it was that was happening there. If there are such things as time travelers, I want to see them for myself, she thought. And I want to see that secret room!

Kit walked next door to Uncle Hendrick’s house, burning with curiosity about Rivermead and the family that had built it. “Did your parents know Miss Mundis’s parents well?” she asked her uncle.

“Not at all. The Mundis family was too grand for the likes of us,” said Uncle Hendrick. He frowned. “I was with Elsie at school, until her mother took her off to a fancy finishing school in Europe. The fool woman hoped her daughter would marry an English lord or some such nonsense.” He laughed, then broke off abruptly. “So, how is she doing all by herself in that grand manor? Foot all better now?”

As Kit dusted, she told her great-uncle about Miss Mundis’s twisted ankle, and the request that Kit spend a night there this weekend. “I can’t fix the leaky pipe in the cellar, and I can’t replace the burned-out lightbulbs because Miss Mundis doesn’t have any new bulbs, but I can do some more cleaning. I can also make sandwiches for Miss Mundis to keep in the icebox, like I do here.”

“And speaking of sandwiches…” said Uncle Hendrick.

Kit went to the kitchen to make his supper. As she worked, her great-uncle stood in the doorway and grumbled at her for slicing the meat too thickly, and for dropping crumbs when she cut the bread.

You are a very grumpy old man! Kit thought to herself, but she kept a pleasant expression on her face as she wiped up the crumbs and hung the dishrag neatly on the hook by the sink. She set the platter of sandwiches on the table, then gathered up her schoolbag and jacket.

“Don’t leave without your wages, girl,” said Uncle Hendrick, handing her two dimes.

“Thank you.” Then she blinked in surprise when, rather than seeing her out the door as he usually did, he took his hat and coat off the rack.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said.

“Why, thank you, Uncle Hendrick,” said Kit, pleased by his unexpected offer.

They walked outside to the carriage house. Uncle Hendrick had told her that before the days of automobiles, it had sheltered both buggies and the horses that pulled them. Now Uncle Hendrick’s automobile stood in solitary splendor in the shadowy building. He strode to the tool bench and snatched a rag from it. Kit waited while he wiped at some invisible spot on the automobile’s hood and replaced the rag. “All right, hop in,” he said.

When he dropped Kit off, Uncle Hendrick surprised Kit again by walking her to the door and staying while she asked permission to spend the weekend at Rivermead. “I can vouch that my neighbor is a respectable woman,” he said to Kit’s parents. “It would be charitable of you to allow Kit to help out.”

Kit’s father asked her mother, “Can you spare Kit from her chores here?”

Mrs. Kittredge smiled at Kit. “Now that Mrs. Howard is back on her feet again, we’ll be fine. So if Kit wants to stay over, she may. What do you say, Kit?”

“I’d love to!”

Uncle Hendrick made a harrumphing sound. Then he said that he would pick Kit up the next day after lunch and drive her and her overnight bag to Rivermead Manor.

“Thank you,” said Kit. And then I’ll see if there are more things in heaven and earth, as Hamlet said.