Double Spell (10 page)

Jane nodded. Elizabeth continued, “Well, I think this doll thing is like that. Maybe it isn’t the house we’re looking for at all. Maybe that’s just a clue.”

Jane’s eyes widened with interest. “Yes,” she said eagerly, “and maybe Hester’s just a clue and …” her face fell, “but how will we know if we have the clues in the right order?”

“I think we’ll just know,” Elizabeth said positively. “We’ll just feel if they’re right. I mean if, instead of paying no attention to all the things we see and just keep looking for the house, we stop and try different things, I’m sure we’ll find it – whatever it is. Anyway I’m going to make a new list.”

Jane began to laugh. She laughed so hard she had to hold the branch she had perched herself on for fear of falling off. “You know what?” she said finally when she could catch her breath.

“What?”

“You sound like me and I sound like you. I have all the wild dreams and you have all the organizing schemes.”

“That rhymes,” they giggled. Jane felt better again. There was a plan now to work on.

“Now,” said Elizabeth, “listen. First we found the doll, that’s number one. Clue number two: we saw the dream house – and remember when we didn’t pay any attention to it we saw it again, so that must be right. Then three: we started to hunt for the house …”

“And we hunted and hunted and hunted,” sighed Jane.

“Yes, and we didn’t find it so maybe that clue is for later.”

“Well, what should we be looking for – Hester?”

“Maybe.”

“Now, Elizabeth,” Jane was sounding more like Jane now, and Elizabeth like Elizabeth. “You can’t look for someone who lived 150 years ago or more. You just can’t.”

“Well, maybe we should look some more in the museum for her clothes or her brooch – I wonder what happened to her brooch after she – I suppose she grew up and died and everything.”

“I suppose so.”

“I never thought about that brooch. You see,” Elizabeth was triumphant, “there’s a whole new thing to think about. Maybe I should go upstairs and think.”

“No thank you for thinking,” Jane said hastily, “let’s try another clue. What about the doll? Maybe we should concentrate more on Amelia.” She got down from her cherry tree branch and picked Amelia up from Elizabeth’s lap. “You know,” she said, “we could fix up the doll, paint her face and make new clothes for her, just like the ones in the dreams – or the memories – or whatever they are.”

“Yes!” Elizabeth jumped up. She didn’t tell Jane she’d already tried the dressmaking. “Why don’t we do that. Maybe she’ll remember better if we do. That’s a marvelous idea. Good for you. What’ll we do first?”

Jane thought. “I think we should ask Mama,” she said. “After all, she knows all about sewing and everything.”

Elizabeth was doubtful about asking Mama.

“We don’t have to say why,” Jane argued, “we can just say we want to fix the doll up and we’ve been reading in books to see what she should look like.”

“Well …, all right, we’ll do it.”

Their mother thought they had a fine idea. She was stuffing clothes into the clothes dryer in the basement when they found her, so they had to wait while she wrestled with the heavy sheets before she would come upstairs to look at the doll. When she did she told them the painting part was a little beyond her. “But why don’t you take it to Aunt Alice,” she suggested. “There she is, stuck in her apartment with her mending hip. She can’t do as much of her tapestry as she’d like because the doctor said it’s too heavy for her just now. I’ll bet she’d be pleased as punch to help you. And she knows so much about this sort of thing too – much more than I do.” Without waiting for them to say a word, Mama went to phone Aunt Alice.

“And you can take William,” she added, as she dialed the number. “I’ve been wanting to get down to some of my own work for days, and he’s bored and could use a good visit with Aunt Alice.”

Aunt Alice was phoned and declared herself delighted to help the twins with their project.

“Come on, nuisance,” said Jane to William and off they went, the three of them and the little doll, its face, as always, stiff with its half-painted smile and unaware of the trouble it was causing.

When they knocked at Aunt Alice’s apartment door, it was opened to them by a man they had never seen before, a short, round man with no hair. “Ah,” he said, smiling benignly at them, “good afternoon and have you brought a valuable historical document for us to see today?”

They thought at first they must be in the wrong place, but Aunt Alice’s voice from inside, bidding them to “Come in, come in,” assured them they hadn’t.

“They’ve brought their doll,” said William.

“Their doll, eh?” said the man. “Well, well.” He led them through the tiny hall into Aunt Alice’s big, sunny living room.

“Glad to see you. Let’s see your doll, where’d you get it? … ah, remember now, same doll you showed me before. Glad to help. Come here Martin.”

The round man obeyed as quickly and without any more question than Elizabeth had. He bent over Amelia to look closely at her.

“By George!” he said, starting with surprise. “By George! Where on earth did you get that?”

“From the Dolls Mended,” said Elizabeth. “We bought it.”

“Must have cost a pretty penny,” he said.

“We paid two dollars and fifty-five cents,” said Jane. “I guess it wasn’t too much,” she added, not being sure, in this case, how much too much would be.

“Too much? Why on earth would an antique dealer sell a doll like this for two dollars and fifty-five cents? Are you sure?”

Jane was still not sure whether two dollars and fifty-five cents was too much or too little. “I’m sure,” she said.

“That’s right,” Elizabeth put in, “two fifty-five, that’s how much we had and that’s how much she said we had to pay.”

“Well, by George, well,” he said, “isn’t that extraordinary. This is a very fine doll.”

“Mr. Hedley works at the Royal Ontario Museum,” Aunt Alice interrupted him.

“Oh,” said William, nodding his head up and down, “he’s the museum man. He read the blue book we sent of Papa’s.”

And then they all began to laugh and talk about the house moving. While Miss Weller, the housekeeper who was helping Aunt Alice until her hip was healed, got tea for them, they talked, admired the view of the city from Aunt Alice’s window, and politely answered the questions Mr. Hedley was asking them about their doll.

“Yes,” he said, “I know that little shop, run by an elderly woman whose name, I believe, is Miss Cloud or Miss Sky or something. I can’t quite understand why she would sell you the doll for such a small amount (
Oh
, thought Jane and Elizabeth,
we paid too little).
It’s quite expertly carved and really, not in too bad condition. It might be as old as 1800.” He turned Amelia over and over in his hand, whistling under his breath as he thought.

“No,” Elizabeth blurted out without thinking, “it’s not that old.”

“You mean because of its dress?” asked Mr. Hedley.

“No, because the book says the house it lived in wasn’t built before 1840.”

Both Aunt Alice and Mr. Hedley looked at her in great surprise. Jane looked peeved. Elizabeth wished she hadn’t said anything.

“Well,” she amended hastily, “we were interested and we looked up dolls and houses and things and the book said about the dress, I guess I mean, and we looked it up in the library about that kind of dress and that’s what it said,” she finished weakly, not daring to look at Jane at all.

“Very enterprising,” Mr. Hedley said smiling vaguely, not quite understanding what Elizabeth was talking about. Aunt Alice, who was always aware when wool was being pulled over her eyes, looked at Elizabeth with one eyebrow raised. Elizabeth blushed.

William, who had apparently been totally engrossed with the cat at the foot of Aunt Alice’s chair, looked up and said, “It has something to do with Hester. She lived in a red brick house with Amelia …”

“William,” said Jane, her face red and stormy, “shut up. Just shut up!”

Mr. Hedley raised his eyebrow in alarm. Aunt Alice asked questions.

“Who is Amelia? And who is Hester?”

“Oh, just a made-up person, both of them are made-up people. It was all make-believe,” Jane said quickly.

“No, it wasn’t,” asserted William. “You went all over the place looking for her house and …”

“Well, it was just pretend,” Jane was trying very hard not to sound angry.

“Who is Hester?” Aunt Alice directed her question this time, and her piercing gaze, toward William.

“I don’t know,” answered William, “but she’s somebody Jane ’n’ Liza don’t like.”

Aunt Alice changed direction and looked from Jane to Elizabeth. It was obvious she meant to know what it was all about.

Elizabeth began to tell, reluctantly at first, but as she went on she was glad to tell the whole thing to someone other than Jane, someone who might help them find a clue. Jane was glad too. Any bits of the story Elizabeth neglected she put in, until, piece by piece, the whole tale was told – the doll, the house, Hester, Hester’s brooch – everything. Miss Weller came in, unnoticed, with tea.

“And,” Elizabeth said with a pleading gesture of her hands, “we don’t know what to do next. The only two things so far that are at all the same are the roses on the house and the roses on the box. The rest doesn’t make sense at all.” She explained then her theory about a scavenger hunt and how they hoped, by restoring the doll, to find the next clue. She hoped desperately Aunt Alice wouldn’t laugh.

Aunt Alice didn’t laugh. She sat deep in her chair pushing her hands open and shut, open and shut against each other while she thought. It wasn’t that she truly believed the doll had a memory and was sending the twins
on a hunt for a long ago house. But she did believe that the world was full of things that didn’t appear to make sense.

Mr. Hedley didn’t laugh either. He nodded his head and thought.

“Aunt Alice has a brooch like that,” said William, looking up again from his spot on the rug.

The answer he got was four blank stares. Finally Aunt Alice put down the teapot she had been busy with and said, with a brilliant smile, “You’re right William, I do have a brooch like that. But how on earth did you know that?”

“You had it on when you came to see us in the old house.”

“The old house?”

“Before we came to your house.”

Suddenly everyone (except Mr. Hedley, of course,) remembered the day, months ago now, when Aunt Alice had come to visit them in Spring View Acres.

“My goodness,” said Aunt Alice, “what a memory you have.”

“When William grows up,” said Jane sourly, “he’s going to be an encyclopedia.”

“Can we see the brooch?” Elizabeth asked eagerly.

“It’s in the jewel box. Top drawer of my dresser in the bedroom, Elizabeth. We’ll all have a look. Give you a good idea what you’re looking for.”

“Oh, we have a close idea,” said Jane, a bit grimly.

Elizabeth was gone such a long time that Aunt Alice sent Jane after her. Jane found her sister standing in front
of the high old dresser looking at something in her hands. Her face was the color of the gray wall behind it.

“I know it sounds crazy,” she said, turning and holding the brooch out for Jane to see, “but this is Hester’s brooch.”

Elizabeth Makes Up Her Mind

A
unt Alice plainly didn’t believe the twins when they said the brooch was the brooch in their dreams. If there had been something about their story that had caught her attention when they had first told it, it was easy to see that she now felt the way Joe had about the sick basket dream – it was just one of those twin things.

All the same, she gave them the brooch. “Not my style,” she said as she put it into Elizabeth’s hand. “Remember it was my mother’s, your great-grandmother’s. So take good care of it. No matter whose it was before that,” she added and the twins couldn’t help noticing that her eyes twinkled when she said it.

Mr. Hedley, like Aunt Alice, wasn’t too interested in the brooch. But he was interested in the doll.

“I shall enquire for you,” he offered, “from Miss Air or Miss Sky or whatever her name is at the antique shop, then from the specialists in dolls at the museum – I shall
have to have the doll, of course, but you won’t mind that, will you?” He turned a comfortable smile on the twins and Elizabeth said, “No, you can have it if we can have it right back.”

“You can have it, Martin,” said Aunt Alice, biting off a thread from sewing she had begun, “when its face and its clothes are done. You leave it here a while. I want to work on it …”

“But Alice,” Mr. Hedley was outraged, “I must have it unchanged, before it is restored. Don’t you see …”

“But we really have to take it home,” said Jane picking it up from Aunt Alice’s lap and holding it firmly.

Elizabeth looked at her sister in astonishment. What was Jane thinking about. Here was Aunt Alice ready to help them fix Amelia. Here was Mr. Hedley dying to take her to the museum and find out what he could about her, maybe solve the whole mystery. What did Jane mean?

“I’ll have to have the doll in order to find out anything. You can trust me,” he said gently. “I’ll be most careful of it, most careful.”