The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop (22 page)

“I was very scared,” Isadore said thoughtfully, “because I felt so guilty. But they hadn’t come to punish me. Everything went black and the next thing I knew, I was a boy again—a boy of about your age. Pierre and Marcel were with me. We were in the old orchard of our grandfather’s house in the French countryside where we spent every summer. And I remembered how it felt to be happy. I remembered how beautiful life was, before I turned wicked and we were the Perfect Three. That’s what Mother used to call us. The Perfect Three, working and playing together in perfect harmony!”

“Before you met Daisy,” Oz suggested.

“I think it started before then.” Isadore was sad. “I floated out of my boyhood body and stood with Pierre
and Marcel, watching the children we used to be. And I was already taking more than my fair share of the sweets we were supposed to divide equally. I already thought I was the best and the cleverest. So it’s no use blaming Daisy.”

“What did they say to you?”

“Nothing much; at first they just wanted me to watch. In fact, whenever I tried to say anything, one of them would say ‘Not now—just watch.’ So I watched. My dear Oz, I can’t describe the agony of seeing those happy boys in the orchard, with their clean consciences and their hopeful hearts! I felt I would have given anything to go back. But that wasn’t the purpose of this trip down Memory Lane. Marcel and Pierre made me relive various scenes of my life—which I’d rather not describe—ending with a grand finale in the tram. It was appalling!”

“Did you have to watch the crash again?”

Isadore groaned softly. “Much worse—I had to do the murders again. I was back inside my own former body, and the horror was that I didn’t want to commit this crime, but I was unable to stop. I had to crash the tram again, kill all those innocent people and watch my poor brothers drown.”

“And that was when you came back?”

“Not quite.” Isadore flicked Oz a furtive look. “As I told J, we finally had a chance to talk.”

“Where? At the bottom of the river?”

“I don’t know where we were—a place where there was just us, the Perfect Three—not so perfect anymore! I knelt and wept and begged them to forgive me.”

“And?”

“They both laughed. Marcel told me not to make a song and dance about it. Pierre said I always loved to dramatize. I made an effort to brace up, and then—then—” Isadore frowned, as if trying to remember. “I think we drank some hot chocolate—and we got down to the nitty-gritty.”

“What was that?”

“Hmmm?” Isadore had the furtive look again. “You don’t need to know the details. We came to an understanding.” He fell into silence.

Oz waited to hear more.

“It turns out,” Isadore said quietly, “that I no longer want what I thought I wanted.”

“You mean, going back in time and making Daisy fall in love with you?”

“I’ve been offered a chance—a tiny chance—to get something much better.”

“Sorry?” Oz was confused.

“You’ll understand one day. Shall we have some more tea?” Isadore jumped up, so fast that he had to grab Dad’s trousers to stop them from falling down. “We have all the ingredients, Oz. We have the molds, and
the blessing of my two brothers—which reminds me, I need to talk to that cat.” He hurried upstairs to the sitting room, where Lily, Spike and Demerara were watching TV. “Demerara, give me the silver coin!”

The immortal cat was still annoyed about losing her curls. “For the last time, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Pierre gave you our mother’s silver coin.”

“He did not!”

“I’ve just seen him,” said Isadore. “He told me—he nicked it from my pocket and gave it to his cat.”

“Well, you must’ve heard wrong.”

“It wasn’t a coin, was it, old girl?” Spike said. “He gave you that lovely silver bell.”

“Of course!” cried Isadore. “Thank you, Spike! He made it into a silver cat bell—the perfect way to hide it from me! Someone take it off her.”

“NO!” shrieked Demerara. “THAT SILVER BELL BELONGS TO ME!”

Oz had never seen her so furious.

“You’d better do as he says,” Lily said softly, stroking Demerara’s neck. “I don’t think he can do his spell without it.”

“POOH to his stupid spell!”

“It’s not a stupid spell—look, I don’t know what it is any more than you do. But I can feel how important this is. Please let me give it to him.”

“Well, I suppose if it’s for you and Oz,” Demerara said grumpily.

“Thanks,” Oz said.

Lily undid the cat’s purple collar and carefully removed the silver bell—which was unusually heavy for a cat bell, she noticed now—and gave it to Isadore.

“It’s warm, but not burning me.” He held it in his palm. “I haven’t a clue how to turn this thing back into a coin. Did Pierre ever tell you how to read the writing on it?”

“I’d like to remind you that I’m a cat,” Demerara said coldly. “Reading is not my strong point.”

“I saw him do it once,” Spike piped up. “We were in the workshop—before you made me immortal—and he accidentally dropped a pan on me. Well, we were friends by then, and Mr. Pierre burst into tears. ‘My dear little pal,’ he says, ‘it’s all over for you now—and I just can’t bear it! Mother wouldn’t like it, but I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t try!’ And then he put a coin on the table and a candle behind it. And the next thing I knew I was as fit as a fiddle.”

“Good grief,” Isadore said. “He made Mother’s special recipe for a lab rat!”

“He was ever so pleased with himself,” Spike chuckled. “He said my strength was as the strength of ten, because my heart was pure. I think that’s from a poem.”

“But how did he read the wretched writing? It’s going to be even harder now that it’s on the inside of
this bell!” Holding up Dad’s trousers with one hand and clutching the silver bell with the other, Isadore hurried down to the workshop.

They ran downstairs after him—even Spike, who loved TV. In the workshop, Isadore found a candle in a candlestick.

“Where did he put it, Spike?”

“On that little table beside the wall,” Spike said. “I was lying in the sink—there was blood everywhere.”

“There’s no need to be disgusting!” spat Demerara, watching her bell with jealous green eyes. Isadore laid it on the flat stone in the middle of the room. He took a small pair of pliers from the tool rack and pulled the silver bell apart until it was almost flat, though not coin-shaped.

Isadore placed the bell on the table, and the lighted candle behind it.

Nothing happened.

“Well, there you are,” Demerara said. “You’ve ruined my bell. I hope you’re satisfied.”

Oz was bitterly disappointed; this recipe was the key to Isadore’s magic chocolate. If he didn’t find out how to make it, that picture of the future would never be changed.

“I’ll ask the department to find me a powerful microscope,” Isadore said. “I do think my brothers might have been a bit more helpful!”

“Can’t you see it?” Lily was surprised. Everyone looked at her.

“See what?” Oz asked.

She pointed at the blank white wall. “The writing.”

There was a silence. Isadore’s mouth hung open. “Writing?” he whispered.

“And lots of numbers—come on, Oz!”

“I can’t see anything except the wall,” Oz said—a little uneasily, because it was spooky that Lily could see something invisible.

“But this is incredible,” Isadore said. “Lily, my dear child, your gift is greater than I suspected!”

“Greater than YOURS,” Demerara said, with a cattish snigger.

Isadore ignored her. “Pen! Someone get me a pen! And a piece of paper!”

Oz ran to the kitchen and found a pen and the back of an envelope. Isadore snatched them eagerly. “Right, Lily—start reading.”

Lily’s freckled face was pale and unhappy. “It’s all jumbled up—I can’t tell what’s an ‘a’ and what’s an ‘s’—”

Oz’s heart sank again. Great, he thought—the only one who can see the writing, and she’s dyslexic.

“Take your time, my dear,” Isadore said softly. “You know a lot more than you think.”

He was suddenly very calm and patient; Oz was a
little surprised to see what a good teacher he could be. One by one he coaxed each letter and number out of Lily, so that she stopped stammering and panicking and became more confident.

“I think this row says 30—X—c8634—but it doesn’t make sense.”

“Don’t worry about that; it’s making perfect sense to me. The numbers stand for Mother’s magicalized cacao beans.” Isadore glanced up from his scribbling and gave her a friendly smile that made his waxy face years younger. “We can start tomorrow—thanks to you!”

“Are you sure?” Lily was relieved; Oz could see how delighted she was to have done it. “What if I’ve messed up the spell by reading the wrong things?”

“My dear child, you’ve given me more than enough information—only I can mess it up now.” Isadore waved the scribble-covered envelope triumphantly. “When this business is all over, I shall be delighted to give you the proper, academic lessons your parents have been paying me for—if I have time. As I said to Daisy, it’s nothing to do with magic, and everything to do with using the intelligence you were born with.”

Oz asked, “What do you mean, if you have time?”

“Oh, let’s not worry about that,” Isadore said. “We have far more important things to do—let the chocolate making commence!”

The man known as J sat at a long table at the back of the empty cafe in Skittle Street, sipping a cup of tea, looking out of place in his immaculate dark gray suit among the plastic chairs and colored pictures of eggs and chips.

“I’m at a crucial stage in my work,” Isadore said. “I’m just about to light the charcoal and select the cacao beans. We can’t spare much time.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to,” said J. “Sit down.”

Isadore, Caydon and the twins sat down at the table; Alan—who had appeared at the workshop to summon them all—went to the counter to fetch tea and juice.

J put a newspaper down on the table.

Oz read the headline for Lily. “ ‘Coffee Terror on Motorway 4.’ ” He didn’t see why this had anything to do with them.

“ ‘A convoy of trucks carrying a hundred tons of coffee beans was held up on the motorway by masked thieves,’ ” J read. “ ‘The attack had all the hallmarks of
the Schmertz Gang.’ ” He looked sternly at Isadore. “If you know anything about this—”

“I know absolutely nothing about it,” Isadore said. “I have no idea what those maniacs want with a hundred tons of coffee.”

Lily gasped suddenly. “Unless they’re working for goblins.”

“Yes, the goblins in the tube,” Caydon said. “They love coffee.”

Oz had heard all about the goblins, but couldn’t see what they had to do with the gang.

J nodded grimly. “We know that goblins will do anything for coffee. It seems the Schmertz Gang have found that out too.”

“But they’d have to be magic to do that,” Lily said.

“We think one of them was magic enough to be able to see a goblin when he or she followed Isadore to his hideout.”

“My magic fudge was mainly designed to keep the goblins away,” said Isadore. “The rats were an easy matter—but those malicious little beasts were an utter plague when I first moved into my grotto. Every time I made a cup of coffee they’d come streaming out of nowhere!”

Isadore was very energetic today, but Oz thought he looked a little older than usual—there were wrinkles around his eyes, and a few gray hairs around his temples. Maybe this was a side effect of getting sober.

“Let’s assume,” J said, “that those goblins are working for the gang. The stolen coffee is their payment for doing something. At first we were afraid they’d planted a bomb deep in the London Underground, but Joyce and her London Transport police have combed every inch of the entire system. We then turned our attention to other places with goblin trouble.”

“There are goblins in other places?” Oz was hardened to weird things by now, but still found it difficult to take goblins seriously—it was like taking garden gnomes seriously.

“All kinds of places,” said J. “For instance, the BBC is riddled with them—who do you think wrecked their garden in 1983? But we’re concentrating on the place where the gang can do the most damage—Heathrow Airport.”

“Oh, crikey,” Isadore said.

“Precisely. Our agent at Heathrow reported a strong smell of coffee in one of the heating ducts. Unless we can find out what the goblins did to get it, hundreds of innocent people could die.”

They were all silent. Without looking at each other, Oz and Lily knew that the other voice was quivering between them, filled with fear.

“The prime minister doesn’t like it.” J was very grave. “Neither do I—this operation won’t be any place for children. But we need you three for your detecting
powers. It’s a very serious matter, and I’ll quite understand if you’d rather not get involved.”

Oz’s mouth was dry. In his official way, J was warning them that they might be hurt, or even killed.

“I’ll do it,” Lily said. “I can’t pretend I’m not scared—but I’m more scared to think about all those people getting killed.”

“Me too,” Caydon said. “Imagine how we’d feel every time we heard about the bomb and we knew we could’ve done something.”

“Me too,” Oz said quickly, a little annoyed that the others had got in first with being brave.

J managed a smile. “Thank you all very much.”

“What’ll you tell our parents if we die?” Caydon asked.

“Good grief, Caydon,” Isadore said, “you do have a talent for asking uncomfortable questions—you remind me of my ex-wife.”

“A freak balloon accident, if you must know,” J said, looking pained. “But nobody’s going to die. Alan will be with you, and also an SMU agent from the bomb squad.”

“Cool!” Caydon’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “I’ve never seen a bomb.”