"You can go now," said Officer Singh, giving a sort of flourish with his pen on the notepad.
They walked down Tigerfield Street in single file. The ambulance and two police cars were parked in Hangman's Way. Uncle Paton strode across the road without even glancing at them. Charlie and Emma ran to catch up with him and when they reached the gate into Cathedral Close, Charlie burst out, "It was Ashkelan Kapaldi. He murdered that poor old man."
"Whatever gives you that idea?" Uncle Paton marched across the cobblestones, his face set in an angry frown.
"Because of the scratch on the floorboards. The sword can do that. It scraped along the road when it was chasing me."
Uncle Paton slowed down, then he stopped altogether and looked at Charlie.
"You have a point," he said.
"I saw the police staring at the scratch," said Charlie. "They must have been wondering what had made it."
"Then why didn't you tell them about the sword?" asked Emma.
Charlie gave her a disappointed look. "How could I, Em? How could I say,
"Excuse me, but there's this man at our school, who came out of a painting, and he's got this sword that works on its own'?"
Emma pouted. "You could have," she argued. "They might have gone and questioned him."
"I doubt it, Emma," said Uncle Paton. "The police don't like delving into the paranormal."
Emma shrugged. "I'm going home," she said.
They watched her run across the square and disappear into the bookstore.
"They were looking for the box, weren't they?" Charlie asked his uncle.
"Whoever murdered Mr. Bittermouse was working for the Bloors."
"Could have been. But did they find it? And why kill the poor old man?" Uncle Paton cast a lingering look at the bookstore and then resumed his loping stride toward High Street.
As soon as they were home, Uncle Paton rang Mr. Silk and told him the news.
Charlie could hear the excitement in the room where Mr. Silk had taken the call. It was lunchtime, and knives and forks were clattering on plates, Mr.
Onimous was exclaiming very loudly, and then Gabriel's voice sang out, "Is Charlie all right, Dad? Who's been murdered?"
When Uncle Paton had said all he needed to, Charlie took the receiver and spoke to Gabriel. He wanted to know what the important meeting had been about.
"Not much, really," said Gabriel. "We just thought we should work out some kind of strategy for dealing with the swordsman. Emma told us pretty much everything that happened to you, so we reckoned you'd be spending the morning in bed."
"No such luck," said Charlie. "Em dragged me around to see this old lawyer.
She thought he might have the box that everyone is looking for. That's when we found him—murdered." Charlie lowered his voice. "It was the swordsman, Gabe, I know it. There was a scratch on the—" He was cut short by someone opening the front door.
Grandma Bone walked in. "What are you doing?" she demanded, glaring at Charlie.
"Sorry. Got to go, Gabe. Grandma's here." Charlie put down the receiver.
"I hear you've been involved in a murder." Grandma Bone stared at Charlie accusingly.
"How do you know?" asked Charlie. "It's only just happened."
"I want to know what you were doing on Tigerfield Street."
Charlie didn't answer. He watched his grandmother pull off her black gloves and put them in her pocket. Next she took off her hat with the purple feathers sticking up in the back, unwound a lavender-colored scarf from her neck, and shuffled out of her black fur coat. When she had hung all these garments on the coatrack, she said, "Well?"
Charlie walked into the kitchen, where Uncle Paton, having heard everything his sister had said, was making himself yet another cup of black coffee.
"It's amazing how word gets around so quickly in your nefarious underground, Grizelda," he said, dropping a lump of sugar into his coffee. "There is a network of spies in this city that I find truly repellent."
"What are you talking about? Where's lunch? I'm hungry," she said, all in one breath.
"We are all aware that you are part of a scandalous conspiracy to defraud Billy Raven of his rightful inheritance." Uncle Paton's dark eyes never left his sister's face as he slowly stirred the spoon around and around in his cup. "Even if it means drowning your own son. The question I have often asked myself is, why, Grizelda, why? Now I believe I know."
Grandma Bone stared at her brother with a mixture of contempt and hatred.
"You have no idea what you're up against this time, Paton Yewbeam," she snarled, and left the room.
Charlie pulled out a chair and sat beside his uncle. "What did you mean, Uncle P.?" he asked. "Have you really found out why Grandma Bone's the way she is?"
Uncle Paton was silent for a while. He continued to stir his coffee, almost as if he were unaware of his actions. Charlie began to smell the leg of lamb that Maisie was roasting in the oven. He thought of the crisp roast potatoes that she always cooked with lamb, and the rich, brown gravy. And because he was still so tired, the thought of the wonderful meal ahead filled his mind like a dream, and he forgot that he'd asked a question until his uncle began to speak.
Charlie had heard the story of Uncle Paton's mother, slipping on the steps of Yewbeam castle and cracking her head on the stones. He knew that Paton's four sisters had remained in the castle after their mother's death, while Paton and their father had left. The castle belonged to an aunt: Yolanda, the notorious shape-shifter. It was she who had turned the girls against their father and their brother. All this Charlie knew, but it didn't explain why Grizelda, the oldest, had turned against her only son.
"It has to do with love, Charlie." Uncle Paton stared at the window.
Snowflakes were tapping gently against the pane, and the room was filled with a soft opalescent light. "Grandma Bone's husband, Monty, fell out of love with her. Who wouldn't have, the way she behaved: jealous, domineering, humorless, greedy.... Monty would never have married her, but he was trapped, spellbound if you like, probably by Venetia with one of her magic garments.
She was good at that even as a child. Poor Monty didn't stand a chance.
Grizelda had always wanted to marry a pilot, and she got one. But not for long."
"What happened?" Charlie stared at his uncle's angular profile, expecting to hear why Monty's plane had crashed. He had often asked how it had happened, but no one seemed to know. Charlie was hoping his uncle had found out at last, so he was disappointed when Paton said nothing about the crash but began to describe a meeting he'd had with a woman called Homily Brown, who lived in the far southwest.
Homily Brown had been a great friend of Monty's. They'd been in school together. It was James, Uncle Paton's father, who had remembered that Monty had been born in a little hamlet called Neverfinding. And that's where Uncle Paton had been on one of his recent trips as he tried to piece together the troubled history of the Yewbeams and the Bones.
"Monty returned to his old home a week before he died." Uncle Paton's tone was almost melancholy. "He went to make a will. Homily found a lawyer for him, and she and a friend were witnesses. He left everything to his only son, Lyell. But that wasn't all.
He wrote a letter, a sad, tragic message to be given to Lyell on his eighteenth birthday. He told his only son never to trust the Yewbeams, never to let them rule his life and"—Paton paused and drew a deep breath—"Homily read this letter, but Lyell has never spoken of it and, I have to admit, I found the last part rather shocking."
"What did it say?" asked Charlie, bracing himself for a dreadful revelation.
Uncle Paton glanced at him, and for a moment, Charlie thought that his uncle could not bring himself to repeat the last part of Monty Bone's letter, and then out it came, on a long sigh. "Monty told Lyell to put an end to the Yewbeams, before they destroyed him."
It was Charlie's turn to stare at the snowflakes falling past the window. So many questions filled his head, but before he could even utter them, Maisie came bustling into the kitchen, talking about snow and overcooked potatoes and uncooked carrots, and Grandma Bone sulking in her bedroom.