‘Me either,’ Trent said. ‘But they did put it in. I remember.’ His eyes traced the four-inch length of the crack. ‘That metal in the wall is something new. I wonder how much of it there is, and how far it goes. Is it just up here on the third floor, or…’
‘Or what?’ Laurie looked at him with big round eyes. She had begun to be a little frightened.
‘Or is it all over the house,’ Trent finished thoughtfully.
After school the next afternoon, Trent called a meeting of all four Bradbury children. It got off to a somewhat bumpy start, with Lissa accusing Brian of breaking what she called ‘your solemn swear’ and Brian, who was deeply embarrassed, accusing Laurie of putting their mother’s soul in dire jeopardy by telling Trent. Although he wasn’t very clear on exactly what a soul was (the Bradburys were Unitarians), he seemed quite sure that Laurie had condemned Mother’s to hell. ‘Well,’ Laurie said, ‘you’ll have to take some of the blame, Brian. I mean, you were the one who brought Mother into it. You should have had me swear on Lew’s name. He could go to hell.’ Lissa, who was young enough and kind-hearted enough not to wish anyone in hell, was so distressed by this line of discourse that she began to cry.
‘Hush, all of you,’ Trent said, and hugged Lissa until she had regained most of her composure.
‘What’s done is done, and I happen to think it all worked out for the best.’ ‘You do?’ Brian asked. If Trent said a thing was good, Brian would have died defending it, that went without saying, but Laurie had sworn on Mom’s name.
‘Something this weird needs to be investigated, and if we waste a lot of time arguing over who was right or wrong to break their promise, we’ll never get it done.’
Trent glanced pointedly up at the clock on the wall of his room, where they had gathered. It was twenty after three. He really didn’t have to say any more. Their mother had been up this morning to get Lew his breakfast – two three-minute eggs with whole-wheat toast and marmalade was one of his many daily requirements – but afterward she had gone back to bed, and there she had remained. She suffered from dreadful headaches, migraines that sometimes spent two or even three days snarling and clawing at her defenseless (and often bewildered) brain before decamping for a month or so.
She would not be apt to see them on the third floor and wonder what they were up to, but ‘Daddy Lew’ was a different kettle of fish altogether. With his study just down the hall from the strange crack, they could count on avoiding his notice – and his curiosity – only if they conducted their investigations while he was away, and that was what Trent’s pointed glance at the clock had meant.
The family had returned to the States a full ten days before Lew was scheduled to begin teaching classes again, but he could no more stay away from the University once he was back within ten miles of it than a fish could live out of water. He had left shortly after noon, with a briefcase crammed full of papers he had collected at various spots of historical interest in England. He said he was going up to file these papers away. Trent thought that meant he’d cram them into one of his desk drawers, then lock his office and go down to the History Department’s Faculty Lounge. There he would drink coffee and gossip with his buddies… except, Trent had discovered, when you were a college teacher, people thought you were dumb if you had buddies.
You were supposed to say they were your colleagues. So he was away, and that was good, but he might be back at any time between now and five, and that was bad. Still, they had some time, and Trent was determined they weren’t going to spend it squabbling about who swore what to who. ‘Listen to me, you guys,’ he said, and was gratified to see that they actually were listening, their differences and recriminations forgotten in the excitement of an investigation. They had also been caught by Trent’s inability to explain what Lissa had found. All three of them shared, at least to some extent, Brian’s simple faith in Trent – if Trent was puzzled by something, if Trent thought that something was strange and just possibly amazing, they all thought so. Laurie spoke for all of them when she said: ‘Just tell us what to do, Trent – we’ll do it.’ ‘Okay,’ Trent said. ‘We’ll need some things.’ He took a deep breath and began explaining what they were.
Once they were convened around the crack at the end of the third-floor hallway, Trent held Lissa up so she could shine the beam of a small flashlight – it was the one their mother used to inspect their ears, eyes, and noses when they weren’t feeling well – into the crack. They could all see the metal; it wasn’t shiny enough to throw back a clear reflection of the beam, but it shone silkily just the same. Steel, was Trent’s opinion – steel, or some sort of alloy. ‘What’s an alloy, Trent?’ Brian asked.
Trent shook his head. He didn’t know exactly. He turned to Laurie and asked her to give him the drill.
Brian and Lissa exchanged an uneasy glance as Laurie passed it over. It had come from the basement workshop, and the basement was the one remaining place in the house, which was their real father’s. Daddy Lew hadn’t been down there a dozen times since he had married Catherine Bradbury. The smaller children knew that as well as Trent and Laurie. They weren’t afraid Daddy Lew would notice someone had been using the drill; it was the holes in the wall outside his study they were worried about. Neither one of them said this out loud, but Trent read it on their troubled faces.
‘Look,’ Trent said, holding the drill out so they could get a good look. ‘This is what they call a needle-point drill bit. See how tiny it is? And since we’re only going to drill behind the pictures, I don’t think we have to worry.’ There were about a dozen framed prints along the third-floor hallway, half of them beyond the study door, on the way to the closet at the end where the suitcases were stored. Most of these were very old (and mostly uninteresting) views of Titusville, where the Bradburys lived. ‘He doesn’t even look at them, let alone behind them,’ Laurie agreed. Brian touched the tip of the drill with one finger, and then nodded. Lissa watched, then copied both the touch and the nod. If Laurie said something was okay, it probably was; if Trent said so, it almost certainly was; if they both said so, there could be no question. Laurie took down the picture, which hung closest to the small crack in the plaster and gave it to Brian. Trent drilled. They stood watching him in a tight little circle of three, like infielders encouraging their pitcher at a particularly tense moment of the game. The drill bit went easily into the wall, and the hole it made was every bit as tiny as promised.
The darker square of wallpaper, which had been revealed when Laurie took the print off its hook, was also encouraging. It suggested that no one had bothered taking the dark line engraving of the Titusville Public Library off its hook for a very long time.
After a dozen turns of the drill’s handle, Trent stopped and reversed, pulling the bit free.
‘Why’d you quit?’ Brian asked.
‘Hit something hard.’
‘More metal?’ Lissa asked.
‘I think so. Sure wasn’t wood. Let’s see.’ He shone the light in and cocked his head this way and that before shaking it decisively. ‘My head’s too big. Let’s boost Lissa.’ Laurie and Trent lifted her up and Brian handed her the Pen Lite. Lissa squinted for a time, then said, ‘Just like in the crack I found.’
‘Okay,’ Trent said. ‘Next picture.’