Written on one side was a musical staff with a single intervaclass="underline" a C and an F-sharp. On the back were the words I REMEMBER.
Alice gasped and looked up at the rooftop, but the figure was gone. Heart pounding, Alice hurried into the law office, where a clerk who seemed oblivious to the goings-on outside immediately showed her and Click into Mr. Stoneworthy’s private sanctuary, an office laid with carpet and lined with books. The desk was piled so high with papers that Alice could barely see the round figure of Mr. Stoneworthy on the other side.
“So good of you to come so quickly, Miss Michaels,” he said in a surprisingly flutelike voice. Someone so rotund and white-haired should have a deep voice. “Are you quite all right? I heard some sort of commotion outdoors.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “It was nothing.” But she couldn’t help wondering what the figure-the clockworker who had controlled the zombies-meant by I remember. A warning? A simple greeting? If he had wanted to harm her, he had every opportunity while she was walking obliviously past. And how had he known where she would be? Perhaps he had been following her or spying on her in some other way. The thought turned her stomach.
“You’re looking positively peaked, Miss Michaels,” said Mr. Stoneworthy. “Would you like some refreshment?”
“I’ve just come off lunch, but thank you,” Alice said, pushing thoughts of the clockworker away, which only allowed the reason for her visit to catch up with her. A call for an emergency visit to Aunt Edwina’s solicitor could only mean dreadful news, and although Alice hadn’t seen Aunt Edwina in more than a dozen years, she still felt a certain fondness for the woman, strange and estranged though she was. Nausea gave way to dread. Click sat next to her chair, his tail curled nonchalantly about his legs.
“Then I won’t keep you in suspense,” Mr. Stoneworthy said. He coughed into a handkerchief, belying the promise he had just made. “Pardon. I’m afraid it is my duty to inform you that you are the sole heir to the estate of your aunt Edwina.”
The chair rocked beneath Alice’s body, and she gripped the arms tightly. Tears welled in her eyes, and her throat thickened. Surprised at the strength of her reaction, she could only murmur, “Good heavens.”
Mr. Stoneworthy looked supremely uncomfortable. “Yes. Perhaps you would like some brandy?” Without waiting for an answer, he raised his voice. “Dickerson! Some brandy for Miss Michaels!”
A glass was pushed into her hand, and Alice drank without thinking. The brandy, her first, burned all the way down and pushed away the tears. She felt more able to speak. “How did she… pass away? And when? And why wasn’t my father notified?”
“She hasn’t died, exactly,” Mr. Stoneworthy said. “She’s missing.”
“Missing? I don’t understand.”
Mr. Stoneworthy coughed into his handkerchief again, and this time Alice caught him peeking at the contents. She hoped he didn’t have consumption, or worse, the clockwork plague. “You’re probably aware that your aunt was a bit… eccentric, yes?”
“She has her ways,” Alice said, feeling suddenly defensive.
“One of those ways was to send a letter to this office every month. I was instructed that if the letter should fail to arrive for twelve consecutive months, I was to execute her will. It names you as the sole heir to her estate.”
“So she’s definitely not dead?” Alice demanded. Click made a mechanical mew at her feet.
“I frankly don’t know,” Mr. Stoneworthy replied blandly. “I’m merely following her instructions.”
“But I’m… I can’t inherit her estate!”
He put on a pair of reading glasses that made him look like Father Christmas and examined a long piece of paper. “You are Miss Alice Michaels, daughter of Arthur, Baron Michaels, of London?”
“Yes.”
“You have reached the age of majority?”
Was that his way of asking if she were a spinster? Slightly affronted, she said, “Yes.”
“And you are unmarried.”
“Now see here-”
“Meaning,” Mr. Stoneworthy said, “you have no husband who would take over the property in your place?”
Her thoughts went to Norbert, but he wasn’t her husband yet. “That’s right. But my father-”
“Is specifically banned from having any part of this,” Mr. Stoneworthy finished for her with another cough into the handkerchief. “That part took some legal work, but it’s all arranged. The house and grounds are yours. Unfortunately, there is no monetary portion to the estate, but once the final legal hurdles are cleared, you could sell.”
“How long will that take?” Alice asked faintly.
“Four or five months, if no one contests the will, but you can take possession now, if you like. Here are the keys and a card with the address. Have you ever visited the house?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Do I need to sign anything?”
“Indeed. Dickerson!”
Alice signed a number of papers she didn’t quite understand, though she did read them to make sure she wasn’t accidentally signing over her firstborn child, and later found herself outside the law offices with a ring of keys in her handbag. Norbert’s carriage was nowhere in sight-apparently it had some sort of command that called it home-so she hailed a cab and let Click jump in ahead of her.
With a nervous glance up and down the street for the grinning figure, Alice handed the address card to the driver and sat back to think. In the space of a few hours, she had received a marriage proposal (of sorts), intercepted a strange message from a rogue clockworker, learned that her aunt Edwina had been missing for months and had managed to declare herself dead, and inherited a large house she had never actually visited. It was all a bit much. And oh yes-she had discovered that Click could talk, after a fashion.
“When did you visit Mr. Stoneworthy’s office so he could give you that message?” she demanded of the clockwork cat. “I quite forgot to ask him. And how long have you been able to reproduce a human voice?”
Click looked out the cab window with phosphorescent nonchalance. Alice made an exasperated sound as the cab rolled over the stony streets. Exasperation was easier to deal with than fear, uncertainty, or sadness. Aunt Edwina was dead. Actually, she was merely missing. Actually, she had failed to alert Mr. Stoneworthy’s office in a prescribed way for one year. Perhaps she wasn’t dead or truly missing at all. Perhaps she had forgotten or grown tired of the arrangement.
After twelve months? she thought. Unlikely.
The ride took more than an hour, and it was nearing dusk by the time the cab arrived at a high stone wall well outside of town, in a place where houses and factories gave way to trees and meadows. The wall ran nearly a hundred yards down the road before curving away and out of sight. Presumably it surrounded Aunt Edwina’s house, of which only the top half was visible. Alice couldn’t see much of it except the roof, or roofs. Several of them poked upward in odd places and directions. A large gate of wrought iron guarded a long driveway, and a smaller entry gate stood beside it. Coming up the road toward them was a barefoot girl of twelve leading a pony. The driver halted near the gate and helped Alice down from the cab with Click jumping down beside her. It occurred to Alice that she had no way of getting home.