Part Two
“Is this everyone?” alternate Trixie asked, when two o’clock arrived the next day. “Let’s start the meeting with apologies.”
“Brian, Honey and Di from my reality can’t make it,” her double explained. “Honey was going to be here, but she was needed at home.”
“No Brian again?” the first Trixie asked, but did not allow time for anyone to answer. “Mart and Dan from here can’t be here – and we didn’t invite Jim – so, there should be… I think that makes eight of us altogether, which there are. Okay, then. Who wants to report back first?”
“We got into the schoolhouse,” alternate Brian announced. “As Mart saw yesterday, it’s filled with broken electrical goods. Each item had been dismantled and any electronic components, such as circuit boards, had been removed.”
“And it definitely wasn’t anything from Maypenny’s,” regular Dan added.
Regular Mart reported next. “We had no luck with the basement. We couldn’t get the red door open and I can’t see through it.”
“I went through my counterpart’s room,” regular Jim added, “but I couldn’t find a key. I even tried returning while he was asleep, but I couldn’t find where he’d hidden it.”
“How about you, Trixie?” her alternate asked. “Did the musical jewellery box get recovered?”
Regular Trixie nodded. “I tipped the police off yesterday and this morning they raided the house of the Manor House cook who got sacked a few months ago.”
Alternate Honey’s mouth formed into an O. “Your reality had a sacked cook, too? Was she called Ellen? Did she say, ‘of course’ all the time, but then do something completely different to what she’d just agreed to?”
“Yes, that sounds just like her,” Jim agreed.
“She’s the one who burnt the hole in the floor,” Honey explained. “What did she do in your reality?”
“She served macaroni and cheese at one of Mother’s dinner parties,” Jim answered. “And that was after serving broccoli as part of dinner eleven days in a row.”
Honey grimaced. “Daddy doesn’t like broccoli.”
“Which is all very interesting,” alternate Trixie commented, only barely restraining herself from rolling her eyes, “but I want to hear what the research team found out.”
“Oh! Yes!” Alternate Honey opened a folder and began pulling out papers. “We found out some really interesting things – I’m not sure how many of you know, but we went to the library and checked the old Sleepyside Sun issues – and we actually did find a mention of Mr. and Mrs. Frayne taking a trip to Europe, about ten years before Nell died, though we can’t be absolutely certain that this was the trip.”
She laid a copy down on the coffee table and the others leaned forward to see it better.
“This is from before I was born,” Jim pointed out. “Eight years before. It’s probably the trip when they bought the music box.”
Honey shook her head. “It can’t be. Because once we had that date, we went back a decade and found the birth notices of the two Spencer daughters. This trip is about the right time after that.”
“What else?” alternate Trixie prompted.
Honey pulled out some more papers. “We looked a couple of years either side of that – though not every single issue; that would have taken too long – and we were lucky enough to find a few more things. Like these pictures from the social pages.”
Jim took it from her and stared at it. “That’s Jonesy! And my mother!”
Regular Trixie, next to him, peered at the grainy photograph. “He looks almost nice! When was this taken?”
“This is less than a year before the trip.” Honey pointed to the date. “I don’t know how different in age they were, but Jim’s mother would have been about seventeen at the time. And, if the caption is right, the other two people are Jim’s great-aunt and uncle.”
Alternate Trixie read the caption aloud: “Jonas Jones, Katje Vanderheiden, James and Nell Frayne.” She turned to Jim. “Jonas Jones?”
He nodded. “And his sister’s name was Joan. I don’t think his parents were very nice people.”
“So, how long is this before your parents married?” regular Trixie wondered. “It must be more than five years, right?”
Jim nodded again. “About seven or eight years, I think.” He frowned. “I had no idea that my mother knew Jonesy before my father died, let alone when she was a teenager.”
“Just because she’s standing next to him doesn’t mean she actually knew him,” alternate Honey pointed out. “They might have just been at the same party.”
Alternate Trixie shook her head. “But, if that really is the right trip and Jonesy really did ask for money before then and Jim’s mother really did stop them giving him any more, well, he must have known them all around that time.”
“Is that our working theory?” regular Trixie suggested. “Are we thinking that the two separate conversations are about two separate things?”
“Well, I would think that,” alternate Honey put in, “except that I went back to the library today and searched some more and found some more things, which I haven’t had time to tell anyone yet, because we only got back just now. This one is from about a year before the trip and this other one is from a few months before it.”
“An obituary for Catherine Vanderheiden,” Dan read, from the first page Honey offered. “Is this Jim’s grandmother?”
Honey nodded. “It says she died after a long illness and that Jim’s mother was sixteen at the time. But the thing that was the most surprising about it is right down here at the end.”
Regular Trixie picked up the page and read aloud: “‘The late Mrs. Vanderheiden left one sister, Mrs. J. W. Frayne of Ten Acres, to mourn her loss.’ What? How could that be true without us knowing it?”
“But would we have known?” Honey wondered. “Because, I don’t think we know anyone who knew Jim’s grandmother, do we? And we didn’t really have anything that would give us a clue to that relationship, did we?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” alternate Di burst out. “Whenever Jim talked about his mother, it was Aunt Nell and Uncle Jim and everything was about what Aunt Nell thought and felt. When he talked about his father, it was Uncle James and Aunt Nell and everything was about his uncle.”
Jim stared at her for several moments, open-mouthed. “You’re right, Di,” he admitted, at length. “Which means that it might actually be true.”
The clubhouse door burst open and the other Jim entered, stopping short a step or two inside.
“Come in and sit down, please, Jim,” Di told him, using her power to turn the request into an order.
“I don’t want to,” alternate Jim answered, but obeyed nonetheless.
“You’re going to answer some questions for us,” Di continued. “Trixie is going to ask questions and you’re going to answer them honestly, okay?”
He made a grunting sound. “I don’t want to, but yes.”
“Good.” Di turned to alternate Trixie. “Go ahead.”
“What do you know about the relationship between your mother and your Great-aunt Nell?” she asked.
Alternate Jim frowned. “Only what she told me. I do not remember Great-aunt Nell.”
“What did your mother tell you?” Trixie prompted.
“You already know these things,” he answered, with a touch of impatience. “Aunt Nell loved my mother and did not want her to marry Jonesy. My mother did not want Aunt Nell to give Jonesy money. They both thought that Jonesy stole the music box because he did not get the money he asked for.”
“Is that all you know?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Alternate Trixie sighed. “Okay, then. Where is the key to the red door in the Manor House basement?”
“It is lost,” he answered, with a hint of agitation. “I have searched and searched and it cannot be found.”
A figure appeared in the still-open doorway. Alternate Trixie, sitting opposite, jolted in alarm, then relaxed.
“Hi, Brian. I thought we were in a lot of trouble for a moment there.”
Regular Brian entered the room, closing the door behind himself and flipping the lock. “What have I missed?”
“We’re just having a bit of a conversation with the Jim who lives in this reality,” she explained, indicating which Jim that was. “There are a couple of things we want to find out.”
“I know nothing more about my great-aunt and uncle. I do not know where the key is. I wish to leave,” alternate Jim announced.
The two Trixies shared a look, then the alternate one told Diana, “Let him go.”
“You may leave,” she told Jim.
He got to his feet and strode out, almost slamming the door behind himself. Brian locked the door once more.
“What are we going to do about him?” regular Trixie asked her double. “If even he can’t open the red door…”
“We’ll just have to find another way around it,” she answered. “Maybe, if Honey’s Dad doesn’t mind, we could break through the wall.”
“Or you could try this key,” regular Brian suggested, holding it up.
“Where did you get that?” his sister demanded.
“I’ve spent the last two days trailing that Jim,” he answered. “I stole it from him about two hours ago, but this was the first chance I’ve had to come and hand it over.”
Alternate Trixie looked from the papers they had abandoned earlier to the key and back again.
“So, Trixie, do you want to solve the problem with your Jim, or with mine?” she asked.
Regular Trixie looked to the Jim from her own reality and made a decision. “Let’s each investigate each other’s Jims.”
Alternate Trixie nodded and went back to the papers, while regular Trixie looked around at the others present.
“Who wants to come with me?” she asked.
“I will,” her own brother Brian answered.
“And me,” the Dan from her reality added.
“I’d better come, too,” alternate Honey added. “It’s my house, after all.”
The four made their way back to Manor House, leaving the rest to work on the issue of Jim’s inexplicable memories.
“What do we do if he’s there?” Brian wondered, as they walked. “He’s been returning there every hour or so for the entire time I’ve been following him.”
“We’ll just have to talk our way out of the situation,” Trixie answered, then sighed. “We should have brought Di with us, but she’s got important information for the other investigation.”
“I do, too, and you’re never going to believe what I found out, when you hear it,” Honey added. “I nearly stayed to help there, too, only that might have made things awkward for the three of you – but I don’t know how much help I can be if Jim wants to cause us problems.”
“What’s he going to do?” Dan asked. “There’s four of us and only one of him.”
They reached the kitchen door and Honey led the way down into the basement.
“What a mess!” she cried, looking in dismay at the piles of broken electrical goods. “Why has he done this? And what are these computers for?”
On a make-shift bench at one side of the dim room, a row of computers ran. Unintelligible writing flashed across their old cathode-ray tube monitors. Brian leaned close to examine one of them.
“I have no idea what this is.” He moved on the next one. “It’s moving too fast to read it.”
“Where’s the key, Brian?” Trixie asked.
From behind one of the taller piles of junk, Jim sprang. “Aha! It was you!”
“Oh, hello Jim,” Honey greeted, as if this was perfectly normal behaviour. “What’s been going on down here? It’s a bit messy.”
“There’s nothing to concern yourself with here, Honey,” he replied. “Now, if you don’t mind, please give me the key.”
“The key to that door?” Trixie asked. “The red one? Tell me, what’s behind that red door?”
Jim’s face tinted red. “Nothing. It’s just a door.”
“Well, there must be something behind it.” Honey cast him an appealing look. “You don’t have to keep secrets from us.”
Jim shook his head. “There’s nothing behind the red door, Honey.”
Trixie took the key from her brother. “Well, then I can just go and... ”
Before she had taken more than a step, Jim had blocked her way.
“No, Trixie. It’s just a boring old storeroom! You wouldn’t be interested in it.”
Honey’s expression brightened. “A storeroom? Oh, good. That’s exactly what we need right now.”
Jim shook his head. “It’s full.”
“But you said there was nothing in it,” Honey answered.
Jim’s face contorted as he tried to think through the contradiction. “It's just a storeroom where we keep the... snibbits.”
Brian’s brow creased in confusion. “What’s a snibbit?”
Jim’s eyes ranged around the room. “It’s a kind of plange.”
“What on earth is a plange?” Honey wondered, looking bewildered. “Jim, you’re not making a lot of sense.”
“A kind of plange,” he repeated, gesturing at the bench. “You know.”
“Oh, a plange for the computers?” she asked.
Jim nodded, his face showing relief. “Yes, computer plange.”
“A storeroom for plange,” Dan muttered, at the back of the group. “Now, I’ve heard everything.”
“Well, if it’s a storeroom, we can store some of this stuff...” Honey began to suggest.
“No again, Honey!” Jim interrupted. “Look, I know that you wanna make your mark down here, and that’s really sweet, but, um... you can’t just go messing around with the snibbit storeroom willy-nilly. You can’t upset the whole harmony of the place.”
“Harmony?” Trixie demanded. “What harmony?”
Jim continued to speak to Honey, as if Trixie had not spoken. “I know that the place looks like a bit of a mess, but it’s actually a very delicate ecosystem.”
“Ecosystem,” Dan repeated, sounding incredulous.
“Everything is connected.” Jim did not seem to notice that Trixie and Dan were sharing disbelieving looks.
“Connected,” Trixie echoed.
Jim began to look pleased with his own reasoning. “It’s like the rainforest.”
Trixie sniggered. “Like the rainforest.”
“You change one thing, even the tiniest bit, and the whole rainforest dies.” Jim began to usher Honey back to the stairs. “You don’t want the rainforest to die, do you?”
Honey shook her head. “No. I really don’t want the rainforest to die.”
“Well, that’s what will happen if you open the red door,” he concluded, giving her a final push onto the bottom step.
Unfortunately for Jim, he had forgotten that the room contained three other people. While he had his back turned, Trixie slid the key into the lock and opened the red door. A wave of something nearly knocked them all from their feet.
“No!” Jim yelled. “Now look what you’ve done, Trixie. The rainforest is going to die, now.”
“I just knew you’d been affected by some kind of device,” Trixie spat back at him. “What is that thing and where did it come from?”
“It’s just a snabbit,” Jim answered, trying to push the door shut again.
“You called them ‘snibbits’ earlier,” Dan pointed out.
Jim shook his head. “Whatever! Just shut the door and it will all be okay.”
Trixie looked ready to argue, but Brian stepped in. “You four go back to the clubhouse,” he told them. “I’ll deal with this and meet you there later.”
“Are you sure?” Trixie asked, casting him a concerned look.
He smiled at her. “I don’t have abilities to lose.”
She thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
“Okay, Jim. Let’s go,” she told him, grasping his left arm with her right hand.
“But, the rainforest…”
“Come on, Jim,” Dan added, grabbing his other arm.
Honey stood behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder, adding her weight. Jim cast one last, agonised glance at the red door, then allowed himself to be led away.
“The rainforest,” he barely more than whispered, as they left the house.
“I’m sure that no rainforests will be harmed,” Honey consoled him. “Brian will be really careful.”
Jim made to turn back. “We have to shut the door.”
“Brian shut it before we left.” Trixie tugged on his arm. “Come back to the clubhouse, okay?”
It took twice as long as it should have, with Jim’s frequent attempts to return to the basement, but they eventually made it back to the clubhouse.
“Did you–” alternate Trixie began, then broke off. “Oh. It’s you, Jim.”
“Why do I have to be here?” he asked.
“Just sit over there, next to yourself,” regular Dan suggested, but Jim moved over to the opposite side of the room. “Hey, where did Brian and Mart go?”
“They’ve gone to get everyone else,” alternate Di explained. “We thought everyone should be in on the end of the case. Speaking of which, you got the red door open, didn’t you?”
Regular Trixie nodded. “Brian’s dealing with whatever it was that’s behind it and he’ll come here later to tell us what it was.”
“We felt it when the door opened,” alternate Di told them. “But then…”
Alternate Honey nodded. “That would have been when it closed again. It must have some kind of barrier built into it, I suppose, to stop the power – whatever it is – from leaking out.”
“But enough about that.” Alternate Trixie dismissed the matter. “You should hear what we found out here!”
“Oh! Yes! The other thing that we found out today at the library,” alternate Honey remembered. “We never did get to tell you that, because Jim – I mean, my brother Jim and not the Jim who we were trying to help – interrupted.”
Regular Trixie turned to the Jim from her own reality, who sat in the corner, not looking at anyone.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
He handed over the photocopy, which he had crumpled in his tight grasp. Her brow creased as she read from the paper’s family notices page, “‘Marriages. Jones–Vanderheiden. On the 12th June at Croton-on-Hudson, Jonas, only son of the late V. and R. Jones, Albany, to Katje, younger daughter of Mr. and the late Mrs. N. Vanderheiden, Sleepyside-on-Hudson.’ When did this happen?”
Alternate Honey pointed to the date. “During James and Nell Frayne’s trip to Europe – the same trip where we think the music box went missing.”
“I went back and spoke to Dad in my reality,” Jim admitted. “He called George Rainsford to ask what he knew about it. It turns out, he knew quite a bit. He thought I knew – that’s why he never said anything. He thought it was better left unsaid.”
Regular Trixie nodded. “So, what did he say?”
“He didn’t have all the details, but he and Dad managed to piece the story together,” Jim explained. “Mom was seventeen at the time and had been engaged to Jonesy for a while. He waited for her aunt and uncle to go out of the country to convince her to bring their plans forward, in an attempt to get his hands on the money. The marriage wasn’t ever legal – and as soon as Uncle James heard about it, he made sure it got annulled and he eventually sent Mom upstate to his brother… where she met my father.”
“But that explains almost everything!” regular Trixie exclaimed. “If she married Jonesy then, even if it wasn’t really legal, then it could have happened that James and Nell didn’t understand why she did it. It puts Jonesy on the scene right at the time, so he could be blamed for the theft. It even possibly gives Katje an opportunity to accuse him and regret marrying him. And it might even explain why she married him again, after your Dad was gone – because she’d already promised to marry him. The only thing it doesn’t explain is why James and Nell gave Jonesy any money before Katie stopped them.”
She shook her head, suddenly feeling dizzy.
“I felt it, too,” alternate Honey told her, before she could ask. “I hope it means that your Brian has fixed whatever that was.”
In the corner opposite his double, alternate Jim groaned. “Oh, no. What have I done?”
His sister smiled at him. “I’m not exactly sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s all going to be okay, now.”
“But I lied to you!”
Her brow creased. “Did you?”
“I said there was nothing behind the red door, when actually, there was the Reality Displacement Device, Mark I.”
“Mark I?” regular Trixie demanded. “You mean, the original one that Bobby dropped into the washing machine? The one that started this whole thing by splitting this reality away from ours?”
Alternate Jim nodded. “If that’s what actually happened. You know there’s some dispute about that. I still favour the accumulated improbability theory.”
Trixie waved the dispute away as unimportant. “But why was it down there? What were you doing with it?”
His face reddened. “I think I was trying to fix it.” His shook his head. “At first, I was just trying to keep it safe, but… you know what happens with those kind of things. They stop you from thinking straight. I thought…” He groaned. “Oh, no! I thought there was something suspicious about regular electronics. I’ve been collecting them… taking them apart… soldering the parts onto the original device. Who knows what I’ve done?”
“Well, I hope that Brian – I mean, the original Brian – can put it back how it’s supposed to be so that everything can go back to normal,” alternate Honey decided. “Or, at least, as normal as we normally are, with our normal extra abilities. And I hope he’ll be back soon so he can tell us himself.”
“I’m sure he will be,” her brother answered. “Provided he has the key, of course. Because you can’t open that door from either side without it.”
Regular Trixie’s eyes widened and she began to pat her pockets.
“I don’t have it,” she told the others. “And I don’t remember what happened to it.”
“Maybe it’s still in the lock,” Honey suggested. “I’d better go there right now and see.”
“You can’t!” Alternate Trixie grabbed hold of her arm. “What if you arrive right at the moment he’s changing something. Who knows what would happen to your powers!”
“But we can’t just leave him in there forever,” Honey pointed out. “And we’re going to have to take a chance, because there’s probably not any ventilation in there. And it has to be me because it’s my house.”
A blue glow and some sounds in the bathroom indicated that someone had arrived by portal.
“What have we missed?” regular Di asked, as she, regular Honey and alternate Mart entered the room. “Have you solved all of the mysteries, yet?”
“Nearly,” regular Trixie answered. “We know how Jonesy could have been accused of stealing the music box – because he knew Jim’s mother before she met Jim’s father – and we know what’s behind the red door. Brian – our Brian, that is – is down there right now putting the original Reality Displacement Device back how it was. The only problem is, we think we accidentally locked him in.”
“But they won’t let me go and let him out,” alternate Honey added, “because we don’t know where Brian – I mean, your Brian – is up to and we don’t want to risk altering my powers.”
“In that case,” regular Honey answered, “we need Brian – I mean, your Brian – to rescue our Brian, but how will we do that without anyone else seeing them?”
“And where even is your Brian?” her double asked.
“Right here,” a voice answered from the doorway. “At least, I think I’m the Brian you’re talking about.”
He, regular Mart and alternate Dan entered the clubhouse from outside.
“Have you been in the basement at my house?” alternate Honey asked the Brian who had arrived. He shook his head. “Then, yes, you’re the Brian we’re looking for.”
“What is it you need me to do?” he asked.
As they explained the whole situation all over again for the benefit of the newcomers, Brian’s frown deepened.
“So, you’re saying,” he asked, when they had finally finished, “that I need to go inside Manor House by myself, find this basement – which I’ve never seen before – and open a red door to let my alternate self out? And then he and I need to leave without anyone noticing that there are two of us?”
“That’s exactly the problem,” his own sister agreed. “Because the alternative is that we just wait until we’re certain he’s finished, but how long will that be? And considering what happened that other time…”
“We don’t want to take that risk,” he finished for her. “Okay. I’ll go and see what I can do. And if it goes wrong, one of the Dianas will just have to fix it for us.”
“There’s always that as a back-up,” alternate Trixie agreed. “I think that’s the best plan we have.”
A short time later, alternate Brian let himself into Manor House through the kitchen door. Honey had given him some directions, along with an excuse to use if he happened to encounter any of the staff, but he hoped not to have to use it.
He found the basement without trouble and started down the stairs. He could see that the red door was shut and its key still hung in the lock on the outside. Brian breathed a silent sigh of relief: one difficulty less. No noise came from within the inner room that he could discern. He crossed to the door and tapped on it.
“Who’s there?” a muffled voice called.
“It’s Brian,” he answered.
The door rattled. “I can’t open it,” regular Brian told him, with a note of alarm in his voice.
Alternate Brian turned the key and allowed the door to open. “I came here to let you out,” he explained. “Have you finished dealing with that thing? As you know, I know nothing about electronics, nor am I interested in them.”
“Long ago,” his double answered, ignoring the last statement, which remained as a hangover of one of their previous adventures. “But I’ve been examining these other things that Jim left here. I think some of them might be important.”
“Well, let’s get them out of here before both of us get locked in and have to be rescued. Do you want to hold the door, or will I?”
They quickly settled that regular Brian would hold the door and alternate Brian would transfer the items to the outside of the room. In a few minutes, they had finished the task and regular Brian pocketed the key.
“One of us should go ahead to the clubhouse and the other wait here a few minutes, in case someone sees us,” alternate Brian suggested. “Why don’t you go ahead?”
Regular Brian nodded. “I’ll let the others know it’s safe to come here. Maybe Honey or Di can come and get you.”
He picked up half of the items they had transferred and started up the stairs. At the top, he nearly collided with one of the maids, but not one that he knew.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” she demanded.
Brian turned his head just far enough to see his double slip out of sight. With a jolt, he realised that he had the key to the red door. The other Brian had nowhere to hide.
“Uh… Honey sent me,” he told the woman. “I’m helping her… clean out the basement.”
She frowned. “What do you have there?”
Regular Brian looked down at the pile of odds and ends he held, most of which were worthless junk. He had not yet come up with an answer when someone approached from the kitchen.
“Oh, hello Brian,” Celia greeted. “Is the basement getting cleaned out at last?”
“Yes,” he answered gratefully. “Honey will be here in a minute–”
“If you can convince Jim to help, that would be a lot better,” Celia interrupted.
“I’ll certainly try,” he replied, stepping around the still-hostile other maid. “If you’ll excuse me…”
He left as quickly as possible, but still caught the beginning of Celia’s tirade to the other maid, on the theme of being more polite to Honey and Jim’s friends. Evidently, the Brian who lived in this reality actually did know that maid.
A short time later, he dumped the junk on one of the clubhouse sofas.
“The other Brian needs to be rescued from a suspicious maid,” he announced.
“I’ll go right away,” alternate Honey decided. “Will I need one of the Dianas?”
“Probably.”
The one from that reality got up and the two of them left.
“What have you got there?” regular Trixie asked, eyeing his pile of junk.
“The things the Jim from here had been keeping in that locked room,” he answered. “The other Brian will bring the rest when he gets here.”
“Oh,” alternate Jim groaned. “Now I remember.”
Alternate Trixie turned on him. “Now you remember what?”
“Now I remember why I had the Reality Displacement Device,” he answered. “Brian and I went up into the attic at Crabapple Farm to help your mother clean it out. But we found an old photograph. And it made me so… upset, I suppose, that I wanted to hide it.”
“Don’t tell me.” Alternate Trixie slapped a hand across her eyes. “The place you decided to hide it was the exact place we hid the Reality Displacement Device.”
He nodded. “But, once we had the hiding place open, I was struck by how easy that was and how it was only a matter of time before Bobby found it and so I decided to put it somewhere safer.”
“And the time it took you to carry it from Crabapple Farm to Manor House was enough to mess with your head,” regular Trixie concluded for him. “So, what was this picture?”
Brian scrabbled through the items he’d brought. “Is this it?”
Alternate Jim took it from him with a nod. It showed a casual grouping of people. He flipped it over to show the reverse, where someone had inscribed some information: ‘James and Nell Frayne’s anniversary party. Nell’s brother, his daughter. J. Jones. James, Nell. Peter, me.’
“It’s Moms’ handwriting,” regular Mart pointed out.
Regular Honey looked more closely at the photo. “James has his hand on Jonesy’s shoulder.”
Jim nodded. “And Jonesy is looking at my mother.”
“But this doesn’t make sense,” regular Diana argued. “I thought we thought that Jim’s great-uncle didn’t want his mother to marry Jonesy?”
“He didn’t,” regular Jim agreed. “That’s one of the things we’d already established.”
“But there’s a clue here.” Regular Trixie pointed to Katie’s father and then to Jonesy. “They’re wearing the same badge.”
“And so is Uncle Jim,” alternate Jim added.
The door opened and the three absent Bob-Whites entered.
“Are you okay?” regular Honey asked them.
Her double winced. “Sort of. But we had to get Di to make Tara – that’s the maid that Brian saw – forget that she’d seen any of us. And then we had to make Celia forget that she’d had that conversation. And then we had to make Tom forget that Celia had told him about it. So, the chances of us getting away with that unchallenged are not great, but for the moment we think we’re okay.”
“What else did you bring?” alternate Trixie asked, looking at the things Brian was laying on the sofa, next to the other Brian’s pile.
“Mostly junk,” he admitted, “but some of it looks like research material on some kind of fraternal organisation.”
The other Trixie picked up a wad of photocopies. “The Jim from here must have noticed that badge, too.” She turned to him. “You looked all this up, right?”
He nodded. “It was the local chapter of some kind of lodge. And I kind of remember…”
“That your mother’s father was the one who sponsored Jonesy?” regular Trixie finished for him, as that piece of information caught her eye. “So, in a way, this is all his fault.”
Regular Jim picked up the photo and looked at his maternal grandfather. “He died before I was born. And I don’t know anything about him at all.”
“But you know what this means, don’t you?” regular Trixie asked him, taking his hand and squeezing it. “It all hangs together. Your memories about what your mother told you actually do make sense. Jonesy had two reasons to think he had a claim on your great-aunt and uncle – the lodge and the engagement.”
“Considering what we know of him,” regular Honey commented, “that would be more than enough.”
“And we have another mystery to investigate, now that this one’s finished,” alternate Trixie added.
Alternate Mart groaned. “Already?”
His sister nodded. “Because both the other Jim and our Jim were thinking about the same thing at the same time, but without either of them communicating with the other. We need to find out more about this.”
Regular Mart pretended to yawn and stretch. “Maybe some other time – like next year. Right now, I think I’ll go home for a nap.”
“Do you need our help cleaning out the basement?” regular Honey asked her double. “Because I’m sure at least some of us could stay, if you need us.”
Alternate Honey shook her head. “I’m sure we’ll be fine, but thank you for offering.”
“In that case, I think it’s probably time for us to go,” regular Trixie decided.
The fourteen of them made their farewells – a procedure which took at least fifteen minutes – then the regular Bob-Whites returned to their own clubhouse and soon scattered in several directions. Jim and Trixie strolled toward the lake together.
“Are you okay with all this?” she asked him, once they were alone.
He shrugged. “It’s a relief to know that my memories weren’t as impossible as I was thinking. And I think I understand a few things about my parents better now.”
“But?”
“Why does there have to be a but?” He shook his head and answered his own question. “It wasn’t what I expected to find. And it was a shock to discover that my father wasn’t actually my mother’s first husband – even if that marriage was annulled.”
They walked a little further and the lake came into view. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the leaves of the overhanging trees. The two found a shady place to sit and look out across the water.
“Can you let it go, now?” Trixie asked, her eyes on a passing bird.
“Yes, I think so.” He nodded. “The past is the past and I can’t change it.”
“Unless…” Trixie’s eyes lit with a new idea. “Maybe there’s some power which can do that.”
Jim shook his head. “I don’t think I’d like to take the risk.”
“You’re probably right.” She picked up a pebble and tossed it into the lake, where it created a series of concentric ripples. “But I can’t help thinking there’s still more to discover.”
“In my past?” he asked.
Trixie looked startled. “That’s not what I meant. There might be, I guess, but I’m not looking for any more skeletons in your closet. I was actually thinking about powers and the alternative reality.”
He relaxed a little. “That’s good to know. I’d like to keep my family closet firmly closed for the foreseeable future. I’d like to recover a little from this shock before I’m confronted with any others.”
Trixie smiled. “That’s fine by me. I never seem to be short of mysteries.”
A slight frown creased Jim’s brow. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“Of course it’s a good thing.” A bright smile flashed across Trixie’s face. “There can never be enough mysteries.”
The End
Author’s notes: A big thank you to Mary N./Dianafan for editing. Thank you so much, Mary. Your help is very much appreciated. Thanks, also, to the CWE team for another fun challenge.
CWE#24 is called Read a Book or Watch TV? and it comes with two challenges. For challenge A: Fixed It!, the task is to find a contradiction or pod character moment in the original books and to fix it. For challenge B: As Scene on TV, the idea is to insert the dialogue from a favourite TV show verbatim into the story. I, of course, chose to do both. In this story, I have fixed the tainted timeline concerning Jonesy and the music box, which if you take the information given in Secret of the Mansion into account, is completely incomprehensible. If Jonesy married Katje after Win died, he could not possibly have been her husband at the time that the music box went missing, which must have been at least seven years before Win died.
The scene I chose is from a British comedy show called The IT Crowd. For those unfamiliar with it, the show centres around the consequences of lying at work. It begins when a woman who knows nothing about computers lies on her resume and in her interview and gets a job as head of the IT department. The scene comes from season one, episode four, The Red Door. According to the terms of the challenge, I was allowed to replace character names. So, every time it says Trixie or Honey, it originally said Jen. (And incidentally, if they hadn’t lied about there being nothing behind the red door, Jen would not have bothered opening it.) I was also allowed to change the number of speakers and the context of the lines. The original lines are marked like this.
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