The second unhaunted house was in western Bohemia, a low-lying structure easily missed amid fountain sprays of autumnal greenery, reddery, orangery, brownery, &c. It seemed to have been assembled in adoration of the castle that stood higher up on the riverbank—the length and width of each window was filled with the view of the castle. Not the soaring semicircular arches—you had to leave the house and look up if you wanted to see the castle’s spire and turrets—but you could probably signal to certain windows that peeped out of the castle walls, if you and your counterpart in the other room had flashlights or lanterns. The bad reputation of this converted lodge, like the bad reputation of the Baker House, had been incurred in modern times. And just as with the Baker House, the estate-agency portfolio photo of this Bohemian house was very close to the version Harriet had seen in Gretel’s atlas. Miss Maszkeradi met them outside this house too, with the notes she’d prepared, but Tamar knocked off the estate agent’s turban with her umbrella and Margot pulled off the wig the estate agent was wearing beneath the turban. There was another wig beneath the first wig, and Tamar or Margot would have pulled that off too, but Miss Maszkeradi saw which way things were going and fled into the woods, sending Tamar an email a few hours later to say that she was back in London and understood their feelings toward her but would nevertheless be sending an invoice for a replacement turban and wig.
The requisite night in the Bohemian house passed, and Harriet’s meeting with Gretel was missed. The next morning, at breakfast, Margot rolled up her bad-cop sleeves and Tamar rolled up her good-cop sleeves and together they attempted to persuade this house’s secret dwellers (a couple brought together by their discovery of their spouses’ joint plot to kill them for insurance money) that it was better for ten guilty people to go free than for one innocent to face punishment. “I congratulate you on the success of your counterplot, I really do—convincing each that the other was the one who really killed you both and getting them to point the finger at each other for all these years, I like it, but all four of you have lived with this long enough now, so what about letting all that water pass under the bridge and taking on a new project? Well, what we have in mind is this . . .”
Harriet rose from the breakfast table and said she was off to see about this river that kept running by . . . it looked as if rowing boats and stepping-stones were readily available and she thought they should be made the most of. “Yeah, why not,” Perdita said, and, in accordance with Harriet’s hopes, she was the only one who came along.
They picked a pea-green boat and rowed past the castle complex, slowing down to wave as they passed the house where Margot and Tamar were not yet prevailing over the desire for revenge. They rowed in perfect rhythm and at a temperate pace that bordered on the desultory; stone houses and other boats drifted by.
“Perdita, I want to ask you something,” Harriet said. She’d been thinking—the night thoughts Perdita’s dolls disapproved of, but also day thoughts . . . she’d been thinking about Perdita saying she’d put her hand inside her own hand and brought forth Gretel’s ring . . . that had been all Perdita seemed able to say about having gone to/been in Druhástrana.
“Mum, if you drag this out I’m going to jump overboard,” said Ari Kercheval’s granddaughter. (Funny to think that she’s also Simon Lee’s.)
“Do you remember my saying Gretel Kercheval was a changeling?”
Perdita nodded. They were face-to-face and couldn’t turn away from each other without messing up the rowing—ha-ha, Perdita, you just try evading your mother now.
“And you remember me saying that she talked as if she could change too . . . bodily, I mean . . . be born as different people?”
“Yeah. So?”
“I’ve been thinking I wouldn’t put it past her to treat two whole families as clients of hers—the Lees and the Kerchevals—I wouldn’t put it past her to try to change their relationship by switching sides . . . I mean getting born on one side and then getting born on the other . . .”
They’d veered off center—Perdita put a leg over the side of the boat; it tilted against the bank, and wet grass brushed them all along their left sides. “Mother! Ask your question! What is it?”
“All right, keep your hair on! I was just thinking. About the two houses,” Harriet said. “Those houses where we were going to meet, Gretel and me. She wasn’t there, but I was, and you . . . so were you . . .”
“And?”
“And . . . when you were little . . . with the gingerbread . . . I mean, before you, I only knew of one other person who would probably die for gingerbread. Wasn’t that some sort of announcement . . . ?”
Perdita leaned forward.
“Are you asking me if I’m Gretel?”
“Fine. Yes, that’s what I’m asking.”
Without blinking, Perdita asked: “Why? I mean—is that an important thing?”
This, for Harriet, was more perturbing than a straight “yes” or “no.” Water-sky roulette, water-sky roulette . . .
“Mum?”
Perdita’s being (or not being) Gretel was of importance to Harriet because Harriet needed to know that Gretel was well, that she had a friend, that . . .
Actually, Perdita’s being (or not being) Gretel was of importance to Harriet because Gretel was the cause of Harriet’s inability to be a proper friend to anybody else. Consider all the friendships that have gone unmade by and with Harriet Lee because she was saving herself for great amity that was on pause, that had not properly begun. Why, if Gretel Kercheval was here right now, she’d get told off. How dare she make a friend of Harriet and then just leave the rest for later . . .
“I see,” Perdita said. “Can I just check that I’ve understood? You think that because of Gretel Kercheval you haven’t been a good friend to anybody?”
When Harriet nodded, Perdita said she didn’t buy it. “Is this really the line you want to take—that you never met anyone you liked as much as that girl, and that you never met anybody who seemed to care for you as much as she did? Also . . . ALSO . . . if you really have been letting this keep you from making other friends all this time, if you really think Gretel Kercheval would quietly take the blame for that, then there’s nothing to be done about you . . .”
“Interesting. That’s a very Gretelian thing to say . . .”
“Listen, Mum. If I was or had at any time been a changeling, and I’m not saying that’s the case, but if it was, this is what I’d say: First off, Tamar’s given me some idea of what you’re going to be like once you go into retirement yourself. Honestly . . . in your own way, getting all interpretative like this makes you just as much of a loose cannon as she is . . . I just think you should know that. The other thing I’d say is this: Here you are rowing on this river with a nice bit of mountain behind us and a nice bit of forest ahead, and maybe some commuting salmon on either side of us. Here you are with your daughter, who thinks worlds of you . . . not just a world but all of ’em, every last one. And—”
Harriet interrupted her: “Yes, here I am with this Perdita I love so much and truly . . . hair’s already gone gray so what more can your behavior do to it . . . all this plus fine weather . . . yes, I’m sure you’re right. Why insist on pinpointing who was who and what is what and when was when?” That’s what Harriet Lee said aloud, but her inner resolve said something else: Gretel Kercheval, I am warning you. The third house is our last chance. Our last last last last chance.
17
Miss Maszkeradi wouldn’t tell Tamar and the Lees which country the third house was in, but she did say that the house was located on an island, the most beautiful island in the world. “Though when I say ‘most beautiful,’ I don’t mean ‘least scarred’ . . .” The portfolio photograph was 95 percent beach, and perhaps 5 percent house . . . though at that distance the “house” could have just been a cardboard box.
“More soon, ladies—we’ve got a tracking team on the ground out there, and if they’re able to catch up with the house, you four will need to prepare for a minimum flight time of fourteen hours . . .”
“Catch up with the house?” Margot said. “You talk as if it stands on chicken legs and keeps running away.”
With more than the usual edge of hysteria to her voice, Miss Maszkeradi said: “Oh, the merry dance this house has led me. This house! It really isn’t a house one can speak of unless one knows. If I manage to sell the damned place before I die it’ll be my greatest triumph . . . I’ll be an icon among estate agents.”
Margot had only one question left. In Druhástranian, she asked: “Drahomíra, my dear . . . are you by any chance Druhástranian?”
She was answered in English, and Harriet held her phone away from her ear to protect it from the Maszkeradi trill: “Of course I am . . . I mean, aren’t we all?”