Page 5 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

Oliver wondered what was keeping Miss Ellicott so long.

He thought she’d come knock for him when she and Maxwell finished playing their game.

Could she still be in the secret cupboard?

Perhaps now was a good time to introduce himself to his cousin.

If the governess happened to be in the child’s room, even better.

As Oliver opened his bedroom door, he saw a small boy taking careful giant steps—one leg extended at a time—and counting aloud. “Thirteen steps north-northeast from the last stop.”

The boy stopped outside the hidden panel in the wall and studied something in his hand.

He spun in a slow circle. When he faced the direction of the bedrooms, Oliver saw the boy looked quite a bit like himself, or at least as he had as a child.

Large dark eyes, the same squared-off chin, and unruly brown curls. This must be Maxwell.

“All right, Pearl. Where are you?” Oliver heard a laugh in the boy’s voice. “Don’t cheat. If I’ve found you, you have to let me see you.”

She did not appear, and Oliver felt the child’s regret at her failure to arrive. It couldn’t be stronger than his own regret. He wondered why she didn’t show herself.

Maxwell turned in another slow circle, and this time he looked up at Oliver standing in the doorway, watching him.

With no obvious surprise at seeing a stranger in the hallway, he raised a small, pale hand and gave a short wave. “I haven’t seen you before.”

It wasn’t a question, and his voice was more serious now than when he’d called for Miss Ellicott.

Oliver raised his own hand in greeting. “I’m Oliver.”

The boy inspected him with a frank stare. “Are you a ghost?”

No one had ever asked him a question like that before.

“Not that I’m aware.”

Another moment of consideration was followed by a serious nod.

“I think you’d know.” Maxwell tilted his head as if listening for a quiet sound.

After a moment, he added, “Not a ghost. Just a visitor.” Still standing in the hallway, the boy seemed to reconcile himself to something.

“Hello. I’m Max. I’d come over there and shake your hand, but I’m sure I’d spoil the game. ”

It was almost an invitation, and Oliver would take it. “I’d never want your game spoiled. What is it you’re playing?”

“Explorer’s Search.”

Oliver stepped away from the door and closed it behind him, shutting out the memories of the empty bedroom.

“I don’t know the game. How does it work?”

Maxwell shrugged. “Pearl sets me a map. Well, not exactly a map. Many maps, I suppose. One movement at a time.” He waved a scrap of paper and then held up a compass on a chain.

“I follow the compass directions and calculate the number of steps, and when I reach the end, there’s another clue.

” He squinted up at Oliver. “She calls it playing, but she’s really trying to sneak in teaching me things.

Sums and reading compass directions and such.

Sometimes she writes the clues in German or French, but I’m not so good at reading French. ”

He looked too young to be able to read anything at all, but Oliver was no expert at assessing a child’s age.

Maxwell studied the small piece of paper in his hand again. “Now I’m at the end, and there are no more clues.”

An urge to help the child battled with a desire to stay and watch him puzzle out the challenge.

“Is there any chance you’ve taken a wrong turn?”

The little shoulders raised up and then drooped. “There is always a chance. This house was built for wrong turns. But if I did, this clue will have been the only one I failed. All the others led to new ones.”

Oliver wondered if his arrival had somehow prevented Miss Ellicott from leaving Maxwell his final clue. He glanced around the hallway, and what he saw made it difficult not to smile.

He rubbed his jaw and tried to look wise. “Perhaps you need to look at things a different way.”

Maxwell’s expression nearly made Oliver laugh aloud. It wasn’t a pout, exactly, but it was certainly related. “That sounds like something Pearl would say.”

“Does it? Seems like your friend Pearl is very wise.”

Maxwell gave a dismissive shrug. “She’s not my friend. She lives here.”

“Lucky you have a friend who lives in the house with you. I once lived here. Did you know that?”

Maxwell shook his head. “Are your parents dead?”

Oliver’s eyebrows lifted in surprise at Maxwell’s bluntness.

The boy ducked his head. “Sorry if that was rude. I was just wondering.”

“Why do you wonder about that?”

Another shrug of the thin, small shoulders. “My parents are dead. Pearl’s, too. And my grandfather’s parents are, or they’d be hundreds of years old. I think people come here to live when they’ve got no one left.”

Oliver was stunned into silence at both the surprising maturity and wisdom in the words, but also the great sadness. He studied the little boy. Maxwell didn’t seem sad, but perhaps his seriousness was an effect of lifelong sorrow.

Finally, he managed to string a few words together. “How lucky Shadowbrook is here, then. I’m glad I’ve found you at my return.”

Maxwell nodded. “I think we should be friends. When I thought you were a ghost, I didn’t know if we could manage it. We might have done. But I’ve never made friends with a ghost before. You would have been the first.”

“And if you had been the ghost, you’d have been my first ghost friend as well. For the time being, we’ll simply have to be the usual kind.”

“All friends are unusual to me,” Maxwell said. “I never leave the house, and no one comes here. At least, not until you.”

Oliver wondered if Miss Ellicott heard Maxwell’s quiet statement from behind the wall. Could she hear the somber acceptance in the words?

Then, with impressive mental agility, Maxwell reverted to a previous topic. “I wonder if I have taken a wrong path on my Explorer’s Search. Pearl should be here, or at least a note should.”

Right, Oliver thought. The boy was looking for his governess and a clue, not a conversation about the possibility of being ghost-friends with a near stranger.

“I find,” Oliver said, “that a change of perspective helps me see things a new way.” He folded his legs and sat on the floor in the middle of the hall.

Maxwell looked at Oliver with a question in his eyes, but upon Oliver’s offering of a smile, the boy nodded and followed suit.

Oliver placed both hands on his knees, and Maxwell did the same.

Oliver leaned back, looking toward the ceiling, where a scrap of torn brown paper was pinned near the top of the wall.

“It’s my next clue,” Maxwell said, somehow both cheerful and calm.

Oliver was happy he’d followed his instinct not to simply point out the paper to the child. There was something satisfying about letting him make the discovery. “And what does it tell you?”

Maxwell got up from the floor with more effort than Oliver was prepared for. After he caught his breath, he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring up at the paper high above his head.

“It doesn’t say anything.”

Oliver wondered if the boy’s illness affected his eyesight. Surely Miss Ellicott wouldn’t place a wordless clue at the end of the game.

He stood behind Maxwell and looked at the paper. The boy was right—no words at all. Oliver reached up to take the paper from the wall, but Maxwell stopped him, a calculated look on his face. “Wait a moment.”

After staring at the wall for a few seconds, Maxwell turned and grinned. “She’s here.”

“How can you tell?”

“Look,” the boy said, but instead of directing Oliver’s attention to the hidden latch, he pulled a small pile of paper scraps from his trousers pocket. “These are the clues. What do they have in common?” He handed the lot to Oliver, who looked at each in turn.

“They’re all written in the same hand,” Oliver said.

Maxwell nodded. “Yes, of course. Pearl did them all. What else?”

Oliver stifled a chuckle at the boy’s lecturing tone, as if Maxwell was a tutor and Oliver his student.

“Each has a compass direction and a mathematical equation to solve.” Some of the calculations were quite complicated. Oliver wondered at the governess pushing the sick boy quite so hard.

Maxwell sighed. “I already told you that. Look at the paper.”

Each piece in Oliver’s hand was folded neatly, and the edges matched exactly. Perfect squares. He held them up and pointed at the angles.

Maxwell nodded. “And that paper,” he said, pointing at the torn scrap on the wall, “is the clue.”

He moved to stand directly beneath the note. “It’s in the shape of an arrow, you see. Well, not a very good one. It’s pointing me to the next move.”

Oliver knew it was true, but he didn’t want to give Miss Ellicott’s hiding place away, so he carefully stared at the brown paper as Maxwell ran his palm from side to side across the wall, starting as high as he could reach and feeling every inch of painted plaster.

After a minute or two, Maxwell had traveled far from the hidden catch in the wall.

Should Oliver stop him? Show the boy how to get inside? He recognized a strong urge to protect Maxwell from wasted effort, but knew it would be wrong for him to step in. Better to let the child solve the puzzle, even if it took some time.

Maxwell dropped his arms and stared at the wall.

Oliver wondered if he’d ask for help, but he hadn’t so far.

Perhaps he would shout in anger or frustration.

Oliver wouldn’t blame him. He was feeling a hint of frustration himself.

Watching the boy’s back, Oliver saw the thin arms come up and cross in front of his chest. Was he giving up?

He tried to remember being a small child trying to do a difficult task.

Before he could arrive at any idea, Maxwell turned to face him, a smile stretching wide and showing a missing tooth.