The Mystery of the Cupboard Read Online Free PDF

What do you think you’re doing at this hour?”
    â€œI — I thought I heard Kitsa crying.”
    â€œBlasted cat! She’s all right! Go to bed.”
    â€œI’m just going. Sorry. Sorry, Gilly.”
    Gillon, still half asleep, mumbled something and rolled over. The light went out and Omri followed his father into his own room. His father then went through the other side into his bedroom. Omri shut both doors. Privacy — there wasn’t any. He was going to have to do something about this.
    Trembling with excitement, he lay down on the bed and waited till everything was quiet. The pattern of moonlight had altered as the moon began to set. He got up and sat in its beam and set the cashbox on the floor. He opened the notebook.
    On the first page were a few words in the most beautiful delicate handwriting. He could just about read them, although the ink had faded to a pale brown.
    Account of My Life, and of a Wonder Unacceptable to the Rational Mind. To be hidden until a time when Minds in my Family may be more Open.
    There was a name. A three-word name. In the wan light of the setting moon Omri could hardly read it till he carried the notebook to the window.
    The name was Jessica Charlotte Driscoll. And there was a date. August 21st, 1950.
    August the twenty-first! Another sign — another coincidence, like the LB on the plaque! August 21st was Omri’s birthday.
    Jessica Charlotte Driscoll.
    The name Driscoll meant nothing to Omri. Nor did Jessica. But Charlotte! Charlotte was the name that Lottie was short for. And Lottie had been Omri’s mother’s mother’s name.
    But the moment the thought crossed his mind that this could be
that
Charlotte - his grandmother - he banished itinstantly. That was impossible. His grandmother had died in the bombing of London in World War Two, when his own mother was only a few months old. By 1950 she would have been dead for eight years.
    Anyway, even though this house had been owned by some distant cousin, any connection between it and his grandmother was impossible. She had lived in south London all her short life. His mother had told Omri that the only place his grandmother’d ever visited out of London was Frinton, a seaside place where her sailor husband had taken her on their honeymoon.
    No, all right. So this Charlotte wasn’t a relative.
    Or was she? She must have been living here before the elderly cousin who had recently died. If she’d been a relative of his, she might also be a relative of Omri’s.
    Omri dared not switch the light on and start to read the notebook because there weren’t curtains yet, and his parents would be sure to see the light through their window. He had to compose his soul in patience till the morning. He slept uneasily with the notebook under his pillow and the cashbox - the cashbox! what could be in there? - hidden under the bed.
    A Wonder Unacceptable to the Rational Mind…
    Omri knew a bit about that. ‘There’s real magic in this world…’ Even Patrick knew it now. Patrick the practical, the doubter, the one who’d once tried to pretend none of it had happened. They’d had proof enough to convince anyone. A little bathroom cabinet that, whenyou locked it with a special key, became a magic box that brought plastic toy figures to life. And more than that — they were not just ‘living dolls’, but real people, magicked from their lives in the past.
    Little Bull had been the first, and, for Omri, would always be the most special - an Iroquois Indian from the late eighteenth century, coming from a village in what was now the state of New York. Then had come others: Tommy, the soldier-medic, who’d later been killed; Boone the cowboy (he was really Patrick’s special pal), and Twin Stars, Little Bull’s wife, and her baby who had been born while she was with them. Matron, the strict but staunch nurse from a London hospital of the 1940s. And