Page 39 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
Magda shook her head, uncertain of the answer.
Coming to the meeting that evening had felt different. Normally Magda would head to the meetings of the Society with a skip in her step, bursting with excitement at the secrets she knew. That day her heart had was heavy, her mood soured by the memory of the discussion with Frank earlier in the day, by what he had done with the chess piece. When she had arrived at Bell Street Books, Frank had been talking to a customer, smiling and nodding as he stood behind his desk with arms folded, so Magda had managed to avoid any conversation for a few minutes more. She had given him a quick nod and had headed straight to the door to the stairs.
In the basement, she had made herself a tea, questions swirling in her mind just as the kettle steam swirled in the air, and then she had sat for a while at the table, just waiting for the meeting to start. She’d found herself thinking again of James and their few hours together, and the man who’d shot him. Her fear of that man had subsided as the hours had passed, but it still lay there, a low background hum like the noise of a car engine on a long journey.
What if he’s watching you? What if he’s waiting for you to come out from the shop later and he’ll shoot you?
She tried to wrangle her fears into submission. The man didn’t know her name and had no way of knowing where she lived. He was on the other side of the planet.
When her nervous energy got the better of her, she got up from the table and strolled over to the bookcase in front of the hidden recess. She opened it to face the Clockwork Cabinet for the first time in a number of years. She had only seen the cabinet opened once, during her very first meeting, but she had unlocked the hidden recess to admire the cabinet on a few occasions since then, dreaming about what she had thought lay within.
“Beautiful, but are you empty?” she asked the cabinet. The cabinet didn’t answer, keeping its proud silence.
She sighed heavily and glanced at the clock on one of the shelves. It was ten minutes past the time the meeting was supposed to begin, and Will hadn’t arrived. That wasn’t like him. Magda worried about what it meant. And disappointment—if not surprise—hung heavily in her heart as she concluded that Henrietta wasn’t coming either. She’d held out such hope. She shook her head and sipped her tea and then heard Frank shuffling down the stairs.
The old man stepped into the basement and stood at the doorway for a minute, looking down at his phone. “Will’s not coming,” he said finally.
“What?” Magda asked. She was shocked at the news, but also relieved that Will had been in touch. Her fertile imagination had been conjuring all manner of awful things that might have happened.
Frank closed the door to the stairs and walked over to join her atthe table. “He replied to my message about the meeting.” He handed her his phone.
Magda read the text exchange, the usual message from Frank about the meeting, and then Will’s reply, which had come in only fifteen minutes earlier.
“‘I won’t be coming this evening,’” Magda read, squinting at the phone. “‘I don’t want to be a member of the Society anymore. Please find someone else to take my place. Please don’t contact me again. But you can rest assured your secrets are safe with me. Regards, Will.’”
“Yes,” Frank said, nodding slowly.
“Why?” Magda asked, passing the phone back.
“I really don’t know,” he admitted, and to Magda he looked lost, like he had just woken up and was still in those brief few seconds of disorientation before remembering where he was and why he was there. “Maybe something I’ve done. Seems like I’ve been making mistakes left, right, and centre lately.”
They both sat at the table, sharing the silence awkwardly for a moment, the fridge humming, and then Frank reached into a pocket and withdrew the chess piece. He placed it on the table between them. Magda stared at it, biting her lip. It pulled her eye, demanding attention. When she glanced back to Frank, he was watching her from beneath his bushy eyebrows.
“Do you want a tea?” she asked, trying to make peace. “Coffee? Cheap biscuits?”
A moment passed, a moment of uncertainty, and then Frank smiled, his serious expression relaxing into something warmer, something familiar, and Magda felt immediately more at home than she had since she had entered the shop that evening. “A bottle of something sweet and fizzy would be great.”
Magda retrieved a bottle of Coke from the small fridge. She used the bottle opener to release the cap and then returned to the table. Frank took the bottle and glugged from it. Then he stared at the bottle, his smile fading. “Wonder why Will decided not to come,” he said. The subject was obviously on his mind. “Why today?”
“Henrietta’s not here either,” Magda observed, but Frank shrugged that comment away without much consideration.
“Is this what the Society is now?” he wondered, his eyes casting around the basement room. “Just you and me?”
Magda didn’t know what to say.
“If I had known, we could have had the meeting in the park this afternoon.” He flicked his eyes at her, as if he was testing that subject matter to see how sensitive it was.
“I suppose we did have a meeting,” Magda said. “Of sorts. Things were definitely discussed.”
Frank hummed to himself thoughtfully. “I suppose we should get on with it, then.” He touched the rook lightly with his forefinger, like a chess player contemplating a move. “This needs to be put away somewhere safe.”
“I want to ask you something,” Magda said, cutting across Frank’s train of thought. “I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon, since we met. Can’t get it off my mind. Well, there’s lots of things I can’t get off my mind, but I want to ask you about this.”
Frank watched her from beneath his brows, neither inviting nor forbidding the question.
“When we were in the park, how did you know what the chess piece did?” She nodded at the rook. “You just used it, like you knew what it would do. You didn’t have to experiment, you just... did it. But it’s been in Hong Kong for years so you can’t have seen it before.”
Frank shifted his eyes to the chess piece, his lips pursing slightly.
