“I didn’t realize we had visitors.”
“Good evening,” said Mrs. Knight.
“It’s morning, madam,” said either Zada or Zora, and I was afraid the whole strange conver-sation was about to start up all over again.
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“WHEN DID YOU SEE HER LAST?”
“We’ve come about Miss Knight,” I said quickly. “We understand she’s gone missing, and we’d like to help.”
But Mr. Knight was looking at his hands again, and Mrs. Knight’s eyes had wandered off too, toward a doorway at the back of the room, where a round little man was gazing at all of us through round little glasses. He had a small beard on his chin that looked like it was trying to escape from his nasty smile. He looked like the sort of person who would tell you that he did not have an umbrella to lend you when he actu- ally had several and simply wanted to see you get soaked.
“Mr. and Mrs. Knight are in no state for visi-tors,” he said. “Zada or Zora, please take them away so I can attend to my patients.”
“Yes, Dr. Flammarion,” one of the aproned women said with a little bow, and motioned us out of the room. I looked back and saw Dr. Flammarion drawing a long needle out of
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ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS
his pocket, the kind of needle doctors like to stick you with. I recognized the smell and hur-ried to follow the others out of the room. We made our way through a skinny hallway made skinnier by rows of boxes, and then suddenly we were in a kitchen that made me feel much better. It was not dark. The sunlight streamed in through some big, clean windows. It smelled of cinnamon, a much better scent than what I had been smelling, and either Zada or Zora hurried to the oven and pulled out a tray of cinnamon rolls that made me ache for a proper breakfast. One of the aproned women put one on a plate for me while it was still steaming. Anyone who gives you a cinnamon roll fresh from the oven is a friend for life.
“What’s wrong with the Knights?” I asked after I had thanked them. “Why are they acting so strangely?”
“They must be in shock from their daugh- ter’s disappearance,” Theodora said. “People
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“WHEN DID YOU SEE HER LAST?”
sometimes act very strangely when something terrible has happened.”
One of the aproned women handed Theodora a cinnamon roll and shook her head. “They’ve been like this for quite some time,” she said. “Dr. Flammarion has been serving as their pri- vate apothecary for a few weeks now.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Flammarion is a tall pink bird,” Theodora said.
“An apothecary,” continued the woman, more helpfully, “is something like a doctor and something like a pharmacist. For years Dr. Flammarion worked at the Colophon Clinic, just outside town, before coming here to treat the Knights. He’s been using a special medicine, but they just keep getting worse.”
“That must have been very upsetting for Miss Knight,” I said.
Zada and Zora looked very sad. “It made Miss Knight very lonely,” one of them said. “It
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ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS
is a lonely feeling when someone you care about becomes a stranger.”
“So Miss Knight has no one caring for her,” Theodora said thoughtfully. The cinnamon rolls were the sort that is all curled up like a snail in its shell, and my chaperone had unrav- eled the roll before starting to eat it, so both of her hands were covered in icing and cinna-mon. It was the wrong way to do it. She was also wrong about no one caring for Miss Knight. Zada and Zora were the ones who were beside themselves with worry. I leaned forward and looked first at Zada and then at Zora, or per-haps the other way around. And then, while my chaperone licked her fingers, I asked the question that is printed on the cover of this book.
It was the wrong question, both when I asked it and later, when I asked the question to a man wrapped in bandages. The right question
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“WHEN DID YOU SEE HER LAST?”
in this case was “Why was she wearing an article of clothing she did not own?” but this is not an account of times when I asked the right ques-tions, much as I wish it were.
“Miss Knight was with us yesterday morn- ing,” one of the women said, using her apron to dab at her eyes. “She was sitting right where you are sitting now, having her usual breakfast of Schoenberg Cereal. Then she spent some time in her room before going out to meet a friend.”
“Who was this friend?” I asked.
“She didn’t say. She just drove off, and she hasn’t come back.”
“She’s old enough to drive?”
“Yes, she got her license a few months ago, and her parents bought her a shiny new Dilemma.”
“That’s a nice automobile,” I said. The Dilemma was one of the fanciest automobiles manufactured. It was claimed that you could
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ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS
drive a Dilemma through the wall of a building and emerge without a dent or scratch, although the building might collapse.
“Mr. and Mrs. Knight give their daughter whatever she wants,” the aproned woman said. “New clothes, a new car, and all sorts of equip-ment for her experiments.”
“Experiments?”
“Miss Knight is a brilliant chemist,” Zada or Zora said proudly. “She often stays up all night working on experiments in her bedroom.”
“I imagine she learned that from watching you cook,” I said. “This cinnamon roll is the best I have ever tasted.”
Complimenting someone in an exagger-ated way is known as flattery, and flattery will generally get you anything you want, but Zada and Zora were too worried to offer me a second pastry. “She probably inherited her abili-ties from her grandmother,” the woman said. “Ingrid Nummet Knight founded Ink Inc.
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“WHEN DID YOU SEE HER LAST?”
when she was a young scientist, after years of experimenting with many different inks from many different creatures. Before long Ink Inc. made the Knights the wealthiest family in town. But those days are over. Ink Inc. is almost finished, and so is the town. That’s why we’re leaving Stain’d-by-the-Sea.”
“When are you leaving?” I asked.
“Whenever the Knights give the word.”
“Even if Miss Knight doesn’t come back?”
“What
