Phyllis Wong and the Secrets of Mr. Okyto (The Phyllis Wong Mysteries, Book 1) by Geoffrey McSkimming

Release date: July 23, 2018

Subgenre:  Children's Mystery

About Phyllis Wong and the Secrets of Mr. Okyto:

 

Conjuring is in Phyllis Wong’s veins. The love for all things magical was passed down from her great-grandfather who, before his mysterious disappearance, was one of the world’s most brilliant and successful stage magicians. Now Phyllis lives in what was his beautiful old home in the middle of the city with her father and her loyal dog Daisy.

When a series of incomprehensible robberies takes place in the city, Phyllis realises that there is more to the crimes than meets the eye. It all may be baffling her friend Chief Inspector Inglis, but Phyllis is determined to find out more. Who is this thief? What does he want? And how is he achieving the impossible?

An exciting mystery about a young sleuth with sleight of hand (and lots more up her sleeve) from the author of the ever-popular Cairo Jim chronicles, Geoffrey McSkimming.

The first Phyllis Wong: Time Detective Mystery.

 

Excerpt:

 

PHYLLIS WONG’S UNRAVELLING of all the secrets began on the first afternoon of her end-of-term vacation.

The last few months of school hadn’t been especially hard or bothersome for Phyllis. She had done well in most of her subjects, and had even come first in History. And she had, over the course of the term, learnt and practised and added another six conjuring tricks—four card routines, one coin transposition and, the classic of them all, the cups and balls—to her growing repertoire of magic.

The joy and thrill of performing magic ran through Phyllis Wong’s veins. Her father said she had inherited it from her great-grandfather, Wallace Wong, Conjuror of Wonder! Before his mysterious disappearance in Venezuela while performing the Houdini sub-trunk illusion in 1936, Wallace Wong had been one of the most famous and highest-paid magicians in the world.

Wherever the passion had come from, Phyllis loved magic. She had loved magic from as far back as she could remember. She loved the elegance of a good trick; the way it mesmerised her audience and transported them away from their worlds and their thoughts and their worries for a few moments. And she loved the small, surging thrill she always had when the moment of the vanish or the substitution or the reappearance or the totally unexpected manifestation of an object happened.

That always made her zing.

When she performed her magic, Phyllis Wong knew how the mysteries worked. When the tricks went to plan, she knew she had control over the mysteries. She was soon to find out, however, that there were other mysteries floating about in the world that were not so straightforward.

*

‘Hi, Mrs L.,’ Phyllis called as she and her miniature fox terrier, Daisy, entered Lowerblast’s Antiques & Collectables Emporium, one of the two shops on the ground floor of Phyllis’s apartment block.

From somewhere in the back of the long, narrow shop Mrs Lowerblast’s voice shot back, ‘Ah! Guten tag, Phyllis.’

Daisy, down by Phyllis’s ankles, gave a short, sharp bark.

‘And you too, Daisy, dear,’ called Mrs Lowerblast.

A little noise came from the back of Daisy’s throat (it sounded like she was quietly gargling with marbles in her mouth), and she trotted off to a patch of multi-coloured sunlight that was shining onto the floor through the stained-glass windows at the front of the shop. Here she lay down on her stomach and proceeded to lick her brown and white paws earnestly.

‘Are you busy?’ called Phyllis.

‘Never too busy for you, my dear, never for you. Just give me two seconds, ja?’

‘Okay.’

Phyllis peered around the dimly lit shop. It was crammed full of everything, its cedar display cabinets and shelves filled with porcelain figurines and silver jewellery and antique tea services; exquisite Fabergé eggs; vintage clockwork toys; strange pots and vases upon which lizards, birds and small, strange, unrecognisable creatures had been sculpted; rare coins; fancy bird cages hanging from the ceiling; boxes of used postcards that had been sent all around the world in the days when writing to someone was not an instantaneous process; hats and handbags from the 1920s; walking sticks with gold and silver handles, sometimes in the shape of dogs’ or ducks’ heads; brass telescopes of many different sizes; glaring tribal masks from islands that Phyllis had never heard of; boxes of unusual, long out-of-print magazines with titles like A World of Ocelots and Better Yurts and Gardens and Don’t Go There and Bagpipes for Beginners and Kenneth!; and items of Victorian lace—shawls, handkerchiefs, tablecloths and what Mrs Lowerblast referred to as ‘unmentionables’.

Phyllis always liked coming in here. She felt a sense of belonging amongst all the seemingly almost forgotten objects.

She ran her long fingers up and down the wooden edge of the counter. The smell of linseed oil, mingled with the slightly sweet fragrance of old things and the whiff of cobwebs (do cobwebs have a smell? wondered Phyllis), wafted up to her nostrils.

From far back in the shop, behind the dark purple curtain that separated the private area from the public, there came a few mmms, and some low grunts and the sound of boxes being moved. Then the curtain was flung aside, and Mrs Lowerblast appeared, smiling at her young friend.

Phyllis smiled back and watched Mrs Hildegard Lowerblast come to the counter. She was an elderly woman, large in proportion and gentle in manner, who always wore her lustrous hair tied back in a neat, stylish ponytail.

Mrs Lowerblast had a great passion for objects from the past. Over the years she had taught Phyllis how old things—things that many people discarded or destroyed without thinking—more often than not told a story. And, according to Mrs Lowerblast, those stories, no matter how small they might be, were the threads that held together the blanket of history.

Phyllis had always liked that idea, and she had learnt much from her gently spoken friend.

But this afternoon Phyllis detected a cloud of concern that seemed to shadow Mrs Lowerblast’s face, despite her smile.

‘What’s wrong?’ Phyllis asked, always one to get to the point.

‘Oh, my dear girl,’ said Mrs Lowerblast, taking out a lilacious-coloured handkerchief from the bosom of her deep mauve dress (Mrs Lowerblast had a thing for the purple hues) and dabbing it across her forehead. ‘You can read me like a book, you can.’

‘Something’s bothering you,’ Phyllis said. ‘What’s happened?’

With a small grunt, Mrs Lowerblast hoisted herself onto the tall swivelling chair which was always behind the counter, perfectly positioned so that she could see every inch of the shop around her. ‘Oh, Phyllis, my dear. I have been robbed!’

‘No!’

Daisy stopped licking her paws and looked up, her ear (the one that was not permanently folded over) turning in the direction of Phyllis’s voice.

‘Ja.’ Mrs Lowerblast nodded, her eyes full of outrage.

‘Robbed?’ repeated Phyllis.

Mrs Lowerblast gave a big, heaving sigh. ‘In all the years I’ve had my business here in your building, I have never once been burglarised or even shoplifted. No theftacious activity has ever crossed my threshold! But now—’ She dabbed at her neck with the handkerchief and frowned. ‘Now my record, it is broken … shatterised, kaput!’

‘Have you called the police?’

‘Nein, my dear. It is not so straightforward.’

Now it was Phyllis’s turn to frown. ‘What do you mean?’

Mrs Lowerblast sighed again. ‘I’ll show you.’ She swivelled her chair around and reached over to the far end of the counter, where she had a small mahogany and glass display cabinet on the countertop. Phyllis knew that Mrs Lowerblast kept some of her most valuable pieces in the cabinet.

She watched as the elderly woman opened the back of the cabinet. From inside it she withdrew an object: a bookend, which she placed on the counter in front of Phyllis. Then she took out another one, a matching piece to the first, and put it side-by-side with its twin.

For some reason, Phyllis had never seen the bookends before. ‘Wow,’ she whispered, pushing her long, dark hair back behind her ears. ‘They’re beautiful!’

‘Ah, you have always appreciated things of quality,’ said Mrs Lowerblast. ‘You have a fine eye, ja.’

Daisy sprang to her paws and trotted over to the counter. She was the sort of dog who always liked to know what was going on. She stood on her rear legs and tapped a front paw on Phyllis’s knee. Phyllis bent down to pick her up, and together they looked at the bookends.

They were indeed beautiful. Phyllis’s eyes widened as she took in every detail of them. They were L-shaped and were made of earthenware that had been fired in a kiln and glossily glazed. The colours were vibrant: against a dark brown background there were splashes of burnt orange, apple green, soft butter yellow, ochre and some streaks of deep blue. The bookends had been made to resemble the trunks of old, gnarled trees with knot-holes and ridges running down them.

On the front of each of the bookends, so lifelike that they seemed as if they were about to turn their heads, perched two small blue wrens. Their tails were raised against the bookends’ uprights, and their spindly little legs were splayed out so that they were able to stand on the bases of the bookends.

The expression on each bird’s face was one of alertness, as though it had just heard a sound—a twig breaking, Phyllis was imagining—and was considering whether it should take flight, or remain where it was, suspended in time.

Daisy pushed her snout forward, had a sniff of the ceramic birds and then, deciding that they weren’t food, she lost interest. Phyllis put her down on the floor and the small dog went and curled up in the kaleidoscopic sunlight again.

Phyllis kept staring at the bookends, taking in every colour and detail of them. For a few silent-as-an-empty-cathedral moments she felt that she was the same size as the wrens, on the tree trunks with them, in their world, hearing their sounds and smelling the forest around them.

‘They are extremely valuable,’ said Mrs Lowerblast, breaking the spell. ‘Made by an Australian potter, about … oooooh … eighty years ago. We in the trade believe that there are only three sets of them left anywhere in the world. The rare blue wren bookends made by the reclusive Gladys Reyscombe.’

Phyllis blinked. She was a little startled to find that her palms had left perspiration marks on the glass countertop. ‘What do they have to do with you being robbed?’ she asked.

Mrs Lowerblast shook her head slowly. ‘It’s all so strange, my dear. All so … weird. So peculiaracious. Someone—goodness knows who, and goodness knows how—took one of these!’

Phyllis raised her eyebrows. ‘You mean, you had three of them?’

‘Nein. Just the two.’

‘Huh?’ Phyllis looked at Mrs Lowerblast, then at the two bookends, then back to Mrs Lowerblast. She knew that her friend often got through her days in the shop with the help of rich fruit cake and the occasional glass of good sherry, and Phyllis wondered whether the fruit cake had perhaps run out and whether Mrs Lowerblast had only had her other favourite on hand lately …

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Phyllis (using one of her favourite phrases from an old film in which her great-grandfather had appeared many years ago). ‘Somebody stole one of these blue wren bookends from you. You had two, and somebody stole one. And now you only have … two! Mrs L., Math may not be my best subject, but even I don’t see how this adds up! Two minus one is one, unless they’ve changed the syllabus again … ’

‘I told you it was weird,’ said Mrs Lowerblast. ‘And now it gets weirder. You see, they did steal one of these, and they substituted it with a fake! I’m as certain of it as I am of my own elbows.’ She pushed one of the blue wren bookends towards Phyllis. ‘That, my dear, is not the work of the reclusive Gladys Reyscombe. That one is a modern-day knock-off! Ja!’

Phyllis scrutinised it carefully. ‘But … it looks exactly the same as the other one. Are you sure?’

To answer her, Mrs Lowerblast pointed both of her elbows at Phyllis. ‘Like I said, as sure as I am of these.’

‘I see.’ Phyllis reached for the bookends. ‘May I?’

‘Be my guest. Oh, this is a terrible business, Phyllis. Most horridacious. I bought the pair about three years ago … I found them in a small market when I was travelling through the south of France. Snapped them up for a song—the sellers didn’t know what they had! Do you know what they’re valued at? What I can get for them?’

‘I have no —’

‘I’ll tell you: at least forty thousand dollars!’

Phyllis looked up, and her mouth fell open.

‘Ja, an astonishing price. Anything made by Gladys Reyscombe always fetches top money, on account of the lovely work she did and the scarcity of it. And, according to many in the trade, the blue wren bookends were the final pieces she ever sculpted.

‘But now, because I’ve only got one of the pieces, why, I’d guess it wouldn’t be worth a quarter of that. Not that a quarter of forty thousand dollars is a sum to blow one’s nose at, of course. But … oh, dear me … ’

Phyllis had picked up the supposed fake bookend while Mrs Lowerblast had been speaking, and she had been running her fingers across all the ridges and surfaces, gently tracing the little bird’s shape and tail. Now she put the bookend down and picked up the other one.

After a few moments she said, ‘I can’t feel any difference, Mrs L. They feel like the same weight, and their proportions are almost identical. Not exact, but close.’

‘Mmmm. The originals weren’t carbon copies of each other, of course, on account of them being hand sculpted. Gladys Reyscombe never worked from moulds.’

Phyllis put the bookend down. ‘Are you sure that when you bought them in the south of France, you didn’t actually buy a genuine one and a fake one?’ she asked respectfully.

‘Positive, my dear. But that’s why I haven’t gone to the police. They’d ask me the same thing, just like that. They’d probably think, “Oh, she’s just a funny old bat and she’s starting to imagine things that didn’t happen.” Well, I may be getting on, ja, but all the marbles are still rolling around up here.’ She tapped her forehead and sighed again. ‘I know what I bought. I’ve been in this business long enough to smell a fake a mile off. I can easily detect the whiffaciousness of a forgery!’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

Mrs Lowerblast gave a sad smile and patted Phyllis’s hand. ‘Nein, nein. No offence taken, Phyllis. Of course you didn’t. You know me. The police don’t.’

‘But how could this have happened?’ asked Phyllis.

‘Now this is the truly bizarre bit, my dear. My shop was never broken into. That cabinet—’ she pointed to the small display case on the end of the counter—‘is always locked, and the lock has never been tampered with. And I keep all the keys to all the locks on all the display cabinets in the safe out the back. The safe which, likewise, has never been broken into. On top of that, I’ve got the whole place alarmed. And no alarms have gone off that I know of in the last fifteen years.’

Mrs Lowerblast leant across the countertop. She looked all around, and then she gazed steadily at her young friend. ‘Nein, Phyllis, my dear,’ she confided in a hushed tone, ‘I believe something very strange happened. I believe that it was done right before my very eyes,and I had no idea what was being perpetrated!’

Phyllis’s spine tingled at this astonishing announcement, sending a shudder throughout her entire being.

 

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About Geoffrey McSkimming:

Geoffrey McSkimming is the author of the bestselling 19 volume Cairo Jim chronicles (published worldwide from 1991 -- 2008) and now the new Phyllis Wong mysteries, featuring the brilliant young magician and clever sleuth, Phyllis Wong. Phyllis Wong and the Forgotten Secrets of Mr Okyto, Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror, Phyllis Wong and the Waking of the Wizard and Phyllis Wong and the Girl who Danced with Lightning have appeared to widespread acclaim and much enjoyment. The sixth Phyllis Wong mystery will be published in 2018.

All of the Cairo Jim chronicles are now being e-published by 9 Diamonds Press, available through Amazon's Kindle platform. A brand new Cairo Jim story will appear in 2018.

When he is not writing stories of magic, mystery and adventure, Geoffrey appears at Phyllis Wong author shows with his wife, world-renowned magician Sue-Anne Webster. Together they bring the magic of story and the story of magic to life before their audiences' very eyes!

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