Read Online The Visconti House by Elsbeth Edgar - Free Book Online Page B

Leon stood watching each other uneasily.
    “Well, see you, then,” said Leon.
    Laura twisted her finger through her hair, thinking. If she asked Leon over, surely no one would know. How could they? It wasn’t as though any kids from school lived near them. Finally, she said, “You could come and see Mr. Visconti’s house, if you’d like.”
    “When?”
    “Whenever you want, one night after school.”Laura flicked her hair back and turned to leave.
    “Maybe I’ll come on Monday,” he called after her.
    Well, it is only fair,
thought Laura as she trudged up the hill.
After all, I barged into his house. It wouldn’t be right not to let him into mine. . . .

Laura spent Saturday immersed in her investigations into Mr. Visconti. Early Saturday morning she snatched a brief moment when her father wasn’t working on his article to search the Internet. But while she uncovered a vast amount of information about all sorts of people named Visconti, there was nothing about
her
Mr. Visconti — nothing that she could find, anyway.
    Thwarted, she returned to searching the house. She combed all the empty upstairs rooms and then climbed back into the attic to rummage through the boxes, hoping to find another postcard or maybe even a photograph. All she found, however, was an old button, a tatty brush, and another box of cutlery. In the garden she unearthed some old bottles and a few bits of broken china.
    “What have you got there?” asked her mother as Laura curled up on the sofa in the studio with a large shoe box.
    “My collection of things about Mr. Visconti,” replied Laura.
    Her mother smiled. “It looks like you’ve found quite a lot.”
    “No.” Laura shook her head. “The box is mostly empty. Mr. Visconti didn’t leave very much behind.”
    “Well, he left the house,” said her mother.
    Laura’s brow wrinkled. “But
it
can’t talk. It can’t tell me about Mr. Visconti.”
    “Maybe it can.”
    Laura looked skeptical.
    While her mother continued chiseling, Laura took out all the articles she had photocopied and glued them into a notebook, making notes as she went along. She soon discovered, however, that most of the notes were questions. Why did Mr. Visconti come to Australia? Why did he build the house? And why did he stay?
    When Laura had finished, she thought about what her mother had said and went back to searching the house. The only other things she found, though, were a small box of paints and two thin brushes. She put them with her collection but felt rather discouraged. How did she know that any of these objects belonged to Mr. Visconti? And even if they did, what did theytell her? Nothing! She pushed the shoe box aside and picked up the novel she was reading, but she could not concentrate. All day her thoughts kept turning back to Mr. Visconti and the house.
    Laura woke on Sunday to the sun streaming in her window. It was going to be a glorious day. She bounced into the kitchen and found her father sitting at the table with Samson curled up in his lap.
    “It is a true sun day,” he greeted her cheerfully, buttering a piece of toast. “What are you planning to do, Laura?”
    “I’m going to sketch the house,” she replied.
    It was the little, battered box of paints that had given her the idea. As she had been drifting off to sleep, she had remembered them and wondered if Mr. Visconti had been a painter. And then she had thought that it would be fun to do some paintings of the house. Her mother always said that you got to see something differently when you drew or painted it.
    She collected some sheets of paper and a box ofpencils from the studio and went out into the garden to start drawing. It proved much harder than she had imagined, however, and she was almost crying with frustration when her mother came out to see how she was doing.
    “It doesn’t look right. It doesn’t look like the house at all,” Laura complained, squinting at the lines on the paper.
    Her mother took up a