Читать книгу Mystery & Mayhem - Julia Golding - Страница 7
Оглавление‘No, but . . .’ said Emily.
‘Hush, dearest,’ said Mr Black – or Father, as she more usually called him. ‘We are on the brink! Of a discovery! We are mere instants from revealing all – are we not, Lord Copperbole?’
Lord Copperbole – or Irritating Moustachioed Weasel, as she more usually called him – leapt back from the laboratory bench, as it erupted in blue flames.
‘The clue!’ moaned Mr Black.
‘The clue!’ howled Lord Copperbole, nursing a burnt thumb.
‘The bucket?’ suggested Emily, tugging a pail full of sand from beneath the bench, and dumping it unceremoniously on to the fire.
A shame. The blue flame indicated atacamite, as she had expected from the sugary crystals gathered in the corner of the clue: an envelope addressed to Lady Tanqueray, greasy from travel, and impressed with the shape of a scarab beetle. It could not have been more obvious.
It was lucky, really, that Mary the housemaid neglected to refill the bucket with sand.
The Chinese puzzlebox Lord Copperbole brought to the house was a rare and beautiful thing: jet black, inlaid with a complex pattern of abalone shell.
‘My dear friend Lady Tanqueray has again entrusted me with unlocking a mystery,’ he explained, purring as he stroked his new-grown goatee. ‘A gift to her eldest daughter, from an admirer. We must be discreet, Charles.’
‘Of course, my dear fellow,’ said Mr Black, turning it this way and that. ‘But if your intellect cannot unlock it, I scarce presume to hope I might.’
This was silly, Emily thought, since her father was a very clever – if amateur – scientist, and Lord Copperbole was just a person who happened to live in a large house full of expensive things. But Mr Black was indeed outfoxed – until Emily slid the abalone-shell catch up, left, down, left and up, mirroring the castellation pattern on the lid until it clicked.
She smiled as the box sprang open.
The secret within was a large furred spider (poisonous, clearly: anyone could identify those red markings), which scuttled out of its prison and on to the floor.
‘Oh!’ said her father.
‘Help!’ yelped Lord Copperbole.
Emily reached under the table, placed the empty bucket over the spider, and stood on top in her black buttoned boots until an eminent zoologist could be located.
The eminent zoologist revisited Mr Black’s house in Richmond three weeks later, accompanied by his weeping wife.
He recounted the tragic tale of his wife’s mother – an elderly seamstress, formerly of the royal household – and her purloined silver spoons. All but one had been mysteriously stolen from her private collection.
‘The police are baffled, sir!’ declared the eminent zoologist. ‘Her eyesight failed many years ago; she only discovered the theft when she came, alas, to sell them. And she is quite distraught, the poor lady, for they were gifts given to her by her daughter, my dear Agatha: one for each Christmas since our marriage. And now there is but one left.’
His weeping wife dabbed at her eyes.
‘I enjoy a mystery, sir,’ said Mr Black with a frown, ‘but I don’t know that we are quite the right people to –’
‘Nonsense!’ declared Lord Copperbole, snatching up a paisley velvet scarf and knotting it with a confident flounce. ‘I half see the solution already! What puzzles me is why the thief would take every other spoon, and leave only one.’
‘Or,’ said Emily, looking up from her book, ‘perhaps there only ever was one spoon, and the daughter gave her the same one every year?’
The weeping wife stopped weeping, and attempted to leap through the window.
Mr Black gripped her by the ankle, hauled her back inside, and Emily sat on her legs until the constable arrived.
The police were not pleased to have been bested.
The newspapers, however, became terribly keen on the exploits of Copperbole & Black.
The Mystery of the Eminent Zoologist’s Wife’s Mother’s Spoons was reported in the Daily Telegraph.
The Case of One-Legged Jack (who was, Emily discovered, actually Two-Legged Jill) was featured on the front page of the Illustrated London News.
After the Adventure of the Magician’s Hatbox, their appeal extended into the society pages.
Lord Copperbole is quite the fashionable gentleman, lately seen sporting a spotted cravat tied in a manner some have dubbed ‘The Detective’s Twist’. Meanwhile, in spite of his unfortunate dusky appearance, Mr Black cuts a more traditional figure, yet his habit of tucking a crocus into his lapel is also gaining regard.
There was no mention of young Miss Emily Black’s contribution.
‘Or the way she wears her stockings all wrinkly about the ankle and her hair in knots,’ Mary the housemaid said, finding Emily gloomily scouring the back pages. ‘Fame’s not all it’s cracked up to be, miss. Fame brings trouble. You’re better off out of it.’
Emily supposed so. Though it seemed to bring a lot of other things too.
Lady Tanqueray’s favourite Parisian tailor made Lord Copperbole a new green brocade coat – ‘At no charge!’ said her father. ‘Can you imagine? And you know Basil; he is fond of a tailor.’
Mr Black found himself invited to the Royal Society – not to join, of course, but to dine, once.
But after the Case of the Lost Prince (who happily really was lost, not dead, and thanks to Emily soon found again, in a coal cellar) mere fame changed into true regard.
Lord Copperbole and Mr Black were summoned to the palace, and each anointed with a new title: DBE, Detective of the British Empire.
There is no crime they cannot solve, the papers declared. LONDON IS SAFE.
Emily felt torn in two. One portion of her blazed with envy. Her second self glowed with secret pride.
Until one day, everything changed.
‘Dearest Emily,’ said her father, ‘we are quite preoccupied, Lord Basil and I, with our work for Her Majesty. I know you have always enjoyed playing our little chaperone, and since your poor mother – rest her soul – was lost to us, I have adored having you by my side. But the scene of the crime is no place for a child.’
‘And the daughter of the Queen’s Detective should be an accomplished young lady,’ added Lord Copperbole, lingering at the looking glass to tweak the pointy collar of his new green coat. ‘A young lady’s most becoming delicate qualities are not to be acquired in a laboratory, my dear.’
‘But, Father,’ protested Emily, ‘we have work to do! Mysteries to solve! Legs to sit on, puzzle boxes to unpuzzle . . .’
You need me, she meant.
And – she had plenty of qualities already. She had learnt to read at four and a half from Darwin’s Origin of Species (she liked the part about tortoises) and ever since had consumed a new book daily, sitting on the kitchen stove to ensure a warm bottom and a ready supply of toast. She knew an Erlenmeyer flask from a retort. She was a bit good at solving crimes, even if no one else noticed.
Mr Black took her hands in his. ‘The former Lord Copperbole – Basil’s father – was good enough to provide me my education. Now my dear friend has offered to provide for you. You are to go to Lord Basil’s house in the country. He has appointed a governess for you. You’ll hardly have time to miss me, I promise!’
Lord Copperbole’s house was in Sussex, surrounded by rolling green hills and a lingering unmentionable smell relating to cows. It was very grand and only slightly damp. Emily had her own room and schoolroom, the run of the library (which was happily stuffed with every modern work relating to science and its principles, and a less interesting selection of magazines about hair), a stable of horses should she wish to ride, a cook to prepare all her meals, and a dog, who she called Wilfrid, because Pashmina was a silly name for a spaniel. None of which helped her heart from squeezing tight in her chest at the thought of her father, hurrying after Lord Weasel, or alone in his laboratory. Mary was bound to have forgotten to fill up the fire bucket again.
Emily resolved to make the best of it.
‘I’m so pleased you’re here,’ she said to the governess, with her very warmest smile. ‘I love learning. Especially chemistry, and botany, and mathematics.’
‘We will study the pianoforte, conversational French and watercolour painting,’ said Miss Hethersmith, who wore a bun, and spectacles, and a mouse-like expression.
‘Of course we will,’ said Emily brightly.
And she proceeded to spend her time at the piano, or the easel, or with her French text on her knee.
‘Oh yes, sir, she has been a most attentive student,’ Miss Hethersmith assured Mr Black, when he and Lord Copperbole visited on Friday evening.
It was not a lie. She had indeed been attentive: to the pamphlet on poisons tucked into her French vocabulary; to the careful detail in her watercolour portrait of the human anatomy and its vulnerabilities to violent attack; to the composition of a baroque piano solo, using a substitution code to spell out I AM BORED AND WOULD LIKE TO DO SOME DETECTING. And, of course, to the newspapers, which had begun to report what they were calling the Case of The Deadly Bedchamber, a mystery so bewildering that there was no question who must be called upon; a case so baffling that the police were ‘probably, like, not even going to bother’, according to a source. Copperbole & Black had been summoned at once, and were now investigating the most mysterious murder of Viscountess Lucetta von Fromentin.
The facts of the case were plain.
The Queen received Viscountess Fromentin, a widow from Austria, for tea on September 12th. The Viscountess had taken a liking to London on a previous visit, and that day had moved into a small but well-appointed house in Marylebone, which had been decorated to her very exacting instructions: carpeting from Constantinople; blown-glass vases from Venice; an extensive range of Austrian cheeses in the larder.
She was noted by her lady’s maid, Bertha, to seem especially pleased by the appearance of her bedroom: a comfortable reading chair, an antique grandfather clock, and all decorated in wallpapers, curtains and bedlinens from Paris, in the latest fashionable green.
(‘I am always rather ahead of the tide,’ said Lord Copperbole, swishing his striped green coat-tails in case they were not noticeable enough.)
After leaving the palace, the Viscountess dined in a hotel in Kensington on soup and stewed guinea fowl, and consumed a single glass of Medoc which she insisted came from a bottle which no one else would drink; the sommelier recalled pouring it away (with a tragic sigh; it was a very good year) in front of her, to be certain.
(‘Most curious,’ noted Mr Black. ‘Though the contents are lost I should very much like the bottle, for testing.’)
Bertha took her a small bottle of soda water as was her habit shortly before ten that night, and noticed the Viscountess looked pale and dishevelled. She later recalled hearing a terrible noise in the night, like the thumping footfalls of some monster. The lady’s maid also swore she had heard the bedroom’s grandfather clock strike thirteen. And then she had gone back to bed, because that was scary.
The following morning, Bertha found herself unable to enter her mistress’s room: the Viscountess had locked the door from inside, and the golden key was still wedged into the keyhole. Her knock received no answer. The windows, their green Parisian curtains still drawn, were bolted shut on the inside.
Fearing her mistress had been taken ill – or worse – the lady’s maid roused the cook, who roused the underbutler, and they hurled themselves at the locked door until it gave way.
What they saw then was quite impossible.
On the bare floorboards beneath the grandfather clock was written, in ominous blood-red letters, the word ‘hare’.
The green linens of the bed had been rent and torn, as if by claws.
The soda bottle was smashed.
And on the bed lay the still, white body of the Viscountess in her Parisian nightgown, quite dead.
(‘A tragedy,’ pronounced Lord Copperbole, wiping his brow with exaggerated sorrow. ‘Such exquisite taste in decor, and she had barely one night in which to appreciate it.’)
All this was recounted to Emily over limande sole au beurre (buttered lemon sole; Emily was learning all her poissons alongside her poisons) at Lord Copperbole’s dining table on Friday.
‘I feel we have barely scratched the surface of this most enticing case, dearest Emily!’ said her father, eagerly squeezing a lemon over his fish. ‘One week into our investigations and so many clues still to unravel! So many theories present themselves . . .’
‘I maintain the Lady’s maid is prime suspect,’ sniffed Lord Copperbole. ‘Sole witness. First to find the body. One should never be too trusting of a servant, Miss Emily,’ he added meaningfully, as a footman held out a platter of potatoes. Somehow the footman did not tip them all upon his head.
‘Ah, now, I have my eye on the sommelier still, sir!’ said Mr Black. ‘The wine was surely poisoned. Although how he would have profited from the murder, I have yet to draw together. And that does not explain the significance of the hare.’
‘Then there is the matter of the torn bedlinen . . .’
‘And the clock which struck thirteen . . .’
Mr Black drank deeply, and smacked his lips. ‘Indeed! It is a remarkable case. One for the history books, if we can but solve it! Tell me, dearest Emily, what do you make of it?’
Emily dropped her fish knife (into all her other knives – there were at least six) in surprise. He was smiling benevolently at her, sincerely curious as to her mind. She felt suddenly aglow. Perhaps, at last, he saw her.
She stole a glance at Lord Copperbole, waiting for his lip to curl ready with dismissal – but he was staring listlessly at his plate, pushing his limande sole about. He had not touched either of the soups, nor the kickshaws of pickled herring (hareng mariné, she remembered) and horrid oysters (les huîtres horrible) he typically pounced upon.
She recognised the expression; her father often sank into similar despondency mid-case. Unless Lord Copperbole was realising he was shortly to be replaced at her father’s side . . . by herself ?
‘Well,’ she said eagerly, pushing her plate away. ‘I think – that is to say, what I make of it is –’
Her voice faded to a croak.
Emily, for the first time in her life, had no idea how the crime had been committed.
Usually she was able to see each clue, each suspect, each moment of importance in her mind as if they were chessmen on a board – and played a swift and confident game until the only piece remaining was the solution. For the first time, for every pawn she took, there was another jostling for attention. For the first time, it seemed the murderer had left too many clues to his identity, not too few. And all while seemingly committing the crime from inside a locked room – and vanishing.
Her shoulders drooped. Perhaps she was not worthy of royal patronage after all.
‘Oh dearest, in my excitement I’ve overtired you with this unpleasantness,’ said her father. ‘We shall not speak of it again.’
Emily opened her mouth to protest, but it stretched itself into an unbidden yawn. She was sent up to bed at once, and the next morning her father and Lord Copperbole returned to London to pursue the case.
‘Today, we shall paint this vase of lovely flowers,’ said Miss Hethersmith.
Emily was so dejected, she obeyed without argument.
The rest of the week was spent pressing flowers, reciting poetry, and improving her deportment.
On Friday evening, the Queen’s Detectives returned to Sussex, aflow with new theories.
At least, her father was.
‘The Viscountess’s Venetian glass was purchased from an antiquities dealer in Amsterdam,’ he explained in an excitable gabble. ‘However! It is a fake. I surmise that the Viscountess had discovered the lie, revealed it in conversation with Her Majesty, and in doing so inadvertently revealed that the royal house too had fallen prey to such fakery. She was murdered to prevent a scandal!’
‘It is a bit more of a scandal now, though, isn’t it?’ said Emily, thinking of the stack of newspaper cuttings in the library, and shifting one chessman across the board.
Mr Black tapped his chin. ‘True. Perhaps instead it was the antiquities dealer himself, fearing exposure, who killed her!’
‘He’d need to enter the room, though,’ said Emily, ‘and come out again, and to come all the way from Amsterdam to do it with no one noticing, and to kill her with a weapon no one has yet found.’
Another pawn was discarded.
Mr Black nodded thoughtfully. ‘Very well. I propose the key clue is the word “hare” and that it is a bookmaker that we must pursue! Perhaps the Viscountess was prone to gambling on hare-coursing, and the murderer wished to . . . er . . . send a clear message to all other hare-gambling enthusiasts who had not paid their debts, by writing the word in blood!’
‘Do you really think so?’ said Emily.
Mr Black sighed. ‘No. The Viscountess had no unpaid debts. And the bookmaker too would need to enter the room and get out again: the police are adamant the bolts inside the windows were quite secure, and the door locked. Then there is the clock striking thirteen. Unless . . . was there a bee, perhaps? A killer bee, which stung the poor woman? Or, or – Basil?’
Emily had almost forgotten Lord Copperbole was present.
He was still moustachioed, and as weaselly as ever – but there was no flounce or flourish to the wilting knot of his cravat. Even his famous coat hung loose from his narrowed shoulders. And the food that whirled around the table – truite aux amandes (trout with almonds) and cucumber salad – seemed to interest him not at all.
‘Lord Copperbole is taking the challenge of this case to heart,’ confided Mr Black to Emily, in a kind low voice. ‘We are working so terribly hard, you see.’
Emily did see.
Unfortunately, the newspapers saw too.
QUEEN’S DETECTIVES OUTFOXED?
NOT SO CLEVER NOW, SIR! COPPERBOLE AND FRIEND REMAIN PERPLEXED
MURDERER ROAMS STREETS AS QUEEN’S TOP ’TEC TURNS PEAKY
Emily redoubled her efforts.
While Miss Hethersmith urged her to paint a bunch of violets, she traced the letters of ‘hare’ in her paintbox in Cadmium Red, over and over.
She spent hours in the library, poring over Lord Copperbole’s books.
She stared out at the green cow-smelling downs, as a spider crawled across the windowpane and began to spin its web.
At that, the final chessman shifted into place.
Now the queen was in play, and the game was on.
‘I shall need to send a telegram to London,’ she announced, in the large empty hall, as Wilfrid skittered across its tiles leaving small muddy prints. ‘Hello?’
But no footman or housemaid appeared.
She hurried to the schoolroom, but Miss Hethersmith was not there. All she found was a copy of the London Times.
COPPERBOLE & BLACK TO FACE THE DEADLY BEDCHAMBER!
These pages have remained firm in the conviction that the Queen’s own Detectives are to be offered every courtesy and respect while they unravel this notorious mystery – now entering its fourth week. It is with much hope that we report that Lord Copperbole – despite his recent ill health – and his dusky companion intend to stay one entire night in the Deadly Bedchamber itself, to expose its secret at last.
Emily’s heart pounded.
It was yesterday’s edition.
The time was now past three. Her father and his colleague were to lock themselves into the Deadly Bedchamber at nine that very evening – and she knew, now, with terrible certainty that if they did, she would never see either one alive again.
Lord Copperbole might be a weasel and a peacock with a curly lip, but she did not wish him dead.
And her father . . .
Her dear papa . . .
There was no time to waste.
Emily dashed to the library to collect one slim volume. Then she made for the stables, rode headlong for Brighton, and boarded a steam train.
She was alone, and rather muddy, and, as the darting eyes and whispers were quick to note, also unfortunately dusky. But she kept her head high and her chin firm, and made sure to find a compartment filled with people reading newspapers, so they would not stare.
After an agonisingly slow journey, the train pulled in at London Victoria.
For a moment she quailed: would a carriage driver take a small muddy brown girl, all alone? But all it took was a confident jingle of her purse, and the driver cracked his whip for Marylebone.
It was not hard to find the correct house. A crowd had gathered, all eager to see the famous detectives. A ring of bobbies was attempting to hold them clear of the front steps, and Emily found herself crushed against warm smelly bodies and hairy coats as she tried to press through the throng.
‘Stand back, ladies and gents, no pushin’!’ bellowed a policeman.
‘How are we to know they’ll stay all night long, eh?’ yelled one voice.
‘And who’s going to solve it if they both pop off ?’ called another, to a ripple of laughter.
‘I will!’ shouted Emily, finding herself pressed against a red pillar box at the edge of the pavement, and scaling it at once. ‘I have solved the mystery of the Deadly Bedchamber!’
She stood awkwardly on the domed top of the pillar box, slipping in her muddy boots, and waved the pamphlet from Lord Copperbole’s library excitedly above her head – but the crowd jeered and booed.
Emily looked imploringly at the line of policemen, but they only had eyes for the crowd.
She tried calling out: ‘Father! Papa, I am here, come out at once!’ but her voice could not carry.
She could not draw him out alone. But she was not alone.
Thinking fast, Emily crouched down on her pillar box perch.
‘I don’t think they’re even in there,’ she said, to no one in particular.
‘Darlin’, I saw them go in myself,’ said a woman hotly.
‘They could’ve slipped out of a back entrance,’ said Emily casually.
‘Ere, that’s a point.’
‘How do we know they’re still in there?’
‘Oi! Show yourselves, Lord La-di-dah and Wotsisface!’
The crowd took up the cry. ‘Show yourselves! Show yourselves!’
To Emily’s joy, a pair of curtains on the first floor were thrown back, and a sash window lifted.
Mr Black leant out, looking rather irritable. ‘Sirs, ladies, it is rather a challenge to solve a locked-room mystery; more so if you will not allow us to keep it locked.’
‘Papa! Father, over here! It’s Emily, I’m here!’
This time Emily’s voice was heard. Mr Black almost fell out of the window in surprise at finding his daughter, in London, alone, standing on a postbox, but she shook off all his demands for an explanation.
‘No time, Papa! You must get out of there at once, both of you! The room is deadly!’
‘We know that, dearest,’ said her father, gently.
‘No – the room itself is deadly.’ She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. ‘Father – Lord Copperbole has been unwell. Has he taken a turn for the worse since entering the room?’
Mr Black looked furtive, as a gaspy choking sound issued from behind him. ‘Er. Possibly?’
‘I know why. And it is what killed the Viscountess Fromentin!’
The crowd, which had fallen silent, began to mutter.
Emily brandished the pamphlet triumphantly above her head, almost slipping from her perch.
‘Why are you waving a fashion catalogue from Paris about, dearest?’
‘Paris Green!’ she called back. ‘The Viscountess was not murdered by a vanishing monster, or an invisible bee. She was poisoned.’
‘By the wine, I knew it!’ yelled someone.
‘Nah, son, it was that guinea fowl.’
Emily shook her head. ‘No! What poisoned her was the wallpaper, the curtains, her bedlinens – all handmade in Paris, to the popular shade, exactly like Lord Copperbole’s coat. Paris Green. Also known as copper acetoarsenite.’
‘Eh?’ said the crowd.
‘But . . . that’s toxic . . .’ said her father, his face falling as he glanced at the curtain by his side.
‘Oooh,’ said the crowd.
‘Ordinary exposure will result in a slower reaction,’ Emily continued. ‘That’s why Lord Copperbole has been unwell! His coat has been very slowly poisoning him. But – the room, the furnishings: I think they must have been super-impregnated with the compound. Sleeping in that room, in a bed, coated in the same poison – that takes only one night to kill.’
There was stillness for a moment.
‘Wait. What about the torn bedlinen?’
‘It was a new bed, new linens. I believe the sheets were torn before she slept, to give the impression of an assailant in the room. The maid either did not notice when she made up the bed, or feared blame if it were mentioned.’
The crowd grumbled.
‘Why did the clock strike thirteen?’
‘I believe the mechanism was tampered with, to add confusion.’
‘What about the wine that got poured away?’
‘Oh! That was just wine. And a viscountess being mean.’
‘All right, all right, I buy it all so far,’ yelled one of the policemen. ‘But who or what is that hare all about?’
Emily’s throat was beginning to hurt from shouting, and her boots really were slippery, but to be called upon by an officer of the law urged her on to reveal her proudest deduction.
‘That,’ she said loudly, ‘holds the vital clue to why this crime occurred in this way. After all, if you want to kill a viscountess, there are quicker ways than selling her curtains super-impregnated with poison. The word “hare” does not mean hare as in furry rabbity creature, but the beginning of another word. Hareng. It is the French word for “herring”, written in blood. A red herring. I think it was written on the floorboards before the Viscountess moved into the room, and covered up with a rug. The missing letters were wiped away by footfalls – or perhaps missed out all along, to prolong the mystery. For this is why the Viscountess died: to preoccupy the Queen’s Detectives with an impossible case. To give them too many clues to solve. To humiliate them with failure – and to draw them into the same trap. The Deadly Room – which is killing them both while I’m talking! Father? Papa? Please, please come down?’
The crowd’s faces turned up to the window, to the forgotten Mr Black above.
Emily met his bright eyes, and saw her father’s chest swell with pride at last.
‘Oh! Yes, at once,’ he said, coming back to himself. ‘I mean to say – oh – Lord Copperbole will need a doctor! And no one is to come into this room!’
Lord Basil Copperbole made a full recovery, and acquired a new coat (demure grey, though the lining was pink and yellow stripes) in time to accompany Miss Emily Black and her father to the palace, where she received a gallantry award for services in the prevention of crime.
‘Perhaps some time back in the country, until all this fuss has died down, hmm?’ said Mr Black, peering anxiously from their carriage as they drew up to the old Richmond house and laboratory, to find the usual crowd gathered to catch a glimpse of the Queen’s Detectives and their young protégée.
‘A little Sussex air . . . some shopping, of course,’ said Lord Copperbole, clapping his hands.
‘Indeed, sir, indeed!’ said Mr Black.
‘Aren’t we going to finish the case first?’ asked Emily.
‘But you solved it, dearest Emily!’ said her father, squeezing her hands. ‘All those clues . . . solved the lot. Even the ones that weren’t really clues.’
‘Yes. Very clever,’ said Lord Copperbole, his cheek twitching with the effort.
‘Um. Well, we know how the Viscountess died, Papa. But we haven’t caught who arranged for her to furnish her home with super-impregnated poisonous bedlinen then laid a false trail of clues, all in order to entrap the two of you in the same room and kill you,’ said Emily, quite slowly, to be sure it went in.
‘Oh. Oh dear,’ said her father.
‘Good heavens,’ said Lord Copperbole. ‘And now we have no clues to go on at all!’
‘Apart from the tailor you visited in Paris who made you your coat,’ said Emily. ‘And whoever recommended him.’
She looked Lord Copperbole in the eye.
Lord Copperbole clutched his lace handkerchief to his lips. ‘But – you can’t be suggesting . . .’
‘She did give you a puzzlebox containing a poisonous tarantula. And I think a cursed scarab beetle before that. I don’t think she intended for it all to help you become a famous detective. Is it possible she doesn’t like you very much?’
Lord Copperbole’s moustache wilted.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Emily. ‘Mary knows Lady Tanqueray’s second footman. If she’s fled the country, he’ll know where her cases have been sent. Shall we go?’
Her father smiled at her with great warmth.
‘My dearest Emily,’ he said. ‘You are becoming quite the detective!’
