Читать книгу The Agatha Oddly Casebook Collection: The Secret Key, Murder at the Museum and The Silver Serpent - Lena Jones - Страница 17

I sit in my room for a long time, waiting until Dad thinks I’m asleep. All the while, I’m thinking about my next move, Changing Channel over and over again, going back to the places I’ve been in the last forty-eight hours.

I’m in the hospital room, looking down at the professor’s red-stained shoes …

I’m outside the RGS, with a rag clamped over my mouth …

I’m in the park, watching in slo-mo as the motorbike roars towards me …

Two things keep bothering me – the professor’s link to the crisis, and my conversation with Brianna in the toilets. Since the professor is unwilling to be questioned, I might as well go and see Brianna.

Brianna Pike – heir to the Pike rubber glove fortune – lives in a townhouse on Cadogan Place. Brianna never speaks about her father’s rubber glove business of course – that would be too embarrassing for a pupil at St Regis. The house is known among the older students at St Regis as the ‘Party Palace’, though obviously I’ve never been invited. Her big brother – a former St Regis pupil – is famous for his lavish lifestyle.

When I’m sure Dad will believe I’m asleep, I get dressed again. I get into my cut-off denim shorts and put on a red stripey vest top and my favourite blue creeper shoes. I pin my hair up and add a short ginger wig for disguise. If the mysterious biker is still around, I’d rather not look like myself. I slip my notebook and pen into my pocket. Then I open the skylight, get up on my chair and climb on to the roof. I move to where the tree reaches its branch and start climbing down. At the bottom, I dust myself off and check for onlookers, before running out through the back gate and into the park.

I run as much of the way as I can, checking around me at every corner. I try not to allow my imagination to roam into the realms of fear – bogeymen are for children, I tell myself. The light is fading when I reach Brianna’s house, but at this time of the year it never gets totally dark – even in the middle of the night the sun barely dips under the horizon. The sky is full of pink-and-gold clouds, and you could have been forgiven for thinking that all is well – that this is a peaceful midsummer’s night.

In the pit of my belly there is a churning unease – a feeling that, at any moment, a figure might drag me into the shadows. On the other side of the square is the Cadogan Hotel, where Oscar Wilde was arrested and dragged off to prison. For all the grandeur of the buildings, this seems a gloomy, haunted part of the city.

I decide to watch the house for a few minutes before risking ringing the doorbell. I lean against the railings a little further down the street. The plants here are suffering from the water shortage. I take my notebook and pen from my pocket. A light comes on and off again in Brianna’s house, but that’s about it. If Brianna is up to anything shady, she’s being discreet. A motorbike drives down the street and stops a few houses past Brianna’s.

I freeze.

I watch as a man gets off the bike and walks up her steps. He’s still wearing his helmet, and is carrying something in front of him that I can’t see. I check my watch – gone ten o’clock. The man glances round, then tries the door handle. Finding it unlocked, he goes in.

I stand for a moment, unresolved. Something is wrong. My heart is beating so quickly as I start to walk towards the house. Then my brain catches up. I have to hurry – Brianna might be in danger. I run along the street, up to the door, which is still ajar. As I run, the man emerges at the door, sprints the short distance to the bike, and rides off quickly.

‘Brianna?’ I whisper.

I run up to the front door and try the handle, finding it still unlocked. I push the door back to reveal a checkerboard floor in black and white marble and a well-lit corridor. I step in and make my way down the hallway. Suddenly, I wish I’d told Liam where I’m going.

‘Brianna?’ I try again.

There is a tiny muffled sound. My heart is racing. I walk a little way further down the hall, to a door that is slightly ajar. There is a light on in the room. I fling the door open to reveal …

Brianna, looking like a startled deer, with a slice of pepperoni pizza in her mouth. She gulps the pizza down, not taking her eyes off me for a second.

‘Agatha, is that you under that wig? What the heck? You scared the bejeezus out of me!’

‘Oh, I’m …’ I look round, as though the explanation is behind me somewhere. ‘There was a man … he let himself in.’

Brianna sighs, though I can’t tell if it’s relief or anger. We’re in a book-lined study, with leather armchairs and a huge fireplace. Brianna is sitting in a chair.

‘That was the pizza guy.’ She points to the open box on her lap. ‘Who did you think it was? A trained assassin?’

‘But he just let himself in!’

‘Yeah, I always leave the door unlocked for him.’

‘But anyone could just walk in here.’

She grins. ‘And yet, you’re the first person who actually has, Agatha.’

‘You invited me, remember?’

‘Well, thanks for coming.’ She tucks her sleek hair behind one ear, trying to regain some lost dignity. Her composure is back. She wears the same, self-confident smile that she used to have. For a moment, I’m sure she’s going to kick me out of her house, the same way she would kick me out of the classroom if the CCs wanted it to themselves.

‘Mummy and Daddy are in Switzerland, but my brother should have been back by now – he must have met up with one of his girlfriends.’

‘How many does he have?’

She shrugs. ‘I’ve lost count. They all seem like the same person to me.’

Whereas you seem like several different people to me, I think to myself.

‘Want a drink?’ She walks to a colossal globe, which stands on one side of the fireplace, and pushes a hidden catch. The Northern Hemisphere swings up to reveal a cocktail cabinet.

‘Not for me, thanks.’

She laughs. ‘It’s not alcohol, dummy! Look.’ She holds up a bottle of elderflower cordial and pours a glass.

I decide to try the direct approach. ‘What were you going to tell me?’

She stands still for a second, as if deliberating something. Then says, ‘You like investigating, don’t you, Agatha?’

The question isn’t the usual accusation – that I’m a snooper, a nosy parker, so I nod. ‘Yes.’

‘Well … I’ve never told anyone this … but well, so do I.’

‘You?’ I splutter. ‘YOU like investigating?’

‘Does it seem so unbelievable?’ She grins – an expression I’ve never seen on her face before. Then she looks bashful.

I don’t know what to say. ‘Well …’

‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ She makes for the bookcase at the back of the study, still cradling the tumbler of elderflower. The shelves look like all the others with a light switch next to them. Brianna flips up the casing of the light switch to reveal a security keypad, into which she punches a number. The bookcase clicks and swings smoothly back to reveal a hidden room. She turns to look at me out of the corner of her eye, as if to say, ‘Cool, huh?’ but I don’t comment.

I hesitate for a moment. Do I really want to go into a secret room with a girl I don’t trust – a girl who I’m not sure I even really like?

‘Come on,’ she says. She catches my expression. ‘I promise not to feed you to the alligators I keep in the basement.’

I can’t help smiling at that, although nothing about this weird encounter would surprise me. I follow her through the door and she turns the lights on. The room is small, barely more than a cupboard, but it has a desk and lots of shelves. The shelves are crammed with technology – gadgets from microscopes to battery-powered drones. There’s stuff that even I don’t recognise.

‘Wow,’ I say. I’ve always thought that Brianna was more interested in impressing boys than anything else. I didn’t expect her to have a secret lair. Well, not this kind of secret lair anyway. Perhaps something more with mood lighting and a minibar.

‘Yeah, I kinda cleared out the spy gadget shop in Covent Garden.’ She turns to me. ‘So what do you think?’

I look around, trying to decide what I think.

‘What are these?’ I ask, pointing out what looks like the sort of thing a tree surgeon or gardener would wear to protect his eyes.

‘They’re night-vision goggles,’ Brianna answers me.

‘And this?’

‘A long-range listening device. Cool, huh?’

I look sideways at Brianna. Am I hearing things right?

‘And is that actual luminol?’ I ask, pointing to a spray bottle. Police use luminol to detect where blood has been cleaned up in a room – it glows bright blue where the blood had been, revealing the gruesome spatters. I’ve wanted to get my hands on some for ages.

‘Sure.’ Brianna grins lopsidedly. ‘Ooh, and check out this robotic camera!’ She holds it out proudly.

‘This is all amazing.’ I choose my words carefully.

‘Thanks,’ she says, clearly aware of what I’m not saying, ‘but I know what you’re thinking.’

‘You do?’

‘You’re wondering why I have all this stuff when at school I’m such an airhead.’

‘I guess, yeah.’ I look around the room. ‘I can’t quite believe this is you, Brianna.’

She nods sadly – I’m confirming what she already knows.

‘I’m not like you, Agatha. I care what other people think.’

‘Well, you’re more like me than I’d ever have guessed,’ I say hesitantly.

‘That’s not what I mean.’ Brianna shrugs. ‘You’re so … good at being yourself. You don’t seem to care if people like you or not, but I’m not like that, Agatha. I just want to fit in … I’ve never even used any of this stuff before.’

‘What, you’ve never tried it out?’

‘Only at home – not to actually solve a crime or catch a criminal. I’ve never had a real adventure.’

She says the word ‘adventure’ with a kind of longing that I know only too well. Suddenly I like Brianna Pike a whole lot more than I thought.

‘Fitting in is one thing.’ I incline my head. ‘It doesn’t mean you have to turn yourself into a Carbon Copy.’ I catch my tongue, realising I’ve used the secret name for the CCs. For a moment, I’m scared of her reaction. Then Brianna laughs.

‘Is that what people call us? It’s pretty good, actually.’

I breathe a sigh of relief.

‘They’re not so bad, you know, Sarah and Ruth,’ she says slowly, as though not quite believing her own words. ‘They just wouldn’t understand any of this.’

‘Well, I know this won’t change anything at school,’ I say, ‘but it’s good to know that there’s a like mind at St Regis.’

She shrugs the compliment off. I’m prepared to like her, but there’s still one question that I need an answer to.

‘Brianna – what were you doing outside the hospital last night?’

She looks guilty.

‘Honestly? You really want to know? I, uh … I was following you.’

‘Following me?’ And there I was thinking she might have had something more to do with it than I’d thought.

Brianna holds up her hands defensively. ‘Yeah, but not, like, in a bad way! It’s just … well, I heard you talking to Liam in class about what happened in the park, to that old lady …’

I nodded. ‘I guessed you must have heard that.’

‘And I dunno, I just felt like you were on to something – it seemed suspicious.’

I sigh. ‘So why didn’t you just say something?’

‘Because …’ She starts, then shrugs and suddenly I understand – it wouldn’t be easy for one of the CCs to ask to join Agatha Oddlow’s geeky detective agency.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Can you forgive me?’ She holds her hand out awkwardly. After a second I take it.

‘Forgiven. Just stay away from my house with those night-vision goggles, OK?’

‘You have my promise.’ She laughs, crossing her heart. In spite of everything, I have to say that I trust her.

‘Well.’ I head towards the door. ‘I’d better get home then, before my dad realises I’m gone.’

‘I’ll get you a cab.’

A cab?

Brianna not only calls a cab, she pays the driver in advance, refusing to listen to my objections.

‘Drive safely,’ she tells him.

‘Will you be OK?’ I ask her, remembering what had been going on between her and Sarah Rathbone.

‘Me?’ She tosses her blonde hair back with customary confidence. ‘I’ll be fine. Stay safe.’

‘Stay safe, yourself.’

Grinning, she waves from the pavement as the taxi driver speeds off.

I sit in the back of the cab, mulling over the night’s events. My visit has raised far more questions than it answered, but I’m also grinning as I cross the lawns. I might just be one step closer to having another friend.

As I get close to the house, I see a small yellow ribbon sticking out of a brick in the wall – Liam and my sign to each other.

‘Yes!’ I mutter under my breath. I crouch down and pull – the mortar there has come loose, and the brick comes away in my hand. In the darkness, you can’t see anything in the hole, but when I pull the ribbon, there’s a folded piece of paper attached. We came up with this hiding place for Liam to leave messages for me if I’m not at home and I have my phone switched off, as I usually do. I’m certain that the message must be something to do with Professor D’Oliveira’s tattoo. I could read the message here, but I don’t want to be seen and give away the location of our hiding place. So, I tuck the message into my pocket and replace the brick.

Back in my room, I take Liam’s folded message out of my pocket and read –

I shake my head, not understanding why the symbol might be so hard for Liam to find. I feel sure I’ve seen it before – I felt it the moment I spotted it on the professor’s wrist. I search my memory, usually so reliable, but it’s like grasping in the dark – one minute I’m groping around and think I have something, and the next it’s gone in a whisper.

I change into my pyjamas, lie down on the bed on top of my duvet, and try to cool myself using a paper fan. I should be exhausted. Instead, I’m buzzing with thoughts – the little grey cells are hard at work, but making little progress.

I stare up at the deep-pink night clouds through my skylight and go over everything that has happened in the past couple of days. I’ve gone from Agatha the Invisible to somebody worth threatening. That means I’ve become a menace to someone in my own right. But who? Part of me relishes the idea that there is someone – perhaps more than one person – who believes I have the power to make a difference, to foil their plot or blow their cover, and part of me is just a little scared.

Quickly, I write out the facts across two pages of my notebook, drawing arrows where I suspect events are linked. There’s the red slime, my assailant outside the RGS. Then there’s Professor D’Oliveira – an old woman with a strange tattoo – and her hit-and-run …

Suddenly I jump, as a knock sounds on the front door downstairs. I glance at the clock; it’s almost eleven at night. Who would come this late? I hear Dad open the door and greet the visitor. So he must have been expecting them. I peer out from between my curtains, but catch only a glimpse of the person’s head as they walk in. I feel nervous. After my attack outside the RGS, I’m wary about anyone visiting Dad – how do I know they are who they say they are?

I wait until I hear the door close and two pairs of feet make their way along the hall to the kitchen. Then I pull on my slippers to muffle my footsteps and creep downstairs. Oliver runs to me with a loud mewl halfway down. I freeze, convinced he has blown my cover. But there’s no break in the conversation drifting up from downstairs. The staircase is enclosed, with a wall either side, and a door at the bottom that leads out to the hall. I open this door slightly, so I can eavesdrop, then scoop Oliver up.

We sit together, near the foot of the stairs, me trying to hear the conversation above Oliver’s loud purring as he slumps in feline bliss on my lap.

I can only make out one side of the conversation. Dad’s voice is soft and doesn’t carry as well as the stranger’s, which is loud and booming. It’s a voice that is used to being listened to. There’s no doubt that they’re discussing the algae – the man’s speech is punctuated with words like ‘regeneration’, ‘abnormal growth rate’ and ‘unstable gas build-up’.

Despite his apparent knowledge, he sounds like a man who works in the City, buying and selling shares, rather than a research scientist. Research scientists tend to be quiet types, with a distracted air, but this man has a confidence that makes me sure, without seeing him, that he is dressed in a sharp suit.

I hear Dad say, ‘So what’s the verdict? How do we beat it, Mr, er … Davenport?’

‘Well, I think you have the right idea with your lab, Rufe!’

‘Nobody calls Dad “Rufe”,’ I whisper to Oliver. He stands on my lap and blows his salmony breath into my face, kneading my thighs with his sharp claws.

The man, Davenport, goes on – ‘I’m sure you’ll get somewhere if you keep selectively starving the samples.’

‘It would help if I knew what to starve them of,’ Dad points out.

Davenport laughs. ‘Good point, old boy, good point!’

I want to go and get a better look at this man. But, as I start to move, I hear Dad and the visitor come back out into the hall. I freeze on the bottom step, holding my breath and hope they won’t spot me through the crack in the door.

I breathe out as Dad’s voice sounds out at the front door, saying goodbye. Before he shuts the door, I hear him call out a greeting to JP and JP says hello in return. What is he doing outside our house so late at night, instead of sitting safely under the weeping tree?

My brain is racing. Images flash through my head as I try to process all the information. I’m suspecting everyone around me. The key’s outline keeps coming back to me – the key tattoo on the professor’s arm. There’s something about that key … If I could only just remember … As I stand there deep in thought, I hear Dad turn the key in the front door, and know I need to move.

Oliver has given up hope of using me as his armchair, and is curled up on the landing.

I bend down to stroke him and an image flashes into my head.

It’s just a snapshot, but I feel sure I’ve touched on it.

Quickly, I think hard so that the image is beamed on to the landing wall by an old-fashioned film projector. A key sketched in pencil I press the rewind lever on the projector. With a click and a whirr, the film reels backwards. Images dance on the wall, too fast to see. I press the forward lever and the film plays again – a hand reaching up to a bookshelf my own hand

Suddenly, the film jams in the projector and, a second later, catches fire against the hot bulb. There is no more – the memory is gone.

But it doesn’t matter – I know where I need to look.

I run up the stairs and go to the bookcase in my room. I scan the titles. There it is – an old copy of Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Affair at Styles. Mum’s book. I draw the novel from the shelf with shaking hands, and open the back cover. There it is – on the discoloured end page, a small sketch of the key. It’s a perfect match with the professor’s tattoo. Below the drawing of the key is a string of rough lines that look, at first glance, like something written in Viking runes …

IVIVXIIVIIIXIIIVIIIXIIVII

I’m breathless. Whatever is going on, Mum must have been involved, and she has left a message for me to find. I have seen this code in the back of the book before, when I was younger, but never thought much of it. The picture of the key was meaningless, just a doodle. The code seemed to mean nothing, but now I put all my effort into solving it. How could I have let a message from Mum sit on my shelf all these years?

I grab my notebook and pen from by the bed and sit down on the rug.

The first thing I note is that the string of Is, Vs and Xs can be broken down into Roman numerals –

IV IV XII V III X II IV III X II VII

Where to split some of the numbers is guesswork – the V and the III (five and three) could actually have been VIII (eight). But if I do it this way, there are twelve numbers, or three groups of four, which seems neat –

(IV IV XII V) + (III X II IV) + (III X II VII)

I wrack my brain – what kind of code would use sets of four? I’m blank for a second, but then it hits me – the object I’m holding is a book! The groups of four numbers could be references to chapters, pages, lines and words. And from words, you could make a message.

Quickly, I flip to the fourth chapter, then the fourth page of the chapter, then run my finger down to the twelfth line, and along to the fifth word.

‘… the symptoms do not develop until early the next morning!’

The next two references share a page, I realise, turning to the tenth page of chapter three. I run my finger along the second line, and discover the other two words in the same sentence …

‘I spent it in ransacking the library until I discovered a medical book, which gave me a description of strychnine poisoning.’

That’s it, I have no more. The message is – ‘Develop In Library’. I stare at it for a moment, my heart sinking. The message seems like nonsense. For a second I had a glimmer of hope. Not just that the puzzle was about to be solved, but that, after all these years, I was going to get one last message from Mum.

I slump back, my mind unfocused, letting disappointment flood in. Then, like a voice at the back of my head that won’t shut up, the phrase keeps repeating itself to me.

Develop in library …

Develop in library …

Develop in library …

I look up to a spot on one of the highest shelves. The books up there have spent many years unread – they are of no interest to me. There are catalogues of other books, or treatises on ‘information management’, whatever that is. Then I see it – right there, in the middle of the shelf, sits one of Mum’s old reference books – Developments in Librarianship, Vol. 18.

Trembling slightly, I pull a chair over to the shelf, get up, and take down the heavy brown book. My hand pauses for a second over the cover, almost not wanting to open it, scared of finding nothing inside. Surely that is what awaits me – another disappointment. Well, better to get it over and done with.

I open the book.

A small slip of paper – an old bookmark – falls out.

For a moment, I stop breathing altogether. There, in the middle of the book, is no page at all. Someone has hollowed out the book with a knife, making a small, rectangular compartment. And there, gleaming darkly in the light, is a key. A perfect physical copy of the drawing – the black lines translated into wrought iron.

I take the key from the book. It is cold, heavy and real. It had belonged to my mother and, after many years, she has given it to me. I have no idea where it came from, or what it is supposed to open. But it is mine.

I take the key and get into bed, exhausted now.

I gaze at the puzzle one more time before switching off the lamp.

Despite the baking heat in my little attic room, I fall asleep in a matter of seconds, the strange key grasped in my hand.