Читать книгу The Curse of the Ancient Mask - Simon Cheshire - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

I HAD TO ADMIT, I wasn’t feeling as confident as I sounded. Here was a genuine, serious mystery and, at first sight, a pretty baffling one. I had absolutely no firm clues, ideas or theories!

My first move might have been to check out the lab. But I decided it wasn’t necessary. If all those security measures hadn’t found the leak, then logically the leak was probably coming from somewhere else. Besides, I somehow doubted they’d let kids into that lab!

So I went to Jasmine’s house. Or rather, I got Jasmine to invite me to her house after school. Every day.

Naturally, Jasmine’s parents had no idea that Saxby Smart, schoolboy detective, was on the case. They assumed Jasmine had got a new best friend. Or else that I just kept following her home and had nowhere else to go after half past three in the afternoon.

As I mentioned, Jasmine was very tall, and the Winchesters, when they were all together, were like a small herd of giraffes. Jasmine’s mum was exactly like Jasmine, but even taller. Her dad was so long and thin he was like one of those distorting mirrors come to life.

Their house was quite posh. My house has a flat roof and is shaped like a shoe box sat on one end. The Winchesters’ house is all chimney stacks, and old-fashioned windows and interesting little bits of architecture.

‘Nice to meet you, Saxby,’ said Mrs Winchester. ‘Excuse me, I’m just finishing something in the garden.’ She lolloped away down the hall on those giraffey legs of hers. I thought she’d be in the garden pruning roses or something, but then loud clanks, bangs and sawing noises suddenly started up outside.

‘She’s working on a motorbike,’ explained Jasmine.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I wondered why she was covered in oil.’

‘Yup. It’s not violent gardening, it’s bike maintenance,’ said Jasmine, smiling. ‘All the local bikers come to her to get their machines fixed. She can strip the engine of a Jujitzu T60 in twenty minutes.’

‘Very impressive,’ I agreed quietly, nodding wisely.

Jasmine showed me around the house. Nothing in particular caught my eye, clue-wise, but because Jasmine had said that her dad worked from home sometimes, a couple of questions occurred to me.

‘You haven’t had a break-in or anything recently?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Jasmine. ‘Mum put a high-tech alarm system in a couple of years ago.’

‘And have there been any workmen visiting? No, I guess your mum does all that too?’

‘Right.’

Another possibility had occurred to me, but Jasmine’s answers had ruled it out. It had crossed my mind that someone from PosiSpark had managed to sneak into the house, but that now seemed unlikely.

The last stop on the tour was Mr Winchester’s study. I stepped in carefully, making sure I didn’t disturb so much as a paper clip. It was a small room, with stripy wallpaper and a plain, brownish carpet. It contained:

• One large bookcase, overflowing with books.

• One set of shelves, displaying Mr Winchester’s collection of knick-knacks from around the world (more on these in a minute!).

• One small desk, with drawers.

• One small table, holding: one coffee maker, one set of five mugs, one stack of filter papers resting on top of the coffee maker.

• One comfy office chair, behind the desk.

• Four more chairs, stacked.

Something bothered me.

‘Does your dad drink a lot of coffee?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Jasmine, puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘And when he works from home, he works alone?’

‘Well, yes, that’s why he’s got this study,’ said Jasmine. ‘Nobody ever comes in here, apart from him, of course.’

Suddenly, looking at the contents of the room, I made a very important discovery. From the items in the study, I could tell that Jasmine was wrong.

There was evidence here that Mr Winchester used this room as more than a private study. Not all the time, but now and again. Can you work out what he used it for?

Mr Winchester held meetings in this study. There’s a coffee maker (odd in a study, for someone who doesn’t drink it much), a set of mugs and extra chairs. Why would he keep these things in there unless they were used? Not used every day, because he probably wouldn’t have left papers stacked on top of the coffee maker if it was used all the time, would he? And the chairs wouldn’t be stacked, either.

‘Your dad holds meetings in here,’ I said. ‘People come here regularly.’

‘I never knew that,’ said Jasmine. ‘When does this happen?’

‘During the school day, I presume,’ I said. ‘This makes a big difference. This establishes a link between people outside this house, and that!’

I pointed to the shelves above the desk. The antique mask sat among Mr Winchester’s collection of items gathered on his travels.

There was a little model of the Eiffel Tower, a snow globe from New York, and a small brass plate with a curly pattern stamped into it. (‘Indian?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ said Jasmine, ‘he got it in Delhi.’) The mask was propped between a carved figurine of an Ancient Egyptian god and an old china dolphin holding up a little sign which said Souvenir of Bournemouth.

Jasmine took the mask down from the shelf, and we took it into the living room to get a better look at it. She was allowed to handle the collection, she explained, as long as she was careful.

The mask was rather beautiful. I turned it over in my hands – it was very heavy. It was carved from a single piece of wood, with holes for the eyes and a kind of grille effect over the mouth. The front was painted to give it a fierce-looking face, and painted on to the back, in red, were several vertical lines of oriental writing.

‘That’s the inscription that sets out the curse,’ said Jasmine. ‘I expect a brilliant detective like you can read exactly what it says.’

I blushed. ‘Umm . . . actually, no. Not a word. But I know someone who’ll be able to translate it.’

I plucked my phone from my pocket, took a few pictures of the mask – front, back, side view and so on – and sent them to my friend Izzy.

‘Aarrrghhhhh!’

That was the wailing sound made by Jasmine’s dad, when he walked into the living room and spotted the mask. His face went almost the same shade of grey as the smart suit he was wearing, and his tie seemed to wriggle about with shock. He picked the mask up with the very edges of the fingernails of his thumbs and forefingers, and held it out at arm’s length as if it was a bomb.

‘Let’s put it back, shall we?’ he said, shuddering. ‘We don’t want to upset it!’

‘Oh, Daaaad!’ cried Jasmine.

Mr Winchester wasn’t listening. He was busy dabbing the sweat off his forehead with the end of his tie. ‘The curse is bad enough as it is. We mustn’t do anything to make it worse!’

‘Mr Winchester?’ I said politely. He paused in the doorway, in mid-step.

‘Yes?’ he said quietly, as if a raised voice might make the mask explode.

‘How often do you hold meetings in your study?’

‘Oh, about once a month,’ whispered Jasmine’s dad. He turned to tiptoe away, then suddenly stopped and looked at me. ‘How do you know about my meetings?’

I felt like saying ‘I know eeeeverything’, all boggle-eyed, and waving my arms about spookily. But it would only have frightened him.

‘I would guess you hold these meetings with a few people from your laboratory? From Microspek Electronics?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Winchester. ‘But that’s a secret! I mean, what we talk about is a secret. It’s not a secret that we have meetings. Excuse me, I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment.’

He hurried away to put the mask back in its place.

‘Does all of this tell you anything else?’ said Jasmine. ‘Apart from the fact that my dad’s normal intelligence seems to have been drained away since this curse business started.’

‘It’s too early to say,’ I admitted.

Over the next few afternoons, I made careful notes about whatever I saw at the Winchesters’ house. A lot of it turned out to be irrelevant to the case, so I won’t write it all down here. But I filled several pages with information about Mr Winchester’s movements between the hours of teatime and seven p.m., about Mrs Winchester’s motorcycle repair activities, and about the workings of the Jujitzu T60 she was fixing that week.

I lurked in a few too many dark corners, I’m afraid. More than once, I made Mr Winchester jump out of his skin and scream when he caught sight of me lurking. But once I’d explained, using my pre-prepared cover story (‘Jasmine and I are playing Hide and Seek, and I’m hiding’), and once he’d calmed down, he was OK about it.

Soon, I’d got as much information as I could from Jasmine’s house. It was time to investigate further!