The Guggenheim Mystery

by Robin Stevens

  ‘You have paintings from the Guggenheim on your walls!’ I said to Sandra.

  ‘Of course I do. Those are prints,’ said Sandra. ‘I could never afford original paintings, so I collect these instead. They’re not the same as paintings.’

  I went up to one of the prints, the picture of the green woman floating on a red background, and squinted my eyes at it. Close up, the colours looked flat. When I moved my head, I could not see brush strokes. I touched it, and felt glossy paper. So it was just a photograph of a painting, not the painting itself. I looked around at Sandra’s walls.

  ‘You do not have any Kandinskys,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Sandra. ‘I told you, I don’t like them. Seurat and Chagall are more my taste.’

  My taste is another way of saying my preference. None of the prints on Sandra’s wall looked like In the Black Square at all – so she had been telling the truth yesterday. Sandra liked art, but she didn’t like Kandinsky. Did this mean that she was less likely to have stolen the painting, because she wouldn’t want to keep it for herself?

  ‘How many copies of paintings are there?’ I said to Sandra.

  ‘In the world?’ asked Sandra, and her eyebrows went up. ‘Millions, I should think. These are only worth a few dollars each.’

  So value was like an equation. If there is one of something, it is worth millions of pounds. If there are millions of something, each one is worth two dollars, which is equal to one pound. So Sandra owned – I looked around the room – approximately twenty dollars’ worth of art.

  ‘Salim,’ I said, ‘you should sell your photos. If you only printed one copy of each one, you’d make lots of money.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, Ted,’ said Salim. He turned away from me.

  ‘Leave it, Ted,’ said Kat to me. I did not understand what I had done. I’d wanted to cheer up Salim, but it hadn’t worked.

  Sandra was nice to us. She let us watch her TV (although she made us watch a channel that I was not interested in), and she kept bringing Salim herbal teas, which he didn’t drink. Then she cooked dinner for us, which was steamed fish and steamed vegetables. This proved that she was not used to having children in her apartment. Kat made faces and moved her plate aside. Salim ate without looking at his fork. I created a circuit on my plate, broccoli touching courgette touching carrot touching limp white fish.

  ‘Sandra,’ said Kat. ‘Have you heard from Auntie Glo? Is she all right?’

  ‘I don’t know anything more than you do,’ said Sandra. ‘It’s a terrible thing. In all of my years as a gallery assistant, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s shocking.’

  ‘Mum didn’t do it!’ said Salim. This was the first thing he had said for thirty-seven minutes.

  ‘Of course, that’s what we all hope the police will decide,’ said Sandra.

  ‘But someone used her credit card!’ I said. ‘They stole it on Monday. She’s being framed. How will the police find that out?’

  Kat kicked me under the table. I don’t know why – I was telling the truth. I wanted Sandra to say the same thing to the police so they would let Aunt Gloria go.

  ‘I was there on Monday, Ted,’ said Sandra. ‘I was in and out all day, but I didn’t see anyone steal anything from Gloria’s bag. You need to leave the detecting to the police.’

  No one spoke again for the rest of the meal. After that it was time for bed. Salim and I were going to be in Sandra’s guest bedroom. Kat was going to sleep on the floor in Sandra’s room. Kat opened her mouth to argue, but Sandra said, ‘That’s what’s happening, Katherine, like it or not,’ and that was that. Kat scowled, and went stomping off to the bathroom to change. She didn’t even point out to Sandra that Kat is short for Katrina, not Katherine. I thought that if she could shut Kat up, Sandra must be good at telling people what to do.

  I put on the pyjamas that had been brought from Aunt Gloria’s flat, and then stood outside the bathroom. Everything felt wrong to me.

  ‘Ted!’ said Sandra, folding her arms. ‘Move it!’

  I moved it. I went rushing into the bathroom and locked the door. Then I climbed into the bathtub and pressed my face into the tiled corner, where the two walls met. I breathed in and out four times and then I thumped the wall. Sandra shouted something and knocked on the outside of the bathroom door, so I timed my thumps to hers.

  After a while her thumping stopped. I thumped twenty-nine more times, because 29 is a prime number, and then I got out of the bath and opened the door. Sandra had gone away, but Kat was sitting in the hallway, waiting for me.

  ‘Ted,’ she said, and she pointed to the floor next to her. I sat down. ‘Ted, I know it’s awful, but you’ve got to be good,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t upset her.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kat,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ said Kat. ‘Ted – I love you. I’m sorry I shouted at you earlier.’

  I was surprised that Kat was still thinking about that. ‘I love you too, sis,’ I said.

  Kat’s eyes went shiny. ‘Goodnight, Ted,’ she said, and she jumped up and went running into the bathroom, because I had been in it for a very long time.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Stealing The Scream

  I lay down in Sandra’s guest room next to Salim.

  ‘Salim,’ I said. ‘I can hear you breathing irregularly. You aren’t asleep.’

  ‘Ted,’ said Salim. My hypothesis that he was awake had been proved correct. ‘Do you ever stop being a detective?’

  I thought about this. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just the way my brain works. Are you upset about Aunt Gloria?’

  ‘Yes, Ted,’ said Salim. ‘She’s my mum! And I’m worried. I don’t know if we can help her.’

  ‘It is not a certainty,’ I agreed. ‘However, it is also not impossible.’

  ‘You’re so weird, Ted,’ said Salim. ‘If anyone else said that, it’d sound awful. That’s why I like you.’

  ‘I like you too, Salim,’ I said. ‘We’re friends.’

  ‘We are,’ said Salim.

  ‘Salim,’ I said. ‘I am going to get up and do some more thinking about the case.’

  I went into the living room. I wanted to read my encyclopaedia. I wanted to know everything it said about paintings, and people who stole them. But I couldn’t, because it was still at Aunt Gloria’s. So instead I looked at Sandra’s books.

  She had a big bookcase that was full of books about art. She even had some about art theft. I looked at a book called Great Art Heists from History. It was a big hardback. I had to balance it on the kitchen table because it was so heavy. I found out that, of all the art stolen, only five to ten per cent of it is ever recovered (this was the fact that Aunt Gloria had used earlier, proving that although she is imprecise, sometimes she is still correct about things). Usually, the thieves have some connection to the gallery or museum the art is stolen from. Most people steal art because it is worth so much money. There is a black market (which means a secret group, not lots of stalls painted black) of criminals who want to buy it. Sometimes they want to use it to trade for other illegal things. Sometimes they just want to ransom the painting for lots of money – if the museum leaves a bag full of money under a bridge, or in a rubbish bin, the painting will be returned. And sometimes they just want to look at it, to have a painting hang in their house for ever. I thought about this idea – that someone might have stolen In the Black Square because they liked it.

  I made a list in my head of all the reasons why someone might have stolen In the Black Square. The list looked like this:

  To sell it for money to someone they hadn’t met yet.

  To sell it for money to someone who already wanted to buy it.

  To ransom the Guggenheim. (This did not seem very likely, since we hadn’t heard about any ransom note.)

  To trade it for something else they needed, such as medicine for Ben’s ill wife, or Lana’s ill father.

  Because they wanted to look at it. (This would rule out Sandra all over again, because she did n
ot like Kandinskys.)

  I found out that the worst art thieves in the last hundred years were the Nazis. They stole paintings from all the cities they invaded, because their leader Adolf Hitler wanted his own museums to be full of his favourite art. They even took paintings from the Jewish people they killed. Thinking about that made me feel ill. I stopped reading that chapter.

  Some of the most famous paintings in the world have been stolen. In 1911 the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre Museum in France by a man who worked there, and in 1994 The Scream was stolen from a museum in Oslo.

  The Scream is an extremely interesting painting. It is a picture painted in bright, frightening colours of a man screaming beside a blue sea and a red sunset. At least, that is what it looks like. But that is not really what the painting is about. The man is not actually screaming – he is hearing a scream from outside the frame of the painting. His mouth is open because he is afraid of the sound coming from all around him. The painter Edvard Munch is playing a trick on everyone who looks at the painting, and he does it because people see what they expect to see.

  The biggest art theft in history happened on 19 March 1990. It happened at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston, USA. The thieves stole thirteen objects, which were worth a total of $300 million, including a painting by Rembrandt called The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. It is a picture of Jesus calming the waves during a storm, which is something that is factually impossible, but it is very famous and the police have been trying to get it back ever since. There is a still a reward of $5 million to anyone who can find it, which made me think that I should look for that painting as well as In the Black Square. It would solve all Mum and Dad’s money problems, and mean that there was enough left for Kat to go to fashion school.

  But In the Black Square was still the painting I had to find first. And I did not know how to do that. I sighed, and my hand shook itself out, and that was when Kat came creeping into the living room.

  ‘Kat,’ I said. ‘You’re creeping.’

  ‘Shhhh!’ said Kat. Her shoulders were hunched over, and she was walking on her toes, like a burglar.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t sleep,’ hissed Kat. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m reading about why people steal paintings,’ I told her. I explained what I had discovered.

  Kat narrowed her eyes. ‘Interesting, Ted,’ she said. ‘That reminds me. We haven’t looked at our suspect list together since we talked to Hank and Ben. Look, I’ve rewritten it so we can see all our latest clues.’ She went over to her backpack and pulled out her notebook.

  Who could have stolen the painting?

  Lionel. (Security guard. The second-last person to leave the museum. Because he is the security guard, he must know how to shut down the burglar alarms and security cameras, and we know they were down yesterday morning.) Problem: could he have made his voice sound like a woman to trick Effortless Light Removals? And was he at the Guggenheim on Monday?

  Helen. (Head of the maintenance crew. Third last.) Was fixing fountain at the Guggenheim on Monday, so had opportunity to steal the credit card and call Effortless. Says she doesn’t have a motive, but she hates Gloria. Lied about the fact that she was with Lana during the smoke.

  Lana. (Member of the maintenance crew. Third person out of the museum after us.) Left very close to when we did. She would not say what she was doing on Monday – now we know that she was visiting her ill father in hospital. She could not have made the call, but she might be working with Helen.

  Rafael. (Janitor. Joint first out of the museum after us. He was also with Ben.) Ben seems to have given him an alibi, but we need to make sure it is true.

  The builder, Gabriel. (This is very unlikely. He was working on the outside of the building, and never went inside. Although he might have climbed in through the broken skylight to steal the painting (this is Ted’s idea. We need to test it to see if it is possible). Gabriel was also late to the roll call, which is suspicious.

  Who has been ruled out?

  Aunt Gloria (because she is being framed), Sandra (because she is too small to have carried the painting, and also she was wearing very high heels), the fire crew (because none of them could have been at the Guggenheim on Monday), Ty (because he wasn’t near the museum on Monday afternoon), Jacob (because he could not pretend to be a woman on the telephone; also his eyesight is too bad to have been able to carry the painting through the museum and he was at his granddaughter’s concert so he has an alibi for Monday afternoon), Hank and Ben (because neither of them could have made the phone call to Effortless, although they need money).

  ‘Ted,’ said Kat, sitting back in her chair. ‘There are two suspects we haven’t spoken to yet, and one crucial place we need to go that we haven’t gone.’

  ‘The Guggenheim,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Kat. ‘We have to go back into the museum.’

  ‘Sandra will probably go there tomorrow,’ I said. I used the word probably, because tomorrow was a Saturday. This meant I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that there was at least a fifty-one per cent probability that Sandra would go to work even at a weekend.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Kat. ‘All we need to do tomorrow morning is make sure that she takes us to work with her. Since we ran away yesterday, I bet she will – she’ll want us to be in a place where she can watch us. And that also puts us in the perfect position to solve the mystery!’

  THIRTY-SIX

  Back in the Guggenheim

  Breakfast the next morning was bread that was grey and full of pieces.

  ‘It’s gluten-free,’ said Salim, poking it. Sandra was in the shower, and she had told us to have finished breakfast before she got out of it. ‘Mum eats it sometimes too, when she’s on one of her diets.’

  ‘It’s repulsive,’ said Kat. She was wearing her tight jeans and the same sparkly shirt she had worn yesterday. ‘Ugh! Why doesn’t anyone have Hovis in this country?’

  ‘And Shreddies,’ I agreed.

  ‘Oh, poor Ted!’ said Kat, looking at me. ‘I forgot – you hardly ate anything yesterday. Mum’s going to kill me!’ She was being Big Sister Kat, worried about my health. She pulled open the big white fridge, which glowed on her face and arms, and dug through it. Then she closed it again and went through the cupboards until she came out with a banana, which she waved at me. ‘You can eat this,’ she said. ‘A banana is a banana, wherever you are.’

  It looked bigger and more yellow than London bananas, but I cut it up into exactly seven pieces, with the two ends left on my plate, and ate it in seven careful bites.

  I felt better after that.

  Then Salim went digging in the fridge, and came out with a bright-coloured box, opened at one end. ‘Pop Tarts!’ he said. ‘I knew Sandra wasn’t into health foods as much as she pretended to be!’

  He put three into something flat and hot called a toaster oven – two for him and one for Kat (they were pink and white and covered in sprinkles, and I didn’t want one), and he was halfway through his second when Sandra came into the kitchen, patting her hair, which was done up in its bun again.

  ‘Salim!’ she said in a voice that was very high. She didn’t like what he was doing, and I deduced that this was because she was embarrassed about having something so sugary in her kitchen, the way Mum gets when we find her chocolate hidden in the empty flour tin.

  ‘Caught you!’ said Salim, sprinkles jumping on his lips as he spoke. ‘You hide Pop Tarts in your fridge!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Sandra. She lifted her lips in a smile. Her cheeks had turned pink. ‘Yes, you caught me out, Salim! Now, are you ready to go? I’m not leaving you here all day, after what you did yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, Sandra,’ said Salim.

  ‘Yes, Sandra,’ said Kat, and behind Sandra’s back she winked at me.

  ‘Good,’ said Sandra, and she went rushing out of the kitchen. Salim and Kat slapped palms again. I knew they were pleased that we were going to th
e Guggenheim without even having to beg Sandra. We were very lucky that morning. I don’t usually believe in luck, because it is unquantifiable, but that is what we were.

  I was ready to leave, in my school uniform. I was secretly glad that no one had reminded me to put on new underwear. Although New York kept changing, my clothes stayed the same.

  The policeman on the forecourt of the Guggenheim, guarding the white-and-blue police tape, let us through because we were with Sandra. The museum was still closed, because of the theft. Then Lionel, yawning but still smiling at Salim, waved us through the main revolving door, which was being kept open for the police, and we were back inside the Guggenheim. I was worried about Lionel. He was one of our remaining suspects. He seemed nice, but what if he was not?

  At least the museum was quiet again. All the hoovering and hammering and buzzing had stopped. The main rotunda was empty, just ten open crates standing there on its first floor. The white walls of the Guggenheim were empty too, and its ramp was clean.

  ‘All right,’ said Sandra, turning to Salim. ‘I need to spend a few hours in the office. I’ve got a call with the Director – he’s flying home from Beijing this afternoon, and he wants to know the latest before he takes off. Then, at one p.m., Lieutenant Leigh is coming by to talk about the case. Lionel can look after you, but don’t disturb me, please.’

  ‘Yes, Sandra,’ said Salim, nodding his head.

  ‘Sandra,’ said Lionel from his seat next to the door, ‘I’m not sure I should be watching them.’

  ‘Lionel, will you please do your job for once?’ snapped Sandra. Snapped is a word that in this case means spoke fast and loud, her lips pursing up.

  Lionel raised his palms up in front of his chest and widened his eyes. ‘All right, Sandra,’ he said. ‘Go.’

  Sandra walked away to the triangular stairs, her high heels clipping on the stone floor.

  ‘Yowch,’ whispered Lionel, when Sandra had walked out of our sight. ‘What bit her today? Apart from the usual, I mean.’