Shadowsea

by Peter Bunzl

  “He’s lost his memory,” Robert whispered. “He does need our help.”

  “That’s why he sent a rodent,” Malkin added. “He doesn’t remember what a real postman looks like.”

  “See?” Lily said. “I was right. I knew there was something wrong with him. I wonder what has happened to his parents? And why he’s with his aunt?” She glanced up to see Dane dropping his napkin over the mouse and bending down to carefully hide it back in his pocket.

  Lily pondered how she, Robert and Malkin were going to discover more about Dane’s parents. And how they were going to contact him in his room tomorrow without his formidable aunt finding out. Especially if his nursemaid, Miss Buckle was guarding him – she looked somewhat of an intimidating foe herself.

  It was a difficult task, and Lily couldn’t figure out why Dane had chosen to entrust it to her, Robert and Malkin, rather than an adult. Then she remembered the weird connection she’d felt with Dane in the lobby. Had he sensed that too? Perhaps that’s why he’d chosen the three of them…

  Either way, now that he had, Lily realized they had a new mystery to solve and they couldn’t let him down.

  Robert, Lily and Malkin watched as Matilda Milksop got up and handcuffed the wooden case back to her wrist, then she and Miss Buckle each took one of Dane’s hands and guided him from the dinner table.

  As she passed Miss Child, the professor’s eyes flicked to the Ouroboros Diamond around her neck. Lily wondered once again what the link was between the symbol on the professor’s wooden case and the singer’s ostentatious piece of jewellery. Her brain fizzed with ideas. There were so many questions to answer, so much to find out – but where to start?

  “They must be going up to bed,” Robert whispered, as the pair of Milksops and Miss Buckle stepped through the dining room’s archway, past the maître d’ and on towards the elevators. “I don’t think we’ll get to speak to Dane again tonight.”

  “Maybe Papa knows more about the Milksop family?” Lily suggested.

  “Seems unlikely,” Malkin yipped. “Given that he’s only met Professor Milksop briefly once before at a conference.”

  “Malkin’s right,” Robert said. “My hunch is he’s told us all he knows about the Milksops already, and even if he hasn’t, we can’t really ask him about Dane’s message.”

  “Why not?” Lily asked, touching the twist of paper in her pocket.

  “Because it specifically says not to tell anyone,” Robert reminded her.

  “Oh.” Lily had forgotten that part of the message. She felt a flood of disappointment. With Dane’s stipulations, this mystery was going to be even more difficult to solve than she’d first thought.

  “Maybe we could look around the hotel instead?” Malkin suggested. “We might find out something else that way?”

  “Good idea!” Lily brightened up. “Perhaps his aunt stays here all the time? Or his parents used to, and the staff know them?”

  “Or perhaps they’re strangers here, like us?” Malkin suggested.

  “Both are equally possible,” Robert said. “We won’t know until we do some digging.”

  They finished their tea and set off, determined to investigate the other public rooms of the hotel to see what they might find out.

  First, they peeped in on the Ladies’ Sitting Room, where ladies in various feathered hats that made them look like plumed blue jays sat drinking their evening cups of coffee and glasses of digestifs before bed.

  Then they found the Grand Ballroom, which was empty except for one mechanical polishing the gold fixtures and fittings.

  This was followed by the Tea Lounge, which was vacant too, since high tea was only served in the afternoon.

  Then came a Gentlemen’s Smoking Room, which was filled with smoking gentlemen – the worst kind. They were careful to peer only briefly round the door of that one, because they didn’t want Papa to know they’d disobeyed his decree at dinner about going straight up to bed.

  Then there was a Games Room, full of card tables, and finally, at the end of a long ill-lit corridor, they found a Reading Room. A sign on its door proclaimed it was for the use of all guests and that it was open all hours.

  “Maybe we can find some information about Professor Milksop and the Milksop family in here?” Lily tried the door handle, but it was locked. The reading room, it seemed, was open all hours except this one.

  Still, that had never stopped her before.

  She knocked once to make sure the room was empty. Then, while Robert peered up and down the corridor to check no one was coming, Lily felt around in the bottom of her basket for her lock picks.

  “Watch it!” Malkin snapped as her fingers scrabbled about beneath his undercarriage.

  Eventually Lily found what she was looking for – a dinky leather wallet, hidden beneath Malkin’s brush. She pulled it out.

  The lock-picking kit had been a present from her friends Anna and Tolly, back in England. Even before she’d got it, Lily had been a pretty dab hand at picking a lock with a hairpin. Now, with the kit, she considered herself an expert.

  She unfolded the wallet’s flaps to reveal the two neat rows of lock picks, each held in its own special pouch, and selected one to open the door.

  “Are we really going to start breaking into hotel rooms now?” Malkin asked, climbing out of the basket as she crouched beside the room’s keyhole.

  “It’s not a hotel room,” Lily said. “It’s a reading room. And besides, it’s not like we’re going to steal anything.”

  “Except knowledge,” Robert said.

  “And you can’t steal that,” Lily added. “It’s free.”

  “The end doesn’t always justify the means, you know,” Malkin grumbled.

  But in the time they had been talking, Lily felt the lock shift. It let out a quiet click.

  She pulled out the picks and replaced them in the wallet, before sneaking into the room. Malkin followed her as Robert picked up the basket and shut the door softly behind them.

  The reading room was filled with plush carpet and floor-to-ceiling oak shelves packed with books. In the centre of the room was a long table and many upright chairs. Off to one side, two red leather armchairs stood beside a marble fireplace with a fire crackling in the grate. A magazine rack sat beside the hearth, where there was a dented coal scuttle and basket of old newspapers for burning.

  “This is quite the library,” Robert whispered, running his hand along the polished tabletop.

  “Isn’t it?” Malkin agreed. “A relaxed place, for anyone so minded to sit and study, or enjoy forty winks by the fire.” He peered longingly at the pair of easy chairs.

  “No time for that now,” Lily told him. “Why don’t you and Robert check the recent magazines for any mention of Matilda Milksop? Professors are always in the news. Especially female ones – they’re as rare as hen’s teeth.” She was thinking of her mama and Dr Droz, the only other two female professors that she knew of.

  “What are you going to do?” Robert asked, but Lily was already scanning through the far shelves.

  “I am going to find an encyclopedia and look up the word ouroboros,” she announced.

  “Good plan.” Malkin prowled over to the fire and threw himself down before it. “But someone needs to keep an eye on the door. The lion’s share of the work.”

  Robert made himself comfortable in one of the armchairs and began searching through the magazine rack for anything about the Milksops.

  Lily stalked the shelves and found a twelve-volume encyclopedia. Each volume was thicker than the breadth of her palm. She pulled down O–P and brought it over to the seat opposite Robert. Then she licked her finger and flicked through the pages.

  “Obey, obfuscate, oboe, orang-utang…ouroboros. Here it is!” she said triumphantly, turning the book around.

  And there it was. At least, a drawing of it. It looked exactly like Miss Child’s necklace, and the picture stamped on Matilda Milksop’s wrist and the side of her wooden case: a circular
snake eating its own tail.

  Robert gave a shudder. “That symbol doesn’t get any less gruesome the more I see it.”

  “Let’s have a look at what more there is to learn.” Lily frowned and read out the definition. “‘Ouroboros comes from the Greek oura, which means tail, and boros, which means eating. The ouroboros symbolizes infinity and wholeness. The cycle of life and death and the duality of creation and destruction.’ It’s just like Papa said!”

  “What does duality mean?” Robert asked, shuffling through the piles of magazines in his lap.

  “It means something that’s two things at the same time,” Lily explained, reading from the encyclopedia.

  “I see.” Robert gave up and stuffed the magazines he had been examining back in the rack of newspapers.

  “No good?” Lily asked.

  “No.” He shook his head. “There’s nothing in any of them about Professor Milksop, or her orba…her orabora…” He gave up trying to pronounce the word. “Her snake suitcase. Nor anything about the work John said she was doing for the fellow Nathaniel Shadowsea on his submarine project.”

  “That’s probably old news,” Malkin yapped.

  “Unless…” Lily glanced over at the basket of newspapers beside the fire. She put the encyclopedia aside, walked over to the fireplace and began pulling the papers out of the basket.

  When Robert grasped what she was doing, he got up and joined her.

  They flicked through each newspaper in turn. Robert enjoyed reading various headlines out to Malkin and Lily in an important-sounding voice. Headlines like: Reporter Nellie Bly Solves the Mechanical Mysteries or Survivor of the Lost Arctic Airship Found or Secrets of the Stolen Steam-Engines Revealed.

  But after a while he stopped. “None of this is any use for our case,” he said sadly.

  “No,” Lily agreed, scanning the articles with her magnifying glass.

  “It does clean one’s canines most agreeably though.” Malkin grizzled at the papers, shredding them to ribbons.

  “Malkin! Wait!” Robert called. He had glimpsed a headline that seemed promising, but it was about to get ground to a pulp by the fox’s yellow teeth.

  Luckily, he managed to tear the page from Malkin’s snapping jaws in time.

  “Give that back,” Malkin barked, snorting and scratching at Robert’s leg. “I haven’t finished chewing it yet!”

  “No!” Robert snapped. “I need to read this!”

  He squinted at the article in the firelight. Lily joined him, peering over his shoulder.

  Beneath the text was a photograph of a group of people lined up on the dockside.

  Professor Milksop and Miss Buckle were standing next to a smart-suited man, who must’ve been Mr Shadowsea, the project’s financier.

  Miss Child, wearing the same golden snake-shaped necklace she had on at dinner, stood beside President McKinley. Robert recognized the president by his square head and slick side-parted hair. He’d seen his face before on John’s dollar bills. Behind the president, a crane was lowering a metal sphere the size of a small house, with portholes in the side, onto the deck of a ship.

  As Robert pored over the picture, he saw a younger-looking Dane with his parents, blurry in the background among the crowds. He pointed them out to Lily, who took out her magnifying glass and stared at their teeny faces. They and Dane did look alike. But no matter how hard, or how carefully Lily and Robert stared at the minuscule figures, their expressions told them nothing new, and the closer they got the more indistinct the image became, until eventually the three Milksops just disappeared into the crowds, melting away into itty-bitty blobs of black-and-white newsprint.

  “Well, we know the names of Dane’s mama and papa now at least,” Lily said, ripping the article with its picture out of the paper and putting the page in her pocket. “Lucille and Daniel.”

  “But we don’t know who or where they are,” Robert said. “Apart from that they were on this Shadowsea base with everyone. And we don’t know why Dane’s aunt is hiding out with him and Miss Buckle at this hotel for New Year’s Eve.”

  “Nor anything about that ouroboros case his aunt constantly has handcuffed to her wrist,” Malkin added. “It’s very suspicious!”

  Lily shook her head. “We may not have the answer to any of those questions yet,” she said, “but I intend to find them out. They’re all mixed up with Dane’s situation somehow, I just know it.”

  “We could speak to some of the hotel staff?” Robert suggested.

  “Good idea,” Lily replied. “They might overhear something over the next few days from Professor Milksop or Miss Buckle. Something we might miss.”

  She was about to say more when Papa suddenly appeared at the door on the far side of the room. “There you are!” he cried. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Malkin, you were meant to take them straight up to bed. Come on, all of you, it’s late now. You need your sleep…perchance to dream!” he laughed.

  After shooing them off to bed, Papa had quickly become distracted by the many interesting books in the reading room; including a thick two-volume biography of Shakespeare, which looked even more in-depth and boring than his own, and so they ended up walking back to their room alone.

  “Tomorrow we’re going to have to relay everything we’ve learned to Dane to see if any of it helps him remember,” Lily told Malkin and Robert. “And we’ll need to do it without arousing suspicion from his aunt or Miss Buckle.”

  “It’s not exactly Sherlock-Holmes-level sleuthing,” Malkin said, jumping up and burrowing himself into Lily’s basket before they reached the more public part of the hotel.

  “Maybe not,” Robert replied, “but we’ve only just started looking. Perhaps,” he suggested, “the article alone will be enough to jog Dane’s memory?”

  “Hopefully,” Lily said. “My hunch is, whatever it is Dane’s forgotten about his parents and everything else, it has to do with the project in the news story – his aunt and her work on that submarine base, and probably her wooden case as well. Maybe tomorrow we’ll find out.”

  They were approaching their door when suddenly Malkin poked his head out of the basket and pricked up his ears. “Hush!” he said urgently. “No more talking.”

  “Why?” Lily whispered.

  The mechanical fox’s expression had taken on a wild air.

  “Because,” he hissed, “there’s a stranger in our suite.”

  Lily pressed her ear to the wooden door of room ninety-nine, just above the lock.

  There was indeed a noise coming from inside – the noise of someone shifting things about.

  She tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

  She motioned to Robert and, brandishing the magnifying glass, she stepped through the door.

  Malkin sprang from the basket, teeth bared, and crept down the short entrance passage to peer around the corner into the living room.

  Immediately his tail went up and his hackles dropped. “It’s only room service,” he barked back at them.

  There, by the hearth, was a maid dressed in grey with a white pinny and a starched white cap that stood out against her brown skin. She had a patch over one eye, which made her look a mite piratical and endeared her to Robert straight away.

  “Excuse me,” she said, looking up from where she was busily setting the fire. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble…”

  “That’s all right,” Robert replied, slightly embarrassed. “We thought there was an intruder.”

  “An intruder?” The girl looked aghast. “Why’d you think that? You in some kinda trouble?”

  “Not yet,” Lily said, “but we soon might be.”

  “Intriguing,” the girl said. “S’pose I’d better not ask why?”

  Malkin crept up to her and butted his head under her hand.

  He purred softly as the girl obligingly stroked his ears.

  “Never seen a mech-fox before,” she said. “What’s his name?”

  Mechanimals weren’t allowed in the hotel
. Robert felt queasy. He hoped she wouldn’t tell management, but she seemed friendly enough.

  “It’s Malkin,” the fox said.

  “He can talk!” the girl said. “I thought I’d imagined it.”

  “Oh yes,” Robert said. “He barely shuts up.”

  “How dare you!” Malkin snapped.

  The girl opened her mouth wide and guffawed in delight. Malkin seemed to like that. He gave her his foxiest grin. “You may scratch behind my ears, Miss, if you so desire,” he said, giving playful yelping noises when she complied.

  “Oh.” The girl put a hand over her mouth. “I clean forgot. I need to finish the fire.” She let go of Malkin and turned back to the grate. “You won’t rat me out, will ya? It’ll only get me in deep with the head housekeeper.”

  “What rat?” Lily asked. The girl’s words had confused her.

  “You won’t tell ’em I started a conversation with you?” the girl explained. “Or that I was tardy lighting the fire. It’s against regulation. They’d dock my pay.”

  “As long as you don’t tell them we smuggled a mechanimal into our room,” Lily said. “Then I think we have an agreement.”

  “Deal,” the girl said. “I won’t breathe a word. Besides, your Malkin is quite the character.” She beamed at him.

  Robert felt relieved. He liked this girl. “My name’s Robert Townsend,” he said. “This is my friend, Lily Hartman.”

  “Pleased to meet ya,” the girl said.

  “And you,” Lily replied.

  A flicker of recognition appeared on the girl’s face. “Hey! Weren’t you the kid in the paper?” she asked Lily. “The girl with the clockwork heart? You’re practically famous!”

  “Practically,” Lily said. “I wish I wasn’t.”

  “I’m sure it ain’t so bad,” the girl said. “’Specially if you get to lord it up in these sorta places. Name’s Ida Winkler, by the way. But my pals call me Kid Wink, on account of my missing eye.”

  “How did you lose it?” Lily asked.