by Peter Bunzl
“But don’t you see?” Lily said frustratedly. “It’s all connected.”
“No, Miss, I do not. Now get back to your rooms. I don’t want to hear any more unfounded accusations from anyone.”
At the inspector’s dismissal, Professor Milksop left, relieved. Lily watched her head for the door. She was probably in a hurry to check on her nephew…
“What about Dane Milksop?” Lily asked the inspector as they gathered up their things to leave too. “You have to promise to speak with him.”
The inspector sighed and took another sip of coffee. “I don’t need this kinda grief, Miss. It’s nearly New Year’s…I’m supposed to be on half-day holiday tomorrow. What time is it?” he asked Lieutenant Drumpf, who’d just arrived back from interviewing the last of the guests at the other tables.
Lieutenant Drumpf took out his pocket watch. “Six o’clock, Sir. We’ve still got the crime scene to get to tonight before you go.”
“Then let’s do that.” The inspector gathered up his coat and tipped his hat to Lily, Robert and Caddy. “I’ll speak with this Dane Milksop tomorrow. If he’s really being held prisoner by his aunt against his will and his parents can’t be contacted, then I suppose that will be a case for child services, but I doubt if it has anything to do with my robbery.”
And with that, he strode off, leaving the three of them seething angrily and with rather a lot to explain to Papa and Selena.
Lily couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about everything that had happened. The diamond robbery, and meeting Dane. What they’d learned from Caddy’s visions and Dane’s memories about his life on the Shadowsea; how his parents had died on that submarine base and how awful he must feel about that.
They’d spent the whole evening trying to explain the rest of the details to Papa and Selena back in the suite after the unprecedented accusations that had taken place in the Tea Lounge.
Papa and Selena had been shocked when they had once again gone over their account of events and of Caddy’s revelations, but all they could do was promise to reiterate them to the police tomorrow in a more sober way. They would try to impress on the inspector how accurate Caddy’s prophecies had been in the past, and hope that he took note of what they said in order to broaden his investigation.
Otherwise, Papa suggested that the best course of action was for Lily, Robert and Caddy, and especially Malkin, to stay out of the way of the Milksops for the rest of the holiday.
Especially if Professor Milksop was involved in the diamond robbery and this group of undiscovered murders that Caddy’s visions suggested. It was the police’s job to investigate all that, he said, not theirs, and anyway he did not want any more scenes with her.
Just recalling that last part made Lily very cross.
She got up and put on her slippers and dressing gown, and, taking care not to wake the others, sneaked over to the French doors, opening them to get a breath of fresh air. As she did so, she glimpsed something strange over the balustrade and stepped out onto the balcony to get a better view…
Down below, the street was grey and bare, except for one figure stood opposite. Lily supposed it was too cold now for most people to be out. The frosty branches of the trees stretched upwards, making cracks in the black shell of the sky. Snow fell gently through the lamplight, coating the slushy sidewalk in a blanket of white.
Lily stared harder at the figure standing in the shadows where they thought they couldn’t be seen, peering through the branches of the trees. It was a woman – practically the only thing visible of her was her dark dress and shiny black patent-leather shoes. Her face was hidden by the brim of her feathered hat, but something about the tilt of her head suggested she was gazing upwards. At their window, Lily realized with a start. Waiting for something.
Or could it be the Milksops’ suite next door she was staring at?
There was something odd about her.
For a while, Lily couldn’t work out what it was. Then she did…
It was so cold outside that Lily should have been able to see the clouds of the woman’s breath. But she could not.
The woman was not breathing.
At the next door balcony, behind the French doors and closed curtains of room one hundred, there were three brief flashes of light as if someone had turned the room lights on and off again very quickly in succession. In each brief glow, Lily saw that the woman wore something round her neck.
A glinting blue jewel.
The Ouroboros Diamond.
It was Miss Buckle!
The mechanical nursemaid had not seen Lily, but she had seen the signal that she had evidently been waiting for, for she turned and walked away along the street.
Lily stood there, shivering and trying to process what it all meant. When Miss Buckle had finally disappeared into the gloom, she crept quietly back to her bed.
She laid her head back on the pillow and thought about the many moving parts of this mystery. There were so many balls in the air, so many pieces of the puzzle and she still couldn’t quite see how they fitted together, nor – most importantly – what they should do next to help Dane.
She shut her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, and eventually, with the tick of her heart and the slow breathing of the others echoing in her ears, she was carried off by dreams.
Robert woke early the next morning feeling like he was on the cusp of some strange revelation, but when he opened his eyes it was gone.
He sat up and rubbed his face. Today was the thirtieth of December – the day before New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow Caddy’s prophecy about Dane waking the dead would come to pass, unless the police could stop it.
“You will wake the dead.” He whispered the line softly to himself.
It had sounded so crazy and alarming when Caddy had said it to Dane, but, repeating it out loud now, Robert didn’t doubt she’d seen a future truth.
The first time he and Lily had met Caddy, she had straight away divined one of Lily’s deepest secrets. How Lily’s mother, who’d loved her very much, had given Lily a present of a unique gold ammonite she’d found while fossil hunting.
That was the first piece of true insight Caddy received from the spirits, and, as far as Robert knew, she’d rarely been wrong in her visions and prophecies since. Which made this latest revelation about Dane all the more worrying.
He got up and took his clothes to the bathroom, shivering as he dressed and washed his face, then combed his hair in the mirror. As they did everyday, his unruly curls sprang back into place as soon as he’d finished brushing them.
Finally feeling more ready for the day ahead, Robert returned to the room to find Lily and Caddy already up and dressed. Lily was winding Malkin and Caddy was looking over the papers they had collected about Dane.
“Morning,” Robert said, giving them a nervous grin. “How did everyone sleep?”
“Awfully,” Caddy said. “I re-dreamed my vision, over and over again, throughout the night, and every time I woke up I thought of Dane.”
“Me too.” Robert shook his head. “I kept thinking about how fearful he looked when you revealed what you’d seen happening down on that submarine. And then his face when you told him that his parents had died down there, and the dangers you’d foreseen in his own future.” He shuddered, thinking of his own father, gone too.
“We’ve all lost people,” Caddy said.
“We could’ve helped him,” Lily agreed sadly, “but we didn’t really even have the time to speak to him properly about any of it. That’s what was so…upsetting.” She finished winding Malkin. “And it’s your prophecy, Caddy, that worries me the most. What does it mean for Dane…? He…he doesn’t seem the sort of person who would do something so disturbing and atrocious.”
“Perhaps his aunt will coerce him into it?” Malkin suggested. “After all, we already think she may have had a hand in the diamond robbery.”
“I feel like we should try and see him again this morning, if we can,” Caddy said. “If only to comfort him and to
tell him that, on a few rare occasions, the spirits have been wrong in their predictions.”
“That will be hard,” Lily said, “given that he’s going to be speaking to the inspector today and hopefully telling him all the bad things his aunt has done.”
“I hope they arrest Matilda Milksop for everything that happened on the Shadowsea,” Robert said. “And for stealing that diamond… Miss Buckle may have been the one who committed that crime, but I just know Matilda Milksop put her up to it.”
“It seems likely,” Malkin said. “I mean, if I were Matilda Milksop and I needed to steal an Ouroboros Diamond to repair my engine – a machine that could both kill people and bring them back to life – then that’s what I would do.”
Lily stared moodily out of the window. Finally she spoke again. “I saw Miss Buckle stood beneath a tree, opposite the hotel, at midnight last night, after you had all gone to bed.”
“What was she doing?” Caddy asked, shocked.
“Looking up at the Milksops’ window, waiting for a signal.”
Robert gasped. “See? We’re right. She did steal the diamond on Matilda Milksop’s orders. What happened then?”
Lily turned back to them. “Then someone in the room flashed the light on and off three times. And Miss Buckle walked off down the street.”
“Where did she go?” Caddy asked.
“I don’t know,” Lily said. “She just disappeared into the night. But one thing I did see was that she had that diamond necklace around her neck.”
“Lily, you have to tell the police this as soon as possible,” Caddy said.
“Not until we’ve spoken with Dane,” Lily said. “First I want to see what more he knows and whether he’s all right.”
“It’s a horrible situation,” Robert said. “I’m still not sure how the pieces fit together. But, with this new information about Miss Buckle, I believe even more that everything that Caddy saw yesterday is true.”
“Me too,” Lily said. “It seems clear to me that Professor Milksop has planned for Miss Buckle to bring her the diamond when the fuss around the robbery dies down. She still wants to repair her machine so she can use it again.”
Robert nodded. “And I think that somehow she’s going to force Dane to help her,” he said. “Isn’t that what Caddy’s prophecy suggests?”
“Help her do what?” Malkin asked.
“Kill people?” Lily suggested with a horrible shiver. “Like she did on the Shadowsea. Or wake the dead? Like she woke Dane and Spook.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?” Robert said. The others had no answers, but it was a chilling thought. Robert gave a shiver, then pushed those worries aside.
No, the police would interview Dane this morning and he would tell them the truth about his aunt. And then they would put a stop to whatever she was up to. Hopefully Inspector Tedesko would recover the diamond from wherever Matilda Milksop and Miss Buckle had stashed it, and have them both arrested. Dane would be free and this would all be over. That was the only way things could end, surely? It was certainly not the holiday they’d planned. None of them had expected to find themselves embroiled in such an alarming mystery, yet again…but here they were.
Matilda Milksop was present at breakfast but Dane was not. Nevertheless, the screen that they usually ate behind was still up, which was probably a good thing for her, as it hid her from the prying eyes of the other guests and staff. The theft of the Ouroboros Diamond was all any of them seemed to be talking about.
The story of the diamond robbery was even the lead article in the New York Daily Cog, which Papa had brought to the table. Robert, Lily and Caddy read about it as they drank their tea and ate their toast, while Selena and Papa conversed quietly.
That was all Robert could take in – he knew the rest and, besides, there was another article underneath it which had caught his attention.
Beneath this was a picture of a determined-looking woman with grey hair and a pleasant, friendly-looking face. She was holding up the picture from the same yellowing article that Lily had in her pocket, showing the entire Milksop family, along with Mr Shadowsea and Miss Aleilia Child, standing on the dock with the president as the first modules of the submarine base were being built.
Dane hadn’t mentioned his grandmother Miriam when they’d spoken. But his memory had been such a muddle that Robert wondered if the boy even remembered her?
They needed to go up to the Milksops’ suite and speak with him again, to tell him about this new discovery and find out what had happened between Professor Milksop and Miss Buckle after they left him yesterday. Perhaps he knew why the mechanical nursemaid had stolen the diamond… Even though they had agreed last night that they would wait for the inspector to talk to Dane first, now, in the cold light of morning, Robert felt as if they couldn’t wait that long. Dane was their friend and he’d appealed for their help, and now they deserved answers as much as he did. They should probably go straight away to see him, while Matilda Milksop was still eating her breakfast behind the screen.
Robert nodded to Lily and Caddy. They all stood up, Lily carrying her basket with Malkin inside.
“We’ve finished breakfast,” she said. “May we be excused?”
Papa glanced up from the morning papers. “All right,” he replied. “But Selena and I have decided that you should keep out of the way of those Milksops from now on. It’s just as we told you last night. We don’t want to get mixed up in any of these matters to do with the diamond and Dane and so on, especially not now the police are involved. So tell me you won’t bother them any more, Lily.”
Lily bit her lip.
“Promise?” John said.
“All right,” Lily said at last. “I promise we won’t bother the Milksops.”
Robert wondered if she really meant it, after all they’d been through?
“And you two?” Selena said, looking pointedly at Caddy and Robert.
“We promise too,” Robert told her, his guts squirming as he said so.
Caddy nodded grimly.
“Good,” Papa said. “Then let that be an end to it. Now you may go.” He took out his pocket watch and consulted it. “Your mother and I have to head out to the embassy again this morning to collect her stamped visa. You lot should probably stay here in the hotel again, but be ready after that to set off for the train station.”
Robert peered over at Matilda Milksop one last time as they left the dining room and saw that one of the mechanical waiters was bringing her a folded message on a silver tray.
He, Caddy and Lily stole quickly from the room before Professor Milksop had time to open it.
On the way up to their suite, Robert whispered to Lily, “How could you promise that?”
“Promise what?” she asked.
“That we wouldn’t carry on investigating the Milksops.”
“That’s not what I promised at all,” Lily said. “I promised we wouldn’t bother them. And we won’t. We’ll be so subtle that Matilda Milksop won’t even know we’re still looking into her crimes, and nor will the police.”
Having said that, she walked straight past their own door and on to room one hundred.
“We’ll have to work fast if we want to get into the room and see Dane again before the professor returns,” Lily said, as she once again got out her lock picks. She’d just put the first pick in the lock when there was an almighty smash from inside the room. Quick as she could, Lily jimmied the lock.
They wrenched the door open just in time to see Miss Buckle dragging Dane out onto the balcony. She was wearing the same outfit Lily had seen her in last night when she had stood outside the hotel looking up at this very room! Snow was spilling in through the French doors and melting on the carpet. Dane screamed as Miss Buckle hiked him up onto the balustrade.
Lily, Robert, Caddy and Malkin ran across the room towards him.
But they were too late. Lily’s heart ticked wildly as Miss Buckle jumped up beside Dane, and, taking him under her free arm, leaped in
to the snowy sky, her long coat flapping like a cape behind her. With a crash, she landed on top of the snow-capped roof of an electrical-wagon parked in the street.
As Lily and the others peered over the balcony’s edge, Miss Buckle leaned down and picked up her hat, which had come flying off in her jump. She dusted the snow from its rim and put it on her head, then, calm as you like, she hopped down onto the sidewalk and, carrying Dane in her arms, clattered off down the empty road so fast it almost seemed as if she was dodging between the falling snowflakes.
“Quick!” cried Lily. “After her!”
They ran back out into the corridor and took the stairs two at a time down to the ground-floor lobby, smashing into Inspector Tedesko and Lieutenant Drumpf, who were just arriving to recommence their interviews with the rest of the hotel guests about the stolen diamond.
“Miss Buckle’s taken Dane!” Lily shouted at the inspector as she skidded past him, heading out through the swinging entrance doors. Malkin, Caddy and Robert rushed along behind her. Robert threw a look over his shoulder at the shocked inspector and lieutenant as they quickly gathered themselves together and followed in their wake.
Lily bounded down the red carpeted steps, past the mechanical doorman, asleep in his box, and skidded out onto the avenue. She stared up and down the long frosted walkways, between the blizzard of falling flakes, searching for Miss Buckle and Dane, but the nursemaid and the boy had already gone.
They had vanished entirely in the stark white street.
Lily cursed and caught her breath as the others joined her. The cold was already drying the sweat on her back. The sprint down the stairs had tangled Caddy’s hair even worse than usual and given Robert a sharp stitch. He gave a sigh. “We lost her then? Maybe the inspector and his men can track them down?”
Lily looked at the elderly inspector puffing his way after them, assisted by his lieutenant, who was making a face like he was sucking a wasp. “I doubt it,” she said.
“What did you see?” the inspector called out wheezily. “Who was that you were chasing?”