Sleuth on Skates

by Clémentine Beauvais

  To my very own Maman chérie, who thankfully isn’t at all like Sesame’s.

  First Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder Children’s Books. The rights of Clémentine Beauvais and Sarah Horne to be identified as the Author and Illustrator respectively of the Work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Text copyright © 2013 Clémentine Beauvais

  Illustrations copyright © 2013 Sarah Horne

  First published in the United States of America by Holiday House in 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  ISBN 978-0-8234-3255-4 (ebook)w

  ISBN 978-0-8234-3256-1 (ebook)r

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Beauvais, Clémentine.

  Sleuth on skates / by Clémentine Beauvais ; illustrated by Sarah Horne.—

  First American edition.

  pages cm.— (A Sesame Seade mystery ; #1)

  “First Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder Children’s Books.”

  Summary: Precocious eleven-year-old self-made-supersleuth Sophie “Sesame” Seade investigates the disappearance of Jenna Jenkins, a student at Cambridge University, where Sophie’s father is chaplain and her mother is Head of Christ’s College.

  ISBN 978-0-8234-3197-7 (hardcover)

  [1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Family life—England—Cambridge—Fiction. 3. University of Cambridge. 4. Cambridge (England)—Fiction. 5. England—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Horne, Sarah, 1979- illustrator.

  II. Title.

  PZ7.B380587Sle 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014010154

  by

  Clémentine Beauvais

  illustrated by

  Sarah Horne

  Holiday House / New York

  I

  You’re not born a supersleuth on skates; you become one.

  And believe me (me’s Sesame Seade, as it says on the cover), there are more requirements than you’d think.

  What you need is, primo, a pair of roller skates (purple) and secundo, this simple little philosophy of life:

  If there are as many connections in your brain as there are stars in the universe, why ask for superpowers? If your feet can run and skate and if your hands can climb and swim, why want to fly?

  Oh, yes, you also need a mysterious mission. And let me tell you, there aren’t as many of those as there are roller skates and philosophies of life. Especially not in Cambridge, where I live. It’s just a small city with a university in it, and probably the most boringly peaceful place in England, though I haven’t been absolutely everywhere.

  But one superior Sunday, after eleven years, five months and seventeen days of waiting, a mysterious mission found me—and at last I became Cambridge’s number one self-made supersleuth on skates.

  It all started very much like a normal Sunday afternoon. A normal Sunday afternoon is when my parents have all the time in the world to ask each other bizarre questions about me. “I don’t know,” said Professor Seade (my mother), “whether our daughter’s particularly bad manners come from a naturally evil personality or from some neglect on our behalf.”

  “Children are not naturally evil, darling,’ said Reverend Seade (my father), ‘so I’m afraid we must have done something wrong.”

  They both looked up at me. Up, because I was up a tree.

  “What are you doing, Sophie?”

  My parents, I’m sorry to say, live under the illusion that their daughter is called Sophie Margaret Catriona Seade, which makes no sense. Call me Sesame.

  “I’m playing with Peter Mortimer and my binoculars.”

  “Don’t look into students rooms: it’s rude.”

  “Mother, I never look into students’ rooms. It’s either boring or disgusting.”

  Living around students isn’t easy, but I have to endure it because my house is in a college, and colleges are where the university stores its students. They sleep there, eat there, work there, and produce a lot of noises and smells in the process.

  I live in a college for parent-related reasons: my mum is the Head of Christ’s College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Earth. That makes her the local queen. That makes me the local princess, which means I can cross that off my to-do list: good to get it out of the way. As for Dad, being married to Mum could make him the local prince consort, but he prefers to be the college Chaplain.

  “Tree to Earth, Tree to Earth! Warning! Peter Mortimer is getting ready to jump down!”

  They didn’t listen to me.

  “Earth, do you copy? Peter Mortimer is in jumping down mode, something serious!”

  Still didn’t listen.

  “That’s Peter Mortimer, Charlie-Alpha-Tango! Crash expected in three-two-one . . .”

  They should have listened, because Peter Mortimer landed on Dad’s head, and apparently it hurt.

  “That cat!” said Dad. “I’ll have his dirty claws removed!”

  “I’ll have you know that God created every single one of his dirty claws!” I protested.

  “The problem with Sophie is that she’s a manipulative little Gorgias,” sighed Mum.

  My parents’ favorite sentences follow this simple recipe:

  Once in a delicious blue moon, I get:

  “Get out of the way, Chubby! Go back into the house!” said Dad.

  My parents, I’m sorry to say, live under the illusion that Peter Mortimer is called Chubby. I don’t think it’s fair to name someone after a weight problem. Understandably, Peter Mortimer resents Dad and Mum. He brings them dead things to express his violent feelings towards them. Like now.

  “Oh, not again! Chubby, can’t you leave the mice alone?”

  “Well, Mother, how ironic.”

  Mum slaughters twenty mice a day. She’s a Professor of Therapeutics, which means she makes lab mice sick, tries to cure them, and fails most of the time.

  “How does she know what ironic means?” asked Dad.

  “God knows. She must have heard it from one of the students.”

  Not one to blow my own trumpet, but I seem to have a taste for sophisticated terminology, which means difficult words.

  “I have a theory to explain Peter Mortimer’s passion for hunting,” I said.

  “Let’s hear it then,” Mum muttered.

  “It’s all based on a big misunderstanding. When Dad says ‘Let us pray’ six times a day, Peter Mortimer thinks he means ‘Let us prey’.”

  I had to explain, because they couldn’t see the difference like you can.

  Dad sighed. “The problem with Sophie is that she’s a blasphemous little Thomas Aikenhead.”

  I wouldn’t want you to think that my parents don’t really care about me. I could see through my binoculars that Mum was reading an article in The Sunday Times called “The Joys and Sorrows of Having an Only Child,” and circling things with a pencil.

  “Tree to Earth! Tree to Earth! Earth, do you copy?”

  “For goodness’ sake, what is it now? Can we never have a peaceful Sunday?”

  “Porter approaching fast! Collision with garden expected in three-two-one—”

  Knock-knock!

  Mum got up, folded her newspaper, and crossed the garden to open the tiny green door, behind which stood Tod the Porter. Porters are the sleepless sentinels and guardian angels of the college. They know absolutely everything about the place and its students, and believe me, there are things you really don’t want to know about the latter.

  “Hello, Tod,” said Mum. “Please come in. Everything all right?”

  “I’m afraid n
ot,” replied Tod, walking into our garden. “You know the student I told you about this morning?”

  “Goodness me, she’s still missing?”

  “We thought she might have gone home unexpectedly, but we’ve just spoken to her parents—she’s not there.”

  “Who’s missing?” I asked.

  “Oh, hi, Sesame. I hadn’t seen you up there.”

  “Hi, Tod! Who’s missing?” I asked louder, as they’d all suddenly gone a bit hard of hearing. Through my binoculars, I could see Tod looking at Mum, who looked at Dad, who looked at me.

  “Don’t scream like that,” said Mum. “One of our students has disappeared. Tod, I think it’s time to call the police. I’m sure it’s nothing, but we can’t take any risks. I’ll be through in a minute.”

  “Who is it? Maybe I can spot her with my binoculars. Maybe she’s stuck on a roof like the last one.”

  (Edmund Sutton, last year. He stayed stranded on a roof for a whole Friday in the manner of Robinson Crusoe.)

  “She’s called Jenna Jenkins,” said Tod.

  I looked everywhere on the roofs for someone who looked like a Jenna Jenkins, but in vain.

  “Roof hypothesis tested and eliminated,” I declared.

  No reply. Dad had gone to wash the blood off his scalp. Mum and Tod had gone to the Porters’ Lodge, at the college’s entrance, which is the best place for the Porters to check with their laser-beam eyes that only tourists and students walk in and out of college (as opposed to chainsaw-wielding serial killers). Peter Mortimer was inside, thankfully, because the only living being left in the garden was a pregnant-looking duck who was eyeing the stream at the bottom of the garden. I climbed down the tree and walked into the house.

  “There’s a pregnant duck outside.”

  “Ducks don’t get pregnant, darling; they lay eggs.”

  “She shouldn’t stay here. She’s going to get ripped to ribbons by Peter Mortimer.”

  “Don’t roller-skate in the house.”

  “Too late, they’re on now. Daddy, did you know Jenna Jenkins?”

  “Yes, vaguely. Goodness, be careful, you’re going to break something.”

  “Did she have any known enemies?”

  “No, and please don’t try and play Sherlock Holmes. The police will do what they need to do. Watch out, that’s fragile! Have you done your homework?”

  “This is my homework.”

  “What, bulldozing our living-room carpet?”

  “No, learning things about the world. That’s what school is for, the Head said. Bye, Reverend!”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Roller derby.”

  First Court in Christ’s College has got one big circular lawn with a stone path around, which makes it an awesome roller derby track. And it echoes like inside a cave. It’s my favorite Sunday activity (I don’t tell Dad that).

  “Hi, Sesame! Enjoying your weekend?”

  Fiona Lumley is one of my best friends among the students. I try not to get too attached to them because, like rabbits, they only last three or four years and then they’re gone. But Fiona studies medicine so she’ll be around a bit longer, therefore I allow myself to be a little bit attached. Being friends with students is like adopting big siblings, I guess, but without being able to sneak into their rooms to read their private diaries. Well, unless you know where to get the keys from.

  I braked as if I was about to fall off the white cliffs of Dover, Fiona covered her ears, and when the screeching noise had receded I replied:

  “Not really, I don’t like Sundays. They have this habit of leading to Mondays. But exciting things can happen: have you heard about the mysterious disappearance of Jenna Jenkins?”

  Fiona frowned, and combed her hair with her fingers.

  “Yes, I have. I don’t know her very well, but I think it’s much more worrying than they’re making it sound. She’s been missing for two days. Everyone assumed she’d just gone home. But she hasn’t.”

  “Unless she did go home, and her parents sold her as a slave.”

  “Somehow, I doubt it. And it’s all the more mysterious as she was about to play the leading role in this year’s Ballet Society show—Swan Lake. She’d been going on and on about it for weeks.”

  “I think,” I said (joking), “a rival probably chopped her up like an aubergine for a ratatouille and drowned the pieces in the river Cam.”

  “I think,” said Fiona (not joking), “we may have to consider that something sinister has happened to her.”

  “Did she have any known enemies?”

  “Plenty,” replied Fiona. “She’s not only a ballet dancer. She’s been Editor-in-Chief of UniGossip magazine for two terms, and she hasn’t made many friends in the process.”

  II

  “Maman chérie, light of my life, can I go out for a walk?”

  “No.”

  “Papa chéri, fire of my loins, can I go out for a walk?”

  “For Heaven’s sake, Sophie, where did you get that terrifying expression from? And no, you may not go out for a walk. It’s nine o’clock. You should be in bed.”

  Sophying me around is the best way of getting me to disobey. I was outside in no time at all. My bedroom window is just above a little terrace where the big tree leans on its elbow. I slid down the trunk and landed on a bunch of tulips. The pregnant duck was still there.

  “Are you nuts? You shouldn’t stay here. Peter Mortimer’s going to bazooka you to the grave and munch on each little bone of each of your little ducklings.”

  The duck shrugged and jumped into the stream, which is not wise. The fish in there are enormous; I hate them all, with their moustaches. Even Peter Mortimer can’t catch them, and they laugh at him.

  “Now, to business.”

  The Porters’ Lodge was quiet when I reached it on tiptoe. Don, the Porter on duty, was drinking tea and looking at his computer screen. In the stealthy manner of the leopard, I crept up to the desk, and then did a forward roll, because that’s the done thing for a supersleuth. It was so astonishingly perfect that a “Wow!” escaped my mouth. Thankfully, at the very same time the phone rang and Don picked it up.

  This was the opportunity of a lifetime. I broke into another three forward rolls. They weren’t as good as the first one and I sort of ended up head first in a cardboard box, but I finally reached the pigeonholes with only a few paper cuts on my forehead.

  Now if you think that pigeonholes are actually full of happy pigeons, you are sadly deluded: this word is a wildly deceptive lie. Pigeonholes are students’ mailboxes. They are barely big enough to fit two letters, let alone a pigeon (I’ve tried, and been punished).

  I skimmed through the names on the stickers.

  Jameson, K.

  Jameson, M.

  Jared, M.

  Jeng, W.

  Jenkins, J.

  Jenna Jenkins’s pigeonhole.

  With nothing in it.

  Of course, the police must have cleared it all. That was not an encouraging start to my sleuthing career.

  I stood there scratching my head and looking at the disappointing nothingness, until something appetizingly colorful caught the corner of my eye and I got distracted. You would have got distracted too, for that something was a medium-sized box of Quality Street sweets, standing there unopened on the floor!

  A little bit of yellow paper was taped to it, which said:

  For Jenna J.

  I lifted it, and the following note appeared in full pencilled glory:

  I congratulated myself for being so much better than the police at spotting essential pieces of evidence and grabbed the box of Quality Street. Then I had to flatten myself like plaice against the wall when Don hung up the phone and stood up to take his empty tea cup back to the kitchenette.

  That’s when I noticed the copy of UniGossip on the Porters’ desk. As soon as Don had whistled his way to the next room I stretched out my free hand, bagged the magazine, and legged it into the dark and stormy night.

>   That had been a fantastically successful first mission, I thought, hopping back into the garden. To celebrate I sat down in a bush and ate just a few sweets until there was hardly anything left in the box apart from a nice little pile of multicolored wrappers. The pregnant duck looked like she was craving the strawberry-flavored one, so I let her nibble on it and she quacked enthusiastically.

  Then I realized I’d eaten up the evidence and felt a little bit guilty. But at least I hadn’t eaten up the yellow message.

  Jeremy.

  There was a Jeremy in this story. I didn’t exactly know when he’d delivered that box of sweets to Jenna, but at that time she’d already disappeared, and he was already worried.

  I still don’t know what you want me to do for UG.

  I picked up the copy of UniGossip. Blood-red headlines and blurry photographs stared out at me:

  LAW PROFESSOR CAUGHT

  SHOPLIFTING AT ASDA!

  University Team Rower

  Secret Father of Twins!

  WHO’S THAT WITH YOU,

  VICE-CHANCELLOR? CERTAINLY

  NOT YOUR WIFE!

  It didn’t sound like the kind of magazine I’d be reading in my spare time, as it didn’t come with a free gadget and didn’t have any comics in it, but I shuffled through it and found the Credits page. Jenna Jenkins’s name was mentioned on top, as Editor-in-Chief, and right underneath it, another name:

  Jeremy Hopkins—Chief Investigator.

  The pregnant duck looked at me with one of those puzzled looks that ducks have.

  So I whispered to her: “What sizzling-hot scandal could Jenna Jenkins have discovered that made her mysteriously disappear before she could ask her Chief Investigator to investigate the case?”

  Cambridge is the windiest place in the universe. As I fell asleep I could hear the gale howling and screaming and whistling as it rushed through the stone flames of the towers.

  But Sesame Seade isn’t scared of the dark or the wind.

  III