Sleuth on Skates

by Clémentine Beauvais

  And then it was time to go home, and I realized I hadn’t done anything today which could possibly enable me to find Jenna Jenkins.

  VI

  This is the moment when the proud supersleuth, faced with defeat, collapses into a podgy armchair and sips on a drink with many ice cubes.

  “In the name of all that is holy, Sophie! What’s in that glass?”

  “Apple juice on the rocks, Maman. It adds to the atmosphere. Look, if I take it in my hands and swirl it around like this, it tinkles. Exactly like a detective film.”

  “Your father’s just told me he found you and Gemma on the street on your own yesterday afternoon. Didn’t I tell you to go straight home?”

  “Well, you did say ‘go home,’ but there was no ‘straight’ between ‘go’ and ‘home’.”

  Mum rolled her eyes and sighed. “I didn’t know teenage crises started so early.”

  “With her, it started at two years old,” Dad commented.

  They both recoiled in horror at what I assumed were stressful memories.

  “DAD!”

  “Goodness me! What is it now, you shrieking gibbon?”

  “I completely forgot to ask you about the duck!”

  “Was there any need for the Australians to hear that? The duck is safe. It’s at Emmanuel College. It’s made lots of new friends. Happy?”

  One of us wasn’t happy, and that was Peter Mortimer. As he walked into the room I saw he was in a foul mood. His prey had all been removed. This morning the sock, now the duck. Tough luck. I fished the mysterious key out of my pocket.

  “Lookity look, kitty darling baby,” I said soothingly, dangling the pompom under Peter Mortimer’s nose. “That’s almost as good as a pregnant duck!”

  He hit it with his paw, glared at me and strutted out of the room, making sure I could see his bum.

  I looked at the ruffled pompom. Under the fluff, a thin strip of white fabric had appeared, with numbers on it. 3901. As I pondered on the meaning of these numbers, Mum shot a suspicious glance at me and said, “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing, it’s a key.”

  “And, more interestingly, a pompom.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “On the floor.”

  “Where on the floor?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  Mum looked at the ceiling as if to beg it to collapse on my skull. “You are impossible!” she exploded. “If by tomorrow you haven’t taken that key back to where it belongs, you will be in a lot of trouble! Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Mummy.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “Yes, Mummy.”

  “What do they do to thieves?”

  “You don’t fool me! I’m too young to go to prison. I’m protected like the Queen’s swans.”

  “Go to your bedroom and think about your actions!” screamed Dad and Mum in perfect unison, which confirmed what I’ve always suspected, which is that they got married to form some kind of double act.

  I went to my bedroom pretty quickly and thought about my actions. And as I thought about them I realized how atrociously naughty I’d been, and cried bitter tears of remorse unto my pillow, whimpering: “Ah! Wouldst that I had never picked up this key! Wouldst that I had taken it to the Lost Property office! My parents are right—I should be thrown into gaol and given only breadcrumbs to peck on!”

  (Gaol is pronounced jail.)

  Oh! What could I possibly do to set things right? What had Mum said? If I hadn’t taken that key back to where it belonged by tomorrow, I would be in serious trouble. Now what did she mean by by tomorrow? It was already seven o’clock. Maybe she meant tomorrow evening. But surely it was wrong to keep a lost object for that long. Maybe she meant tomorrow lunchtime. But Professor Philips might need his key in the morning! Which meant Mum must have wanted me to return it by 12:01 tonight, which was effectively tomorrow.

  That was the only possible interpretation.

  She wanted me to leave the house after dinner and take the key back to where it belonged before the clock struck midnight.

  Between you and me, it surprised me a little, as I wouldn’t have expected Mum to allow me to go to the Fitzwilliam Museum on my own after dark, but then parents’ moods are as changeable as the Cambridge wind.

  “Are you going to bed already?”

  “Yes, it’s getting a bit late.”

  “It’s only eight forty-five. Are you ill?”

  “No, I’m just particularly tired. Look! AAahhhh.”

  “I don’t think I absolutely need to witness your yawns. Good night, then.”

  “Good night, Mummy! Good night, Daddy! Good night, wisteria! Good night, chandelier! Good night, moon!”

  “Go to bed!”

  I went to my bedroom and quickly put on my supersleuth uniform, which is, for want of sewing abilities, my school uniform and my roller skates. I threw the roller skates out of the window and slid down the tree to the garden. I escaped through the small green door and crossed Third Court, praying I wouldn’t bump into any obnoxious Fellow who’d tell my parents everything about my escapade. “Fellow” is the official name for university teachers, but let me tell you, “jolly good” is never guaranteed to go with it. Like my parents, most of them seem to think I shouldn’t be roaming the premises on eight wheels. Or any number of wheels, actually, as one Fellow duly informed me one day when I crashed into her office window on a unicycle.

  Having successfully not bumped into any of these unfunny people, I left College through the back door, put on my roller skates, and the dangerous Cambridge night swallowed me up.

  To be fair, it was actually quite well lit, and it didn’t seem as dangerous as my parents had always told me. Instead of muggers and child-snatchers, I whizzed past old ladies and students carrying orange Sainsbury’s bags. One of them I recognized. . . .

  “Hi, Fiona!”

  “Sesame! Your braking technique is terrifying. What are you up to?”

  “I’m on a sleuthing mission. You mustn’t tell my parents.”

  “It’s not as if I had coffee with them every day. Nothing dangerous, I hope?”

  “What do you mean by dangerous? Crocodiles, vampires, arsenic?”

  “You don’t have to answer,” said Fiona. “Okay, I’ll see you around.”

  “Yes! Oh, what’s that T-shirt? It’s well cool!” She was wearing a hoodie with a drawing of a stethoscope around the collar, and medical instruments scattered all around in pockets.

  “It is, isn’t it? I got it free in the post this afternoon. It’s some promotional thing from a T-shirt company. Fun coincidence, since I’m studying medicine!”

  She left, waving goodbye, and as I watched her go, I noticed on the back of the T-shirt a C in a circle that looked vaguely familiar.

  I picked up speed again and whooshed past the market place and Great Saint Mary’s church, which chimed nine o’clock. Big and low in the dark brown sky, the full moon dusted the top of King’s College chapel with whitish light.

  Finally I got to the Fitzwilliam Museum, its slim columns turned silver in the night. The large iron bars were all locked, so I threw my roller skates above the stone railing and climbed over. I landed on the grass and walked to the side door.

  It was locked, of course. What had I expected? I twisted my wrists, looking at the sky. I was gravely unprepared! But then I noticed the code-lock keyboard on the side of the door, and I keyed in 3901. The door clicked open and I walked in.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever walked on a museum floor with just socks on, but it’s the most amazing thing ever. It’s like ice-skating. I couldn’t stop myself. I slid through the Greek antiquities, did a triple axel in the ceramics room, fell down and almost broke my crown next to an Egyptian stone. Then I remembered I was on a mission. What reminded me was a white door with a simple business card inside a clear rectangular plastic holder:

  “Ha!” I said. “It’s the door.”


  So I slipped the key inside the keyhole, and turned it to the right.

  Nothing happened.

  I turned it to the left.

  Nothing happened.

  I left it in there and said: “Alohomora!”

  Nothing happened.

  I left it in there and said: “Open, sesame!”

  Nothing happened.

  I was a little stunned. And then something added to my stunned mood.

  That something was the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor, accompanied by two voices:

  “We already have results. It’s working.”

  “Good. Money well spent.”

  “And well earned.”

  “Mainly thanks to you.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without your art of persuasion.”

  Not only did the conversation make no sense, but I was trapped. Trapped in a corner where there was only one door that wouldn’t open, and . . .

  And a broom cupboard! Which I tried. Which was locked. Locked! Who locks a broom cupboard? No wonder there weren’t any mops available earlier!

  The footsteps and voices were getting closer.

  “Is she OK now, by the way?”

  “She’s fine. We negotiated.”

  “How much?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m more concerned about that Tsarina person.”

  Tsarina. Part of my brain recorded that, whilst the other part was trying to figure out how to open the broom cupboard. That’s the kind of thing you can do when the number of connections in your brain is equal to the number of stars in the universe.

  Use the key, said a little brain cell.

  I was inside the broom cupboard before I even realized I’d unlocked it.

  Outside, the footsteps had stopped.

  It was the Philips brothers, no doubt about it. I recognized their voices—Ian’s smooth and deep, Archie’s higher-pitched and merry.

  Fumbling noises were heard.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve lost your office key as well,” said Archie.

  “Ah, no, here it is. Still no idea where the other key is, though. Thank goodness I lost it after she’d gone.”

  “Can you imagine?” whispered Archie. “Can you imagine if she’d still been in there?”

  “Yes, well, it didn’t happen, did it? No need to worry about it.”

  Professor Philips’s office door opened, and I heard the noise of a light switch being flicked on. From a vent at the top of the broom-cupboard wall, three bars of light shone through from the office.

  That’s when I realized that the broom cupboard was deeper than I’d thought. Furthermore, it had no brooms in it. Unusually for a broom cupboard, it contained an air bed (deflated), a sleeping bag (rolled up), a pile of Tintin books and an empty box of McVitie’s biscuits.

  And then my head formed a thought which had been waiting patiently in the back of my nose for a little while. That thought was that the cupboard kind of smelt like my mum had been in there.

  This surprised me a little bit, as my mum isn’t the kind of person who’d snuggle up into a museum cupboard to munch on hobnobs and chuckle her way through a pile of comics. So there had to be another explanation for the waft of perfume which was unmistakably the same.

  And suddenly the explanation exploded out of nowhere. The birthday picture Jeremy had shown me. Jenna Jenkins surrounded with gifts. A blue teddy bear. A pair of ballerina shoes. And a bottle of perfume. The same as my mum’s.

  Jenna Jenkins had been here.

  And Toby’s foot had been right. Ian Philips was the kidnapper.

  If Mum had known, I don’t think she’d have sent me on this mission.

  Inside the office the two Professors weren’t talking much any more. All I could hear were clickety noises and electronic beeps. Of course there can be very innocent reasons for spending an evening with your brother typing away at a computer. They could have been cobbling together a nice photo album for their mummy’s birthday. But I had reasons to believe that it wasn’t exactly what was going on.

  Not only had Professor Ian Philips kidnapped Jenna Jenkins, but Professor Archie Philips had known everything about it. Even now that they’d released her, it didn’t look like they were up to any good. And they’d confirmed what my sleuthing radar had been beeping on about: that Tsarina, somehow, had something to do with Jenna Jenkins’s mysterious disappearance. But what?

  After ten or fifteen minutes of this suspicious silence, I pushed the cupboard door open and made a stealthy escape, taking the key with me. I couldn’t leave it there; it had my fingerprints all over it—what if the police found it and thought I was Jenna Jenkins’s kidnapper?

  I left the museum, climbed over the railings again, and put on my roller skates. The city was very dark and silent as I rushed past the stone buildings. I flung the key into the Cam and sneaked into college through the back door.

  Peter Mortimer was waiting for me on the little terrace. As I jumped into my bedroom I heard footsteps on the stairs, and just had time to leap into bed and close my eyes before the door silently slid open, casting a long rectangle of orange light inside.

  Two shadows. Mum’s voice: “Yes, she’s asleep.”

  Dad: “Hugging her roller skates.”

  Mum: “Don’t ask.”

  VII

  “What’s all that junk?”

  “Well, that’s a nice way of saying good morning, Father.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you, Sophie. I’m talking about that.”

  “What is it?”

  “A catalogue on duck-rearing that came in the post this morning, addressed to me!”

  He looked at the object as if it was a time bomb, and put it down on the table. It was called Happy Ducks and, appropriately, was decorated with a picture of a smiling duck. Just underneath the duck, there was the small C in a circle I’d seen on Fiona’s T-shirt and somewhere else. I flicked through the magazine. It was full of very useful objects that the keen duck-breeder would need. Duck food! Egg incubators! Little coats for ducklings!

  “That’s amazingly cool,” I said. “I think we should try it! Look, you can get a beginner duck-rearing kit from only £124.99! Can we? Can we?”

  Dad just rolled his eyes and picked up the Telegraph.

  “Good morning, Mummy, are you in a good mood?”

  “Why? Do you have something to confess?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then if I’m in a good mood it’s very likely to change. What is it?”

  “Well, please don’t make me reveal my sources, but I have splendid evidence that Jenna Jenkins’s kidnapper is none other than Professor Ian Philips, probably helped by his brother Professor Archie Philips. They locked the poor girl in a broom cupboard in the Fitzwilliam Museum.”

  Mum looked at Dad, who looked at Mum, and they both produced vexingly loud laughs. Dad smiled and said, “The good thing about Sophie is that she’s an imaginative little Scheherazade.”

  “No, seriously, parents, you have to believe me. He kidnapped Jenna and left her to rot with only a box of biscuits and a pile of comics in a cupboard. I don’t know where she is now, but that’s the absolute truth. And Archie Philips is involved in the Tsarina affair! And they both use the Fitz as a base for their illegal activities. . . .”

  “My adorable, insane little girl,” cooed Dad. “Go and get dressed. You’re going to be late for school.”

  “Dad, I swear to God . . .”

  “Don’t swear to God.”

  “I swear to the Archangel Gabriel . . .”

  “Don’t swear at all.”

  “But Daddy, seriously, look at me, I have my serious face on—seriously, the Professor Brothers of Evil have to be arrested. You have to call the police because if I do it they won’t believe me. . . .”

  “You’re right, they won’t. Go and put your uniform on.”

  “But they’re the only ones who can tell us where Jenna Jenkins is!”

  “Oh, Sophie,” sighed Mum, half-smiling. “Ever
ything’s fine. We know where Jenna Jenkins is.”

  My eyeballs almost fell out of their sockets, but I pressed them back in. “What?”

  “We received a letter from her this morning. It’s just as we suspected—she had a nervous breakdown and left college for a few days to go to London. When she realized everyone was looking for her, she came back and wrote to explain what had happened. She’s still shaken up, so she’s going to give up on her degree this year and come back next year.

  “So you see,” said Dad, “there’s nothing at all to worry about, my little spinner of funny tales.”

  Still frowning with incomprehension, I joined Gemma and Toby on the school field.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Gemma.

  “Firstly, PE. Secondly, Jenna Jenkins has mysteriously reappeared. You’ll never believe it.”

  I explained everything to them, and they gaped at the tale of my midnight escapade.

  “I don’t get it,” said Toby eventually. “If Jenna Jenkins says she was in London, who was locked in the cupboard?”

  “It can’t be anyone else. No one else was missing! Jenna Jenkins is nose-lengtheningly lying in the manner of Pinocchio. She was in that cupboard: I smelt her.”

  Toby said, tying his shoelaces, “Maybe you got it all wrong, Sesame. Maybe it wasn’t your mum’s perfume, just the smell of cleaning products.”

  “Are you saying my mum smells like a freshly-bleached bathroom?”

  “Listen,” replied Gemma, “am I the only one who thinks we should drop the case? Whatever happened to her, Jenna Jenkins is now alive and well. Whatever the Professors are doing is their own business. Firstly, it’s probably boring, like most businesses. Secondly, they’ve proven they’re not against locking up people in cupboards, and I don’t really want to try that out.”

  “At least,” I remarked, “being locked up in a cupboard would give one a good excuse not to go to PE.”

  Gemma and Toby got up and started warming up for sprint. Mr. Halitosis was already jumping up and down to try to get rid of his beer belly, screaming, “Come on, children! You can do it! You’ve got it in you!”