Thanks to Twinkle Earnshaw, Alfie Kingsolver had become a celebrity overnight and he was milking his newfound fame for all it was worth. When Liam had spoken to him a couple of weeks before, he’d seemed skeptical, humble, soft-spoken. Now he was a blowhard who had an opinion on everything, including LewisCarroll23, whom he had branded “a danger to society.” The man had singled him out and was ruining his career, he claimed. Furthermore, he was ridiculing the beliefs of millions of people, which could get him into quite a lot of hot water. Finally, he pleaded with LewisCarroll23 to cease and desist before very unpleasant things started to happen.
“He’s threatening you,” said Amanda.
“It does look that way,” said Holmes. “He can’t really do anything though.”
“Of course not,” said Simon. “It’s not like he can put a spell on you or anything.” He guffawed.
“I think it’s terrible,” said Amphora. “You should get a bodyguard, Scapulus.”
“He can’t find me,” said Holmes. “And anyway, he’s just full of hot air. He’s feeling threatened and this is the only way he knows to fight back. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“What’s this?” said Binnie, joining the group.
“No big deal,” said Clive. “This Merlin guy is just blowing steam.”
“About Scapulus?” said Binnie.
“Actually, this is kind of weird,” said Amanda, looking at her phone.
“What?” said Ivy.
“Well,” said Amanda carefully, “it seems that he’s saying that your dad is a national hero and should be knighted.”
“Wait,” said Ivy. “The bad guy is defending my dad?”
“Seems so,” said Amanda.
“I’m not sure that’s so good,” said Simon.
“Of course it is,” said Amphora. “He’s an international figure. What he says will have impact.”
“Not if we make him look like a fool,” said Ivy.
“What am I supposed to do?” said Holmes to Amanda later.
“You have to keep going,” she said. “We’ll have to rely on Simon to fix Professor Halpin’s problems.”
“How’s that going?”
She’d been working on the animations but kept getting distracted. “Okay. I don’t have anything to show yet though.”
Holmes looked worried. “You don’t really think he faked the results, do you?”
Amanda was shocked. The idea that anyone in the Halpin family could be dishonest was absurd. They were the best people Amanda knew, although she didn’t know Ivy’s mother very well. “Scapulus! How could you say such a thing?”
“I know he’s a good guy and everything, but he’s been under a lot of pressure to produce results, and sometimes people cave.”
“Not this person.”
“But what if—”
At that moment Simon came running up to the pair and said, “You’re not going to believe this.”
“Oh, Simon,” said Amanda. “Now what is it?”
“Number one,” he said, “shut up. And number two, Alfie Kingsolver is doing real magic.”
The thing about Simon Binkle was that he didn’t exaggerate. He also wasn’t easily impressed. So if he said that Alfie Kingsolver was doing real magic, he probably was.
“Simon, I’m surprised at you,” said Amanda. “You know there’s no such thing.”
“All right, I didn’t phrase that quite right,” said Simon. “What I meant was, he appears to be doing real magic and everyone thinks he’s really a wizard.”
“That makes more sense,” said Holmes. Simon gave him a look. Amanda just knew he knew what was going on between them. For a geek, Simon seemed to have an amazing sixth sense. Ivy was wrong. He didn’t have Asperger’s at all. He was just Simon Binkle, human oxymoron.
“No it doesn’t,” said Simon. “How can anyone believe that nonsense?”
“How can anyone believe you can read the vibrations of history?” said Amanda.
“Hey,” said Simon. “This is me we’re talking about, not some crackpot.”
“Please don’t call him that,” said Amanda. “Liam Halpin was the one who found him. If you disparage him you hurt Ivy’s dad.”
“No I don’t,” said Simon.
“You do,” she said.
“Just because Professor Halpin found him doesn’t mean he’s responsible for the guy being a jerk.”
“Not to you and me, but a lot of people think that,” said Amanda.
“This is getting very convoluted,” said Holmes.
“Look,” said Simon. “I will clear Professor Halpin. However, this magic thing Alfie Kingsolver is doing is serious. I don’t think you can stop that with a few Sherlock Holmes videos.”
“Let’s step back a moment,” said Amanda. “What difference does it make if a lot of people want to believe in nonsense?”
“A very big difference,” said Holmes. “I’m surprised you haven’t realized this already, Amanda. If people don’t believe in the value of logic, we detectives are finished.”
Holmes was right. When the public discovered that Alfie Kingsolver could do real magic, they abandoned everything to do with reason. Courtrooms became circuses, classrooms devolved into bedlam, and no one obeyed traffic signals, causing so many accidents that insurance companies went bust overnight. Logic courses in universities were scrapped and classes in spells and potions took their place. Scientists and politicians caved to the pressure, and even the queen was caught wearing a strange-looking piece of Druid jewelry.
Apparently one of Alfie’s new tricks was making electric bolts burst out of his hands. Seeing the charlatan perform such an obvious illusion annoyed Amanda no end. “That’s been done,” she said. “Star Wars anyone? Big deal.” Then he was levitating things, including himself, and after that he was creating objects out of thin air. And that was what tipped Amanda off.
“Hugh Moriarty,” she said. “He’s behind all this.”
“Just what I was thinking,” said Holmes.
“We’ve got to stop him.”
“Agreed.”
“Can you hack him again?”
“I can certainly try.”
Holmes abandoned his work on the other videos and went to work trying to locate Nick’s younger brother. But if it had been difficult to trace him when he was creating purple rainbows, now it was impossible. Holmes made no progress whatsoever. But Amanda did.
At last she had completed her animation of the data gathered by Simon’s history machine and called everyone into the common room for its first run. She hadn’t even watched it herself—she hadn’t dared. All she knew was that she had managed to take Simon’s data and build a 3D animation out of it. If things went wrong, she didn’t want to be alone when she found out.
She set up her computer on the lunch counter the décor gremlins had installed and started the animation. She had managed to isolate the actions of each person who had entered the chamber and had created avatars for them, so it seemed as if the kids were really watching people move around. In the interest of objectivity she had kept the avatars completely neutral, refusing to speculate about which real person they might represent. One of them was a frog, another a koala bear, a third a parakeet, and so on.
“Nice job on the artifacts,” said Clive.
“Those were easy,” said Amanda. “All the information was in the scan.”
“We’re checking the action against the archaeologists’ logs, right?” said Holmes.
“Yep,” said Amanda. “I really wish we had Darius’s film too, but we don’t.”
“Yeah, where is that guy anyway?” said Simon.
“I don’t know,” said Amanda. “I guess he got called away.”
“What’s happening on the screen?” said Ivy.
“So far they’re opening the chest and finding the jars,” said Simon.
“My dad, Felix, and Louis?” said Ivy.
“Yeah, and Twinkle, the harpy,” said Simon.
“Wait,” s
aid Clive. “I thought we weren’t going to mention the real people, just the avatars.”
“Everyone knows who they really are,” said Simon.
“Ssh,” said Amanda. “Just watch.”
The kids sat there watching for a very long time, until all the figures had left the chamber.
“Is that it?” said Ivy.
“No,” said Simon. “That only goes up until the time we all left for the day.”
“So there’s more?” said Ivy.
“Lots more,” said Simon.
“We can’t sit here and watch, what—days’ worth of action. What are we going to do?”
“I have a trick,” said Simon. “There’s this technology that identifies changes in the video. It will find any movement in the chamber after this point.”
“Cool,” said Clive.
“This will take a moment,” said Simon. “Amanda, shoot me the file, will you?”
“It’s in the cloud,” she said. “Just pick it up from our folder.”
“Gotcha,” said Simon.
He fiddled with a few things and then turned his machine around so everyone could watch. The same view of the chamber appeared, but at 1:00 A.M., when everyone would have been asleep, a figure slipped into the chamber, opened the chest, and inserted an object that looked a lot like a jar.
“Look!” cried Amanda. “Someone is putting something in the chest!”
“Who is it?” said Ivy.
“I don’t know,” said Amanda.
“Is it my dad?” Ivy said anxiously.
“It will be fine,” said Simon. Amanda looked at him sharply.
“What are you saying?” screamed Ivy.
“Something must be wrong,” he said. “I need to check the data again.”
“He wouldn’t!” Ivy screamed. “Fix it, Simon!”
Amanda and Simon exchanged looks. Clive just looked down.
“We can’t use this,” said Simon.
Ivy exploded into tears. Nigel stuck his nose in her face and licked her, which only made her sob more.
“Maybe it isn’t Professor Halpin,” said Amanda.
“You’re right,” said Simon, but Amanda knew he was just saying that for Ivy’s benefit.
“What’s going on in here?” said Lila Lester, barging into the room. “Why is Ivy crying?”
“It’s nothing, Professor Lester,” said Simon.
“We’re fine, Mom,” said Amanda.
“No you’re not,” said Lila. “Let me see that.”
“What are you children doing?” came an even louder voice than Lila’s. Professor Darktower stormed into the room.
“Tell me what that is right now, Amanda,” said Lila.
Amanda looked at Simon helplessly, but before she could open her mouth Ivy said, “It’s my dad faking evidence. Can’t you see that?”
“Are you telling me that your father, the one who created that monster Kingsolver, actually faked his results?” thundered Darktower. “This whole thing could have been prevented?” Ivy burst into tears all over again. “Give me that computer at once,” said Darktower, snatching the laptop off the counter. “Thank you, Mr. Binkle, for exposing this fraud. I will see to it that you are rewarded.”
He turned and left the room in such a hurry that he stepped on Lila’s foot. She screamed and cried, “Savage,” then limped out after him.
Three hours later, Amanda read on the Web that Twinkle Earnshaw had received a one-million-pound advance to write a book about the dig. Because of the demand, the book would be rushed to press and would be available within the month.
22
Collapse!
When a second peacock died, Amanda decided she had to do more to save the birds.
“Scapulus,” she said when she’d found Holmes, “we need to find out exactly what happened to them.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said.
“Let’s check the garden again. Maybe we’ll find some clues this time.”
As they were scouring the Legatum grounds, it occurred to Amanda that they might be on the wrong track. It was a horrifying thought, but she had to pursue it. “Maybe there’s another way to go about this.”
“What do you mean?” said Holmes, looking up from the shrub he was examining.
“What if someone deliberately poisoned the peacocks?” She absent-mindedly looked up at the girls’ dorm. He noticed but he didn’t say anything.
“You mean instead of them eating poison by accident?” he said, glancing up there himself.
“Exactly.”
“Then we’d have to figure out why someone would do that, which . . .”
“Should lead us to the culprit,” said Amanda.
“They have been very noisy and messy,” said Holmes.
“You mean disturbing people?” said Amanda. “Someone thinks they’re enough of a nuisance to do away with them?” She fought the urge to look up again.
“Yes. It is difficult to sleep with them screeching ‘email’ all night.”
The birds would sit in the trees behind the school and make the most awful noise. Probably a way to alert each other that there were predators nearby, Amanda thought, but very irritating for humans who had to listen.
“Good point.”
“Sidebotham hates them,” he said. “Aside from the noise, there’s the mess.”
“They are pretty poopy,” said Amanda, shuddering to think of what she, Clive, and Binnie had had to endure in the lab.
“And she doesn’t like disorder.”
“You don’t think she’d go that far, do you?” said Amanda, although she knew the acting headmaster was capable of anything. She’d never seen such steely eyes.
“Sure I do,” said Holmes.
“Anyone else?” said Amanda. Sidebotham wasn’t the only ruthless person at the school. Any number of teachers, students, and even staff were equally capable of such a heinous act. But there might be another motive. “Say, what if this has something to do with the ink?”
“The UV ink, you mean?” he said.
“Yes.” It was an obvious connection, and considering how important the Bible seemed to be, a better bet.
“What about it though?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone doesn’t want anyone to make more of it.”
“Why not?” he said. She wished he’d stop asking questions and venture a guess or two.
“It’s dangerous?” she ventured.
“I don’t see how. It might be a secret means of communication, but surely there are more efficient methods of doing away with people in the twenty-first century,” he said.
“I suppose so. But let’s assume the reason does have to do with the ink. That would mean the perpetrator is someone who knows about it. Who does?” She stopped to think. “I don’t think there are that many people. You and me, of course. Clive, Simon, and Ivy. Maybe Binnie. She’s always hanging around. I’m sure she picks up stuff.” The next possibility was an awkward one, but she had to raise it. “Amphora?”
“She doesn’t know from me,” said Holmes, who didn’t even flinch at the suggestion. No defense, no emotion at all. Amanda didn’t want to be the cause of the couple’s breakup, but even without her involvement, she didn’t see how the relationship could last. It was completely one-sided. She felt a pang of sympathy for her former roommate.
“The teachers,” she said. “They must.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Holmes.
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a hunch,” he said. “I could be wrong.”
“Professor Also told me that there’s a lot I don’t know about the detectives. I don’t know what she was referring to, but she might know about the ink. And if she does, other teachers must too.”
“The Punitori gave up on the Bible when they left though. If they’d thought it was still to be found around here, they would have stayed and kept looking.”
“Good point,” said Amanda. “But how does that fit with our hypoth
esis?”
“I’m not sure it does,” said Holmes.
“And I’m not sure this line of thinking is getting us anywhere,” she said.
“Well, then,” said Holmes, “so far we have the nuisance factor and the ink. Anything else?”
She thought for a moment. “What if someone else wants to be able to make that ink?”
“Or what if there are other qualities to the peacocks’ feathers that we haven’t discovered and someone else has?”
“Now you’re cooking,” said Amanda. “This has Blixus written all over it.”
“I’m afraid it does,” said Holmes looking at her uncomfortably.
“What?” she said. “Go ahead and say it.”
“No,” said Holmes.
“All right, then I will,” she said miserably. “It might be Nick.”
Holmes seemed incredibly awkward all of a sudden. It seemed that the two of them could not even mention Nick without everything going all wobbly between them. Amanda feared that he was right, but she wasn’t quite ready to point fingers yet.
“We should prove that they were poisoned deliberately before we start accusing people,” she said.
“Yes, let’s,” said Holmes, sounding relieved.
“We need a smoking gun,” said Amanda.
“We’re looking for poison?” said Holmes.
“We are,” said Amanda.
“Let’s assume the culprit did not leave the poison bottle lying around,” said Holmes.
“That seems sensible.”
“Then how do we find it?” he said.
“Look for plants the peacocks have eaten and take samples of them?”
“Do you think there are still half-eaten leaves around?” he said. “The peacocks haven’t been here for a while. The gardeners are pretty meticulous about keeping things tidy.”
“I’ll bet we can find something—if it exists,” said Amanda.
The two of them split up and started to comb the various planting beds again. It was painstaking work, as there were a lot of plants, and many of the leaves weren’t visible without wading in and handling each one. After a while of this with no luck, Amanda caught up with Holmes and said, “This isn’t an efficient way of looking.”
Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set Page 127