by Laura Wood
There was another long pause as everyone digested this.
“Well,” said Inspector Hartley, sounding suspiciously like he was trying to smother a laugh, “I think I’ll be getting back to the crime scene now, as everything here is … under control.” He and Miss Baxter shared a brief look and then he hurried out into the hall.
Kip shuffled around next to me and Ingrid, and the three of us stood there quaking. How could we have been so wrong? I thought, miserably.
“Well, you three, I can’t remember a time when I have been angrier. I am bitterly disappointed in you. What do you have to say for yourselves?” Miss Baxter’s normally sunny face looked pale and pinched.
“Oh, Miss Susan. I’m so sorry!” I burst out. “It was all my fault. All my idea. I dragged them into it. I’m so sorry!” I looked at Ingrid and Kip, feeling the weight of my guilt crushing me like a hat full of rocks.
“No,” said Ingrid quietly, “it was all of us. We are very sorry.”
“Yes,” muttered Kip awkwardly, dragging his eyes up to Miss Susan’s face. “Sorry, Miss Susan. We got it all wrong. We just wanted to find the ruby.”
“And to help Marvin. To prove he didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, my eyes pleading with Miss Susan for her understanding.
“Whatever your reasons, this is a very serious offence. We may have to talk about suspension … or even worse,” said Miss Baxter, shaking her head.
I felt my knees turning to custard, and I thought I was going to drop down right there on the carpet. A few weeks ago the idea of coming to Saint Smithen’s had seemed like the worst thing in the world, but now the thought that I might be sent away seemed unbearable. I had found true best friends, and I realized with a jolt that I was enjoying school much more than I had thought possible.
“No,” said Miss Susan firmly. “What you did was terrible” – she looked at all three of us very hard and we nodded – “but I know you were trying to do the right thing. You were trying to help a friend.” I felt my heart jump just a little as a tiny scrap of hope appeared. “But unfortunately, trying and doing are not the same things. You didn’t do the right thing,” Miss Susan continued. “What you did was very wrong, and you must face some kind of punishment.”
Again we all nodded eagerly. “Yes, of course, miss,” said Ingrid.
“Very well,” said Miss Baxter sternly. “Miss Susan has been very generous. But it’s detentions for you three for the foreseeable future. Starting tonight in the library. Now, come on.” Miss Baxter held the door open and the three of us began to trail out.
I turned back quickly to face Miss Susan. My face and mouth and heart were full of feelings. “I really am so sorry,” I said quietly.
Miss Susan gave me a very small smile. “It’s OK, Poppy,” she sighed without a trace of her frilly voice, “we all do strange things for the people we love.” Then the smile vanished and her back stiffened. “Just don’t let me ever, EVER catch you doing anything like that again.”
Chapter Thirty
By the time we hustled back from lessons, there wasn’t time to go down to see my family before reporting to detention. When Ingrid and I rushed back to our room to drop off our school bags, I found a note on my bed.
At four o’clock on the dot, the three of us reported to the library for what we knew would be the first of many detentions. Even though the memory of that morning still left me burning with shame, I was overwhelmed with the relief of not having got into even bigger trouble. I think all three of us knew that a detention spent shelving books was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. So it was with an almost light heart that I found myself in the cool quiet of the library, unpacking boxes and boxes of local history documents.
Mr Fipps, the librarian, was – as usual – asleep behind his desk, snoring gently. The three of us had been given the task of unpacking, cataloguing and shelving several large boxes of documents relating to the school and the surrounding area. It was actually a pretty interesting job and the boxes contained everything from old maps to diaries to photographs.
“Look at this one!” exclaimed Kip, holding up a very old, brown photograph of Saint Smithen’s, with a group of pale, small boys in smart suits lined up outside next to glowering teachers in robes that made them look like sinister bats. “They don’t look too happy.”
“Add it to that pile, there,” said Ingrid, who had slipped immediately into the role of organizer. Ingrid was in her element surrounded by all these historical papers. “Look, you two!” she exclaimed, her voice squeaking up a notch in excitement. “There’s a whole box here with stuff on the Van Bothings!”
Kip’s head snapped up, but I stared down at my hands. “I don’t think we should be talking about the curse any more,” I said in a small mouse voice that I didn’t recognize as my own. I could feel the other two looking at me very hard, and I raised my eyes to theirs. “I just feel like I dragged you two into this mess with Miss Susan.”
“Oh, shut it, weirdo!” said Kip loudly, a friendly grin on his face. “And stop moping around. We’re all in it together. So we caught the wrong person, who cares? That’s what always happens in the books just before they catch the right person. We’ve got to keep looking!”
I looked at Kip in astonishment and turned to Ingrid, expecting her to look horrified, but she was nodding as well. “Kip’s right,” she said, and then laughed at our surprised faces. “Well, it had to happen sooner or later!”
“What’s bothering me,” I said slowly, “is that pearl. If it didn’t come from Miss Susan’s watch, then where did it come from?” I could feel something tugging at my memory, like a blackbird pulling on a worm. I had seen something recently, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I sighed. Maybe it would come back to me.
I looked up to see Ingrid frowning over something. “What’s up, Ing?” I asked.
Ingrid looked up, a frown still scrunched above her eyes. “It’s this Van Bothing stuff,” she said slowly. “I don’t know why, but I think there are things missing from it. These articles have bits blacked out, there’s a diary here with a load of pages ripped out of it, and look at this photograph.” She held out a small black-and-white photo of a man with a friendly face. “It looks like it’s been cut in half, like someone’s been taken out of it.” Kip and I huddled over the picture and realized that Ingrid was right; the man’s arm looked like it was supposed to be around someone else’s shoulder – you could just see a tiny bit of it left in the picture, but that person had been cut out.
“Perhaps it got ripped?” I said. “Perhaps the other half is still in the box?” Kip started scrambling around in there, trying to find the remaining piece of the photo.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Ingrid, running her fingers along the side of the photograph. “The edge is so neat. Like someone deliberately cut it with scissors.”
“Whaburhghphthp,” came Kip’s muffled voice from inside the box, which appeared to be swallowing him whole, his two short legs waving around out of the top. Eventually, after much wriggling, his pink face reappeared.
“What were you saying?” I asked, shaking my head.
Kip held out his hand, and in it was what looked like an old roll of film. “I was saying, look at this! It was buried at the bottom of the box. What is it, d’you reckon?”
Ingrid grabbed it out of Kip’s hand. “It’s an old roll of microfilm!” she cried; then, seeing our confused faces, she added, “It’s like a load of scanned documents – usually newspapers. You just need a machine to project them. My mum and dad use them all the time with their stamps.” Ingrid snapped her fingers. “I’m sure I saw one in the photocopying room!”
I looked at Kip and Ingrid’s flushed faces and felt the now-familiar thrill of stumbling upon a clue. Somehow this microfilm was connected to the mysterious Van Bothings, and the Van Bothings were connected to the ruby. It seemed to me that lost newspape
r articles were just the kind of thing Dougie and Snoops would stumble on to in about chapter thirty of one of their books. “What are we waiting for?!” I cried. “Let’s go!”
The three of us crept past Mr Fipps into the small photocopying room behind his desk. In one corner of the room a machine stood under a black cover. Pulling the cover off, Ingrid clapped her hands. “Just like the one my parents have!” she whispered as she carefully started the machine and fed the film into the space at the bottom. Turning on a light in the screen, we saw the first projected image from the film. It was a newspaper article from 1974, nothing very interesting, just a story about a charity auction at the Van Bothing estate. Ingrid began clicking through the images, and as we got near the end of the roll, my heart sank. So this was a dead end too, I thought, just a roll of film someone had left in the box by accident.
But then Kip hissed, “STOP!” and there it was, the picture of the friendly man smiling out at us, right in the middle of the screen. And he did have his arm around someone, a young, pretty woman with dark curly hair. We all huddled around the screen and stared at the picture. There was something so familiar about that woman, I thought. I knew that I had seen her somewhere before.
I started reading what was written under the photograph and it was like my brain was picking up all the jigsaw-puzzle pieces that had been in the wrong places and putting them into the right ones. I noticed a small beauty mark on the woman’s left cheek, and I could almost hear the imaginary light bulb ping above my head as I realized who it was.
“Holy baloney,” I gasped, “it’s Gertrude!”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Gertrude?!” cried Kip and Ingrid with one voice.
“Look!” I pointed to the caption underneath the picture. It said:
Sir Percival Van Bothing and his cousin, Gertrude Van Bothing, enjoy an afternoon at the races.
“And look there.” I pointed to the picture. “That beauty mark on her cheek … the same as Gertrude’s!”
“Wait … Gertrude? Miss Baxter’s assistant?” Kip was looking like someone had smacked him in the face with a wet noodle.
“Yes.” I nodded. “It’s her.”
Ingrid’s eyes had sharpened up behind her glasses. “You’re right, it does look like her … those small eyes, and the dates are right – the picture’s nearly forty years old.” She shook her head. “But if Gertrude’s a Van Bothing, what does it mean? How does that fit into everything?”
My brain was working hard, buzzing and humming like a complicated clockwork contraption – I could feel the cogs whirring as I tried to fit all these clues together.
“Well,” I said carefully, “let’s look at the facts. For one thing, we know that someone has removed all evidence from the files that Gertrude is a Van Bothing. Someone cut her out of that photograph, and pulled out diary pages and newspaper articles that must have mentioned her. They must have missed the roll of microfilm by accident, and if we hadn’t found it we’d have no idea.”
Something was niggling in my brain, some connection I hadn’t made yet. I could feel my mind stretching out for it the way you reach for a lamp in the dark.
“Gertrude must have destroyed all this stuff,” Ingrid was saying slowly, “because no one knows who she is, so she must not want them to know. I mean, with the exhibition coming from her family, you’d think she’d have mentioned it…”
“But why would Gertrude want to keep her identity a secret?” asked Kip, scratching his head.
“It’s about the ruby. I’m sure of it,” I said, “She didn’t want anyone to suspect she had any connection to it when it went missing. Let me think.” I screwed up my eyes as I concentrated hard. An image of Gertrude standing behind Miss Baxter swam into my mind. My stomach did a triple somersault. “Gertrude was there that night.” I turned slowly to face Ingrid and Kip, my hands trembling and my heart thumping. “Marvin said she interrupted him and Professor Tweep in a conversation about the Van Bothings. She was wearing that horrible purple cardigan,” I whispered, “the one with all the pearl buttons.”
We all stood as frozen as ice lollies straight from the freezer. Gertrude had been there. The pearl had been left behind by her. Gertrude had stolen the ruby!
But did she? a tiny, unpleasant voice in my mind asked. You were wrong before; maybe you’re wrong now. I was all tied up and confused. I didn’t know what to think. I remembered how awful it had felt this morning when we accused Miss Susan, and I imagined Miss Baxter’s face if we made another mistake.
I turned to Kip and Ingrid. “What do you think?” I asked. “Is it possible? Do you think she did it?”
“Did you see her after the ruby was stolen?” Ingrid asked. “I can’t remember seeing her anywhere.”
“I can’t remember either,” I said. “I was so busy looking for Miss Susan, like a complete spoonhead.” I smacked the palm of my hand against my forehead. “What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” said Kip slowly, “but I think we’d better come up with a plan. A better one than last time, anyway…” He grinned.
Ingrid was nodding. “I think we should just tell Miss Baxter right away. It’s late, but she might still be in her office. She’ll know what to do.”
“Yes,” I said, “and let’s take the picture with us. That way we can take it straight down to the circus if Miss Baxter’s not in. We need to make sure we can clear Marvin’s name and they’ll all want to help.”
With a snort, Mr Fipps woke up. “Eh? What? Oh, yes, how is it coming, then, you lot?” he blustered, looking at us over the top of his glasses. He looked like a droopy, red-eyed basset hound. “What are you doing in there?” He peered into the photocopying room.
I flashed a warning glance at Kip and Ingrid. “Nothing,” I said breezily, “just photocopying some of these documents for the files.” I picked up a random stack of papers and waved them in Mr Fipps’s direction.
“Hmmph,” he grumbled, with a yawn. “All right, then.” He looked at his watch. “It’s half past five now and you’ve done enough this evening, but make sure you’re back here on time tomorrow night.”
We grabbed our stuff and shuffled meekly out before tearing off like racehorses in the direction of Miss Baxter’s office.
When we arrived, we were grateful to find Gertrude was not at her desk. It would have been hard to act normal while we suspected her of being a jewel thief.
“Look at this,” hissed Kip, picking up a book off Gertrude’s desk. It was a book on Ancient Egypt, and as Kip lifted it off the desk, a scrap of paper fell out, covered in drawings of the Eye of Horus.
My eyes widened, and I was relieved to notice Miss Baxter’s door was slightly open, a soft light shining out from inside.
“Miss Baxter’s in,” I said, pointing at the door, the relief filling my voice. “Let’s go.”
I tapped gently on the door, pushing it open wider with the palm of my hand. “Miss Baxter?” I said quietly. “We’re sorry to disturb you, but we need to talk to you about the ruby.”
“And Gertrude,” said Ingrid, coming in behind me.
“And the Van Bothings,” said Kip from behind Ingrid.
And then we all stopped dead, because standing behind the desk was not Miss Baxter, but Gertrude.
Gertrude’s eyes glittered in the dimly lit room, as hard and flat as shining pennies. Her usually stooped figure was completely upright, and she looked tall and hawklike. In place of her usual bulky cardigan and baggy, misshapen skirt, she was wearing a black polo neck, a black jacket and black trousers. And there was nothing creaky or shuffling about the way she sprang round in front of the desk.
I gasped, and I heard Ingrid behind me give a small moan of fear, because there in Gertrude’s hand, glinting sinisterly against her pale skin, was a gun. And it was pointed right at us.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“You
three! I might have known.” Gertrude’s voice cracked like a whip through the room, as Kip, Ingrid and I stood paralysed, staring at the gun in her hand. “Luckily, in my line of work you come prepared for these problems. Hands behind your backs!” Tugging back one side of her black jacket, she revealed several sets of shining handcuffs clipped to her belt. With an efficient and well-practised motion she snapped handcuffs on all three of us using only her free hand. “Now get over here.” Gertrude gestured with the gun towards the desk and we shuffled over. She moved towards the door until she was standing with her back towards it, the unwavering gun still pointed in our direction. I strained my wrists against the cuffs, desperately wishing I had anything to pick the locks with.
“Y-you stole the ruby,” I managed to choke out. I tried to sound brave, even though I had never been more scared in my whole entire life. Not even the first time I did a Russian roll on the trapeze.
“Oh, very clever, Miss Pym,” smirked Gertrude. “What was your final clue? Me holding you up at gunpoint?”
“But you’re a Van Bothing!” blurted Ingrid. “Why do you need to steal it? Surely the ruby belongs to you now that Sir Percival is dead? We thought he didn’t have any family left.”
A cruel smile clung to Gertrude’s lips. “I see you want the whole story,” she said. “Very well. Yes, I am Gertrude Van Bothing.” She smiled sinisterly at us again. “Both my parents died when I was very young – the Pharaoh’s Curse strikes again!” She let out a short, sharp thunderclap of a laugh. “My aunt raised Percy and me as if we were brother and sister. We had many luxuries, many toys and games, but my favourite thing in the whole world was the ruby beetle. My aunt used to let me sit and play with it, and the way it shone and sparkled it was … hypnotizing.” Gertrude’s face had taken on a dreamy, faraway look. “Nobody else loved it like I did, nobody! It should have been mine!” The dreamy look left Gertrude’s eyes and was replaced with a smouldering anger.