The wooden base had split in two, the glass dome had split into a hundred and seventy three, and the bird itself (which, after all these years, was only held together with dust and air) had all but disintegrated. It was nothing more than a small mound of fluff and fibres. But there, on the ground in amongst the bits of dry feather, was a key on a long silver chain. Without thinking or hesitating Asa scooped it up and dropped it into his coat pocket just as the doors burst open and all hell broke loose.
There followed lots of questions like: ‘What were you doing?’ and ‘Whatever were you thinking of?’ and sometimes ‘What do you think you were playing at?’ Questions he couldn’t possibly answer because they didn’t mean anything, and anyway, the fact was, he didn’t feel bad about what had happened, how could he? It was meant to happen. Benjamin Tooth had hidden the key in the bird for the person who was clever enough to find it. Or the person who was stupid enough to fall over and discover it by accident.
Asa did a good job of pretending to be sorry about the incident and found himself agreeing to help out at the library, unpaid, for the rest of the week.
This was perfect as far as he was concerned; if the trunk was still in existence it would most likely be in the library, where it was left. If it was as big and cumbersome as the book had described then the furthest they would have taken it would be the library basement. It had to be down there, and Asa’s ‘community service’ was the ideal way of gaining access.
7
Search for the Chest
The next morning Asa turned up at the library to find Mr Trap in charge again. As he got to know him a bit better Asa found that Mr Trap wasn’t as annoying as he had first thought. He was far worse – and kept adding to the reasons not to like him. One of those reasons was the endless mugs of tea that he drank. Not normal tea but some foul herbal concoction that smelled like stewed bathmats. Asa overheard him telling an old, uninterested gentleman that the tea helped his blood pressure.
Asa soon discovered that there were really only two jobs to do in the library: stamping outgoing books, and putting the incoming ones back on the shelves. Mr Trap, obviously, did the stamping (it gave him a feeling of power) which left Asa to replace the returns. It was a mindless, repetitive task but Asa didn’t really care, he quite liked mindless, repetitive tasks, they allowed him to think about other things. Right now, for example, he was trying to think of a way or an excuse to get down to the library basement.
Just before lunch Asa came across a large cardboard box of old and damaged books so he took them to Mr Trap.
‘Shall I take these down to the cellar?’ he asked as innocently as he could manage. Trap looked over his bifocal glasses.
‘They’re to be thrown away,’ he said.
Asa was surprised. ‘Thrown away?’
‘Yes. That’s right. Thrown away,’ Mr Trap said, speaking to Asa as if to an imbecile.
‘But I didn’t think old books got thrown away. I thought they got stored somewhere. Like in the cellar.’
Mr Trap stepped up the sarcasm.
‘Exactly which cellar are you referring to?’
‘The cellar? The basement where you keep the books?’
‘We tend to keep the books on the shelves so that people can read them.’
‘You mean there isn’t a basement storeroom?’
‘No.’
‘“No” that’s not what you meant? Or “no” there isn’t a cellar?’
‘“No” there isn’t a cellar.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
The librarian nearly spat out his tea.
‘You don’t believe me?’ he spluttered, unable to think of anything sarcastic to say.
‘There must be a basement or something! All old buildings have a basement.’
Trap made a wide, sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘If you can find one, you can help yourself to all the treasure you find therein. But please try not to disturb the other readers.’
Asa spent the rest of the day replacing books on shelves with the silver key nestled in his pocket. He secretly tried it in any lock or keyhole he found but without much hope and without any results.
He was stumped, the library cellar, he now realised, had been his only idea. With two more days of his punishment to serve and the biology field trip starting the day after it did not look like he would get any time to himself for a while.
*
But the very next morning as he left the house Asa intercepted the postman and took the mail from him. Amongst the other letters was one addressed to his parents that he instantly recognised as being from school. There were no outward signs but he knew the envelopes they used and the strange sense of foreboding that accompanied them. He opened the letter on the way into town and was delighted to read that there would be no classes for another week as essential repair work was carried out and that, as such, all school trips were postponed until further notice, including Asa’s biology field trip.
*
Mrs Fields was back at the library, which was a breath of fresh air not least because she didn’t drink smelly tea. She, as always, was very up for talking and soon confirmed what Asa hoped Mr Trap had been lying about; that there was no cellar under the library building.
He decided to tell the old lady the truth about wanting to find the trunk and asked her if she had any ideas where it might be.
‘I don’t think it’s still around, dear,’ she said looking sorry, ‘unless they have it locked away somewhere in the council building. But Benjamin Tooth was seen as a madman so I think they probably disposed of it not long after it was left.’
Well, that’s that, thought Asa and reluctantly accepted that the lost trunk was well and truly lost.
8
Discovery
The next day Asa’s legs were recovered enough to cycle into town but he met Mrs Fields getting off the bus and walked the last bit with her.
‘I tried to phone you last night,’ she said, ‘but the phone lines were down again.’
‘What about?’ he asked.
‘About something the workmen found after you left yesterday, something I think you will be interested in. With the Mereton Warbler display gone there was no use for the wooden plinth it stood on so we decided to get rid of it to make more space in the entrance. Well, it seems the pedestal is fixed into the floor. It seems it was constructed on the spot … around something. They think there’s something hidden inside it.’
‘What do you mean “think”? Didn’t they find out?’
‘Well, it was closing time so they’re coming back this morning to have another look.’
By then Asa and Mrs Fields were approaching the library and he ran ahead and up the steps into the entrance hall. There was the wooden plinth in position but one of the side panels had been prised open at the top and now there was a gap of about an inch along one edge. Asa looked in. Too dark. He was pulling at the panel as Mrs Fields arrived and scolded him, telling him to wait until the workmen got here, before he broke something else.
But the workmen didn’t arrive for hours and Asa couldn’t concentrate on anything because he was in no doubt as to what was hidden in the cabinet.
And, he was right. When the builders eventually turned up they did so with crowbars and made short work of the rest of the plinth revealing what was undoubtedly the lost trunk of Benjamin Tooth. But Asa had never imagined it to look like this. The chest was massive, presumably made from wood but covered in riveted metal plates; a sort of homemade armour plating and on the front was a hefty iron padlock. It was so heavy and cumbersome that instead of moving it they had eventually built a box around the trunk and used it to stand the Mereton Warbler on.
Asa squeezed the key in his pocket so hard that, had it been confiscated, he could have taken an impression of it from his hand.
There was no decoration on the chest save for two tiny letters stamped into one of the metal plates. Mrs Fields leaned in to take a look.
‘B.T.,’ she read.
<
br /> ‘British Telecom?’ said someone stupid.
‘No – Benjamin Tooth!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s the lost works of Benjamin Tooth!’
* * *
All morning people buzzed around the trunk and poked things into the keyhole until Mr Trap turned up and cordoned it off with the large-print tape.
It was arranged that a locksmith would come at lunchtime to open the chest and, with him, a photographer from the local paper to record the event. Mr Trap was in his element running around making phone calls and notifying people of what he started referring to as ‘my discovery’. Asa suspected he was going to try and get in the photo come lunchtime.
By one o’clock word had spread enough that a small group of twenty or so people had gathered in the library atrium to see the chest opened. The photographer took a few shots of the trunk with the broken-open pedestal and then the locksmith knelt down beside it and set to work with a selection of thin, pokey tools. Everyone held their breath. Eventually they all had to let that breath go and take another one, which they held. But it soon became apparent that this might take some time and before long everyone was breathing normally again.
The locksmith’s ears and cheeks started to go red as he worked under pressure. He shook his head and tutted. Trap leaned in with a furrowed brow as if he might be able to spot the problem.
The photographer lowered his camera and said, ‘Can’t you do it?’
It’s what everyone was thinking but it didn’t go down well with the locksmith, who snapped, ‘I need to concentrate, and you’re standing in the light!’
The photographer wasn’t standing in the light, he was nowhere near, but he took a step back anyway and adjusted his focus.
Ten minutes later and the small crowd were starting to drift away when Mr Trap, who had been to answer the telephone, burst back into the atrium and held up his hands triumphantly.
‘Hold everything!’ he announced, which seemed odd, as nothing had happened for ages.
He paused dramatically and continued, ‘I have just got off the phone to the BBC,’ another good pause for reaction, ‘who asked me if they can send a television crew, here, to the library, and film the opening of the chest live on tomorrow’s breakfast news!’ With that he looked as if he wanted to take a bow but instead just took a dainty step back and awaited the applause he so obviously thought he deserved. The applause was not forthcoming and as people started to leave he called after them, ‘Tell all your friends! Let’s get a good crowd here tomorrow, shall we?’
Nobody answered but the locksmith remarked, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to get this open on live TV, I can’t shift it.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Trap, ‘I know a man with bolt cutters.’
*
Asa had to think of a plan quickly. He had a day to get into the trunk, but when would he ever get time alone? Only after the library was closed and the building was locked. The only way would be to hide somewhere in the library and spend the night there. There was still enough of lunchtime left to speedily cycle home and grab some provisions. A torch and spare batteries, some sandwiches and a bottle of water. It’s never good to lie to your parents except perhaps when you are on the brink of an earth-shattering discovery so Asa left a note to say he was spending the night at his friend Chris’s house and he wrote down the telephone number. This was a confidence trick as his mum already had the number but if it was written down for her she would be less likely to check. Asa would just have to hope she didn’t.
The first part of the afternoon was spent looking for a likely hiding place until Asa suddenly realised that both the outer doors and the inner doors to the reading room would be locked. This meant he would have to actually be hiding in the atrium when the building was locked. The atrium, of course, was completely bare apart from the locked trunk and the empty pedestal that used to cover it. The pedestal! It was easily big enough to get inside and if he pulled it flat against the wall once he was in it would be impossible to know he was there.
The rest of the afternoon dragged painfully slowly and Asa kept drifting into the atrium to look at the trunk and the box, wanting to get in to try it for size. When five o’clock eventually came around and everyone had left, Asa got his bag from behind the counter and bid Mr Trap goodbye as nonchalantly as he could manage. Then he walked into the atrium and with a glance behind him ducked down into the wooden pedestal. Once inside he got hold of the edge and tugged the box against the wall and there he sat, hardly daring to move, waiting for the librarian to leave.
There was space inside the box but not enough to stretch out fully and it soon started to become uncomfortable. When finally, after half an hour, Mr Trap left for home, he locked the doors behind him without noticing a thing.
Once he had gone Asa pushed the box with his shoulder until there was a large enough gap for his feet to stick out and he could lie down flat. He stayed that way, in the box with his bag as a pillow, and listened to the footsteps of people outside walking back from work until, eventually, he drifted off to sleep.
9
Tooth’s Works
It was dark outside when he was awoken by voices coming up the library steps. It took a few seconds to remember where he was but when he did he pulled his feet sharply back inside the box and listened. It was the group of teenagers who usually hung out by the clock tower. They reached the door and peered in at the trunk but Asa could not make out what they were saying. At one point they rattled the locked doors and he thought they might break in but after another ten minutes they got bored and moved off.
Asa waited until all was quiet outside and then heaved the box away from the wall.
Slowly and painfully he inched his way out. It felt so good to be free that he just lay on his back on the marble floor for a few minutes looking up at the ceiling. It was dark in the library but the orange glow from the street lamps outside threw just enough light to see by.
Asa pulled himself up on to his knees. His instinct was to keep low in case anyone passing saw a shadowy figure in the library and called the police. When there were no cars it was insanely quiet but the echoey entrance hall amplified any noises that Asa made. His nerves were fraught as he approached the trunk that was sitting solidly where it had been left two centuries before. Taking the silver key from his pocket he pushed it into the padlock and turned it once. But rather than the clunk of a latch opening, it made the ratchet sound of a clock being wound. A mechanical click sounded from somewhere inside the lid of the trunk and then a low whirring began. Asa waited, the whirring faded and then stopped. Silence. He tried to lift the lid but it still wouldn’t budge. He took the key again, thought, here goes, and began to wind. Immediately he could hear things starting to happen inside and after ten or twelve turns the key would turn no further. Deep within the box musical notes began to faintly chime a ghostly tune and a shiver ran up Asa’s spine. The tune came to an end and as the last chord hung in the air there was a dull clunk-click; the trunk seemed to sigh, like someone loosening their belt after a big dinner, and the lid slowly raised a couple of inches.
In the streetlight’s glare he could see that the sheer volume of papers in the trunk had pushed the lid up when the lock was released and a few loose leaves slipped silently to the floor. The smell of the paper was almost overwhelming. The same dust-and-old-paper smell that you’ll find in any library but so concentrated he could almost taste it. If you squeezed the chest you could probably extract pure essential oil-of-library.
There was not enough light to read by so Asa took out the torch he had brought and turned it on. Suddenly the entrance was flooded with light and he hurriedly clapped a hand over the beam. He sat in silence for a while and raised his head enough to peak out of the window. The street outside was deserted and so, allowing just a sliver of light to escape between his fingers, he tentatively examined a page.
The handwriting was spidery, scratched into the paper in a manic frenzy with blots and splatters around every word like a clou
d of gnats. Asa studied it closely but couldn’t make out a single word. It wasn’t that it was illegible but it seemed to be written in a different alphabet. He spent a few minutes trying to decipher the scribbles before noticing that most of the sentences started with a full stop. It was written backwards! He looked around for a reflective surface but the only thing was the window out on to the street. He ducked down low and crawled over to the double doors. Then, squatting awkwardly, he tried raising himself just enough to see the reflection of the page in the window but this didn’t work as it was too dark. After a few further experiments Asa found if he shone the torchlight through the paper from underneath he could just make out the backwards writing. Try as he might he could not stop wild shadows dancing on the walls whenever he moved the torch and so, with an armful of papers and ledgers to sift through, he crawled back into the wooden pedestal, where the light would be hidden, and set to work.
Most of the pages were written on both sides, which made it confusing as he skimmed through the documents for anything of interest.
The pages seemed to be in no particular order, starting halfway through a sentence with no headings or titles, and the writings just appeared to be the ramblings of a madman:
… this 16th day of August did receive from Mr Weighbury the sum of 8d. for a pot-hook and a peck of prunes. The latter, he said, were to calm his bilious winds whereupon I offered him my bladderwort and arum tonic. But, I fear Mr Weighbury must have been drunk for no sooner had he swallowed a beaker or two but he came violently ill and began writhing on the floor in a most embarrassing fashion.
The Windvale Sprites Page 3