“I told you, he’s another Lestrade,” Xander said glumly as they made their way through the Tuesday-morning crowds. It wasn’t full tourist season, but London was never completely free of foreigners who stood hunched over maps as they tried to figure out where they were going. Xena and Xander made their way around two young women and overheard one say to the other, “No, it’s here—see? Waterloo Bridge. It’s right next to that.”
“I don’t understand why he won’t pay attention to us,” Xena said. “It’s not like we were making things up. He’s just like most grown-ups—he doesn’t get texting at all. Just because it was sent from my phone doesn’t mean I’m the one who sent it!” She waited for a response from Xander, but there wasn’t one. She looked around and saw that he had stopped and was talking to the two women. He was exercising his famous charm, flashing his blue eyes at them, making the most of the dimples that appeared whenever he smiled.
“So it’s too far to walk?” one of the women asked.
Xander nodded. “It’s a short Tube ride, but there’s no Tube today. I can try to get you a cab,” he offered.
They both said, “How sweet!” and he went to stand on the curb, where Xena joined him.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “We’re in the middle of an investigation!”
Xander looked smug. “They said they were going someplace near Waterloo Bridge.”
“So?”
“So that’s where Somerset House is! We still haven’t figured out what Sherlock meant by writing that in the casebook. Let’s go there and see if we can find something out.”
Even on a day when people were almost fighting over taxis, Xander managed to snag one. The two women thanked him profusely, and he said, “Mind if we come along? We need to go that way too.”
“Of course! Hop right in.”
The drive took longer than usual due to the heavy traffic, and Xena and Xander made polite small talk with the two women. They were from Australia and were eager to see everything. When they got out of the taxi, the two women went to a nearby shop while Xena and Xander stopped to gawk at the huge palace that was Somerset House.
“What amazing fountains!” Xander said. They paused in the courtyard to watch as the brilliant jets of water shot up in the air and danced in intricate patterns. Xena wandered over to look at some signs standing against the elegant, immense building.
“Wow, I’d love to come back sometime and see this!” She pointed at a notice about an exhibit of works by William Shakespeare.
Xander shrugged. He wasn’t as interested in old things as his sister was, and besides, there wasn’t time. He approached the information counter.
“Six pounds each, please,” said the man seated there.
Xena and Xander looked at each other. Neither had that much money on them. Most museums in London didn’t charge admission, and it didn’t occur to them that they might need to pay an entrance fee. “We don’t need to see the exhibits,” Xena explained. “We were just interested in the history of the building.”
The man directed them to a room off the courtyard that was devoted to the history of the palace. Xander immersed himself in old engravings showing the palace when it was a private home.
“Check this out,” Xena said from across the room. Xander tore himself away from a scene of elegant ladies with parasols walking small dogs on leashes across a bright green lawn. Xena was looking at a long text detailing what had happened to Somerset House once it had become a public building.
“This has got to be why Sherlock was interested,” she said. “See, it says that this is where they used to store all the birth certificates and marriage licenses and things like that for the whole country.”
Xander rapidly read the rest of the information. “It says that during Sherlock’s time, anybody who wanted information about British subjects could go to Somerset House to find whatever it was they were interested in. This could be why Sherlock mentioned it in the casebook! He might have wanted to know something.”
“But what?”
Xander was reading again and didn’t answer. “Darn it,” he muttered.
“What?” He didn’t answer, so she read it for herself. “Oh.”
The records—all 300,000 of them—had been moved to the National Archives when Somerset House became a museum.
“So where are these National Archives now?” Xena asked.
“A long way away.” Xander had memorized the map of London. “This says they’re all the way in Kew.” Xena didn’t know where Kew was, but from Xander’s tone, it wasn’t anyplace they could walk to, and the chances of lucking on someone going that way in a taxi again were slim. What tourist would be interested in birth certificates and marriage licenses?
“Time to call the SPFD.” Xander pulled his phone from his pocket.
Mr. Brown pulled up to where they were waiting on the curb. They settled themselves into his comfortable car and he drove to Kew, in the southwestern part of London. Mr. Brown kept them enthralled with his tales of the work he had done as a young man with the CID, the detective branch of Britain’s police force.
“Did you ever work on a kidnapping?” Xena asked.
“One or two, but they were much different from this. I can’t go into detail, you understand.” Mr. Brown dropped them off, saying he was picking up Andrew from a friend’s house and he’d be back for them in an hour.
The huge glass-and-cement complex of the National Archives could hardly be more different from the graceful stone Somerset House. The buildings were kind of intimidating, but Xena and Xander found some comfort in the way they looked. They clearly meant business.
Once again, there were posters advertising exhibits of old manuscripts, letters to and from famous people, and other records of all kinds. Xena promised herself she’d come back as soon as she could. She tore herself away and followed Xander, who was striding toward the information booth.
She caught up with him just as the man at the desk was saying eagerly, “Oh, so you’re the kids who are descended from Sherlock Holmes! I’ve always loved his cases, and I followed the ones you were involved in with interest. What are you working on now?”
“We can’t talk about it,” Xander said.
“Oho, state secret! Well, fill out this form, and I’ll help you locate what you need.”
Xena filled in the blanks, requesting any papers in the five years leading up to the kidnapping of Princess Stella bearing the names of Queen Charlotte, King Boris, Princess Stella, or Miss Mimsy. She pushed it over the counter to the man, whose eyes widened.
“This will take a while.” He handed the form to a clerk. “You can look around, if you like. I’ll call your name when we have something.”
They were too nervous to do anything but pace up and down the corridor, looking at the large pool outside and glancing up at the high ceilings. It was a quiet place, like a library, except when someone came in and exclaimed over the building and the exhibits.
It seemed like forever before the man’s voice said, “Holmes?” They hurried back to the desk. “I’ve put the documents you requested in a private reading room. Here, put these on before you handle them.” He handed each of them a pair of white cotton gloves. “Oils from your hands can damage the pages. You can have room three-twelve.”
The room was almost bare, with a table and two chairs, and a glass door in sight of the main desk. Xena was dying to get her hands on the papers, but she knew Xander could speed-read them so fast that there was hardly any point in her helping. So she sat on the hard wooden chair in the small, windowless room, chewing the inside of her cheek nervously.
“Aha!” Xander held up a yellowing sheet of paper. “Got it!”
“What is it?” Xena tried to snatch the paper out of Xander’s hand, but he said, “Nuh-uh! You might rip it.”
He spread the paper out on the table. At the top, it said in flowery writing, “Certificate of Marriage.” It was dated June 1892 and the groom was Jonathan Blunt, which meant nothin
g to Xena, but the bride’s name was familiar: Eugenia Mimsy.
“Miss Mimsy got married?” Xena could hardly believe it. “But the contract said she wasn’t supposed to!”
“She was married before she became a nanny, and I guess she didn’t want to tell the queen. And look at this!” Xander pointed to the words “birth certificate” scrawled in the margin, in the by-now familiar handwriting of their ancestor Sherlock Holmes.
“So Miss Mimsy had a secret marriage a year and a half before she went to work for the queen.” Xena copied the names and dates into her notebook. “Good for her. I know it wasn’t honest, but it’s not fair that she couldn’t have her own family when she was taking care of someone else’s. And we know that Sherlock found this same paper. I wonder what he meant by ‘birth certificate.’ This is a marriage license.”
“I don’t see where this takes us,” Xander said. “Lots of people must have had secret weddings in those days, if nannies couldn’t get married. And look at this.” He showed her another paper, a death certificate for Jonathan Blunt, dated only a few months before his wife was hired by the queen.
“That must be why Miss Mimsy—or Mrs. Blunt—needed the job so badly that she’d lie,” Xena said. “Hmm … I wonder.”
“You wonder what?”
Xena shook her head. “Never mind. It’s crazy. Unless … wait a second. Don’t leave this stuff. I don’t want someone to think we’ve left and clean it up.” Xena ran out. Through the glass door, Xander saw her conferring with the clerk, who nodded and disappeared into the back. What was she doing?
In a few minutes, the clerk came back and handed her another piece of paper. Xena scanned it, raised her head, and asked the clerk a question. He went back into the archives. This time he stayed away for so long that Xander was about to get up and see what was going on, when the man reappeared, empty-handed this time, and shook his head. He and Xena spoke together a little longer, and then she came back.
“What’s that?” Xander tried to snatch the paper from his sister’s hand.
Xena couldn’t hold back a triumphant smile. “A birth certificate for the nanny’s baby.”
“What?” This time he managed to grab it. Sure enough, it said that in November 1894, a baby girl named Josephine was born to Eugenia Mimsy Blunt, widow of Jonathan Blunt.
“Think about it, Xander. The queen interviewed Miss Mimsy—or Mrs. Blunt—months before Princess Stella and Josephine were born. If the nanny didn’t tell the queen that she was married, maybe there was something else she wasn’t telling her. Like, that she was going to have a baby.”
“What made you think that?”
“Remember what Sherlock called Miss Mimsy?” Xena asked.
“You mean ‘Buttercup’?”
Xena nodded. “And remember what we found out about Buttercup in the opera?”
Xander sighed in exasperation. Usually he was the one who tantalized Xena with hints, and he wasn’t used to having to guess. “She sold things to sailors, and she used to be a nanny, and she took care of two babies who—” He broke off as understanding dawned on him.
Xena nodded. “Exactly.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Buttercup used to be a nursemaid,” Xander said, “who took care of two babies. One of them became the captain of the Pinafore, and the other became a sailor.”
“Right.” Xena opened the glass door of the reading room. It was getting stuffy in there, with no window and the two of them breathing the same air. “But earlier, Buttercup had mixed the babies up and for some reason never told anyone.”
“Maybe that’s what Sherlock was getting at when he called Miss Mimsy ‘Buttercup,’” Xander said. “Do you think the princess who was returned wasn’t the same baby as the one who disappeared? You think someone switched them, the way you and Alice switched schoolbags?”
“I don’t know—but I’m beginning to think that Sherlock thought so. And it also looks like he had a suspect: the nanny. That would explain why Sherlock said ‘Things are seldom what they seem,’” Xena said. “Everyone just assumed that the baby who was returned was the same one who had disappeared. But she wasn’t.”
“So that’s why the nanny pretended to be drugged, and she didn’t really send a telegram,” Xander said. “The longer nobody saw the baby, the better.”
“Right! Remember how Aunt Lou said she wouldn’t have recognized you, when she saw those photos Mom sent her from the park? And it had only been a few months since the last time she saw us. When the baby came back after a month, people might have thought she looked different, but they’d think it was just because babies change a lot, even more than people our age.”
“So that’s why Sherlock was interested in fingerprints,” Xander said. “He wasn’t trying to find the criminal with fingerprints—he was trying to see if this baby was the same one who had been kidnapped!”
“What?”
“Think about it, Xena. Why else would he be interested in the baby’s fingerprints? Remember the word ‘rattle’ surrounded by the drawings of fingerprints? He must have found a toy rattle that Princess Stella had used before the kidnapping, and was trying to figure out if the baby that was returned had the same fingerprints. That could be why he examined her with a magnifying glass!”
“It makes sense,” Xena agreed.
“I wonder how Miss Mimsy snuck the baby out,” Xander said. “Remember, I saw contracts with security guards.”
“You could easily hide a little baby under one of those huge skirts they wore. She must have been really afraid the baby would cry.”
“Why did you ask the guy at the desk to go back into the archives after he found the birth certificate?” Xander asked.
“I wanted to see if there were any more records about Josephine Blunt.”
“And there weren’t?”
“Nope.” Xena shook her head. “But he also said that a lot of records were lost during World War Two, when buildings were bombed. If Josephine lived out in the country, any record of her marriage or death could have been destroyed. So we don’t know for sure what happened to her.”
“Anyway, if Miss Mimsy did switch them,” Xander said, “she certainly didn’t want anyone to know that she had her own baby—she’d be sure not to leave a paper trail. She must have been relieved when the queen had a girl too. If it had been a boy, she wouldn’t have been able to make the switch.”
“Do you remember when Princess Stella was born?” Xena asked.
Xander closed his eyes and called up the birth certificate in his memory. “November 1894.”
“Just the same age as Josephine,” Xena said. “It must have been really hard for Miss Mimsy to leave her newborn baby with someone else. Maybe she came up with this switch as a way to keep the baby near her.”
“What do you think Miss Mimsy did with the real princess?”
Xena thought a moment. “Remember that when she retired she brought her niece in from the country to be the next nanny?”
“You think that was the princess, and not really the nanny’s niece at all?” Xander asked eagerly.
“I bet she was! That would mean that the baby who got ‘returned,’ the one they all thought was the princess who had been kidnapped, was really Josephine Blunt, not the princess at all!”
Xander’s eyes sparkled. “And Miss Mimsy’s great-great-granddaughter, Miss Jenny, is the real heir to the throne.”
“Which means that Miss Mimsy’s descendant is Alice! Remember, one of the newspaper articles said that the nanny wanted to be a singer!” Xander exclaimed. “Maybe that’s where Alice’s musical talent comes from, the way we inherited detecting skills from Sherlock.”
“And the blond streak in our hair from Mom.”
“Right!” Xander was excited. “If Miss Jenny is the real heir to the throne, then Aunt Penelope won’t be a relative of the queen. You can tell she wouldn’t like that. She likes being the boss of everybody. I bet the letters say something about the babies being switched, or at least
the queen’s suspicions that something like that happened, and Alice’s aunt took the letters from Alice to destroy them. She must know about the switch, and she’s trying to prevent the truth from coming out.”
“Maybe,” Xena agreed. “But Sherlock would never jump to conclusions like that. We still don’t have any proof that it was Aunt Penelope who took the letters—or Alice. What if the prime minister knew about the switch too, and he’s holding Alice for the same reason? Or what if Miss Jenny is holding Alice until she can proclaim herself queen? Maybe she’s showing the letters to the prime minister. He could also be the kidnapper. Or Jasper, or even the cook or the maid!”
Just then, a loud bang came from outside. “What was that?” Xander asked as they ran into the corridor. They joined the crowd that was gathering at a window.
Security guards ran outside and poked around the courtyard. One of them held something up. “Kids!” said the archivist who had helped them. “Just a firecracker.”
There was nothing more to see, so Xena and Xander returned to their study room. Xena picked up some loose papers and looked under them, and then crawled under the table.
“What are you doing?” Xander asked. “We don’t have much time. Mr. Brown will be back any minute.”
“The birth certificate!” Xena sounded desperate. “Josephine Blunt’s—it’s gone!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Xena and Xander were waiting anxiously, fingers crossed that there was another copy of Josephine Blunt’s birth certificate. “Sorry,” the man at the desk said when he returned from his search in the archives. “It’s expensive converting all those documents to electronic files. I’m afraid that the documents you were interested in just weren’t important enough.”
“Thanks for looking,” Xena said, and Xander added, “Yeah, thanks.” He sounded so disappointed that Xena didn’t have the heart to nudge him to remind him to be more polite.
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