The House of Puzzles

by Richard Newsome

  Gerald did not wait for a second invitation. He darted to the freedom of the cold afternoon outside, followed closely by Ruby, Sam and Felicity. They huddled together by a frozen fishpond in the courtyard.

  ‘Well that was about as much fun as a knee to the groin,’ Sam muttered, bundling in close to the others to escape the cold. ‘Who’s for something to eat?’

  Ruby wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. ‘For once, I agree with Sam. Let’s see what’s on offer in the dining hall. Are you coming, Felicity?’

  Felicity bounced on her toes, like an over-eager spaniel late for its afternoon walk. ‘Yes. And I have something I really need to show you all. It’s super important.’

  Gerald looked at her with interest. ‘What is it? You’ve been acting strange since we got on the bus back at the castle.’

  Felicity gave him an impish grin. ‘I’ll tell you once we’ve got some hot food in front of us and there are no prying eyes about.’

  They started towards the dining hall, but Gerald paused. ‘You go on,’ he said. ‘There’s something I need to do first.’

  Gerald held back in the courtyard garden outside the headmaster’s office, rubbing his arms to keep warm, until he saw what he was waiting for.

  ‘Your father arranged all of this, didn’t he?’ Gerald crossed to Alex Baranov as the boy stepped from a covered walkway and onto the gravel path that led to the cabins. ‘This challenge for the Triple Crown. It was all designed to locate the hiding place for Drebbel’s perpetual motion machine, wasn’t it.’

  Alex buried his hands deep in his pockets and strode along the path, head down and saying nothing.

  ‘It’s a clever way to get a hundred sets of eyes looking for you,’ Gerald said. ‘First, you weed out the hopeless ones by setting a twenty-mile hike to find a symbol—a symbol that marks the place where the perpetual motion machine was hidden a few hundred years ago. Then you let the clever ones loose to try to find the hiding place. What was the third leg in the challenge? To retrieve the machine? How proud your father would have been when you were the one to do it. How did he convince Mr Beare to go ahead with the idea? Throw some money his way, did he? Isn’t that the Baranov solution to everything?’

  Alex stopped and swung around. ‘Forget about it, will you?’ he said. His eyes drilled into Gerald’s forehead. ‘My father thought the machine was hidden in James VI’s castle but it wasn’t there so it’s no use banging on about it. My father has even less reason to be proud of me now.’

  Gerald paused as an unexpected emotion washed through him. Was it pity?

  Alex dropped his eyes to the ground. A fresh gust sent a flurry of leaf litter across the courtyard, whipping at Gerald’s ankles. He suddenly felt very cold.

  ‘I’ll see you around,’ Alex said in a low voice, then he turned to walk away. Gerald reached out and took his arm.

  ‘I’m sorry about all of this,’ he said, ‘I have to get that perpetual motion machine or my friend is going to—’, Gerald stopped and sighed. ‘It has to do with Sir Mason Green,’ he said. ‘It’s complicated.’

  Alex stared down at where Gerald held him by the sleeve. ‘Sir Mason Green?’ he said. ‘I hardly think he’s going to cause you any problems.’

  Gerald grunted. ‘You don’t know him like I do,’ he said.

  Alex shook his arm free. ‘You’re an idiot, Wilkins. Mason Green is my godfather.’

  Gerald stared open-mouthed as Alex Baranov stalked off to the cabins.

  By the time Gerald reached the dining hall, Sam was well into his second helping of lasagne. Ruby looked at Gerald with alarm as he dropped onto the bench beside her. ‘You look terrible,’ she said.

  Gerald took a moment to respond. He was still trying to process what Baranov had just told him. He looked at Ruby, glassy-eyed. ‘Sir Mason Green is only Alex Baranov’s godfather,’ he said.

  Ruby and Felicity gaped back at him.

  ‘His what?’ Sam said.

  ‘It looks like Mason Green and Sergei Baranov are closer than we thought,’ Gerald said.

  ‘Then why is one of them trying to stop you from finding the perpetual motion machine and the other is doing all he can to get you to do it?’ Ruby asked.

  Gerald held his head in his hands. ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be in this stupid situation,’ he said. He rolled his eyes up to Felicity. ‘What was it you wanted to show us?’

  Felicity bounced in her seat and started babbling. ‘You won’t believe what I’ve found,’ she said, her face alight with excitement. ‘It’s too amazing. Too, too amazing.’

  Gerald had seen Felicity in full excitement mode before, but it was usually something to do with horses. After the day he had endured, he was not in the mood for a twenty-minute monologue about the latest from the Argentinean polo championships.

  ‘Oh please,’ he said with a heavy sigh, ‘just tell us what it is.’

  Felicity put a stout little book, bound in faded brown leather, onto the table in front of him. Gerald looked at it. ‘And?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a diary,’ Felicity said, doubling the bounce rate in her seat. ‘It was in the mess of broken rubble and stonework in the cellar after the keystone was knocked out. It must have been hidden inside the stone.’

  ‘How did you get it?’ Sam asked.

  ‘It landed right at my feet,’ Felicity said. ‘Everyone else was looking for something much bigger, so no one noticed it.’

  ‘Except for you,’ Gerald said.

  Felicity bounced some more. ‘Except for me.’

  Gerald picked up the book; it was barely bigger than the palm of his hand.

  ‘Open it,’ Felicity said to him, nudging Ruby with excitement.

  Gerald flipped open the front cover. Written on the first page, in a fine scrawling hand, were the words: This journal is the property of…

  Gerald’s eyes flicked back up to Felicity, and he said in disbelief, ‘This is the diary of Jeremy Davey?’

  Chapter 18

  Gerald carefully turned the pages in the little book. Each one was dense with handwritten scrawls. Every few pages there was a faded newspaper clipping, pasted in with glue that was cracked and brown with age. ‘Why would Jeremy Davey leave his diary in the cellar of some rotten castle in Scotland?’ he asked.

  ‘For the same reason he threw a coded message in a bottle into the sea,’ Sam said. ‘He was a nutter.’

  Ruby stirred sugar into her tea. ‘Let’s stick to what we know, shall we?’ she said. ‘Jeremy Davey stuffed a coded message into a bottle and tossed it into the sea sometime around October 1835. We don’t know where or why. Now, almost two hundred years later, his diary turns up in the ruins of the summer castle of James VI, the boy king of Scotland.’

  ‘I know some quite interesting things about him,’ Sam said.

  Ruby brandished her teaspoon in Sam’s face. ‘Keep quiet,’ she said. ‘I will insert this into your nose if I have to.’ Sam stared defiantly at his sister but his head shrank back into his shoulders like a deflating pool toy.

  Felicity pressed her fingers to her lips to stop herself from laughing. ‘And the diary was
in a keystone which, if you can believe Alex Baranov, was where the king was hiding a perpetual motion machine built by his good friend Cornelius Drebbel.’

  ‘But the machine wasn’t there,’ Gerald said. ‘Someone had already taken it.’

  ‘Who? Jeremy Davey?’ Felicity said.

  ‘Possibly,’ Ruby said. ‘Whoever it was built that rickety scaffolding up to the ceiling, used those old tools to fashion a plug for the keystone and made off with whatever was inside that metal box that Alex found.’

  ‘Then why leave the scaffold still standing?’ Gerald said. ‘Wouldn’t you take it down so everything looked undisturbed? And why stick your diary there in its place? That’s just bizarre.’

  Ruby thought for a moment. ‘Maybe once they found what they were after they just took off,’ she said. ‘No point hanging around once you’ve got the treasure. And as for the diary? Maybe he dropped it accidentally. We may never know.’

  Gerald leafed through the pages, trying to make out the tiny handwritten passages. ‘So why would Jeremy Davey take a perpetual motion machine? And was it even him?’

  Ruby leaned across and took the book from Gerald. ‘Whether it was Davey or not, we’ve got his diary. And it could give us a clue to the coded message. It’s only a few weeks until you go to New York for the Billionaires’ Club initiation, Gerald. We need to have it worked out by then.’

  The conversation was interrupted by a rolling grumble from Gerald’s stomach. He rubbed a hand across his belly. ‘I need food, then I can think,’ he said. ‘But I have been tossing around one idea.’ He leaned across the table and looked to Felicity, then Ruby and finally to Sam. ‘Why don’t you all come to New York with me?’

  He was met by a chorus of surprise.

  ‘I’m taking the Archer corporate jet anyway so it’s easy enough for you lot to hitch a ride,’ Gerald said. ‘Obviously not to the Billionaires’ Club—Alex and I are stuck doing that together.’ He shook his head at the prospect of spending a night in Alex Baranov’s company. ‘But once I find the box that Green wants, it would be really good to have you guys around for when I deliver it to him. It would make me feel…I don’t know…more secure. You just need to get your parents to agree. Mr Fry will be there to look after us. Well, at least until we ditch him.’

  ‘But aren’t we meant to stay here at the camp during the mid-term break?’ Felicity said.

  Gerald climbed off the bench and turned towards the kitchens. ‘After what happened at the castle today, I get the feeling that Rice Crispies will be more than happy at the prospect of getting rid of us for a while.’

  Before Gerald could move, Kobe Abraham ran into the dining hall and raced up to the table. ‘Have you heard?’ Kobe gasped, steadying himself on the table’s edge while catching his breath. ‘You know Marcus Budge? He’s been caught smoking with some girl behind the boys’ toilets. Rice Crispies is going ape.’ Kobe sucked in more air. ‘The teachers are going through all the cabins, searching for cigarettes and anything else they can find.’

  ‘Is that a problem for you, Kobe?’ Ruby asked.

  Kobe took another breath. ‘I’ve got some magazines stashed under my mattress that I’d rather Crispies didn’t find.’ He pushed himself off the table and dashed out of the hall.

  Sam and Gerald looked at each other with a growing sense of panic.

  Felicity eyed them curiously. ‘Why are you two looking worried?’ she said. ‘You don’t have any cigarettes, do you?’

  Gerald and Sam stood from the table. ‘No,’ Gerald said, his pulse quickening. ‘But there is one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Felicity asked.

  ‘The vandalised remains of a priceless French painting, rolled up in a tube under my pillow,’ Gerald said. He and Sam eyed each other again, then bolted for the door.

  By the time they reached the cabin, Dr Crispin and Miss Frobisher were completing their search. A small crowd had gathered to witness the scene. Charlie Blagden stood forlornly beside a pile of contraband, looking entirely unhappy.

  ‘Chocolate hobnobs, kitkats, mars bars, chewing gum.’ Miss Frobisher picked through the stash of sweets and biscuits. ‘There’s enough junk food here to open a corner shop.’

  Gerald and Sam skidded to a stop on the gravel path, jostling into each other. Dr Crispin stood before the hapless Charlie, giving him a severe dressing down for hoarding snacks against school rules. The headmaster’s voice cut like a whip through the still afternoon air. But Gerald did not register a word that was uttered. All he could do was stare at the way the headmaster punctuated his rant by slapping a cardboard tube into his open left hand.

  ‘Is that it?’ Sam squeaked in Gerald’s ear.

  ‘Yes,’ Gerald squeaked back.

  He could not take his eyes from the cardboard container, moving back and forth like a metronome.

  Ruby and Felicity arrived just as Dr Crispin dismissed Charlie and turned his attention towards Gerald and Sam.

  ‘Gerald Wilkins!’ the headmaster barked. ‘I would like a word with you.’ He shook the tube in Gerald’s direction. From inside came the sound of something sliding up and down. ‘This was under your pillow,’ Dr Crispin continued. ‘Are you hiding anything in here? Cigarettes? Matches?’

  Gerald’s pulse rate doubled. ‘I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you,’ he said.

  Dr Crispin’s eyes narrowed. ‘I see,’ he said. He wedged his thumbs under the rim at one end of the tube and flicked off the red cap with a sharp ‘pop’. A rolled bundle slid into his hand.

  Gerald and Sam looked at each other in heart-attack inducing panic.

  Dr Crispin unrolled the bundle and stared at the contents.

  Gerald felt he was about to be violently ill. ‘I can explain,’ he began.

  The headmaster raised his eyes and delivered Gerald an ice-pick stare. ‘Can you, Wilkins?’ he asked. ‘Where do you even begin to explain this?’

  Dr Crispin held up a detailed pencil sketch of himself. He was dressed in a ballerina’s tutu and fishnet stockings, while pouring a large packet of Rice Crispies into a bowl. Gerald’s signature was plain to see at the bottom of the drawing.

  Gerald’s eyes bulged. He recognised the sketch from his notebook. He opened his mouth and a stutter of ums and ahs stumbled out.

  Dr Crispin glared at Gerald. ‘I will not be made a fool of, boy,’ he hissed. ‘I don’t care how much money your mother gives to the building fund.’ He screwed up the sketch, shoved the tube into Gerald’s chest and stormed off.

  Gerald and Sam stared after him, then at the cardboard cylinder in Gerald’s hands.

  ‘What happened to the Delacroix painting?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Gerald said.

  They both looked up to find Ruby and Felicity laughing at them.

  ‘They really don’t deserve us, do they Ruby?’ Felicity said.

  ‘No, Flicka, they do not,’ Ruby replied.

  Gerald looked from one smug face to the other. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You were so sure you could wander about with a piece of priceless art and not get caught,’ Felicity said. ‘I was worried so
mething like this might happen so I took the Delacroix and hid it properly, and not just tucked under my pillow.’

  Gerald could feel his cheeks reddening as he gave a mumbled thanks.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear that,’ Felicity said.

  Gerald screwed up his face. ‘I said “thank you”,’ he mumbled a little louder. ‘But why did you have to replace it with that drawing I did of Rice Crispies?’

  ‘To teach you a little lesson, Gerald Wilkins,’ Felicity said.

  Ruby put her arm around Felicity’s shoulders. ‘I think we might change the team motto to Ruby and Felicity are always right.’

  Gerald looked across to Charlie as Miss Frobisher made him toss the cache of snacks into the bin. His stomach rumbled again. ‘I could murder a chocolate hobnob round about now,’ he said.

  In the weeks before the New York initiation, Gerald pored over the message from Jeremy Davey. Despite long nights spent dedicated to the task at a lamp-lit table with bottomless mugs of hot chocolate, he was no closer to finding the keyword that would unlock the code. When he wasn’t filling in endless alphabet grids, he was staring at a picture of Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People that Ruby had found in the library’s encyclopaedia. He felt he knew every square centimetre of the painting, particularly the dull blue satchel that was slung over the young boy’s shoulder—the original of which was rolled in a cardboard tube and hidden inside the hollow leg of his bunk.

  Felicity took charge of the forensic investigation of Jeremy Davey’s diary, combing through the document for any clues that might provide the keyword. She recruited help from the best resource available at Oates: Kobe Abraham.

  When Gerald heard about Felicity’s decision to enlist Kobe’s assistance, he was not sure it was a great idea.

  ‘Nonsense, Gerald,’ Felicity said. ‘Kobe is like a factoid sponge. He absorbs any piece of information put in front of him and links it with everything else he knows. He’s a machine. Take this little gem.’ Felicity opened the diary to a faded newspaper clipping.