“What does that mean?” screeched Dash. “What are we supposed to do with some mysterious Russian words?”
“Master Dash, I suggest you run a search for it in the embassy’s archives,” Chandler offered. He had intuited his young mistress’s line of thought. Meanwhile Agatha squeezed her eyes into two narrow slits, as though expecting a revelation at any moment.
And that is exactly what happened . . .
“Whoa!” exclaimed the young detective as he read the result of his search on the screen. “Krasnaya Roza—Red Rose—was the code name of a famous spy who disappeared in the nineteen eighties under mysterious circumstances. His name was Sergei Ivanov, and he operated in Paris for decades during the Cold War. He even had a family here. Then he was fired by one of his superiors . . .”
“Boris Renko!” Agatha finished his sentence.
Dash stared at her, trembling. “Do you want to know the most amazing thing?”
“I already do, my dear cousin,” she said, heading toward the street. “He was Marlene Ivanova Dupont’s father!”
The three detectives hurried along Lannes Boulevard at top speed. It was a busy street full of cars, with dazzlingly bright fog lights shining in their eyes.
Rushed as they were, they had to judge their steps carefully so they wouldn’t slip on the slick, icy pavement. They were tired, and the cold seemed to seep into their bones.
It was 9:30 p.m., and they’d traveled the length and breadth of Paris, but they couldn’t stop now—not when they were so close to bringing a murderer to justice.
“What’s the plan?” asked Dash, out of breath.
“First we find Marlene, then we figure out how to catch her!” replied Agatha.
“I love it when we improvise,” said Chandler. His sarcasm came as such a surprise that Dash and Agatha both burst out laughing, despite the snow and the bustling Parisian traffic.
Agatha signaled to her companions to stop. “I think we’ve already passed the hat shop,” she panted. “It should be a lower street number.” In the long day’s excitement, even her cast-iron memory was beginning to lose its touch.
“How did we miss it?” asked Dash.
She pointed at the icy fog swirling around them. “It’s just a minor setback; nothing to worry about,” she reassured him. They retraced their steps, keeping close to the stores to better check every address.
“Here it is!” shouted Chandler.
Agatha motioned him to lower his voice and joined him in front of the closed roller shutter door.
“You’re hiding inside there, I know it,” she muttered through clenched teeth, as though there were a personal challenge between her and Marlene Dupont.
“What is our plan?” demanded Dash.
“We could knock and pretend we’re police,” suggested the butler. “Perhaps we’ll be able to apprehend her without resistance.”
Agatha shook her head and looked around, searching for a solution. After a quick reconnaissance, she observed, “The store has three entrances: the main one, a back door, and a grate that leads to a basement storage level. We’ll go underground.”
“Underground?” asked Dash.
“Didn’t I tell you that there’s a whole other world underneath Paris?” she joked.
“Well, yeah!” replied Dash. “But how will we get inside? Whichever door we choose, we’ll need to break in!”
“Do you really think this is the time to worry about the law, Dash?”
Dash bristled. “I didn’t mean that,” he grumbled. “It’s just that we’ll need tools to cut chains, lift grates, or pick locks . . .”
Just then, Watson pushed through the door of his cat carrier, jumped down, and slipped through the iron grate near the sidewalk.
“Oh, no!” cried Agatha. “Watson, come back here!”
Calling him was useless—the cat had disappeared into the basement below the store.
“It looks like we’ll have to go down there,” said Agatha, looking around her. “But where’s Chandler? Has he disappeared, too?”
The butler reappeared a moment later with a large steel bar in his hands. “I found this in one of the Dumpsters. I’ll lift up the grate,” he said, breathing hard. “Then I’ll stand guard in front of the back entrance. Unfortunately, I’m too big to slip through this opening . . .” he apologized.
Agatha thanked him for his initiative, and together they made a lever to lift the iron grate. After a great effort, they heard the CLANG! of bolts releasing.
“You’re in, kids. Be careful!” said the butler.
He didn’t need to say it twice.
With some difficulty, Dash eased himself through the narrow opening. When he reached the floor, he reached a hand up to his cousin to help her climb down.
They were in total darkness, except for the dim light sifting through the grate from the street above.
“What do we do now?” whispered Dash.
“We go upstairs to the shop and get Marlene to confess,” replied Agatha softly.
“How about we turn on a light?”
“I’d rather we didn’t announce our arrival,” she replied. “Come on, and go carefully. We don’t want to make any noise.”
Just then, they heard the sound of something thumping around upstairs. It was probably Watson, who had apparently made his way into the hat shop.
“Ugh, what is this?” Dash hissed suddenly. He had bumped into a mannequin and was holding a plastic head in his hands. Agatha could tell he was trembling with fear, but she put her index finger to her lips.
They slowly made their way to the staircase and tiptoed up the stairs.
Behind them, a silent movement escaped their notice.
“Can you open the door?” asked Dash, his heart pounding.
Without a word, Agatha twisted the handle and crept forward stealthily. Silvery light slanted into the store from a small window. They saw shelves stacked with hats as they moved furtively toward the counter.
The tension was nearly unbearable.
“We’ve found you, Marlene!” announced Agatha in a steady voice. “We’re private detectives! Come out from your hiding place!”
Dash heard footsteps behind him, and spun around just in time to drop to the floor, pulling Agatha down with him. A blond woman with a long, sharp hat pin missed them by a hair.
Marlene had followed them up from the basement, where she had watched them from her hiding place amid the mannequins. “You think I’m trapped?” sneered the young murderess. “You’ll never catch me!” She sped up a flight of spiral stairs in a corner of the store.
They tried valiantly to catch up with her, but quick as the wind, she climbed out onto the snow-covered roof. She paused behind the building’s smoking chimney.
“Nosy snoops!” she said angrily. “I thought the intruder was my stupid boyfriend, but instead I find myself trailed by two amateurs playing detective.”
Dash looked down at the sloping roof and grabbed hold of Agatha’s sleeve. It was a thirty-foot drop to the street. If they were to slip, they wouldn’t stand a chance. But Agatha continued to walk resolutely toward Marlene, and he was forced to swallow his fear and follow her.
“Why did you kill Boris Renko?” asked Agatha, a few paces away from the murderess.
“Revenge, you stupid little girl!” hissed Marlene with a nasty snicker. “Many years ago, that rat Renko betrayed my beloved father, sending him on a one-way trip to Siberia. That’s when I started to work on my plan for the perfect crime! The Jules Verne was the ideal place to avoid being discovered.”
“But why did you stay in the restaurant after you poisoned him?” Agatha asked. “Why didn’t you make a run for it?”
“I wanted that rat to recognize me,” she replied darkly. “I went over to him and smiled in his face. I wanted him to remember what he had d
one to my family!”
At that moment, a flash of white zoomed between Agatha’s and Dash’s legs and launched itself at the murderess. It was Watson, more ferocious than ever, his jaws wide open and claws outstretched.
Marlene dodged him and started to laugh. “Even your little cat is going to meet the end it deserves,” she snapped. As she began moving toward them, her face was suddenly lit up with well-aimed red lights that soon striped the rest of her body.
They looked like little laser sights.
The reinforcements had arrived!
Marlene Dupont had no choice but to surrender. Men in the uniform of the French special forces emerged from behind the chimneys of the neighboring houses, surrounding her. In a matter of moments they arrested her and took her away in a helicopter that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
It happened so fast that Agatha and Dash just stood there with their mouths agape.
Who could have called the special forces?
The answer to that question came mere minutes later, when Agatha, Dash, and Chandler sat down to rest on the carpeted floor of the hat shop.
“Your phone is vibrating, Master Dash,” the butler advised him.
Exhausted, with his heart still pounding, the young Londoner picked up a call from a number that he didn’t recognize. “Who’s this?”
“Excellent work, detective,” Agent UM60 congratulated him. “You’ve fulfilled our agreement perfectly!”
Dash straightened up. “Oh, uh, is that you, professor? How are you doing? Where are you?” he stammered.
A video image of his teacher in a hospital bed, one leg in traction, appeared on the screen.
“I’m right here in London, but also in Paris.” Agent UM60 gave a benevolent chuckle.
Agatha and Chandler craned over Dash’s shoulders to see the small screen.
“I don’t get it,” said Dash. “London or Paris?”
“I told you, I’m in both places at once!”
Agatha pointed at the glasses with the LEDs. “Cousin, I think your professor has been observing all day through those glasses,” she smiled. “And he’s also been listening in on our conversation, am I right?”
“Excellent deduction, Miss Agatha,” replied Agent UM60. “When I saw you were in a tight spot, I called the special forces to intervene.”
Dash scratched his head. “So . . . um . . . you won’t tell anybody at school that I caused your accident?” he murmured as Agatha lifted her eyebrows.
Agent UM60 grew serious. “The terms of our agreement were clear. If you succeeded with this mission, you would not be expelled, Agent DM14,” he stated. “I’ll see you in class next week, by which time we will both have forgotten about that unfortunate incident, oui? Case closed.”
The screen went black, and the lights on Dash’s glasses turned off for the first time all day.
He leaped to his feet and started to jump up and down. Then he hugged his cousin and Chandler. “My detective career is saved!” he rejoiced.
The morning sun pierced the clouds and melted the snow. All of Paris sparkled like an enormous diamond.
Agatha, Chandler, and Dash had arranged to meet Gaston on the second level of the Eiffel Tower. They stood at the rail, gazing down at the city in all its splendor: its glorious buildings and well-tended gardens, the mazes of cobblestone streets, and the winding path of the River Seine.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon. They’d all slept late and eaten a delicious breakfast of fresh-baked croissants, so they were full of energy.
“You do realize that we only solved this case because of pure luck?” Agatha said to Dash as they admired the view.
“Luck?” asked the young detective. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the red rose,” said Agatha. “If John Radcliffe hadn’t chosen a red rose for his marriage proposal, we would never have found our way to Marlene Dupont.”
Dash thumped his chest proudly. “I’m sure we would have worked it out some other way,” he declared. “We’re an unbeatable investigative team, my dear cousin. Your brains and my expertise!”
She gave him a half smile and walked toward Chandler.
The butler was scrutinizing the city with a telescope, which looked like an ear of corn in his enormous hands.
“What time is Gaston supposed to arrive?” she asked him.
“He’s already twenty minutes late, Miss Agatha,” the Mistery House jack-of-all-trades replied calmly. “Maybe he’s still adding finishing touches to the family portrait.”
“He was so angry when he realized we’d forgotten to bring him that color he asked for,” she recalled, laughing. “He’s just like his brother!”
Chandler grinned. “While you were sleeping, I heard him grumbling at his easel about how it’s not possible to paint a true work of art without cobalt blue.”
“What did I tell you? He’s a whiner, just like Dash!” Agatha laughed.
The tower was flooded by hordes of tourists pouring out of the elevators to take in the view. It was another half an hour before the young painter emerged from the stairwell.
“I came the whole way up on foot,” he said breathlessly. “I didn’t want to wait in that endless line for the elevators.” He was clutching a frame in his hands, covered by a drop cloth flecked with spots of dried paint.
The group gathered around a small bench.
“Ah, did you hear the news?” exclaimed Gaston, looking toward the Jules Verne restaurant behind them.
“What news?” asked the others.
“Didn’t you hear about the murder on Saturday night?” asked the painter. “A Russian diplomat. They caught the culprit in record time.”
“Did they really?” asked Agatha, feigning surprise.
“Forget about that,” Dash said abruptly. “Let’s see this great painting.”
Dash was adamant about one point: No one, not even his brother, was allowed to know he attended a famous detective school. This was why they had been so vague about their activities the day before, and had not breathed a word to Gaston about their mission.
“Oui, I suppose crimes aren’t exactly your sort of thing . . .” said Gaston, scratching his sideburns. “But I hope my fantastique work of art will arouse your interest!”
“Come on, what are you waiting for?” Dash encouraged him, relieved that he’d managed to change the subject.
“We can’t wait to see it, Gaston!” Agatha added.
The painter wandered away into the crowd. “We need to find the perfect light,” he explained, zigzagging from one side of the viewing platform to the other. “No, this won’t do! Too much direct sunlight!”
In the end, he stopped in front of a warmly lit souvenir stand and leaned the frame against an iron bar.
The others had followed him through the crowd of tourists, and were ready to view the artwork Gaston had entitled London Meets Paris.
“Are you ready, messieurs et mademoiselle?” asked Gaston, one hand on the drop cloth.
They nodded. He whipped off the cloth, revealing the small group posed against the backdrop of a window that revealed the snow-covered Notre Dame cathedral. Agatha was writing intently in her notebook, Watson was curled up next to her, Chandler was punching a boxing-gloved fist in the air, and Dash posed with a pair of skis and his dark sunglasses.
The only problem was the sky in the view through the window behind them. It was the vivid lime-green of a lizard, or an energy drink.
“Wh-what’s with that color, big brother?” asked Dash.
Gaston glowered at him, and answered resentfully. “That’s what you get when there’s no cobalt blue.”
Agatha began to applaud and Chandler gave the young artist a pat on the back. Only Dash seemed dissatisfied, retreating behind his high-tech glasses. “That sky is so ugly that I’ll need to activate the night
-vision function just to avoid seeing it,” he whispered to Agatha.
She turned to him, stunned. “Night vision? Why didn’t you use that function last night when we were stumbling around in that basement trying to find Marlene?”
Dash covered his face with his hands. “I really am a bumbling detective,” he whispered, flushing with embarrassment. “I hope UM60 didn’t think of it, either.”
“Don’t worry; you can make up for it on the next investigation,” Agatha tried to console him. “Meanwhile, let’s enjoy our first front-page newspaper story!”
Dash was speechless, but his expression changed when his cousin shoved a copy of Le Figaro under his nose. There was a photo of Marlene on the front page, along with a short article about the part played by two young British tourists in resolving the case.
“Naturally they couldn’t print our names for security reasons,” Agatha added quietly.
Dash was over the moon. “I’m famous!”
“What did you say?” interrupted Gaston. “Who’s famous?”
Agatha smiled. “You are—or will be. He’s talking about your extraordinary artwork,” she said with a chuckle. “Why don’t you paint a whole series with Dash in different poses?”
Dash shot her a glare behind his brother’s back.
“I’ll get to work on it right away,” Gaston declared solemnly. “Now that I’ve picked up an extra-large tube of the best cobalt blue.”
It was a blustery Saturday morning in late January, and Dashiell Mistery, an aspiring detective at the prestigious Eye International Detective Academy, was jumping out of his skin with excitement. He had just received an Evite from his friend Mallory, inviting him to her birthday party.
Dash was thrilled. He’d dragged himself out of bed to sit through an online seminar on Espionage and Counter-Espionage, and had been struggling to cover his yawns for two hours when Mallory’s message popped up on his screen. He managed to keep his eyes open till noon, said a polite good-bye to Professor DM31, and immediately opened Mallory’s invitation.
The Eiffel Tower Incident Page 5