She remembered the park in Budapest, where she had felt as though all of them were tangled together, in ways that she couldn’t quite unravel. Now she saw how the tangle had happened: Marguerite was chasing a diamond, Ester and Klaus were protecting their diamonds, Suzanne was guarding a diamond – and Max had a diamond, all along.
She would bet good money that Rupert Nobes had not been with them by coincidence, but she couldn’t see yet how he fit in to it all. She wondered if she would ever know. Poor Rupert, still lying in hospital somewhere back in Romania. And Sister Marguerite – where was she now?
The silence was broken by Le Goff, knocking smartly on the door before letting himself in.
“You have another visitor, Max,” he said. “She has just arrived. But we’ll be arresting her as well.”
Max’s heart leaped. That could only mean one thing.
“Sister Marguerite?”
And it really was.
Le Goff nodded a small, tired nod. “I’ll bring her now. Madame Morel, there is some paperwork to discuss with you, as Max’s acting guardian…”
“Of course. I will say goodbye to my great-niece,” tinkled Great-Aunt Elodie, “while you fetch the nun.” It was not a question. Le Goff nodded, and left.
Max put her face in her hands and took several steadying breaths. Until now, she had not really let herself think her fears out loud. But Marguerite was alive. It was all right. It was all right.
When she raised her head, Great-Aunt Elodie was standing by the table with the contents of Max’s case and the empty bobble hat. Max was sure she saw her gloved paw twitch something quickly out of sight.
“What are—” she began – but then Le Goff arrived, and she could hear Marguerite’s singsong voice nattering behind him, and she forgot to finish the question. Le Goff signalled for Marguerite to wait and be quiet, as he took his leave of Great-Aunt Elodie, who apologized very sadly for Max.
“She is just a child, officer,” she sighed. “It seems this nun must be the real menace.”
“Quite so, madame.”
“Could I see it?” she asked, with a small porcelain smile. “The little diamond causing all the trouble? If it’s not too rude to ask; I realize you are doing a very stressful job here, Commandant…”
Le Goff was obviously pleased that somebody finally appreciated this. He coughed importantly, and held up the diamond for her to inspect. She ran a gloved finger over it in wonder.
And then a flurry of things happened very fast:
Le Goff returned the diamond safely to his pocket, and said goodbye to Great-Aunt Elodie. She sailed from the room.
Sister Marguerite flew in wimple first, tripping over something. She grabbed at Le Goff for balance, who peeled her off with distaste.
From somewhere outside, Ester started bellowing. Le Goff sighed and left the room, locking the door behind him.
That was all: nothing that seemed important. All this happened in seconds – in the blink of a beady, bright little eye – as fast as the flutter of a phantom.
Marguerite ran to Max and enveloped her in a huge habit-hug. Max hugged tightly back, and despite all the steady breathing, she found that she was crying in extremely squiggly breaths now, gasping in and out.
Marguerite squeezed tightly. “I’m sorry I’m late, mon lapin!”
For a few moments, they just hugged, not speaking. Outside, Istanbul was waking. The sound of traffic was by now a steady thrum, and sometimes you could make out a raised voice – presumably speaking Turkish, but it was too far away for Max to hear any words.
“I came as soon as I could,” said Marguerite. “I got the first flight out of Bucharest.”
“I thought you were – that someone might have—”
“Well, I’m not and they didn’t,” said Marguerite, “so don’t go getting upset over what never happened, mon lapin.” She squeezed extra tightly, and explained, “Celeste jammed my toilet door at the station and trapped me inside. She must have realized I knew something was going on, when we guessed too quickly that it was Rupert who fell, and when I knew her name. Still, here I am now, so all’s well that ends well.” As she finished speaking she released Max from the hug, and got out the houseplant for the windowsill. She pulled two cakes out of her habit, and turned on the radiator below the window. “Goodness, is Le Goff trying to freeze us out? Right. Breakfast.”
Max started to say thank you, but she was worried it might set the squiggly breathing off again, and she’d only just stopped. So instead she said, “Actually, Klaus was right, Celeste isn’t Celeste. She’s Suzanne.” And while they ate she told Marguerite everything that she had learned, right up to Great-Aunt Elodie’s betrayal, and everything that had happened to her on the way. When she got to the part about climbing on the roof of the train, Marguerite turned very pale, and hugged her again for good measure.
“Well, mon lapin,” she said, when Max had finished, “I hope you don’t have your heart set on being a pop star or a vet or something, because I’ve never met a more natural detective. Well done.” She put her chin on her laced-up fingers to think. There wasn’t anything to lean on, but she did it anyway, elbows hanging in mid-air on some imaginary table. “I remembered meeting an Elodie Yavuz at that Berlin auction as soon as Ester mentioned it. She stopped buying a couple of decades ago – but no one just stops buying – if a collector vanishes, they’re probably buying on the black market. Or, in this case, stealing. I realized she might have planted it in your belongings somehow, but I didn’t know how. That’s why I left breakfast in such a hurry: I wanted to have a hunt through your things, but Klaus wouldn’t leave me alone.”
She rubbed her face, almost looking tired. “Oh, Max, I’m sorry I didn’t find it in time. I thought we’d have time on the Bosfor. I didn’t want Klaus to see me find it – it was a delicate situation, to be seen carrying it. We needed time to decide how to explain ourselves, in case…”
“In case this happened?” finished Max, with a half smile.
“In case this happened,” Marguerite agreed, with the other half.
There was a pause. Outside, a car honked, and someone shouted angrily. Max looked out of the window, but it only looked on to another brick wall a few feet away.
“Where are we?” she asked.
Marguerite rolled her eyes. “With his usual rigour and intelligence, Le Goff seems to have just found the nearest available room with a lock. I suppose they are planning to send us straight back to France: we’re not the concern of the Turkish police.”
“And when that happens,” Max said hesitantly, “will it be – all right?”
“I highly doubt it, mon lapin, but I have no intention of finding out. We’re not staying here.”
Max’s pulse quickened. “What? How are we getting out?”
“Well, yes, quite,” said Marguerite. “That is the interesting question. I haven’t decided just yet. But there’s always a way.”
Just then, as if in answer, the door flew open. But not in a please-step-outside-through-me-to-freedom sort of way. More in a here-comes-some-very-bad-news sort of way. Le Goff was in the doorway, and for the first time, he was bothering to have an emotion other than mild boredom. He had made it all the way to angry. And there was something else in his eyes too – a smattering of panic.
“What have you done with it?” he yelled.
Max and Marguerite looked at him. He did some heavy breathing, but didn’t explain what “it” was, so they just carried on looking.
“Don’t play innocent with me,” he spat. “The diamond. It’s gone. You took it when you fell on me, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
“No,” Marguerite informed him helpfully.
For the next ten minutes, Le Goff conducted the most pointless hunt Max had ever seen. Once he had shaken every pocket and patted every sleeve and made absolutely sure they weren’t carrying the diamond, he searched the room; but the room was a small, bare box, and it wasn’t very useful for dramatic hunts. He overturned the o
nly furniture – the table and chair – with some important-sounding crashes, and then did a bit of glaring at each corner of the room in turn. He tapped the bricks on the outside walls, feeling for a loose one, and knocked on every floorboard. For a while he paced about gurning at the ceiling.
“What have you DONE with it?” he repeated.
“We haven’t done anything,” said Max, for the hundredth time. She couldn’t work out what had happened, but she knew who had happened. “My great-aunt—”
At the mention of Great-Aunt Elodie, Le Goff managed to be furious and bored at the same time. “For goodness’ sake, Max. I returned the diamond to my pocket as Madame Morel was leaving the room, so she is ruled out. Whereas you –” he rounded on Marguerite “– conveniently fell on me.”
Marguerite looked indignant. “Elodie stepped on my hem. She set me up.”
“You are not five years old,” said Le Goff, rolling his eyes. “‘She stepped on my hem, sir’… Grow up.”
“Le Goff?” croak-yelled a voice outside the room – a voice accompanied by a click-click-click, with heavy footsteps close behind. “Le Goff, I tell you I want to speak to them! What is this delay?”
At the realization that he was going to have to deal with Sister Marguerite and Ester Rosenkrantz at the same time, Commandant Le Goff looked a bit ill. He shrugged, defeated, and Max could almost see him decide it was probably time for a coffee and a nice sit-down.
“I’ll be back,” he spat, and he marched out of the room. He marched right into Klaus, and stumbled backwards.
“Easy, now,” said Klaus, picking him up by the elbows and putting him in the doorway. “Are you OK?”
Le Goff resumed marching with as much dignity as possible, and locked the door with a haughty click. His footsteps tapped away. Marguerite and Max looked at Ester and Klaus. Ester and Klaus looked at Marguerite and Max.
“We believe you!” announced Ester.
“And we’re so sorry, Max, for getting you in trouble,” said Klaus earnestly. Ester’s eyebrows beetled upwards at that: she obviously hadn’t agreed to the “we”. But she didn’t object, either.
“Le Goff told us your story,” she went on, “and I say it makes sense. Elodie’s a nasty piece of work, and she’s tricked me more than once into a bad deal. But you, as a thief – that doesn’t make any sense. Klaus, check the hat.”
The room was a little too small for Klaus, who had to stoop. He made his way over to the hat like some enormous duck, his neck sticking out ahead of his body. He picked it up and studied the wool.
“Yup,” he said, “Turkish. Look, you can see a very typical Turkish pattern at the edge here, and the wool they’ve used is…”
“That will do, Klaus,” said Ester. “If I wanted to know about wool I would have been a sheep farmer. If that hat was sent from Turkey, that does it. We’re on your side.” And she slammed her stick on the ground, like a queen announcing her decree. Klaus nodded earnestly, and hit his head on the ceiling.
There was an awkward pause. Ester seemed to expect them to say something about that. So Max said “Thank you” for want of anything better.
“We’ve come to rescue you,” explained Klaus, rubbing his head.
“Oh good,” said Sister Marguerite cheerfully. “What did you have in mind, mon chou?”
“Well, ah –” Klaus looked a little crestfallen, as if this small detail had not crossed his mind until now “– ah, nothing in particular, to be honest. But we had to do something. I felt terrible just leaving you here.”
“And I can’t stand that twinkling twittering smirking great-aunt of yours,” added Ester. “She’s bested me far too many times. I want in on whatever-it-is-you’re-going-to-do.”
Max looked at them both. They really were a picture of evil: Klaus hunkering down below the ceiling, muscles bulging and thick eyebrows drawn in, and Ester squatting over her stick and glowering at them. But she had misjudged them – and they had come back to help her anyway.
“Thank you,” she said, and she meant it this time. Ester nodded graciously, like toady royalty.
“Now,” said Sister Marguerite, “we had better decide on a plan. We don’t have long.”
And this was an excellent point. So Marguerite put her chin on her hands, and Klaus twiddled the definitely-Turkish hat thoughtfully, and Ester chewed three pear drops at once to fuel her brain, and Max held on to both plaits, and they all thought.
“Maybe,” said Max, “if we use Marguerite’s sewing stuff, and our spare clothes, we can make something to disguise ourselves as, um, as a – as a—”
“Or,” cut in Ester, “if we all lift Klaus and use him like a battering ram, we can smash down the door, and—”
“Or,” said Sister Marguerite hastily, before Ester could plan any more damage to Klaus’s skull, “if I tie all my spare habits together, we could make a rope to climb out of the window.” She peered out. “Oh. Actually, we’re rather high up. Hm. Well, if we jumped the last few storeys—”
“Or,” said Klaus firmly, “when Le Goff comes back I could pick him up and put him in the cupboard outside.”
The others all looked at him.
“It locks,” he added.
“That,” said Sister Marguerite, “would work excellently.”
Max very much wanted Le Goff to be put in a cupboard, but she felt a little knot of worry. Surely then Klaus would be in big trouble too – Klaus who had tried to look after Sister Marguerite when she was “ill”; who had stopped to help the “stranger” on the floor at Marek, Marek and Ruszy’s; who had come back to rescue her and Marguerite. Klaus, who was nice.
“We can’t let you,” said Max. “Then you’ll be wanted by the police, too.”
Klaus smiled sadly. “I already am, Max.”
“Because of what you did for Die Eiserne Hand?” Max asked.
Klaus blinked. “Yes. How did you know?”
“I saw your tattoo,” explained Max. “I, er, well – I followed you in Budapest.”
“My fault,” said Sister Marguerite. “Max has been my trainee detective. I’m a former commandant myself, you see.”
Ester and Klaus gawped.
“Sorry,” said Max.
“Oh, no need to be sorry,” said Klaus, “I just – well. I hope you don’t judge me too harshly. I’m trying to leave it behind, you see. I have to keep under the radar though, which makes it tricky to find work … using an alias, and so on… I’m not really Klaus Grob, you see, and I can’t show any ID papers or what have you. So I mostly still do secretive security jobs. Just, on my own terms.” He paused. “Without any of the … you know…”
“Senseless violence on behalf of evil people,” supplied Ester helpfully.
“Right,” said Klaus, shrinking a bit.
“It’s all right,” said Max. “I don’t mind about who you were before. I like Klaus Grob.”
Klaus smiled.
“All right, enough of this,” yelled Ester. “Shouldn’t we be making plans?”
“Plans,” said Le Goff coldly, “to do what?”
They all spun round. Le Goff glared at them. Max had no idea how long he’d been there.
“This,” explained the-man-known-these-days-as-Klaus-Grob. And he picked up Le Goff, marched him outside, put him in the cupboard and locked the door.
The city of Istanbul is divided by a flash of blue that looks like a river. Actually, it is a strait – the Bosphorus Strait – a waterway connecting two seas. To the north, the Black Sea. To the south, the Marmara Sea.
On the west bank of the Bosphorus Strait, Istanbul is in Europe. On the east, it is in Asia. Max had marvelled at that blue line on the map, and now here it was, wide and watery and real. As Max, Marguerite, Ester and Klaus hurried over a magnificent suspension bridge, they crossed from one continent to the other: just like that.
Sister Marguerite assured them all that she had a plan, so they followed her across the city. The mist that Max had seen at dawn had not lifted, and hung sleepily
about the streets. They hurried through tiny backstreets crammed with colourful houses, down wide smooth roads criss-crossed overhead by trolley wires, through heaving crowds on shiny shopping streets, past lines of people fishing at the water’s edge, up and down hills and in and out of noise and bustle. Istanbul was enormous, and it always seemed to be sloping upwards or downwards, and soon Max’s feet were aching and Ester’s complaints were sounding almost reasonable.
Just when Max began to worry that Marguerite’s plan might just be to walk their way out of Turkey, they came to a halt outside a red-brick building. It was hooded by a green awning, with Çay sarayı printed on the side (“Çay sarayı,” announced Marguerite, “means tea palace, mon lapin!”), and flanked by little round balls of trees poking out of pots. Marguerite opened the door, and a bell trilled.
They trooped in. It was a café, almost empty, save an earnest young couple and a bored waiter.
“Salem? Hello? It’s me!” called Marguerite. “Yoo-hoo! Salem?”
“Sister!” A man emerged from the backroom, arms spread wide. They hugged, and Sister Marguerite turned to the others, beaming. “This,” she said, “is my very good friend Salem Sadik.”
Salem was soft and a bit blobby-faced, as though he had been carelessly shaped from some dough. His black hair stood up in foolish feathery tufts, but his eyes were sharp. He took in the motley crew. He smiled a soft misshapen smile, and spoke in soft misshapen French: “You have brought me your army, Marguerite!”
“I’ll explain, mon chou!” promised Marguerite. “But before we get to business, this one needs to sleep.” She put a hand on Max’s shoulder. “Could she borrow a bed?”
Max began to protest, but Marguerite was firm. And suddenly, sleep struck Max as a very good idea. She had hardly had any rest on the Bosfor. Her body had done what was needed without complaint, but now it was suddenly desperate to lie down. So when Salem ushered her up to the flat above the café, Max went without further protest.
The bedroom was painted in apricot, with sketches of birds on the walls, and a photo of a young woman on the bedside table. The bed was soft and the duvet warm. Max snuggled in, and a minute later, Salem appeared with a hot chocolate.
The Secret of the Night Train Page 10