by Lauren Child
Clancy was pretty quiet on the journey home. He felt sort of down, depressed even – how had this nice man Fengrove, who used to be so popular and sociable, ended up so alone and lonely? Ivan the zookeeper had abandoned him, possibly even released his animals – how spiteful was that? Mr Piper was definitely right: man was only interested in his own survival, born bad and good luck to anyone else.
The car took them back to town, travelling in from the northeast down Upper East Avenue, through the city centre and on westward. The plan to first drop Clancy back at his house on Ambassador Row and then head on to Cedarwood Drive. As soon as Clancy was out of the car, Ruby told the driver to turn around and head back the way they had just come, back towards the upper east side. There was something else she wanted to check out; something she didn’t want Clancy to get involved with. She had a creeping feeling it might turn out to be dangerous.
Chapter 42.
THE ONLY THING RUBY HAD TAKEN FROM IVAN’S CABIN was the receipt for the watch and the only reason she had taken this was because she wanted to check out something that was written on the back.
She hadn’t told Clancy what she was thinking of doing because she knew he would make a big old fuss and she didn’t have time for it.
She got the cab to drop her at East 23rd Street, a smart neighbourhood not far from the city centre. She paid the driver and watched as he moved off into the heavy Twinford traffic.
She looked again at the faint pencilled scrawl on the back of the receipt. Apartment 9, East 23rd Street. No name, just this address. She buzzed apartment 9: no answer; she waited and tried again: still no answer. She would risk it; it didn’t seem like anyone was there. It was easy to get in the building, the doorman was on a break, so she just pressed one buzzer after another until someone clicked the apartment block’s front door open. Apartment 9 was on the fourth floor. Ruby took the stairs; she didn’t want to risk the lift in case she bumped into one of the residents.
The building’s corridors were well maintained if old– fashioned; they were also quiet: she couldn’t hear a sound from anywhere. She knocked on the door, ready to run if she heard footsteps. For the second time that day she utilised the tiny lock-breaking tool. It wasn’t as easy as breaking into Ivan’s place, this door was pretty secure, but after a few minutes she figured out the trick to it and was in.
She stood listening, utterly still, but got no sense of another person in the apartment. She looked around. She was standing in a generous lobby area where there was a small round table, on top of which sat a vase of fresh cut flowers. Ruby walked carefully across the hall to the nearest door and gently pushed it open. The room was shrouded in darkness; it had heavy drapes that were pulled not quite all the way across the windows. As her eyes adjusted, she began to make out the shape of a couch, an armchair, a fireplace and a desk.
On the desk sat a phone, nothing more. She looked in the drawer, but that was also empty, then she bent down under the desk and saw the wastepaper basket – it was pretty full with newspapers, magazines and, right at the bottom, envelopes. Most were addressed with the same looped black ink handwriting and all were delivered by hand, but none of them bore the recipient’s name.
As she searched through them, smells wafted out. Some still contained their letter, but, as Ruby pulled each from its container, she discovered every single one to be blank. Every piece of paper came from a different hotel. Each was branded with the hotel’s name or logo.
Ruby carefully replaced the newspapers and other trash, and placed the writing paper in her purse, hoping that they would not be missed. She was about to move on when she saw another envelope which had fallen beneath the chair. She turned it over and realised this was the same envelope dropped by the businessman in the department store; she knew this because it was printed with the same decorative seal. The eye gazed up at her and Ruby wondered whose faces it had seen. How had it got here, whose apartment was this? She left the drawing and wandered to the kitchen, a tidy room, no clutter, no mess, but on the table she found a small bottle, clear and almost full of some kind of liquid. She unscrewed the top and the smell that wafted out took her straight back to her chemistry lessons: it was ether.
Diethyl Ether a dense, gasoline-smelling liquid used as a solvent, or for anaesthetising people and knocking them out.
Now why would someone have a chemical like that on their kitchen table?
She didn’t have time to find out.
Ruby heard the sound of the elevator and heels stepping out into the passageway. She didn’t wait for the key in the door; without hesitation, she tiptoed to the window, pushed it open and climbed onto the fire escape, only pausing to gently close it behind her.
Lorelei Von Leydenopened
the door to
her apartment
She put down her bags and walked to the study; she needed to make a call. On entering the room she paused and sniffed the air. What was it she could smell?
‘Bubblegum?’ she said.
Chapter 43.
THE NEXT MORNING, RUBY WOKE UP EARLY. She was still cursing her carelessness – she’d only just got out in time, before the occupant caught her.
And just who was the occupant? She didn’t know. All she had now were some pieces of scented paper. Bozo, she thought.
She was about to close her eyes and have another twenty or maybe thirty minutes’ dozing time when she remembered something very important that she had to do. She was going to need to enlist the help of Red Monroe. She stumbled out of bed and looked at her own weary face in the mirror; she still wasn’t looking the picture of health. She scrabbled around in her bathroom cabinet for some vitamins – she looked like she might be missing a few important ones. She swallowed a couple and picked up the soap bar phone and dialled Red’s number. Red answered it as her mom had already set off for work.
‘Hey Red, could you do me a favour?’
‘Sure, what dya need me to do?’ Red always said yes; she was a nice kid that way.
‘When you get to school, could you go to the secretary’s office and distract Mrs B so she comes out into the hall? I need to get something from behind her desk.’
‘No problem,’ said Red, ‘I’ll be there at 8.15. Just let me know how long you need her out of the way.’
Red made a great decoy: she had such an innocent face that no one, not even the suspicious Mrs Bexenheath, could ever quite believe she could do anything even mildly bad. Second best at this was Mouse, but she was a little more nervy than Red, and if she was being totally honest with you she preferred to stay out of trouble’s way, choosing to keep a low profile. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help, it was just that she didn’t need the heat.
By the time Ruby arrived at the secretary’s office, Red was already speaking to Mrs Bexenheath. She was complaining about something she had seen in one of the lockers.
‘I think it’s a raccoon,’ Red was saying, ‘but you see it could be a marmot, to be honest Mrs Bexenheath. What with all these weird animals showing up all over the place, I’m just not sure.’
Mrs Bexenheath was looking worried until Red said, ‘I heard there’s a reward if the animal is exotic, I mean if it’s something like a chinchilla, which it could be. I didn’t get a good enough of a look.’
Mrs Bexenheath looked a little more animated; she even got up off her chair. Mrs Bexenheath liked sitting down and only stood up if her duties demanded it.
‘I heard that you even get your picture taken and put in the Twinford Mirror,’ continued Red.
Mrs Bexenheath put down her coffee cup.
‘I’d better come and look,’ she said. ‘Someone is going to have to take charge.’
Ruby signalled seven minutes with her fingers and Red nodded, no problem.
Once the secretary had vacated her room, Ruby was in.
She knew where Mrs Bexenheath was likely to keep the test paper: she kept anything of any importance in her locked cupboard. She kept the keys to this on a keyring which she wore
around her neck and it seriously weighed her down; the secretary had a lot of keys.
The Bradley Baker watch tool made easy work of the lock and Ruby was in in no time. Finding the test wasn’t difficult either since Mrs Bexenheath was a very organised woman. Ruby removed the original Clancy essay and placed it in the shredder. Then she opened her satchel and pulled out an essay written in not too perfect French: it was all about the circus. The handwriting was Clancy Crew’s, at least it looked like Clancy Crew’s, and no one, not even his mother, would think to argue otherwise. It was neatly written, but not too neatly. There were a few crossings-out, but not a lot.
It was a brilliant forgery: not too good, but good enough.
Satisfied, Ruby left the room, pulling the door closed behind her. The whole thing had taken just under six minutes and having fixed Clancy’s essay she thought she might take advantage of Dr Harper’s sick note and take the day off.
She decided to go and hang out in Central City Park, do some thinking, which was just as well because a couple of hours later she got a buzz on her watch and was unsurprised to see Hitch’s light had flashed on. She radioed him.
‘Harper says she should take another look at your foot; those stitches should be about ready to snip.’
‘Really?’ moaned Ruby. She had hoped to get the chance to study the writing papers she had lifted from the East Avenue apartment; she had packed them in her satchel and been intending to call in at the library where it was cool and quiet. But instead she reluctantly headed off towards the toddler playground.
Lorelei took her
jewelled telephone dialler
and dialled. . .
. . .the young man answered. ‘Lorelei?’
‘Yes, it’s me, where have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night.’
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Something happened?’
‘You were right to be concerned; it turns out the little snoop knows more than we thought.’
‘You want to do something about it?’ said Eduardo.
‘You bet I do. I’ll use a lure, it shouldn’t be difficult, think Hansel and Gretel.’
‘You’re going to use candy?’ he asked, a little puzzled.
‘Not exactly,’ said Lorelei, ‘but sort of.’
Chapter 44.
‘IT’S HEALING OK,’ was Dr Harper’s first remark, ‘but you don’t look so good.’
Ruby wasn’t feeling so good either; this was the worst cold she had had in a while and nothing she did made it any better.
Dr Harper reached to open one of her desk drawers – as she rummaged around for the tablets she was looking for, Ruby noticed a curve of broken glass wrapped in paper. It looked a little like a crystal ball, like a fortune teller might use, though this crystal ball seemed to contain not fortunes, but the Eiffel Tower.
Dr Harper handed Ruby a card of tablets and said, ‘Take two in the morning; they might help.’
Ruby thanked her and got up to leave.
‘Take it easy kid,’ was Harper’s parting advice, ‘and come back if you start to feel like you might be dying.’
‘ That’s good advice,’ said Hitch when Ruby reported back the doctor’s words. He looked at her more closely. ‘Actually, you really don’t look so good. I’ll drive you back after my meeting with LB.’
So Ruby sat in the Spectrum canteen, took out the envelopes and sat there wondering what they might mean.
Maybe, just maybe, someone here at Spectrum might be able to take a look at them. Hitch’s meeting seemed to be going on a long while so what was the harm in doing a little investigating? After all, she had time on her hands.
Ruby knew the Spectrum lab was somewhere in the lower level complex, she wasn’t sure where as she had never actually been taken there.
Spectrum was arranged without a directory: you either knew where departments were or you didn’t. If you didn’t, then you probably had no business going there. However, if you could work out where a department was simply by using your brain and your knowledge of Spectrum, then you probably deserved to find it. Each door in Spectrum was a different colour and each corridor was made up of shades and hues of reds, oranges and yellows, then greens, blues and indigos on through the colour spectrum.
Ruby thought about labs and what they meant to her, what was the first thing she thought of? There were Bunsen burners and gas flames – gas burned blue. There were metals in golds, silver, copper and browns, various chemical liquids and compounds and these came in a whole series of colours and there were tests one did which involved colour, like the litmus test. Red was for acidic and blue for alkaline; purple was neutral. Neutral seemed right for a lab so this was the colour of the door she went in search of.
A good choice as it turned out.
Ruby knocked and found a woman in goggles working at a long white bench covered in a lot of neatly arranged bottles and beakers and glass dishes. She sort of looked up when Ruby entered.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘I’m just trying to work out if this substance is corrosive or not. I’ll be with you in a mo.’
Several minutes passed and then the woman said, ‘Thought so,’ and put down her tongs and pulled off her lab gloves.
‘How can I help?’ She looked at Ruby through her goggles and said, ‘Gosh, you look young.’
Ruby was slightly thrown off guard by the lab technician’s easiness – she didn’t seem to mind some school kid walking in unannounced, like protocol at Spectrum was no big thing. Ruby looked at the badge clipped to the white coat the woman wore.
‘Your name SJ?’ she asked.
‘I’d be pretty weird if I was wearing a badge which said SJ if I wasn’t SJ, don’t you think?’ Then she thought about it. ‘But actually you’re right to ask because I could have borrowed SJ’s lab coat and I could really be called Beryl or Anastasia, I wouldn’t mind that – being called Anastasia – not Beryl, I’d mind that quite a lot.’
‘My name’s Ruby,’ said Ruby.
‘As in Redfort?’ asked SJ. ‘If so, then I think I’ve heard of you. Who sent you?’
Ruby thought it might be best to come clean and see where it took her; some people liked this approach and the lab technician seemed like she might be someone who would.
‘No one,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m not really supposed to be here.’
‘Nor am I,’ said SJ, ‘it’s my lunch break. What do you want to ask me?’
‘I’ve got some things I’d like you to look at.’
‘Come on, hand them over.’ SJ pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. ‘You can’t be too careful.’
Ruby opened her satchel and took out the plastic folders containing the papers. SJ, having wiped the bench clean, carefully spread them out across the worktop. She looked carefully at the letterheads then she looked at them again through a magnifying glass and then through a microscope. She held them up to the light and then she switched on an infrared light and an ultraviolet light. She did a flame test, a water test, dipped the corner of one into a solution and tried gently baking another in an oven but nothing happened. The papers seemed to be utterly blank; the letterheads were just letterheads.
‘That’s a surprise,’ said SJ. ‘I was expecting to find a microdot or some sophisticated invisible writing, something super clever – but nothing.’
‘Oh well,’ said Ruby, ‘they aren’t what I thought they were.’
‘They pong a bit, don’t they?’ said SJ, blowing her nose. ‘I’m not good on perfume, makes my nose run.’ She blew hard. ‘You know, they might simply be perfumed notepaper. People use it, don’t ask me why.’
‘But isn’t it a bit weird to send people pieces of perfumed notepaper unmarked?’ said Ruby.
‘Not if you happen to be a perfumer,’ said SJ. ‘Then I would think it very reasonable. Now I really do need to grab a sandwich before I positively faint.’
Much to Ruby’s disappointment, this all made sense; the person all these letters were addressed to might very well be a perfumer,
in which case what was the big mystery? The only thing that didn’t quite make sense was why a zookeeper might have had the address of a perfumer scribbled on the back of a receipt for an expensive watch.
And what was the ether for? She returned to the canteen and waited for Hitch. When he appeared, he looked kind of stressed, not his normal cool and collected self. When Ruby asked him if something was bothering him, he just shook his head and said, ‘LB just keeps on about that darned paperweight.’
But Ruby didn’t think Hitch’s mood had anything to do with some old paperweight.
‘I hope you don’t mind
Miss von Leyden. . .
. . .but I let your mother into your apartment.’
Lorelei stopped dead. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your mother, she said you wanted me to let her in.’
‘And what did my mother look like?’ asked Lorelei carefully.
‘Hard to tell, she was wearing a hat with a veil.’ The doorman looked confused. ‘Did I do something wrong, is she not your mother?’ He was already reaching for the phone, fearful that he had made a terrible mistake.
‘No, no, she’s my mother,’ she reassured him. ‘I just wondered how she was looking. She’s had a long flight and of course I worry about her so.’
The doorman looked relieved. ‘Tell her, if there’s anything she needs, I’d be happy to get it for her.’
‘Oh, I will,’ nodded Lorelei as she slowly turned, stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to the fourth floor.
The woman sitting at Lorelei’s desk was perhaps fifty, fifty-five, maybe even a little older, it was hard to tell. The veiled hat sat on the chair next to her and she had taken off the smart navy coat to reveal a cheery-looking floral tea dress.