The Case of the Stolen Sixpence

by Holly Webb

  “Goodness me!” the professor bawled, so loudly that Maisie jumped, and Eddie let out a little yip of fright. “Oh, good heavens! Mrs. Hitchins! Mrs. Hitchins!”

  Then he beamed hugely at Maisie and disappeared from the window. She could hear him as he hurried down the stairs.

  “Whatever is it!” someone exclaimed, and then there was a clatter of boots as the professor erupted into the kitchen, still shouting.

  “Did you see it? My goodness! Out in the yard! The most enormous rat I’ve ever seen! Thank goodness you’ve had the sense to purchase a terrier, Mrs. Hitchins. He’ll deal with the beasts. My specimens, you know! I can’t have them nibbled. I thought I heard some scratching behind the skirting boards last night.” The professor appeared at the door to the yard and made anxious flapping gestures at Maisie, who was gaping at him. He was pointing at the wombat.

  It did look quite like a rat . . .

  “Good boy!” Maisie squeaked. “Oh, good boy, Eddie! I think he’s got it, Professor. It, er, it isn’t moving anymore . . .” She stuffed her hand into her mouth so as not to laugh.

  “Excellent, excellent. Shall I dispose of the nasty creature, Mrs. Hitchins? You ladies don’t want to be dealing with that.” He darted forward as Gran and Sarah-Ann crowded behind him, and threw an old piece of sacking over the wombat. He gathered it up, and strolled toward the yard gate. He stopped to pat Eddie’s head, and drooped one eyelid in a slow wink at Maisie. “What a clever little dog you are. A wonderful ratter. Well done, Mrs. Hitchins.”

  Gran and Sarah-Ann and Maisie stared after him, and then looked down at the little white dog, now sitting sweetly at their feet.

  “I suppose we’ll have to keep him then,” Gran sighed, looking down at Eddie. “If the professor likes him. But not in the kitchen, Maisie. Not ever.”

  “Unless there’s a rat, Mrs. Hitchins, ma’am,” Sarah-Ann said nervously. “Mice I can chase out with the broom, I don’t mind that. But that rat was a monster! Did you see its teeth? It could have had your finger off!”

  “Don’t be silly,” Gran snapped, but she didn’t sound as sharp as usual. Maisie was quite sure Gran hated rats too.

  “I’m sure just having Eddie close will scare them away,” Maisie said hopefully. It might be true . . . She had seen rats in the yard, several times, though none of them had been wombat-sized.

  Gran glared at Eddie. “There’s a ham bone in the pantry,” she said, rather crossly. “You’d better fetch it for him, Maisie. And that chipped pie dish—he can have that for a water bowl. But if there’s any mess, out he’ll go!”

  “Yes, Gran!” Maisie threw her arms around her gran’s spotless white apron and hugged her tightly. “He’ll be a little angel. I promise.”

  The next morning, Eddie sniffed around in the yard while Maisie did her work upstairs. Once her gran was out doing the shopping, Maisie did sneak him into the kitchen and Sarah-Ann fed him some bacon rind. Since the professor’s amazing rat trick, Sarah-Ann would have given Eddie roast swan if she could have found any. They hustled him quickly back out into Maisie’s room when they heard Gran coming back.

  “Stay there, now,” Maisie told him. “I’ve got to wash the breakfast dishes. Piles and piles of them. The professor does like his breakfast. Then maybe we can slip out for a walk later on. We need to go back to the alley where I found you, don’t we? Alice is right. You’re a mystery, my first proper case. I have to find out who tried to get rid of you like that.”

  Eddie began to bark sharply, and at first Maisie thought he’d understood what she’d said. But then she heard the click of the yard gate. She smiled down at him, frisking back and forth in front of the back door. “You see, I knew you’d be a good guard dog,” she told him, going to open the door.

  The pale, scrawny boy who stood there was a couple of years older than she was. He was wearing a scruffy waistcoat, and a familiar-looking greasy apron. “Got yer meat delivery,” he told her, handing her a parcel wrapped in waxed paper.

  “But . . .” Maisie glanced at the bicycle he’d propped against the wall. It was a different boy. Not George. Had Gran changed butchers after all? Had the butcher kicked up a fuss about those sausages? But Gran hadn’t said anything about it, and the sign on the bicycle still said Harrowby’s Finest Meat Pies. “What happened to the other boy?” she asked.

  The boy sneered. “Sweet on him, was yer? Get off, nasty little beggar.” He aimed a kick at Eddie, who was sniffing around his boots.

  “Don’t do that!” Maisie went pink. “And I certainly wasn’t sweet on George! I just wondered why it was you instead.”

  He shrugged. “George got the boot. He’d been stealing, the old man said. Got his fingers in the cash box. If I see George, I’ll tell him you was asking after him.” He climbed back on the bicycle and rode unsteadily away, as though he wasn’t used to it.

  Maisie stared after him, frowning. Stealing? George? Maisie was surprised. It seemed unlikely from what she knew of him. She stared after the other boy. He was a lot less polite than George (or than George was when a dog hadn’t just stolen a string of sausages from him, anyway). And he didn’t ride a bike nearly as well. She didn’t think he’d be as popular with the houses he delivered to. George had always said Miss and Madam, and pulled at the peak of his cap as he said goodbye—like a salute.

  And with her detective hat on, there was something else bothering Maisie—the way George had chased after Eddie and those sausages didn’t feel right. If he was a thief, surely he wouldn’t have been all that bothered? And he hadn’t wanted to lie to Mr. Harrowby, either . . .

  Maisie’s eyes widened. What if Mr. Harrowby hadn’t believed George about the dog? George had been worried that he wouldn’t. And then he’d given him the sack, because he thought George had taken the sausages!

  If that was what had happened, she and Eddie had lost him his job!

  “We’ll have to go and find him,” Maisie murmured. “And then I’ll go back to Harrowby’s with him and say it was all my fault. Then Mr. Harrowby will have to give him his job back, won’t he?” She looked anxiously down at Eddie, who twitched his funny ear at her. “You are a nuisance . . . But I do love you,” she added hurriedly.

  Maisie had a reasonable idea where George lived, from talking to his sister Lucy at school. She was sure she could find their lodgings.

  Glancing quickly over her shoulder to see if anyone was around, Maisie darted back into her room to fetch her jacket, and then hurried out into the yard, with Eddie following after her, dragging his ham bone.

  Maisie sighed. “You can’t bring that. No.”

  Eddie stared up at her. He had never had a bone of his own before, Maisie supposed. He had tried to lift it onto her bed last night, and he’d given her a very reproachful look when she hadn’t helped him. In the end he’d slept with his nose over the edge of the bed so as to be as near to it as possible.

  Now he sat down in the middle of the yard, next to the bone, and looked from Maisie to the bone and back again, his ears twitching anxiously.

  “You can stay here with it,” Maisie suggested, going to open the yard gate. “But I’ve got to go. If Gran catches me she’ll have me polishing the banisters or something.”

  Eddie frantically dragged the bone behind the coal bunker and dashed after her. Maisie smiled to herself. It was nice to know that she was slightly more important than a bone.

  They set off toward the busier streets, heading past the butcher’s shop (Maisie picked Eddie up here), and then into the lanes behind (where she put him back down). Maisie was concentrating so hard on remembering where George lived that she almost missed it when George himself walked past her. She only realized when Eddie came to a stop and turned to growl at someone.

  “Hey!” She turned back, catching his sleeve.

  George stopped and sighed. “You again. And the sausage dog.”

  Maisie stared at him anxiously. He looked grayish, and miserable. Even his fair hair seemed to have lost its color, and his
clothes looked somehow shabbier already. “I was actually looking for you,” she explained. “Did he sack you because of the sausages? Mr. Harrowby, I mean. I’m so sorry. I’ll go and tell him it was all my fault. I never meant for you to lose your job!”

  George shook his head. “It wasn’t that. I don’t think it helped much, but he sacked me because there was money missing from the cash box. Odd bits. Just a shilling or so, here and there. He reckoned it had to be someone who works in the shop, so he marked some of the money in the cash box.”

  Maisie blinked admiringly. That was the sort of clever thing that Gilbert Carrington would do to catch a thief. “How?” she asked eagerly.

  George looked at her in surprise. “How what?”

  “How did he mark it?” asked Maisie.

  “Paint,” said George. “Instead of taking all the money out of the cash box one night, he marked some of the coins with a little bit of yellow paint, and put them back as the change for the next day. Then a couple of days later, he lined us all up, and made us turn out our pockets—me, Sally, who takes the money and writes up the ledgers, and both of the assistants, one of them who’s his own nephew, even.”

  Maisie frowned. “But I don’t understand. You hadn’t stolen the money, so how come you got sacked?” Then she went red. “I suppose . . . you didn’t actually steal it, did you?”

  “No!” George shouted, loudly enough that people turned to look, and Eddie darted worriedly behind Maisie’s ankles.

  “I didn’t think you had,” Maisie assured him. “I just don’t see how you got the sack if you didn’t have the marked money.”

  George rubbed the toe of his scruffy boot in the dust. “I did have it,” he admitted. “Just one sixpence.” He glanced up at Maisie, his eyes pleading. “I found it! It was in the yard, under some straw! Whoever it was who took the money must have dropped it, or maybe they hid all the money there for a bit? All I did was pick it up,” he added. “It isn’t fair.”

  “I don’t suppose Mr. Harrowby believed you when you told him that, though,” Maisie said.

  George made a noise that was half laugh, half grunt. “Not a chance. He said I was a shameless liar and a thief, and he sacked me.”

  Maisie looked thoughtful. She could see how it looked, but she was sure that George was honest. It wasn’t fair. She looked at him hopefully. “We’ll just have to find out who really took the money, then,” she said. “Who else could it be?”

  George shrugged. “I don’t see how we can work that out.”

  “I will,” Maisie said firmly. “I’m sure I will. It could have been any one of the people who work in the shop! I don’t think much of Mr. Harrowby’s judgment—I reckon the new boy’s much more likely to be a thief than you. I wouldn’t trust him at all. He’s rude.”

  George’s eyes widened, and then he seemed to go even grayer. “Got a new boy already, have they? Didn’t take them long.”

  Maisie frowned. “How’s your mum going to manage without your wages?”

  George straightened up and glared at her. “Mind your own business,” he snapped.

  “Sorry . . . Don’t go!”

  But George was already marching away furiously, and Maisie sighed. She shouldn’t have said that. But she had a horrible feeling that George’s mother and Lucy relied on the money he earned. They really needed it, and if he’d been sacked for stealing, he’d never get another job.

  Even though it wasn’t her fault he’d been sacked, Maisie still felt responsible. She picked Eddie up and hugged him tightly, watching as George plunged away down the lane.

  Now she had two mysteries to solve.

  “Drat it . . .”

  “What’s wrong, Gran?” Maisie looked around from the potatoes she was peeling. Since Gran had let her keep Eddie, she was trying to be amazingly well behaved. Eddie wasn’t, so she had to be.

  “Professor Tobin wants a steak and kidney pudding for his dinner. I clean forgot to buy the meat when I went to the butcher’s this morning.”

  Maisie jumped up from the table. “I can go!” She grabbed her jacket from the hook and hurried to the back door.

  “Maisie! Wait—you don’t know what I want, child,” cried Gran. “And you need a basket. Here, I’ll write it down. Don’t let them give you too much sinew—they’re bound to try it on, with it being you instead of me.”

  Maisie went off with the basket, grinning to herself. She’d been trying to work out how to do some detective work around what was going on at the butcher’s shop, so going to buy some steak and kidney was perfect. Gran always did the morning shopping herself, and got most of her purchases sent home by the boys from the grocer and the butcher. She had occasionally tried to take Maisie with her, but Maisie hated shopping so much that they usually ended up quarreling.

  Maisie couldn’t tell her gran the real reason she wanted to go out. Gran wouldn’t approve of detecting at all. She would just think that Maisie was snooping. If Maisie ever became a professional detective like she wanted to, she knew she’d never be allowed to work from Albion Street. Which was sad, because Professor Tobin’s rooms on the first floor would make excellent consulting rooms for a detective.

  With Eddie trotting in front of her, Maisie wandered on, imagining Gran showing in her clients. “Her Grace the Duchess, Miss Hitchins. Here about the diamonds . . .”

  And Maisie would smile and nod, and ask the duchess to sit down before she told her that the diamonds had been stolen by her new lady’s maid, who wasn’t a lady’s maid at all. They could be found in the green suitcase under her bed. All of which Maisie had worked out from the way the duchess’s new shoes clearly pinched her feet. No real lady’s maid would let her mistress go out in ill-fitting shoes!

  Maisie wasn’t quite sure how she’d detected the green suitcase, but she was sure that she would. After all, by then she would have had years of practice.

  Maisie shook her head firmly. Concentrate, Maisie Hitchins! she demanded. She had a real case now. Her first actual case, with a proper crime and everything. Of course, Maisie still wanted to know who had tried to drown Eddie, but not many other people would call it a crime. This one was different. Even Gran would be impressed if she solved the case of the stolen sixpence.

  The new delivery boy shot out of the alleyway that led to the yard at the back of the butcher’s as Maisie came up the road. She had to jump back against the wall to keep from getting hit, and Eddie yelped with fright.

  “That stupid boy!” Maisie muttered, stroking the puppy’s ears. “George might have been a bit rude about you eating the sausages, but he never ran into people. We have to get him his job back.”

  Harrowby’s wasn’t the smartest butcher’s, but Mrs. Hitchins had always shopped there. She said she didn’t want to be sneered at by those smart assistants in the new butcher’s up the road, the one that had the plate-glass windows with the gold lettering on. Maisie didn’t like either of them. She hated seeing the meat hanging up in the windows, and outside sometimes too. She didn’t much like the spongy feel of the damp sawdust on the floor either.

  “Stay here, Eddie,” she told the puppy, tying the piece of twine she’d fastened on to his new collar to a ring outside. Then she squared her shoulders and marched into the shop. It was quite busy, with the butcher himself talking to a smartly dressed lady and several other shoppers in front of Maisie.

  “Serve the young lady, Alfred!” Mr. Harrowby nodded at her eventually, and Maisie wrinkled her nose as she tried to remember the name. Alfred . . . he must be one of the assistants. She had her tiny notebook and a stub of pencil to write down clues in the pocket of her jacket, but she could hardly get them out and start scribbling now.

  “Morning, miss.” The young assistant leaned over the counter at last, pretending he could hardly see her, and Maisie sighed. It wasn’t really that funny being short.

  “Pound of your best stewing steak, and my gran says not too much sinew. And three kidneys.”

  The young man rolled his eyes, but
he fetched a knife and started to chop up the meat for her on the big wooden slab.

  Maisie wandered along the counter, dodging her way through the other customers, and eyed the big wooden box where the money was kept. It didn’t look easy to open without someone seeing. Certainly the customers couldn’t get to it, which was something she’d been wondering. But then, if you were putting in the money, perhaps it wouldn’t be too hard to palm a few of the coins.

  It was stupid to have sacked George, Maisie thought, frowning to herself. He did the deliveries and the odd jobs. He didn’t serve customers and take money. How would he ever be able to steal from the box? The shop seemed very busy—someone would have noticed the delivery boy messing around with the money.

  Still, Mr. Harrowby obviously believed he had. And the only way to change his mind was to find the real thief.

  “There you are, miss. Taking it yourself, are you? Bit heavy for a young lady like you,” Alfred chuckled. “Send it with the delivery boy, if you like!”

  Maisie clenched her teeth, and then realized this was a chance to do some investigating. “Is that George, the delivery boy?” she asked innocently. “I was at school with him.”

  Alfred shook his head. “Nope. New one now, called Reg.”

  “What happened to George?” Maisie asked aloud.

  “Caught stealing,” the young man said shortly, glancing around at Mr. Harrowby, who was still smiling and bowing at the smart lady. Perhaps they weren’t supposed to talk about it.

  “Oh! What did he steal? Meat?” Maisie widened her eyes, and tried to look as though she didn’t already know.

  “The money kept coming up short at the end of the day, see.” Alfred was frowning. “We write it all down in a ledger—Sal does that, mostly, don’t you, Sal?” He nodded to the pretty girl sitting at a tall desk behind him, who was putting down the details of Maisie’s purchases on Gran’s account. “Little bits of money missing, here and there. Never much. Adds up, though. My uncle decided to put a stop to it.”