by H. L. Dennis
It didn’t take long for Tusia to nip across the hall to the library and retrieve two huge reference books. She left the door open as it was hot and the stained-glass window above them, covered with pictures of flowers, was making the room feel like a greenhouse. In the corridor, Brodie could see Smithies. He had a clipboard. Tusia seemed undeterred and raced back in, flicking through the pages of the dictionary, stopping at the Cs.
‘OK, we’ve got the obvious one. Dead bodies. But apparently we’re ignoring that, like I’m trying to ignore you.’ She smiled smugly at Hunter before looking back again at the open page. ‘Then there’s “to corpse”, which is to do with forgetting your lines if you’re in a show. But I can’t see how that one makes sense of the clue.’
Brodie frowned. ‘Any more?’ The rope of ribbons was heavy in her hand.
Tusia looked up. ‘One,’ she said. ‘A corpse flower.’ She ran her fingers across the page, skim-reading the information. Then she began to flick through the second book she’d brought, a heavy encyclopaedia, until she found the entry on corpse flowers. ‘Says it’s one of the ugliest flowers in the world. And worse than that, it’s got a really disgusting smell.’
‘Must remember to get you a bunch,’ sniffed Hunter.
Tusia carried on reading. ‘Apparently the flower only blooms when the plant’s mature. And then not every year.’ She snapped the encyclopaedia shut. ‘And apparently, even when it does flower it’s only for a few days. Five at most. It’s pretty rare.’
‘Bet I could track some down,’ said Hunter, ‘for the right person of course.’
Suddenly a bell rang.
Brodie’s hand tightened on the coded lifeline. ‘Already? We have to hand this thing in already?’
Two pink circles appeared on Tusia’s cheeks. ‘But we haven’t done anything yet!’
‘Except row,’ muttered Brodie a little too quietly to be heard.
Brodie carried the lifeline as they hurried to the nearest hut. She opened the door to the vacuum tubing, coiled the cord inside a message container and shut the door. There was a familiar whirring noise and the container sped out of sight.
Brodie waited. The vacuum system thrummed above their heads. There was a popping noise. And then the sound of falling. The container dropped back down the tube.
‘Well?’ urged Hunter, as Brodie unscrewed the lid.
She held the cord outstretched.
Tusia gasped. ‘Seven! Only seven ribbons. We’ve lost two lives already. Why?’
Brodie thought she knew but was too scared to say. ‘What matters is we don’t lose more.’ She tried to sound calm but she wasn’t sure she managed it. ‘We need to focus on the problem and not stress about the “lives”.’ She was sure she failed to deliver that sentence as if she meant it.
Tusia looked back at the clue. ‘OK. So we keep going. Do you think we’re looking for a place somewhere at Station X where there’s corpse flowers? The encyclopaedia says the smell’s so gross we wouldn’t be able to miss it. I reckon if there’s a corpse flower around then finding where it blooms or awakes will be no problem.’
‘OK.’ Brodie twisted the lifeline round her wrist but with fewer ribbons it felt less comforting.
‘Should be a piece of cake,’ said Hunter. ‘Come on.’
It seemed, however, he was wrong. A thorough search of the gardens left them despondent.
Eventually Hunter led the way back past Miss Tandari and towards the mansion. His stomach grumbled from hunger. He wasn’t happy and his mood didn’t improve when the bell rang again.
‘Oh no. This can’t be good,’ said Brodie.
They hardly spoke as she pressed the lifeline into the vacuum system. They said nothing as the rope whirred through the air to return to them. Brodie couldn’t speak at all when they saw the ribbons.
‘Five,’ groaned Hunter. ‘Only five. This can’t be happening.’
But it was.
‘We’ve searched everywhere,’ Hunter moaned, glancing up at the tapestry hanging in the passageway when they finally got back to the mansion. ‘Look.’
Brodie stared up at the hand-stitched map of the Bletchley Park estate and agreed they’d searched every outside location shown on the needlework picture. She jabbed her finger at the various huts depicted on the scene. ‘Do we try the inside places now?’ she said. ‘And look for an outside flower, inside?’
Tusia ran her fingers across the stitching. ‘But the place’s huge. And if we really have to search inside then what’s the point of the clue about the flower?’
‘What’s the point of any of it?’ moaned Hunter, scrabbling in his pocket for a rather crushed packet of Polos. ‘I’m starving. We should stop to eat.’
‘What and lose more lives?’ blurted Tusia. ‘I don’t think so.’
Brodie was beginning to panic. ‘The clue said we should prepare to feast,’ she said, trying to cling on to any hope she could find. ‘Maybe it’s that simple. We go back to Hut 12. That’s where there’d be a feast.’
‘Hut 12’s too obvious. And why the flower?’ Tusia said, leaning her head against the tapestry.
‘Look,’ Brodie said at last. ‘We’re tired and hungry. Let’s take the tapestry into the other room and lay it down on the floor so we can read it like a map.’
‘OK. Maybe there’s something we’re missing,’ added Tusia as she helped Brodie lower the hand-sewn map and carry it through to the music room.
‘I tell you what I’m missing,’ huffed Hunter. ‘My lunch.’
‘We don’t have time for this!’ shouted Tusia, waving the lifeline in his face. ‘Five lives left, Hunter. That’s all. And then it’s over.’
The girls put the fabric map down on the music-room floor and weighted down the corners with their shoes and the huge reference books.
‘OK, Station X,’ said Brodie, lifting her head in exasperation to allow the sun from the window above to warm her face. ‘Tell us where you want us to go before it’s too late.’
Brodie closed her eyes and thought for a while. The light from the window danced on her face. Flashes of colour streamed through the stained glass. Brodie could still see the flowers with her eyes shut.
She opened her eyes.
‘The glass.’ She blinked to see more clearly. ‘It’s patterned, right?’
‘Well done, Miss Observant. The glass skylight does have pattern on it. And the relevance of that is?’ asked Hunter.
‘And we’re supposed to remember all we’ve learnt?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the thing we forgot when we were coming into the mansion for the very first time was about …’
‘Light being knowledge,’ Tusia interrupted, scrambling to her feet.
‘Still not with you,’ Hunter said, peering to see whatever Tusia was staring at in the skylight above them.
Tusia was now reaching for the encyclopaedia. ‘Corpse flowers,’ she said. ‘Look. That stained glass in the skylight. It’s of flowers. All sorts. But look. In the corner, there’s a corpse flower.’
She thrust the book into Brodie’s hand so she could see and true enough, the ugly flower depicted on the glass looked remarkably like the one sketched beside the definition.
‘OK,’ said Hunter, dragging out the word as if not entirely convinced. ‘I can see the flower and that’s all great. But how’s that tell us where to meet?’
Brodie read the clue again. ‘To take a place amongst us, line the lower stitches straight with the fire then prepare for feasting in the place where the corpse awakes at two. So, if light is knowledge then maybe our answer is when the light shines through the corpse flower in the skylight at two.’
‘OK,’ Hunter said again, looking at the patterns made on the floor through the glass. ‘But how will light through the window give us a location? You want us to dig up the floor looking for corpse-flower bulbs? Cos the light’s going to fall on the floor, right?’
Brodie rubbed her eyes to concentrate. ‘We could hold a map,’ she said. ‘
Under the light.’
Hunter seemed impressed but Tusia was shaking her head. ‘But where would we hold it? Would you just wander around under the light? That way you could make the light fall anywhere you want to. That can’t be what the clue means.’
Hunter looked down at his shoes. ‘So maybe there’s a fixed map. On the floor.’
‘Well, there is now. I mean, not a fixed one. But this tapestry. There’s your map.’
‘So, where on the floor should it be?’ yelped Tusia. ‘Where do we put it?’
Hunter’s face looked as if the suggestion he was saying in his head was not really very polite.
‘Let’s just see where the light falls at two o’clock if we line the map up with its edge against the wall,’ offered Brodie, pushing up her sleeves to reveal both her watches. ‘At least with this clue we aren’t late.’
The hands on her Greenwich Mean Time watch revealed they had five minutes.
That was when the bell began to sound.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ spluttered Hunter.
‘We can’t go now!’ said Tusia. ‘It’s nearly two.’
Brodie was frantic. ‘But we have to.’
Hunter grabbed the rope. ‘I’ll do it. You two sort the map!’ He raced from the mansion.
Tusia and Brodie struggled with the tapestry. Brodie could feel her heart beating in her throat.
Minutes later Hunter threw the door back open.
‘Well?’ the girls yelled at him.
‘Down to three,’ he panted. ‘Look.’ The lifeline rope looked forlorn and nearly empty, three red ribbons flapping near the end.
‘But why?’ squealed Tusia. ‘This must be right. The map and the light. I don’t understand.’
Brodie stared down at the map while Hunter doubled over and tried to catch his breath. It was two o’clock. What had they done wrong?
When Hunter spoke his words came in gasps. ‘The pattern from that corpse flower. It’s settled. It doesn’t look good.’
The three of them looked down. The pattern cast by the flower was right in the middle of the lake.
‘That’s why we lost the lives,’ snapped back Tusia. ‘I told you it was important where we put the map. You can’t just put it anywhere.’
Hunter’s face suggested he’d thought of another unshared and impolite location.
‘It’s the wrong way round,’ yelled Tusia, scanning through the clue again. She kicked her shoes from the corner of the tapestry and dragged the edges as if she were trying to train a badly behaved puppy on the end of a very short lead. ‘Help me move it, then. Before it’s too late. The clue says “line the lower stitches straight with the fire”. It must mean we’ve got to get the bottom edge lined up with the grate, not the wall. The clue says so.’
Brodie and Hunter grabbed a corner each and pulled the tapestry round into position. Then they stood again. And the pattern stilled.
And the light from the coloured glass of the corpse flower settled now on the hand-sewn location of Hut 11.
Hunter straightened up. The coded rope hung down from his hand. They had three lives left.
‘We can’t do this,’ mumbled Tandi, a pile of six red ribbons on the table in front of her. ‘They’re doing their best.’
‘But they have to be better,’ said Smithies. ‘It’s what we agreed.’ His words were catching in his throat.
‘But we’ll lose them all,’ moaned Tandi. ‘It’ll all have been for nothing.’
Smithies had been pacing by the window. He stopped. ‘We agreed we’d find the best. The very best. Only those who are up to the task can stay. Working together, Tandi. That’s always been the key.’
‘Three of them. Three lives left. It could all be over,’ she mumbled.
‘I know.’
‘And that’s what you want?’
Something like anger flashed in his face. ‘I want those who can cope with all there is to know,’ Smithies said quietly. ‘I want those who won’t be scared when they know what we’re really up against. And I want a team.’
‘And if we lose all three?’
Smithies rested his hand on the pile of ribbons. He didn’t say any more.
Hut 11 was small and dark. Brodie was sure she could see Ingham looking in at the window. She felt a prickle of fear.
There was a table in the centre but it was hardly fit for a banquet. Brodie looked closely. She saw graffiti had been etched into the soft wood with blades of some sort. The three of them circled the table slowly. Brodie let her fingers trace along the carved initials. ‘Who do you think they were?’ she said at last, letting her fingers slow across each shape and groove. ‘Black Chamber members from the past. Real ones,’ said Tusia. ‘People who worked together on MS 408.’ ‘Well, maybe it was easy for them,’ hissed Hunter. Brodie let her hand rest. She pressed the nail of her finger into two pronounced carvings of the letters AB. Alex Bray. Could they be her mother’s initials? Could she have carved them long ago as a child sitting with code-crackers at this table?
‘Because they didn’t have to work with you, Toots.’
Tusia scowled and then opened her mouth to answer.
Her words were drowned out by a bell.
‘You do it, B,’ said Hunter.
Brodie coiled the rope in her hand. It was lighter than before. She glanced at the window, then opened the hatch in the vacuum system, slipped the rope inside the container and closed the door. The container thumped in the tubing like an erratic heartbeat. No one spoke.
When Brodie opened the returned container her fingers were moist with sweat.
There was no need to say anything.
One solitary red ribbon fluttered on the end of the rope.
‘I know why we’re losing lives,’ she said. ‘And we have to stop!’ Her eyes stung with tears.
Hunter and Tusia said nothing.
‘You just never let up. On and on, trying to prove which of you’s the most clever, and the point is you both are, that’s why you’re both here.’
‘Now hold on a minute,’ interrupted Hunter. ‘I’m always fair to you, BB. It’s just her I can’t stand.’
‘Well “her” has a name. And it’s not T or Toots. It’s Tusia.’
Hunter flushed red but Tusia began to grin from ear to ear.
‘And you’re just as bad,’ Brodie continued, causing the smile to evaporate quickly from Tusia’s face. ‘Hunter’s OK and if you stopped for one moment trying to score points off him because he’s a boy then you’d realise that. Don’t you see?’ she said, holding the rope as the single ribbon lifted and fell in the air. ‘This must be where they worked! The code-crackers of the past. The Veritas team looking at MS 408. Working together, maybe all through the night, trying to make sense of a mystery. These are their names, look, carved here. If we join the Study Group we sort of take over from them. We sit where they sat. But it’s not going to happen, is it? With the rowing and the moaning. That’s why we’re losing lives.’ She lowered her hand once more to feel the shape of the initials on the table. She laid the rope beside it.
There was a long silence. The initials of Study Group members of the past stared up at them. The red ribbon fluttered.
Eventually Hunter drew a breath. ‘Sorry, Tusia,’ he said deliberately. ‘I guess laughing at you was just too much fun. We should start again.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Tusia said slowly. ‘We should be working together.’ She tapped the initials on the table. ‘Guess they were quite a team.’
In places the initials linked and looped together.
‘Shape and space,’ Tusia said. ‘It’s my thing. And I suppose being part of a team isn’t. Or working with boys as a general rule.’
Hunter began to raise his hands as if to argue.
‘But OK. I’ve got to try and see things differently. I’ll give it a go.’
‘Good,’ said Brodie. ‘We’re a team. In this together. And we have one life left. So let’s solve this puzzle.’
Hunter pul
led the crumpled clue out of his pocket.
Tusia took the paper from him. She read the clue aloud for the third time.
‘To take a place amongst us, line the lower stitches straight with the fire then prepare for feasting in the place where the corpse awakes at two.’
‘We’ve covered everything except the feasting,’ said Brodie.
‘Yeah and that’s the part I’m most looking forward to,’ added Hunter, although there was really no need for him to confirm this.
‘It says we have to prepare. Do you think we have to do some cooking?’
‘I seriously hope not,’ laughed Hunter. ‘My rock cakes at school were so realistic they tasted like real rocks.’
‘No. I’m sure we just have to get things ready for a feast. But in here? How can we do that?’
‘We could lay the table,’ suggested Tusia, peering round the room for anything that may do as a cover.
‘Here,’ said Hunter, scurrying to the corner of the room and returning with a large folded square of fabric. ‘A tablecloth, do you think?’
‘Maybe,’ said Brodie, smoothing the fabric across the table as Tusia hurried over to help. ‘It’s a bit tatty. Hardly great for a feast.’
‘It’s all there is,’ said Tusia.
‘And it’s full of holes,’ added Hunter, slowing his hand over small circular tears in the fabric. ‘But that’s not a criticism,’ he said quickly. ‘Just an observation.’
Tusia stood up straight. ‘Hold on. Look at the holes and the carving on the table. Can we let some of the initials show through the holes and spell out a message?’
Tusia dragged the tablecloth to the left a little and a new series of shapes peeped through the holes made.
‘You write down letters we can see at any one time, B, and we’ll try and make some words with them.’
Brodie grabbed her notebook and peered at the tablecloth and the initials that showed through the holes.
‘Anything?’
After about twenty minutes of rejected combinations, Brodie was ready to give up.
‘You can’t give up now, BB,’ Hunter pleaded. ‘Not when it was all your idea about trying to get along. We’ve got to think around this. See it another way.’
