The Mastermind Plot

by Angie Frazier

  She stood up. “Be ready in an hour. And bring your needlepoint. Perhaps Adele can help you with your stitches.”

  She rang for Bertie and shuffled out of the front parlor. I’d make her happy and bring my sad-looking needlepoint. But with these new thoughts regarding Dr. Philbrick, I highly doubted Adele and I would be discussing stitches and thread tonight.

  The carriage had barely stopped rolling up to the front steps of Adele’s house when I leaped out and started to shut the door behind me.

  “It’s all right, Grandmother, I can go in alone. You’ll be late for dinner as it is.” I felt only slightly guilty that I’d dawdled getting ready just to be sure of it.

  “I’ll at least wait until the butler sees you in,” she said. Perfect! This way she wouldn’t witness Adele’s sour expression when she saw that I’d arrived uninvited.

  The butler opened the door and I gave Grandmother a pert wave. She waved back, but through the glass I thought I could see her pursed lips twitched to the side and one of her thin eyebrows arched. She knew I was up to something. Not so perfect.

  Still, her carriage drove away and the butler let me in, telling me to wait while he fetched Miss Adele. I shivered with anxiety as I waited, the house feeling big and quiet all around me.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice drifted from the top of the curved stairwell. Adele descended, one hand on the polished railing. “I said you could ignore the invitation.”

  I pushed my shoulders back and recalled a Detective Rule about showing unwavering certainty even when in extreme doubt.

  “I didn’t come to socialize,” I replied, my tone just as frosty as hers. “I came to discuss our assignment.”

  I hoped she understood my hidden meaning. Her butler stood just off to the side, waiting and listening.

  She stopped on the bottom step. “Funny. I thought you said you’d be doing that assignment solo.”

  The butler flicked his eyes, trained to display only a lack of interest in me.

  “I know, but I ended up finding so much information, I thought it might be better if I worked with someone.”

  Adele perked at this. “Did you?”

  Her butler cleared his throat, apparently tired of our preamble. Honestly, so was I. Talking in code wasn’t as fun as I always thought it would be.

  “Shall I have Beatrice prepare a second supper to be sent up before I leave for the evening, Miss Adele?”

  She waited an uncomfortable moment before replying. “I suppose so. Thank you, Gerald. Good night.” She turned to go back up the steps and said to me from over her shoulder, “Come on, then.”

  She led me up to the second floor and down a short hallway.

  “Where’s your father?” I asked.

  Adele hooked a left into a room. “The Copley. Hannah Grogan’s having a —”

  “Bon voyage dinner. I know. I was invited, too. But I told my grandmother I’d rather come here.”

  I followed her into the room. It was perfect: small, filled with books, large windows, and art on the walls and on stands around the room.

  Adele got to the point quickly. “So what’s this new information you suddenly have the urge to share with me? And it better be something substantial. I’ll know if you try to feed me a bunch of fluff.”

  Adele perched herself on the edge of a seat cushion before the fire and waited, staring at me expectantly. My suspicions about Dr. Philbrick weren’t exactly fluff, but they also weren’t good enough all of a sudden. I didn’t want to upset Adele or make her think I was holding back yet again. I did want to share what I knew with her. I’d shared it with Will, hadn’t I? I could trust him. I wanted to trust Adele, too, and in that moment, I decided to give it a try.

  “It isn’t him.”

  Adele’s smirk flew off her face. “Who?”

  I was officially crazy. My uncle Bruce was going to be livid if this confession went south. But sometimes being a detective meant taking risks.

  “Matthew Leighton. The Red Herring Heist mastermind,” I answered. “My uncle’s newest suspect isn’t the person stealing your father’s art.”

  The rain hadn’t quit all day. Now it whipped against the windows. Adele screwed up the corner of her mouth.

  “Why are you so certain of that?”

  It wasn’t a challenge. She was truly curious.

  “Because you met him. He approached you on the dock after the second fire and came right out and told you that the art was being stolen. Why would he do that if he wanted to cover up the thefts with the arsons?”

  Adele’s lower lip dropped open. “That was him? But how do you know?”

  I took out my notebook and flipped to the page where I’d noted the strange man’s scent.

  “You told me he smelled like musky soap, like wood. And then yesterday on Boston Common when I was next to Matthew Leighton, I noticed he smelled the same way — like strong piney soap.”

  Adele crooked her head to the side. “Are you finally going to tell me why you were there?”

  I balled up my hand into my skirt. I didn’t want to be afraid to tell Adele the truth. My family had hidden from the truth for so long, had lived in fear of it being discovered. I didn’t want to be ashamed the way they’d all been.

  “Because Matthew Leighton has been following me around Boston. My uncle thought he would be following me in the Common, too.”

  Of course, next Adele asked why a criminal would be following me.

  “Because he’s my —” But before I could finish my confession, the electric bulbs in the wall sconces and in the desk lamp behind us snapped out.

  Adele gasped. Her face froze in alarm, her widened eyes lit only by the flickering flames in the hearth before us.

  I got up to go to the window. “I’ll see what the rest of the street looks like.”

  Veins of rain streaming down the glass cast the rest of the street into a blur, but there were definitely lights on in other homes.

  “It’s just us,” I announced, turning around. Adele wasn’t there. The door to the reading room was open and the last, ruffled folds of her dress were fluttering out into the hallway.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, and hurried to catch up. I didn’t relish the idea of staying in a dark, unfamiliar room alone.

  Then again, it might have been preferable to the black hallway. I stopped just outside the reading room, unable to see a thing.

  “Adele?” I said softly. Not yelling in the dark just seemed like a rule a person should never break, especially a detective.

  “This way. Up the stairs.” Her light footsteps padded up the carpeted steps to the third story. “Don’t worry, it’s just a power failure. My father has a hurricane lamp on his desk in the study. At the pace Beatrice walks, it will take her all night to get up to us with a light. Let’s just get one ourselves.”

  I groped around for the banister and found it. “It’s most likely a blown fuse. We should check the box in the cellar.”

  I had experience with fuse boxes now, after the Cook case in July. Maxwell Cook and his son had cut off power to the hotel one night during a storm so they could —

  I stopped midway up the stairs, the breath caught in my throat.

  They’d cut off the power. During a storm.

  “Adele?” I whispered. She was at the top of the stairs.

  “What is it?”

  I hesitated. I had no way to prove anyone had cut the power to the Horne house. There was no point in spouting off fearful theories.

  “Nothing,” I answered, and finished climbing the flight of steps. But I still felt uneasy.

  The study was the second door to the left. Like every other room in the small mansion, it was completely dark. Adele made it to the desk and had the hurricane lamp in hand, but then the task of finding a matchbox daunted her.

  “It has to be in one of these drawers,” she said. I stood still as she rummaged around. The blackness felt thick and cold, like we would have to cut through it with sharp kni
ves to see again rather than just light a match.

  The shutters outside Mr. Horne’s study rattled with the wind. As soon as the racket stopped, I heard something else: The soft creak of the floorboards in the hallway.

  “I think Beatrice was faster than you expected,” I said.

  Adele sighed, exasperated with her failed search for matches. “I should have brought the hearth matches from downstairs. Come on, we’ll go get them.”

  But then a match flared, illuminating the face of a person standing in the doorway to the study. My heart spluttered and Adele screamed.

  It wasn’t Beatrice.

  Detective Rule: In moments of severe distress and danger, a detective’s most valuable possession becomes a very good hiding spot.

  MATTHEW LEIGHTON HELD HIS INDEX FINGER to his lips in a gesture for us to hush. My jaw, and Adele’s, hung open. Neither of us made a sound as he came inside the study and closed the door lightly behind him. But once he’d closed us off from the hallway, Adele straightened her back and the questions began.

  “Who are you? What are you doing inside my house?” Her voice trembled, but she still jutted out her chin commandingly.

  “You must forgive me, but I’m not accustomed to explaining to the resident of a home why I’ve broken in.” He took his lit match to the desk and swept it over the lantern wick. The study brightened. He blew out the match. A gray tendril of smoke drifted in front of my grandfather’s face. “But Suzanna can assure you I’m quite harmless.”

  Adele swung her shocked expression toward me. “You know him?”

  I paused, choosing to look at him instead of Adele. “He’s Matthew Leighton.”

  “The one your uncle is trying to arrest!” she exclaimed. “But this doesn’t make any sense. Why can you assure me he’s harmless?”

  Leighton remained silent. He simply looked over to me, waiting to see how I would respond. He was giving me the choice, I realized. The choice to lie or to admit the truth. I wasn’t going to lie.

  I lifted my chin. “He’s my grandfather.”

  The corner of Leighton’s mouth twitched up with surprise. Adele gaped at me.

  “Your … grandfather?” Adele’s gray eyes narrowed into slits. “Your grandfather is the thief and you knew it? That’s what you were keeping from me?”

  “No! I mean, yes, I knew, but —” I saw the fury boiling up fast in her widened eyes. “He is not the thief, Adele! And he’s certainly not an arsonist or murderer.”

  But I couldn’t explain why he was inside her father’s mansion. I turned toward him. “What are you doing here anyway?”

  He walked out from behind the desk, still wearing his hat and coat, and even his gloves. It didn’t look like he was planning to stay long.

  “There isn’t a lot of time to explain, Suzanna. I expect your uncle to be here very soon.”

  Adele and I glanced at each other as my grandfather moved to the floor-to-ceiling wall of shelves. Books packed every shelf.

  “Why would he be coming here?” I asked. He inspected the titles, not turning around to look at me when he replied.

  “I fear you’ve too quickly dismissed your uncle’s competence. You know as well as I do how distasteful the idea of failing is to him. He failed apprehending me on the Common yesterday. Did you consider he might have a backup plan?”

  He ran his hands along a row of leather spines — I wanted to know what he was searching the shelves for.

  “But Uncle Bruce is supposed to be at the bon voyage dinner,” I said as my grandfather came to the end of the shelves and to the stones of a cold, fireless hearth.

  “Yes, as are you,” my grandfather said, glancing over at Adele. “And you. But here the two of you are. Inside a house that was supposed to be empty all evening. Once again thwarting your uncle’s plans.”

  Of course. Uncle Bruce had been planning on leaving the dinner party early, and then staking out the Horne house. For some reason, he believed Leighton would show up to take advantage of the empty house. But why? And how had Leighton known?

  “If you know he’s coming, why are you here? You’re walking into his trap,” I said.

  Leighton bent down and peered inside the hearth. He stretched his arm inside and felt along the blackened inner walls of the fireplace.

  “It’s not his trap. It’s mine. You see, a concerned neighbor sent in a complaint to the police station saying an old man had been seen prowling around the Horne house the last few nights. If I know Bruce’s modus operandi — and I do, very well — I know that he will attend about an hour of this bon voyage dinner out of courtesy before slipping off to see if he might catch me in the act. He wants to trap the Horne art thief, and trap the thief he shall.” He glanced back at me and propped up one eyebrow. “It just won’t be the thief he’s expecting.”

  As my grandfather ducked and entered the deep concave of the hearth, I couldn’t help but marvel at his astute, clear thinking. He would have made a brilliant detective — that is, if he hadn’t already been a thief.

  “What are you doing?” Adele asked as Leighton’s shoes scuffed through the old, cold debris on the hearth’s stone floor. They brought up clouds of ash. There came an audible click, and then an entire panel of books beside the hearth — six shelves running at least six feet long — popped open like a door.

  Adele stared in disbelief at the open panel. My grandfather reappeared, dusting off his shoulders and hat. He grabbed hold of the open panel door to what, I now realized, was one of Mr. Horne’s hidden safes.

  “How did you know about this safe?” Adele asked. From her dumbfounded expression, I deduced she had not.

  Grandfather grinned and gestured to the wood floor. The bottom of the door ran flush along the floor, and now, looking closer, I saw an arc of scratches along the polished wood from the many times Mr. Horne must have opened the safe.

  “I’ve taken a few unguided tours of your home before, Miss Horne.” At Adele’s widened eyes, Grandfather continued, “Don’t be alarmed. I left everything in its original place.”

  I took another look at the scratched floors. My grandfather had the eyes of a detective as well. Perhaps that’s what made him such a good thief.

  Before I could look back up, my eyes traveled over the tips of Grandfather’s black dress shoes. A silky layer of ash coated the shiny patent leather. Mr. Horne had come to Grandmother’s dinner party with his shoes dusted in just the same way. He’d been taking care of some business, he’d told my uncle, but had avoided saying what about.

  He’d also been elusive about something else: his collection’s crown jewel. I was willing to bet it was right inside this secret safe. Mr. Horne must have gone to wherever it was being stored, extracted it, and moved it to his own home without telling a soul. All the while Detectives Snow and Grogan had been at the “club” waiting for him, as I recalled my uncle saying.

  “Miss Horne.” Leighton checked the hands of the mantel clock. Five minutes to eight. “It would be best if you and my granddaughter left the house now. Suzanna, hire a hackney back to your grandmother’s house and stay there until everything your uncle and I have planned for tonight — separately, might I add — has unfolded. Quickly, girls.”

  “Don’t!” she cried as Grandfather started to duck inside the safe. I was certain she’d figured out what was inside as well.

  He stopped, but not because of Adele’s plea. The floorboards had creaked in the hallway outside the study once again.

  “He’s arrived early,” my grandfather whispered.

  “Uncle Bruce?” I crossed the room and peered out the window. The rain had tapered off and I could see easier through the streaked glass. There was no one out front, though the statues of Hercules and the armless goddess made me take a second glance.

  “No,” my grandfather answered. “The real thief.”

  He’d followed me to the window and startled me now by shoving me behind the floor-length curtains.

  “Make yourself invisible, Suzanna,” he
whispered, pulling the curtains farther along the rod to obscure me. He then hissed to Adele, “Miss Horne, hurry. Over here —”

  Before he had the chance to finish, the study door squealed on its hinges.

  Adele screamed yet again. I rolled my eyes, recalling my Detective Rule against that particular reaction.

  “You! But you’re … you’re …” Adele stuttered.

  I widened my eyes, though the only thing to see was the back of a thick panel of green velvet. But then the next voice made me want to scream.

  “Dead. Yes, I know.”

  It was Detective Grogan. He was standing inside Mr. Horne’s study. And he was totally and utterly alive.

  Detective Rule: Prepare for the worst. Expect the unexpected. And don’t count on backup.

  I DIDN’T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS. I ALSO DIDN’T believe the dead could come back to life. So a more practical theory took shape in my mind as I stood behind the curtain: We’d all been fleeced like a bunch of ignorant lambs. Neil Grogan had faked his own death.

  “I wondered if I might find you here, Leighton,” Detective Grogan said blithely. I wanted to see him, not just hear his voice. I didn’t understand why my grandfather had chosen to hide me this way.

  “It seems I wasn’t the only one who thought tonight would be an ideal time to see to the Degas,” my grandfather replied.

  My theory had been correct. It was inside the safe.

  “I thought you’d gone the straight and narrow, old man,” Grogan said. “You weren’t much of a rival for the other artwork in Horne’s collection.”

  Adele started to sputter off a shocked protest, but my grandfather interrupted.

  “I suppose I’ve developed discriminating taste. And arson never was my cup of tea.”

  My heart thrummed wildly as my mind struggled to keep up. Grogan hadn’t died. He was here, looking for the Degas, seeming to be on familiar terms with Matthew Leighton.

  “I’d get off that pedestal if I were you,” Grogan said, turning more somber. “I might have studied your methods, but not out of admiration. No. It was so I would know how to frame you for everything. You’ll be taking the fall for all of it, Leighton. Consider it your debt to society. Hannah and I are happy to see you atone for your past sins.”