The Treasure of Dead Man's Lane and Other Case Files

by Simon Cheshire

  CHAPTER SIX

  “What’s the next one?” said Jack.

  “Well, ‘the prize’ must mean the key,” I said.

  “Are we supposed to look at it in a mirror?” said Muddy. “And even if we did, how would we see a tree?”

  I turned the key over and over in my fingers, examining it closely. It was a perfectly ordinary key, without markings or oddities of any kind. It wasn’t particularly light or heavy, and it didn’t seem to be made of anything unusual.

  “It’s obviously got something to do with mirroring or symmetry, but what?” I mumbled.

  “Math again,” sighed Jack.

  “Maybe it’s a reflection instead of a mirror,” said Muddy. “The next part of the line mentions glass, and that reflects.”

  I snapped my fingers. Which I only did because I couldn’t get a huge exclamation point to ping into view above my head. “We’re thinking too small. Most of what we’ve done so far has involved the house itself, and moving around in it. We’re now standing as far as you can go on this side of the house. If we mirror the exact spot we found the key in on the other side of the house, what do we get?”

  As one, we charged out of the room and across the landing at the top of the stairs. Keeping in mind a careful three-dimensional picture of the key’s hiding place, we hurried across the house, judged the correct position as closely as we could, and found ourselves at the end of a corridor, standing in front of a window.

  “A side window,” said Jack. “‘Mirror the prize and see the trees’!”

  “But you can’t see any trees from here,” said Muddy, peering out and making a face. “All you can see is the cloverleaf and the mall.”

  “I thought I heard you guys stomping around.” At that moment, Izzy appeared in the hallway, clutching a pile of papers to her chest.

  “Perfect timing!” I cried. “Did you find any photos?”

  “Of…?”

  “Of the house in the 1840s?” I said. “I need to confirm a theory.”

  “Actually, yes,” said Izzy. “I was able to find loads of stuff, along with a very talkative old lady behind the desk, who happened to be something of a local historian. Here, there are some pictures in with all this.” She handed me the papers, and I started flipping through them eagerly.

  “Wow, Izzy—incredible,” I said, still zipping through one sheet after another. “This mystery’s got more questions than two trivia books and a game show put together! Give us the highlights.”

  “Okay,” Izzy began. “Tonight’s headlines. Silas Middlewich came from a very poor family. Which, the way I see it, makes his running a workhouse here all the more shameful, exploiting poor people like that. He got his money—the money to build this place—by getting involved in buying and selling local plots of land. These deals were highly illegal, it seems. Dozens of wealthy townspeople were involved, including the mayor, a Mr. Carmichael, and a factory owner named Isaac Kenton, but nothing was ever proven. It’s thought that Middlewich covered up the whole thing. It’s also thought that Middlewich murdered Isaac Kenton’s wife. She vanished without a trace in 1844, the same year this document was written. Again, nothing was ever proven.”

  “And Middlewich himself was murdered?” said Jack.

  “Yes, in 1845,” said Izzy, “by this Martha Humble I mentioned before. Nothing more is known about her, only that she accused him of swindling her husband, whoever he was. Anyway, Middlewich was so hated around town that the local teacher, a man named Josiah Flagg, started a kind of anti-Middlewich committee. The town constable, Mr. Trottman, even had this house raided twice, looking for evidence against Middlewich. But Middlewich was obviously too good at covering his tracks. I’m telling you, Jack, your parents own a house built by a total crook.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I muttered to myself. I stopped sorting through Izzy’s papers and looked up at the three of them. “I know who this treasure hunt was meant for. I know who Silas Middlewich wanted to leave his treasure to.”

  “Who?” said Muddy.

  “Think about how the scroll’s written, about how we’ve gone about deciphering it. From what Izzy’s told us, there was a certain person who would’ve had an easier time following this than most people. In 1844, anyway.”

  Have you figured out who it was?

  “The teacher, Josiah Flagg,” I said. “Every single clue we’ve followed has involved exactly the kind of math, science, and history that we learn about today. Most people in 1844 had no real education at all. Most people would’ve gotten hopelessly stuck somewhere along the trail.”

  “No way,” said Izzy. “He hated Middlewich. Let’s face it: everyone hated Middlewich. That can’t be right.”

  “Silas Middlewich left this trail for someone to follow,” I said.

  “Even the great Saxby Smart can make one too many assumptions, you know,” she said, eyeing me with a sly smile.

  “You just wait,” I said, eyeing her right back. I turned to the window, brandishing one of the pieces of paper Izzy had brought. “Voilà!” I declared. “The trees!”

  I showed them what Izzy had photocopied at the library. It was an engraving, dated 1860, showing the house from a short distance away. Along with the woods behind the building, there were thickly wooded areas on both sides, too.

  “If you’d have looked out this window in 1844, all you would’ve seen would have been trees, trees, and more trees. You’d probably still have seen trees in 1944.”

  “Right,” said Jack. “So, now…”

  We slid the window open, peered out, and looked straight down. A “fall from the glass” would have landed us in the yard. Well, it might’ve done so in 1844. But not anymore.

  “Oh man,” said Muddy quietly.

  We were looking at the large clear roof of a greenhouse, added to the side of the house by a more recent owner. Two minutes later, we were looking at that same roof from below. Then we looked down at the rock-hard, concrete floor beneath our sneakers.

  “It says ‘down and down,’” wailed Muddy. “We can’t go down through this. Not without some seriously heavy equipment.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Jack growled furiously. He stomped the floor as hard as he could. It was so solid, the blow barely made a sound.

  “Isn’t there a basement?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s toward the back of the house,” said Jack.

  Suddenly, Izzy twitched as if she’d just been poked with a stick. “Wait! Wait!” She quickly rifled through the papers she was carrying, tossing pages aside as she went. “In with all those documents your parents got with the house, Jack! Plans of the sewers!”

  “I am not going down a sewer!” cried Jack.

  “Of course!” I said. “That plan would detail everything under the house.”

  Izzy found the document she was looking for and excitedly tapped a finger against it. “Look! Look!”

  “The basement goes all the way across here,” I said, tracing the line that marked its edges. “It extends out past the side of the house, including this spot we’re standing on right now. We can go down from here.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, we raced for the cellar, clattering down a flight of wooden steps into a long, low room lit only by a single bare light bulb hanging above us. Then we hesitated.

  “Ugh, it stinks,” said Izzy.

  “It’s very damp,” said Jack. “Dad says it’ll be the biggest job in the house, getting it right. It’s going to be used as a boiler room and laundry.”

  “We’ve got to go over to that far corner,” I said. “That’s the section under the greenhouse.”

  The basement was mostly empty. A few decaying wooden crates were stacked up to one side, leaning against the wall’s moist bricks as though they were too exhausted to stand on their own. Our shoes made dull scraping sounds against the shiny gray flagstone floor. The single light bulb beamed clawlike shadows around us as we moved.

  Once we were in the right spot, we took a good look aro
und.

  “But there’s nothing here,” Jack said quietly. His voice sounded thick and heavy, as if the dampness of the walls soaked it up as he spoke. “Where the heck would you put a saucer?”

  “I assume he meant, like, a china tea-set saucer,” said Muddy. “Not a flying saucer.”

  “I don’t think they had aliens in 1844,” said Izzy, making a face at the patch of mossy stuff growing on the bricks beside her.

  I was also feeling puzzled, to say the least. But that last line had to be about something down here. I took another close look at everything around me:

  The ceiling: Made up of gray panels that had been nailed in place; obviously not the original ceiling, but a more modern covering of some kind, bashed and gouged in several places.

  The floor: Plain, gray flagstones; in some places, almost slippery with dampness; some of them worn down into a dipping, uneven surface, one stone worn so deeply you could put your foot in it; with scattered dirt and rusty discarded nails.

  The walls: The same plain bricks used on the walls in the rest of the house; dark and damp, several of them in a crumbly, flaky state, forming a kind of dotted line at knee height; the mortar joints between them dotted with black.

  “Of course,” I whispered. “I see it now. It’s one of Silas’s sideways-thinking clues. All you’ve got to do is ask yourself, ‘What does a saucer go under?’”

  Do you see it too?

  I crouched down and pointed to that deeply eroded stone in the floor. “‘Where the saucer goes, go I.’ A saucer goes under a cup. That flagstone is worn into…”

  “Something pretty close to a cup shape!” said Izzy.

  “Muddy,” I said, looking up at him. “Got something to lift it up?”

  Muddy produced a large screwdriver from his bag and crouched down too, pushing the flat end of it as deep into the crack at the edge of the flagstone as he could. With a few heaves, the stone was lifted. It flipped over with a loud k-klak. Beneath it, surrounded by earth, was what could only be the lid of a small wooden chest.

  “That’s it!” cried Jack.

  “The treasure!” cried Muddy.

  I, being me, didn’t want to start sinking my hands into the dirt. Yuck! But Muddy, being Muddy, dived right in, digging the box free. At last, he hauled it up out of the hole he’d dug and set it down on the stone floor.

  It wasn’t very large, but it was very degraded. Over the years, the wide metal straps that reinforced its edges had become pitted and discolored. The wood it was made from had been half-eaten away by the earth and whatever lived down there.

  I took the key we’d found out of my pocket and handed it to Jack. “It’d probably split open with a good kick,” I said, “but I think this is more appropriate.”

  With a grin, Jack kneeled down and twisted aside the small metal plate that covered the lock. The rest of us hardly dared to breathe, our hearts racing. The key turned, and with a crunching sound, the lock sprang open.

  Jack lifted the lid. Inside, tightly wrapped in cloth for preservation, was a leather-bound notebook. We stood around him as he flipped through it. Every page was filled with handwriting, lists, and numbers. Toward the back of it was a torn edge, where a page had been ripped out. Inside the front cover, in the same familiar lettering as the scroll, were the words:

  “That’s it?” said Jack. “That’s the treasure of Dead Man’s Lane?”

  “It certainly is,” I said, smiling wide. “It certainly is.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Izzy, Muddy, Jack, Jack’s parents, and I assembled in the rubble-strewn spot that was going to be the house’s main dining area, once the renovation was completed. It had been a week since we’d unearthed Silas Middlewich’s journal, and I now had the means to put right a great injustice.

  The others sat on upturned packing crates. I stood in front of them, holding the journal.

  “We thought we’d find gold and jewels,” I began. “Or something similar. You’re all still asking yourselves: so, what actually happened to Silas Middlewich’s ill-gotten gains? Where did he hide all that cash he’d squeezed out of those he’d swindled? The answer is: he never had any in the first place.”

  “What?” said Izzy. “That completely contradicts everything that’s known about him.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Everything that’s known about him is wrong. This journal proves it, and in light of what it says, I noticed some significant holes in those old documents and newspaper articles Izzy found—a lot more speculation that actual facts—and those sources are what that history-buff librarian Izzy talked to would’ve been going by. Silas Middlewich had a reputation as a crook and a cruel workhouse owner, but in reality he was the exact opposite. He was a champion of the poor. This house, the workhouse he built, was used to shelter destitute people. He put every penny he had into keeping them safe and properly fed.”

  “But how, then, could he get such a terrible reputation?” said Jack.

  “Izzy discovered,” I said, “that he got the money to build this place from some shady land deals with local bigwigs. That much is true. I can’t say I follow all the legal ins and outs of it, but basically, the bigwigs were illegally buying and selling each other’s land. According to some correspondence Middlewich copied into the journal, they knew what they were doing was against the law, but they thought Middlewich was on their side. He wasn’t. It was brilliant, really. He had them paying him all kinds of rents and allowances, and they couldn’t do a thing about it because every last deal they’d signed would’ve landed them in jail.”

  “So, these landowners started calling him a crook?” said Jack.

  “Exactly,” I said. “They couldn’t go to the police, so they used their influence to try and ruin Silas Middlewich some other way.”

  “Hang on,” said Izzy. “Surely what Middlewich did was wrong too? I mean, he did swindle those landowners, even if he did it with the best intentions.”

  “Absolutely right,” I explained. “But he realized that these wealthy landowners had a lot more to lose than he did, if it all went public. He wasn’t interested in his reputation. He didn’t care who called him a crook. He’d been born into a poor family, and he saw it as his mission in life to help others in the same position. He was a kind of Victorian Robin Hood!”

  “So where does the hidden treasure come in?” said Jack’s dad, a scattering of plaster dust falling lightly from his hair.

  “Ah!” I said, holding up the journal. “It wasn’t long before the landowners were plotting among themselves how to have Middlewich run out of town. Of course, they wouldn’t do their own dirty work, so they persuaded the local schoolteacher to organize efforts against Middlewich.”

  “Josiah Flagg,” said Muddy.

  “Right,” I said. “But Middlewich stayed put. Soooo, Plan B…One of the landowners, Isaac Kenton, sends his own wife to Middlewich’s workhouse, having her pretend she’s a pauper. The idea was for her to find and destroy any evidence Middlewich had against her husband and his cronies.”

  “Oh boy,” said Izzy quietly. “And the landowners spread a rumor that Middlewich had murdered her.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “The perfect way to make Middlewich look like even more of a despicable lowlife. The trouble was, Mrs. Kenton didn’t find the evidence she was searching for. So somehow, the landowners managed to persuade the police to raid the house twice, and they didn’t find anything either. Why not?”

  I paused. Smiles began to creep across the faces of my audience. Then everyone started nodding knowingly.

  “Because,” I said triumphantly, “the evidence was hidden behind that wall paneling. That was what the secret compartment was for: hiding this journal. Middlewich was a smart man. He knew those landowners would be after his blood, so he kept every last piece of evidence here, in his journal, safely tucked away, ready for whenever trouble started brewing.”

  “Which it did,” said Jack.

  I nodded. “By then it was 1844. The landowners were u
p in arms, the police were getting involved, and Middlewich knew that soon the game would be up. He had to pass on his evidence, his journal, his ‘dark and mighty treasure,’ to someone who could look after it and take to the authorities if necessary.”

  “Josiah Flagg again,” said Muddy.

  “Flagg had secretly been on Middlewich’s side the whole time,” I said. “The landowners didn’t suspect him. If Middlewich’s journal went to Josiah Flagg, it would be safe. The last few days of Middlewich’s life are still a mystery, but obviously he felt that his hiding place, behind the paneling, was no longer safe enough. So in the back of his journal he wrote down those clues. He tore out the page, and put the page behind the paneling instead.”

  “And it fit into the secret compartment perfectly,” said Izzy, “because it was torn from the same notebook the compartment had been designed for in the first place.”

  “Yes!” I exclaimed. “He buried the journal in the basement.”

  “And then?” said Muddy.

  “And then, the story ends,” I said sadly. “The journal was buried, and we have nothing to tell us what happened next. My guess is that the undercover Mrs. Kenton and the mysterious Martha Humble—the woman who killed Middlewich—were one and the same.”

  “Mrs. Kenton murdered him?” said Jack.

  “Now that we know that Middlewich wasn’t cruel to the people staying here, as the story goes, it doesn’t make sense for him to have been killed by one of his residents. They had no reason to hate him. But Mrs. Kenton did. Izzy’s research revealed that Middlewich’s killer said he’d swindled her husband. Well, we now know what she meant.”

  “But why didn’t Josiah Flagg get hold of the journal, as Middlewich intended?” said Jack.

  I shrugged. “I guess that’s something that will remain a mystery. Maybe he didn’t get the chance to follow the trail. Maybe the landowners found out about him. Maybe Middlewich died before he could tell Flagg about the secret compartment. Whatever the truth is, time passed, and Silas Middlewich drifted off into history as a crook and a scoundrel. Well, until now. Until Saxby Smart got on the case!”