by Holly Webb
“What you want?” someone asked.
Maisie jumped and almost slipped on the worn stairway. She dug her nails into the damp wall down the side of the steps, gasping in fright.
“What you standing there like that for?” the boy demanded again. At least, Maisie thought it was a boy. He was so filthy with mud that it was hard to tell, but the face under his dirty cap looked quite young. He was wearing ragged trousers that were tucked up to show bare legs, scarlet with cold, and a pair of boots tied on with scraps of knotted string. There was a metal bucket dangling on his arm, full of holes.
“I’m looking for the boys that found the scarab – the golden beetle that was in the river yesterday.” Maisie eyed him doubtfully. “At least, I was told it was a gang of boys that found it. Were you there?” She shuddered as she watched his thin, dirty face. Maisie had been feeling hard done by on three meals a day, but these children were surviving on the few pence they could earn for selling other people’s rubbish.
“Don’t know about that,” the boy said at once, but his eyes slipped shiftily sideways, and Maisie didn’t believe him. She glanced over, trying to see where the boy was looking, and saw a few more children, stooping over closer to the water, gathering scraps into tattered baskets.
“Was it them?” Maisie asked. “I’m not here to get anyone into trouble,” she added quickly. “I just wondered if you could tell me where it was thrown in. Whether the tide always brings things the same way?” She shifted nervously on the steps. The other children had seen her now and they were creeping closer.
Eddie peered round Maisie’s skirts and let out a low, uncertain growl. Maisie swallowed, and wondered if she should just turn and run. But why would they want to threaten her?
“Who’s she?” a grey-faced girl demanded. “Why you talking to her?”
“Standing there snooping, wasn’t she?” the first boy snapped back.
“This is our patch,” snarled a tiny boy in a longcoat, with black rat tails of greasy hair trailing down his back. “Get your own.”
“Don’t be stupid,” the older boy told him, rolling his eyes. “Look at her! She’s not coming down here to pick up coal, is she? She’s a nark.”
“I am not!” Maisie said indignantly. She knew that slang from her friend George. A nark was a nose – someone who went sniffing around for the police. Well, maybe she was. But not in the way this lot meant it.
“I’m not working for the police,” Maisie insisted. “I’m working for the man who lost that golden beetle. Trying to find who stole it from him in the first place. His family are really worried, they think it might be…” Maisie trailed off. How could she explain Egyptian kings and ancient curses to these starved children? Especially when she could hardly make sense of it herself. “They think someone’s after him,” she said, shrugging. “I only wanted to know where it might have gone in, that was all.”
They all looked at her suspiciously for a minute longer, and then the boy seemed to relax a little. He shifted the bucket further up his arm. “It was me what found it,” he admitted.
“But we dunno where it went in,” the weary-looking girl told Maisie. “Can’t tell. Most stuff just falls off the ships. And it all depends on the rain.”
“I suppose it would,” Maisie agreed.
“It din’t fall off no ship,” the boy in the huge coat squeaked.
“Shut up, Greasy,” the weary girl said disgustedly. “You don’t know nothing.”
“I do, too! I saw him, din’t I?”
There was a moment of stillness, as everyone turned to stare at the tiny boy.
“Saw who?” Maisie asked.
“Some swell. He threw it in off the bridge. I was up there – I saw it go. Late afternoon, it was. Almost dark. Saw it sparklin’, an’ I tried to catch it, but it went in the water. Then he nicked it off me.” He heaved his elbow at the older boy, who snorted.
“That’s right, Greasy, it were yours an’ I nicked it – the next morning. Who you trying to kid? You din’t see no swell. An’ even if you did, it could’ve been anything he threw off the bridge.”
“That would be Tower Bridge?” Maisie asked, trying to work out where they were. The new bridge was the closest one, she was sure. Tower Bridge opened up in the middle so the tall-masted ships could sail through to the docks.
The little boy nodded. “He did throw it,” he muttered, glaring at the others. “And he were a swell, Lily Dickens. He had a great tall hat on, so there!”
Maisie wasn’t sure she believed the little boy, either – perhaps he was just making it all up in the hope of a reward?
“Did you get paid much?” she asked the older boy suddenly. “For the scarab, I mean? You took it to a pawnbroker, didn’t you?”
“Five shillings.” The boy shook his head in amazement. “Gave it to my ma, paid all the rent. Best haul ever.”
Maisie swallowed and nodded. Five shillings. According to Lord Dacre, the scarab was worth thousands of pounds. And the boy thought he had been well rewarded, even though he was back here the next day, searching through mud and ice for firewood to sell.
She looked around her at their pale, pinched faces and the purplish red of their bare legs, and shivered. She pulled the bag of biscuits out of her basket and handed it to the boy, since he seemed to be in charge. She could use some of the money from Lord Dacre to buy another bag for Gran.
“Thank you for talking to me,” she said quietly, turning to walk back up the steps. At the top, she glanced back, but none of them were looking at her at all – they were desperately shaking the last few crumbs out of the bag.
Maisie was walking back to Albion Street, after her second trip to the grocer’s – trying to work out how to explain to Gran that she had been away for the whole morning, even though she’d taken the Underground back – when she came to a sudden stop. Something the little boy said had suddenly clicked inside her head.
A smartly dressed man – no ordinary burglar, then, not if he was wearing a top hat. In fact, she should have worked that out already. It couldn’t be just any old thief, breaking in on the off-chance. That house was so full of gold, they’d never have left with only the scarab. The thief had known just what to take. Exactly what would upset Lord Dacre the most.
Perhaps the police were right – it almost had to be an inside job…
Eddie gave a whine, and Maisie realized the little dog was shivering. There were a few flakes of snow starting to feather down around them. “Sorry,” she whispered to him. “I know it’s too cold to stop and think.” Maisie set off again, hurrying home. There was an odd smell in the air, something like the smell of the fireplace grates, but mixed with the cold sharpness of the snow. Then she saw that the dense greyness of the sky wasn’t just the snow clouds – it was smoke. Something was burning.
Maisie was close enough to home to feel a sudden coldness inside, as well as out. What if Professor Tobin had piled up the coals and set the hearthrug on fire? Or Miss Lane had knocked a candle over on to one of her lacy scarves? But the fire was in the next street, she realized, the thud of her heart slowing down. Flames were flickering in an upstairs window, and there was a horrible, hungry crackling sound. People spilled out on to the steps, clutching children and frantically calling to each other, trying to make sure that no one had been left behind.
“Bring the teaspoons! The silver teaspoons!” one elderly lady screamed to her husband, who was struggling to carry a very large and ugly portrait of a man with side whiskers. The old lady herself had a huge and terrified ginger cat tucked under her arm.
Maisie reached down to catch Eddie’s collar, just in case, but the little dog seemed to know that this was not the time for chasing cats. Maisie wondered if she ought to stop and help, or perhaps run to the post office and telegraph the fire station, but the engine from the Metropolitan Fire Brigade was already swinging around the corner, drawn by two sweating horses. A gang of small boys standing watching the flames let out a huge cheer as the engine drew
up. The bell was clanging so loudly that Eddie tucked himself in between Maisie’s feet, whimpering. Maisie hurried him out of the way as the firemen jumped off the engine and started to fit the hose to the steam pump.
Maisie walked on home, turning back to look every so often, and worrying about those people, out in the cold with only the strange treasures they had snatched up as they’d fled from the fire.
“I’d take you,” she whispered to Eddie. “And Gran, of course. And Sally and all the lodgers. I don’t know what else I’d take – my most precious things… Oh! My magnifying glass. And my notebook.” She sighed. Even the poor people from the burning house still had more than the mudlarks.
“Maisie! Maisie!”
Maisie galloped up the stairs, wondering what on earth was the matter with the professor. She had taken up his letters, and now he was ringing his bell and shouting for her so loudly that Gran had nearly dropped the teapot.
“Whatever is it?” Maisie gasped, as she reached the landing.
The professor hauled her into his sitting room and pressed a letter into her hands. “Read that! Yes, this bit, here. It’s from Leggy.”
Maisie frowned at the loopy, flourishing handwriting and felt glad that it was only a short note. “Someone’s painting messages up in hieroglyphics?” she asked, hoping she’d read it right.
“The first one appeared a couple of nights ago, apparently. On the wall opposite Leggy’s house. And then another last night, on the wall of his club, the Explorers. Miss Dacre has had another nervous attack.”
“Does Lord Dacre knows what they mean, these messages? Is it something horrible, is that why his daughter’s so upset?” Maisie said, trying to read the rest of the note, but the writing only got worse. Even though Lord Dacre wrote that he wasn’t worried, Maisie had a feeling he was putting on a brave face, and these new threats had shaken him even more.
“Apparently they’re all about death…” Professor Tobin sighed worriedly. “I have to admit, Maisie, I’m starting to find this rather frightening.”
Maisie smoothed the letter between her fingers, looking at the words straggling across the page.
“Yes. But there’s one odd thing, Professor…” She nibbled her bottom lip, thinking it through. “It’s the same thing that I thought about the scarab, actually…”
“Oh, do tell me!” Professor Tobin begged impatiently.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that no one has asked for anything?” Maisie nodded slowly. “Whoever took the scarab could have ransomed it for a lot of money – it’s obvious that Lord Dacre would have paid anything to get it back. Instead they just pulled out its eyes and threw it away. They didn’t even mean for it to be found. That was an accident, I think. After all, they threw it into the river! And now with these messages. They’re just being nasty. They aren’t telling Lord Dacre to pay money, or give back the finds, or anything.”
The professor sighed gustily, making his moustache flap. “Well, isn’t that the point? They’re just frightening him.”
“But why?” Maisie shrugged. “It seems to be an awful lot of trouble for nothing. Oh!” She sat down suddenly on the very edge of an armchair, looking pale.
“Have some of my tea, Maisie,” the professor said anxiously, holding out a cup. “What is it? Have you thought of something?”
Maisie nodded miserably. “Lord Dacre told us it was his last expedition, because of his heart trouble. What if someone is trying to frighten him to death?”
“Please, George…” Maisie begged. “It’ll take forever to do it all by myself. And Gran says she’ll pay you sixpence.”
“Oh, all right, then.” George grinned at her and leaned his bicycle against the railings. “I’ve only got a couple of deliveries left to make, and Mr Harrowby won’t know, I suppose. I’ll just tell him the snow slowed me down. Got a shovel?”
Maisie handed him the shovel from the outhouse, and went back to sweeping the snow off the front steps. There had been a heavy snowfall in the night, and the steps and the street in front of the house were ankle deep. They had to be clear for the lodgers to go up and down. Gran had given her a bag of salt to scatter on the steps to stop them freezing over.
“What’s the matter?” George asked, a few minutes later, leaning on his shovel, scarlet-cheeked.
Maisie stared at him. “Nothing. What do you mean?”
“Got to be something wrong, Maisie, you ain’t chatting.”
“Oh…” Maisie nodded. “I suppose so. It’s this case. I don’t know what to do next.”
“You got another one?” George asked curiously. He had been part of the very first mystery that Maisie had solved, when he’d been accused of stealing from the butcher’s where he worked. He’d had a particular interest in her detecting ever since, and had helped her out on a couple of her other cases.
“Lord Dacre’s scarab. It’s been in the papers,” Maisie said proudly.
“You’re mixed up in that?” George’s eyes widened. “Maisie, the newspapers are saying there’s a curse on that golden beetle thing!”
“Curses are nonsense,” Maisie said firmly. Out here, with the weak winter sun shining on the snow, she believed that. It was harder to be so certain when it was dark. “I think it was somebody from his house. Somebody who knew how much it would upset him if that beetle was taken. His lordship’s got a weak heart…”
“You think someone’s trying to do away with him?” George asked.
“Maybe. But I’ve got no proof,” Maisie admitted. “I’m just guessing.”
“Who’s your suspect, then?”
Maisie sighed. “His daughter… And his cousin, I think.”
George stared at her. “Why?”
Maisie shrugged a little. She couldn’t just say that it was because she didn’t like them. That wasn’t proper detecting, it was stupid.
“They’ve got the opportunity,” she murmured, not looking at George.
“Well, you need more than that,” he scoffed.
“I know!” Maisie snapped back. “But the police think it was an inside job, too.”
George sniffed, as though he didn’t think much of that, either, and Maisie sighed and shivered.
“Anyway, I’m working on it. Come on, cleverclogs. Gran wants this all cleared by lunchtime.”
Maisie sat curled up in bed, with Eddie snoring slightly on the rug beside her. She was making a list of clues and possible suspects in her notebook, and it was not going very well. Most of her notes were crossed out, and her pencil needed sharpening.
She blew out her candle with a huffy little sigh and lay down, trying to think the case through. It was too cold for sitting up in bed writing anyway. Gran had left the stove banked up with coals to keep the warmth in, but Maisie was frozen, even with Gran’s old quilted bedjacket on over her nightgown.
“Eddie!” Maisie whispered, hoping he wasn’t too deeply asleep. “Eddie!”
The little dog looked up blearily and wagged his tail.
“Come on up. Come on. I know you aren’t supposed to, but my feet are freezing, and you must be perishing, too. Good boy!” She patted her feet, and Eddie sprang up delightedly on to the bed. “Oh, that’s better,” she murmured, as Eddie settled himself snugly on her toes.
“How am I going to find any evidence to show Lord Dacre, Eddie?” Maisie asked sleepily. “I can’t say I think it was Isis or Max unless I’ve got some real proof, and how am I ever going to get that? I’d have to interview them, and why would they talk to me? I wonder if we could go to the house…” She yawned, and Eddie sniffed and wriggled himself into a tighter little ball on top of her feet. “I wonder where those rubies have got to…” Maisie mumbled to herself, as she drifted off to sleep.
“Look, Maisie, this is about Lord Dacre. Isn’t that the professor’s friend? That lord who came to the house?” Gran asked, pointing at the newspaper, which was spread out across the kitchen table.
Maisie hid a grin. Gran knew perfectly well who Lord Dacre was. She ju
st liked to mention that a lord had visited as often as she could, especially as Mr Smith was sitting at the table, sipping – or rather slurping – his morning cup of tea.
“What does it say about him?” Maisie asked.
Gran squinted at the tiny print. “Major developments. Case solved, apparently.”
“They’ve got the thief? Who is it?” Maisie squeaked. “Who’s been arrested? When Lord Dacre came to visit a couple of days ago, he was talking about an Egyptian secret society!”
Mr Smith snorted. “Lot of nonsense!”
“Yes, well, I think Lord Dacre thought so, too.” Maisie replied. “But I didn’t know that there were even any suspects.”
“Well, Inspector Grange— Oh, our old lodger!” Gran glanced smugly at Mr Smith. “It says he’s arrested an Algernon Travers.”
“Mr Travers?” Maisie gaped at her. “Lord Dacre’s nice secretary? But – I met him…”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t be a thief, Maisie!” Gran laughed.
“I know, but…” Maisie frowned. Mr Travers? Really? He had seemed so kind, and he’d been polite to her and the professor. Surely he couldn’t be a thief.
“Gran, can I pop out this afternoon? Please? Just for a very short while. I think I ought to pay a visit to Scotland Yard and congratulate Inspector Grange on his promotion…”
“Good afternoon, Inspector.” Maisie bobbed a polite curtsey, but she was smiling, and Inspector Fred Grange beamed back at her. When they’d first met, he’d been calling himself Mr Grange and masquerading as a clerk at the biscuit factory. He’d been the last person to rent the second-floor rooms, before Mr Smith had arrived. Maisie had noticed Mr Grange hanging around the streets when he should have been at work, and had asked him some very careful questions, which anyone who knew anything about biscuits should have been able to answer. It had been very good detective work.
