THE BOY DETECTIVES

by Adrian Wright

  *

  Red Cherry House seemed a much less happy place the next day. Bunty was perhaps the least despondent of all, already seemingly having accepted that the pearl would never be traced. Mrs Jones was in such a state of despair that she postponed the morning’s pastry making, while Mr Jones was kept busy making cups of tea and coffee to keep the household’s spirits up. Lady Standing arrived in her chauffeur driven Rolls Royce to communicate the Watch Committee’s commiserations on Miss Rogers’s loss, sat beside Mrs Jones on the settee and ate one of her coconut tartlets with obvious relish. From the post office, Miss Simms sent word that she was shocked to the core, and that if there was anything she could do in the way of postage she would be only be too happy to oblige. Up in Francis’s bedroom, he and Gordon were in conference.

  ‘Well, you know what Sherlock Holmes would have suggested,’ said Francis.

  ‘No doubt he would have discovered the whereabouts of the pearl through the aroma of some rare Cuban tobacco,’ said Gordon.

  ‘No. Something much more sensible than that. When you cannot solve something through any other method, then the most obvious solution is the answer.’

  ‘Very clever of him, I’m sure,’ said Gordon, ‘but I can’t see how it helps us at all in this case. Every one was searched after the show, and the premises was given a tooth and comb examination. Of course, a pearl is a very small object, so there’s nothing to say it can’t have been hidden somewhere discrete - under someone’s tongue, even - with very little chance of it ever being found.’

  ‘The Chief Constable doesn’t think there’s anything to be done about it,’ agreed Francis. ‘The best we can do is to take Bunty’s mind off it, and create a restful and tranquil atmosphere.’

  ‘Admit defeat, you mean?’ asked Gordon. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right.’

  But Gordon wasn’t at all sure … If one of the company had been known to covet the pearl, or if the pearl had been the subject of great public interest …. But Bunty had never told a soul about its true value … to anyone who didn’t know, the thing might just as well have come from the jewellery counter at Woolworth’s. Except, of course, for that almost blinding light the pearl gave off as the lights faded around it. Surely, that fact was crucial to understanding what had happened: as Bunty had told he and Francis, she had never before told anyone about the provenance of the pearl.

  Gordon reached for the dictionary. Closing its pages, he sat without speaking for several moments before he announced to Francis that they were about to bicycle down to the Records Office at the Town Hall.

  ‘The fact that you’ve just discovered we are related to a famous explorer has awakened your interest in the family tree,’ laughed Francis, as they wheeled out their machines and set off from Branlingham. Fifteen minutes later, they were seated at a table in the Records Office where the custodian Mr Charlesworth had set before them several enormous ledgers wherein they might trace their family history. Mr Charlesworth was quite excited to see the boys, realising that he might be playing a small part in some mystery in which they were involved. When they needed more information relating to other parts of the country, he was more than willing to help by telephoning his colleagues in the North of England. It was mid-afternoon when the boys thanked him and rode back to Branlingham, to make ready for that evening’s performances. They couldn’t imagine how Bunty would get through the shows in such dreadful circumstances, or how the rest of the company would respond to the previous night’s events. Francis told Gordon in no uncertain terms that they must both remain professional, and not let their personal involvement with Bunty mar their performances. They were no longer amateurs, but professionals, installed in the Temple of Thespis.’

  *

  The final two performances of Ladies Without went on in a spirit of resignation and sadness. During the days that followed the dramatic disappearance of the pearl, the police had made no progress in discovering it or coming up with any theory regarding its theft. The Chief Constable was further discouraged by the fact that Francis and Gordon were themselves unable to shed any light on the mystery. It had been a difficult week. They spent their days with Bunty, escorting her to Norwich, where they had lunch at the Maid’s Head Hotel and spent an interesting hour in the cathedral before walking down to sit by the river at Pull’s Ferry. Here, they were treated to Bunty reading poetry to them in that voice that Mrs Jones had thought that of an angel. It seemed such an enchanted time, and Bunty seemed to have a direct emotional link to the words of T. S. Eliot. Refreshed and revitalised and seeing the world through eyes that had glimpsed the wasteland, the boys walked alongside Bunty back into the city centre, to ready themselves for the final two performances of the show that all Norfolk had flocked to see. There was a definite feeling of sadness in the air, for their newly discovered relative would leave Red Cherry House the following morning, and goodness knows when the boys would see her again.

  When they reached the Hippodrome and were installed in their dressing room, professionalism took over and the boys remembered that they were now, as the Reverend Challis had reminded them only the previous evening (he had not missed a performance), trainee priests at the altar of Thespis. As always, Francis and Gordon were allowed to watch the show from the wings, only being ushered away when Bunty and the girls shed their costumes. At first house, Francis was heading towards his dressing room when he heard the stage manager say ‘He’s got the bird’ as Dick Slocombe took his bow, and there was something a little more reticent in Bunty’s manner as she arose in the shell, but otherwise all seemed just as usual. It was an odd moment, because a trick of the light momentarily made Gordon think he had just seen Bunty in the wings, when she was in fact already in position in the shell, in full view of the audience. After first house, as he and Francis were making their way to Bunty’s dressing room, they heard the musical director Bert’s booming voice.

  ‘I’ve not been doing this for forty year without knowing my business,’ Bert Brownhill was telling one of the acrobats. ‘It were all sorted at Band Call, and well you know it. There were no rallentando at Band Call, that I do know. We had to hold up for several bars when you was doing the act on Tuesday night first house. Me musicians were mucked about with. And now it’s happened again tonight. You was up on that trapeze so long we had to put in another ten bars. We’ll not be so obliging again.’

  The acrobat shrugged his shoulders, said a few unintelligible words and waved his arms at the musical director.

  ‘Bloody foreigners!’ said Mr Brownhill.

  And then, when Francis and Gordon had enjoyed their last bacon and egg supper in Bunty’s dressing room, the second house – the last of their magical week – began, and the curtain went up on Norwich’s one remaining chance to see Bunty Rogers in all her glory. Despite the upsetting business of the pearl, the show went with a swing, and after the interval the acrobats spun and hurtled through the air just as nimbly as ever, while the audience gasped in admiration at their gymnastics. The climax of their act was always a thrilling moment. The lights dimmed. The acrobats stood stock still, as if suddenly rooted to the spot in a moment of pre-electric genius. The exciting throb of the pit band fixed on a trembling note. This was the moment when the unbelievable happened every night: as the lights played on those members of the troupe standing on stage, the lights around the top rigging of the various ropes and swings was dimmed, until suddenly a dazzling light was shone on one of the acrobats who, in the pitch darkness, had climbed to the very top of the rigging and was now perilously standing on a wire at the very top of the proscenium arch. Then, announced by a thundering roll on the drums, he would as always jump from the wire onto a swing that was thrown towards him, spending what seemed an eternity in mid-air.

  Yes … he made the jump … the audience gasped, as always, and applauded madly as he reached the ground and bowed … and then, the audience gasped again, for way above him, balanced on that wire from which the acrobat had just jumped, was Gordon Jones, and in his hand, s
hining into the eyes of all who looked on, he held something small and brilliant and mysterious beyond words!

  *

  ‘Well, there is no denying it!’ exclaimed the Chief Constable. ‘The boy detectives have done it again.’

  The throng that had gathered in Bunty’s dressing room after the final curtain applauded his words.

  ‘The local constabulary was baffled,’ continued the Chief Constable. ‘Quite frankly, I think if it had not been for the boys …’

  ‘No!’ interrupted Francis. ‘In this case, I think it’s a grammatical error. Boy in the singular, I think. This one is down to Gordon!’

  Everyone laughed, and Bunty gave Francis a great kiss, and squeezed his hand, and then kissed Gordon and ruffled his red hair.

  ‘Oh, darlings. You are and always will be a duo, and sometimes – even in a duet – one or other must have a little solo.’

  Mrs Jones was deeply touched by such wit.

  ‘Anyway, I think you are the best one to offer an explanation, Gordon,’ said the Reverend Challis, whose admiration for the lad seemed to burst from his being.

  ‘I owe it all to Francis,’ Gordon began, and then Mr Jones perked up and said that it sounded like one of those speeches American actors gave when they were given an Oscar.

  ‘It was Francis who encouraged me to learn a little about Greek,’ said Gordon, ‘and encouraged me to take out a subscription to the Children’s Newspaper. And it’s always been Francis who says it’s important to read and find out stuff, when I’d rather be playing football or cricket.’

  ‘But how did you work it all out?’ asked Bunty impatiently.

  ‘It wasn’t a stroke of genius, or a sudden blinding light. Rather, it was a lot of small things that seemed gradually to come together to make a picture. First, there was the pearl itself. The note that had rested alongside it for goodness knows how many years described it as a ‘sibling’ pearl, which suggested there were others like it. And then it said ‘a sibling pearl of great beauty’, and I wondered if that was a sly way of suggesting that the other pearls of which it was a sibling were not as beautiful, or as valuable.’

  ‘You have a wonderfully intellectual mind, darling’ whispered Bunty.

  ‘Bunty had kept the pearl a secret, only ever wearing it on stage at the very end of each performance. Nobody, so far as she knew, was aware of it, or guessed its great age and importance. So, when it was stolen, it seemed to me that only someone who knew about it would do such a thing. Someone who knew the story of the pearl; the fact that Bunty had it. And therefore, that person or persons must be on stage at the Hippodrome.

  ‘Bunty’s mother had abandoned her and left her with her doting father when Bunty was little more than a baby, and Bunty had been told by her father that the pearl had been left behind when his wife deserted them. As is the way of so many domestic upheavals, people often leave things behind which they wish they had taken. And we know that Bunty’s was described as a ‘sibling ‘ pearl. There were others. I suspect that there were two other pearls, which may well have been encased in velvet boxes describing them as such. Bunty’s mother took the other two pearls and left the one described as ‘of great beauty’ behind.

  ‘And there I rather stumbled, and ran out of ideas,’ said Gordon. ‘Until I decided to go some research at the Public Records office, looking up marriage certificates and birth certificates. There I discovered that Rose Grace Clatten had remarried a few years after leaving her husband and given birth to two other daughters, who she named Beryl Grace and Mavis Grace. When they turned twenty-one, she gave each of them one of the sibling pearls, telling them that they were of priceless worth. The girls probably had them valued, and were informed that they were little more than cheap paste. They returned to quiz their mother. It was then that the story of the three pearls emerged.’

  ‘And I guess that the pearl Rose Clatten left for Bunty to inherit was the priceless one that her grandfather Sir Horace Clatten had found in Peru?’

  ‘Exactly. The one that had once adorned the throat of a beautiful Peruvian princess many thousands of years ago. The other two pearls probably came from Woolworths. All this was too much for Bunty’s mother and the two girls, who resolved to get the pearl back. Since the only time when the pearl was in public was on stage during Bunty’s act, they realised they would have to get into her show.’

  ‘Of course!’ shouted Francis. ‘Those two dancers, Trixie and Nancy! The new ones that the company picked up en route. Your two half-sisters, Bunty.’

  ‘Yes, I suspected as much when I saw their travelling cases, both of which had their initials stamped on them, and the second initial on each was ‘G’. G for Grace, the middle name that Bunty shared with them.’

  ‘The Three Graces,’ said Bunty. ‘How very mythological!’

  ‘The two girls were supposed to be experienced dancers, but they didn’t seem able to pick up the routines. And tonight, I suddenly thought I caught a glimpse of Bunty in the wings, but I knew she couldn’t be there because she was standing in her shell on stage. It was Florrie I saw.’

  ‘Florrie!’ exclaimed the Reverend Challis.

  ‘Yes. For just a moment, I thought I recognised her, but then I realised. It wasn’t Bunty in the wings, it was someone who looked something like her. Her mother! The mother who had deserted her years before had got herself hired as a dresser. This was all very well, but I still had no proof or knowledge of what might have happened to the pearl. Then, I remembered that on the night of the disappearance one of the acrobats had bumped into me on stage in the confusion, and wasn’t very pleasant about it.’

  ‘Quite understandable in the circumstances,’ said Mr Jones.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Gordon, ‘but he wasn’t very pleasant in English. The acrobats were all Roumanians, and couldn’t speak a word of English, but this one sounded as if he came from the Old Kent Road. I think we may discover that he is the father of Trixie and Nancy. And of course the acrobats probably couldn’t have explained his appearance in the act to anyone because they can’t speak English.’

  ‘Your mind must surely be left to medical science,’ said the Reverend Challis.

  ‘What still puzzled me was – what had happened to the priceless sibling pearl? That is where I owe a debt to you, Mr Brownhill.’

  ‘To me?’ The musical director seemed as puzzled as anyone in the room.

  ‘Undoubtedly. I heard you complaining to one of the acrobats that they had messed up the timings for the orchestra on the Tuesday night at the end of their act. This seemed very odd. Timing is absolutely essential in that act, so why should it be so altered at one performance? I realised that it was at the point of the act when one of the acrobats was at the very top of the proscenium, and in darkness. And it had happened first house Tuesday. The first opportunity the interloper acrobat had to plant the pearl in the crown of Thalia on the proscenium.’

  ‘But wait a minute,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Everyone was questioned after the pearl went missing.’

  ‘But not the Roumanians,’ said Gordon. ‘They couldn’t understand English, and everyone just assumed they had nothing to do with it. Anyway, the pearl was so tiny, how could it be found? it really was a case of a needle in a haystack.’

  ‘And tonight?’ asked Bunty.

  ‘Tonight,’ Francis explained, ‘Gordon knew that during the second house the acrobat would take the pearl out of the crown of Thalia, and it would vanish for ever. So during the lighting changes Gordon ran on stage and under cover of darkness preceded the bad acrobat up the ropes and retrieved the pearl.’

  ‘And there it lies,’ said Mrs Jones breathlessly. ‘Imagine! Peruvian, and priceless, and all.’

  ‘And so ends the story of the Three Graces,’ said Francis. ‘Bunty, Trixie and Nancy, alias Thalia, Aglaia and Euphrosyne, the daughters of sky-ruling Jove.’

  ‘I feel I got to know Thalia,’ said Gordon. ‘All those hours I spent sitting in the stalls at the Hippodrome, gazing up at her on
the pros, admiring her crown. The crown that I first really noticed the day the show opened. And then, later in the week, I noticed it began to sort of, well, glow. And I began to wonder if, somehow or other …’

  ‘The Pearl of Thalia,’ said Francis in a tone of wonder.

  *

  Life went on just the same as before in Branlingham after Bunty Rogers was swept away to the railway station from Red Cherry House. The Jones family had never experienced so much kissing, and Mrs Jones dabbing her eyes, and Bunty calling everyone darling, and giving Francis and Gordon such hugs and kisses and promises not to lose touch. They stood at the gate of the house and watched until the taxi vanished from view. Mrs Jones, determined to keep up everyone’s spirits, had made a Bramley apple pie especially for the occasion, and the day turned out a good one, the boys recounting their week at the Temple of Thespis, Mrs Jones counting her blessings that that lovely lady she’d sat next to on Bunty’s first night had already sent her a postcard and invited her to pop up to London to see her, and had even ordered one of her most progressive corsets. Lady Darting arrived to personally congratulate the boys on their work, and accepted a slice of pie that she pronounced far superior to anything that had ever come out of her kitchens at the Hall.

  That week’s drama reverberated beyond Red Cherry House.

  Two days later, at the post office, Miss Simms clasped Mrs Jones’s new parcel with both hands. There was no mistaking the feel of it; it was another of those French corsets. Miss Simms glared at the label in disbelief. It was addressed to Dame Sybil Thorndike.

  At the Hippodrome, Mr Penderbury sat in the manager’s office. He had sat a long time, staring at the little velvet box which had that very day been delivered by special messenger, and at whose centre shone the great pearl that had been the cause of so much bother. Once again, he unfolded the note he held in his hand.

  Dear Mr Penderbury