“Curses,” hissed Montgomery, “he must have got here another way. Quickly!” – and he hurried them into a shop across the road.
It turned out to be a hat shop. They spent an awkwardly long time in there, and the woman who ran it kept pestering them to try on hats, which was fair enough. They had to try on most of them twice, because it wasn’t a very big shop, and Montgomery ended up buying Michael a pinstripe top hat with a feather in it because the woman was getting so cross.
At last, Eliot reappeared. When he was a safe distance away, they hurried out of the shop, and down the alley.
They stopped outside a grey door. It had a long window in it made of frosted glass – the kind that doesn’t really let in any light – and a smart black knocker.
“Splendid, here we are, splendid,” said Montgomery. “Ah – hmm. Does anybody know how to pick a lock?”
Property took out a hairgrip, and set to work. The door swung open with a slight squeak.
The room inside was dark green and lifeless. There was a small window, one desk piled high with papers, a second that was entirely bare, three large cabinets, and nothing else. Set in the far wall was a back door with another window, and through it Property could see a very overgrown garden.
“Right,” said Michael, rolling up his sleeves. “Mr Montgomery, could you keep watch? If they come, delay them as long as you can, and Prop and I will sneak out the back door. We’ll meet back at the Café Splendide.” Montgomery nodded, and slipped out of the room.
Michael searched the papers on the desk, and Property searched the cabinets, the Gunther at her heels. She knew what Netty’s signature looked like, so she didn’t have to worry about her secret. The first cabinet was locked, with a fancy combination lock that she couldn’t pick, and the second was empty apart from a couple of old coats. The third was full of shelves, all crammed with glass bottles. Blue inks and black inks and red inks. Dirty yellows and pale browns. Gold leaf and red wax. A jar full of liquorice sticks. She spent a long time taking it all in.
“Well,” said Michael, “it’s not on the desks.”
“Michael,” said Property, “Come and look at all this. ”
He came over to look. “Wow. This is amazing.” He picked up a bottle of something thick and indigo, that was kept between a bottle of something slightly-lighter-indigo and something slightly-purple-ish-indigo. “No labels on any of it,” he remarked. “How does he know which one’s which?”
“They look different,” said Property, shrugging.
Just then, they heard voices outside. Eliot Pink was back – and Gimble too, by the sound of it.
Montgomery leapt into action, and began telling the men a long-winded story about a miraculous recipe that he had invented for undoing lemonade stains. As he talked, Property and Michael crept to the back door and turned the handle. And turned it some more. They jiggled it. They tugged. They heaved.
No wonder the garden had looked unloved. The back door was stuck shut.
They could hear Montgomery listing ingredients, but his imagination wasn’t very good, and they were getting more and more unlikely. Pink and Gimble finally lost patience at “mushy peas”, and it sounded as if one of them picked Montgomery up and moved him out of the way. The key turned in the lock. Giving up on the door, Property gave Michael a shove towards the empty cabinet and scrambled in after him, the Gunther clinging tightly to her shoulder. Inside, they froze, hardly daring to breathe. The two men came into the room.
The cabinet was wonky and badly made. There was a crack between the doors that let Property see a sliver of the room. It turned out that a sliver was all she needed to see Gimble, who was a sliver of a man, short and slight. He was entirely hairless and eyebrowless, with soft, puckered skin. He looked exactly like a finger in a suit.
“I don’t like it,” he was saying. “Why’s Montgomery hanging around?”
“You worry too much, Gimble. He obviously doesn’t know about the forgery.” Eliot was out of sight, but his voice alone made Property’s chest tighten.
“You never worry enough. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of them. I don’t understand why you didn’t silence those Joneses while you had the chance.”
“Because I’m not rash, Gimble. There was no need.”
“What if they interfere?”
“They won’t. They’re not the type,” said Eliot. “And if they do, then I’ll take care of them. No need to be hasty.”
Property had an uncomfortable feeling that hiding in a cabinet probably counted as interfering. She breathed very, very quietly.
“Very well, very well,” said Gimble, wriggling out of Property’s line of vision. “Of course, if you hadn’t forgotten to make mould marks—”
“For the last time, Montgomery would never have noticed. If it hadn’t been for that obnoxious bookshop girl—”
“She’s a little girl, Eliot, not a detective.”
“She’s exceptionally observant.”
Gimble squirmed back into sight. His forehead was wrinkled, as if his eyebrows would be raised, if he had any. “Oh, really? How fascinating. Does she have an extra eye? A microscope for a nose? Sensors in her fingertips?”
“Enough,” growled Eliot. His tone made Property’s heart somersault, but Gimble only smirked. “She’s like me,” said Eliot. “That’s all.”
“You mean she can’t…?”
“Yes.”
“But she lives in a bookshop.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of idiotic child lives in a bookshop and can’t read?”
Property suddenly felt much too hot. She wished that she could see Michael’s face, but she didn’t dare move. Eliot didn’t answer Gimble. There was a sticky silence.
“Oh, don’t sulk,” said Gimble, smirking more than ever. “I’m not saying you’re an idiot. You know that I value your – ah – special relationship with books. There’s no one else in the forgery business with such a good eye for faking papers and inks. Besides” – Gimble chuckled – “it’s lucky for me. If you could read, you wouldn’t need me to write the words, eh?”
No labels on Eliot’s bottles, no papers on his desk. He needed Gimble to handle his paperwork. He could have kept their beautiful bookshop, but instead he tore it apart for no good reason. And he had spotted Property’s pretend-reading straight away, when the Joneses had never noticed. Property kicked herself for not realizing. Of course. Eliot couldn’t read either.
He still wasn’t talking to Gimble, but Gimble seemed happy to talk for both of them. “Anyway, enough – we’ll put your little slip-up behind us. Have you checked all the others? No more mistakes?”
“They’re fine,” Eliot growled.
“You’ve made me nervous. I just want to get all of these delivered and disappear: no trouble. Promise me you’ll check them before they go out tomorrow? I wish I could be here. I don’t like leaving it all to you. Are you listening to me, Eliot? Do you promise?”
“Yes. Would you like me to promise to brush my teeth and clean behind my ears as well?”
“Please don’t be childish, Eliot. If we’re going to pull this off, I need you to think for a minute. Two hundred forgeries to deliver in one day! These people are important, you know, and they’re paying us a fortune. We can’t afford mistakes.”
Eliot slammed something down on a desk. “Don’t question me. They’re good.”
“They’d better be.” Gimble wriggled in delight. “This is our moment! It’s going to make history! Every museum, every gallery, every rich stupid so-and-so in the country is going to have one of our fakes.”
“I know.”
“We will be so outrageously rich this time tomorrow.”
“I know. You never stop reminding me.” But despite himself, Eliot sounded just a touch excited. “Have you got everything you need? We should get going.”
“Oh, don’t hurry me.” Gimble was out of sight again, rustling through papers, and rambling on about the important people that he wa
s going to hoodwink. Something clicked to the left: Eliot was unlocking the other cabinet, looking for something. Property didn’t even blink, praying that he wouldn’t look in their cabinet.
His shadow fell across the crack between the doors. A long, grey coat was briefly visible. Then he moved on again. “Right,” he said, “let’s go.”
Michael let out a tiny whimper of relief. The Gunther clamped his tail over Michael’s mouth. They all waited.
Eliot turned. “Did you hear something?”
“No,” said Gimble. “Now, have you definitely got the right book?”
Eliot grumbled in reply. Footsteps moved away. The door shut.
For ten seconds, no one moved. Then brother and sister and cat tumbled out of the cabinet in a heap of excited relief. Property ran to peer out of the window. There was no one in sight.
“Gone,” she said.
“Good,” said Michael. “Good, good, good.”
MAWR, said the Gunther.
“Property,” said Michael. He looked at her more properly than ever before. “What did he mean, about you? You can read. Can’t you?”
THE JONESES INTERFERE
Property wished that she was better at words. Michael would have known the words she needed. She wished she could tell him that it had not felt like pretending to sit and read with them, and that she hadn’t set out to trick them. She wanted to explain that while she couldn’t read the letters, there were stories in the cracks of the spine and the smell of the pages and the way the jacket feels under your fingers.
But she couldn’t fit all of that into words. And besides, he hadn’t asked. He had only asked whether she could read.
“No,” she said. “Actually, I can’t.”
“Oh,” said Michael.
Then Property said, “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you,” and at the same time Michael said, “I’m so sorry I didn’t realize.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Prop,” said Michael. “We should have thought of it. People aren’t born knowing how to read. It’s our fault.”
Property didn’t reply to that, because there was a very large lump in her throat that was making it difficult to talk. It was also making it more difficult to pay attention. She didn’t notice the two shadows through the frosted glass on the door, or the Gunther head-butting her ankles with more urgency than usual.
“Thanks, Michael,” she said. And then there was a rap on the door, and with a sickening jolt, Property at last saw the figures outside. She froze.
The rap came again, and someone pressed their face against the door. “Michael? Prop?”
It was Netty, with Montgomery.
Michael crumpled up a bit with relief, and hurried to open the door and let them in. Netty hugged them both, and then Montgomery hugged them too, which was a bit awkward. “Oh dear, oh dear,” he kept saying, “I thought something awful had happened! My dear young Joneses! Oh dear.”
Once they were satisfied that Michael and Property were both still in one piece, they had a hundred questions: “Where were you?” and “What happened?” and “Are you all right?” and “Why are you wearing a top hat, love?” and “Well, my dear Joneses, did you find those papers?”
The papers! Property had almost forgotten why they were there. Her brain scrambled to get back to business. She had heard Eliot unlocking the last cabinet – the only place they hadn’t looked. While Michael was explaining what had happened, tactfully avoiding Property’s secret, Property tried the cabinet door. It was still unlocked. She pulled it open, willing it to have Netty’s signature waiting inside.
The cabinet very obviously didn’t contain any fresh new papers. It was so beautiful, though, that Property forgot to be disappointed. It was full of ancient-looking books. Some of them were beautifully gilded, or bound in soft leather, or stitched up with silk. Others were thin and fragile, and some were even just single tattered sheets, covered in urgent spikey writing. They looked so full of secrets that Property wished she could read them.
“What’s that you’ve found, Prop?” said Netty. The others crowded round to look. Montgomery’s eyes bulged.
“My goodness,” he breathed. “King Arthur… Da Vinci… Saint Augustine… Christopher Columbus… Julius Caesar… My goodness…”
“Don’t get excited,” said Michael. “They’re all fakes.” He ran a finger down some of the spines. “They’ve got every celebrity in history here. They’re going to make a fortune.”
“This is what Michael was telling you about. Pink and Gimble’s big job,” said Property. “We were just a practice. They won’t even need our money this time tomorrow, when they sell all of these.” She fought the urge to tear all the forgeries apart. That would probably count as interfering, and it wouldn’t actually help.
Montgomery had pulled one of the books from the top of a shelf, and was leafing through it. “I have to say, these are impressive. I’d never have guessed this colouring was liquorice. And the writing – this must have been done with a real quill. That scoundrel really does get the details just right.”
“It’s not that impressive,” said Property. “He just pays attention, that’s all. It’s not like he did the words.”
And it was then that Property had a good idea. In fact, it was a very good idea. But it was a bit extraordinary, so she had to think about it for a few seconds before she was sure.
It would definitely count as interfering. But it just might work.
“Wait,” she said. “If two hundred of the most important museums and galleries and libraries all complain that they’ve been sold a forgery, people will have to listen, won’t they?”
Netty nodded. “Sure. But not everyone’s as observant as you, love. Unless they all figure it out very quickly, Pink will be able to disappear.”
“Right,” said Property. “So, I reckon we need to make it really, really obvious for them. We need to make sure that they all complain straight away.”
The others blinked at her uncertainly, and the Gunther, now desperate to leave, had started nibbling at her feet and yowling sadly. But Property was warming to her very good idea, and she wasn’t going to be put off.
“Look, Eliot’s the only one here tomorrow, and Eliot can’t read. As long as they look right, he won’t know what they actually say. Why don’t we add a few words of our own?” She looked at the bottles of ink, winking at her in the light. “We’d need to use the right inks, or he’d notice. I reckon I’d be good at that. And I’m sure that you could all come up with great things to write. As soon as people read their precious books, they’ll be demanding an explanation.”
Michael grinned at her. “Ha! Yep, I can think of a few words that King Arthur definitely never wrote…”
“Exactly!”
“But Michael said that there are two hundred of them,” said Albert H. Montgomery. “If we can add something to all of them in one night, it will be a miracle.”
Property smiled. “An Object of Wonder. They do happen sometimes, you know.”
“What if they come back?” asked Netty.
Property didn’t have an answer to this. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But we can’t just leave and do nothing. It’s not just about us, now. They’re going to bankrupt every bookshop and library in the country with these!”
“Come on, Mum, we have to try,” said Michael. And although the others ummed and aahed nervously, they felt the same, and it didn’t take long to persuade them. Besides, as soon as they started coming up with ideas for unlikely things for the kings and queens and poets and saints and philosophers to write, they were laughing so much that they all felt a bit giddy. It was too tempting not to try.
So Netty and Montgomery sat at the two desks, and Michael sat under one of them, and all three started dreaming up a list of unlikely phrases. The Gunther kept lookout at the window. He wasn’t great at this, because he kept stopping to have angry fights with his tail, but at least it kept him out of everyone’s way.
Meanwhile, Pr
operty got to know the inks. Dark blue and navy and indigo, pitch-black and shadow-black and midnight-black, rust-red and brick-red and terracotta, all glistening and glooping in their bottles. Then there were the dip-pens and quills, all shaped differently for spikier or fatter or smoother writing. Property fished some paper out of a bin, and tried them out, comparing the results to the piles of fake books.
She found that the inks looked different depending which paper they were used on. And there was the problem of their different smells, and the way that some of them changed colour as they dried. She had to get it exactly right. Eliot would be sure to spot any mistakes.
Once she was sure that she had found a match, she would pass the book, ink and pen to one of the others, and they would add in some words of their own. After the first rush of ideas and excited giggling had calmed down, they worked silently, apart from the scratching of pens. They had to write very carefully, and it was slow work. For a long time the mountain of unfinished books didn’t seem to get any smaller.
They worked until the sky outside smudged first into dusk, and then into dark, at which point they turned on a feeble light. At night the White Hart had always been cosy, and the Emporium was huge and majestic in the darkness, but the office of Pink and Gimble just felt drab.
Property was suddenly struck by the thought that having Eliot Pink’s brain would be like being stuck inside this room: nothing comfortable or interesting or beautiful, nothing really alive, just cupboards full of clever schemes. She paused with her pen in mid-air, taken aback by the thought. If this was true, she wouldn’t want to be Eliot Pink if he had a hundred book emporiums. She shook off the thought with a shudder, and got back to work.
Her second sleepless night in a row made her feel very peculiar. Sometimes she forgot where she was or why she was doing this, and would just get lost inside the scratching of the pens and the glittering ribbons of ink. Then the Gunther would helpfully nibble her toes to wake her up again.
The others were a little more awake, but the night still took its toll. By the time they reached the last book, supposedly by Robin Hood, their brains had given in. “Uuuh,” Michael said. “Er. Does anyone else have any ideas? I’m thinking I’ll just write I LIKE BANANAS in really big letters.”
The Bookshop Girl Page 6
