by Anna Dale
The receiver on the other end of the line was put down with a clunk and Susan was left listening to silence.
Murmuring ‘Bother!’ under her breath, she replaced her handset too and heard her pound coin drop in the box. ‘So much for that idea, Scallywag.’
Although she had received a setback, Susan was not prepared to give up. She decided that there was nothing for it but to memorise Arthur’s address and to try to find his house. The only problem with her new plan was that she did not have the faintest idea where she might find Willow Road. She would need to rely on the help of a passer-by.
As Susan made her way through Plumford, she was struck by how eerily quiet it was. Most of the roads were deserted and the houses that she passed had their curtains drawn, but plenty of windows were open, it being such a sultry night. Through them, from time to time, Susan heard snatches of laughter, raised voices and the tinny blare of music. A cat or hedgehog crossed her path occasionally, but the presence of Scallywag kept most creatures at bay. Not knowing in which direction she should go, Susan asked everyone she met for assistance. A couple strolling arm in arm had never heard of Willow Road, and a bunch of boisterous youths were more interested in pulling her plaits than providing helpful advice.
Finally, Susan’s persistence paid off when she stopped at the door of a curry house and spoke to a man called Vijay who had driven cabs before he became a restaurateur. He gave Susan detailed instructions to get to Willow Road. He even drew her a map on a napkin and gave her some Bombay mix to eat on the way.
Willow Road, where Arthur lived, was part of a new estate. All of its roads had been named after trees, shrubs or flowers. When Susan turned into Dahlia Drive she felt a great sense of relief. She followed the pavement, which wound its way through a maze of roads. Those with the grandest names were lined with smart, detached houses that had garages tacked on the side and neat front lawns. In the plainer-sounding roads, the buildings were jam-packed and had an altogether shabbier look.
Susan’s belief that she would find Willow Road started to fade when the rain began to fall. The drops were light at first, and Susan mistook them for winged insects landing in her hair, but soon they grew plumper and fell to earth in a rush. Getting wet did not dismay Susan as much as the knowledge that her napkin map was softening, and Vijay’s carefully written words were being turned into splodges of ink. Within seconds the map was unreadable.
A distant rumble in the sky filled Susan with even more anguish, and Scallywag answered the noise with a rumbling growl of her own. To prevent them both from getting soaked to the skin, Susan looked for a place where they could hide from the rain. She spotted a tree in someone’s front garden and ran to it. She felt drier beneath its branches, but she also felt a sense of despair. Having come so far, it seemed that she would have to spend the rest of the night under the tree or trailing around the housing estate, getting increasingly lost.
The next moment a car swept past, its windscreen wipers flitting back and forth at speed. Susan was caught in the car’s headlights and raised her hand too late to shade her eyes against their glare. She was still blinking to get rid of the brightness when she heard a squeaking noise and the sound of a skidding wheel.
A voice called out, ‘Why are you standing there, dopey?’
Susan looked up and thought, for a moment, that she must be dreaming. A metre or two in front of her, sitting astride his bike, was Arthur. He grinned at her and pushed his long fringe out of his eyes. ‘Don’t you know that sheltering under a tree in a thunderstorm is one of the stupidest things that you can do?’ he said. ‘If lightning strikes that tree, you’ll be frizzled to a crisp!’
His words were lost on Susan, who had not yet recovered from the shock of Arthur appearing. ‘How’d you know I was here?’ she asked.
‘I used my psychic powers!’
Scallywag whined to be stroked and Arthur leaned down to oblige. ‘Stumbled on you, didn’t I?’ he said. ‘You woke up the whole house with your phone call, Suze. I heard Mum say your name and guessed that something weird – and maybe bad – had happened at the shop. I waited till the coast was clear and then made tracks!’
‘There is something wrong,’ said Susan, feeling tearful all of a sudden. ‘Someone locked us in our rooms . . . I had to climb down a tree to get out!’
Arthur’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. Instead of asking her to explain, he gestured that she should get on his bike. ‘Sounds like we’d better get there super-fast!’ he said.
Susan revealed more details as they rode along the streets of Plumford on Arthur’s bicycle. Susan had never ridden a bike so she sat on the saddle whilst Arthur stood up and pedalled, leaning his weight on the handlebars. Scallywag was too big to fit in Arthur’s saddlebag, so they took off her rope lead and she ran alongside.
They were an odd-looking pair; Arthur in long shorts and a pyjama top and Susan with her ribboned plaits flying out behind. The bike wobbled and wavered, sent off course by the weight of two riders instead of one, but Arthur was a capable cyclist and managed to keep his bike from falling over.
‘Burglars?’ said Arthur as they left the road and freewheeled down a narrow, unlit footpath close to his school. Wet nettles and cow parsley brushed against their legs.
Susan clung to the crossbar tightly. ‘That’s who I thought they must be. What do you think they’ve come to steal? Mr Hardbattle’s books?’
Arthur pulled a face, and turned the handlebars sharply to avoid a fallen branch. ‘Mr Hardbattle’s books can’t be worth that much,’ he said. ‘And he isn’t rich. The till drawer’s practically empty, and he doesn’t have any signet rings or gold medallions or things like that. He hasn’t even got a TV!’
Susan struggled to stay in the saddle as they went over a hump in the path. A loud, crackling rumble followed a flash in the sky, and made her squeal.
‘It’s just a thunderstorm. You’ll be OK,’ said Arthur, pedalling faster.
Arthur’s spurt of speed and his knowledge of short cuts saved them from getting totally drenched. They were fairly damp, but not dripping, when they arrived outside Hardbattle Books. They dismounted clumsily as another lightning flash lit up the sky. A crash of thunder swiftly followed.
‘Electricity in clouds,’ whispered Arthur. ‘Nothing to be scared of, Suze.’ He crept towards the shop and put his finger to his lips. ‘Shh!’ he said over his shoulder.
Susan reattached Scallywag’s lead, and Scallywag sank to the ground, worn out from having run several miles across town. Her tongue lolled from her mouth and her sides heaved. She was so tired that the thunderstorm failed to trouble her.
Arthur examined the frontage of Hardbattle Books. None of the windows had been broken and the lock on the door had not been tampered with. At first glance the interior of the shop seemed dark, but when Arthur peered through the window, he saw glimmers of deep gold light at the very back of the shop.
‘Someone’s there!’ he whispered to Susan. ‘But it beats me how they got in. There isn’t any sign of a break-in as far as I can see.’
Susan tweaked Arthur’s pyjama sleeve. ‘Whose car is that?’ she asked.
Next to the kerb, in the space in front of Mr Hardbattle’s van, was a battered old Land Rover. As Susan and Arthur stared at it, bewildered, they heard the creak of a bicycle, which sounded as if it needed oiling, and saw a man in a deerstalker hat pedalling quickly in their direction. Arthur pulled Susan away from the portion of pavement that was lit up by a street lamp. They goggled at the cyclist from the shadows as he pressed his brakes and came to a stop. Alighting from his bike, the man retrieved a briefcase from a pannier, looked around him to check that no one was watching and walked straight up to the bookshop’s door. There, he knocked in a sequence: once, three times, twice, and four times more. He turned up the collar of his raincoat and cast furtive glances over his shoulder as he waited to be let
in. The door opened a crack and there was a murmur of voices. When the man was ushered into the shop, they heard the bell jingle-jangle. The door was closed firmly behind him.
‘That was just plain odd!’ said Arthur, not altogether convinced that what he had just witnessed was the typical behaviour of a burglar. ‘Who do you think that man was, Suze?’
‘I don’t know, but I thought he looked shifty,’ Susan whispered in reply. ‘Not the sort of man that Mr Hardbattle would be chums with. I do wish we could see what was happening inside the shop!’
‘The way that Mr Shifty rapped on the door was strange,’ commented Arthur. ‘It was almost as if he was giving a secret knock! Even if we copied it, I’m not sure that we’d be let in . . .’ He hesitated while he thought about what they should do next. ‘Perhaps we should try round the back,’ said Arthur. ‘If the burglars didn’t get into the building from the street, they must have broken a window or jemmied the door at the back of the house. There’s a footpath somewhere that leads to a gate in Mr Hardbattle’s yard. Come on, Suze! Let’s try to find it!’
They had started to sneak along the row of houses in search of a path that linked all of their backyards, when the sound of another vehicle approaching caused them to stop in their tracks.
This time it was a van which was the size of a small truck. Its driver parked in front of the Land Rover, and three stocky men got out. They hunched their shoulders against the wet weather and, hands in their pockets, walked up to the door. One of them lifted his fist to deliver the secret knock.
‘Change of plan!’ whispered Arthur to Susan, turning on his heel and tiptoeing back towards the bookshop. He paused by his bike and removed the pump. ‘I’ve just had an idea!’
.
Chapter Twenty
Shady Dealings
Arthur dropped to his hands and knees when he passed in front of the shop so that his head did not show above the window sill. Taking care to keep to the shadows, Susan crawled behind him, and a panting Scallywag brought up the rear. When they were a stone’s throw from the three men, Arthur called his stalking party to a halt, signalling by raising his hand. He and Susan crouched together, not even daring to whisper, waiting for the door of the bookshop to open.
The men did not appreciate being made to hang around outside in the rain. They buttoned up their donkey jackets, and grumbled about getting wet. When the door creaked ajar they squashed into the doorway, eager to get into the dry, but an unseen person drove them back.
‘Password first!’ the person said.
‘We got ourselves a right stickler ’ere!’ complained one of the men, turning to his two pals. ‘What’s the flamin’ password, lads? Anyone remember?’
Both men shrugged, then one of them had a flash of inspiration. ‘Some geezer’s name, weren’t it? A Mafia Mr Big, it sounded like . . . Poppa Peddle or someone . . .’
‘Popocatépetl,’ said the man behind the door, but judging their effort to be close enough, he allowed the three men to enter.
Arthur readied himself as the men trooped over the threshold, waiting for the moment in which to make his move.
When the door was a split second away from clicking shut, Arthur sprang into action. Leaping forward, with one arm outstretched, he lodged his bicycle pump in the gap between the door and the doorpost. His aim was true, and the pump did its job, keeping the door of the bookshop open. Arthur waited to see if it had been noticed that the door had not closed properly, but he did not hear any utterances of annoyance, and the door remained ajar.
Arthur was so pleased that his plan had worked and so keen to discover what was happening within the shop that he did not give a second’s thought to the bell above the door. Susan whispered a warning in his ear just in time.
They concluded that their entry would have to coincide with a thunderclap, which, with luck, would cover the clamorous jingle-jangle of the bell. A flash of lightning gave them their cue, and the instant they heard the first crackle of thunder, Arthur and Susan nudged the door open and sneaked inside the shop. Before closing the door behind him, Arthur retrieved his bicycle pump, then he ran to join Susan and Scallywag, who had taken refuge behind a tall bookcase. They huddled there in the dark, their hearts thumping wildly.
When Susan and Arthur were satisfied that their entrance had not been detected, they left their hiding place behind the bookcase and crept through the warren of books towards the hum of voices. As they ventured deeper into the shop, their surroundings grew lighter so that they could see the outlines of books on the shelves and very nearly read their spines. Somewhere, in a hidden recess of the shop, a source of light was brightening the gloom.
‘Over there!’ hissed Arthur to Susan, pointing with his bicycle pump. ‘Candles and a whole load of people! Look!’
Both children peered round a bookcase and saw a gathering of twelve or more people who were standing in pools of light thrown by the wavering flames of six stout candles.
‘Are all these people burglars?’ Susan asked. She had expected to be afraid, but found that she was more puzzled than scared. ‘Golly, Arthur! Aren’t there a lot of them?’
The ‘burglars’ were milling around a table display of some kind. Amongst them were the three broad-backed men, Mr Shifty, who had taken off his deerstalker hat but was still sporting his bicycle clips, and a woman in a green paisley headscarf and wellington boots. When Arthur spotted Mrs Voysey-Brown and Jimmy amongst the throng, he started to think that Susan had been mistaken, and that the people in the shop were not burglars at all. He saw someone flaunt a wad of twenty-pound notes and hand a thick sheaf of them to Jimmy. A sale seemed to be going on. It was not unlike a tabletop sale, of the sort that was held in the playground at Arthur’s school at weekends. Were the three house guests selling Mr Hardbattle’s books and pocketing the proceeds? Arthur trembled with outrage, alerting Scallywag that something was wrong. A growl started in the dog’s throat, and instinctively Susan tightened her grip on Scallywag’s lead to prevent her from rushing into the small crowd of people.
A well-to-do voice raised itself above the commotion: ‘These rugs are exuding a strong smell of garlic! Or is it these opera evening gloves? The wretched smell seems to be floating right underneath my nose!’ The woman in the headscarf replaced the soft leather gloves on the table and, in her prissy voice, continued to complain. ‘Must we view these artefacts in such poor light? Surely, we could switch on the electric lights and do away with these candles!’
‘And have the rozzers sniffing round ’cos a shop’s open after hours?’ said one of the thickset men beside her. ‘’Ave some sense, love! Blimey!’
‘They aren’t buying books, Arthur!’ Susan said, as more money changed hands and somebody walked out with an umbrella stand and a porcelain vase. Arthur and Susan watched, bemused.
‘It’s expensive junk, that’s what it is!’ declared Arthur. ‘Where can it have come from? I’ve never seen any of it before!’
Every so often, Mr Claggitt made an appearance, tramping downstairs in his hiking boots, his arms laden with paraphernalia.
‘Where’s he getting it all from?’ murmured Arthur, daringly leaning round the bookcase to get a closer look.
Susan remembered the banging noises that she had heard in her room prior to her tree-climbing escapade. At the time, she had thought that the sounds had originated on the roof, but it seemed more likely now that they had come from the attic instead. She shared her new theory with Arthur.
But if Mr Hardbattle had all this valuable stuff in his attic, why didn’t he flog it to help him keep his business afloat? pondered Arthur, feeling more confused by the minute.
Before he could try to make sense of it all, Arthur became distracted by an argument over an item of jewellery.
‘Five thousand pounds?’ Mr Shifty snorted. ‘My good woman, I wouldn’t give you five hundred!’
He scrutinised a bow-shaped brooch through an eyeglass, shook his head and handed it back to Mrs Voysey-Brown.
Extremely unimpressed to be offered a tenth of her asking price, Mrs Voysey-Brown resorted to calling Mr Shifty names, including a crooked old goat, a swindler and a rip-off merchant. ‘You know damn well,’ she said, ‘that this diamond brooch is worth a mint. You can’t expect me to believe that a lady would wear paste. And when I say “lady”, I mean the wife of a lord!’ Mrs Voysey-Brown looked down her nose at Mr Shifty. ‘These gems are genuine, and you shan’t convince me otherwise, you foul, insipid little upstart of a man!’
Before Mrs Voysey-Brown could close her fingers over it, Arthur got a good look at the brooch, and realised that it was the very same one that he had found in the gutter outside the shop on the day he had cleaned Mr Hardbattle’s van. He frowned. Something was bothering him. How had Mr Claggitt managed to get into the attic? Despite searching for ages, Mr Hardbattle had not been able to find the key to the padlock. Could it be that the house guests had put all the antiques in the attic themselves and fitted the padlock to stop anyone else from finding their haul? Where had the three of them been in the hours before Arthur had found the brooch? Touring stately homes, they had said.
Arthur gasped. He delved inside his pocket and found the newspaper article he had ripped from the Plumford Gazette. Tilting it towards the light, he read the whole thing. It mentioned the outbreak of shoplifting and various burglaries in the town, but the article concentrated on the plundering of stately homes on the thirty-first of May. Amongst the items stolen were statues, a silver teapot, vases, figurines, paintings, oriental rugs, and a diamond brooch identified as missing by Lady Smythe-Hughes. In one fell swoop the mystery had been solved!
‘Crikey, Suze!’ said Arthur, shoving the article under her nose. ‘All that stuff is nicked! And these people – Mr Shifty and the rest – they must be dealers . . . dodgy ones who aren’t fussed about buying stolen goods!’
