The Missing Boy (Lady Eugenie's School for Girl Sleuths Book 1)

by V. Penley

  Phillip raised a hand. “Obviously, I have created a misunderstanding. Instead, I was hoping to meet with him personally.” Phillip put the emphasis on personally.

  The man sat up straighter. The respect on the other two’s faces was replaced with anger.

  “In that case, no,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I can’t right say where Mr. Styles is.”

  Phillip bowed slightly and lifted his hat. “Thank you. That’s all I needed.”

  Eugenie wasted little time getting out onto the sidewalk, but she heard over her shoulder the owner shout at them, “Tell Bertie to come pay his bill, if he ever keeps the liquor out of his hand long enough!”

  “Dear, me,” Phillip said, letting the door hit them on the way out. He cupped Eugenie’s elbow with his hand and walked with her away from the store.

  “He doesn’t sound very popular,” Eugenie said.

  “No,” Phillip said, when they had returned to the car. “And neither did we find out where he lives.” The elderly man with the toothpick had left.

  “Apparently, I was right that money is tight in the family. I’m sure that has been weighing on Mrs. Styles’ mind this whole time as well.”

  Phillip rubbed the back of his neck, and for the first time he looked tired.

  “Where to now?” Eugenie asked.

  *

  Pippa and Maisie followed behind the two boys, Cecil and Thomas, as they ran down the high street. Eugenie had given them some money, to purchase toys or drinks and attempt to blend in. Sweets were a good introduction, and Maisie had told them all to spend their money on sweets. Having been designated the leader, she intended to lead.

  However, the two boys didn’t seem much interested in what she had to say. They ran off without asking her permission, so Maisie had been forced to give chase. Her hands involuntarily clenched into fists as she gave chase. But when the boys stopped, they turned to her and asked where they should go. She quickly loosened her palms and smiled.

  “Not sure,” Maisie said, looking around. “Let me think.”

  “Looks like a store over there,” Pippa said, pointing across the road.

  “I see it,” Maisie said—and shot her daggers. She didn’t need Pippa horning in on her authority.

  “Should we go over there?” Cecil asked.

  “It’s says they offer sweets,” Thomas followed up.

  “Let’s go to the store,” Maisie said, as if it were her idea, and the four crossed, waiting for a horse and buggy to pass first.

  A sign hanging outside the store read: “Sweets. Toys. Fun.” in yellow lettering. Before they could reach the door, three boys ran around from the back of the building and entered. Maisie led the way for her group, pushing the door open. A bell sounded as they entered, but no one greeted them. It was dark and cool inside.

  The high-ceilinged store, with windows near the ceiling, was crammed with several large glass cases, behind which were displayed candies in wicker baskets. The three Barnardshire boys had crowded around one cabinet, poking their fingers into the glass as they discussed what to buy.

  On the other side of the store were toys, some behind cases and others hanging from the ceilings or pegs on the walls. Maisie, Pippa, Cecil, and Thomas all went to this side, leaving the Barnardshire boys alone to look at their candies. Maisie scanned for a toy that they could purchase and then play with the three boys.

  Two clerks managed the store: an older one and a younger one, both wearing white aprons as if they worked in a butcher’s shop. Maisie looked at the rubber balls gathered in large wicker baskets, and she watched the younger shop owner approach out of the corner of her eye.

  “Hello, children,” he said. “I ain’t seen you here in a while. You new?”

  Maisie nodded, silently. She wasn’t stupid. She had handled more than one store owner in London.

  “Interested in anything?” he asked, clapping his hands. “We have lots of fun toys.”

  Maisie shrugged in a practiced manner. After the passage of a sufficient amount of time, she had begun to lift her finger to point toward a rubber ball. But at this moment she heard Cecil speak. “I want that,” he said, and pointed at the wall.

  All heads followed his finger. A giant hoop hung on a nail in the wall.

  It was a copper hoop, pure copper, and it had a matching stick. The stick, which had a leather handle, was also made of copper. Both the hoop and the stick gleamed in the darkened store.

  As soon as Cecil spoke, everything went silent. Even the Barnardshire boys fell quiet. They had bought their small candies and had slowly migrated over to the toy side of the store. As soon as Cecil had said, “I want that” and pointed at the hoop, they had licked their lips and watched.

  Maisie understood right off what had happened—Cecil had pointed to the most expensive toy in the store. Every toy had price tags attached, but it wasn’t difficult to surmise what was the least expensive. Whereas the small rubber balls were priced at a half penny apiece, the hoop was two pounds, well beyond the price that anyone but perhaps the shop owner himself could afford to pay for a toy.

  Maisie understood well the hierarchy of toys. Having grown up poor herself, she had walked into plenty of shops to buy penny candies. Every store owner carried a variety of toys: those that could be bought cheaply and those that a child could save up for. But there was a third kind of toy: the toy that no child could afford. This toy was prominently displayed so that children could look at it, with longing, while they purchased something different. This third type of toy would bring you in, and then encourage you to buy something cheaper as a substitute—to take some of the edge off the hunger created by the unreachable toy.

  Maisie herself had done this plenty of times: half of the fun of going into a store to buy sweets or a stick of gum was the opportunity it afforded to look at the more expensive toys, to be at least close to them. But she could never afford them. And even her bargaining skills had never worked on lowering the price on that third kind of toy.

  She suspected that these Barnardshire boys couldn’t afford it, either. And here was Cecil, attempting to purchase the most expensive toy in the store.

  “Why don’t we get this,” Maisie said, grabbing his arm and pointing to a basket of rubber balls with her free hand. “We have money for this.”

  “No,” Cecil said. “I’ve my own money,” he said in a snotty voice. He reached into his pocket, apparently to pull out his bills.

  “Please don’t,” Maisie whispered. This was something else a poor person would never do: reach into a pocket and expect to find bills to pull out.

  She put her hand quickly on Cecil’s, clasping his wrist to keep it in place.

  The boys crowded around. One of them cried out, “Look! A girl is handling him!” This brought a raft of chuckles at Cecil’s expense.

  “Will you let a girl tell you what to do?” another boy asked. His teeth pushed out like the roof to a house, his lower lip tucked under the gable.

  Maisie withdrew her hand but not the warning in her eyes.

  With a chuckle of his own, the older man, having finished serving the boys candies, came around and stood beside the hoop. “Are you interested in this, eh?” he asked, pulling it off the nail in the wall. “Would you like to feel it?”

  Cecil only nodded. It was too late now to back out. He’d have to buy it.

  Unfortunately, the group of boys wouldn’t step back and make room for him to roll it; so Cecil was left with no room to do anything but run the hoop through his hands. He ran his hand around a few times and smiled. Pippa tentatively touched it as well.

  “It’s good,” Cecil said, for no reason. Maisie nodded, trying to make the scene as natural as possible.

  “I’ll take it,” Cecil said.

  The younger clerk nodded and took the stick off the nail as well. He grabbed the hoop back and went to the register, where they were to pay. The entire group, including the three Barnardshire boys, moved over at once.

  “Are you children
from around here?” the clerk asked, writing out a receipt but looking at them over the rims of his spectacles. His eyes slid over the three-piece suits worn by Cecil and Thomas, which stood in stark contrast to the clothes of the other boys. Cecil and Thomas should have taken their jackets off and left them in the car, Maisie could see that now. Another mistake: she would have to tell Lady Eugenie all the errors they were making.

  Lady Eugenie had told them the first principle of information gathering: blend in with those who hold information. She couldn’t yet tell whether she and Pippa blended in with the people of Barnardshire village because she hadn’t yet seen any girls outside. Maybe they were kept indoors to do chores.

  The clerk finished writing the receipt on a piece of paper while the younger clerk took the price tags off the hoop and stick with a tiny pair of scissors.

  “Two pounds, please,” the clerk said; his eyes showed surprise when Cecil handed over two crisp notes.

  “Thank you.” The hoop and stick, as well as the receipt, were handed back over the counter, and everyone then moved toward the door.

  Maisie knew that she had to engage the local boys in conversation. She turned, expecting to find rage on their faces that someone—a stranger—had come into their store and bought their prized toy. Instead, she saw expectation: they looked like they wanted to play.

  “Come on,” she said, and they happily followed.

  Once out in the street, Maisie grabbed the hoop away from Cecil, who didn’t say anything in return. Well, she thought, at least he senses he has made a mess. It would have been easier to gather everyone to play with a rubber ball, but they would have to do their best with the hoop.

  “Why don’t we all spread out into a circle,” Maisie said, and they found, right beside the store, a gravel lot they could play in.

  Cecil held on to the stick. “But you are supposed to use the stick,” he said, “and the hoop rolls out and then returns to you.” Cecil held out the stick for Maisie to see.

  She already knew that. The problem, of course, was that only one person could play at a time that way, and they were never going to get to know the Barnardshire boys if Cecil spent ten minutes playing with the hoop by himself. They needed everyone involved and everyone to have fun. That would loosen up the jaws. “Make people happy and they will tell you anything,” her mum had said, when she was a little girl, eating food with her hands beside a fire. Maisie felt a pang for her parents, whom she hadn’t seen in months.

  The children had spread out into a lopsided circle. Unfortunately, the three boys were all bunched together on one side of the lot; Maisie, Pippa, Cecil, and Thomas on the other.

  “You two know Jimmie Styles?” Maisie asked, rolling the hoop toward the tallest boy, the red-headed one. He caught it and then rolled it across to her. It skipped over the gravel and, on its way back to Maisie, died on its side. She had to run up and fetch it.

  “Jimmie? Yeah,” the boy said. “He’s a good friend of mine.”

  Maisie pushed the hoop toward Cecil, who stumbled and let the hoop race by him. He had to chase after it, causing everyone to laugh.

  It also caused everyone to forget about Jimmie. Maisie tried again. “Is he around here?”

  “Who?” the red-head asked. He looked over his shoulder at Cecil, who had finally corralled the hoop when it hit the side of the store. “Hey!” he shouted. “Roll it to me again!”

  Instead, Cecil patiently walked to the circle and bent to dust off his legs. Yes, Maisie thought, that was a fine gesture to help make friends. The other boys were covered in dust, and happily so.

  After cleaning himself off, Cecil indeed rolled the hoop to the red-headed boy, who picked it up and started to twirl the hoop on his arm, which he held straight out at his side. “Look at this!” he cried. “I always wanted to do this!”

  His two friends laughed at him. Even Pippa did.

  “Come on,” Maisie said. “Roll it over to Pippa, please. So that we can all play.”

  The boy did as she requested, and Maisie once again brought up Jimmie. “Have you seen Jimmie?”

  “Why you interested in Jimmie?” he asked, his freckles darkening a little.

  Another boy said, “Maybe she’s his girlfriend,” which made them all giggle. Maisie tried to keep her anger from showing.

  “He’s my cousin,” Pippa suddenly said. “My mother and father have gone to visit him, but they said Jimmie wasn’t here. They didn’t say where he was.”

  Everyone had stopped to look at Pippa, who, because of the paleness of her skin and the whiteness of her hair, seemed less a body than a quiet ghost among them. Accordingly, a voice issuing from that body caught everyone off-guard.

  “You his cousin, eh?” the red-headed boy asked. He rolled the hoop to one of his friends, only a few feet away. The hoop got away, forcing him to chase after it. Fortunately, Cecil knew enough not to mock him in return.

  “On my mother’s side,” Pippa said.

  “Eh, good,” the boy said. “At least not related on the father’s side.”

  “What’s wrong with his father?” Maisie asked quickly.

  “Nothing really wrong. Except he don’t provide for Jimmie’s family the way he ought.”

  One of the other boys spoke up. “He’s a drinker. Drinks like a fish. My mum says he’s drinking his family into the poor house.”

  “Don’t he work?” Maisie asked.

  The hoop finally started to roll again. Thomas corralled it and rolled it to the red-headed boy, who answered.

  “He used to work. I think he had to stop because he couldn’t hardly talk straight. Too much drink makes a man dumb. The tongue is like a sponge, heavy with liquor.”

  “Thank you,” Maisie said, stowing away that piece of information. She then gave herself over to the pleasure of the game.

  *

  A woman with a blanket tied around her shoulders came to the front door. Her face was smudged and the fingers that clasped at the blanket were darkened, like earth roots with soil clinging to them. She cracked the door open only a foot and turned an anxious look at both Eugenie and Phillip.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, settling on the feminine face.

  Eugenie and Phillip, without a lead, had chosen this building by happenstance.

  “Do you know where the Styles family lives?” Eugenie asked, smiling warmly. She saw, underneath the blanket, a baby’s bare leg sticking out. The woman was cuddling her child.

  “Who wants to know?” the woman asked quickly. She turned her eyes from Eugenie to look skeptically at Phillip’s suit. Eugenie’s dress and shirt, meanwhile, evaded scrutiny. “You aren’t from the bank, are you?” she asked, her eyes moving from one face to the other.

  The eyes began to widen: fear.

  “No,” Phillip said. “I have actually been meeting with the wife, Mrs. Styles, and have a message for her husband, Mr. Styles. She is staying with Mrs. Todderham, near Clarendon Grange. Do you know her?”

  “Bess Todderham?” The woman’s face softened. “I know her. What’s happened to Joanna…I mean, Mrs. Styles?”

  “Nothing has happened,” Phillip said. “Nothing dangerous, I mean. We have simply been sent to fetch Mr. Styles and give him a message. His wife was so discombobulated—confused, confused—when we spoke with her last, that she neglected to give us the address. We neglected to think of it before we left.”

  Eugenie thought it was smart for Phillip to avoid mentioning that the boy was missing. There was no reason to get people afraid. The papers in London ran stories, twice a week, darkly warning of an invasion soon to come. The papers never identified the invaders but demanded that the public at large be ready for them, and to be ready by remaining suspicious of anyone you didn’t know. If London was in a state of heightened anxiety, Eugenie could only imagine that the villagers in Barnardshire might be as well.

  Also, she and Phillip surely looked like outsiders, riding into the village in that motorcar. Eugenie was not surprised that they had rec
eived a cool welcome.

  “I believe Bess has some furniture she is giving to Mrs. Styles,” Phillip said. “And she needs her husband to come help. I’ve been sent to fetch him with my horse.”

  “Who are you?” The question was less defensive this time but was rather curious. The baby squirmed and gave a small cry, and the woman inserted a hand into the blanket to stroke it.

  “I live at Clarendon Grange,” Phillip said. “I am Mrs. Todderham’s neighbor.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “Nice place,” she said. “I’ve been by it, once or twice.”

  “I will tell the Duke, the owner, that you approve.” Phillip smiled, but stiffly.

  The woman repositioned the baby and refastened her blanket. She nodded at the building across the street, a ramshackle white structure of three stories. “He lives on the third floor up there,” she said. “The upper flat. There’s a set of steps around the back. Just climb up and knock. He left earlier, but he should be back. I think I saw him come back down the street before you two showed up.” And without any conversation, or even allowing Phillip the chance to raise his hat and say thanks, she shut the door on them.

  “Well, at least we found an address,” Phillip said, stepping away from the door.

  “You did well,” Eugenie said. “Are you now your valet? Did I hear you properly?” Eugenie realized that she had gotten too close to something in the motor car earlier, when she had raised the issue of the Austen book. Now she would settle for teasing and banter. That was safer.

  Phillip smiled but said nothing. Together they crossed the street. In the distance, Eugenie saw the bright blue dress of Pippa; she was in a group of children playing a game of some sort. She hoped they could find some useful information as well.

  Phillip led the way around the side of the white house and up the creaking steps to the back door on the third floor. Two mangy cats streaked down the stairs in their face, almost upsetting Eugenie’s step. To stay upright, she had had to grab the guard rail to steady herself, but the guard rail seemed ready to snap off and was rickety in its own right, so she gave a small cry.