The Missing Heir

by Tracy Barrett

  “Our mom has a new kind of video recorder that supposedly has really good audio,” Xander said. “We can make it for you!”

  “But school is out for a week,” Xena said, “so we can’t do it here. Give me your cell number, and I’ll call you so we can figure out a time to do the recording.”

  “I don’t have a cell phone anymore,” Alice said. “My aunt said I was spending too much time texting my friends in Borogovia. You could call me at my house, but calls are monitored for security reasons.”

  “Why don’t you come to our house over the weekend?” Xander suggested.

  The light that had come into Alice’s eyes during her audition dimmed and went out. “It’s hard. I have to have a bodyguard with me at all times. But in my house the security is really good, so we would be left alone. Do you want to come over tomorrow?”

  “Your Highness.” They all jumped. They had forgotten about Jasper. “You know that your aunt doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  “Coming!” Alice quickly scribbled her address on a slip of paper that she passed to Xander. “Why don’t you come early in the afternoon? I should be done with my work by then. And please—don’t tell anybody about this.”

  Before they could ask Alice what kind of work she could possibly have on the first Saturday of spring break, Jasper took her firmly by the arm and led her out.

  Xena and Xander had just stepped outside when their friend Andrew Watson, a fellow member of the Society for the Preservation of Famous Detectives, or SPFD, came up to them. He had been present when the SPFD, a group devoted to preserving the memories of great detectives from the past, had given Xena and Xander the cold-case notebook of their ancestor, Sherlock Holmes. At first Andrew hadn’t been friendly with them—he had resented the attention Sherlock had gotten compared to his own great-great-great-grandfather, Sherlock’s best friend, Dr. Watson. But Andrew had gotten over that, and he had been a great help in solving some of their earlier cases.

  Andrew said, “Some of us from my class are going to celebrate the start of spring break at the bakery. Want to come along?”

  Xander’s stomach rumbled. He loved English food, and lately he had fallen for the muffins at the bakery near school. But he shook his head. “Got to get home.”

  “Suit yourself!” Andrew ran off and joined the others. Xander looked after them wistfully.

  “It’s okay,” Xena said, knowing her brother wished he could have gone with them. “We have to make some sacrifices if we want to solve Sherlock’s cold cases.” Xander nodded without answering and followed her down the steps to the Tube.

  Once home, while Xander fetched the casebook, Xena went online to find out more about the disappearance of Princess Stella more than a hundred years ago. Xena soon found a history of Borogovia written by a well-known scholar.

  “Listen to this,” she said when Xander came back with the worn leather-bound book. “In those days, when someone was sick, the doctors told them that sea air would make them better, so after the princess was born, King Boris and Queen Charlotte went to the Mediterranean—you know, the sea around Italy and Greece?”

  Xander nodded impatiently. He was good with factual subjects like geography—a photographic memory really came in handy for details.

  “Anyway,” Xena went on, “they left their baby in the Borogovian mansion with the new nanny, Miss Mimsy. So a week after they left, Miss Mimsy didn’t come down to breakfast. One of the servants went to her room to see what was up. It says here”—she scanned the page and then read aloud—“‘The maid woke Miss Mimsy only with great difficulty, because, as it turned out, she had been drugged. A later analysis of the nanny’s bedtime cocoa revealed the presence of an opiate.’” Xena looked at Xander. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a kind of drug that makes you sleepy. What else does it say?”

  “They noticed that the baby was missing. They searched all over and asked everyone, but no one had come in and taken her. The maid ran to the corner to get a policeman, and Miss Mimsy went to the telegraph office to send word to the king and queen.”

  “So they came right back?”

  Xena scrolled down the page and shook her head. “Not for a few weeks. They couldn’t get telegrams on the ship, and when they arrived at the next port, the telegram had been sent to the wrong address or something, and they never got it.”

  “That’s so weird,” Xander said. “I mean, remember when we were in that park with Mom and she took pictures of us and sent them to Aunt Lou? And she lives thousands of miles away, across the ocean!”

  “I remember,” Xena said, rolling her eyes. “She called Mom right away and Mom put her on speakerphone and everybody around us in the park got to hear how cute we were.”

  “And how she never would have recognized me,” Xander added. “And it hasn’t even been a year since we saw her!”

  “Well, a cell phone would have been a help to King Boris and Queen Charlotte,” Xena said. “After the telegram missed them, they were on the ship for a while and they didn’t know anything about the kidnapping until they got to the next port, which was”—she paused and scanned the page again—“Naples, Italy. They read an English newspaper there that had an article about the princess, and they turned right around and came back. They’d been gone for almost a month. But then—and this is the strange part—the day before they got home, the baby was returned!”

  “That’s weird,” Xander said. “You don’t just borrow a baby!”

  “I know. There was never a ransom note or any kind of threat, like, you know, do something or I’ll never return the princess.”

  “What I don’t get,” Xander said, “is why they called in Sherlock. If the baby was back, what was he supposed to investigate? And if there wasn’t a baby to be found, why is it in his cold-case notebook? That’s supposed to be just for cases he didn’t solve.”

  “I guess they wanted to find out who had kidnapped her so they wouldn’t do it again,” Xena suggested. “Sherlock must not have found that out, so that’s why it was a cold case.”

  “Let’s see what Sherlock has to say about it.” Xander pulled the large book onto his lap and turned quickly to the right page.

  They studied the page, which, as always, was a jumble of drawings, seemingly random words, and what looked like doodles, including some swirly circles. The words “Norwood” and “rattle” appeared above and below the swirls. “Somerset House” appeared under a sketch of a three-story mansion, with “Aha!” next to it. They read “Telegraph office—address?” and finally, there was a sketch of a large sailing ship with something scribbled on its side.

  Xena and Xander were used to cryptic notations in Sherlock’s notes, but these were even stranger than usual.

  “What are all these marks and circles?” Xena asked. “It looks like he didn’t have much to write, so he doodled. I don’t know, Xander—it’s all very confusing.” She was usually more cautious than her brother about taking on new cases, but this time even Xander was hesitant.

  “There’s not a whole lot to go on,” he agreed. Then he turned over some pages in the casebook and saw once more the notes their great-great-great-grandfather had made about the missing portrait by the painter Nigel Batheson, the terrifying Beast of Blackslope, and the mysterious Egyptian amulet—all of them cases that Sherlock had had to abandon, and that he and Xena had solved.

  “There’s something familiar about that name.” He closed his eyes and muttered “Norwood, Norwood” to himself a few times, and then shook his head. “Must be the name of someone at school or a street name or something. Anyway, we can’t give up before we even start! We don’t even know what the case is yet. Let’s see what Alice has to say tomorrow, and then we can decide.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Are you sure this is the right place?” Xander stared at the gate. It was made of wrought iron, and the shiny black metal rods twisted into curlicues and rosettes were obviously not just for beauty. They were arranged in such a way that nobod
y could slide through them, even someone short for his age (as Xander was) and thin (as they both were). Xena and Xander had come up a drive from the street, and after two turns, the gate in the high stone wall and the house behind it had become visible.

  If the gate and wall were impressive, the enormous house behind them was mind-boggling. It was painted white and had pale brown shutters at all the windows. Eight columns were lined up on the porch that must lead to the front door. The curving drive opened out in a wide sweep in front of the mansion. Xander imagined cantering up on a noble steed and leaping down onto the gravel, with bowing servants coming out to take his horse and to lead him inside to a grand room where he would be served lemonade and muffins.

  “I didn’t know there was anything like this in the city,” Xena said in a hushed tone. “You could walk right past it and not know it was behind the wall.”

  They jumped as a man’s voice said, apparently right in their ears, “Who is calling?” They looked around, and Xander pointed to a speaker mounted above a camera that appeared to be staring at them with its one black eye.

  “Xena and Xander Holmes,” Xena said as soon as she recovered.

  A pause. “Please face the camera and state your full names.”

  “Xena Irene Holmes.”

  “Alexander Mycroft Holmes.”

  A whirr, and the gate clicked. Xander pushed it open. They had taken only a few steps when someone came hurrying out onto the porch. It was a friendly-looking woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, her dark hair piled on top of her head. “Come on in!” she called. “Sorry you had to go through that interrogation.” She rolled her eyes and grimaced back at the house as though to tell them she thought it was silly.

  “I’m Alice’s nanny,” she said. “Or I was her nanny when she was a baby, and now I more or less see to her clothes and her schooling and things like that. You can call me Miss Jenny.” She held open the big wooden door, and they stepped inside.

  “Wow!” Xander said.

  “I know,” Miss Jenny said. “It’s quite grand, isn’t it? Not at all homey, I’m afraid. But Alice’s family and mine have lived here off and on for generations, when we’re not in Borogovia, so we’re used to it.” She walked them through the cavernous entry room and opened a door that led down a corridor.

  “I can’t imagine getting used to this!” Xena exclaimed, stopping to admire a woven tapestry hanging on the wall. It showed a young man on horseback chasing after a white deer into a forest filled with brilliantly colored birds, foxes, and rabbits.

  Xander gaped at an ornate suit of armor. He tapped on its chest and looked embarrassed at how loud it rang.

  Miss Jenny laughed. “I see what you mean, but I hardly notice these things anymore. I grew up here and in Borogovia, like my mother before me and her mother, all the way back to my great-great-aunt, Eugenia Mimsy.”

  Xander nudged Xena, but she didn’t need a reminder that the nanny hired to take care of Princess Stella, the baby who had been kidnapped, had been named Miss Mimsy.

  Miss Jenny talked about the house as they continued down the corridor and into a room with a huge fireplace, big chairs covered in red velvet, heavy dark curtains, and an Oriental rug.

  “This is the sitting room, built in 1870. It’s part of an addition, one of many. The center of the house is among the oldest buildings in London. It survived the Great Fire—you’ve heard of it?”

  “It was in 1666,” Xander said promptly. “Most of the city was destroyed.”

  “Very good!” said Miss Jenny, and she laughed again. She seemed like a cheery person. “Well, the old part is where I live with my husband—he’s the family’s driver—and our daughter, Gemma, who’s just about your age, I think, Xena. She and Alice have been best friends ever since they were babies.”

  Miss Jenny opened another door and said, “Hang on, we’re almost there!” As he went through, Xander glanced to his right and did a double take at the sight of an open door leading to a park with a fountain and tall, leafy trees. But it was still too early in spring for leaves. What was going on?

  “That’s one of our famous paintings,” Miss Jenny said at his look of amazement. “Go ahead, touch it!” Xander put out a tentative finger, as did Xena, and sure enough, it was a flat wall. “We passed another one earlier. Did you see the marble columns that separated the south drawing room from a library where a dog was sleeping on a cushion?”

  “I don’t know which was the south drawing room,” Xena confessed, “but I did see the dog!”

  “What you saw was actually a clever painting of a dog. These paintings are called trompe l’œil”—Miss Jenny pronounced it “trump loy”—“which means ‘fool the eye’ in French. They were very popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And here’s Alice’s study.”

  Miss Jenny opened yet one more door, and finally, there was Alice. She was sitting at a large desk made of dark wood, with a computer so sleek that Xena longed to get her hands on it. A piano stood near the window, and the shelves were full of books. The far end of the room was set up like a movie theater, with comfortable-looking reclining seats, a screen, and what appeared to be a powerful sound system.

  It was hard to imagine anyone who lived here, with this room all for her own, being anything but wildly happy. But the rims of Alice’s eyes, when she raised them from the book open in front of her, were red, as was the tip of her nose.

  “Thank you, Miss Jenny,” she said.

  Miss Jenny laid her hand on Alice’s forehead. “Still no fever. Are you sure you feel well?”

  “I’m fine.” Alice made an obvious effort to smile.

  Miss Jenny didn’t seem convinced, but she said, “I’ll leave you to it, then. Give me a ring if you want anything.”

  “I will.” Alice watched as the door closed.

  Xena and Xander didn’t know Alice well enough to ask what the matter was, but on the other hand, she had asked for their help, so they stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.

  They didn’t have to wait long. “Something bad has happened,” Alice said as soon as Miss Jenny’s footsteps had faded into the distance. “Those letters—the ones I told you about—they’re gone!”

  “Gone?” Xena couldn’t hide her shock. “You mean like disappeared?”

  Alice nodded and blew her nose on a large, lacy handkerchief. “It’s more complicated than that. This morning at breakfast, I showed them to my aunt and asked her about them.”

  “Wait a second,” Xena said, and she pulled a small spiral-bound notebook and a pencil out of her schoolbag. “Who else was there?”

  “Miss Jenny and Gemma. My bodyguard, Jasper, and the cook and Frieda—she’s a new maid and is still in training, so for now she only serves at breakfast until she knows how to do everything right.”

  “What could be so complicated about serving food?” Xander wondered aloud as Xena scribbled, Miss Jenny, Gemma, Jasper, cook, maid (Frieda).

  Alice smiled for the first time since they had come in. “You don’t know Borogovia! Everything is bound by customs. It’s pretty complicated—you have to eat your salad with a certain fork, and there are some dishes and glasses that only I can use. That kind of thing. That’s why I prefer to eat in here with Gemma. But Aunt Penelope makes me have dinner with her and sometimes other meals too, so I’ll know how to behave when I go back to Borogovia.”

  Xena and Xander noticed that she didn’t say “when I become queen.” It must be strange to think about ruling a country at the age of thirteen, much less talk about it with people she hardly knew, Xena thought.

  “So what did your aunt say?” Xena asked, her pencil poised over the paper.

  “She read all the letters,” Alice said. “It took a while and it was kind of awkward, since no one can get up from the table until she does, and Gemma had to go to rugby practice. When Aunt Penelope finished them, she folded them up and put them in her pocket. I noticed that her cheeks were red and her hands were trembling. She said the letters were n
onsense and that I had to stop talking about them. Then I …” She swallowed hard.

  “Yes?” Xena asked. “Then you what?”

  “Then I asked her to give them back to me.” Alice seemed shocked at her own daring. “I said that they were written by my great-great-great-grandmother and I wanted them.”

  “What did your aunt do then?” Xander asked.

  “She let Gemma leave for practice and then gave me the letters. I could tell that she didn’t want to.”

  “If they were nonsense, like she said, she didn’t really have any excuse to keep them,” Xena said. “So she had to give them to you, or it would look like she’d been lying about them.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” Alice said. “But I still couldn’t get up, and Miss Jenny said something about the Rathonian question. I think she was trying to change the subject.”

  “The Rathonian question?” Xander echoed.

  Alice sighed. “It’s this whole thing that’s going on in Borogovia. The country next door, Rathonia, is a lot bigger, and they’re trying to take over Borogovia. They say the two countries used to be one kingdom and should be united again. Lots of Borogovians agree, but other people say that the only reason they used to be one big kingdom is that Rathonia invaded Borogovia way back in the Dark Ages, and that we’ve been independent now for five hundred years and should stay that way.”

  Xena prompted Alice again. “What happened next?”

  “Nothing. My aunt dismissed me and Miss Jenny, and I came here to do my homework. I left the letters right here, next to my computer, so I could look up some words.”

  Homework? Xander thought. On the first day of spring break?

  “Then Gemma and I went out into the garden, and I helped her with some rugby drills. I came back in after an hour or so and looked for the letters. But they weren’t there!” Alice bit her lip for a moment and then went on. “I asked Aunt Penelope, and she said she didn’t know anything about them. I looked everywhere. So did Miss Jenny and Gemma, and even Jasper and Frieda. But I can’t find them. Aunt Penelope got angry when I asked her again and said that they were distracting me from my studies, so it’s just as well that they’re lost.