“So,” continued Ada, “all that’s left is to find the real criminal, find out why Rosie lied about being that criminal, find the acorn, and … um …”
“And get Rosie out of prison!” cried Rebecca.
“Yes, well, I knew there was another thing. I have to meet all the variables.”
“Variables?” Rebecca asked.
“In the equation,” Ada replied.
“She means,” explained Mary, “the people. In the house. Who else was in the house that night? Who else might have taken the necklace?”
“Oh. Well, usually there’s just my mother and me, but my late uncle’s friend Mr. Abernathy and, of course, Mr. Datchery were staying with us that night. They’ve both remained, as I’ve been so upset about the theft.…”
“What about your other servants?” asked Mary. “Besides Rosie?”
“I just can’t believe anyone in the house was involved! And the constabulary cleared the other servants after they searched and the necklace couldn’t be found.…”
“Well, one of them took it,” Ada said bluntly.
“We really should meet everyone involved,” Mary added to soften the blow.
“But how shall I explain why two strange girls are asking people in my house about the crime?” asked Rebecca.
It was a good question. Mary was suddenly reminded that they were meant to be a secret constabulary. Perhaps they should—
“We’re doing it for a school project,” said Ada.
“Do you even go to school?” asked Rebecca.
“No. We don’t have projects either.”
Mary looked at Ada, who seemed perfectly matter-of-fact about the whole thing, and at Rebecca, who obviously did not. Somehow, a path ahead must be cleared from Rebecca’s distress to Ada’s certainty. What was an exercise to Ada and an adventure to Mary was a heartbreak for Rebecca. It was the time of saying Are we absolutely sure about this? but it was also, and more so, the time of thinking it very loudly and not saying it.
“I don’t think grown-ups ask a lot of questions when you give them simple answers,” Mary offered instead, which seemed to do the trick.
“Very well, then,” said Rebecca, drying her tears. “We’d best be off.”
The words “long” and “dark,” said over and over, would give a pretty good description of the Verdigris dining room. At one end of the long, dark table, and beneath a long, dark painting of a man with a long, dark expression, sat a number of actual nonpainting people with matching long, dark expressions.
“It is unfortunate, but the criminal has been apprehended,” said Lady Verdigris sternly. Lady Verdigris was Rebecca’s mother, dressed all in black with buttons up to her chin, and Mary could not imagine her saying or doing anything in a way that could not be described as “sternly.”
“Mama, no!” insisted Rebecca. “I’ve known Rosie since we were girls. She’s no criminal!”
Behind Rebecca stood a handsome young man in a lavender frock coat. He said nothing, but placed his hands reassuringly on Rebecca’s shoulders, and so Mary assumed this must be Mr. Datchery, Rebecca’s fiancé. Lady Verdigris gave the young man a stern look, and he took his hands away and put them behind his back.
Standing behind the stern Lady Verdigris was an oddly shaped man, thin but with a round belly (which made him look somehow thin and fat at the same time) and a sort of pear-shaped head with a long, narrow nose.
The oddly shaped man had introduced himself as a Mr. Abernathy, a wealthy friend of the family.
“I’m a wealthy friend of the family,” he had said. “Very rich. Friendly.”
Mary found it particularly rude of him to mention that he was rich, as in her experience the people with the most money never seemed to bring it up at all.
Mary watched Ada watch the four people at the end of the table: the stern Lady Verdigris, the upset Rebecca, the oddly shaped Abernathy, and the comforting young man. The variables.
“And who is he?” asked Ada, forgetting they had been introduced. It was the first time she had spoken in the Verdigris house. Ada had seemed overwhelmed by the outing, by being outside in general, and had clutched Mary’s hand tightly when they left the carriage and entered the house.
“I am Beau Datchery, Lady Ada. Miss Verdigris’s fiancé. We were introduced not moments ago.”
“Did you take it?”
“I’m sorry? Did I take what?” said Beau, confused.
“The acorn. Pendant. Thingy,” said Ada.
“And you say this is for a school project?” questioned Lady Verdigris. Ada ignored her and continued to question Beau.
“Well, certainly Rebecca didn’t take it, because she already had it in her possession. Lady Verdigris didn’t take it, because she had it before, in the safe, waiting to give it to Rebecca. Mr. Angrybunny—”
“Abernathy,” said Mr. Abernathy.
“Him. You. You didn’t take it because you don’t need it, because you’re rich. You said so. Twice. And Rosie didn’t take it, or at least Rebecca says so. And all your other servants have been cleared by the constables?”
“Of course!” Lady Verdigris huffed.
“So that leaves the fiancé.” Ada turned to Beau. “I’m afraid you’re the only one left. Therefore, you took it. And not an elephant.” She nodded smugly to Rebecca.
Beau was quite surprised by this and didn’t seem to know what to say. So he said “Um” instead.
“Lady Ada,” said Rebecca reassuringly. “Beau did not need to take the acorn. If he desired it, I simply would have given it to him. And when we are married, anything that belongs to me will belong to him.”
“Will it?” asked Ada.
“Yes, it shall.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Ada.
“Nevertheless,” added Lady Verdigris, which annoyed Ada greatly. “While I’m sure this is very educational”—she stressed the word—“the matter is dealt with. The maid has confessed. The pendant is unrecoverable.”
“Might I ask if there’s a drawing or something?” asked Mary. “So we know what it looks like? For our, er, school project.”
“There’s an entire book on it,” stated Lady Verdigris. “Geoffrey, do you have Colonel Havisham’s book?”
Geoffrey was apparently Mr. Abernathy’s first name, and he did have Colonel Havisham’s book. He handed a small green clothbound volume to Mary, somewhat reluctantly. She thanked him, and when Ada reached for it out of habit, Mary had to give Ada a “not now” look—twice, as Ada missed it the first time—and then she finally relented, handing it over for Ada’s examination.
The book was travel-worn and tatty, with the image of a gold acorn embossed on the cover. Beneath the acorn, in a ribbon, it read De parvis grandis acervus erit, which Ada knew was Latin, although she didn’t know what it meant. She noted that the book smelled very faintly of fish.
“This was written by my good friend Colonel Havisham, now deceased,” explained Abernathy. “It tells of his adventures in Turkey, where he acquired the jewel.”
“Do you mind if we borrow this?” asked Mary.
“Of course you may,” said Rebecca. “Anything to help. Your, er, school project.” The expression on Rebecca’s face was at once hopeful and sad.
Mary made her thanks and polite excuses, and the Wollstonecraft girls followed the Verdigrises’ butler (who was both short and talkative) to the front door.
As they approached the waiting carriage, Ada seemed to forget her anxiety, her mind busy with the details of the case. “Excellent. Now there are only two things left to do,” she said with confidence.
Mary was momentarily distracted by the sight of three unusual men standing across the street. Men wearing odd, flat-topped caps of red felt, like upturned flowerpots. Men who seemed to be staring directly at her. She found the feeling quite unnerving.
“Two?” asked Mary, her attention returning to Ada.
“One, read this book,” said Ada, holding it up in one gloved hand
. “And two, go to prison.”
As Mary climbed into the black carriage, half expecting to see a boy pretending not to be there, her heart began to flutter at the thought of danger and adventure. Prison? Ada couldn’t be serious. But, of course, Ada was as serious as Mr. Abernathy was oddly shaped, and as serious as Lady Verdigris was stern. They would have to interview Rosie and ask why she confessed to something Rebecca was sure she didn’t do. And that meant getting into prison. Somehow.
“Hello?” said Peebs, still locked in the distillery closet back at the Marylebone house. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Ada was stepping from the carriage into the cobbled road across from the Byron house when without warning the horse reared, and the carriage lurched, and Ada, who still had one foot aboard, pitched forward. Mary’s hand shot out and caught her, pulling her back inside just as a team of three horses abreast bolted past them, hauling the longest carriage the girls had ever seen. They had never imagined anything quite so large moving quite so fast. Had Mary not caught Ada, if she had fallen, she would surely have been killed.
The girls caught their breath and waited until the enormous contraption was well past them before stepping together into the road.
“Good heavens! What on earth was that?” asked Mary of the coachman.
“That’d be the omnibus, miss,” he told her. “Three horses, and twenty-seven aboard. Biggest beast the streets of London have ever seen.”
“Lady Ada could have been killed,” Mary stated plainly.
“The bus don’t seem to care, do it?” the coachman replied. Realizing this sounded harsh, he added, “I’m sorry, miss. I do hope she’s all right. That thing is a monster, and shouldn’t be allowed on the streets. Gives ol’ Charlie here an awful fright each time.” Mary guessed ol’ Charlie was the carriage horse, and she suddenly felt quite sorry for him. She smiled and gave them both—coachman and Charlie—a little curtsy, then took Ada’s hand firmly as they crossed the street to the house.
Greatly unsettled by her brush with death, Ada climbed automatically up the stairs to her balloon while Mary headed to the drawing room to make notes from their interview with the Verdigris family.
Passing the library, she noticed a recently released Peebs hurriedly replacing a small blue book on a shelf.
“Ah,” he said, nervous about something. “Miss Godwin. You’re back.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Mary, not sure what she was thanking him for.
“I’ll, just, um, yes. Books. Many, many books.”
“This is the library,” said Mary calmly.
“Yes. Just, you know, browsing. No particular book. Just books in general.”
“I often enjoy browsing books. In general.”
“Yes, well, that’s quite enough browsing for me now. If you’ll excuse me,” he said, hurrying past her.
Mary had a sneaking suspicion creeping deliciously up her spine and into her head. This particular sneaking suspicion had to do with a small blue book, and Peebs’s talking about books in general so as to distract her from that specific small blue book in particular. She decided to investigate.
There were several blue books on the shelf that Peebs had just been browsing, but only one was exactly the right amount of small and exactly the right shade of blue. She was tall for her age, and only had to tippy-toe a little bit to reach it.
The book was oddly familiar, and it only took a heartbeat to realize that she had an identical copy in her own family library at home. The book was a collection of stories for children called Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations, Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Her mother. She actually had two copies at home—a rather plain one, which had her mother’s scribbles in the margins, and this one, with illustrations by a Mr. William Blake. Un-scribbled.
A certain chill of excitement took Mary as she opened the book to read the inscription:
To my dear friend George (Albé)
on the birth of his daughter Allegra 1817
“Hail to thee, blithe sprit!”
Yours as ever, PBS (Shiloh)
Mary covered her mouth as though she meant to scream but must not. “George” had to be Ada’s father, Lord Byron, and “PBS,” of course, was Peebs. Mary didn’t know about an Allegra—Ada had never mentioned a sister—but based on the year, Ada would have been (some quick math) two when this inscription was written.
But there was the secret. That was why Peebs had been trying to be clandestine in the library.
Mother won’t talk about him. She won’t let his books in the house. His friends used to come to visit, but she shooed them away, said Ada in Mary’s memory.
Peebs had been a friend of Ada’s father’s, and Ada’s father’s friends were forbidden in the Byron house. The Baroness Wentworth, as Ada had explained, had gone to great lengths to keep her husband’s former associates from having anything to do with the family, especially with Ada herself.
Peebs was a spy.
This idea both delighted and horrified Mary. How exciting! How dangerous! Should she confront Peebs on the matter? Would the secret revealed mean that Peebs would no longer be a tutor in the house? If Peebs were no longer a tutor, would Mary be sent off to school? Could Mary and Ada still be friends? What of the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency? What was meant by “Albé” and “Shiloh”? Did Ada really have a secret sister?
So many questions. Mary counted seven off the top of her head, and so many questions made her want to sit down until she realized she had already sat down on the floor without bothering to notice.
It was a good floor, with broad wooden boards and an ornate rug atop, and Mary was grateful for it. The floor sat there holding up the entire library, as well as Mary herself, and it didn’t ask any questions.
Mary stared resolutely at the cover of the book. What would her mother tell her to do, if she were there? The right thing. Of course, the right thing. But what was it?
After a good sit, Mary understood that the right thing was to tell Ada what she knew—but after she had given Peebs a chance to explain. Perhaps Ada wouldn’t mind that Peebs had somehow smuggled himself into the Byron house, like a stowaway, under false pretenses, like a spy. Whether Ada minded or not was Ada’s decision, and not Mary’s, and Mary sighed at the truth of that. Even if it meant the end of her tutoring, and the end of the friendship, and no end to the mystery of the missing Verdigris acorn, she could not keep the truth from her friend.
As she stood upon the firm and trustworthy floor, she set out to confront Peebs with her discovery so that they could share the truth with Ada together.
But then the great knocker on the front door sounded and the clock in the hall chimed, which meant that a carriage had arrived to take Mary home to Somers Town.
The truth would have to wait until morning.
Mary scarcely said a word to Charles the next morning, which was just as well, as he continued to pretend he wasn’t there. He’d made no inquiry as to the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, despite being the one who actually placed the advertisement in the newspaper and delivered all the missives. She couldn’t tell if he was uninterested or just really good at being clandestine.
She felt that there was a balloon in her chest, squished somewhere between her breastbone and her heart, that grew ever so slightly larger with each passing moment.
Peebs is a spy, it whispered until Mary found it hard to breathe.
When the carriage arrived at the Marylebone house, Mary opened the door slowly, checked for the galloping threat of the omnibus, and bade Charles a good morning, expecting no reply. The door was suddenly yanked open by Ada, in a cape and bonnet, who climbed in as though she were expected. Mary could see Mr. Franklin on the doorstep, seeing Ada safely away.
“Who is he?” asked Ada, pointedly staring at Charles.
“Please don’t speak to me. I’m not supposed to be here, so I’m pretending I’m not,” said Charles from behi
nd his book.
Ada nodded.
“So that’s you, then,” she said, and began pretending that Charles wasn’t there. It astonished Mary how easily Ada accepted things once she was given what she considered to be a reasonable explanation.
“What do we know,” stated Ada in her not-a-question-but-really-a-question voice.
We know Peebs is a spy, whispered the squishy balloon in Mary’s chest, and Mary wanted to let it out. But she knew that the right thing to do, the only right thing, was to give Peebs the chance to explain himself first.
“What do we know about what?” asked Mary, pretending not to understand.
“The case. Rebecca. Honestly, Mary, do try.”
“Well,” said Mary, trying to wrap her head around things, “Rebecca Verdigris is sixteen and engaged to a Mr. Beau Datchery, and she inherited a pendant from her uncle, Colonel Something.”
“Havisham,” said Ada.
“Tell me, how is it that you recall the name of a dead relative in a case we found out about yesterday, yet you cannot remember the name of a maid who’s been living in your house for years?”
“He wrote a book,” said Ada. “It smells like fish. Go on.”
“Um, all right. There’s Lady Verdigris.…”
“Go back. How do we know Rebecca didn’t take the acorn?”
“Because she already owned it.”
“Precisely. Go on.”
“Right. There’s Lady Verdigris, Rebecca’s mother. She’s a bit of a cold fish, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t see anything wrong with her,” said Ada.
“I didn’t say there was something wrong with her. She was just a bit …”
“What?”
“Stern,” said Mary.
“And we know Lady Verdigris didn’t take it because …,” continued Ada.
“Is that a question?” asked Mary.
“Yes.”
“You know, it’s rather difficult to tell sometimes.”
“Mmm” was all that Ada had to contribute.
“Fine,” Mary carried on. “We know Lady Verdigris did not steal the acorn because it was in her possession all this time. She had it. And she gave it to Rebecca. If she wanted it that badly, she could have kept it for herself and not even bothered to tell Rebecca about it.”
The Case of the Missing Moonstone Page 5
