The Case of the Missing Moonstone

by Jordan Stratford

  “Very good,” said Ada. “And Mr. Allthemoney.”

  “Abernathy.”

  “Him.”

  “Well, you said he didn’t take it, because he was rich. He kept saying so, which was rather odd,” added Mary.

  “Was it?”

  “Well, you know more rich people than I do. But I don’t think they mention how rich they are all the time.”

  “Do I?” asked Ada.

  “Do I what?” said Mary, meaning to say “you” instead.

  “Do I know more rich people than you?”

  “You’re gentry, Ada. Lady Ada. That usually means rich, and knowing rich people.”

  “What are you?”

  “Whatever do you mean?” asked Mary, surprised.

  “If I’m gentry, and you’re not, what are you?”

  “I’m just a girl, silly.”

  After a brief silence, Ada returned to the case. “The fiancé.”

  “Well, we don’t know much about Mr. Datchery, except that Rebecca is clearly in love with him,” stated Mary.

  “She is?”

  “She is. I could tell.”

  “How?”

  “I just … could tell. There are some things you just know, and this is one of them.”

  Ada sat again in silence for a moment. “Did her eyes get bigger?”

  “Whose?”

  “Rebecca’s.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “I’ll look, next time.”

  Mary wondered about this. “What would that mean, if her eyes got bigger?”

  “I’m working on a theory,” said Ada. “How do we know he didn’t take it?”

  “Well, Rebecca said that after they were married, Beau would own it anyway.”

  “That seems odd.”

  “That’s marriage, Ada.”

  “Well, I’m filing it under ‘odd’ anyway. Havisham,” said Ada, like a funny sneeze.

  “Bless you.”

  “No. Havisham. What do we know?”

  “He was Rebecca’s uncle, he’s dead, he left her the acorn in his will as a birthday present. That’s all I know.”

  Ada began to wander the hallways of her brain: “Oliver Hypotenuse Havisham, Colonel. Officer and adventurer. There’s a plate, copper thingy, a picture of him, holding the necklace.” There was a sailor in the background of the picture—oddly shaped enough to be Havisham’s wealthy friend, she thought, but he reminded her too of someone she couldn’t place.

  Ada continued. “He spent most of his career in Turkey, where he acquired the Acorn of Ankara, a Turkish ‘national treasure’ said to have the property of mesmerism. That was in the book.”

  “How does one ‘acquire’ a national treasure of somewhere else?”

  “I think it means he just took it away with him.”

  “That’s hardly polite. He seems rather a scoundrel, gentleman or no. What’s mesmerism?” asked Mary.

  “I have absolutely no idea. The word isn’t in the dictionary.”

  “There are words that aren’t in the dictionary?”

  “Yes, they’re still working on it. When I find a word that isn’t in there, I find out what it means and send it to them.”

  “To whom?” asked Mary, baffled.

  “To the dictionary.”

  “You could ask—” Mary started. The spy, she thought. “Peebs,” she finished, after a moment.

  “Mmm,” said Ada again. “Possibly. We also know that Havisham was the brother of Lady Verdigris and a friend of Mr. Abudabbi.”

  “Abernathy.”

  “Him.”

  At this, the carriage stopped. Mary hadn’t asked where they were, or where they were going.

  “Pardon me. Boot-polish factory,” said Charles, closing his book. “I glue the labels on.” He pulled a cap out of his pocket and put it on, tipped the brim, and opened the door to one of the many less pleasant parts of London.

  Ada didn’t bother to say goodbye, seeing as he wasn’t actually even there in the first place, officially speaking.

  “Where are we going?” asked Mary.

  “There’s one person in the case we have yet to meet. Except for Havisham, but he’s dead, so that’s difficult. We’re here for the maid.”

  Mary had had a sneaking suspicion, of course, but she didn’t like this one as much.

  “So we really are going to prison,” she said.

  “That’s where the not-clever criminals are,” said Ada, nodding. “We can’t use our real names, as we are secret detectives. We’ll have to be clandestine.”

  “Yes! Though I suppose it would have been better had we used clandestine names at Verdigris Manor.…”

  “Mmm,” Ada acknowledged.

  “Well, whatever shall we—”

  “I,” said Ada, “shall be Miss Ribbon, and you can be Miss Newdog.”

  “Newdog?”

  “It’s sort of an anagram.”

  “What’s an anagram?” asked Mary.

  “A letter scramble. Your last name is Godwin, and that’s Niwdog backward, so it’s close enough to Newdog. You can remember it that way.”

  “And Miss Ribbon?”

  “Well, Byron backward is Noryb, and that’s silly, and Ribbon is easier to remember.”

  “It would,” agreed Mary, “be less clandestine if we were unable to remember our own names.”

  Mary found the idea of having a clandestine name exciting, although secretly she wished for one more glamorous than Newdog.

  And then they were there, at the front of the worst place in the world.

  Its rough, heavy walls and low, massive doors looked like they were designed for letting people in and then never letting them out again. Newgate Prison.

  A guard box, painted a gleaming black, was posted outside the terrifying entrance. In the box stood a man in a blue cape, who Mary assumed must have been tired, as there was no stool inside for him to sit down on. There was a fire grate propped on three legs, with a small, greasy fire within, but it seemed just ever so slightly too far from the guard box to offer any comfort.

  The girls left the carriage; Ada paid the coachman extra to wait for them, however long it took, and they approached the guard box.

  Ada stopped in the middle of the road, between coach and black shelter.

  “I’ve just remembered something important,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I’m sorry? You don’t like what, Ada?”

  “Outside. Being. Not in the house.” Ada was frozen as if bolted to the road, her choppy manner of speech returning.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” comforted Mary.

  “I won’t. Can’t move my feet. Can’t breathe.”

  Mary thought for a moment, concerned. “Ada? If you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t speak.”

  Ada seemed to relax. “That makes sense.”

  “You just need to keep your wits about you,” clucked Mary. “Concentrate on the next step. First we must get out of the road before we’re run down. And we have to get in there somehow. We’ll need a story.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “We can’t just wander in and ask to look about. It’s Newgate Prison. We don’t belong in there.”

  “We could say we’re impoverished orphans. There was a story in the newspaper about impoverished orphans that had Peebs all upset. And people who wrote to the paper after said the story was quite touching.”

  “Ada …”

  “Although I’m not sure what it was touching, exactly. I mean, possibly your eyeballs. Or your thumbs. You do often use your thumbs to touch the newspaper, and then they get all smoodgy from the ink.”

  “Ada!”

  “Mmm?”

  “Look at that gentleman in the guard box. The cost of your bonnet could feed his family for a fortnight. You make a very unconvincing impoverished orphan.”

  “Really? Well, I suppose I could get a different bonnet.”


  “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

  “Fine,” declared Ada. “Then we’ll do it my way.” And she marched purposefully toward the guard box, pleased to have a problem she could solve.

  “Open the door,” said Ada to the guard.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, miss?” replied the guard.

  “Open the door. Please. We’d like to go in.”

  “Well, that’s very curious indeed, miss. Folk don’t often ask to get in. It’s the wanting to get out that you usually hear about.”

  “In which case,” continued Ada, “letting us in can hardly be a problem, can it?”

  “Putting it that way, miss,” said the guard, “I s’pose it’s all right, then.” And he twisted the heavy black iron ring on the enormous door, the latches sliding back with a ker-clunk, like the loading of cannons.

  Ada gave a little nod and marched into the darkness beyond the giant door, utterly fearless. Mary trotted along behind her in astonishment, nearly tripping herself as she gave a running curtsy to the guard.

  “That was really terribly clever,” said Mary. “How do you plan to get out again?”

  “I can hardly be expected to think of everything,” replied Ada.

  And the door swung shut behind them, with the cannon ker-clunk letting them know they were locked in.

  Mary saw a dim corridor before them. At the end of the corridor, the hallway split in two directions. There were no signs and no prison guards they could ask for directions.

  “How are we to find Rosie in here?”

  Ada pointed to the right. “This way.”

  “How do you know?” asked Mary.

  “I don’t. I’m just guessing. But if I’m wrong, the other way will still be there.”

  They proceeded down the right-hand corridor. The gloom was thick, almost sticky with sorrow and defeat and other unpleasantness. Mary could feel a sadness creeping into her bones. She began to make out the sounds of prisoners in their grim cells: scraping and whistling, snoring or crying. She could hear coughing and moaning and a horrid squelching sound she couldn’t begin to identify. She suddenly realized she’d been walking alone for a few paces, Ada no longer beside her. She turned around.

  “Ada?”

  Ada was rooted to the floor of the hallway. “Really don’t want to be here, I remembered.”

  “I don’t think anybody wants to be here.”

  “Feet not working again.”

  “But they were working just fine a moment ago.”

  “Then I remembered. About the not wanting to be here.”

  Mary nodded. She had to keep Ada moving, as Mary had little desire to be here much longer herself.

  “Well, to get out of here, you’re going to need your feet.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “And it’s not as bad as last time, when you said you couldn’t breathe, but could.”

  “Mmm.”

  “So you were mistaken about your breathing then, and you might well be mistaken about your feet now. Take a step and see.”

  “That’s a good experiment,” said Ada nervously, taking a step.

  “Any conclusions?” asked Mary.

  “Feet work.”

  “Right. Well, let’s use them to get us to Rosie, find out what we need, and get out of here.”

  Taking Ada’s hand, Mary led them back the way they had come, and they tried the other hallway, hoping it might prove more promising. It was equally awful, and thick with misery. Each step seemed harder to take than the last, and again Ada stopped.

  Then she shouted at the top of her lungs, “ROSIE!!” and the cry was an explosion, an avalanche down the chilly hall. It was met by the sound of nothing.

  “I’m curious as to how that could have been expected to work,” said Mary, after a bit.

  Ada shrugged.

  But then, in the lingering silence, they heard a very small “Yes?”

  “Rosie?” asked Mary. “Rosie Sparrow?”

  The maid seemed to wake slowly, although she’d been sitting up and her eyes were wet with tears.

  “Yes?” she said quietly.

  “Rosie, we’re … um, Misses …”

  “Ribbon and Newdog,” said Ada.

  “We’re friends of Miss Rebecca’s,” Mary continued. “She has asked us to find out why you confessed to a crime you did not commit.”

  “Miss Rebecca asked you …?” murmured Rosie, as though from a distance.

  “She knows in her heart you are innocent,” Mary persevered. “Tell me, did you take the acorn?”

  “The acorn,” repeated the imprisoned maid.

  “The pendant. Her birthday gift. Did you take it?”

  “I said I did,” replied Rosie.

  “We know that already,” huffed Ada.

  Mary shot her a look, but Ada missed it. “Yes, Rosie, we are aware of what you said you did. But I must beg of you to trust us. Miss Rebecca wants you to trust us. We know you didn’t actually do it, did you?”

  “No,” said Rosie quietly.

  “There. And I believe you. Now, whyever would you confess to taking the acorn when you did not?”

  Rosie looked like she was about to return to the tears she had been crying before the girls arrived.

  “It would break my Rebecca’s heart for her to know the truth,” she blurted suddenly.

  “But, Rosie,” assured Mary. “It is breaking her heart to know that you are here, in prison, when you’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “She has done something wrong,” said Ada. “She lied to the constabulary, lied to her friend and her employer, and kept the real criminal out of the newspaper. Prison.”

  “Ada!”

  “Ribbon!” corrected Ada.

  “That’s a terrible thing to say,” rebuked Mary.

  “It’s not a good thing to do either,” said Ada angrily. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Are you suggesting,” said Mary to Rosie, “that if Rebecca found out who really took the acorn, it would be worse for her than it is knowing that you’re here in this awful place?”

  Rosie fought the urge to cry, and nodded.

  “So all of this is to save Rebecca’s feelings?”

  Rosie sniffed, and nodded again.

  “Beau,” said Mary quietly.

  “Told you,” added Ada.

  “What? How do you—? Please, you mustn’t tell Miss Rebecca,” begged Rosie. “She loves him so, and it would break her heart if she knew Mr. Datchery was the thief.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Mary. “As her friend, wouldn’t you want to stop her from marrying a bad man?”

  “That’s just it,” replied Rosie. “He is not a bad man. He’s a very good man. I don’t know what could’ve possibly possessed him to steal the pendant, but I saw him do it. While everyone was downstairs, I saw him coming out of Rebecca’s room. I gasped, I was that shocked, but he never noticed. He had the necklace in his hand—he just carried it down the hallway, staring at it the whole time like it was something from his dreams. Then next morning when Rebecca discovered it was missing, I told her I had stolen it. She’d be crushed to find he took it. And there’d be such a scandal. And think of Mr. Datchery’s reputation.”

  “If he stole it, he’s a criminal, and he should be in here and not you,” said Ada. Somehow, the iron bars reminded her of the lines between the narrow columns in the newspaper, and the gray stone reminded her of the pages themselves. Grim, but tidy.

  “It would break Miss Rebecca’s heart if the man she loved were here.”

  “It’s breaking her heart that you are here,” countered Mary. “Rosie, what if we can find a way to solve this riddle? There must be some explanation, and if we can find it, then we can restore the acorn, present the explanation, and get you out of this dreadful place.”

  For the first time, Rosie smiled. She nodded and wiped a tear. “I dared not hope that such a thing were possible.”

  “Well, I’m certain it is possible. Ada, I mea
n, Miss Ribbon here, is extremely clever, and I’ve no doubt she will get to the bottom of this.”

  “Thank you,” said Rosie. “Thank you ever so.…”

  Mary squeezed Rosie’s hands through the bars.

  Memory served as their guide out of the dungeon, back toward the dim cavern behind the stout front doors. Mary gave the oak a sharp, desperate knock, which reverberated through the shadows of the prison.

  The door opened a crack, and welcome daylight rushed into the hall.

  “Can I help you?” asked the man from the guard box.

  “It’s us. We came in, and we’d like out again,” said Ada.

  “Well, I can’t just go letting people out of prison, can I?”

  “And whyever not?”

  “Lose me job, I would. What kind of a prison guard would I be if I let people out all willy-nilly?”

  “Not a very good one, I imagine,” admitted Mary. “But we’re …”

  “Yes?”

  “Impoverished orphans,” said Mary with some desperation.

  “You don’t look it,” said the guard.

  “Thank you. Now please let us out.”

  “No, sorry. You need a letter of release from the magistrate before I can let you out. And I don’t see too many o’ them, at that—you’ve got to be Lord or Lady Such-and-Such to even ask for one. That’s how it works.”

  “But you just let us in.”

  “In is one thing. Out needs paperwork.”

  Ada concentrated, remembering bits from her newspaper reading. “And do you have a warrant?” she asked.

  “Begging your pardon, miss?”

  “A warrant. For our arrest. I’ve read all about them, and we can’t be here without a warrant. Have you got one?”

  “But I don’t know who you are, so how can I know if there’s a warrant for you?”

  “Well, there’s no sense in asking us,” said Ada. “If we were criminals, we’d simply lie about our names so that the warrants wouldn’t match and you’d have to let us out.”

  “Interesting point, miss. In that case, I’ll have to keep you in.”

  Mary was starting to panic at the thought of remaining on the wrong side of this heavy and forbidding door. “Impoverished orphans!” she repeated.