Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy

by Paula Berinstein

On the last day of the term, the first-year class gathered in the auditorium for the project presentations. Over the past few days Amanda, Simon, Amphora, Ivy, and Editta had worked hard to figure out who had set off the explosion and why. Amanda had heard back from Darius Plover’s friend at UCLA and he had been incredibly helpful. They had done a lot of digging about Professor Pickle, who it seemed couldn’t keep his mouth shut on the golf course, as well as about the other teachers, who revealed more about themselves than they realized by their words, deeds, and possessions. The older students had been particularly helpful in the countless interviews the Holmes House team had conducted, including Ivy’s sister, who seemed to know everyone and everything within a thirty-mile radius. And finally, they had relied on the well-known dictum articulated by Sherlock Holmes, even though it made Amanda gag: that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

  Simon began the presentation in a clear, steady voice. “After the project was first announced, we weren’t sure what it actually was. For a while we thought the teachers might have planted the sugar and blood we found around the school and that they were related to it. Now there’s no doubt, of course. The real project began with the explosion. As we all know, those other things were related to the Moriartys’ pink sugar conspiracy.

  “We investigated the garage several times after the explosion. We were able to determine the point of origin by examining the damage, which was most acute around the vehicle belonging to Professor Bill Pickle. Therefore we have concluded that the explosive device was centered in, on, or under his car. It was a plastic explosive containing C4. We were unable to determine the exact time it was placed there, but we were able to guess at how the perpetrator or perpetrators gained access.

  “As you know, the campus is protected by heavy security fencing, and the walls are booby-trapped. Much of this is disguised so as to throw off the locals and make them think that this is an ordinary school. However the fences are electrified and fitted with devices to injure anyone who tries to climb them. In addition, all vehicles must pass through the guard gate down the hill, and even the regular delivery drivers and the faculty and staff must stop and show ID and submit to inspection. The guards also have CCTV cameras, which they monitor all the time. So it’s quite difficult to breach Legatum’s security, although not impossible. We have identified some ways that the perpetrator might have got in. However, he or she didn’t have to.

  “The bomb was placed in, on, or under Professor Pickle’s car when he drove it off campus. We’re not sure where this occurred, but we suspect it was at the golf course, since that is where the professor goes regularly and it would be easy to predict when he’d be there. Obviously there was a timer on the bomb, which set it off without the perpetrator having to be on or even near campus.”

  Then Ivy spoke. “As for the target, we didn’t want to conclude that Professor Pickle’s car was the object of the bomb without considering other possibilities. We started with the adjacent vehicles. These were a dark blue sedan belonging to Professor Stegelmeyer and a woody belonging to Professor Ducey.

  “We examined the contents of the glove compartment in the woody and found the following: maps of various parts of England and Scotland, a topo map of the Lake Windermere area, a receipt for some windsurfing equipment, a pair of glasses, and something that might have been Galaxy chocolate bars. There was also a tube of sunscreen and several packs of gum. On the Lake Windermere map several areas were circled in red pencil. We discovered that these locations were popular windsurfing sites.

  “The body of the car was empty. We looked inside the wheel compartments and found nothing unusual. And no, I didn’t look. Simon did.” Ivy smiled. She sure wasn’t self-conscious about being blind.

  “We also inspected Professor Stegelmeyer’s sedan. Unlike the vehicles owned by Professors Pickle and Ducey, this one had a trunk, which was locked. We thought we might make a wax impression of the lock and fashion a key in the lab, but we didn’t need to. The lock fell in by itself.” That was stretching the truth, but they had agreed that what they’d done was within the rules and they weren’t going to worry about the fine points. “Inside we found the remains of a number of manuscripts allegedly written by Professor Stegelmeyer. They appeared to be horror novels. Aside from those, a spare tire, a jack, and a pump, we found nothing else in the trunk. We did, however, find some items in the glove box. These included a pair of scissors, an evidence kit, and a newspaper, which was opened to an article about an escaped criminal.”

  Amphora glanced over at Ivy, and when she was certain she’d finished, continued. At first her voice was shaky, but she soon gained confidence. “The article caused us to wonder whether this criminal was someone with a grudge against Professor Stegelmeyer. Indeed it was, one Absil Thurvy, a murderer our professor helped catch. We thought perhaps Mr. Thurvy might have tried to exact retribution by killing the professor. So we dug deeper and discovered that upon his escape, Mr. Thurvy fled to Africa, where he was being held on another charge and could not have been in the UK around the date of the explosion. He might, however, have had an accomplice, and we kept this possibility in mind as we developed the case.

  “We also searched the areas adjacent to the garage. These included a small outbuilding and some shrubs and trees that were destroyed by shrapnel and fire. The outbuilding contained tools, gardening equipment and supplies, and a couple of ladders. There was no fertilizer, which as we all know can be made into an explosive, and no evidence that there had been any there recently. Since it was winter, it would have been most strange if there had been any, and we would have questioned its presence.”

  Amphora stopped speaking, suddenly became self-conscious, and glanced at Editta, who gave her a questioning look. Amphora nodded. “As you know, after the blast, Professor Pickle disappeared and hasn’t been seen or heard from since,” said Editta, picking up the thread. She was a good speaker, if rather melodramatic. “However, there was no evidence in or around the garage to show that he had been injured or killed. He simply vanished. At first I thought this was bad luck, but—”

  Amanda coughed and shook her head.

  “Sorry,” said Editta. “Sometimes I get a little carried away. Anyway, after that happened there were two other deaths on the campus and a number of other suspicious sightings, including blood on the path outside the Holmes House common room, various pink sugar patches, and a secret room full of the sugar, which was being eaten by what is known as slime mold. Apparently the slime mold’s normal source of food was destroyed in the blast and it had gone looking for a substitute, which it found in the sugar.”

  “So here was all this damage and some odd things out of place, and we needed to figure out which clues were part of the class project and which weren’t,” said Amanda. She looked out into the crowd. Everyone was paying close attention, even the Wiffle kid. Then, for a moment, she thought she saw Nick in the back and started. The shock caused her vision to go dark. She stood there half-blind for a second or two, panicked. Then she realized her mind was playing tricks on her and her eyes cleared, but her hands were still shaking.

  “We concluded that the explosion was the project and that the sugar, blood, and secret room were not. Here’s how we came to that conclusion.” She nodded to Simon.

  “It was tempting to think that Professor Pickle was the target of the bomb,” he said. “After all, the point of origin was his car and it sustained the most damage. It also seemed to contain items that might point to a motive: a label from a pickle jar, some golf clubs, a book of accounts. Why would these things make Professor Pickle a target? We did some investigating.”

  “It seems that Professor Pickle, who was known for his fixation on his Triumph Roadster, had another obsession as well,” said Ivy. “You see, Pickle isn’t his real name. He changed it when he became involved in his family’s pickle manufacturing business. Some of you may know that he was a descendant of Father Brown, but he was als
o a scion of the Crigglestone pickle family, and he took this role very seriously. Other than his golf and his detective work, Professor Pickle was focused solely on pickles. And Professor Pickle has a rival, one Reginald Ribchester, a pickle manufacturer he considers his mortal enemy. When we discovered that, we thought perhaps this competitor had blown up the professor’s car to send a message.”

  “But he wasn’t trying to kill the professor,” said Amphora. “If he had been he wouldn’t have set the bomb to go off in the middle of the night, when he knew the professor wouldn’t be in his car. However he might have set the explosion as a message to the Pickle family. One way or another he wanted them out of the business. If he had to harass them to make it happen, so be it. Or so we thought.

  “That was only one theory. We also looked at the possibility that Professor Ducey might have been the target, despite the innocuous-looking objects we found in his vehicle. This is certainly a logical assumption since he has put many criminals in prison. Both Professor Ducey and Professor Stegelmeyer also have personal enemies, which I won’t describe in order to protect their privacy. Suffice to say that we dug very deeply and discovered a lot about the teachers.” She looked out at the audience, where the teachers were sitting. They were all poker-faced.

  “So it was plausible,” said Ivy, “that any of the three teachers could have been the intended target, although it did seem that Professor Pickle—because his car was the point of origin, because of his rival’s animosity, and because he disappeared—was the most logical choice.”

  “But that wasn’t the answer,” said Amanda, her heart beating normal speed again. “In fact, none of these teachers was the object of the blast.” She paused dramatically. “Nor was any other.”

  The audience gasped.

  “The target of the explosion wasn’t a person,” she said.

  There was a general hubbub throughout the room.

  Amanda nodded to Simon. “There was more in the garage than just vehicles,” he said. “As you know, the faculty has a series of storage compartments there. We found a huge amount of stuff in them, everything from family photos to old letters to eyeglasses. In addition the garage housed an automotive repair area that contained everything from tools to engine parts. Fortunately no gasoline was stored there or the explosion would have been even stronger. However, none of these items was the target either.

  “No, it wasn’t the teachers or their personal items or the auto shop or even the building that was the intended object of the explosion. We contend that the real target was something in Professor Mukherjee’s storage area. Professor Pickle’s car was just the means of access.”

  More gasps from the audience.

  “Inside an airtight container in Professor Mukherjee’s cubby was a book, The Legatum Continuatum Detective’s Bible, dating back to the school’s founding in 1887. The perpetrator knew this.”

  There was so much noise in the room that Professor Thrillkill had to stand up and shush everyone.

  “This volume is so old and valuable that its location is constantly changed, with only a handful of people knowing where it is at any given time. It is wrapped in acid-free paper and kept in a moisture-proof box.”

  “How do you know about this?” asked a student in the front row. “Why haven’t we heard of this before?”

  “It came out in our investigation,” said Simon. “There was enough text left for us to piece together its name and purpose, but we had to use special techniques. The book is written in code. We also—”

  “We don’t require that level of detail, Mr. Binkle,” said Thrillkill.

  “But we want to know why we’ve been kept in the dark,” said the student.

  “There are many things you don’t know about Legatum,” said the headmaster. “If we told you everything, you wouldn’t get much practice at learning for yourself, would you? You should know by now that everything we do here at Legatum we do for a good reason. If you have a trust problem with us, Mr. Wiffle, I suggest you make other arrangements.” Of course it was the Wiffle kid. Who else?

  Wiffle sat down and folded his arms in a way that cried out “Harumph.”

  Editta spoke next. “You are aware that no one was hurt in this blast. That’s because it occurred in the middle of the night when everyone was in their dorms, far away from the point of origin. The time was chosen so as to protect lives. However, if the explosion had occurred during the day, we have no doubt that people would have been injured and possibly killed.”

  “But Professor Pickle disappeared,” yelled a student. “What happened to him?”

  “I’m glad you asked that,” said Amanda. “Professor Pickle went off to hunt down his pickle-making rival. He ended up assaulting the man and is now cooling his heels in jail.”

  “No,” yelled out another student.

  “Yes,” said Amanda. “You can check.”

  “But if all this is true, who did it? I mean, in the simulation. Obviously the teachers set this up.”

  “Who indeed?” said Amanda. “Who do you think did it?”

  “It was our old friend Moriarty,” interrupted a student in the back row. “Right?”

  “Right. Or it would have been if it had been real. Moriarty is the only one who could have done this. Do you know why?”

  “Why?” yelled the students.

  “Tell them, Miss Lester,” said Thrillkill.

  “Because Nick Muffet, aka Nick Moriarty, infiltrated our school and knew about the Bible. And he passed along this information to his mother, the cook’s assistant, who was working here under false pretenses. And she passed the information along to her husband, who is a descendant of the original Professor Moriarty.”

  The room exploded. All the kids were talking at once. Someone yelled out, “Do you mean to tell me that Nick Muffet is a Moriarty and infiltrated our school? And the teachers knew?”

  “Yes,” said Simon. “Nick was a Moriarty and did infiltrate the school. But no, the teachers didn’t know. They set up the project as an exercise. It just turned out to be much more realistic than they expected.”

  “I’ll kill him,” yelled the student. “Just let me at him.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t,” said Professor Thrillkill.

  “I will. You can’t stop me.”

  “I don’t have to,” said Thrillkill. “Mr. Muffet, nee Moriarty, is dead.”

  The room fell silent so quickly that it seemed like all the air had gone out of it.

  It was a good thing that Amanda had bawled all the way home from London, or else she would have burst into tears upon hearing this now. But she didn’t. She just stood there calmly and waited.

  “What happened, Professor?” said the student. “How did he get in? How did he die?”

  “That is a story for another time,” said Thrillkill.

  No one said anything for a long time and then another student raised her hand and said, “Why did they blow up the entire garage? Why not just steal the book?”

  Amanda stepped forward and spoke with as much gravitas as she could muster. “To show us that it can be done.”

  “You mean it was a warning?” said the student.

  “Yes,” said Amanda. “It showed us that we must always be vigilant.” She turned to Thrillkill. “Isn’t that right, Professor?”

  “Yes, Miss Lester,” said the headmaster. “That is exactly why it was done.”