“In the meantime, I’ll go and find out what I can about this whole building,” said Izzy. “You never know what info might be useful.”
Actually, I was going to ask her where I could buy a really big ice cream around here, as I was still feeling hot and bothered. But hers was a much better idea. “Er, yes, exactly what I was going to say,” I said.
Izzy grinned at me. “Of course it was. I’ll call you later.”
She disappeared among the late-afternoon shoppers, and I took a good look at the building in front of me. As I’d already noted, the museum was part of a group of four addresses. From right to left along the block were SwordStore (selling those plastic combat game kits at eye-wateringly high prices, remember), the museum, that empty house, and the local branch of Boyd’s Direct Bank.
Backing on to these four, on the reverse side of the block, separated only by a gloomy narrow alleyway, were an almost identical set forming part of Good Street: behind the bank was Rogers & Rogers Bookshop, next to that was Bertie’s Shoe Palace, next to that was Nibblies Cheese Shop (behind the museum), and on the corner was the Bite-U-Like Café and Coffee Bar.
I reckoned that someone in any of them might have heard (or even seen) something. I decided to start with the least promising option, the empty house next to the museum.
Its windows were bare, and nothing was visible in the shadows beyond them. A red and white For Sale sign had been nailed up at a ninety-degree angle above the front door, and quite a while ago from the chipped, slightly faded look of it. There was a freebie newspaper jutting out of the mailbox in the hefty front door. With one finger, I pushed the paper through into the entrance hall. I heard a fluttery thump as it hit what I presumed was a whole pile of other freebie newspapers.
“Nobody home,” I muttered to myself.
At first, I didn’t know what it was that made me spin around at that moment. Then I realized that the shuddery sensation of being watched I was suddenly experiencing must have been because of that CCTV camera on the other side of the road. There it was, as before, pointing right across the street, staring, unblinking.
But why should I suddenly feel…?
I quickly hunted in my pockets for the camera I’d borrowed from Muddy, the one I’d been intending to photograph the now-missing handprint with. I used it to zoom in on the CCTV.
I had been wrong! Yesterday, I had seen that CCTV camera pointing across the street, and I had come to the wrong conclusion about what the police were doing! The lens of the CCTV was aimed directly at the spot I was now standing on.
Have you spotted what it was I now realized?
The police weren’t watching the museum at all. They were watching this empty house.
Aha! That explained why the police hadn’t said anything to James’s dad.
Oh! That also meant that the police didn’t know that Captain Blade’s gold was about to be stolen, after all.
And why would they be watching this house? I was suddenly very confused. Watching the museum had made sense—there was a robbery being planned. But watching an unoccupied house next door didn’t appear to make the slightest sense whatsoever.
There was nobody home. What could they possibly be watching? Unless the owner of the house had bribed them to keep an eye on things…hmm…which made even less sense.
For a moment or two, I wasn’t sure what to think. Did the police interest in this house have anything to do with what was going on at the museum? If so, what? If not, had I simply stumbled across something completely unrelated to my investigations?
For the moment, there was no way I could find out anything more about what the police were up to. Well, I suppose I could have popped into the local police station and asked, but they were hardly likely to let me in on whatever they were planning, now, were they?
I decided to proceed with my original plan of action. I still needed to establish some more info on those strange noises. Starting from where I was now, on the doorstep of the empty house, I circled the block asking questions and taking notes. These were the results:
* * *
Location 1: Boyd’s Direct Bank, Hanover Street
Observations: Went in and headed for one of the cashiers behind the huge glass screen. Angry queue of customers shouted at me. Apologized for not realizing that so many people could all be waiting to see cashiers. Waited. Got to front of queue. Asked cashier if any member of staff had heard spooky noises recently? Cashier laughed. Called manager. Manager laughed. I was getting cross now. Said I was perfectly serious. Manager said no, nobody had heard anything strange, now please leave. I asked if they had a cellar. Manager said, we have an underground strongroom, not that it’s any of your business, young man—now please leave before I call the police.
Note to self: Never open an account with Boyd’s Direct. Don’t like their attitude.
Location 2: Rogers & Rogers second-hand bookshop, Good Street, back of bank
Observations: Spoke to lady behind the till. She said, no she’d not heard anything unusual. Yelled up to sister in apartment upstairs. Sister yelled down, no, she’d not heard anything unusual either. Asked if they have a cellar. Yes, they do, but it’s never used. Owners both scared witless of spiders. Door to cellar always kept locked. Thought about pointing out that spiders might crawl under door, but then thought better not. Note to self: Must come in here more often, lots of really good crime books!
Location 3: Bertie’s Shoe Palace, Good Street
Observations: Bertie himself emerged from cellar as I entered shop! Cellar used for storing stock, currently twelve thousand pairs, widest range in town, low low prices, blah blah, Bertie droned on.
Asked about noises. Yes, actually, he had heard some weird bumps and scratching sounds. Several times, over several days. Always daytime—lives above shop, not heard anything at night. Assumed sounds were being made by the woman from the cheese shop next door.
Location 4: Nibblies Cheese Shop, Good Street
Observations: Cellar accessed through a hatch in the floor. Asked if they could confirm the newspaper report about the noises they’d heard? Yes, they could. Had the sounds continued? On and off, yes, they had. Now, was I going to buy some cheese or was I just in here to waste their time? Made hasty exit.
Location 5: Bite-U-Like Café and Coffee Bar, corner of Good Street
Observations: Man behind counter wearing an apron saying You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here, but It Helps. Pretended to find apron amusing in order to start a conversation. Yes, the café has a cellar—used exclusively for growing organic mushrooms, as featured in half the items on the menu. No, they hadn’t heard anything strange, except maybe the woman from the cheese shop. Pretended to be amused again. Bought an ice cream! (Yum!)
Note to self: Try the chocolate flavor next time, looks delicious.
Location 6: SwordStore, back around on Hanover Street
Observations: Shop assistant appeared to take up roughly half the space in the shop. Asked if I was into collecting FrogWar figures. I said no. Asked if I was into collecting Meka-Tek vehicles, Gigablast Warriors, and Ultra-X Gamecards. I said no. Asked if I was thinking about maybe possibly collecting FrogWar, Meka-Tek, Gigablast, or Ultra-X merchandise of any kind. I said no. He said, yeah, cool, okay, just browsing, pal, cool, that’s fine. I asked if the shop had a cellar. He said you betcha, it’s our Games Room, and would I like to join all the other St. Egbert’s pupils who were at the free FrogWar session going on downstairs right now? I said no.
Had he heard any strange noises? Yes, he’d heard some peculiar scraping and thumping sounds recently, but hey, dude, with all the FrogWar action going on in that Games Room, it could just have been a Frog Admiral and his hordes of lethal Frog Troops on the march!
Decided to leave before he could find the copy of the SwordStore catalogue he’d promised me. Apologized for dripping ice cream on his gameboard. He said, no hassle, cool, s’okay.
* * *
By the time I got back out onto the stree
t, it was just past five o’clock. I saw that the museum had already been closed up for the day, half an hour earlier than usual.
Before I headed for home and my Thinking Chair, I had two very important phone conversations and made one very important deduction. The first phone call was from Izzy.
Me: That was quick! Whatcha got?
Izzy: Not very much, to be honest. There’s only one really interesting point. That whole block was…Are you eating something?
Me: Sorry, my ice cream’s melting. It’s Cherry Surprise!
Izzy: Fascinating.
Me: Tasty.
Izzy: That block was constructed in 1771. It’s the second oldest building in town, actually.
Me: Is that the really interesting point? The date this place was built?
Izzy: No, that’s what led me to the interesting point. I couldn’t get anything else that’s specific to that particular block, just the date, so I did a search about the way things like that were built generally. And this is the interesting point. They were normally put together to a standard design. It was a way to make long rows of houses in towns and cities during the Industrial Revolution.
Me: So, the layout of one house would be exactly the same as the layout of all the others?
Izzy: Basically, yes. I remembered you saying you’d asked James about a cellar.
Me: You mean, if the rest of the block has cellars, then so should the museum?
Izzy: Yup. It would be very unusual indeed if it didn’t.
Me: That’s brilliant! Thanks, Iz!
As soon as I flipped the phone shut, my mind started racing like a runaway train. Then I started flicking back through my notes.
With the exception of the empty house, I’d been able to confirm that every address in the block had a cellar (whether it was used or not!). So why did the museum not have one?
Unless…?
I thought back carefully, going over each of the locations I’d visited. Now, then, where was the entrance to each cellar? I closed my eyes, my fingers wandering in midair as I walked myself back around the block in my head.
The bank…Don’t know, didn’t see. The manager simply said there was an underground strongroom. The bookshop…through the door, over to the far left, about fifteen feet from the front. The shoe shop…left, by that rack of wellies, behind that big pillar. And next door…the same! Far left, midway down the shop! And again at the café! And yet again in SwordStore!
In every case, the way down to the cellar was in precisely the same spot, just as Izzy’s info would suggest.
It was at this point that I made the very important deduction I mentioned a couple of pages back. With my heart thumping, I worked out the exact place in the museum where the entrance to the cellar should have been. I thought back to yesterday’s visit to the museum with James.
I pinpointed it instantly. Have you spotted it too?
Under that huge exhibition case in the Captain Blade room! The cheese shop had a hatch in the floor—why not the museum as well? The exhibition case was certainly big enough to cover something like that.
It was now time for the second of those very important phone conversations. I called James.
Me: Where are you?
James: I’ve just finished soccer practice. I’m on my way home.
Me: I’ve made a vital discovery. The museum does have a cellar!
James: Oh, you’re not still going on about that, are you? I’ve told you. There! Is! No! Cellar!
Me: I worked it out. The entrance is under that big Captain Blade exhibition case.
James (laughs): No it isn’t! I’ve seen under that case loads of times.
Me: Oh. Have you?
James: Yes. I’ve often helped arrange the displays in it. I’ve seen it moved right out across the room. The only thing underneath that case is the floor.
Me: No, there must be a hatch, or a handle, or some sort of hidden locking mechanism.
James: I’m telling you, there isn’t. It’s just floorboards. Big, plain floorboards. Very old ones, at that. Look, I’ve lived in that building my entire life. My dad’s been curator of the museum for nearly fifteen years. Mrs. Pottersby’s been on the staff there for well over thirty years. Don’t you think, maybe, we’d know if there was a hatch?
Me: Umm…well…yes, I suppose so. But it makes no sense for the museum—
James: There is nothing there. Got it?
Me: By the way, speaking of things that aren’t there, when you get back you’ll find that the handprint has vanished.
James (sudden panic): It’s gone? How?
Me: Er, okay, see you tomorrow!
James: It’s the ghost! The ghost! It’s real! Oh my—
Me: Umm, byeeeee!
I took another look at the outside of the museum, with its banners announcing the Captain Blade exhibition shifting gently in the early evening breeze. For a minute or two, I thought I ought to stick around, wait for James and his dad to return home, and see if we could get that case shifted anyway.
But I quickly changed my mind. Just when I thought my investigations were getting somewhere, everything seemed to be unraveling. The police weren’t watching the museum. Apparently there wasn’t a cellar. Exactly how many wrong trees was I barking up? I didn’t seem to have anything definite to go on at all.
I headed for home, my brain swirling with questions, pirates, and ghosts. I’d been wrong several times that day, but little did I know that my next thought was going to turn out to be more wrong than I could have possibly imagined.
Oh well, I thought to myself, I don’t suppose much is going to happen overnight.
Chapter Six
By midmorning the next day, the news was all over school. Muddy and some of the others from my class were in the IT Room shortly after assembly, and they happened to read the local news Web site. The printout got passed from person to person, and arrived in my hands during break. It said:
Bank Raid Baffles Police
Hanover Street was the scene of a major police operation this morning, as it was revealed that Boyd’s Direct Bank had been robbed during the night. The dramatic robbery, which took place at an as-yet-unknown time during the early hours, saw crooks break into the bank’s strongroom, located below street level. A wall had been partially demolished, which connected the strongroom to the cellar of an empty property located next door to the bank.
The thieves are thought to have entered the strongroom through this hole, and escaped using the same route.
Police raided the empty house shortly before 8 a.m., but found no sign of either the thieves or the cash and valuables stolen from the strongroom. Debris from the demolished wall was found to be scattered thickly across the cellar floor. Forensic experts will spend the next three weeks examining the rubble for clues. CCTV footage of the area has already been checked and is said by reliable sources to show nobody entering or leaving the empty house. Security cameras inside the bank’s Customer Services area also showed nobody entering or leaving. In a surprise development, it was revealed that the police had received advance information relating to a possible bank robbery several weeks ago, and had mounted a major surveillance operation. The crooks appear to have foiled this operation completely. A police spokesman has been forced to admit that they are also baffled by the way in which the robbery was carried out. ‘Taking out a thick connecting wall like that takes hours and is very noisy and disruptive,’ he said. ‘This robbery appears to have been carried out in silence. No local resident was disturbed during the night. We have no clue as to how the thieves managed to achieve this, or even how they managed to get in and out of the empty property adjoining the bank.’ The robbery was discovered by the bank’s manager, 47-year-old Mr Adrian Shadbolt, when he arrived for work at around 7:30 a.m. ‘I was terribly shocked,’ he stated. ‘The police had informed me of their surveillance operation, but I never believed anyone could break into our strongroom without being discovered. I am deeply upset. I am also deeply angry that the police s
eem to have not the slightest idea what to do now.’ Mr Shadbolt is being comforted with cups of tea by his loyal staff. This daring robbery is certainly the most serious crime to hit the town in many years. Unofficial estimates put the value of the cash and other stolen items at no less than one million pounds. Given the baffling nature of the raid, awkward questions relating to the competence of the police’s surveillance operation and earlier intelligence reports are certain to be asked.
As I finished reading the article, a whole crowd of questions and possibilities started jostling for attention in my mind. How did those crooks get in and out of the empty house? Last term, when builders had knocked through a wall to make extra space in the school office, they’d taken all day and used enormous, deafening brick-saw-type machines, so how could those thieves demolish a wall without anyone hearing?
What puzzled me most was connecting this robbery up with all the goings-on at the museum. There had to be a connection. This robbery was far too much of a coincidence to be unrelated to the mystery of Captain Blade’s ghost.
Or was it? Was I looking for a connection that wasn’t really there? Just because a serious crime had happened right on the museum’s doorstep, did it follow that the ghostly sounds and the vanishing handprint were part of the same problem?
I had the distinct feeling that answers were hiding just out of sight, or at least that there were factors involved in all this that I wasn’t quite fitting together correctly. However, everything became clear when I bumped into James in the lunch line.
The servers were busy slopping mashed potato onto our plates and some greenish stuff that looked like it might be broccoli, when I noticed James a couple of places ahead of me.
“Hi!” I called. “Did you read that news thing?”
“Yes,” said James, “there were police cars all over the road when I left home this morning. Quite exciting, really. It’s turning out to be a day full of surprises!”
The Pirate's Blood and Other Case Files Page 3
