“Of course, they couldn’t do anything at all if you were in the museum during the day. So, one of the gang posed as an intermediary for this mysterious benefactor and kept you busy every day valuing a load of old rubbish. And then, the moment the robbery had been done and they no longer needed to keep you away from here…”
“They simply left me a note,” whispered James’s dad. “Oh, good grief. What an utter fool I’ve been! And I suppose, Mrs. Pottersby, that you’ve always known there was a cellar underneath this floor?”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Pottersby, through clenched lips. “It was boarded over about forty years ago, when this place was still a private residence. The owner never used it, and it was very damp down there. I’d all but forgotten about it, until the need arose for a way to get into that bank undetected.”
“Why, Mrs. Pottersby?” said James sadly. “Why did you do it?”
She pointed to James’s dad. “What, you think Mr. Meany there was going to help me save for my retirement? Thirty-six years I’ve been here, luv, and he keeps me on minimum wage. Skinflint. Always on about his budgets. I knew that anonymous benefactor thing would get him. He’s so tight-fisted, he’d never miss the chance to get something for next-to-nothing.”
“I’m not exactly well-off, you know!” cried James’s dad.
“So if the crooks were digging through that wall during the day,” said James, “why did they stage the actual robbery in the middle of the night?”
“For the simple reason that, while this museum isn’t exactly a busy place, the bank certainly is,” I said. “A gang of thieves couldn’t break through the wall without being spotted by bank staff and then all their careful planning and work would have been for nothing. They’d have never got away in time.”
“Hang on a minute,” said James. “That news article also said that the CCTV footage from across the road shows nobody coming or going. Even if the camera was pointed at the empty house next door, it would have also been able to see anyone entering or leaving this museum, surely? And nobody did. Nobody broke in here during the night. Dad or I would have discovered it.”
“Yes, that camera certainly would have seen any disturbance at the museum’s door,” I said. “And that’s why it was so urgent that we got here quickly. That’s why I needed to get this place closed, so that nobody could enter or leave.”
“What, to trap Mrs. Pottersby?” whispered James to me. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
“No,” I said. “To trap the entire gang!”
James stared at me bug-eyed. “Huh?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” I said, “I noticed that the museum closed half an hour early. My guess is that the members of the gang, one by one, arrived here while I was circling the block asking questions. I think they hid inside this museum, waiting for the hour to strike the bank. And then, once the robbery was over, they went back to their hiding place.”
“Oh my God!” cried James’s dad. “You mean, the crooks are still in here? Hiding? Waiting for the police to go? Waiting for the coast to clear?”
“Possibly. Possibly not,” I said. “You’ve left that front door open all morning. They might all have sneaked away by now, pretending to be ordinary museum visitors, perhaps while you were off finding that note from your anonymous benefactor. But whether they’re still here themselves or not, what’s definitely still here is the money.”
“Rubbish,” scoffed Mrs. Pottersby. “Are you saying they’d rob a bank and then leave the money behind?”
“If they trusted you enough to keep them safe while they had access to this place, they’d trust you enough to guard their loot for a while,” I said. “After all, if the police had heard that a robbery was being planned, they might also have heard who it was who was planning it. The gang would need to wait a few days. They’d need to see if the police came knocking at their doors. They’d need to be sure that they weren’t under suspicion before they touched any of that cash. No matter how cleverly they’d stolen it, they’d only have to be found with the money to be charged with the crime.”
“There’s nowhere in here to hide a load of stolen money,” said James’s dad. “We’re very short of space. There’s certainly nowhere in here to hide a gang of bank robbers!”
“Isn’t there?” I said, turning to Mrs. Pottersby. “Isn’t there quite a sizeable space that’s recently been emptied out?”
“The gift shop’s stockroom,” said James. “I wondered why Mrs. Pottersby had cluttered up the shop with all those boxes.”
“So did I,” I said. “She has been expecting a delivery. But not of novelty pencil sharpeners.”
“Well, luvs,” said Mrs. Pottersby, decisively, “as the game seems to be up, and I expect you’ll be calling the police in a minute, I’ll just pop to the loo. You don’t want to go using the toilets in police stations, you never know who’s been in there.”
She handed James’s dad her bunch of keys and bustled off, tugging at the hem of her cardigan as she went.
“She seems to be taking it very well,” said James quietly.
“Taking it well?” spluttered James’s dad. “That woman’s involved my beloved museum in a bank robbery! Goodness only knows what’s going to happen once the police start marching through here, dusting for fingerprints!”
“In the meantime,” I said, raising my voice a little for attention. “I think it’d be a good idea if we checked the gift shop’s stockroom.”
The three of us hurried over to the gift shop. We stepped around the piles of boxes and crept up to the locked stockroom door. I pressed an ear to it and listened.
“Can’t hear anything,” I whispered.
“Looks like the gang have already gone,” whispered James.
“Why are we whispering?” said James’s dad.
“Dunno,” I shrugged. “Come on, let’s open it up.”
James’s dad brandished Mrs. Pottersby’s jingling key ring. “Stand back, boys. You never know.” Then he spoke loudly, in case someone was listening inside the stockroom. “Even if they’re still in there, the front door is locked. There’s no escape.”
The key clicked in the lock. James’s dad slowly took hold of the handle. The door swung open with a creak.
There was nobody inside, but in one corner was a pile of bulging black plastic garbage bags. We approached cautiously, and James’s dad flicked back the top of the nearest bag, so we could get a look at what was inside.
It was a crammed jumble of bank notes, tens and twenties. You could actually smell a papery, peopley scent coming off them, there were so many.
“Wow,” breathed James. “Look at all that money! Saxby, you were right.”
“Yup,” I said, not able to take my eyes off all that cash. “I certainly was.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. Something to do with the question I’d asked James when we’d arrived and what James’s dad had just said loudly to this empty room.
“She’s getting out of the window!” I shouted. “Quick!”
I dashed out of the stockroom and along the corridor that led toward the back of the building, James racing at my heels.
“Argh, she’s had two minutes!” I cried angrily. “She could be long gone! I should have realized!’
We ran full tilt into the door marked Staff Toilet. Locked.
“Dad!” yelled James. “Break this door in! Quick!”
“You can’t go barging into the Staff Toilet!” protested James’s dad, trotting down the corridor behind us.
“Just do it!” cried James.
With a grunt, James’s dad aimed a kick at the door, and it flew back with a thud. James and I raced in.
I expected to find the window wide open and no sign of Mrs. Pottersby. What we actually found was the window wide open and Mrs. Pottersby wedged firmly into it. She’d climbed up onto the toilet tank to reach the window catch, and wriggled through as far as her waist before getting stuck. The back end of her woolen skirt waggled madly at us, and her feet
flailed about uselessly.
“Get me out!” she cried furiously. “Get me out!”
James heaved on one side, I heaved on the other. A couple of minutes later, we had Mrs. Pottersby under guard, sitting on a chair in the gift shop. James’s dad unlocked the front door and called over to the police officers outside the bank to put down their mugs of tea and get into the museum as fast as possible.
One week later, there was a report of the robbery in the local paper. This was headed:
POLICE SOLVE BAFFLING
BANK ROBBERY
Officers Discover Tunnel
At Town Museum
So, not exactly a complete or accurate report. My part in the whole affair wasn’t even mentioned. Why? Because I’d made sure it wasn’t, that’s why. I adopt the same point of view as the great Sherlock Holmes: my value as an undercover detective would plummet, like a boulder dropped off a cliff, if my name and picture started appearing in public all over the place. The work is its own reward. That’s what Holmes always said, and that’s what I say too. Besides (insert sniggering noise here!), how would it look if the cops got beaten at their own game by a schoolboy? Ha ha!
I returned to my shed and my Thinking Chair. I propped my feet up on the desk, and I reached for my notebook.
Case closed.
Case File Eight:
The Mystery of Mary Rogers
Chapter One
I stared in disbelief. Utter disbelief. I think my jaw may have hung open as well, I’m not sure.
Overnight rain had ruined my carefully painted sign, the carefully painted sign on my shed door, the sign I’d painted so carefully. The day before, it had said Saxby Smart: Private Detective. Now it said Sbleeeebsnbjllaa.
I groaned to myself. Was there anybody, anywhere, in the entire world, a bigger piece of garbage at these practical things than me?
I considered doing a bit of moaning and sulking too, but my self-pity was interrupted by a voice from behind me.
“I think you used the wrong sort of paint.” A girl I knew from the school book club, Zoe Rogers, was peeking around the garden gate.
“No kidding,” I grumbled. “Hello, Zoe, what can I do for you?”
“I need your help,” she said. “Urgently.”
“As long as it’s nothing to do with paint,” I said to myself, making a mental note to redo the sign later on. Little did I know that I was about to uncover one of the most heartless crimes in all my case files.
I ushered Zoe into the shed and offered her my Thinking Chair to sit on. I sat on my desk, pulled myself up into a cross-legged position, and adopted a serious-yet-mysterious expression, in keeping with the job of being a brilliant schoolboy detective.
“What’s the problem?” I said, in as deeply smooth a voice as I could manage.
“My mom’s in big trouble,” said Zoe. Her bottom lip suddenly started bouncing around like a football in a spin dryer, and she burst into tears.
“Oh, umm…umm…” I wasn’t used to dealing with that kind of thing. I dragged my slightly crumpled handkerchief from my pocket and dangled it in front of her. “Here, umm…”
She took it and, after a couple of window-rattling blows of her nose, she was okay again. “Sorry, I’ve been holding that in,” she said. I assumed she meant the tears, not the window-rattling nose-blows.
“My mom owns the secondhand bookshop in Good Street,” continued Zoe.
“Oh, of course, Rogers & Rogers!” I cried. I’d been a regular visitor to that shop for several weeks, ever since I’d discovered the place while on an investigation (see my previous case file The Pirate’s Blood). I should have realized the place was connected with Zoe—she had exactly the same hairstyle as the woman who was always behind the counter there: a sort of wild blond splat, which looked as if there’d been a minor explosion at the back of her head.
“I love that shop,” I said.
“It burned down on Saturday night,” said Zoe.
“Oh no!” I cried. Where was I going to find a good supply of cheap crime novels now?
“What I mean is,” said Zoe, “someone tried to burn it down. They started a fire in it, but the sprinkler system put the flames out. My mom and I live above the shop, and our apartment wasn’t damaged, thank goodness.”
“So, you need me to find out who started the fire?” I said. “Isn’t that a job for the police?”
“It’s not that simple,” said Zoe. “The police think Mom did it! The shop’s never really made much money for us, but Mom adores the place—she wouldn’t torch it. The whole shop is ruined. Every last book is either soaked or burned. Or both.”
“Is the shop insured?” I said.
“Yes,” sighed Zoe, “but the insurance company won’t pay up because of what the police are saying. Since the shop hasn’t been making a profit, the police think Mom’s tried to burn it down just to get the insurance money. She could be sent to prison! And if the insurance company won’t pay up, we’ll be left penniless anyway!”
I sensed there were more tears coming. Quickly, I said, “Why are the police so sure she burned the shop?”
Zoe began to slide her hands up the sides of her face. “Because…she was seen.”
“Seen?” I cried. “She was seen setting fire to her shop? By whom?”
“My cousin Joe,” said Zoe. “Joe Albieri, in the year below us at school.”
“Oh yes, I know him,” I said. “But surely it’s just his word against hers?”
“He was with six of his friends…”
“Ah. But could he be getting them to lie for him?”
“…and eight of their parents.”
“Ah. Umm,” I said, wrinkling up my face. “So fifteen people saw her do it. I don’t want to sound insensitive or anything, but, er, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but, umm, doesn’t that make her just the tiniest bit, oooh, I dunno, guilty?”
“It doesn’t matter what they saw,” said Zoe. “I’m telling you, it’s simply not possible that my mom set fire to that shop.”
“Umm,” I said quietly, “I admire your loyalty, and so forth, but—”
Zoe stared up at me. “It’s not possible, Saxby, because on Saturday night my mom, my Auntie Sally, and I were down in London. All evening.”
“Did anyone see you there?” I said.
“Yes, about eight million people.”
“Huh?”
“We were in the audience for the semifinals of Dance Insanity,” said Zoe. “You know, the TV show? I’ve got it recorded, at home. We’re on it. You can see all three of us!”
I sat silently for a moment or two. I was too amazed to take much notice of what my face was doing, but I’m pretty sure I was frowning and going boggle-eyed at the same time.
So, on Saturday night, Zoe Rogers’s mother was in two places at once.
Zoe buried her face in my hanky and had another window-rattling nose-blow.
Chapter Two
“Ooooooookaaaaaaaay,” I said, carefully. “Now then, I think I might need a bit more info here. Tell me more about this trip to London. Dance Loony was it?”
Zoe gasped at me. “Dance Insanity! You must watch Dance Insanity! Everyone does!”
“Nnnnnnope.” I shrugged.
“It’s a knockout contest. Twelve celebrities partnered with twelve professional dancers, one gets voted off every week. You must have seen it.”
“Nnnnnnope.” I shrugged.
“It’s the final at the end of this week. The only ones left in it are that really lovely girl who does the weather and the dude who plays the pub owner in Deerpark Drive.”
“Dear-what?”
“The soap opera! Good grief, Saxby, you’re even more out of touch than my Auntie Sally!”
“But she’s a fan of Dance Barmy too, I presume, if she went with you on Saturday?”
“Oh yes,” said Zoe. “All three of us are huge fans. Auntie Sally suggested going. She knows someone who knows someone who could get us the tickets. They cost her a fort
une.”
“And you were in London all evening, you said?”
“Yes,” said Zoe. “We went on the train. The shop is only a five-minute walk from the railway station, and the TV studio is only a five-minute walk from the station in London, so it’s an easy trip. We left at quarter past five in the afternoon, and we didn’t get back home until nearly midnight.”
“And how much of that time did you spend appearing on TV?” I said.
“Oh, only a few seconds,” said Zoe, “but we’re definitely there, I watched it back on Sunday. The show went out live from seven o’clock till eight, and then there was the results show, also live, from five to ten till twenty past ten. At the start of each show, the camera does this sort of slow whoosh across the audience. And there we were, both times. Well, me and Mom are a bit blink-and-you’ll-miss-us and in the distance, but you can see Sally clear as anything.”
“So, what happens in the time between these shows?” I said.
“Well, not much, really,” said Zoe. “The TV technical people run around a lot, which is quite interesting to see. Mostly, they want you to stay put. They don’t like anyone leaving their seat. They even have a sort of checkroom thing there, where you have to leave coats and bags and so forth, because that sort of thing looks like a big mess on screen, apparently.”
“So the three of you stayed put all evening?” I said.
“Yes. Mom and I got to eavesdrop on one of the judges chatting to the director! He’s mean with his marks, but he’s sooooo nice in real life.”
The Pirate's Blood and Other Case Files Page 5
