The Ghost Light
Page 19
‘Sorry, Frank.’ I doubled over and put my hands on my knees. I took a few more deep breaths, making sure my lungs were still working, then I turned to Pete. ‘Pete, how accurate was your reconstruction of the set?’
‘It was an exact replica. A lot of the parts are original.’
I nodded.
‘So the safe in Vivian’s bedroom. The only way to get to that would be from onstage?’
Pete nodded slowly.
‘When it got lifted up for the set change, could someone standing on it reach the scaffolding beam next to the catwalk?’
Pete’s eyes widened. His mouth fell open. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t so he just nodded.
‘And Frank, the script and the blocking. Is that true to the original production too?’
‘Well, I may have made a few changes, but yes, for the most part it’s the same.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and I turned up the corridor and ran.
I hurtled into the wings of the theatre. I could hear footsteps behind me, and a voice over the PA system droned: Fifteen minutes to places for Act Three. Fifteen minutes.
‘What are you doing?’ Kevin asked.
‘Don’t you get it? We know the necklace went into the safe and then got lifted into the rafters. And when the set came back down, the necklace was gone.’ I paused to catch my breath. ‘It had to be Kittie Grace who took the necklace.’
‘So she stole it while it was up there. So what? We still don’t know what she did with it.’
‘So the police report said that the constable in the audience locked down the stage after Act Two. There wouldn’t be time for her to hand the diamond to an accomplice – she couldn’t even have gone to her dressing room. She had to have hidden it up there between the two Acts. And she had to hide the Star before coming down from the catwalk, or down from the set.’
‘But she never got back up there again to fetch it because of the fire,’ Kevin added excitedly.
‘Exactly!’ I said, then shuddered, remembering the fire report. Kittie Grace had tried to go back, but the fire must have killed her before she could get to the Star. ‘That’s why Irinke must have been drilling those holes. She was looking for a secret compartment somewhere up there.’
‘But there wasn’t one.’
‘No, but there must have been other places up there where Kittie could have hidden the diamond.’ I was halfway up the ladder into the catwalk. Kevin was behind me.
‘So you think it’s still here?’
I slowed down and almost missed a rung. My stomach lurched to one side and I swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But if Irinke had found it, she wouldn’t have hung around and fallen for our trap. It might still be there. You heard Pete – a lot of the set is from the original production.’
I got to the top of the catwalk.
I stood in the centre of the metal walkway and closed my eyes, counting up in primes and trying to calm my thoughts. Whoever hid the necklace would have needed somewhere safe, but also somewhere it would be easy to come back and get it without anyone getting suspicious. I opened my eyes and turned in a slow circle.
Nothing. The catwalk was clean and clutter-free to keep it safe. But that also meant that there weren’t many places to hide things. The metal rungs, the wooden beams. The only things that weren’t made of something solid were the sandbags that hung down from the ceiling.
And then it hit me. The sandbags.
The only reason I could reach all of them now was because the upper level of the set had been raised into the flies. When this part of the set was lowered back down, the sandbags – as their counterweight – would rise up into the darkness above my head and be well out of reach.
They were the perfect place for Kittie Grace to hide the Star. There were always more sandbags than the crew needed to counterbalance the set, so that if one came loose by accident the set wouldn’t crash on to the stage. She could have untied one, put the necklace inside and then tied it back up.
I wondered if a police constable would even think to search them.
‘Quick,’ I said. ‘The sandbags!’
I pulled the closest sandbag out of the space above the stage and opened it carefully. Kevin watched me for a second and then ran to the other end of the catwalk to start searching the ones hanging there.
I reached my hand into the clean smooth sand and brought it out empty. ‘It isn’t here,’ I said.
‘Not here either.’
We kept searching. There were twenty sandbags hanging from the flies. The Midnight Star wasn’t in any of them.
I watched as a few loose grains of sand fell down on the stage below me and felt disappointment swirling around my middle. I had been so sure. I sighed and dropped to my knees.
What was I thinking? Surely Irinke had looked in the sandbags already. There was no point in searching them again. I thought maybe she’d missed one, but . . . I stopped. My eyes went wide and the dry dusty air of the theatre made them sting, but I was too shocked to blink. There was one sandbag left.
I climbed back down the ladder. I didn’t bother going through the wings – I just shot straight through the red velvet curtains and jumped off the edge of the stage. A few audience members had returned to their seats and looked shocked to see me rocketing up the aisle but I ignored them.
I made it to the top of the theatre and pushed my way into the lobby. Kevin was right behind me. Pete trailed after us too.
Linda stood on the stairs that led up into the balcony; she was making a small speech of thanks. The Beryl’s remaining patrons gathered around her like a flock of exotic birds, all dressed in sequins and feathers, although none of them held a candle to Irinke. But I wasn’t there to see the donors. I looked around the lobby display. There.
I ran to the small display case next to the bathroom and lifted the lid.
Linda’s speech faltered. ‘Alice? What are you doing?’ she asked in a voice full of horror as I lifted the vitrified sandbag out of the case and smashed it to the concrete floor.
Sand and glass sprayed everywhere, coating the concrete floor. The people in the lobby gasped and stepped back, horrified.
‘Alice, have you lost your mind?’ Linda screeched again.
‘Stay back,’ I said and crouched, carefully avoiding a large shard of glass. I ran my fingers delicately through the chunks of glass and unmelted sand.
I had a terrifying moment of doubt, that I’d just smashed part of the lobby display in front of all Linda’s potential patrons for nothing. And then my fingers closed around something cool and smooth. I lifted it slowly, blowing away the bits of sand that clung to the joints of the silver and diamond chain. I blinked. The pictures I’d seen hadn’t started to do the necklace justice. The five diamond-encrusted chains sparkled in the light of the lobby display. Red rubies glinted where the chains joined together. And the teardrop diamonds that ran along the bottom row jingled slightly as I lifted it out of the sand.
I held the large diamond pendant at the base of the necklace to my lips and felt the stone go hot almost at once. It was real.
‘Uh, Numbers?’ Kevin’s elbow in my ribs brought me back into the room. I looked up. Everyone was staring at me. Even my mom.
‘Yeah,’ I said lamely, swallowing hard. Then I took a deep breath and held the Midnight Star up into the light. ‘I found it.’
There was a moment of total silence and then the room broke into thunderous applause. I felt myself turning a shade of red you only see on tomatoes. Kevin nudged me again and I shrugged and did my best to look graceful as I took a bow.
By the time I stood back up, Linda was standing beside me. She must have levitated over the crowd to get there so fast. I handed her the necklace and she took it with shaking hands. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.
‘You’ll want to get it tested, but it’s been hidden in that sandbag since the night of the fire. I think it’s probably the real thing.’
People were snapping photos like it was going o
ut of style. I saw Dad in the corner handing out business cards to everyone he saw. It wasn’t exactly breaking news, but the theft of the Midnight Star in 1927 was a crime story. And Dad wouldn’t be Dad if he let a juicy story like that go to waste.
Mom appeared out of the crowd a moment later, Della at her side. I couldn’t believe Della was letting people see her during the interval, but I guess finding the Midnight Star was important enough that she could break the rules.
‘You did it, honey,’ Mom cried. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I told you she was good at investigating,’ Della said with a satisfied smile.
Kevin nodded his agreement, smiling so wide I could see his molars. Mom gave us each a stern look, but there wasn’t much force behind it.
‘I didn’t get a chance to say thank you for my outfit,’ I said. ‘I really like it.’
Mom beamed, and smoothed the lapel of my jacket. ‘I thought it would suit you.’
The warm glow from earlier burnt a little brighter. Maybe Mom understood me more than I thought.
The lobby lights flashed on and off. Intermission was over. Della gave a startled squeak and bolted through the doors, racing to get backstage before the curtain rose. After all, be it calamity or a miracle, the show must always go on. The lights flashed again, and Mom, Kevin and I went to find our seats to see the rest of the show.
*
Save the Beryl auctioned off the Midnight Star in early spring. It took a while to figure out who the necklace officially belonged to. In the end, a judge decided that, because Franklin Oswald had paid the original owner after the Star originally went missing, it belonged to the Beryl.
The necklace sold to an anonymous buyer in India. For twenty-five million dollars. More than enough to finish the Beryl’s restoration and set up a trust for its care. There was even enough left over to start a free after-school programme to teach the next generation of theatre kids the tricks of the trade.
Benji was the first student to apply. She said she was passionate about learning special effects. I was pretty sure she just wanted to get her hands on some flash powder. But Pete seemed to have her under control.
‘I still think we should have gotten a reward or something,’ Kevin said, when he heard the news. ‘After all we found it. And we caught the Phantom. We’re heroes.’
‘We?’ I looked at him over the top of Fermat’s Last Theorem. We were sitting in my living room waiting for the Larry Sellers Show to come on.
‘Hey, I was there.’
I smirked. ‘Linda offered to give us free tickets for life.’
Kevin didn’t look impressed. He flopped back on the couch and sighed. Outside cold heavy rain drummed against the windows – winter was hanging on for dear life. I shivered and snuggled further into the couch.
The theme music for the Larry Sellers Show started and Kevin shot to the edge of his seat.
Matthew Strange walked onstage. It was weird to see him on the TV after spending time with him in person. He flashed his trademark white smile and the audience practically swooned; so did Kevin. I smirked when I saw the bottle of apple water waiting next to his seat. Something told me the star was happy to be back in Hollywood.
‘I can’t believe you thought he might have been the bad guy,’ Kevin scoffed without taking his eyes off the screen.
‘I never said I thought it was him, I just said I couldn’t rule him out just because he was famous.’
Kevin wasn’t listening.
I sighed and went back to my book.
When the show was over, Kevin turned off the TV with a happy sigh. ‘I still can’t believe I got to meet him. In person.’
I grunted.
‘And we solved another case. And caught an international jewel thief who Interpol has been chasing for years.’
Kevin paused. I could feel him building up to something.
‘There’s just one thing I’m disappointed about,’ he said.
I turned the page and kept reading. I could feel Kevin’s eyes on me, waiting for me to look up. I read two more pages and then put the book down.
‘What are you disappointed about?’ I asked.
Kevin’s grin broadened. ‘I would have really liked to see a ghost.’ He wiggled his eyebrows at me and I shook my head with a laugh.
In a minute, Dad would come back with takeaway from the Vietnamese place up the street and the smell of chilli and lime would fill the house, we’d eat and Dad would tell us the latest developments in the case against Rex Cragthorne.
But right now I was warm and comfortable and I had a chapter to finish.
x plus y plus z equalled perfect.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This is my third book, but my first sequel, and I leant on a lot of people as I undertook this new challenge. To everyone who listened to me worry and fret about getting it right, thank you!
In particular, I’d like to thank my agent, Lindsey Fraser, for her constant support and for helping me find the way to start. Thanks also to the amazing editor chickens Rachel Leyshon and Kesia Lupo for helping me take a lot of events and distil them into an exciting and coherent plot.
I’d also like to thank my wonderful writing group, the KiDS (Dave, Celeste, Noel, Kim, Ariel and Geoff) for reading some very messy early drafts and helping me save the good bits and get rid of the bad and reminding me when my characters disappeared from a scene.
Thank you to my husband, Chris, for listening to me try to untangle plot snarls, being my maths consultant, and bringing me tea and ice cream; to my son Henry for reminding me of the magic of reading; and a very, very special thank you to my daughter Matilda, for waiting to be born until after I finished the first draft!
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Text © Sarah Rubin 2017
First paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2017
This electronic edition published in 2017
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