Ester and Klaus had left their coats behind. Max searched the pockets. Klaus’s were no use, and Ester’s had a lot of sticky pear drops. Max was so close, but still so infuriatingly far. She tried putting her chin on her hands to channel Sister Marguerite, and she thought.
If she had a key like that, she would want to keep it with her at all times. Not just in a coat or a skirt or anything, that you had to take on and off. It might, she thought glumly, be with Ester right now. Probably on a chain round her neck – although, no, Max would have seen it nestled among her fabulous necklaces.
There was a click-clicking noise from the corridor, and Max tensed – but it was just a grumble from the train, not a tapping stick. The stick was still here, anyway, Max remembered. Ester must really have been scared, to race off without it; she always had that stick with her.
And then, half a second later, the penny dropped.
Max grabbed the stick and twisted at the silver top. Like a dream, it turned, then eased away from the wood. Peeking out from the bottom of the silver was something long, thin, and gold, with little ridges along the edge. Max slid it out of its hiding hole. A tiny key.
Heart hammering, Max put the key in the lock, turned it, and opened the other half of Ester Rosenkrantz’s suitcase. It was stuffed full of jewels.
Rubies and sapphires and diamonds. Emeralds and opals. Jade and topaz and musgravite. Amber and onyx. They glittered under the train’s electric lights. They winked and shimmered. They were blindingly beautiful.
And that is why Max didn’t see Ester and Klaus standing in the doorway, until Ester began to bellow at the top of her appalling lungs.
The bellowing brought the train guard, a man with a face as heavy and folded as a bulldog’s, who shook all his folds in outrage at Max. Max spoke neither Romanian nor Turkish, so she couldn’t explain that the jewels she appeared to be stealing were, in all likelihood, stolen goods already. Even if she could explain, she was not sure that this particular guard would take any notice. The head shaking was keeping him very busy, and he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Max tried to scrabble through the jewels and find the tiny heartbreak diamond, but that only resulted in a lot more yelling, and the guard pulling her off the case and down the corridor.
So that is how she ended up locked in the guard’s carriage, while the guard phoned somebody about her, glaring at her and wobbling his face about in disgust.
The guard’s carriage was dingy and uncomfortable, and it was hard being told off so unfairly, but as Max’s heart finally started to slow down it occurred to her that this might not be so bad. She was safe, here, from any pushing-off-train business. She had done it – she had found a secret stash of jewels, smuggled in a hidden compartment and guarded by a member of the shadowy Die Eiserne Hand, and if that didn’t turn out to hold the heartbreak diamond she would eat her own knitted bobble hat. They would have to find someone who could speak French eventually, and if she was being handed in as a thief, then she would meet exactly the right people to arrest Ester and Klaus and find Marguerite. When they looked in that case, which the guard had insisted on keeping safe in his room, then they would know that she was telling the truth. She just had to wait.
So her tired brain gave in for the day, and she settled into the hard chair that she had been given, leaned against the window, and shut her eyes.
It was a long, long night. The guard played games of backgammon with himself most of the time, and he kept shaking his head sadly and sighing, so presumably he was losing. The pale electric light was kept on, and the seat was uncomfortable. Max could only doze in fits. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she was awake or dreaming. Was Klaus really at the door, looking wide-eyed and worried at her? Was Celeste really there, shouting furiously at the guard? Was her mother really there, telling her not to ruin her appetite for dinner?
Questions wandered sleepily around her brain, although she was no longer trying to answer them. What were all the other jewels in that suitcase? Was Celeste Celeste, or was she Suzanne – and why had she followed Ester and Klaus? And then there was Rupert – why had he been pushed, and what was the secret behind his phone call, and his strangely empty bag? Ester must be the thief, Max was sure of it, but there were still a lot of things that she didn’t understand.
If she had understood those things, she might not have been quite so relieved when dawn began to break, and brought with it a shadowy skyline of domes and tower blocks and minarets, and the Bosfor delivered her at last to her final destination:
Istanbul.
The sky was a pale yellow, and hung with mist. Max watched it brighten in peace. It was beautiful. Then the station came into sight, and the fuss began.
The train guard had moved on from shaking his head, and now started jerking it instead, to show Max that she was to get up and follow him. Max tried the word “breakfast”, but it got no response. So she sighed, wound her scarves round herself tightly, and followed.
The guard hurried her along at high speed. She craned around as they left, but didn’t see Ester, Klaus, or Celeste-or-Suzanne – it would have been comforting, somehow, to see a face she knew. She missed Marguerite, and she even missed the silly smile of Rupert Nobes.
She had no time to take in Sirkeci station. All she had was an impression of pink and white, and beautiful round glass windows; and then she was being taken through a small door, and up and down stairs, and the noise of the crowds got fainter and fainter.
The guard opened a door, which led to a small dim room. He shook his bulldog folds in greeting at the figure inside, glared at Max once more for luck, and plodded away again to get on with glaring at his next passengers.
The figure in the room nodded at Max, like an egg wobbling on a spoon. Max was finally looking at a familiar face.
“Commandant Le Goff!”
“Good morning. Maximilienne, isn’t it? We received a call as soon as the guard found it in the luggage. I was flown over at once.” He said this in an aggrieved tone, as if it was all rather tiresome and unfair.
It made Max feel a bit giddy to think that all those miles, all those Hungarian fields and Romanian forests and Bulgarian valleys, could be skipped over in a few hours on an aeroplane. All she could think of to say was “Hello”, which seemed to fall a bit short.
“So,” Le Goff said, with a saintly effort to take an interest, “we finally found a Phantom.”
Max could have cried with relief. “Yes!” she said, beaming.
“I wouldn’t look so pleased, Max,” said Le Goff, with a sigh. “It’s extremely serious. Take a seat, please.”
Max thought that this was rather joyless of him, but she sat down and worked at straightening her face. Then she remembered the questions she had to ask, and she didn’t have to work at it any more. “Do you know they got Sister Marguerite?” she asked. “Are you looking for her?”
Commandant Le Goff had a go at looking like a man who knows what’s going on, for about three seconds. Then he scratched his head, and said, “Do I know that who got who?”
“Ester and Klaus! They got my friend. The nun. She didn’t get on to the Bosfor.”
“Ah, yes. Your accomplice,” said Le Goff. “I was wondering where she’d got to. Yes, we’ll certainly be looking for her.”
Accomplice?
“Hang on,” said Max, “who do you think stole the diamond?”
“We were hoping,” replied Le Goff, “that you would tell us.”
“Ester Rosenkrantz!”
Commandant Le Goff frowned. “Don’t be difficult, Max.” He had the pained face of a man who had already dealt with Ester Rosenkrantz, and had absolutely no interest in dealing with her again unless it was entirely necessary. “Come on now. You’re only a child. You’ll be in much less trouble if you tell us what you know.”
“But why am I in trouble?”
At last Commandant Le Goff understood that they were not on the same page. He sighed.
“Look, Max, we know you were the
smuggler. The guard searched your things last night.” He gestured to a table in the corner of the room. “And I am asking you, nicely, who you were working with. But you are testing my patience.”
Max looked at the table. Her brown case was there, opened up, and next to it was the bobble hat from Great-Aunt Elodie. Except that it wasn’t a bobble hat any more – the bobble had been unravelled, leaving a surprisingly small heap of wool. And on top of that heap sat a sparkling red stone, not more than two inches wide, with a white streak across the middle.
“Not the wimple,” said Le Goff, “but the bobble hat. You two and your stupid sense of humour! Well, the joke’s over, Maximilienne.”
“There’s been some mistake,” said Max, hardly able to take it in. “That hat is from my great-aunt. I have her letter to prove it.”
… except, she realized, that she didn’t. Her letter was at 21 Téli Út with Istvan Marek. Or, more likely, in a bin somewhere in Hungary.
How had the diamond got into her hat? Or – had it been there all along? Max remembered the newspaper article: it is not known when the real diamond was removed. Somebody could have slipped it in before she even left – before she even got the parcel.
“My great-aunt,” she repeated faintly. “You should ask her. Elodie Morel. She can tell you. It was just a hat.”
Le Goff just raised an eyebrow about half a centimetre, before realizing that was tiring and putting it back down again. “Madame Morel is on her way,” he said. “We phoned the number on your luggage label and explained the situation. In the meantime, Max, I suggest you give some thought to cooperating.”
There was a long silence, as Max tried to make sense of what was happening. The first early cars grumbled below. The room was icily cold, and Max was hungry: it was difficult to think straight.
“But what about Ester’s case?” she managed at last. “All those jewels? And Klaus? He was there as security…”
Le Goff had started wearily filling out a form, and didn’t look up, but recited flatly: “Madame Rosenkrantz took the decision to remove her jewels from Fort Vaults after the incident with the masked robbers, the week before the Phantom theft was discovered. She was, I believe, hoping to sell a few, and deposit the others with a security firm in Turkey, who are currently thought to be the best in the world. Naturally, she was concerned for their security; but she didn’t want to draw attention to their presence by sending them under official protection. So she brought them herself, with the security fellow incognito.”
It had been there in the article, Max remembered: many are taking steps to move their most valuable jewels to new secret locations. And she had known that Ester stored her jewels at Fort; Marguerite had said so. She had been so close – she was right that Klaus was security, and right that Ester was hiding diamonds – but she had imagined all the wrong reasons. No wonder Ester had been so angry when Klaus had left the suitcase unguarded in the lockers, back at the Budapest baths.
There was a knock on the door, so gentle it was almost a scrabble. They both looked towards the scrabble-knock, unsure if it had really been a knock at all, or just a noisy bit of air. Then a voice like tiny bells said, “Commandant?” – and air doesn’t do that. So Commandant Le Goff opened the door.
The woman who swept in was covered in lace and jewels. Her small, pointy face was set in a permanent half smile, and her bright little eyes darted constantly about the room. She wore a lot of rouge, and reminded Max forcefully of the pink sugar mice that were always in the window of a sweet shop near her school.
“Maximilienne! My, how like your maman you are!” she trilled, ignoring Le Goff entirely. “Now, what is going on, my dear? These silly policemen seem to think you have a diamond.” And she laughed – like glasses chinking, like icicles falling, like pixies crying.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Max. “It was in the hat you sent me.”
Le Goff, his egg-face full of huff over the “silly policemen” comment, indicated the table. “You are familiar with this bobble hat, madame?”
Great-Aunt Elodie looked at the hat. She darted her eyes to Max, Le Goff, the hat again, the window, Le Goff, Max, the hat – all in a speedy second – and blinked innocently.
“No,” she said.
Max found, to her surprise, that she was standing. “That is not TRUE!” she yelled. “You sent me that hat. And Marguerite is missing, Commandant, and somebody has to help. And Rupert was pushed off a train, and Celeste is actually called Suzanne, and…” Come on, Max scolded herself. Make sense.
“Commandant,” said Great-Aunt Elodie. She placed a gloved paw on Le Goff’s arm. “My great-niece is obviously distressed. May I have some time alone with her?”
She had a way of asking a question that wasn’t really asking. Le Goff was nodding before she had even finished the sentence. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll go and inform Madame Rosenkrantz of developments here. I’ll have to lock the door, I’m afraid.” He started towards the door, remembered something, and turned back to pocket the diamond and take it with him. Great-Aunt Elodie’s eyes followed every movement.
The door shut with a heavy bang.
Max’s great-aunt settled herself on the chair and looked up at Max. She made her voice even tinier and softer, so that it wouldn’t carry through the door.
“We set everything up perfectly,” she said. “You had one simple little thing to do, my dear. How precisely did you make such a mess of it?”
Max felt a bit winded. Somehow she had not quite believed, until her great-aunt spoke, that the sugary old lady had done this on purpose. She had been willing it to be some terrible mistake. But now that Great-Aunt Elodie had dropped the small smile, and clenched her gloved paws in her lap, Max suddenly found it all too easy to believe.
“So this was all you! You’re behind the Phantoms?” Max didn’t think she had ever loathed anybody this much. “Where’s Marguerite?”
For the benefit of Le Goff’s retreating ears, Great-Aunt Elodie said loudly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, my dear. Do calm down.” Then her voice dropped back to its silky murmur – like shadows humming, like snails sharing secrets. “I have no idea, my dear, and I don’t care. Suzanne took care of her, I presume. She is very efficient at handling people who get in the way.”
Suzanne! So she was in league with Max’s great-aunt! It must have been her, then, who had been “efficient” with Rupert, when he wouldn’t leave her alone. Max struggled to hold everything straight in her head. “So she is Suzanne?” she said. “Not Celeste Le Blanc?”
Great-Aunt Elodie’s eyes fixed on Max for a full half-second before darting off again. “I don’t know why you know that name, Maximilienne. You seem to be a meddler. I wrote letters to Celeste Le Blanc, but she doesn’t exist. The letters were addressed to an abandoned house. That way, even if anyone suspected that Suzanne was one of us, they still wouldn’t find our letters. I prefer letters to phone calls after the fiasco with the tiara, but we still have to be very careful.”
“Then how did Suzanne get…” Max began – and then she suddenly remembered Klaus’s voice: Suzanne Leroy, works at the post office… Of course! If Suzanne worked at the post office, then she didn’t need to wait for the letters to arrive. She had been able to take them before they were even delivered.
Great-Aunt Elodie ignored the half question. She seemed to be speaking to herself now, as much as Max. “Celeste is quite a new creation. We had to switch addresses and names when we found our old route was being tampered with,” she said, pouting, as if this had been very unfair. “I suppose that was your precious Marguerite. Anyway, after we discovered that, we could hardly risk Suzanne smuggling the diamond herself. Even if she changed trains, the snoop might follow her – we didn’t know how much they knew about us. We needed to change our plan invisibly, so that they wouldn’t even realize we had changed it.”
“Ideally, we needed a new smuggler – someone totally unconnected, and totally above suspicion. Which is diff
icult, my dear.” She sighed sweetly at the unfairness of her life. “So, I tried calling your parents. I knew they would never deign to come themselves, but if they sent one of the children, that would be perfect. Nobody would never expect a child.”
“I wasn’t very hopeful, my dear, knowing your family. I was up all night dreaming up other schemes. But then they sent you – the youngest! The perfect smuggler. So I sent a hat, and all Suzanne had to do was open it up at the post office, add the bobble and send it on its way.
“It was all set up perfectly,” she said. Her little hands clenched in their gloves with frustration. “Suzanne’s theft went flawlessly, she slipped it in the bobble without any trouble, and I reminded your dear mother to make absolutely sure you packed the hat. All you had to do was get from A to B, while Suzanne kept an eye out. I didn’t think you’d be a meddler. None of the rest of your family are.”
“The photograph,” said Max, “That you sent to Cel – to Suzanne. It was of me, wasn’t it?”
Great-Aunt Elodie inclined her head once: yes. “One of the photos that your dear mother so thoughtfully sends me every Christmas.”
“M. For Elodie Morel,” murmured Max, talking to herself now. Take great care, my dear! Never has a girl been more precious. The girl in the letter wasn’t Suzanne. It was her, Max.
No wonder Suzanne had seemed so angry when Max had nearly left her case behind on the Kálmán Imre. All that time she spent standing around in train corridors, she had been keeping watch on Max’s car. And she hadn’t been following Ester and Klaus at all, that day in Budapest – she had been following Max. Following the heartbreak diamond.
Great-Aunt Elodie Morel and Max Morel both sat silently, both with brains whirring, both trying to plan their next steps – more alike than Max knew or would want to admit. The room was very still and quiet. Nothing rattled or chugged or swayed. Max wished she was still on a train somewhere, speeding off into possibilities: she seemed to have hit a dead end.
The Secret of the Night Train Page 9
