‘Veronica said to follow the passageway around, and then eventually we’d come to the library,’ murmured Sophie, not daring to raise her voice.
Sure enough, after they had gone some way further, they found themselves standing before a heavy wooden door. They glanced at each other nervously, and then Lil gave the door a tentative push. Rather to their surprise, it swung immediately and silently open.
They were standing on the threshold of an enormous, lofty room. It was filled with books, and yet it was like no library either of them had ever seen before. It had high, arched ceilings, and the walls were panelled in dark wood, elaborately carved, making it look like the hall of a medieval king. Two large chandeliers hung from the ceiling, sending out blurry pools of light, but leaving the corners of the room shrouded in dark shadow. In spite of the summer evening, heavy damask curtains were drawn across the window, blotting out the view of the gardens.
Sophie noticed that there was a golden figure positioned in each of the four corners of the ceiling, each with an arm outstretched: from where the girls stood, the statues seemed to be communicating an obscure kind of warning to stay back.
But it was not only the figures that made Sophie hesitate in the doorway. This room reminded her of the study in which the Baron had once held her prisoner. That had been in another house, far across London, but she remembered it with sudden, sharp vividness: the greenish light, the slippery feeling of the leather sofa, the whispering tick of a hundred clocks. There were clocks here too – looking around, she saw an immense grandfather clock, and a beautiful golden wall-clock, richly enamelled – but that was not all. The room held a treasure trove of extraordinary objects.
Together, they crept forwards. Sophie took in half a dozen different things in a single glance. There was an enormous emerald beetle pinned inside a glass case. Beside it were half a dozen butterflies in a rainbow of colours, their dazzling wings spread to the size of one of her own hands. A fan of ornamental swords and scimitars was displayed upon a panelled wall, arrayed like a peacock’s tail. An exquisite Book of Hours had been set out on a carved wooden stand, as though someone had been examining it only moments ago: its pages were open to a design of a curving serpent that seemed to be devouring its own tail.
‘Look! That door over there must lead to the study!’ exclaimed Lil suddenly, her voice echoing out in the silent room. She tugged on Sophie’s arm.
Sophie forced herself to stop gazing around and followed Lil to the door in the corner. It stood ajar, leading directly into the room that Veronica had described to them: Lord Beaucastle’s study.
As in the library, the study walls were panelled and the furniture was all of heavy wood, but Sophie was struck immediately by a change in atmosphere. This was a conspicuously ordinary room – it could have belonged to any wealthy man. The books on the shelves were bound editions of Dickens that looked as though they had never been opened; the paintings on the wall were dull hunting scenes. There was even a bust of a serious-looking gentleman on a wooden pedestal beside the door. Probably one of Lord Beaucastle’s ancestors, Sophie thought. The room struck such a contrast with the library that she began to feel even more unsettled. There was nothing here that spoke to her of the Baron – no sign of his strange sense of showmanship. It was a room that seemed to have no personality at all.
Although the room was unoccupied, the lamps were lit and the curtains were drawn; a tray with decanters of sherry and port had been set out on a table. Sophie sucked in her breath anxiously – someone might return at any moment.
‘We’d better make this as quick as we can,’ she said.
But Lil had already begun. She was turning over the few items that lay on the desk. Veronica had said that she had seen it covered with documents, but now there was only a telephone, an inkstand, some blotting paper and a box of monogrammed calling cards. The only thing that looked at all unusual was a curious jade paperweight with strange carvings on it. Lil picked it up and turned it over. It was in the shape of a snake, or possibly a sort of dragon.
Sophie began looking through a tray of letters. Her heart was thumping in her chest. If they were to be discovered now, searching the Baron’s own study, she did not even dare to imagine what might happen to them. Her ears were pricked for even the tiniest unfamiliar noise, but all she could hear was the sound of Lil sliding drawers open and shut again.
Her hands were trembling as she leafed through the papers. They seemed to be ordinary correspondence: letters from Beaucastle’s steward about his estate; a note from his banker about some shares. Here and there was something scribbled in the angular, confident handwriting that she took to be the Baron’s own, but nothing in the least bit unusual or incriminating.
‘There’s nothing here,’ whispered Lil, sliding a drawer shut.
‘Nor here either,’ murmured Sophie in disappointment. ‘It’s all perfectly respectable. Invitations, calling cards . . . nothing at all out of the common way.’
‘Wait – what’s this?’ said Lil. From the drawer, she took out a thick document and handed it to Sophie. The words SOUTH RIDGE were printed across the front of it in bold letters.
‘It must be one of Veronica’s father’s mines,’ said Sophie. She opened the report and flicked through. It was a report, detailing locations, depths, yields. It was certainly strange that Lord Beaucastle should have this information. It seemed cold and calculating to have so meticulously researched the property of his bride-to-be and her family, but there was nothing actually wrong about it.
She was still looking at it curiously a few moments later, when Lil closed the last drawer in exasperation. ‘There’s nothing else here,’ she said. ‘It’s all just . . . ordinary. ’
Sophie looked up from the report, her brow furrowed. ‘We should have known he would be too clever to leave anything where it could be easily found,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘There must be somewhere else he keeps his documents – somewhere secret, like that old derelict house.’
‘So what now?’ asked Lil.
‘I don’t really know,’ sighed Sophie. She took off her hat for a moment, and wiped her forehead, feeling suddenly weary and desperately disappointed. After all their efforts to get here, all their promises to help Veronica, it was unbearable that they would be leaving empty-handed – without the evidence they had been so confident of finding.
‘There must be something here,’ said Lil stoutly. ‘Surely there must!’
Sophie went over to the window, and looked out through the gap in the curtains into the growing darkness. It was awful to think that Billy and the others were out there in the garden, waiting for them hopefully – and all for nothing. Behind her, she was conscious of Lil still moving up and down, examining books on the bookshelves and peering behind paintings, almost as if she expected some clue to be hidden behind them, as in one of Billy’s detective stories. But in her impatience, Lil became careless: she brushed against a vase and it tottered alarmingly. She lunged to catch it, but in doing so knocked against the wall, making the oil paintings rattle.
Sophie spun around, a warning on her lips, but the words froze. As Lil bumped the wall, something extraordinary happened. The wall – the whole wall – had actually nudged backwards. It’s not a wall at all, Sophie realised in astonishment. In fact it was a hinged partition, separating the front part of the study, with its calling cards and sherry decanters, from another space altogether.
Together they pushed the partition back a little further. Beyond was a large room, furnished in an entirely different style again. This was in every sense a practical, working space, full of the signs of purposeful activity. A solid workbench stood in the centre, set with a microscope, a set of brass weighing scales, a sheaf of documents, glass flasks, and a row of test tubes in a rack. There were no oil paintings here: instead, the walls were covered with blueprints and diagrams. A writing desk, cluttered with maps and papers, stood beside a set of shelves crammed with books – no gilt-edged, leather-bound novels now, but
row after row of hefty reference books and ledgers.
There was a furtive crackle in the air – the room seemed heavy with secrets. The slightly burnt, metallic, chalk-dust smell made Sophie feel a little dizzy. ‘It’s not just a secret room,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a secret laboratory .’
In even more of a hurry now, they squeezed through into the hidden room and resumed their search. Lil raced towards the writing desk, whilst Sophie turned to the documents lying on the workbench. They seemed to be plans of some kind. The jumble of letters and numbers she encountered were as unreadable as hieroglyphs to her, and yet she couldn’t help but examine them closely. When they had last encountered him, the Baron had been working with secret codes – what was his new preoccupation? Could he really be planning to use strange minerals from Veronica’s father’s mines to create some sort of new and deadly weapon?
She turned to a second stack of papers – and to her surprise, she found that instead of more hieroglyphs, she had in her hands a stash of birth certificates, marriage certificates and property deeds. They belonged to a whole series of different people, she saw, her brow furrowing.
‘Look!’ hissed Lil suddenly, interrupting her. ‘I’ve found his appointment book!’
She came hurrying over with a black, leather-bound volume, and together they bent their heads eagerly over the pages. At first, they saw nothing but notes about balls and dinners, calls to pay and appointments at the bank, but after they had looked through several pages, Lil pointed to something. The word Shoreditch was written against a Tuesday, and underscored twice. A week later, on a Thursday, it was Whitechapel .
‘Places in the East End!’ she whispered excitedly.
‘It’s still not enough,’ said Sophie, shaking her head. ‘He could have any reason to be there – legitimate business, or some sort of charitable work.’
But even as she was speaking, an entry caught her eye. It was recent – the Wednesday just passed.
‘I say,’ said Lil, staring at the 7.00 p.m. appointment. ‘What a strange name.’ She looked up at Sophie. ‘You don’t think it could be . . .’
‘A code !’ finished Sophie. She thought again of the Baron’s fascination with codes and ciphers, and the way he had kept all his most critical communications secret. ‘If it’s in code, it must be something important! But how do we work it out?’
Lil stared at the page for several moments, and then back at Sophie. ‘You know how to work it out, silly,’ she said suddenly. ‘It’s easy. It’s the code that I used when I wrote the note about your birthday tea .’
Sophie gaped back at her. ‘But – it can’t be!’ she exclaimed.
‘It is!’ said Lil, her eyes growing wider by the second. ‘Look at it!’
Sophie tried to remember how the code had worked. You read every second letter starting with the first, she recalled – and when you came to the end, you started again. ‘M – T – L – S,’ she began. ‘But that doesn’t make any sense at all!’
Lil shook her head vigorously. ‘It isn’t every second letter this time. It’s every third letter. Look!’
She pointed to the letters as she spoke. ‘M – I – S – S – E – M – and now we’ve run out of letters, so we go back to the beginning again – I – L –’
‘Miss Emily Montague, ’ breathed Sophie. ‘And Wednesday is when she went missing!’
‘It’s proof !’ burst out Lil, forgetting to whisper now. ‘It’s proof that he killed her!’
For a long moment, they stood silently staring at the appointment book, but then Sophie shook her head, as if to snap herself out of her thoughts. ‘This is important – we should take it,’ she said. ‘But we still need more. Something that proves without question Beaucastle’s connection with the East End and the Baron’s Boys.’
‘What about account books?’ suggested Lil. ‘Look – there’s a whole row of them here.’
She took one from the shelf and handed it to Sophie. It was filled out in careful handwriting that did not match the scrawl in the appointment book. Here and there she caught sight of some of the addresses: Whitechapel Road; High Street, Shadwell.
‘I think this might do it!’ she exclaimed in excitement. ‘Let’s take it! And a couple more – there are so many that he mightn’t notice these are missing.’
Lil grabbed two more books from the shelf, and then they swiftly slipped out of the secret laboratory and back into the study.
Outside, in the grounds of Lord Beaucastle’s mansion, tempers were beginning to fray. It seemed like a very long time since they had left the boat, and there was little for them to do but watch and wait in the shadowy gardens. There was no one in sight. They could hear a trickle of music from the brightly lit house, and see the distant comings and goings of carriages and motors, but in the safety of the trees, all was dark and silent. After an hour or two, everyone was becoming a little snappish when at last Lil’s signal – three owl hoots – came quavering through the darkness.
Joe shook his head: ‘I hope no one else heard that,’ he murmured. ‘It sounds more like someone being strangled than anything else.’
‘You stay here on watch,’ said Billy to Mei and Song. ‘If you see anyone coming, do the owl hoot. We’ll get the evidence and meet you back here.’
Joe and Billy slipped cautiously through the dark towards the East Tower. The call came again, but even without it, it would have been easy enough for them to find the window at the base of the tower. Yellow light was spilling out on to the grass.
‘Did you find anything?’ Billy whispered, as soon as he caught sight of Sophie and Lil.
Suddenly everyone was talking at once in low, excited voices:
‘Did you get here safely?’
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘Are Mei and Song all right?’
‘Here’s his appointment book. And these are some of his accounts – they’ve got lots of East End places listed.’ Sophie passed the books through the window to Billy, who took them excitedly.
‘Read a bit out,’ suggested Joe.
Billy opened one and, squinting in the light that came from the window, began to look down the page: ‘There’s a list of names,’ he reported. ‘Payments made, payments received. Let’s see . . . Arthur Smith, 110a Whitechapel Road, £10 6s 2d. Or Mrs O’Grady, High Street, Shadwell, £5 10s. ’
‘Ma O’Grady!’ exclaimed Joe in excitement. ‘She runs a gaming house down by the docks. That’s one of the Baron’s places, for sure.’
‘Mr George Black 15s . . . Mr James Lee, 12 Hollywell Street, 14s 6d. ’
‘James Lee – that’s Jem!’ exclaimed Joe, forgetting to whisper in his astonishment. ‘The fellow I used to work for – leader of the Baron’s Boys. This is it – this is the stuff you need!’
They grinned at each other in delight. ‘We’ve done it – we’ve really done it!’ squealed Lil.
‘But now you have to get them away from here – and quickly,’ said Sophie.
‘We will,’ said Billy. ‘But why don’t you come with us? Don’t risk going back to the party.’
Lil looked tempted, but then Sophie shook her head. ‘No – we have to let Veronica know we’ve got the evidence, remember?’
‘And don’t forget about Phyllis and Mary – and Mr Pendleton,’ remembered Lil, with a giggle. ‘They’ll be wondering what happened to us.’
‘Keep those safe overnight,’ said Sophie to Billy and Joe. ‘Somewhere under lock and key, if you can. Then let’s meet at Sinclair’s first thing tomorrow and decide what to do next.’
The boys nodded seriously, and Sophie felt a wave of relief sweeping over her. All they had to do now was go back to the party, say goodbye to Veronica and the others, and then go home, as though they were ordinary guests. Even if a servant glimpsed them in the passageway, it would be easy to say that they had merely got lost. She felt a thrill of pride to think that they had actually done it – they had actually managed to get the evidence that McDermott and Scotland Yard could u
se to prove the Baron’s real identity, once and for all.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said suddenly, an idea striking her. ‘Let me fetch some of those papers I saw as well. They might be important – and the more evidence we have the better.’
She slipped quickly back into the secret room and pulled out a few sheets from the sheaf of scientific papers she had seen on the workbench. She might not be able to make head or tail of them, but perhaps someone would – and they might turn out to be important. She folded them up and stuffed them in her pocket, and then hurried back, closing the partition behind her.
Meanwhile, Lil was scrutinising the bust that stood beside the door to the study. ‘I say – do you think this is meant to be Beaucastle himself ? It doesn’t look much like him,’ she said, prodding its nose disrespectfully.
But Sophie did not hear her. As she picked up her hat from where she had left it on the study desk, her gaze fell on an old photograph that stood in a carved wooden frame, and suddenly all her lightness swept away.
The picture was of two military gentlemen, smartly attired in dress uniforms hung with medals, and with swords at their sides, standing with a young lady dressed in a light-coloured gown in the fashion of fifteen or twenty years ago, complete with large, and what must then have been very stylish, puffed sleeves. All three were smiling at the camera. Although much younger, it was quite clear that the man in the centre was Lord Beaucastle. But it was not the Baron that made Sophie stop and stare. To her disbelief, she saw that the man at his side was her papa. What was more, the young woman who stood on his other side was her mother.
Her heart somersaulted painfully in her chest.
‘Lil –’ she said urgently.
But the voice that replied was not Lil’s.
‘Good evening, Miss Taylor,’ said a horribly familiar voice. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. Still playing at being the Lady Detective, I see?’
The Mystery of the Jewelled Moth Page 18
