The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection

by Lauren Child

  Clancy had been moved from intensive care, but where had they taken him? Well, happily not to the LLG – the lower-lower-ground floor level – because that was the morgue. She shivered, for had it not been for her careful study of deadly snakes then the morgue was where Clancy Crew might certainly have wound up. The lower-lower-ground floor was the place to avoid – a place for the dead, for crypts and catacombs.

  Crypts.

  Catacombs.

  And just like that it struck her.

  What if the location she and Blacker had been looking for was under the ground?

  What if she was actually trying to find a building that was no longer there?

  Or at least a building that one could no longer see …

  She thought about the map of old Twinford her father had found for Mrs Digby, now framed and up on the housekeeper’s wall. Ruby remembered her words … ‘Seems every day now they go knocking an old building down, or running a road through it … If it weren’t for the place names, you wouldn’t have a blind clue what used to be there.’

  She thought about the slogan on the back of the Taste Twister labels. FOUR GREAT TASTES SINCE 1922. The four had been significant – a 4-dimensional cube was used to encode the locations. The tastes had been significant – that was how the coordinates were communicated.

  So why shouldn’t the 1922 be important too?

  She remembered on her community service duty lifting up that tyre and discovering the plaque to mark the site of the old law courts.

  She thought of the road running under the subway line, the vacant lot just next to the intersection, the lot that had become a trash heap … She and Blacker had concluded there was nothing there. But what if they hadn’t looked hard enough? What if they had needed to dig?

  What if we were looking at the wrong map? thought Ruby.

  ‘Which floor?’

  Ruby looked up at the woman, and was pulled out of her thoughts.

  ‘Getting out,’ she said, as she dodged through the closing doors. She needed to get home fast. She grabbed a passing nurse.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she asked, ‘would you be able to give this to Clancy Crew? He’s the kid recovering from the snake bite.’

  ‘We have several boys recovering from snake bites,’ said the nurse. ‘There’s an epidemic in Twinford.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Ruby. ‘Well, this kid has an ambassador for a dad, and if you’ll pardon me for saying it, this dad likes everyone to know it.’

  The nurse gave her a look of weary recognition. ‘Sure, I know the one.’ She took Ruby’s gift. ‘Who shall I say it’s from?’

  ‘He’ll know,’ said Ruby, ‘just tell him I had to be somewhere, but I’ll be back before you can say “painkillers”.’

  Ruby arrived home to find the house empty – even Bug was absent. There was an envelope lying on the kitchen table and inside it was the watch. The note that came with it simply said:

  Fixed. P.S. Keep clear of dribbling infants.

  She ran down to Mrs Digby’s apartment, half expecting to find the old lady sitting on the settee watching one of her early evening shows, but the apartment was quiet.

  But no matter, it was the map she wanted to see. It was freshly framed and newly fixed to the kitchenette wall just by the table. Ruby stood right up close and searched for the spot where Numeral Street crossed Pythagoras, and there she saw no vacant lot, no elevated subway line but instead the Sacred Heart Cathedral. Where the trash was now piled was where the church steps had once been.

  Bingo.

  So the cathedral had been knocked down when they extended the subway line, which was maybe in the late 1940s or early 50s … anyway, it was gone. It had been razed to the ground …

  Or at least, thought Ruby, from the ground’s surface.

  She sprinted back upstairs to her father’s study and located a book on Twinford history. She flipped through the pages looking for a photograph of anything that looked like a church, and after a few minutes, there it was. Sacred Heart Cathedral. Spanish revival style. Sure enough, it had been demolished in 1947 to make way for the elevated subway.

  She glanced through the few paragraphs of text until something caught her eye:

  ‘The cathedral was one of the few in America to possess an underground crypt in the medieval European style, where important Twinfordites were often buried in the early decades of the town’s history. Notable residents interred here included …’

  It went on, but nothing more that was relevant. Still, thought Ruby, what if the crypt remains? What if they only destroyed the part above the ground?

  Those important Twinfordites might very possibly still be there. The crypt would be a good reason for not running a subway tunnel underground – it would have disturbed the dead. Instead the elevated track swooped over the roads, the roads beneath burying the crypt below.

  Ruby pressed the radio transmitter on the watch, hoping for Blacker to pick up.

  He didn’t, either his transmitter was off or he was busy. Ruby’s finger hovered over the emergency button, but she remembered how Holbrook had been scolded by Delaware for being a bit trigger happy with the emergency button and immediately thought better of it. Don’t use the emergency button unless there is a life-or-death situation in progress.

  So instead she called through to reception.

  ‘Agent Redfort, convey your message,’ said Buzz.

  ‘I’m trying to contact Blacker, his transmitter is off,’ said Ruby.

  ‘He’s in a briefing,’ she said.

  ‘It’s important,’ said Ruby.

  ‘He’s in a briefing,’ repeated Buzz.

  ‘It’s urgent,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Please hold the line, I’ll phone through to the briefing room,’ said Buzz.

  No more than fifteen seconds later and: ‘I have Agent Blacker for you.’

  BLACKER: Is there a problem Ruby?

  Ruby could hear voices in the background; LB she thought, maybe Hitch.

  RUBY: Am I interrupting?

  BLACKER: It’s OK, how can I help?

  RUBY: I think I have figured it out.

  BLACKER: You have?

  RUBY: It’s exactly where we thought it was, only impossible to see.

  BLACKER: How’s that?

  RUBY: It has to do with 1922.

  BLACKER: Meaning?

  RUBY: It’s cryptic – that’s a joke by the way.

  BLACKER: I’m not sure I’m with you.

  RUBY: You’ll need an old map of Twinford … do you want me to explain over the airwaves?

  BLACKER: No, come in to HQ.

  RUBY: OK, I’ll be in as soon as.

  Pause.

  RUBY: Do you mind if I grab a snack first? I’m actually starving.

  BLACKER: Sure, take your time, I’ll be in the coding room.

  RUBY: I won’t be long.

  Ruby felt better having spoken to Blacker. She poured herself a glass of banana milk, dropped some bread in the toaster and thought about what it was they might be about to discover.

  When she heard the ping of the toaster, she reached around grabbed the toast and very nearly missed what it was trying to tell her.

  Change of plan

  Meet me at the

  Sacred Heart Crypt

  P.S. I got the joke!

  She was surprised but happily so: this was a sign that things were looking up for her and her career at Spectrum. She was a trusted member of the team. In the past, Spectrum had gone out of their way to ensure she was kept out of the action (mostly unsuccessfully). She grabbed her raincoat and the map with the location area outlined in red, not that she needed a map, she knew exactly where she was going. She checked that her watch was on her wrist, even though she knew it was; she checked her hair for the fly barrette – she was taking no chances this time – and then she headed on out into the rain.

  She took the subway downtown, changing at Acacia Park onto the College Town line and travelling on to Cathedral Avenue. She had never bef
ore considered why this station might be named ‘Cathedral’, but now of course she knew.

  She took the steep steps down from the station to the sidewalk and then walked towards the section of busy road that crisscrossed underneath the elevated tracks. There, just to the left, was a paved area where the steps to the cathedral had once been – the traffic was heavy, it being late rush hour now, and it took a minute to get there. When she reached it there was still very little to see, just a whole lot of trash, mounded up, leaves blown in and trapped there, spinning in the wind. She set about lifting the garbage, searching under it until, beneath a Dime a Dozen shopping cart, was revealed a grate about the size of a very small door, and next to it a tarnished and grimy plaque which read: SITE OF THE SACRED HEART CATHEDRAL.

  There was no sign of Blacker so she tried him via the watch, but the signal came back blocked.

  So she continued to wait. The traffic was beginning to ease, rush hour almost over, she looked at her watch again. Where are you Blacker?

  She had been there an hour now. What should she do? Continue to wait? She looked at the grate and bent down to see if it was secured. It had a padlock but when she held it in her hand it fell apart.

  That was strange.

  She looked at her watch and remembered the message her colleague had sent.

  Meet me at the Sacred Heart Crypt

  The penny dropped.

  Ruby, you bozo, he’s down there already!

  She heaved the grate up, looked around her, saw no sign of anyone lurking in the shadows, could feel no eyes on her, no one watching, so she ducked down into the dark, pulling the grate closed after her.

  She shivered. Not because it was cold, though it was. She shivered because although when she looked up through the bars she could still see light, she was aware that beyond her there would be nothing but black.

  She steadied herself, calming her breathing, then stared ahead into the pitch darkness. Her worst fear in reality was not being ostracised by all her friends and fellow pupils as she had claimed to Hitch. It was in fact a fear of being trapped and lost in the darkness of what lay underground.

  To be buried alive was Ruby’s worst fear.

  She called out Blacker’s name, her voice a dull echo in the dank chamber.

  No one was down here – well, no one except for the long-dead, and she wasn’t a bit scared of them.

  But where was Blacker?

  Where Blacker was, was back in the coding room waiting for Ruby.

  He’d told her to take her time but still, I mean, how long did it take to grab a snack?

  He kept looking at his wrist but he’d mislaid his watch somewhere between here and the canteen. He’d put an announcement out, but so far no one had handed it in. He looked at the huge map of Twinford displayed on the light-board and the notes taped next to it.

  The Little Seven Grocers, the Bodice Ripper movie museum, the music school, and … the fourth one had slipped from the wall, it was lying on top of Ruby’s book, Pick Your Poison, with the big red apple shiny on the cover. He took the note in his hand and looked up at the wall clock.

  Rube, he thought, you’re a great kid, but do you ever look at a watch?

  Ruby crept through the passageways, past unseen marble plaques carved with the names of the dead.

  As she wound her way through, so the passageways widened, the arched ceilings became higher, and soon she thought she could see light.

  She had almost reached what she assumed must be the centre, the main part of the crypt where all the passageways met and the great and good of Twinford would be lying in their solid stone tombs. The light she could see came from beyond one of the arches and, curious, she walked towards it.

  Blacker was flicking through the book. He stopped when he arrived at the well-thumbed chapter on transdermal poisoning, then he leafed past the frogs and the plants until he reached the bride’s dress. Smart of Ruby to have figured that out, he thought. He turned the page, to an illustration of Snow White.

  ‘A fairy tale in which three objects are laced with poison in order that they might kill a young girl,’ said the text underneath the illustration.

  ‘A comb, a bodice, an apple.’

  There was a second illustration of the wicked queen looking into her magic mirror, her face aghast as Snow White’s reflection stared back at her. The text underneath read, ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’

  He paused.

  The fourth note was in his hand, written on it were the words:

  The Twinford Mirror building …

  He looked to the wall:

  The Little Seven Grocers, the Bodice Ripper movie museum, the music school …

  Before it was a music school it was a factory, the comb factory. A bodice, a comb, a mirror and the Little Seven … like the seven dwarves … was it just a coincidence?

  His eyes flicked back to the book, the illustration of Snow White with her black hair and neat white teeth. She looked a lot like the kid on the Taste Twister bottle, who looked a little bit like another kid he knew.

  His heart was beginning to quicken – what had she said, something about 1922, some joke about it being cryptic? How what they had been looking for had been there all the time. He picked up the phone and dialled through to the records department.

  ‘Agent Blacker here, I wonder if you could look something up for me. Back in 1922, before the elevated subway was built, what building stood on the Numeral Street–Pythagoras intersection?’

  He waited while the researcher went off to find the answer. It didn’t take long.

  ‘The Sacred Heart Cathedral,’ was her reply.

  ‘And did this Cathedral have a crypt?’ asked Blacker.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman, ‘and the crypt remains. The entrance is beneath the vacant lot. Anything else you need?’

  He thanked her and ended the call. He tried putting a message through to Ruby’s transmitter, but she wasn’t picking up. He sent her an URGENT GET IN TOUCH IMMEDIATELY symbol, but she did not respond. So without further hesitation, he grabbed his weapon, and ran up to the atrium and on out of the building.

  Chapter 64.

  One bad apple

  THERE WAS AN APPLE SITTING ON THE STONE TOMB IN THE CENTRE OF THE CRYPT. A perfect, rosy-red apple. Ruby walked over to where it sat. What is it doing here? she wondered. Is it even real? She picked it up – it was real all right. So how did it come to be down here in this long-locked space? More importantly, who had brought it here?

  The sound of footsteps.

  ‘Blacker?’ she called.

  The tap tap of shoes continued, and a faint whistling and then a voice, a soft rich voice.

  ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who must hate you worst of all?’

  She felt the tiny hairs rise on the back of her neck.

  He laughed as he appeared from the shadows, elegant in a suit and Italian shoes, as always. ‘It’s a riddle, my dear Snow White.’

  Still she could not speak.

  ‘You have been following my clues, no?’ he asked. ‘And all the time wondering, what do they mean? Where could they lead? Tick, tick, tick, tick in that little head of yours until finally you figured it out.’ He waved his arm with a flourish. ‘And here you are.’

  Ruby slowly surveyed the scene: she was in a crypt with a madman; she could see nothing else.

  ‘All the clues were just there to lead us to you?’ she asked.

  ‘To lead you to me, dear Ms Redfort,’ said the Count. This small but important correction was not something she wanted to hear. ‘I know how you love puzzles, so I designed this one especially for you.’ He frowned. ‘I thought you would be quicker to solve it, I almost tired of waiting.’

  She didn’t reply.

  He looked at her, his expression full of concern. ‘You’re wondering what I want with you; it’s a reasonable thought given our history. I must confess, you have angered me in the past. How I loathed you when you stole the Jade Buddha from m
y grasp, snatched back the Sisters’ treasure, the invisibility skin and that wolf.’ His voice filled with such regret. ‘Oh, how I wanted that Blue Alaskan wolf.’

  ‘The stealing of the wolf was your doing – I wasn’t sure, but …’

  ‘Oh, I was busy with other things, I outsourced help, in retrospect a bad decision, but there we are.’

  ‘But for what?’ said Ruby. ‘So much effort for what …? Just things.’

  ‘Yes, I collect things,’ said the Count coldly. ‘Trinkets, souvenirs. Have you never been to Hawaii or Disneyland and felt you wanted to mark the occasion by bringing back a little something for yourself?’

  ‘An eighth-century Jade Buddha counts as a little something?’ said Ruby. ‘I usually find a keyring or a pin badge does the trick.’

  He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘It’s all the same, just there to remind you of your holiday fun or, in my case, a job well done.’

  A job well done … did that mean she was right? That all along these cases had been about something else? Not the jade, or the gems, the wolf or the invisibility skin, but something much bigger and much less obvious … Something the Count had been … hired for?

  ‘I see that little brain of yours whirring. You almost have it, don’t you Ms Redfort?’

  ‘There’s someone else …’ she said. ‘Someone you work for … and they have a plan?’

  ‘Bravo.’ He clapped his hands.

  ‘And the snake woman … that was part of the plan? To kill Amarjargel Oidov?’

  ‘Yes. My employer needed her out of the way. So I made arrangements.’

  She nodded. ‘So it was you who ordered Baby Face to murder her?’

  ‘Oh yes, poor Mr Marshall, blundering idiot, may he rest in pieces.’