Sleuth on Skates (11 page)

Inside the office the two Professors weren't talking much any more. All I could hear were clickety noises and electronic beeps. Of course there can be very innocent reasons for spending an evening with your brother typing away at a computer. They could have been cobbling together a nice photo album for their mummy's birthday. But I had reasons to believe that it wasn't exactly what was going on.

Not only had Professor Ian Philips kidnapped Jenna Jenkins, but Professor Archie Philips had known everything about it. Even now that they'd released her, it didn't look like they were up to any good. And they'd confirmed what my sleuthing radar had been beeping on about: that Tsarina, somehow, had something to do with
Jenna Jenkins's mysterious disappearance. But what?

After ten or fifteen minutes of this suspicious silence, I pushed the cupboard door open and made a stealthy escape, taking the key with me. I couldn't leave it there; it had my fingerprints all over it—what if the police found it and thought I was Jenna Jenkins's kidnapper?

I left the museum, climbed over the railings again, and put on my roller skates. The city was very dark and silent as I rushed past the stone buildings. I flung the key into the Cam and sneaked into college through the back door.

Peter Mortimer was waiting for me on the little terrace. As I jumped into my bedroom I heard footsteps on the stairs, and just had time to leap into bed and close my eyes before the door silently slid open, casting a long rectangle of orange light inside.

Two shadows. Mum's voice: “Yes, she's asleep.”

Dad: “Hugging her roller skates.”

Mum: “Don't ask.”

“What's all that junk?”

“Well, that's a nice way of saying good morning, Father.”

“I wasn't talking about you, Sophie. I'm talking about that.”

“What is it?”

“A catalogue on duck-rearing that came in the post this morning, addressed to me!”

He looked at the object as if it was a time bomb, and put it down on the table. It was called
Happy Ducks
and, appropriately, was decorated with a picture of a smiling duck. Just underneath the duck, there was the small C in a circle I'd seen on Fiona's T-shirt and somewhere else. I flicked through the magazine. It was
full of very useful objects that the keen duck-breeder would need. Duck food! Egg incubators! Little coats for ducklings!

“That's amazingly cool,” I said. “I think we should try it! Look, you can get a beginner duck-rearing kit from only £124.99! Can we? Can we?”

Dad just rolled his eyes and picked up the
Telegraph
.

“Good morning, Mummy, are you in a good mood?”

“Why? Do you have something to confess?”

“Yes.”

“Then if I'm in a good mood it's very likely to change. What is it?”

“Well, please don't make me reveal my sources, but I have splendid evidence that Jenna Jenkins's kidnapper is none other than Professor Ian Philips, probably helped by his brother Professor Archie Philips. They locked the poor girl in a broom cupboard in the Fitzwilliam Museum.”

Mum looked at Dad, who looked at Mum, and they both produced vexingly loud laughs. Dad smiled and said, “The good thing about Sophie is that she's an imaginative little Scheherazade.”

“No, seriously, parents, you have to believe me. He kidnapped Jenna and left her to rot with only a box of biscuits and a pile of comics in a cupboard. I don't know where she is now, but that's the absolute truth. And Archie Philips is involved in the Tsarina affair! And they both use the Fitz as a base for their illegal activities. . . .”

“My adorable, insane little girl,” cooed Dad. “Go and get dressed. You're going to be late for school.”

“Dad, I swear to God . . .”

“Don't swear to God.”

“I swear to the Archangel Gabriel . . .”

“Don't swear at all.”

“But Daddy, seriously, look at me, I have my serious face on—seriously, the Professor Brothers of Evil have to be arrested. You have to call the police because if I do it they won't believe me. . . .”

“You're right, they won't. Go and put your uniform on.”

“But they're the only ones who can tell us where Jenna Jenkins is!”

“Oh, Sophie,” sighed Mum, half-smiling. “Everything's fine. We know where Jenna Jenkins is.”

My eyeballs almost fell out of their sockets, but I pressed them back in. “What?”

“We received a letter from her this morning. It's just as we suspected—she had a nervous breakdown and left college for a few days to go to London. When she realized everyone was looking for her, she came back and wrote to
explain what had happened. She's still shaken up, so she's going to give up on her degree this year and come back next year.

“So you see,” said Dad, “there's nothing at all to worry about, my little spinner of funny tales.”

Still frowning with incomprehension, I joined Gemma and Toby on the school field.

“What's wrong?” asked Gemma.

“Firstly, PE. Secondly, Jenna Jenkins has mysteriously reappeared. You'll never believe it.”

I explained everything to them, and they gaped at the tale of my midnight escapade.

“I don't get it,” said Toby eventually. “If Jenna Jenkins says she was in London, who was locked in the cupboard?”

“It can't be anyone else. No one else was missing! Jenna Jenkins is nose-lengtheningly lying in the manner of Pinocchio. She was in that cupboard: I smelt her.”

Toby said, tying his shoelaces, “Maybe you
got it all wrong, Sesame. Maybe it wasn't your mum's perfume, just the smell of cleaning products.”

“Are you saying my mum smells like a freshly-bleached bathroom?”

“Listen,” replied Gemma, “am I the only one who thinks we should drop the case? Whatever happened to her, Jenna Jenkins is now alive and well. Whatever the Professors are doing is their own business. Firstly, it's probably boring, like most businesses. Secondly, they've proven they're not against locking up people in cupboards, and I don't really want to try that out.”

“At least,” I remarked, “being locked up in a cupboard would give one a good excuse not to go to PE.”

Gemma and Toby got up and started warming up for sprint. Mr. Halitosis was already jumping up and down to try to get rid of his beer belly, screaming, “Come on, children! You can do it! You've got it in you!”

“I can't run, Mr. Barnes, I've sprained my ankle.”

“A likely story, Sophie! Next time you'll tell me you've injured your ponytail.”

“It kind of hurts too, actually.”

“Run! Running empties your head.”

“That explains it,” I muttered.

I ran for about ten minutes, but it didn't empty my head. In fact, my skull was positively purring in the manner of Peter Mortimer when his stomach is being stroked. The overload of mysteries was twisting my brains into plaits.

There was no doubt that the Philips brothers were a criminal couple of crooks. But apart from the fact that one sported a goatee and the other one a moustache, I didn't have any way of proving it to the world. Jenna Jenkins had said she hadn't been locked up, and if I talked about the dodgy conversation I'd overheard, my parents would choose both not to believe me and to punish me for skating to the Fitz on my own in the middle of the night. Parents are contradictory like that.

“I'm not surprised Professor Philips is a bloodthirsty bandit, anyway,” said Toby next to me. “He looked scary.”

“Speaking of scary people,” interfered Gemma, “what was in his letter to your mum?”

“Dunno . . . I'd completely forgotten about that. Probably something to do with their business meetings.”

“I do hope he's better at business than he is
at spelling,” said Gemma haughtily.

“What do you—?”

“Sophie Seade, is that what you call running?” Mr. Halitosis's voice interfered.

“Yes, it's a special kind of running I made up. It's much less tiring than normal running.”

“I'm afraid someone made it up before you and called it walking. I want to see you run!”

I had to conform to his definition and painfully caught up with Gemma. “What . . . do . . . you . . . mean . . . about spelling?”

“Oh, that. Didn't you see? The address on the envelope was riddled with spelling mistakes! Personally, I never get my apostrophes wrong. And I certainly would not leave out the d in ‘Cambridge'.”

I stopped in my tracks, grabbing Gemma's collar (she gurgled a bit) and stammered, “Spelling mistakes! Oh, Gemz! How did you not tell me that before?”

“I meant to, but then I was gravely ill, remember? Why? It doesn't matter!”

“It does! It does! That's it! I get it!” I
turned to Gemma and Toby. “Reverend Tan told us that Jenna is dyslexic! Professor Philips hadn't written a letter to Mum. He was delivering the letter from Jenna. He forced her to write it!”

“Sophie Seade, if you don't start running again, I'll send you to the Head's!” boomed Mr. Halitosis, and all the flowers around him withered and died in the vapors of his breath.