“Calm yourself,” Alice's aunt said.
He turned to her as though seeing her for the first time. “And then someone tried to break into my hotel room last night!”
“What?” The policeman pulled out his notebook again. “What happened?”
“I told hotel security that someone was on my balcony,” he said. “They sent up a man to check. He said nobody was there, but I distinctly heard someone. I must have scared him off.”
Xander couldn't restrain a little snort of laughter at the thought of a burglar being scared by this small, round-eyed man in his pajamas.
As the prime minister went on and on, complaining about the thunderstorm, the traffic-clogged roads, his concern over Alice's disappearance, Xena observed him carefully. Was he as worried as he appeared, or was it an act? She had a feeling that he was hiding something. She focused on what he was saying. Maybe he would give it away, whatever it was.
“What time did you arrive in London?” the police officer asked the prime minister, interrupting his flow of words.
“Late last night.” He waved a hand dismissively, as though details were beneath him. “I don't know exactly at what time. What a dreadful situation! What will I tell my people?”
“Xena!” She turned around. Her father was standing in the doorway, dripping all over the beautiful rug.
“Are you still here?” Aunt Penelope turned on her and then glared at Xander. “Out! Now!” she spat, and they scurried out the door.
It was raining even harder now, and their father was soaking wet. He turned up the heat in the car, muttering under his breath as he pulled away from the curb.
Xena explained to Xander why she had needed his phone. “There's something strange about Alice's note, but I don't know what it is. Let me see your phone again.” The image was too small to see clearly, and she handed it back to him.
“There was something else strange,” Xander said. “If you were going to run away from home, what would you take with you?”
“Money,” Xena said. “I noticed that too. If Gemma's right, Alice didn't have much, so she would have taken everything out of that jar on her desk.”
“Right. And wouldn't she take that picture of her with her mom?”
“Obviously that picture was important to her,” Xena said. “It was right up there on her desk where she could see it every day. Plus, my cell phone was gone.”
“Wouldn't she take it if she ran away? She doesn't have a phone, remember?”
Xena shook her head no. “I don't know Alice very well, but I bet she would never steal anything, even if she needed it badly. Someone else must have my phone. And I don't think she ran away. Where would she go? She doesn't have any other relatives, right? I don't think she's friends with anyone at school who would hide her. She's close to Miss Jenny and Gemmaâwould she leave them without a word, especially right before Gemma's birthday and the glee club performance? And what about
Talented Brits
?”
“Okay, okay!” Xander held up his hand. “So if Alice didn't run away, what do you think happened to her?”
“There's only one other possibility.”
“You mean ⦔
Xena nodded. “I think Alice was kidnapped!”
T
hey got home before lunch. Normally, during vacation, they would just be getting up at this hour, but they were so worried about Alice that they were eager to tackle the problem of her disappearance first thing.
As soon as they were inside, their father said, “I'm going to change into some dry clothes and then go to the university. I might be able to get some work done there. You two okay on your own until your mom gets back?”
They assured him that they were.
“So why did you want to take a picture of that paper?” Xander asked as Xena downloaded the photo to the family computer and then enlarged it.
She shook her head in frustration. “I'm not sure. There's something about it that looksâI don't know, wrong.”
Together, they read the note.
Dearest Aunt Penelope,
Don't bother looking for me because I
don't want to come back. I'm very sorry
to hurt your feelings by leaving, but I
have to do it. I don't want to return to
Borogovia, and I don't know how else to
stay here.
Love,
Your niece, Alice
“It's short and kind of formal,” Xander said, “but I don't think writing notes like that is something you practice for, is it?”
“Aha!” Xena said. She jumped up and ran into her room, and then came back with some pages stapled together. “This is the science project that Alice and I worked on together last term. Does the handwriting look the same to you?”
Xander looked from the school paper to the note. He hesitated. “I don't know,” he finally admitted. “It kind of looks the same, but some things about it are different. Do you think Alice didn't really write that note?”
Xena was already dialing the phone on the
desk. “Dad? I think something funny is going on at Alice's house.” She explained, then waited. “Okay. Where is it?” She hung up and turned to Xander. “Dad says it's probably nothing, but we should show the picture and the project to the police. He told me where the police station was.” She pressed PRINT and waited while the cell phone picture printed out, and then made a copy of a page of the project. “You know what it means if Alice didn't really write the note, don't you?”
Xander swallowed. “It means you were right. She was kidnapped.”
Â
“So what makes you kiddies think that two different people wrote these?” The policeman at the desk tapped the printout of the photograph.
“Look at the way she crossed the
T
on her homework and the way it's crossed on the note. They're different. Plus, the capital
A
is different, andâ” Xander looked up at a snort from the policeman.
The man was trying not to smile, without much success. “A couple of amateur sleuths, are you? Good for you! Maybe when you grow up you can join the force and be real detectives.” He gathered up the papers and said, “I'll see that
these go to the ⦠er ⦠to the proper channels.”
There didn't seem to be anything else to say, so they thanked him and left, ducking under awnings to keep out of the pouring rain. The wind made their umbrellas almost useless.
“I bet I know what he means by âthe proper channels.'” Xena was bitter. “I bet he'll throw them right in the trash. Good thing we didn't give him the original of the class project.”
“He's just like Inspector Lestrade,” said Xander.
“Who?”
“A policeman who never believed Sherlock, no matter how many times he was wrong and Sherlock was right.”
Back home, they read the note again. “I just don't believe it,” Xena said. “Even if Alice didn't want to leave London, she seemed pretty convinced that she had to become the queen.”
“Maybe whoever wrote it couldn't think of any good reason for her to run away and this was the best they could come up with,” Xander said. “Heyâwhy don't we send this and a picture of the homework project to Andrew? The SPFD is sure to know someone who can analyze handwriting.”
Xena faxed them to Andrew with a note explaining what was going on. It felt good to be actually doing something. Xena and Xander hadn't known for very long that Sherlock Holmes was their great-great-great-grandfather, but once the SPFD had given them his cold-case notebook and they started detecting, they realized that they had been born for this.
“Okay,” Xena said. “Time to try to figure out whoâwho took her.” She didn't even want to use the word “kidnapped.” It was too scary.
“If that was the only note they found”âXander indicated the bogus messageâ“that means there wasn't a ransom note. Right?”
“Right. So the motive can't be money. Do you think it's just a coincidence that she disappeared so soon after she found the letters? Could the letters have something to do with why she's gone?”
Xander considered this for a moment. “Maybe,” he finally conceded. “But what? Do you remember what Alice said about them?”
Xena thought back. “Not much. There was something that worried her, she said, about when they talked about the baby. And Sherlock was mentioned. Not much more than that.”
“Maybe it has nothing to do with the baby. Maybe there's something else in the letters that would make a difference in her coronationâlike they changed the age someone had to be when they were crowned or something. The one thing we know for sure is that someone took them. The letters wouldn't have just disappeared in the short time she was doing those rugby drills. So let's work on them. Who knew that Alice found them?”
Xena read from her spiral notebook, “Aunt Penelope, Miss Jenny, Gemma, Jasper, the cook, and a maid named Frieda.”
Xander chewed his lip. “That's a lot. Alice said they could all probably read the letters. And any of them might have talked. The servants might have friends in town, or relatives, or any of them could have told the postman, who could have told someone else on his route.”
“No way,” Xena said. “The kidnapper had to be someone who was known and trusted, or they couldn't have gotten into the mansion. There's that bodyguard and the security system. Remember the camera at the gate? If that Jasper guy isn't involved, he wouldn't let the mailman or anyone else in. It has to be one of the people on our list.”
Xander wasn't so sure. He thought that orderly Xena sometimes relied too much on lists. But all he said was, “Let's find out more about Borogovia, especially about the kings and queens. You can check online, and I'll look in the history books in the study.”
“What are we looking for?” Xena asked.
“Anything unusual. Not all that stuff about how many square miles it is and the annual average rainfall.”
After an hour, they assembled their findings. Xena read the list she had made in her notebook. “One: In the seventeenth century, Borogovia was really torn up by wars of succession, between different people claiming they should be the next king. The wars were so bad that when they were finally settled, the Borogovians wrote a new constitution that said that whoever is crowned king or queen is the legitimate ruler, even if later on they figure out that actually someone else should have been crowned. No do-overs.” She looked over the top of the notebook at her brother. “Did you read about those wars in one of the books?”
He nodded. “This kingâhis name was Carlâdied in 1632. He didn't have any kids, so
normally his younger brother would be the one to take over. But his brother had died before him, so the brother's son said
he
was king. The problem was that Carl also had a sister, and she said that
she
was queen. There was no law against a woman taking over, but it had never happened before, and a lot of people said that it should be Carl's nephew instead.”
“So what happened?”
“There were two different wars and a lot of people died in them, including Carl's nephew, so Carl's sister became queen. Then someone found some old legal document that said women couldn't rule, so there was
another
war to try to get rid of her and have a male ruler. The queen's side won, and they were the ones who made the constitution that said once someone was crowned, that was it.”
“Got it,” Xena said. “Two: Just barely more than half the Borogovians want to stay independent from Rathonia. There was a poll a few months ago, and it was fifty-one percent to forty-nine.”
“Hmm. So if a new queen said one way or the other about it, probably at least a few people would change their minds.”
“Right. And it wouldn't take more than a few people to make a difference when it's that close. Three: Lots of Borogovian rulers have married English people. Alice's mom was English, and so was Princess Stella's. They built the mansion right after the wars of succession, and it's been enlarged lots of times. The most recent time was when Queen Charlotteâshe was Stella's mother, remember?âwas homesick, and she added a whole story so her family could visit. Some famous architect made it. A newspaper article from the time said, âIt is a marvel of both engineering and architecture.'”
“What does that mean?” Xander asked.
“Engineering means how it was made, like how strong it was, and architecture means how it looked. So I guess that means it was well built and beautiful.”
Xander sighed. “I didn't find anything more than that. All this is interesting, but I can't see how it helps us find Alice. Let's take a look at the casebook. Oh, and I thought of somethingâyou know those glass cases in the lobby of the SPFD where they display clues that Sherlock used?” Xena nodded. “Well, one of them holds things that are all about the kidnapping of Princess Stella.”
“Do you remember what they were?”
He squinted. “Um, a pictureâlike a family photo. I guess that was the princess. And a kind of pinâit was a black flower behind glass, like a tiny picture. I didn't look too closely. We'll have to go back so I canâ”
His phone rang. “Hi, Andrew. You already heard back?” He said to Xena, “Andrew has the results of the handwriting analysis.” He spoke into the phone again. “Wait, let me put you on speaker so I don't have to tell Xena everything you say.”
“âcan't be sure without seeing the originals,” said Andrew's voice, “but he would be really surprised if the two samples were written by the same person. I'm faxing you the report.”
Xena stood by the fax machine. When the report came through, she scanned it quickly and handed it to her brother. He read aloud, “âLess than a five percent chance that the two samples were written by the same hand,'” and then a lot about capital letters, slant, and other details. “So whoever wrote the note
wasn't
Alice!” He gave the page back to Xena, who tucked it into her schoolbag. “Do you think the police suspect the same thing we do?”
“There was nothing about it on the news sites I checked while you were reading those encyclopedias,” Xena said. “So either the police didn't look at the evidence we brought them, or they're keeping quiet about it. Sometimes they do that with important investigations, don't they? I mean, not give out all the details, so they can catch the bad guy when he knows things that only the guilty person would know?”
“I guess so.” Xander didn't voice what he was thinking, and he knew that Xena was thinking the same thing.
If the police weren't going to do anything with this important evidence, it was up to them to find their friend.