The Baker Street Boys - The Case of the Stolen Sparklers (8 page)

While the boys were making their way through the slices of pie, Mr Harper came into the kitchen. He was annoyed to find them sitting on his newspaper, but they smoothed out the crumpled sheets and gave it back to him only slightly dirty. Mr Harper said he supposed no harm had been done, and he paid them half a crown for clearing the blocked chimney.

“Half a crown!” crowed Sparrow when they were back outside. “We won’t have to eat boiled cabbage tonight – we’ll be able to buy some proper food.”

“Hold your horses,” Wiggins told him. “I don’t think that’d be right. We ain’t actually done nothing for it, have we?”

“What we gonna do, then?”

“Give it to Charlie. For lending us his barrow and his brushes. It’s only fair. I mean, he ain’t been able to earn nothing while we’ve had ’em, has he?”

Sadly, Sparrow had to agree. And anyway, he
had
just eaten a very nice slice of pie…

“He wasn’t poppin’ no jewels,” Beaver told the other Boys when he and Gertie returned to HQ later. “Only a cigarette case, for a couple of sovereigns.”

“Blimey,” exclaimed Shiner. “He must be ’ard up. I wouldn’t go all that way for a couple of quid if I’d got a tiara worth thousands tucked away somewhere.”

“Ah, but if he’s got it hid away, then he ain’t got the dosh for it yet, has he?” said Rosie.

“That’s right,” said Sparrow, who was just leaving for the theatre. “He’d have to keep quiet and bide his time.”

“’Cos if he started chuckin’ his cash around, when he didn’t have none before,” Beaver agreed, “then everybody’d want to know where he’d got it from, and if he couldn’t tell ’em, then they’d suspect him, but if he carried on as if he still hadn’t got no money, then nobody would suspect him and then—”

“Right,” Wiggins interrupted him. “We get the picture. Good thinking, Beav. But we don’t know for sure that he done it, do we? What do you think, Polly?”

Polly had been quietly listening to the Boys as she stood at the stove, stirring a big pot of vegetables. Left on her own all day and unable to go outside in case anybody saw her, she had kept herself busy dusting and cleaning and tidying until the others could hardly recognize HQ. Now she was cooking supper. It was mainly sprouts and swedes and a few potatoes, and it didn’t smell much better than last night’s cabbage. But at least it was food, and it was hot, and she was doing her best with it.

“What do I think about what?” she asked.

“Mr Gerald. D’you reckon he could’ve done it?”

“Well, he was in the house, and his room’s next to her ladyship’s… He came runnin’ out when she screamed and he was there when she fainted.”

“Fainted?”

“Oh, yes. She was so upset she fainted clean away. Fell down on the floor, she did. Ooh, it was ever so dramatic, just like something on the stage.”

“Was it, now?” Wiggins sat up straight, his eyes shining. “And her a famous actress,” he said thoughtfully.

“You think she was puttin’ it on?” asked Rosie. “Like, she was actin’?”

“Cor,” said Shiner. “You mean she pinched ’er own jewels?”

“No, no! You can’t suspect her ladyship!” cried Polly. “She wouldn’t.”

“Well,” said Wiggins, “somebody did. There was only six people in that house, so it has to be one of ’em. We know it wasn’t you, so that leaves five. Mrs Ford was downstairs in the kitchen, baking. So it wasn’t her. That means it has to be one of the others: Mr Harper, Violet, Mr Gerald or her ladyship. One of ’em took the sparklers, and I reckon whoever it was has still got ’em, and they’re hid somewhere in that house.”

Next morning, the Boys took up their posts once more in the street outside Mountjoy House. Wiggins said they should take it in turns to watch the house, in case anyone got suspicious of them hanging about all day. He, Sparrow and Gertie took the first turn, so that Rosie and Shiner could carry on with their jobs in a busier street and earn a few more pennies and Beaver could get food for Polly to try to cook for supper. They had not been waiting long when the front door opened and Lady Mountjoy came out and began walking briskly along the street. Wiggins signalled to the others that he would follow her and they were to stay where they were.

Wiggins and Lady Mountjoy were hardly out of sight when someone else came out of the house, this time not through the front door but up the steps from the basement.

“It’s Violet,” Sparrow whispered to Gertie. “And look – she’s carryin’ somethin’.”

It was Violet, and tucked under her arm was a package wrapped in brown paper.

“D’you think the sparklers could be in there?” Gertie asked. “In the parcel?”

“Could be. Only one way to find out – you’ll have to follow her,” Sparrow said. “If she sees me, she might remember me from yesterday. I’ll stop here and keep an eye on the place in case anybody else comes out.”

Looking quickly along the street as though making sure Lady Mountjoy had gone, Violet hurried off in the opposite direction. Gertie waited a moment, then set off after her, a few yards behind, leaving Sparrow on his own.

“Blimey,” he thought. “What do I do if somebody else comes out?”

And at that very moment, somebody else did. This time it was Mr Harper, carrying not a bag or a parcel, but a letter. While Sparrow was trying to decide whether or not to leave his post and follow him, the butler stopped at the pillar box on the corner, checked the address on the envelope in his hand, touched it briefly to his lips as if he was kissing it, and popped it into the slot. Then, to Sparrow’s relief, he turned and retraced his steps back to the house, looking very pleased with himself.

Wiggins was glad that Lady Mountjoy had not taken a cab, which meant, he thought, that she could not be going very far. She led him across busy Baker Street and then turned into a quieter area and rang the bell on a white-painted building with a polished brass plate beside the door. After she had gone inside, Wiggins strolled up to the door and looked at the plate. Engraved on it were the words P
ARKER AND
M
UNRO
, I
NSURANCE
A
GENTS
.

“Insurance,” he murmured. “I dare say she’ll be talking about collecting the insurance money on the jewels. Does that mean she don’t expect to get ’em back?” Could Lady Mountjoy herself have faked the robbery, he wondered, so that she could get the money and still keep the jewels? He found the idea hard to believe, but he had to admit that it was not impossible.

Gertie almost lost Violet as she made her way through a crowded street market, still clutching the brown-paper parcel. The lady’s maid seemed to know a lot of the people there, who called out to her cheerfully as she passed. At the far end of the market she went into a shop selling second-hand ladies’ clothes. Gertie ambled up to it and peeped in through the window. Inside she saw the shopkeeper, an enormously fat woman with crinkly black hair, greeting Violet like an old friend as she handed her the brown-paper parcel.

The woman looked around the shop to make sure no one else was inside, then waddled across, locked the door and pulled down the blind. Gertie, who had ducked out of sight, turned back and found that she could just see the shop counter through the narrow gap between blind and door. She held her breath as the shopkeeper unwrapped the parcel to reveal what was inside. Would it be the tiara?

The brown paper still hid the contents of the parcel, but whatever it was, the woman looked very pleased. However, when she lifted it out, it turned out to be a smart lady’s dress, trimmed with lace. She unfolded it and held it up against Violet, examining it carefully. Then, satisfied that it was not marked or damaged in any way, she nodded and said something to Violet, who shook her head and said something in return. Gertie could not hear what they were saying, but she had been to enough horse sales with her father to know that they were haggling over money for the dress. After a few more exchanges, they obviously agreed a price and shook hands. The woman pressed a key on the ornate brass cash register, and when it opened with a sharp
ting
she took out a handful of coins and gave them to Violet, who slipped them quickly into her handbag.

When she came out of the dress shop, Violet went straight back to Mountjoy House. She did not stop, apart from calling at a little sweet shop to buy a paper bag of chocolate drops – which made Gertie’s mouth water as she watched. When Violet got back, she hurried down the steps into the kitchen, where Queenie was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor.

“Oh, look – you’ve made dirty footmarks all across my nice clean floor!” Queenie cried as Violet walked past her.

“So I have,” Violet replied, not looking at all sorry. “You’ll just have to do it again, won’t you?”

Just then, Mrs Ford came into the kitchen. “What’s going on here?” she demanded.

“She’s walked all over my clean floor,” Queenie told her.

“That’s not very nice, young lady!” Mrs Ford chided Violet, wagging a finger at her. “And where have you been, may I ask?”

“Running an errand for her ladyship,” Violet replied. “Is she back yet?”

“No, she ain’t,” Mrs Ford said, clearly not believing her. “So you ain’t been missed.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Violet with a cheeky smirk. “I’ll go and take my hat and coat off before she comes back.” And she trotted off into the house.

“She’s getting too big for her boots, that one,” said Mrs Ford, shaking her head in annoyance.

Queenie sighed and began to wipe up Violet’s footprints. She looked down at her hands, which were red and sore from all the scrubbing and cleaning and washing-up she had been doing. Being a skivvy was no fun at all, she decided. She couldn’t wait to get back to the Boys and HQ.

Gertie had returned to HQ to tell Wiggins and Beaver what she had seen.

“I thought it was gonna be the jewels,” she said, “but it was only a frock. Mind, it looked like a very nice frock.”

“Worth a bob or two?” Beaver asked.

“Yeah, I reckon it was. Real posh, if you ask me.”

Polly frowned. “Violet don’t have no real posh frocks,” she said. “What was it like?”

Gertie was not much good at describing dresses, since she never wore one herself and wasn’t very interested in them. But she did her best.

“It was made of shiny stuff. Sort of a bluey-greeny colour…”

“You mean like turquoise?” Polly asked.

“No, I don’t reckon it was Turkish.”

“If it was Turkish,” said Beaver, “it would have had baggy trousers and a tunic – oh, and a veil. I seen a picture once of a Turkish princess, and—”

“Beaver!” Wiggins interrupted. “It ain’t Turkish, it’s tur
quoise
. Turquoise is a colour: bluey-green, or greeny-blue, if you like.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” said Gertie. “And it had lots of lace down the front.”

“That’s one of her ladyship’s dresses,” exclaimed Polly. “What’s Violet doin’ with it?”

“Selling it, by the sound of things,” said Wiggins.

“Oh, the wicked creature.” Polly put her hands to her mouth in shock. “She must have stole it!”

“If Violet’s a thief,” Beaver said, “that means she could’ve stole the jewels, don’t it?”

The daylight was fading into evening and the patches of mist were thickening into fog, when Shiner and Rosie saw a telegraph boy ride up the street on one of the Post Office’s new red bicycles. They stared at it with great interest, fascinated at how quickly and easily it moved. The telegraph boy got off the bicycle and leant it against the railings of Mountjoy House. Shiner crossed the street to admire it. Straightening the little peaked helmet on his head, the boy climbed the steps to the front door, pulled a red envelope from the leather pouch on his belt and rang the bell. Although Shiner had never received one himself, or even seen one close up, he knew that a red envelope meant a telegram – a message sent through the Post Office that was usually urgent. Mr Harper opened the door, took the envelope and went back into the house, telling the boy to wait. Shiner scooted to the bottom of the steps.

“Psst!” he hissed. “Who’s the telegram for?”

The boy shook his head. “I’m not allowed to tell you that,” he said.

“Don’t matter,” said Shiner airily. “I know, anyway.”

“Bet you don’t.”

“Bet I do. It’s for Lady Mountjoy, ain’t it?”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” the boy replied, falling into Shiner’s trap. “It’s for Mr Gerald Huggett, so there!”

“Ta very much,” Shiner grinned.

The boy glowered at him, but before he could retort, Mr Harper opened the door again to tell him there would be no reply. Shiner gave a cheerful wave as the boy mounted his bike again and pedalled furiously away.

“Now, who’d be sending Mr Gerald telegrams?” Wiggins mused when Shiner reported back to HQ. He turned to Polly, who was busily chopping up vegetables for supper, and asked, “Does he get many?”

Polly shook her head. “No, not that I can remember. Letters, yes. But you only send telegrams when it’s something important.”