Murder at the Museum Read online

  ‘Get lost, Sarah.’ Brianna beats me to it, meeting the gaze of her former friend with a steely glare.

  ‘Ouch! That hurts,’ Sarah drawls, rubbing her cheek as if she’s been slapped – but a grin is spreading across her face. She knows she’s hit a nerve.

  ‘I just wanted to say hello to you both,’ Sarah says, putting a strange emphasis on the last word. She’s looking from Liam to Brianna, and I guess she’s just making a point of how insignificant she considers me. She was furious last term, when I became something of a celebrity for solving the problem with London’s water. She turns to me, seemingly as an afterthought.

  ‘Oh, hi, Agatha. Oddly enough, I didn’t see you there.’ I manage not to react to this well-worn misuse of my surname. ‘Well, catch you all in class.’

  And with those words, and a snigger, she disappears.

  I sigh. ‘Nothing like the Sarah Rathbone welcome back, is there?’ I say.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ says Brianna, and she dashes off after a boy she knows from maths. ‘Hey! Adedayo! Wait up – I want to ask you about that project Foghorn set us. She didn’t actually expect us to do it, did she?’

  Liam remains quiet for a moment, watching Brianna go. Then he says, ‘So, come on, tell me about the –’ he glances around him and lowers his voice – ‘first test. Have you done it already?’

  I smile, my mind taken off Sarah Rathbone’s behaviour for the moment, and start to tell the story of the Guild’s test, the curious riddle and my trip to Holland Park. (I leave out the fact that I started at the Black Bamboo, and am rather vague on the location of the origami flower.)

  I relish Liam’s reaction, which somehow makes the experience more real. After waiting for the Guild Trial for so long, it seems amazing that it’s finally happening. Or, at least, it has begun. If it weren’t for recounting the tale, and seeing the look on his face, I might almost think that I’d dreamed it up in a fever pitch of expectation.

  ‘A letter A?’ says Liam. ‘Is that all?’ He sounds disappointed.

  I nod. ‘Yeah. But it’s only the first test, remember? I’m guessing the other two will help provide the answer.’

  I’m so engrossed in our conversation that I completely forget to look in detail at the newspaper – until right before the bell goes to call us into school. When I do, I see a small article at the bottom of page two, under the headline:

  I read the article, my interest piqued. The Bernie Spain Gardens are on the South Bank, next to the River Thames and close to the Tate Modern art gallery. The idea of a sinkhole opening up in such a prominent location sparks something in my thoughts, though I’m not sure what.

  This is what being a detective is like, to some extent – you just get a tingling feeling at the back of your head, and you have to trust that your instinct is leading you somewhere – somewhere productive, somewhere you might discover a clue. But of course, the more you listen to the tingle, the more often it might lead you astray. Too many times I’ve ended up hiding behind a tree, or disguised as a barista in a coffee shop I don’t work in, just because I trusted the tingle and set out on a wild goose chase.

  But then, if you never followed it, if you never trusted your instinct, you’d never have any adventures. So should I trust it now, or should I ignore it and go to my first class of the day?

  As we walk towards the front door of the school, I turn to Liam and ask, ‘What’s our first lesson?’

  ‘Double maths, of course,’ he replies, practically rubbing his hands together with glee. Liam enjoys maths; I don’t. For him, it’s as enjoyable as a blockbuster. For me, it’s about as enjoyable as … well, about as enjoyable as double maths first thing on a Thursday.

  ‘Oh, right …’ I reply, somewhat distractedly.

  Liam must see something in my expression, a glint in my eye. ‘Oh, Agatha, no,’ he says.

  ‘What? What is it?’ Brianna asks, joining us at the entrance. She looks between us, trying to decide what’s going on.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  ‘She’s planning to skip school,’ Liam replies.

  Brianna turns to me. ‘Really?’

  I was going to tell a white lie, but, under the intensity of her gaze, I realise I can’t. ‘Er, yeah … There’s something in the paper I want to check out.’

  Unlike Liam, Brianna smiles, as though giving me her approval. Liam’s been putting up with me running off on investigations for some time, whereas to Brianna it’s all quite new, and she’s still amused by what she sees as my rebellious streak. She doesn’t realise it’s not rebellion – it’s just me doing the work I was born to do. And school is just something which, rather unfortunately, gets in the way of my investigations.

  ‘Well then, I think you should go.’ She pretends to study my face with concern. ‘You’re looking quite peaky. That stomach ache must be bad. Come on, I’ll show you to the gates.’

  And Brianna escorts me across the playground, one hand on the small of my back, as though guiding someone who might have a fainting fit at any moment. Grateful for her acting, I play along, bowing my head and crossing my arms over my stomach. Nobody tries to stop us, though I’m aware of several people looking in our direction.

  The groundskeeper, Mr Perkins, is standing sentinel at the gates when we reach them. ‘Where are you two going?’ he growls.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Brianna replies, ‘but Agatha here is feeling very unwell, and she’s already put in a call to her dad, who’s coming to meet her.’

  Mr Perkins opens his mouth, obviously about to raise some objection to this, but Brianna speaks first, lowering her voice as if confiding in him: ‘She’s got woman’s problems. You know how it is.’

  Mr Perkins clamps his mouth shut, clearly embarrassed by the idea that I have a female body – or, indeed, any body at all. He nods me on. Brianna pats me gently on the back and says, ‘Get well soon!’, and I’m on my way down the road.

  I know that Liam and Brianna will do their best to cover for me in form class and beyond, and Liam still has his clever box which has a recording of me saying, ‘Here’. It probably won’t get me through the day, but it might get me as far as lunchtime, and that’s probably all I need to investigate the sinkhole and sneak back in for lunch.

  Getting to the South Bank is easy enough from St Regis. I take a bus most of the way and hop off at Westminster Bridge. I walk along the South Bank for ten minutes, until I come to the Oxo Tower, which marks the start of Bernie Spain Gardens. Looking out across the lawns, which are all too rare in this crowded part of London, I can see a circle of yellow-and-black tape fluttering in the breeze, a dark hole in the lawns, and – with its tail end upended like the Titanic mid-sinking – an ice-cream van with its sign partly obscured. I recognise the logo, and I know the name – ‘Mr Cool Cones’ – as it’s often parked outside the school gates at home time.

  I start to walk towards the circle, taking note of everything around me as I go. There’s a white van with a satellite dish on the roof parked quite near to the sinkhole, and some people milling about outside it: clearly a news crew, come to get footage.

  Sinkholes are more common in areas like London that have clay soil, because it swells when wet and shrinks when dry – most sinkholes are caused by earth shrinkage. It doesn’t help that the clay is Swiss-cheesed with tunnels, and sometimes one of these will collapse, and take the surface world down with it like a yawning mouth.

  There are a few tourists and locals who have stopped to look at this spectacle, as though it were another art installation on the South Bank. Really, the sinkhole isn’t all that big, though certainly big enough to swallow the ice-cream van, which still has its back door thrown wide open, presumably from where the ice-cream vendor made his escape.

  From the description in the paper, I had expected the hole to be huge, like ones I’d read about that had swallowed whole streets, but it’s around the size of a double-decker bus. It’s made to seem much bigger by the circle of yellow-and-black tape, which, b
ecause the authorities are not sure whether the sinkhole might extend and widen, has been placed cautiously far from the perimeter of the hole itself.

  I go up to the tape, wondering if anyone will stop me if I duck underneath and walk closer to get a better look. I can’t see what is at the bottom of the hole – can’t see whether, for instance, there’s some sort of cavern underneath, or whether the hole is just a sagging indent in the earth, as though a giant hand from above has pressed its finger into the soft grass. My own fingers are on the tape, and I’m about to lift it, when a voice speaks, very gently, from right beside me.

  ‘You need to forget this. Stop investigating.’

  I spin to face the person talking, and see a woman wearing a hoodie, with a scarf pulled over her face and dark glasses. It’s an effective disguise. She’s unidentifiable – even her voice is muffled.

  ‘Why? Who are you?’ I say, startled.

  The woman says again, more urgently, ‘You need to stop this, Agatha Oddlow. Stop investigating.’ And, without another word, she walks away from me, towards the South Bank, and disappears into the crowds.

  I could run after her, of course – ask how she knows my name, ask how she knows I’m investigating. But something stops me and holds me back. Perhaps it’s her manner, plus the fact that she walked up to me here in broad daylight and spoke my name as though she were an acquaintance of mine, an old friend. That takes a certain degree of confidence and I know confidence is often a sign of power. People who can afford to protect themselves tend to have little to fear.

  So I let her go. Only Liam knows I was heading for Bernie Spain Gardens, and if I vanished from here, in the company of this heavily disguised woman, the trail could easily turn cold. If something happened to me, no one would know where to look. My mind goes back to a little more than six weeks earlier, just round the corner from the Royal Geographical Society, where someone had reached out from the shadows, clamped a chloroform-soaked rag to my mouth, and whispered in my ear to stop investigating.

  This is what they always want, of course, the corrupt people I find myself up against – to stop my investigations. They always pretend it’s a choice I can make; they’re just giving me some ‘friendly advice’, they’re only telling me ‘for my own good’.

  Well, they can keep their advice.

  I walk round the sinkhole for another minute or two, taking in details, but also keeping an eye out for anyone who might be watching me. The news crew begin their broadcast beside the hole, and I make sure to stay out of shot.

  Finally, I’m done, and I stroll away from Bernie Spain Gardens, right down the South Bank, in the direction of the Tate Modern and, further along, Shakespeare’s Globe, the reconstructed Elizabethan theatre. The weather is still mild and a little humid, so I take off my blazer and put it in my backpack.

  I lean against a railing for a moment, looking out over the Thames as it crawls past, on its way to the sea. Seagulls bob on its surface, and a tourist boat passes, filled with people holding cameras. I take out my mobile phone, switch it on, and send a message to Liam, asking him to research the geology of Bernie Spain Gardens, and anything underneath which might have caused the cave-in. When it’s sent, I switch the phone back off and continue on my way.

  I often find that walking helps me to think. It’s the same as staring out of a train window – something about the movement lets your brain relax, and all the problems which seemed so hard before suddenly make sense. The little grey cells, as Poirot would say, start to work.

  Written notes appear, tattooed on to the foreheads of the passing tourists …

  Warned off … Who? Why?

  Is sinkhole above a Guild tunnel?

  Is it connected to museum murder?

  The link with this last question seems tenuous at first. But the more I consider it, the more likely it seems. After all, the person who warned me must have been watching me for some time – otherwise, why would they follow me to the sinkhole? And if they’ve been watching me, they know I’m investigating the British Museum case.

  And, together, these two facts add up to create a third: quite simply, I’m on to something big. For the first time in six weeks, this is a real case.

  Content that I’ve done everything I can for the time being, I buy myself a hot chocolate from one of the stalls that line the South Bank. Then I make my way back towards Westminster Bridge, ready to get the bus to St Regis – and the necessary evil that is geography class.

  Getting back into school isn’t quite as easy as getting out of it, and involves hiding from a PE teacher, crawling beneath a chain-link fence and scrambling through a shrubbery.

  Luckily, Liam and Brianna have done an admirable job of convincing our form and maths teachers that I’d been sick enough to need to return home. In fact, I have trouble convincing my geography teacher that I’m over my stomach ache and sickness now, and am well enough to be in school.

  I sit through geography, listening to facts I already know about tectonic plates and continental drift. After that, it’s time for lunch in the canteen, which St Regis calls the ‘refectory’, to keep the snobby parents happy. It’s there that I fill in Liam and Brianna about what has happened on the South Bank.

  Liam is especially concerned, and keeps saying, ‘Agatha, please don’t take any more risks. You’d better stop investigating.’

  Brianna’s response is: ‘She must be on to something if they’re warning her off.’

  I smile at her gratefully, but Liam just looks more worried. ‘Exactly! She’s on to something, which means whoever murdered the museum attendant could be coming after her!’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about her life being in danger like that,’ says Brianna.

  I sigh. ‘Will you stop talking about me in the third person? I’m sitting right here – and quite capable of making my own decisions.’

  ‘Are you, though?’ says Liam. ‘I mean, look what just happened to you.’

  I poke at a lump in my custard with my spoon. ‘I’m fine, aren’t I? Stop making such a fuss.’ I glance at him. His eyes are wide with anxiety, so I say, reassuringly, ‘I’ll be careful.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  In the afternoon, we have history (which I enjoy), computer programming (which Liam enjoys) and ballroom dancing (which nobody on earth enjoys).

  By the end of the day, I’m dog tired. I drag my weary body through the front door, and hear Dad in the kitchen – he’s home early. I go to greet him.

  ‘Hey, Dad.’

  He’s making himself a cup of tea. ‘Hello, love!’ he says, with a big smile. Something about his behaviour is still unsettling me – he’s too perky.

  It’s a long time till bed, but Dad has once again already changed into his dressing gown and pyjamas, together with the fleecy slippers I gave him last Christmas. The dreadful double-breasted brown suit has obviously made another appearance – it’s now draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. I can see a red line round the back of Dad’s neck, where the itchy wool has rubbed his skin. Even he can’t bear to wear the thing for too long.

  ‘Do you want a hot drink?’ he asks. ‘You look tired.’

  I laugh. ‘Oh, cheers – now I feel really great.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Dad smiles, comes over and envelops me in a bear hug. He really is in a good mood. I break out of it and look up at his face, quizzically. I can’t read his expression.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll have a hot chocolate, if that’s OK.’

  ‘I’ll put the milk on. I’ve got us a couple of pizzas for tea.’

  I sit down at the table and study him as he sets to work. He’s humming to himself.

  ‘Dad?’ He turns and meets my eye with his head on one side. ‘How come you’ve finished work so early again? And why do you keep wearing your suit?’

  ‘Oh … I took a couple of days’ leave. And I had that meeting with the orchid specialist, remember?’

  ‘Yeah, you told me about that – but
since when did gardeners wear suits to visit other horticulturalists? And I thought that meeting was yesterday.’

  He looks uncomfortable and busies himself, placing the pan of milk on the hob to warm and then setting the oven temperature for the pizzas. When he straightens up, his shoulders are squared, as if he’s steeling himself to tell me something bad. He’s twirling a tea towel between his fingers.

  ‘Aggie, we need to talk about something.’

  He sits down opposite me. Here comes bad news – I’m sure of it. My chest feels constricted, like I’m wearing a corset that’s been pulled way too tight.

  Dad clears his throat. He’s still twisting the tea towel between his fingers. ‘It was a very important horticulturalist … and the meeting went so well that I had a second one today.’

  ‘This meeting …’ I say. ‘Was it a date?’

  Dad looks startled. ‘No! What? Agatha, why would you think that?’ He seems genuinely shocked, as though the possibility of him going on a date hasn’t even occurred to him. ‘Date? No, I had a job interview.’

  There is silence in the kitchen, except for a sizzle as the milk rises to the rim of the pan. Dad leaps up just in time to rescue it, then pours it into a mug for me and spoons in the chocolate powder.

  I’m confused. ‘Why are you applying for jobs? I thought you loved it here.’

  He sets the mug down in front of me. ‘I do, but I didn’t apply – they headhunted me.’

  ‘Who did?’

  Dad takes a deep breath, and I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I don’t know what’s going on, but this doesn’t feel good.

  ‘It was an interview with one of the managers from the Eden Project.’ He pauses, and lets this sink in. ‘It went so well yesterday they followed up with a second interview today. And they came to London specially to see me.’ He can’t disguise his excitement.