Scam on the Cam (8 page)

“Want me to take over?” asked Julius after a while.

“Almost . . . done . . . ,” she grumbled between her teeth, still banging at the pirate chest and showering it in pretty sparkles of sweat.

“Would have been easier if you hadn't lost the key,” said Julius.

“Very . . . funny,” said Gwendoline. “Haven't. . . lost it . . . someone . . . stole it!”

And finally the lock exploded into splinters of metal and wood, some of which landed dangerously close to my shiny shoes.

“Good job,” said Julius. “Let's see. Anything missing?”

Gwendoline opened the chest, which groaned as if annoyed to be so rudely awakened (I certainly would have been). They peered into it for a while, moving stuff around.

“Not that I can tell,” murmured Gwendoline. “No, everything seems to be just as we left it.”

“I told you,” said Julius. “No one stole that key—you must've lost it somewhere.”

“I was worried about those kids roaming
around,” said Gwendoline. “Your little friends from Goodall.”

“Oh, they're completely harmless,” said Julius. “I got one of them talking this morning. She told me they suspected that someone was poisoning the team. So I made up a story about seeing Rob Dawes mixing stuff into their food. That should keep them busy for a while.”

I mentally cursed Gemma so abundantly that her unearringed ears must still have been ringing the next morning, though she probably interpreted it as a foreboding of wedding bells with the devious Julius.

“Well,” said Gwendoline, “until I find the key, let's leave that thing here. We can't hide it anywhere in the boathouse, and we can't leave it outside now that the lock is broken. Let's get what we need from it immediately and come back for more whenever necessary.”

They crouched down and filled Julius's backpack with things I couldn't see. Then they closed the chest again, pushed it against a wall, covered it with old furs and a Persian rug and
finally left the room, helpfully neglecting to turn the lights off.

As soon as they'd gone, I leaped out of my hiding place—my lungs as dusty as if I'd been vacuuming up the room with my nostrils for the past two hours—and pushed away all the rags that they'd dropped on the chest. Gingerly, I opened it.

It was half-full of bags.

Bags of
powder
.

Blue powder, white powder.

“Well, well, well,” I murmured, “what can that powder be, then? How about
poison
?”

So I took one, stuck it inside my dress pocket, and put the chest back into place. Then I took some time to congratulate myself.

“Well done, Sesame. This was a good evening. You hadn't planned to go on a mission, but a good supersleuth knows that the unpredictable is always the best ally.”

I shook my own (right) hand with my own (left) hand and merrily prepared to make my way back to the door.

And then the only lightbulb in the cellar burned out with a
ding
!

I didn't panic. Supersleuths don't panic. They embrace the unpredictable. “Hurrah!” I said to the darkness around me. “The lights have gone out. This gives me a unique opportunity to use my tiny pen-size flashlight.”

My cool godfather, Liam, who is a hippie and a punk and sometimes a Goth, but always a good-for-nothing artist, a while ago had sent me a sleuthing package full of useful things. You would know this if you'd read the previous volume of my adventures, like all intelligent people should. Anyway, this package contained, among other things, a pen-size flashlight, which I always keep in my pocket. So I got it out and lit my way to the door.

Which was locked.

I didn't panic. Supersleuths don't panic. They embrace the unpredictable.

“Hurrah!” I said to a moth-eaten stuffed weasel with a sparkly tiara on its head next to me. “The door is locked. This gives me a unique
opportunity to use my skeleton key.”

For my cool godfather Liam's package contained, among other things, a skeleton key, which is a key that can open all doors, or at least a good number of doors.

So I got it out and slid it inside the keyhole, and tweaked and turned and twisted it until the lock went CLICK! and nicely agreed to open the door.

Triumphantly, I pulled the door handle.

Which remained in my hand, problematically not connected to the door, due to its base being entirely eaten up by rust.

I didn't panic. Supersleuths don't panic. They embrace the unpredictable.

“Hurrah!” I said to an ugly painting of a knight on a horse in a field next to me. “This gives me a unique opportunity to use my phone and call Toby to tell him to get here as fast as possible and open the door from the outside, or else.”

So I got my phone out.

And there was no reception.

Now I can't deny I started panicking a tiny little bit.

“Dear parents, I adore you,” I said to Mum and Dad on the way back to Christ's College.

“We adore you too,” said Mum, which proved that she was more than a little bit tipsy.

“It was an über-good idea to give me the hair clip with the flower tonight.”

“I'm sure it was, my love.”

“It saved my life.”

“I'm sure it did, my love.”

They stumbled into Christ's, threw loud hellos to the Night Porters and danced around First Court to our front door.

“Looks like they had a good evening,” said Tod the porter to me as I was bidding good night to him and Don.

“Yep,” I said. “They didn't even notice I was gone for an hour, almost buried alive, and would have died a long and hungry death had it not been for a metal hair clip I managed to use as a door handle to free myself from a room of Lost Objects containing a pirate chest full of illegal poison.”

“So many funny stories in that little head,” said Don, ruffling my hair.

I hugged them both, leaving a vast amount of cobwebs and dust on their uniforms, and skipped home where a concerto in snore major was already emanating from the parental bedroom. I emptied my pocket on the table, found my phone and texted Gemma quickly:

Then I realized I was about to collapse with exhaustion, and almost did, but Peter Mortimer started licking my ankles with a tongue that was slightly more unpleasant than a cheese grater, so I moved to bed and fell instantly asleep.

“
Bonjour
, hungover parents! How's the head?”

“We are not at all hungover,” said Mum curtly, spreading jam on her toast. Dad was idly pretending to read the
Telegraph
. “We remember everything that happened yesterday evening.”

Both of them were sporting impressively dark half-circles under their eyes, making them look like a couple of giant, cuddly raccoons.

“Like when I was away for an hour at the end of the dinner?”

“Very funny,” said Dad. “Here's your porridge. Sugar? Honey?”

And he pushed a jar of honey toward me, as well as an open bag of . . .

I froze.

“That's not sugar,” I said.

They didn't reply, so I said more loudly, “That's not sugar.”

“What isn't, my dear?” asked Mum, who was now reading the centerpiece of the
Telegraph
, which Dad had shared with her.

“That bag. Bad powder. N-n-not sugar,” I stammered, having suddenly lost the ability to use verbs.

“Yes, it is,” said Mum, stirring a spoonful of
the substance into her cup of coffee, and then drinking it.

“No no, no no no, no no, no no,” I choked. “Don't drink it!”

“It's my second cup,” said Mum, laughing. “What's wrong with you, Sophie?”

“It's not sugar,” I said. “It's a bag of . . . something . . . that I left here on the table yesterday. By mistake.”

Mum rolled her eyes and tucked into her newspaper again.

Being faced with two
Telegraph
-shaped walls, I looked at the transparent plastic bag. Sure enough, there was writing on it, small enough that I hadn't noticed it the night before. It said Fine White Sugar (500g).

“But it can't be,” I murmured. “It makes no sense. Why hide sugar in a pirate chest?”

“What are you mumbling?” inquired Dad from behind the
Telegraph
wall.

“Are you feeling well?” I asked. “No nausea?”

“Seriously, Sophie,” said Dad, “we're not hungover at all. It was just a little bit of wine.”

“Any rumbling and fizzling in your stomach? Any urgent urges to be violently sick?”

“Really, Sophie, you are infernal,” said Mum. “We don't need to hear such disgusting things at the breakfast table. Finish your porridge, you're going to be late for school.”

And when I left the house, half an hour later, neither Mum nor Dad was projectile-vomiting into the purple curtains.

It was incomprehensible.