Scam on the Cam (9 page)

While all the other kids were at school doing algebra, Gemma, Toby and I were on a small motorboat on the river in Ely.

“Sometimes I love being your sidekick, Sesame,” said Toby.

The motorboat was steered by Gwendoline, who was shouting orders at the top of her voice to the university rowboat next to us. The boat was coxed by Will, who was adding more orders to the wild rumpus. It sounded like this:

“Come on, boys! Oxford won't be waiting for
you to catch up at the first corner!”

“And push for ten! One! Two! Three! . . .”

“Up one, down one!”

“Going up to thirty-eight now! Thirty-six at the moment!”

I was trying quite hard not to stare at the boat, as I had to look at Gwendoline's hands and pretend to be fabulously stupid, but it wasn't an easy task.

“Don't forget we're on a mission,” I whispered to Gemma and Toby. “We have to figure out why Gwen and Julius are hiding bags of sugar in that chest.”

“Maybe it wasn't just sugar,” said Toby, looking into the screen of his camera. “Maybe the bag you took was sugar, but the rest was poison.”

“Maybe,” I admitted.

“You're both mental,” snapped Gemma. “There's no reason why Julius and Gwendoline would poison their own team. I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation to this pirate chest mystery. It's obviously Rob—he poisoned
enough people to get into the first crew, that's all.”

“Gemma, I've already told you it's not him. Julius made that up after you unequivocally explained to him everything about our mission.”

“I barely said anything!” protested Gemma. “I was just trying to make conversation. And anyway, maybe Julius is right, but he doesn't know it. It's Rob, I'm sure.”

We passed under a bridge, and the farts and hiccups of the motorboat's engine scared a lazy-looking heron, which flew away into the distance with an expression of profound disgust on its face.

“Or maybe it's as everyone always suspected,” said Toby. “A virus, just a virus.”

“But my mum said it was a man-made one,” I objected.

“Precisely,” said Gemma triumphantly. “Gwendoline would never be able to make a virus like that. She did fine art at Oxford. She isn't a scientist.”

“Hey, that's a good point,” I muttered. “Ask
Gwendoline what the other rowers on the team do.”

Gemma cleared her throat and switched to goody-goody mode. “Gwendoline? Sorry to bother you—we're just thinking that for the article, we'd like to indicate what each of the rowers studies. Would you be able to tell us?”

“Sure,” said Gwendoline, her eyes still riveted to the rowboat next to us. “Alex at bow does English. Salman and Dan are both engineers. Rob does medieval history. Danny does physics, and so does Andrew, I think . . . Then there's Joe, an astronomer. And at stroke, Gary, who's premed. As for Waldo,” she laughed, “he studies frogs for his doctorate.”

“Frogs!” exclaimed Toby. “Wicked! I love Waldo more and more. I mean, Will.”

“Gary's a medical student,” I murmured. “This could be our man.”

“Gwendoline?” asked Gemma again. “Has Gary been pulled from the reserve crew?”

“Nope,” she said, “he's always been in the first crew. He's . . .”

But she suddenly stopped talking and cut the engine. Next to us, the rowers had slowed down considerably.

“What's going on, boys?” she shouted. “Why are you losing speed?”

“Gary's got a problem,” replied Will from the cox's seat.

“What's wrong, Gary?” asked Gwendoline.

And just as I heard the CLICK! of Toby's camera near my ear, Gary leaned to his right over the edge of the boat and emptied the (colorful) contents of his stomach into the river.

“Well,” said Toby to lighten up the atmosphere, “at least the fish got some extra food for tea.”

But no one seemed to have switched on their sense of humor, so the three of us sat down
under a nearby tree and waited as the whole crew disembarked and dragged a semicomatose and very white Gary onto the grass. They rowed back as a seven, leaving Gary with us on the motorboat.

“Mystery reactivated,” I said. “There's no reason why Rob should have poisoned someone else—he's already on the crew. So it can't be him. It could be the next guy they'll pull in from the reserve boat, though.”

“Or,” said Gemma, “it could simply be A Bug! Maybe there's no mystery at all, Sesame.”

“If it's A Bug,” said Toby, “we've definitely caught it, having spent twenty minutes with Gary on that tiny boat.”

The boys were in the changing rooms, and Gwendoline disappeared into the boathouse. Will walked down toward us, looking very concerned.

“Please don't publish this article before the race,” he said. “We can't let Oxford know that we're six men down.”

“Don't worry,” said Gemma in a professional
tone, “we know our responsibilities.”

We walked back to the boathouse. Inside, Rob Dawes came to us with a box of chocolates.

“Want some, kids?” he said. “If you're still hungry after all this . . .”

We were indeed, and helped ourselves copiously. While Gemma was asking him some innocent questions, and while Toby was taking pictures, I spotted Gwendoline's reflection in a darkened window.

She was in the kitchenette, at the end of a short corridor, half-hidden from everyone's sight.

I crept up the corridor and looked.

And what I saw made me open up my mouth as wide as Peter Mortimer's when he's about to give a squirrel the bite of death.

For Gwendoline Hawthorne was scooping blue powder from a white bucket into a large jug of juice, and mixing, and mixing, and mixing.

“It's you!” I shouted, pointing at her. “You're the poisoner!”

“What?” she exclaimed, turning to me. “What's that about? Oh, it's you. I didn't know you could even talk.”

“Oh yes, I can,” I sniggered. “I can talk very well, and also deduce things from what I see. You're slowly poisoning your own team so Oxford can win. Pathetic!”

She burst out laughing. “That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard,” she said.

“I know where you hide your powder,” I said. “I don't know how you made that virus, but I know where it is now—in the cellars of St. Catharine's College!”

She suddenly went as white as Toby's frog's belly. “I don't know what you're talking about. But I suggest you and your friends get out of here right now. Waldo!”

“Yes?” said Will, who was walking up to us
with Gemma and Toby.

“Send the baby journalists home right now.”

“Em . . . okeydoke,” said Will. “But why?”

“Why?” I repeated. “Because she wants some peace and quiet to poison the whole team with that virus!”

There was a long, very long silence, so long that I wondered if I'd accidentally hit the pause button of Life.

But then Will murmured, “I'm not sure I understand.”

“It's quite simple,” said Gwendoline. “This ridiculous child is accusing me of trying to poison everyone.”

“Poison? Why poison?” laughed Will, looking at me. “It's a virus that people are getting, you know, not poison.”

“It
is
a virus,” I said, “but a man-made one. Someone is deliberately giving it to the rowers. And that someone is her, with the help of her brother.”

“You're an idiot,” said Gwendoline. “This, my dear, is a protein shake, which I make every day
for the guys in the crew.”

Toby and Gemma slapped their foreheads, and I slouched a little. Gwendoline had poured herself a glass of the weird mixture, and downed it in one.

“See? I'm not throwing up anytime soon. Because it's just extra protein to make them stronger. Maybe you'll learn that at school someday. In the meantime, get out of here. Waldo, drive them home. I've had enough of those kids, we're not taking them back in the van.”

So we got out of there, under the sarcastic glances of the seven remaining boys, and Will's concerned look.

“Sorry about that,” he said to us as we squeezed into his tiny, rusty car. “It's not a good time to get people on the crew angry. We're all a bit stressed about all the losses. That bug . . . It's ruining our chances, you know. And for most of the guys on the team, it's the opportunity of a lifetime. They've been dreaming of the boat race for years.”

“But Will,” I said, “you've got to believe us,
there's something dodgy about that bug. We really think someone is feeding it to the rowers. Maybe someone who's trying to get into the first crew, we don't know, but . . .”

Will was shaking from head to foot. “It's a horrible thought,” he said. “I don't know what makes you think that, but I'm sure you're wrong—it's just a bug, probably in the river. Have some antibacterial gel, by the way. Wouldn't want you to fall ill too. What a dreadful epidemic.”

He pointed at the tube of gel in the glove compartment, and we helped ourselves.

“But don't you find it weird that Gwendoline is from Oxford and coaching the Cambridge team?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said, “the Hawthornes have lived in Cambridge for generations. Gwen went to Oxford because she wanted to do fine art, which you can't do in Cambridge. Seriously, kids, don't look any further. Everyone wants us to win—everyone except the river and the bug in it.”

He dropped us off in the city center in
Cambridge, and we had to admit it had been another very bad day for sleuthing.

I gloomily passed by the gate of Christ's College. It was very hot, I thought, even though it was apparently raining. And I was very tired, even though it was only five o'clock. The river air, probably.

“Good evening, Sophie.”

“Evening, parents.”

“How was the outing? How's the article going?”

“Not great.”

“You're not very chatty tonight.”

“No.”

That's when I fell onto the armrest of the armchair, bounced off it, landed on the floor, was even more colorfully sick than Gary and then all I remember is
                                                                                                     

“Enough, Mother! A week of carrots is enough for anyone. I am not a bunny!
Je ne suis pas un
bunny!
No soy un
bunny! I don't want to see or smell another carrot in my life. I wish carrots would disappear from the surface of the planet. In fact they probably are disappearing, since you're feeding them all to me.”

“The problem with Sophie is that she's a dramatic little Sarah Bernhardt,” sighed Mum. “Eat your carrot puree.”

“I'm warning you, if I do end up turning into a rabbit, I'll leave perfectly round little turds everywhere in the house. Everywhere. That'll teach you.”