A Pocketful of Eyes (21 page)

‘Well,’ said Bee, cocking her head to one side. ‘I’m pretty sure that Featherstone won’t be coming back, so you’ll have to find a new Head Conservator.’

Kobayashi gulped. ‘So you’re not going to . . .’

‘Dob you in?’ asked Bee. ‘No. Not as long as you don’t mention any of this to anyone.’ She looked at Gregory Swindon. ‘William Cranston deserves his Nobel Prize, don’t you think?’

Kobayashi nodded. ‘I won’t say anything.’

‘Thank you,’ said the old man. ‘And as I’m now in control of William’s finances, I shall make sure the museum will overcome its financial difficulties.’

Toby raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you sure she deserves that?’

‘William loved this museum,’ said Gregory Swindon. ‘I’d hate to see it replaced by another ice-skating rink or shopping complex.’

Kobayashi whispered a hoarse ‘thank you’, and then quietly left the room. Bee turned to Swindon, who stood up slowly.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘I think Cranston’s research will be safe from Featherstone now.’

‘Thank you,’ said Swindon. ‘William always liked you. He told me all about you.’

‘Really?’

Swindon nodded. ‘He said you were the perfect assistant, and that your back-and-forth stitch was the best he’d ever seen.’

Bee felt a lump in her throat. Gregory Swindon shook her hand, and Toby’s.

‘Good luck,’ said Bee. ‘With the Nobel Prize and everything.’

Swindon inclined his head, and then shuffled from the room.

Bee gave Toby a hesitant smile. He didn’t smile back. Maybe he hadn’t forgiven her after all. Bee wondered if she should grovel.

‘Um,’ she said.

Toby scratched his nose. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Before you start whatever speech you’ve got planned, I think you should let me make something clear.’

That didn’t sound good. Grovelling was definitely now an option. ‘But I need to apolog—’

‘No,’ he said. He grabbed her shoulders and held her in place. ‘You’re going to
listen
.’

‘But—’

Toby had no hands free to put over Bee’s mouth, so he leaned in and kissed her. The kiss was warm and soft, but firm. It was a kiss that said
shut up
, and Bee shut up. For quite some time.

When they finally broke apart, Toby nodded briskly. ‘Any comments? Questions?’

Bee found she couldn’t quite manage speaking. Her knees felt rather trembly, and she was glad Toby was still holding her by the shoulders.

‘You’re very clever, do you know that?’ Toby smiled at Bee, and to her utter joy she saw that the twinkle was back in full force.

‘Yes,’ said Bee. ‘Yes, I do. But I couldn’t have done it without you, Watson.’

Toby grinned and kissed the top of her head. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and tell Faro Costa that we banished the shadows.’

THE TAXIDERMY LAB SEEMED SOMEHOW
smaller. Bee gathered the few things that she’d left at her desk, and tidied away the tools and scraps of cottonwool and wire. The completed animals had been carefully wrapped and boxed and were ready to be taken to the exhibition space, where the curators would pose them in glass cases and write carefully worded cards with the animals’ Latin names and some information about habitats and diets. Bee thought about all that those animals had witnessed over the last two weeks, and wondered what the cards would say if she were in charge of writing them.

‘Well,’ said Toby, when every last pair of tweezers had been put away.

Bee reached up to the third shelf from the right and four shelves down, and screwed a lid onto the jar marked
EYES, REPTILE, S–M
.

‘Well,’ she replied.

Toby’s mouth curled in a crooked smile. ‘Is hanging out with you always this intense?’

Bee laughed. ‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘At least, not with the death and danger and intrigue. Not all the time, anyway.’

‘But there’ll still be a
bit
of intensity, right?’

Bee leaned in and kissed him. It was supposed to be a soft and gentle kiss, but it very quickly got out of hand. Bee felt Toby’s shirt under her hands, and under that, the warmth of his chest and the fast thumping of his heart. She felt his mouth smile, and she pulled away.

‘Intensity,’ said Toby, breathing heavily. ‘Check.’

Bee arrived home later – quite a bit later – to find Angela and Neal sitting at the dining-room table playing Settlers of Catan. Angela stood up when Bee entered the room.

‘Are you okay?’ said Angela, coming over and giving Bee a hug. ‘You left so suddenly this morning and you haven’t been answering your phone all day.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Bee. ‘Actually, I’m good.’

Angela squeezed her. ‘I’m sorry if I haven’t been around much to talk to.’

‘It’s fine, really.’

‘What’s been going on? Why were you so upset this morning?’

Bee considered telling her mother the whole story, but the thought exhausted her. She’d already been through it once that day. She’d tell Angela some other time.

‘You know,’ said Bee. ‘The funeral. Everything. But everything’s fine now.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

Angela gave Bee one last hug and kissed her cheek, before sitting back down at the table. The Celestial Badger looked up at Bee and smiled.

‘Oh,’ said Bee, smiling back at him. ‘And I wanted to say thanks, Neal. For your advice last night. You were right. I did just need a good night’s rest.’

The Celestial Badger’s smile broke into a grin, and Bee thought that maybe he wasn’t
so
awkward-looking after all. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

‘Do you have any plans for tonight?’ Angela asked Bee. ‘We were going to order takeaway and watch DVDs.’

Bee grinned. ‘That sounds like the best night ever.’

Angela looked pleased. ‘Do you have any pizza preferences?’ she asked, standing up to get the menu. ‘You should pick, as it’s your last night of freedom.’

‘Nope,’ said Bee. ‘You choose. I have to do a couple of things first, then I’ll be ready for whatever your DVD collection wants to throw at me.’

On top of Bee’s wardrobe there was a large cardboard box. She stood on a chair and dragged the box down. It was heavy, and covered with dust. Bee sneezed. Then she sat down on her bed and summed up.

1. Toby liked her.
Liked
liked her.

2. She liked him back.

3. A lot.

4. More than she’d ever liked Fletch.

5. It was possible that Toby wanted to be her boyfriend.

6. This was a nice thought.

7. If Bee had a boyfriend, she didn’t have to feel hurt about Fletch dumping her.

8. And people wouldn’t feel sorry for her. Especially if her new boyfriend was a hot genius PhD student.

9. If she wasn’t angry or sad about Fletch, then she didn’t mind if he had a new girlfriend.

10. Like Maddy.

11. She missed Maddy.

12. And technically Bee had cheated on Fletch as well. Sort of.

13. So technically
he
hadn’t dumped
her.
They’d just
broken up
.

14. Which meant Maddy hadn’t stolen her boyfriend.

15. Which meant she didn’t have to be mad at Maddy.

Bee looked at the phone lying on her desk. Had the Celestial Badger been right? Could it really just be a case of getting over it and calling Maddy? Could everything just go back to normal? Friendship was supposed to be such a complicated thing; surely it couldn’t be that simple.

She wondered what William of Ockham would have advised her to do. Would he have said the same thing as the Celestial Badger?

Bee thought about Toby, and that funny half-smiling look he got just before he kissed her. Something happy and fizzy bubbled up inside her, and she wanted to
tell
someone.

She wanted to tell Maddy.

Bee picked up her phone and scrolled down her contacts list.

Maddy answered, sounding surprised. ‘Bee?’

‘Hey.’

‘Hey yourself!’ Maddy sounded pleased and nervous. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m good,’ said Bee, and was surprised to find out it was true. ‘Really good, actually.’

‘I’m glad.’ Maddy paused. ‘Did you get my email?’

‘Yep,’ said Bee. ‘Thanks. For explaining everything.’

‘Oh! That’s okay, you’re welcome. Um. I’m sorry. Again.’

‘Forget it,’ said Bee. ‘It really isn’t important.’ This, also, seemed to be true. ‘So. Are you ready for school tomorrow?’

Maddy groaned. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No. I don’t know. I kind of want school to just get it over with, you know? Like ripping off a bandaid. Everyone’s been going on and on at me all summer about what a
big deal
Year Twelve is. I just want the suspense to be over.’

‘I know,’ said Bee, who felt she had had quite enough suspense for one year, and it wasn’t even February yet.

There was another somewhat awkward pause.

‘How was your summer?’ asked Maddy at last.

Bee grinned and propped her feet up on the dusty cardboard box. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,’ she said.

William of Ockham had sort of been onto something, Bee concluded half an hour later. The simplest answer was often the right one. But simple wasn’t the same thing as boring. Simple could still take your breath away. Some of the most beautiful things in the world were beautiful
because
of their simplicity. Simple things were deceptive and amazing because behind them were millions of layers of meaning and complexity, all hidden beneath the facade of simplicity.

They were the best kinds of mysteries, after all. The ones where you were completely stumped by the whole thing, along with Sherlock and Nancy and Trixie and Hercule. Until the end where everything fell into place and you couldn’t believe you’d been so blind, that you hadn’t seen how
simple
it all really was.

Bee remembered her eleventh birthday. It had been the first year she hadn’t received a card from her father. When she was really little, he’d sent gifts, which had dwindled to cards. Then, nothing. That was when reality had sunk in. Bee had boxed up all her childish mystery novels, marched down to the library and borrowed as much adult crime as her library card would permit. She stopped making up outlandish stories about how Mr Lee was really a millionaire posing as a poor, cardigan-wearing maths teacher because his cruel ex-wife was trying to have him murdered so she could steal his fortune. She had crawled into bed after eating too much cake with her mum and Maddy, and curled up into a ball of misery. No birthday card. No mystery. Nothing. Bee had cracked the spine on a PD James novel and concluded that this must be what being a grown-up meant, and that she would just have to suck it up and deal with it.

So she did.

Until now.

Bee grabbed a pair of scissors and cut through the brown packing tape of the cardboard box. She sneezed again as she lifted the flaps open, and felt a thrill of nostalgia and recognition. It was like discovering old friends who had never really gone away.

She pulled out
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
with its dreadful illustration of Hercule Poirot on the cover. Next came a red hardcover edition of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. Bee flipped to the end and saw the purple stains on the paper, where she’d become so excited she’d knocked over her glass of grape juice. The copy of Agatha Christie’s
Sleeping Murder
had lost its cover long ago and the pages were held together with crumbling sticky tape. Nancy Drew emerged from the box in two copies of
The Whispering Statue
, both the 1937 version and the revised 1970s version with its completely different plot. Bee paused over
Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Headless Horseman
, remembering how thrilled she’d been when, in an almost postmodern twist, a quote from Sherlock Holmes had provided Trixie with the solution to the puzzle of the fruit trees.

Finally, at the bottom of the box, Bee found her detective kit, complete with notebook, rubber gloves, magnifying glass and lipstick. She flicked through the notebook, laughing at her outlandish feats of imagination and clumsy handwriting.

‘Bee?’ Angela called from the kitchen. ‘The pizza’s here. We’re going to watch that episode of
Doctor Who
where Agatha Christie goes missing and there’s a giant wasp.’

Bee grinned. ‘Coming.’

The rubber gloves were starting to crumble, the thin latex unable to stand the test of time. Bee dropped them into the bin, then slid the notebook, magnifying glass and lipstick into her handbag.

Just because the world was simple, it didn’t mean there wasn’t any room for the occasional mystery.