Wilma Tenderfoot and the Case of the Frozen Hearts (5 page)

“Have you got a cold?” Jeremy asked.

“Yes,” said Alan, rather quickly. “It's come on suddenly and appears to be a very bad one.” And he coughed as if to emphasize the point.

“Best get out of this damp vault then.” Jeremy smiled. “I'll lock the vault but leave the box open for Captain Brock to see it. Then I'll seal it away for good, ready for travel.”

“Yes,” said Alan passing the box back and putting one hand in his pocket, “lock it away. Why don't you do that?”

“Oh!” said Jeremy, putting a hand to his forehead. “You must think me very rude. I've offered you nothing. Actually, I've got some lemon meringue pie in my office! Would you like some?”

“No, thank you,” said Alan. “I'd better be going.”

Jeremy looked puzzled as he waved good-bye to Alan, who seemed to be in a great rush, but he thought no more about it. After all, he had to make sure that the Katzin Stone reached the Museum without falling into the hands of the island's Criminal Elements. And that was far more important than eating lemon meringue pie.

 

At 12:04 precisely, Captain Brock's crack team of the 2nd Hawks Brigade arrived outside the Office of the Receiver of Burrowed Things. Two soldiers to the left of the building, another two posted to the right. Captain Brock, because he had the most experience, watched in both directions at once. Please don't try this at home. Captain Brock has been specially trained to watch things very carefully and you have not. Trying to look in two directions at once can result in a nasty headache or instant death. “Please note that I am seeing no Criminal Elements to the left or to the right,” said Captain Brock, tapping his hands together behind his back. “I will now proceed into the Office of the Receiver of Burrowed Things, where I will watch the Katzin Stone being taken out of the vault.”

Most vault doors are made of solid steel and this one was no different. “Would you mind not watching while I tap in the code for the vault door?” Jeremy asked Captain Brock. Captain Brock frowned.
Not
watching something did not come naturally to him, but he understood that these were exceptional circumstances so he averted his gaze and instead watched a drop of water as it slid its way down the vault's slimy walls. “I've tapped in the code for the vault door,” said Jeremy, after a series of clicks. “You can stop not watching now.”

Captain Brock's forehead relaxed and he looked back at the vault door, which was now open. Inside the shadowy vault was an open small metal box. Captain Brock stepped forward and made sure he was looking as hard as he possibly could. Jeremy lifted the box into the light. “The Katzin Stone, Captain Brock,” he said with a sense of awe.

Captain Brock felt the breath catch in his throat. The Katzin Stone was, without a doubt, the most beautiful and most enormously precious thing he had ever been asked to look at. “This must never fall into the hands of the Criminal Elements,” said Captain Brock with an ever greater sense of purpose. “Please lock the box and take it out of the vault. You will be escorted onto a train, where you will take the box to car number five. You will sit in a designated chair, where the crack team and I will stand in a circle and watch you and the box all the way to the Museum. Do you understand?”

“I do. Thank you, Captain Brock,” said Jeremy, who suddenly sounded very serious, like when adults are discussing garden furniture.

 

No one spoke during the three-mile trip. Jeremy had quite wanted to chat about how the weather had been unusually pleasant for the time of year and the fact that he could see bluebells in the fields but, realizing that Captain Brock and the 2nd Hawks Brigade were standing around him in a circle and staring so hard they were breaking into a sweat, he thought better of it. There was a time for idle chitchat, but this was not it.

As the train pulled into the Museum station Jeremy stood up. “Gently does it, Mr. Burling,” said Captain Brock, maintaining eye contact with the box at all times. “Hawks—two of you stay with the box, two of you out onto the platform.”

“All clear!” shouted a soldier from the platform.

“Proceed, Mr. Burling,” said Captain Brock, and out they all went from the train.

Standing on the platform was the Welcoming Committee from the Museum. As Jeremy stepped down onto the train platform the Museum Curator, a very fat and pompous gentleman, motioned to a man with a trumpet who, on cue, blew a fanfare. “Stop that at once!” yelled Captain Brock, still staring at the box. “Do you want to alert our presence to every Criminal Element in Cooper?” The herald stopped blowing on his trumpet and looked a bit disappointed.

“Captain Brock,” said the Curator, “do you have the Katzin Stone? Is it secure?”

“It is, Mr. Curator,” said Captain Brock, inching toward the Welcoming Committee.

“Then let us see it,” said the Museum Curator, puffing out his chest to show everyone that he was not to be messed with.

“Here you are, Mr. Curator,” said Jeremy, handing over the box. “The Katzin Stone.”

The Curator smiled and took the box into his hands. He let out a little sigh and opened it.

“Saints preserve us!” cried Captain Brock.

The Curator looked up, his face ashen and drawn. “Gentlemen,” he said, his puffed-up chest deflating, “the Katzin Stone is gone!”

 

And at that precise moment, in the village of Hillbottom, a scream rang out as the neighbor of Alan Katzin's aunt found her and her nephew lying on the wallpapered floor of the kitchen, done in, murdered and dead.

T
he peppermint tea was almost how Theodore P. Goodman liked it, but Mrs. Speckle knew better than to take it in until the color was just right. The detective's peppermint tea needed to be the color of spring grass: any lighter and he would complain that it was too weak, any darker and there would be an afternoon of frowns that Mrs. Speckle could well do without.

Mrs. Speckle, Detective Goodman's housekeeper, was unable to bear the cold. Quite why this was, nobody knew, but even on the hottest summer days Mrs. Speckle would be wrapped in woolen sweaters and woolen trousers, with not just one but two woolen bobble hats (for good measure) on her head. From her heavy duffle coats to her underpants, everything that Mrs. Speckle wore was knitted. Even her Wellington boots.

As she stood waiting for Theodore P. Goodman's peppermint tea to turn the correct shade of green, she pulled her second bobble hat a little farther down her forehead. There was a sharp chill and she cast her eyes about to see where it might be coming from. Mrs. Speckle had a phenomenal talent for pinning down the source of drafts, and as she scanned the room she took in everything that might be the culprit. Perhaps the draft was coming in through that hole in the wall where that ant and his large extended family seemed to have moved in? Mrs. Speckle pushed the butcher's block away and bent down to have a look. Nope. No draft there.

As Mrs. Speckle straightened she noticed that the edge of the curtain that hung over the back window was trembling. Taking hold of the fabric with one hand, she pulled it aside and realized that the left side of the window had wriggled itself ajar. Mrs. Speckle frowned, stretched her arm across the counter, and tried to get a grip on the window's handle, but the awkward angle prevented her. She leaned back into her knitted Wellingtons and wondered what she was going to do next, and as she did she heard a small voice coming from the other side of the window.

“Is this where Theodore P. Goodman lives?” said the voice.

Mrs. Speckle peered in the direction of the voice but could see no one. All the same, she said, “Yes,” because if there was one thing she knew for certain, it was that answering voices that seem to be coming from nowhere is always best.

“Theodore P. Goodman the famous detective?” said the voice, a little excited.

“Well, what other Theodore P. Goodman is there? Of course it's the famous detective.”

“Has he got an apprentice?” asked the voice.

“What is this?” asked Mrs. Speckle, pushing open the window suddenly and impatiently. “It's not my job to be answering questions about my employer and whether he has or has not got an apprentice, which he has not. Especially when you can't see who's asking them. Apprentices indeed!”

A small face appeared at the window. It was Wilma and she was beaming and wide-eyed. “Does he really live here? Really truly? I live next door. I used to live on the Lowside at the Institute for Woeful Children, but I've been sent to work for Mrs. Waldock. So far I've seen a baker's shop with a giant cake, a broken swing, and a bush in the shape of an eagle. I've read all about Theodore P. Goodman. I'm going to be a famous detective too. My name's Wilma. This is Pickle. He's a dog. Aren't you hot, wearing all those knitted things?”

Wilma, as we know, was only ten years old, which goes a long way to explaining not just her dizzy demeanor but her sudden lapse in manners. Mrs. Speckle, on the other hand, was fifty-two years old and was in no mood for explaining her love of knitted things to a cheeky young girl. Or her dog. “Listen to me, young lady,” said Mrs. Speckle with a marked tug of her bobble hat. “Famous detectives get to be famous detectives by hard work and indulging in long periods of contemplative silence, which, on the present evidence, I suspect you will find impossible.”

“What does
contemplative
mean?” asked Wilma, hooking both her hands over the frame of the opened window and swinging on it.

“Thinking about something very hard,” said Mrs. Speckle. “Which I think you should do before you swing on that window again.”

“Who's swinging on my window, Mrs. Speckle?” asked a voice like a warm cake with hot liquid chocolate at its center. Desserts, like people, can be serious, and for this reason in Cooper you will sometimes hear adults saying, “This is a serious dessert.” Well, this voice was a serious voice, and at the sound of it Wilma fell off the window and into some snowdrops. Pickle barked and leaped about a bit. Mrs. Speckle, who had noticed that the peppermint tea was turning a shade of green that was not the right kind, winced and spun around. There, standing before her, was Theodore P. Goodman.

 

Let's make no bones about it—Theodore P. Goodman was a very impressive man. As a descendent of the great Hayten Araucan, one of the founding fathers of Cooper Island, the detective was allowed to wear a mustache. The dense fawn whiskers that gathered under his nose fanned out to stunning blond peaks with the tips a deep brown as if they'd been dipped in chocolate. His hair was the color of wheat, and his head, as it caught the sunlight coming in through the window, looked as if it was made of gold. He wore a waistcoat made from the finest silk and a battered leather overcoat that had pockets deeper than oceans. There was a chain attached to one buttonhole, at the end of which hung a magnifying glass, the tool of choice for any detective worth his salt.

“Mr. Goodman!” said Mrs. Speckle, who was still staring at the peppermint tea and wishing that her employer would drink it before everyone's day was ruined. “Nothing for you to concern yourself with. Look now, here's your tea. Shall I fetch you a few corn crumbles to go with it?”

Theodore's mustache twitched at the mention of corn crumbles, for which he had a terrible weakness, but he was a detective first and biscuit* lover second, and if someone was swinging on his window he wanted to know who. “You were conversing with someone, Mrs. Speckle,” said Theodore P. Goodman, fingering his magnifying glass.

“What does
conversing
mean?” said a small muffled voice from outside the window.

“Talking, chatting, and generally entering into conversation with,” said the detective, poking his head out of the back kitchen window.

 

When people whose lives are going to be forever entwined meet for the first time, they have no way of knowing how important they are going to be to each other, and as Theodore P. Goodman, who was a very famous and serious detective, met Wilma Tenderfoot, who was a very young and cheeky Lowsider, there was no way of knowing that within just one week Wilma would be in such perilous danger that Detective Theodore P. Goodman would be her only hope. But for now Wilma wasn't in perilous danger; she was just lying in a famous detective's snowdrops, which, although not life threatening, still spelled trouble. “Hmmm,” said Theodore, eyeing the small child. “It would appear you have crushed my snowdrops.”

“I didn't do it on purpose,” gabbled Wilma. “I'm not lying here because I'm tired. Or because I wanted to ruin your flowers. I was swinging on your window. And I fell off. I think I've cut my hand,” added Wilma, holding up a small bloodied finger.