Wilma Tenderfoot and the Case of the Frozen Hearts (7 page)

“She's hanging up laundry, Goodman,” said the Inspector, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Shame. They are awfully good, aren't they?”

Theodore managed a weak smile and put down his cup and saucer. “So, Inspector . . . to business. The Katzin Stone?”

“Here's the thing, Goodman,” began Inspector Lemone, flipping open a small notebook that he had pulled from the inside breast pocket of his raincoat. “The Katzin Stone, the most valuable jewel ever found, was stolen from places unknown somewhere between the Office of the Receiver of Burrowed Things and platform 3B of the Cooper National Museum train station sometime between o-twelve-hundred hours and o-thirteen-hundred hours and twenty-five minutes.”

“You don't say the ‘o' when the number is over nine, Inspector. That's how the twenty-four-hour clock works. You can say o-seven-hundred hours but you can't say o-ten-hundred hours, or o-eleven-hundred hours. The ‘o' is for numbers lower than ten.”

“I know that,” replied the Inspector, looking up. “I just like saying the o bit. It sounds more official.”

Theodore said nothing, but raised his eyebrows.

“Obviously an inside job,” sighed the Inspector. “I've arrested Jeremy Burling, the Receiver of Burrowed Things. So far, he's saying nothing.”

“Hmm. I shall have to speak to him, of course. Arrange that for me, please, Inspector. And what about the people who died?” asked Theodore, picking his pipe out of his waistcoat pocket and filling it with rosemary tobacco. “What's the connection?”

“Alan Katzin and his aunt.” Inspector Lemone nodded. “Katzin found the stone. Took it to Burling. We can only assume that Burling did them in too.”

Theodore stopped packing his pipe.

“And were they killed before or after the Katzin Stone was stolen?”

“Hard to say. We think it was about the same time.”

Theodore stood up and walked toward the door of his study. “Inspector,” he said, glancing back, “we must get to the Museum at once. But first, you,” he added, opening the door with a flourish, “had better get back to your mistress, where you belong.” Wilma, who had had her ear to the keyhole and had heard everything there was to hear, looked up. “Do you know the expression
Caught in the Act,
young lady?” asked Theodore, looking down. Wilma shook her head and shifted on her feet. Pickle, who was sitting behind her, rolled over and waved his legs in the air, a tactic that had often gotten him out of scrapes, but Theodore was unimpressed. “It means being caught doing something that you shouldn't. So that's another new thing you've learned, which I think you'll agree is more than enough for one day. Inspector, if you please, we don't have a moment to lose.”

“We're not walking, are we?” asked the Inspector, standing up and following the great detective out through the door.

 

As Wilma watched Detective Goodman and the Inspector sweeping down the corridor, she felt quite certain that as far as learning new things today was concerned, there was plenty of room for improvement. If only she knew the way to the Museum. But then she remembered. “The mosaic!” she whispered, shooting an excited look at Pickle, and off she ran to get her bearings.

W
ilma was on her hands and knees. She had found the You Are Here arrow on the bathroom floor to the left of the sink and was tracing the snakelike path with her bandaged finger down from Clarissa Cottage to the big village of Coop. The post office was under the towel rack and the baker's was next to the soap stand. If she followed the road past the Poulet Palace, which was to the right of a small rag-roll rug, then all she had to do was turn left at the toilet brush and the National Museum would be directly in front of the laundry basket. Brilliant. With her bearings all found, Wilma stood up and took one lingering glance at the picture of the young Theodore with his mentor, Anthony Amber. “Come on, Pickle,” she said with a sense of resolve. “We need to hurry. If we don't, we're going to miss everything. Nothing and nobody stops Wilma Tenderfoot.”

 

“Oh no,” said Inspector Lemone as he looked at the tandem bicycle that Theodore was wheeling out from his side-garden shed. “Can't we take the steam train, Goodman? It runs on the hour.”

“Yes, Inspector, the train does run on the hour,” said Theodore, taking the seat at the front, “but it is now just past the hour, so we would have to wait fifty-seven minutes for the next one to come along. Therefore, we ride on the tandem. Put this protective hat on and tuck your trousers into your socks.”

Theodore tossed over a scuffed green hard hat, which the Inspector caught and stared at unimpressed. “Green doesn't suit me,” he said, looking up at Theodore, who was holding a far more thrilling black hat.

“Well,” said Theodore, understanding perfectly what the Inspector was getting at and ignoring it, “it is a difficult color.”

There is nothing worse than having to wear something you don't like, and the Inspector was quite anxious that a certain housekeeper didn't see him wearing the horrible green hat. “We're not riding anywhere near your clothesline, are we, Goodman?” he asked, looking about with some anxiety.

Theodore raised an eyebrow and said nothing. If he had been a flighty man stirring the pot of romance stew, then it might have been different. But he wasn't. He was a famous and serious detective, so he looked at the Inspector and said, “The National Museum, Inspector. Time is of the essence.”

 

“Shhhhhhh!” whispered Wilma to Pickle as they crept into Mrs. Waldock's back kitchen. “We mustn't wake her up.” Mrs. Waldock, having enjoyed her mid-morning double-muffin snack, was slumped in a chair and snoring. Somehow, Wilma had to get to the Museum as quickly as possible. But how?

Wilma, despite always being determined to make the best of things, had been forced to conclude that life at the Waldock residence was not as rosy as it might have been. First, there was the damp and smelly cellar; second, there was the house itself: dusty, dark, and brooding; and third, there was the bizarre manner in which Mrs. Waldock communicated Wilma's instructions for the day. Every morning since Wilma had arrived, a letter had landed on the doormat addressed to her. She had never received a proper letter in her life and she couldn't help wondering, as she carefully opened the first envelope, whether it was something exciting, like an invitation to go kite flying or a wild-card entry into that year's Lantha Championships. Sadly it was not. The letter was from Mrs. Waldock and it outlined her chores for the day:

 

Today you will do the following:

 

Every day for the last three days a new letter had arrived, and each morning Wilma had found herself with a list of revolting and maddening chores. It was something of a mystery that Mrs. Waldock should be so miserable and contrary. After all, thought Wilma, she was a Farsider, for whom life should be an endless burst of sunbeams, but here she was shut up in the gloom and stuffing herself with the very worst that Cooper cuisine had to offer. What Wilma didn't know, of course, was that there was a reason for Mrs. Waldock's cantankerous nature. It is a universal truth that ladies who stop pulling up their socks and start growing a mustache have generally given up on things. The root cause—an unspeakable letdown of a romantic nature that leaves the rest of one's life as joyless as a crate of broken eggs. Someone, somewhere, had once broken Mrs. Waldock's heart, but as to who, or why, there was very little to go on.

The only clue to Mrs. Waldock's past was a large leather traveling chest that sat gathering dust in one of the upstairs bedrooms. On Wilma's second day at Howling Hall, one of her chores had been to sweep up all the half-bitten toenails from the bedroom floors. Being a curious and determined little girl, Wilma, intrigued by the oversized trunk, had felt compelled to open it and have a good peek. “It's not snooping,” she explained to Pickle, who was sitting watching her. “It's investigating, which is a different thing entirely.” Given that everything at Howling Hall was drab and gray, Wilma was astonished to find a mass of dazzling and sparkling costumes. There was also a poster for a circus glued into the lid. She made a mental note to think about it again when she was a proper detective.

But, remembering the trunk at that moment, Wilma suddenly knew how she was going to get to the Museum . . .

 

The National Museum of Cooper had won the Most Brilliant Building on the Island Award every year since it was built. As Theodore and Inspector Lemone freewheeled down the Avenue of the Cooperans the grand entrance plaza stretched out in front of them. Larger than a football field, it was surrounded by sugarcane trees that visitors to the museum came in the hundreds to lick. Younglings lined up to chew the sweetest trees, and Sugarcane-Swizzle vendors stood on every corner cutting down the sticky twigs and leaves and pulping them into delicious bubbly drinks. Beyond the plaza was the Museum, a six-tiered pyramid that held all the treasures of Cooper. Inspector Lemone couldn't have been more relieved as they came to a stop. “I'm exhausted, Goodman!” he said, getting off the tandem and leaning against the wall of the Museum with one hand.

“It was downhill all the way, Inspector,” said Theodore, dismounting neatly. “The sensation you are experiencing is not one of exhaustion but the burst of exhilaration that riding at speed can provide. But don't worry—they are easily confused.”

Inspector Lemone wiped away the sweat on his forehead for the second time that day and stared afterTheodore P. Goodman as he marched toward the Museum entrance. “No,” he muttered to himself. “Believe me. I'm exhausted.”

There will always be individuals who are naturally athletic. You know the sort: They glide rather than galumph, they float rather than flop, and they can throw things overhand without looking really, really terrible. Inspector Lemone was not one such individual and neither was Wilma, who, having borrowed a pair of skates from Mrs. Waldock's mysterious trunk, had managed on her journey to the National Museum to knock over three mailboxes, a trash can, and a five-year-old named Susan. It was like watching a baby deer on a pogo stick. Out of breath and panting, Wilma crashed to a stop in front of the grand plaza with Pickle, his skinny frame bouncing along, ears flapping in the wind, at her heels.

The place was packed. The theft of the Katzin Stone had been in the after-lunch papers, and citizens had come from all over the island to stare at the empty display case and say things like “It's an awful shame” and “How terrible,” because everyone, no matter how much they deny it, loves a notorious case of thievery. “Sorry!” said Wilma as she skated into a family from That Place Over There, a small village on the west of the Farside. “Excuse me!” she said as she glided over the toe of a woman from That Place Under There, a village to the south. All countries have someone whose job it is to give everywhere its proper name. In Great Britain, for example, the task of naming places first fell to a man named Gregor Thellred. He was very good at what he did and came up with great place names like Plymouth and Ipswich. Sadly for Cooper, their place namer was a scruffy and disinterested lad named Brian, whose lack of imagination was breathtaking, and as a result there are villages on Cooper called terrible things like Bleeuurgh, Little Meaning, and Isit-nearlylunchyet.

Looking about frantically, Wilma couldn't see the detective anywhere, but as she skated closer to the main gates she caught sight of a stodgy police officer puffing his way across the square. “Inspector Lemone!” cried Wilma but, just as she kicked down with her left skate, she felt a hand tightening around the back collar of her pinafore.

“No skating allowed on the plaza,” said a raspy voice. Wilma looked up into the face of an angry-looking man in uniform.

“You don't understand,” said Wilma, trying to wriggle herself free. “I've got to get to the Museum. It's the Katzin Stone and—”

“No skates! And the line for the Museum starts over there,” said the attendant, indicating a line of people snaking away from the entrance. “From there,” he went on, pointing at the end of the line, which was so far away Wilma couldn't even see it, “your waiting time will be four hours.”

“But you don't understand!” shouted Wilma. “I have to get in there now! I'm helping Theodore P. Goodman crack a very important case.”

“You? Help Theodore P. Goodman?” asked the attendant, looking down his nose at the young Lowsider. “I don't think so. But even if you are, you're not going anywhere with those skates on.”

“All right! All right!” said Wilma, holding her hands out. “I'll take them off. But Mr. Goodman will hear about this, you know,” she said, giving the man one of her special stares. “You are preventing me from all manner of contemplations and deductions.” She unstrapped her skates.

“The end of the line is the other way,” said the man as Wilma set off toward the entrance gates.

“I knew that,” said Wilma and, keeping one eye on the man, she turned and headed in the direction of the Avenue of the Cooperans, Pickle hard on her heels.