War of the World Records (4 page)

Though Mrs. Whipple could have gone on to mention Franklin's stint with the Royal Naval Academy, or Cordelia's apprenticeship at the Institute for Medical and Architectural Research, or Henry's YesterGear sponsorship, she instead said nothing and simply smiled.

“Ah, well,” said Rita, “so much more to see, Lizzie. Have you had a chance to view Randolf's trophies for Fastest Trophy Polishing?”

As his mother was whisked away again by the hostess, Arthur turned to look for Ruby, but found she was no longer in the room. He then discovered a half-open door where he'd last seen her standing and peeked inside.

An angular indoor fountain spouted from the center of the dim, candle-lit chamber. There, on the fountain's outer ledge, reading an old cloth-bound book, sat Ruby. Arthur stepped inside.

“Done gawking?” said Ruby without looking up from her book.

“What? No,” said Arthur. “I was just, um . . .” His voice trailed off. “So,” he said a moment later, taking a seat a few feet from her on the fountain's edge, “what's that you're reading?”

“
Poise and Poisonousness
,” she replied. “One of the last novels Joss Langston wrote before her untimely death. I'm just at the part where Elsie discovers Mr. Billowy has selfishly sullied her sister's honor, and decides to even the score by stirring arsenic into his cognac while he's out dancing a quadrille.”

Arthur grimaced.

Apparently sensing his unease, Ruby added, “You've heard of Joss Langston—
Crime and Credulousness
?
Corpse and Culpability
?
Southanger Cemetery
?”

“Not really.”

“Classic Victorian noir. Some of the finest femmes fatales ever to wield a cleaver while wearing a corset. I just finished
Lass and Laceration
, and I'm moving on to
Manslaughter Park
as soon as I get through this one.”

“Hmm,” said Arthur. “Sounds, um, engrossing. So what is this place anyway?”

“The reflection room,” she said. “Rita saw it in a magazine I think. ‘No modern home is complete without a room in which to relax and reflect on one's unity with the universe' or some such. Doesn't get much use.” Ruby paused, looking up from her book for the first time. She dipped her hand in the fountain and let the water drain through her fingers. “But perhaps we should do a bit of
reflecting
of our own,” she said cryptically. She closed her book and set it beside her on the ledge, then walked to the doorway. Peering cautiously out into the trophy room, she quietly shut the door.

“So,” she said, turning back to Arthur, “what are we to do with our investigation now? You know, now that Sammy's been seen alive?”

“Hmm?” said Arthur. “Oh, right—the investigation. I've been meaning to—”

“I mean,” Ruby cut in as she sat herself back down, “I was thrilled to see him on the front page of
The Record
, clearly not dead, and I wanted to believe he was innocent—but this skipping-town business, without a word to anyone. . . . It's a bit hard to swallow, don't you think?”

“I know,” replied Arthur, unable to conceal a sudden smirk. “If only there were some way to know for sure he was telling the truth. . . .”

He then slipped Sammy's note out of his pocket and handed it to Ruby.

“What's this?” she said.

“Read it.”

Ruby unfolded the paper. She hadn't held it open for two seconds before she exclaimed, “What? Where did you get this?”

Arthur glanced to the door to make sure it was still closed, then whispered, “It was delivered to me inside a belated birthday cake the day after the
Current Champion
sank.”

“And you're just showing it to me now?” Ruby shot back.

“I tried to call you all this week,” Arthur explained, “but the boy answering the phone said you'd just be a minute, only to leave me waiting for hours every time.”

“Sounds like Rupert's idea of a joke,” Ruby said with a scowl.

“I nearly achieved the Longest Time to Hold a Telephone Line at one point,” Arthur added, “but it went dead at thirteen and a half hours, just ten minutes short of the record.”

“Yep,” said Ruby. “That's Rupert all right.”

She returned to Sammy's letter. When she had finished reading, she looked up at Arthur and smiled. “I told you he was grateful.”

Ruby handed Sammy's note back to Arthur, then scrunched up her face. “So, if Sammy didn't put the poison in the galley, then who did? Either Smudge is completely crooked and planting evidence, or someone else managed to get it aboard the ship that night.”

“But who? Besides Inspector Smudge and the Execution Squad, it was only our two families and the ship's crew who ever set foot aboard the
Current Champion
, as far as I know.”

“Well,” scowled Ruby. “I wouldn't put it past Smudge or the Execution Squad, for starters.” Then, with a nod to the trophy room door she muttered, “Or anyone in my family, really. . . . And how well do you know the crew?”

“Not very well, I guess,” Arthur admitted. “Besides the regular staff, we hire an assortment of sailors and deckhands off the docks to handle the rigging and whatnot.”

“And is it possible one of them might have accepted a bribe from the giant and the dwarf—Messrs. Overkill and Undercut—to plant the poison?”

“I guess so. They
are
a bit of a salty bunch, come to think of it.”

“They usually are,” Ruby nodded. “And as the ship is now a permanent addition to the sea floor—and the physical evidence is in the possession of Inspector Smudge, I'm afraid we've come to a bit of a stall here. It seems we'll have to find some other way to track down our culprits. Any ideas?”

“Well, I've already tried contacting the Unsafe Sports Committee to see if the giant and the dwarf turned up in any of their photographs or film footage, but they were too busy fighting the lawsuits from this year's Showdown to be of any help. So, I don't think we'll get anywhere that way either. But we've got to come up with something, wouldn't you say? So we're not just sitting on our hands, waiting for our villains to make their next move?”

“Indeed, Detective Whipple,” Ruby replied. “Anything less would simply be bad police work. How's tomorrow for a comprehensive case meeting?”

“Well, I'm attempting the record for Balancing Most Wine Glasses on Chin tomorrow morning, but as soon as that's over, I've got the rest of the day free.”

Ruby couldn't help but roll her eyes ever so slightly at Arthur's mention of the record attempt. “Fine,” she said. “We'll rendezvous at the Undertakers' Graveyard at noon.”

“Hang on,” Arthur protested, “can't we pick somewhere—”

“I am having a meeting in a graveyard one way or another,” Ruby said firmly. “I still haven't forgiven you for the last time you had one without me. Be thankful I'm not demanding we meet at midnight.”

“Very well then,” Arthur sighed. “I'll—”

Just then, the door burst open and Ruby's mother poked her head through the doorway.

“Come on, you two,” she said. “We know you have no interest in trophies and awards, but that's no reason to be antisocial. I'm sure the Whipples don't want their underachieving son dragged down any further by your influence, dear.”

“Of course they don't,” said Ruby.

After Rita had escorted the two of them back into the trophy room, Rex gathered the rest of the group. “All right, then,” he declared, “I think we've sufficiently exhausted the anteroom now. . . .”

“Anteroom?” puzzled Mr. Whipple. “But I thought—”

“Oh, no,” Rex replied. “This is merely the entryway. The main trophy chamber is just through there. . . .”

The Whipples followed their host through yet another plastic portal to find themselves in a huge circular room. Every inch of its high, curving wall was covered with sparkling plaques.

Arthur gaped at the sight. Reminded of his earlier mission, he took a deep breath and set about scanning each new award, hoping to finally locate the one with Ruby's name on it.

“My, my,” said Mr. Whipple after a stretch of dumbfounded silence. “This is
almost
as big as our own wall of plaques back home—isn't it, children?”

Rex turned to him and smiled. “Right you are, Charlie. Your record for Largest Wall of Plaques in a Family Residence is indeed safe for the time being.”

Arthur's father put on an unmistakably proud face—but their host hadn't finished.

“Yes, we realized early on that
one
wall simply would not be enough for us. . . .”

Rex pressed a button in a concealed panel to his right, and the curving wall of plaques split down the center and slid open to reveal: a second wall of plaques. This in itself was easily enough to wipe the smirk off Mr. Whipple's face, but as soon as the first wall had come to a halt, the second wall split apart as well, unveiling yet another plaque-covered wall behind it.

The Whipples' jaws dropped.

Hopelessly overwhelmed, Arthur officially called off his search. It would take hours to read so many plaques. If he was going to discover Ruby's secret world record, it would not be like this.

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Whipple said a moment later. “Three walls of plaques—a clever gimmick to be sure. But what of it? Clearly, most of these awards have not even been officially certified, seeing as you only broke your thousandth record a few weeks ago at the Birthday Extravaganza.”

“It's true, Charlie,” said Rex. “That was our thousandth record . . . for
this
season. I mean, surely you've heard the news by now.”

Mr. Whipple cocked his head to one side. “And what news would that be?”

“Well,” Rex replied, “as a result of our performance at the Unsafe Sports Showdown, the International World Record Federation has ruled to acknowledge all the unregistered records we'd quietly broken in the years before our new contract with the
Ardmore Almanac
. So as it turns out, we now officially hold more records than the legendary Nakamoto family—your old sparring partners! Of course, we do still trail your family by a fair margin, but I'd say going from amateur to world's second best in a matter of weeks isn't half bad. Really, I'm shocked you hadn't heard before. It's all in the new edition of the
Ardmore Almanac
, out today. You do read the
Almanac
, don't you, Charlie?”

Arthur's father arched his eyebrows and opened his mouth in such a way that no kind words could have come from it, but he was promptly cut off by a burst of static, as the image of a thin-mustached man in a towering chef's hat appeared on a nearby viewscreen.

“Monsieur Goldween,” the chef declared, “deenair eez sairved.”

• • •

Arthur was famished. Since the time of Sammy the Spatula's arrest, the Whipples had been auditioning various chefs to fill the position but had yet to find anyone with even half of Sammy's talent. This week's candidate, Chef Stefan Mulchmann, was famous for his extensive menu of gourmet casseroles. Arthur had initially been taken in by the dishes' enticing-sounding names, but he grew increasingly amazed at the number of otherwise-delicious foods that suddenly became unpalatable once the word “casserole” was added to their titles. After a week of trying to make the best of pizza casserole, roast beef casserole, sweet-and-sour casserole, macaroni casserole, taco casserole, and all-you-can-eat buffet casserole, Arthur had been inspired to attempt the record for Longest Time to Survive without Food. (Unfortunately, when Beatrice had smuggled an uncasseroled sausage link from the kitchen that morning and offered to divide it amongst her siblings, Arthur had forgotten all about his ongoing fast until he had already broken it.)

Needless to say, he was very much looking forward to having a meal away from home.

And so, as he peered down at the pea-sized splotch in the middle of his plate, he couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed.

“But where's all the food?” said Beatrice.

“Hush, Beatrice,” said Arthur's mother. “Don't be rude.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Whipple,” said Rex, grinning from across the Goldwins' white, kidney-shaped dining table. “This is hardly your everyday spread. As you can see, Chef Bijou painstakingly pares down each cut of meat and every handpicked vegetable until all that remains is an absolutely ideal specimen. Tonight's meal, I'm happy to report, will break his own record for Smallest Portioned Five-Star/Four-Course Dinner Ever Prepared, further cementing his title for Most Records in Petite Cuisine. Why, come to think of it, Charlie, this must remind you a bit of your own former chef. Sammy the Spatula's work never had the same focus on premium quality that Bijou's does, but it was fairly groundbreaking in its own right, wasn't it? What a shame he got you to believe in him, only to try and murder you all again like that. I hear they nearly caught him boarding the first train he could sneak himself onto—”

“If you don't mind, Mr. Goldwin,” said Arthur's father, “I'd rather not discuss our former chef at this time. Still a bit of a tender subject, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, I completely understand, Charlie. I can't imagine the heartbreak of having a member of one's own trusted staff commit such a betrayal. Fortunately, we've never had to experience anything like that, since each of our staff has come fully recommended by the Ardmore Association. Just one of the many perks of membership, of course. You should really think of coming over—I know the Association would love to have you. . . .”

Arthur thought back to the last place he'd heard the Ardmore Association mentioned, in an article about the discovery of a deceased board member at a sandcastle competition. He wondered if Rex had read that article, too.