Wilma Tenderfoot: The Case of the Fatal Phantom (24 page)

“Yes, Mr. Goodman,” she answered, reaching for her woolly duffel coat.

The night sky was clear and sharp and as they walked into the yard behind the kitchens, Wilma looked up at a bank of stars that seemed to go on forever. “Know what that one is?” asked Theodore, staring upward and pointing to a particularly bright constellation. Wilma shook her head. “That’s the Big Badger. If you ever get lost on a clear night, look for it and it’ll give you your bearings. Follow the snout. It always points north.”

“Thank you,” she replied in a small voice. Then she looked up at her mentor. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you that there weren’t any ghosts, Mr. Goodman. I got a bit carried away. Having a case go all spooky was a bit giddy-making.”

“No apologies required, Wilma,” replied Theodore, giving her a pat. “With every case, you are learning new skills, and that’s what being an apprentice is all about. Besides, part of learning how to do things properly is allowing yourself to get things quite wrong sometimes. Everyone makes mistakes, but what we can do is strive to improve and do our best all the time.”

“I would like to get things COMPLETELY right one day, Mr. Goodman,” said Wilma quietly.

Theodore smiled and put his hand on his young apprentice’s back. “I know, Wilma. And your enthusiasm for the task is commendable. Your Hunchy Instincts, as you call them, were often spot on, as were a lot of your observations. But enthusiasm isn’t all that’s required. It must be tempered with thought and calm contemplation of the facts—not speculations, remember. If you can manage that, then you have the makings of becoming a very great detective, Wilma.”

Wilma gave a small but determined smile.

As the pair walked, they found themselves next to a derelict building. Wilma looked up and frowned. “That sign there, Mr. Goodman,” she said, pointing, “the one hanging off its hook. It says ‘Stables.’ But that can’t be. These stables look ruined, but Victor told me he worked in them.”

“Victor?” asked Theodore, puzzled.

“The boy I told you about before,” answered Wilma, looking around. “The one who helped me with the case. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t
have found the diary or the second piece of the map.”

“But there is no stable lad at Blackheart Hoo, Wilma,” said the great detective seriously, stopping and putting his pipe away. “Are you sure?”

“Definitely, Mr. Goodman. He must be here somewhere. He’s not allowed in the house.”

Wilma ran forward and looked about her. “There he is!” she cried, pointing toward a thicket to the right of the stables. She could see Victor standing in the moonlight. He looked straight at her, smiled, raised a hand, and…melted into the cold night air. Wilma blinked. “How did he do that?” she whispered. “Where did he go? Did you see that, Mr. Goodman?”

“I’m afraid I saw nothing, Wilma,” said Theo-dore, scanning the horizon in the direction Wilma was pointing in. “Hang on, what’s that …”

The pair walked toward the point where Victor had stood. There, among the long grass, was a single gravestone. Theodore bent down and pushed the undergrowth to one side so as to read it. “‘Here lies Victor,’” he said. “‘Buried
near his adored horses. Killed in the great Hoo fire. Greatly loved. Sadly missed.’”

“Oh my,” gasped Wilma.

Mr. Goodman looked up as the leaves in the trees above them shifted gently, as if the spirit of a sweet boy finally at rest—his last treasure hunt for his dear mentor, Lord Bludsten Blackheart, completed at last—was playing among them …

P
ickle was feeling much better and was enduring the fitting for his Brackle Bush costume as best he could. “It’ll need letting down a bit there,” Mrs. Speckle grumbled, pins in her mouth. “The traditional Brackle Bush doesn’t have a tail sticking out of it.” Pickle gave a snort. He was of the opinion that a Brackle Bush would be vastly improved by the presence of a tail. Still, there was no accounting for taste. Most humans deserved nothing but his endless pity. He needed to remember that.

Wilma had been hard at it trying to learn all her lines. The Brackle Day play was in a few
hours, and what with the Case of the Fatal Phantom and being stuck at the Hoo, there had been precious little time for rehearsals. Given that the only part Pickle could play was the all-important bush, it fell to Wilma to take on all the other parts. After mixing up her porpoise lines with her Melingerra Maffling lines and forgetting about the beard change for Old Jackquis, she decided that the best thing for it was to go for a brisk stroll to clear her head. But it wasn’t just her lines that were causing her to feel troubled. Her headmistress, Kite Lambard, would be back that very afternoon and finally, after a long and interminable wait, she would be able to ask her about the letter she was sure Miss Lambard had written to Madam Skratch mentioning her all those years ago.

But there was something else Wilma had to do before she saw Miss Lambard. She wanted to prepare herself for the worst, should the worst come. Stanley Brisket had given Wilma what any young detective would refer to as a “golden lead.” After determining that she was not Lady Blackheart’s and working out that neither Molly
nor Polly were old enough to have left her at the Institute ten years ago, and that Portious and Mrs. Moggins had absolutely no recollection of absentmindedly wrapping a baby in a ham-smelling blanket, Wilma was forced to come to the conclusion that the Twelve Rats’ Tails was her next port of call. There was no point in pretending otherwise—the thought that she might have started life as the very worst sort of Criminal Element filled her with dread. But she had promised herself that she would get to the bottom of her own story and do it she would, even if the answers were murky and mud-splattered.

“This,” explained Wilma as she and Pickle walked along the front pier of the Cooper Docks, having crossed the border from the Farside to the Lowside of the island, “is called killing two birds with one stone. That means we’re being super-efficient and doing two things at once. So in this instance, we are taking a brisk stroll in fresh-aired circumstances to prepare ourselves for this afternoon’s performance, but at the same time we are going to the Twelve Rats’ Tails to investigate the next development in the Case
of the Missing Relative. What do you think? No, don’t eat that,” she added, bending down and pulling a crab’s leg from Pickle’s mouth. “Beagles shouldn’t touch shellfish.”

The Twelve Rats’ Tails was the island’s most notorious hangout for Criminal Elements. As inns of ill repute go, it was the absolute worst and was full to the brim with rapscallions and desperadoes all hunched over flagons of bubbling beer, grumbling about evil deeds and misdemeanors that they had every intention of committing. Generally speaking, low dives and hidey-holes aren’t to be recommended for ten-year-olds. Firstly, there is always the danger of falling in with the wrong crowd (which is never advisable). Secondly, you’ll probably catch something. So avoid them. Thank you.

As she pushed open the door, Wilma coughed and tried to clear the air in front of her with a hand. “Goodness, Pickle,” she said as they wandered through the murk of pipe smoke. “You’d think they’d open a window or something. Stinks a bit, doesn’t it?” As she spoke, a villainous-looking type sneered in her direction while his raggedy-looking
bulldog snarled at Pickle. They were clearly not welcome.

The barman, an ugly fellow with a nose that looked like a burst tomato, stared down over the bar at her. “Detective types don’t do well here,” he grumbled, spying the apprentice badge on Wilma’s pinafore. “If I was you, I’d turn around and leave.”

Wilma gulped. This was what her Academy textbook referred to as a “hostile environment”: not one where conditions are tricky, like a desert or an ice cap, but one where nobody in your immediate vicinity wants to be in the least bit helpful. You know, like supermarkets the day before Christmas. She needed to be brave. So taking a big breath, she began. “Do you get your ham delivered here by Stanley Brisket?”

The barman nodded. “Yes. What about it?” he snarled.

“And does that ham get wrapped in a muslin like this?” she added, holding up the piece she had been wrapped in when she was a baby.

The fellow looked at it and put down the tankard he was wiping. “Yeah,” he said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

“And can you remember someone from here taking one of those hammy cloths and wrapping a baby in one? And then taking that baby to the Institute for Woeful Children?”

The innkeeper thought for a moment. “About ten years back?” he asked eventually, leaning forward.

Wilma’s heart leaped to her throat. “Yes, almost exactly ten years ago. Do you remember?”

“Yes I do.” He nodded. “And it was I what done it. A baby was left here, so I took it up to the Institute. Left a note with it an’ all.”

“This note?” asked Wilma, her hand shaking as she showed him the luggage tag with the words “Because they gone” that had been left tied about her neck.

“That’s the one.” The fellow nodded again. “My handwriting too.” The man rested back on his heels and squinted at Wilma. “Hang on a minute—that baby. Weren’t you it?”

Wilma looked up at him, her green eyes brimming with emotion. “Yes,” she whispered, putting the tag back in her pinafore pocket. “It was me. I was the baby you left at the gates.” She stopped.
Was this the moment she had waited for all her life? Gathering her courage, she continued. “Can you tell me where I came from?”

“Don’t know about that, but I can certainly tell you who left you here,” said the barkeeper. And then, leaning right over the counter, he looked Wilma straight in the eyes. “The person who brought you here and told me to get rid of you whatever way I chose was…Barbu D’Anvers.”

Pickle yelped and Wilma stumbled backward. She felt dizzy and sick. She shook her head slowly. “I don’t believe you!” she muttered at last. “I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!” Filled with anguish and with tears running down her cheeks, she pushed through the crush of scoundrels and ran from the Twelve Rats’ Tails as fast as she could. Not Barbu D’Anvers, the man she despised the most on all of Cooper! It was the worst news possible. She couldn’t be related to him! But what if she was? What if he was…her father? It didn’t bear thinking about. She had to get to Mr. Goodman—he would know what to do.

Blinded by tears, Wilma stumbled back to
Clarissa Cottage. She had never experienced such a feeling of despair. It was as if the sun had gone in forever and she would never be happy again. As she pushed her way through the front gate of the cottage, Wilma was so miserable that she failed to notice the small horse-drawn carriage parked outside. Her eyes were so filled with tears that as she fell into the cottage kitchen, she paid no attention to the leather deerstalker hat sitting on the table. Racked with sobs, she made her way to Theodore’s study, opened his door, and she collapsed to the floor with emotion. Pickle instantly flopped down beside her and began to lick her face sympathetically. “It was Barbu D’Anvers,” she wept, her face hidden in the crook of her elbow. “He was the one…who left me…at the Institute.”

Suddenly Wilma was lifted up, and as she opened her eyes she realized it was by her headmistress, Kite Lambard. Wilma buried her face in Kite’s shoulder. “I thought it was you,” she wept. “Because of the letter…I thought you were my…missing…relative.”

Kite stroked Wilma’s hair and held her tight. “Wilma,” she whispered eventually as the small girl’s crying began to lessen, “I’ve come here because I have something important to tell you. Before I was the headmistress of the Academy of Detection and Espionage, there was someone in charge called Maximillian Blades. He was a brilliant man and was married to my sister, Prudence.”

“And he was my best friend, Wilma,” said Theodore, coming forward to comfort her too.

“But eleven years ago, both Maximillian and Prudence disappeared and I haven’t seen them since.”

“What has this to do with me?” asked Wilma, rubbing her eyes and gulping.

“Well, I’ve never told anyone this before, but the last person I know of to have seen them…saw them with a baby. Very fleetingly and from a distance, but with a baby nonetheless. The baby disappeared too, and I think it was taken to the Institute for Woeful Children. The question for me is whether the baby they were seen with was theirs at all. I made inquiries at the Institute,
as I had discovered that a baby was sent there at around the same time as Max and Pru went missing. May be unrelated, of course, but it was a lead I needed to follow up. Sadly, I got little if no help from Madam Skratch. And, now Theodore has told me about you being given MY letter to Madam Skratch, I think that baby might have been you.”

Wilma shook her head. “But I don’t understand …” she whispered, blinking. “The innkeeper told me Barbu D’Anvers gave me to him.”

Kite shot a quick, worried look in Theodore’s direction. “And we need to get to the bottom of that,” she replied. “It seems somehow you, Barbu, and the disappearance of my sister and Maximillian are all tied together.”

“Do you …” Wilma began, her arms still around Kite’s neck. “Do you think
they
might be my parents? That would make you…my aunt …”

Kite smiled slightly as she stared into Wilma’s eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “The last time I saw my sister she wasn’t pregnant, so you still could be anyone’s. Especially as Theodore tells
me someone else has been writing to Madam Skratch about you too, sending payments for your upkeep—and that wasn’t me. On the other hand, I didn’t see Prudence for a whole year before you were even born…so you could be hers. We just don’t know. But there’s more,” she added, putting Wilma down gently. “The reason I have been away is because I’ve been following some new leads about my sister’s disappearance. And yesterday, I found this. It was in a bottle in Filthy Cove.” She reached into her leather satchel and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Here, Theodore—read that.”

The great detective’s eyes flashed as he read the note, “‘All is not lost. Maximillian.’ It’s dated only two months ago.” He put a relieved hand on Kite’s shoulder. “We have hope at last. They’re still alive.”

“But where?” asked Wilma, wiping her eyes.