The Case of the Spilled Ink, page 6
part #6 of Maisie Hitchins Series
“That’s very pretty,” Maisie said admiringly. “I like the little dog,” she added.
“I know! I can’t decide if he’s my favourite, or the soldier. My father is in the army, you know.” Lucie paused. “What’s the matter, Milly? You’ve got such a frown.”
“I was just thinking,” Maisie murmured. “No, don’t worry. I don’t expect it would work.”
“What? What?” Lucie squeaked. “Tell me!”
“Well, I expect you’ve shown your charm bracelet to everyone,” Maisie said slowly. “So all the girls know that you have it, and that it’s special. Someone who wanted to make trouble for you might try to take it – like all the other special things that have gone missing.”
“But I won’t let anyone, Milly,” Lucie said earnestly. “I’ll look after it, ever so carefully. I shan’t let Bella anywhere near it!”
“Exactly,” Maisie agreed. “It’s too precious, that’s why I said my plan wouldn’t work.”
“Oh, Milly! Are you going to set a trap for her?” Lucie exclaimed.
“I was thinking about it.” Maisie nodded. “But I don’t want anything to happen to your bracelet.”
Lucie nibbled her bottom lip. “I’d get it back, though, wouldn’t I? And I do want to get rid of Bella, Maisie. She makes everyone miserable.”
“I wasn’t thinking of letting her steal the whole bracelet,” Maisie explained. “But we could undo one of the charms, you see. And then if you could drop it, just when she happens to be walking by, and pretend that you haven’t noticed…”
“She would pick it up!” Lucie breathed.
“Yes. And if we were watching, perhaps we could spot where she’s hiding things. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of in her rooms while I’ve been cleaning. I think she must have another hidey-hole somewhere.”
“Let’s do it!” Lucie agreed eagerly.
“I have to get back to the kitchens, or Mrs Albert will be looking for me,” Maisie explained. “Can you go and find Alice, Lucie, and explain to her what we’re going to do? Ask her to open the link on the dog charm with her penknife. Here, look.” She pointed to the place. “If she leaves it just a little loose, so that you can pull it off easily, then that should work. And then you’ll have to watch out for the right moment to drop the charm.” Maisie thought for a moment. “I won’t be there to help, but if you tell Alice and Clarissa and Arabel, then between the four of you, you must be able to see where Bella goes.”
Lucie nodded. “I’ll go and tell Alice now,” she said, as she hurried back along the passageway.
Maisie watched her go and sighed. It was a good way of catching Bella in the act, but she had hoped to find some way of solving the mystery without getting the older girl into trouble. She felt sorry for her.
“Maisie! Maisie!” Alice dashed into the music room, where Maisie was dusting. It was the next afternoon, and Maisie had been waiting nervously to see whether Lucie would be able to carry out the plan. Lucie was so little and so giggly, Maisie wasn’t sure whether she could convince Bella.
But it seemed she had. Alice was dragging Maisie along the corridor towards the back of the house and the kitchens.
“Where are we going?” she asked. She had assumed that Bella would have hidden the things somewhere in the main part of the house.
“Wait and see,” Alice said grimly. “There! Look!”
Lucie, Arabel and Clarissa were standing by Maisie’s coat, hanging on its peg.
“What on earth are you three doing?” Maisie asked in surprise.
“We followed her!” Lucie explained. “We hid behind the broom cupboard and watched.”
“And guess where she put it!” Clarissa added.
“You’ll never guess!” Arabel folded her arms triumphantly.
Maisie looked at her coat, and thinned her lips. “She’s doing it again, isn’t she? She was furious with me for standing up to her when she was mean to Lucie. Has she put it in my pocket?”
The little girls looked disappointed, but then Lucie nodded. “I suppose you really are a detective. Yes, look!” She dug her hand into the pocket and pulled out the little silver dog.
“You’d better put it back,” Maisie said slowly. “We can use it to show Miss Prenderby what Bella did to Florence… Wait a minute! Where’s Bella now?”
The other four gaped at her.
“Didn’t you look?”
They shook their heads worriedly, and Alice gasped, “Do you think she’s gone to tell?”
“Yes!” Maisie yelped, looking around wildly, as though she expected Miss Prenderby to appear out of the woodwork any moment.
Alice grabbed her arm again, and they dashed upstairs, the little ones hurrying after them.
“What are we going to do, Maisie?” Alice panted. “We can’t prove that you didn’t take that charm. Oh, perhaps we shouldn’t have left it there!”
“We’ll tell Miss Prenderby it was Bella,” Lucie suggested eagerly, but Maisie shook her head.
“I don’t know if she would believe you. You’re the littlest girls in the school, and Bella – well, she can be very convincing when she wants to be. No one’s going to take my word over Bella’s either, I’m just a maid.”
“No, we can make sure no one thinks it was you, Maisie,” Alice said firmly. “Lucie, come on, we’re going to your room. You lost your charm, and you called me and Arabel and Clarissa and Maisie, I mean Milly, to help you find it.”
“Good idea! Come on.” Lucie scurried along the landing, and they all followed her to the room she shared with the other little ones.
“And before we came to help, Maisie, you were in my room,” Alice whispered. “Helping me tidy up, because the kittens tipped out my sewing basket! Miss Prenderby will believe me, I’m sure of it.”
There was a sharp knock on Lucie’s door just as Alice finished, and Miss Prenderby marched into the room, followed by Bella. “What on earth are all you girls doing in here?” the headmistress snapped.
“Oh, Miss Prenderby, my little dog charm has fallen off my bracelet!” Lucie squeaked, when Alice nudged her. “I asked the others to come and help me, and Milly too. I wanted her to help me lift up the chest of drawers. I think the charm might be underneath.”
Maisie stared at her admiringly. Lucie was much better at making up stories than Alice.
“I have your charm,” Miss Prenderby said coldly, holding it out.
Lucie took the little silver dog, trying to look surprised. “Thank you! Where was it, Miss Prenderby?”
“It was in this girl’s coat pocket.” Miss Prenderby gazed at Maisie. “Where she put it. Bella has just told me that she saw Milly pick something up a few minutes ago, and then she went sneaking along so suspiciously that Bella decided to follow her.”
Alice frowned. “But Milly was with me until a few minutes ago, Miss Prenderby. The kittens had knocked over my sewing basket, so I asked her to help me clear it up. All my embroidery silks were knotted up and it took us ages. Nearly an hour.”
Bella stared at Alice, and her mouth dropped open. She obviously hadn’t expected Maisie to have an alibi.
“Are you quite sure?” Miss Prenderby asked sternly.
“Oh yes,” Alice said. “Bella must have been mistaken.”
“I wasn’t…” Bella muttered, but she looked worried. It was her word against Alice’s.
“Milly was in Alice’s room – that’s why Alice came to help us look for the charm too,” Lucie put in. Only Maisie could see that she had her fingers crossed behind her back.
Miss Prenderby turned to look at Bella, who quailed under her searching gaze. “Well?”
Bella’s mouth opened and shut, but she didn’t say anything.
“All of these girls say that you’re mistaken, Bella, but I really don’t see how you can be. You can’t have imagined seeing Milly take the charm and put it in her pocket. You either did see her, or you made it up.”
“It was a mistake,” Bella muttered, scarlet-faced.
Maisie frowned. Miss Prenderby certainly suspected Bella, but this wasn’t quite good enough. They needed to help Florence get her job back.
“Miss Prenderby, may I visit my grandmother this afternoon?” Maisie asked suddenly, pulling Bella’s stained gloves out of her apron pocket. “I found these gloves in one of the young ladies’ rooms, and they’re all stained. My gran has a book of recipes for cleaning, and I’m sure she’d know something I could use to get the marks off.”
Maisie held out the gloves to Miss Prenderby, who turned them over in her hands, frowning. “Kid gloves… Embroidered kid gloves. Bella, aren’t these the gloves that—”
“Where did you get those?” Bella shrieked at Maisie. “What were you doing looking in my stocking drawer?” Then she realized what she’d said, and clapped her hand across her mouth, looking horrified.
“You said Florence took your gloves!” Alice said angrily. “You made it look as though she was a thief, and she hadn’t stolen anything at all! And now you’re doing it again to Milly!”
Bella stared sulkily at her feet, but she said nothing. It was obvious that, for once, she couldn’t think of any way to shift the blame.
“Bella, come with me!” Miss Prenderby snapped. “You will go to your room, and I shall be sending a telegram to your parents, explaining that you cannot stay here any longer!” And she stalked away, with Bella following hangdog after her.
Two weeks later, when Maisie went back to the school to visit, Florence opened the front door to her and hugged Maisie delightedly. Maisie thought she looked as though she’d settled in – she was pink-cheeked and not so thin and nervous.
Lucie and the others had been so pleased to see her that it was some time before Maisie managed to escape upstairs to talk to Alice.
“Did the little ones tell you?” Alice asked, when she finally got Maisie to herself. “Bella’s been sent off to Vienna, or wherever it is her parents are, with a friend of Miss Prenderby’s to be her governess. And do you know what? Bella actually asked Miss Prenderby to let me come and see her, and she gave me all the things she’d taken! She wanted me to give them back to everybody.”
“Where were they?” Maisie asked curiously. It still made her cross that she hadn’t been able to find them.
“In her wardrobe, tucked inside that huge sealskin muff she was so proud of.”
“Oh! I looked in the wardrobe, but I never thought to look inside that!” Maisie clicked her tongue irritably.
“The strange thing is, Maisie, I think Bella was almost glad she’d been caught. She told me that she wrote and explained to her parents how much she wanted to be with them instead of at school the whole time, and so she’s going! They’d sent her to school because they keep travelling around, and they thought she’d be lonely without anyone else her own age. And her mother has a terrible fear of her catching typhus fever in foreign cities, apparently. But Bella wrote to her that she’d rather have typhus than stay at Miss Prenderby’s any longer. And I think Miss Fleet wrote too, and told them that Bella needed to be with her mother and father.”
Maisie nodded. “I hope she’ll be happy now. But how’s Florence?” she added worriedly. When Maisie had given in her notice, Alice had told Miss Prenderby that she’d sent Florence to work at her father’s house, since she’d felt sorry for her. Maisie hadn’t really wanted Florence to go back to Miss Prenderby’s, to have to sleep in that horrible little room and spend all her time avoiding the grumpy cook. But Florence had said she liked it, with all the girls. It reminded her of the Foundling Hospital, she said. And it was a lot more comfortable, even with the lumpy bed.
“Florence is much happier now Bella’s gone. Everyone is! I know you thought it wasn’t all her fault, Maisie, but she was still nasty.”
“She was,” Maisie agreed. She smiled at Alice. “I do miss working here, you know. It’s very quiet back at Albion Street. And it was lovely being able to see you all the time.” Then she shuddered. “I don’t miss that awful, itchy wig, though. It was worth it, for the sake of solving the mystery and getting Florence her job back, but it’s so nice to just be me again!”
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of the Little Tiger Group
1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
Text copyright © Holly Webb, 2014
Illustrations copyright © Marion Lindsay, 2014
First published in Great Britain in 2014
eISBN: 978-1-84715-563-4
The right of Holly Webb and Marion Lindsay to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
www.littletiger.co.uk
Alice’s father is having a run of bad luck – several of his ships have disappeared and he has lost a lot of money. Maisie is determined to solve the mystery herself, so she heads down to London’s docks to investigate. Can she discover what is going on and save Alice’s family from ruin?
For sneak peeks, fun facts and more, visit:
www.maisiehitchins.com
Holly Webb, The Case of the Spilled Ink
