The Case of the Stolen Sixpence Page 2
“Alice, I’d better go. I was only sent out to fetch the fish for Gran’s lodgers, and she’ll be desperate for it by now. It’s ever so late. Have you got French conversation on Friday?”
Alice nodded. “Au revoir, Maisie,” she giggled. “Au revoir, petit chien.” Then, as Maisie turned to go, she added seriously, “Maisie, you ought to find out who tried to drown him. It’s a mystery, so you could do your detecting. You love detecting! Someone who’d do that to a dear little dog might do anything!”
Maisie nodded, and clicked her fingers. Eddie trotted after her at once, down the darkening street and around a couple more corners, until they came to the neat, green-painted gate that led into the yard at the back of 31 Albion Street. “You have to be very quiet!” she told Eddie sternly, and she was pleased to see that he tucked his thin little tail neatly between his legs and pricked up his funny ear as though he was waiting for instructions.
“Good boy,” Maisie whispered. “Come on.” She opened the gate and peered around it to see if anyone was looking out of the scullery window. They would only see her feet, as the scullery was lower than the yard, but they couldn’t miss seeing small white paws, too.
Not wanting to take any chances, Maisie crouched down and picked the little dog up, tucking him under the floral cape she was wearing crossed over her jacket. Gran had a horror of the fog getting to her chest, and now that it was late autumn, she wouldn’t let Maisie out of the house without at least five layers of clothes. Luckily, Eddie was small enough and the muffler large enough that it just about hid him. “I could have put you in the basket with the fish,” she muttered. “But that would be cruel—the smell’s bad enough for me, let alone a dog.”
She hurried down the steps into the scullery passage and into her tiny bedroom, where she pulled the thick woolen blanket off the end of her bed and folded it up into a cushion for Eddie. “Stay there,” she told him, wriggling out of her muffler and putting it down on the cushion with the small dog still wrapped in it. “Stay!”
Eddie stared back at her, his bright black eyes shining out of the nest of wool, and Maisie saw how nicely he curled up, and how much cozier her bare little room looked with a dog in it. She just had to keep him. Whatever Gran said.
“I’ll find you something to eat in a minute,” she told him, shutting the door firmly behind her.
She was expecting her grandmother to be in the kitchen, probably furious with her for being so late, but the kitchen and scullery were both empty, and Maisie could hear some sort of commotion going on above stairs. She took the fish out of the basket, left it on the kitchen table, and hurried up to investigate.
Gran and Sarah-Ann were standing in the hallway, watching rather helplessly as two men carried in neat wooden packing crates and huge cloth bundles, glass cases, and even a parrot in a gilded dome of a cage.
“Oh . . . a parrot . . .” Gran said faintly. “I’m really not sure I can allow . . .”
Maisie came further up the stairs and saw that supervising the two men was a small, thin figure wrapped in an enormous tweed overcoat, with an absurd tweed hat with earflaps. “Oh, my dear lady, Jasper is most beautifully trained, I do assure you. Very quiet. Very polite. No bad language.”
“I should hope not,” Gran said.
“Perhaps the young lady would like to earn a shilling or two looking after his cage,” the old man suggested, peering at Maisie with dark eyes that glittered under the bushiest eyebrows she had ever seen.
Maisie nodded eagerly. If she had some extra money, she could buy scraps for Eddie. She had been wondering how she’d manage to feed him without sneaking food from the kitchen all the time. It was hard enough for Gran to make ends meet without Maisie feeding a dog, too. “Of course, sir,” she said, bobbing a little curtsey. She knew who he was now. She had forgotten that Gran had told her the best rooms, the ones that took the whole of the first floor, were let again. They had been taken by an old gentleman who had come recommended by Madame Lorimer. He had been a friend of the French lady’s husband, many years ago, and he was some sort of professor. Looking at his boxes and bundles of strange stuff, Maisie couldn’t imagine what he professed in.
“This is Professor Tobin, Maisie,” Gran said with a sigh. She looked as though she wasn’t sure about her new lodger at all, but Maisie thought he might be rather fun. A lot more interesting than the bad-tempered old lady who’d had the rooms before, anyway. And Gran would be pleased once all the mess of his boxes was out of the hallway. Now that all the rooms were let except for those on the ground floor, which had most of the noise from the road, it would mean the household expenses weren’t so dear. Madame Lorimer and Miss Lottie Lane, the actress who had the third-floor rooms now, didn’t pay as much as whoever took the first floor. Their rooms were nice, but not as smart, and the staircases needed painting. The first-floor apartments were much bigger than the rooms higher up the house, and well furnished, with an almost-new crimson damask wallpaper, so they brought in most of the money.
Maisie hadn’t been at all sure about bringing home a puppy. She had never owned one before, and she didn’t know an awful lot about them. She hadn’t expected Eddie to be so friendly, or so much fun to watch. But by the next morning, she was wondering how she had gotten along without a dog for so long. She had found a broken old comb that Miss Lane had given her, and with it combed through Eddie’s coat. He did have fleas, but not very many, and she knew how to catch them by squashing them into a bar of soap. Miss Lane had taught her that trick as well—she said that theaters weren’t called fleapits for nothing.
Maisie hadn’t had the heart to try to wash him properly under the scullery pump—what if it reminded him of the canal? So she’d taken a bucket of water and some rags and done her best to sponge him down. He didn’t smell all that bad now, which was a relief, as he hadn’t stayed on his cushion for long once she went to bed—he had scrabbled and wriggled his way up onto her feet and then squashed himself blissfully between Maisie and the wall. He snored. Luckily, Gran always said that Maisie did too, so hopefully anyone who heard him would just think that Maisie had a cold. That wouldn’t work if he started to bark, though, Maisie thought, as she sat up in bed stroking him the next morning. It was lucky that he seemed to be a very calm, quiet sort of dog. So far . . .
Lovely though it was to have a dog to sleep on her bed, Maisie still had the problem of feeding him. She had saved a piece of her fish the night before (not much of a hardship), but Eddie was clearly hungry again this morning. He stared up at her with round, hopeful eyes that made her feel terribly guilty.
“I’m sorry. There isn’t much. I’ll try to save you some of my breakfast, but it’ll be porridge, and I’m not sure how I can get it to you. I can hardly wrap it in my handkerchief, can I?”
Eddie put one small paw on her knee and stared up at her adoringly.
Maisie sighed. “All right. I’ll manage somehow. Oh, Gran’s calling. I’ll be back soon.”
But she wasn’t. There was breakfast, and then there were errands, and polishing, and dusting the new gentleman’s rooms, with strict instructions from Gran not to touch anything. Maisie wasn’t sure how she was supposed to dust without touching things—just flap the duster around? It was interesting, though, and Professor Tobin didn’t seem to mind her touching things in the slightest. In fact, he kept getting up from his desk to show them to her properly. He had rather a lot of stuffed animals, which he explained he was studying, for his book. He tried to explain what the book was about, but it was very complicated and seemed to be all to do with how much fur creatures had, and people having once had fur too, which couldn’t be right, could it?
By the time Maisie got back downstairs it was past ten, and she knew that Eddie would be starving. She hadn’t heard any barking from upstairs, but what if he started whining, or scratching at the door?
“Maisie!” Her grandmother was standing in front of Maisie’s door as she came into the scullery. “Whatever is making that noise in your room
? I thought it was you, with the most dreadful toothache!” As she spoke, she flung open the bedroom door, and Eddie burst out, and raced through the scullery and into the kitchen, where Sarah-Ann was telling the butcher’s boy that he’d brought the wrong thing again.
“It’s all there, just what was on the order! Don’t you go blaming me if the missus has changed her mind. Hey!” The boy wheeled around as Eddie scrambled over his feet, up the steps, and out into the yard. “Didn’t know you had a dog.”
“We do not,” Gran snapped. “That creature does not belong here.”
There was a crash from the yard, and the butcher’s boy said something that made Gran put her hands over Maisie’s ears. Then he ran up the steps.
Maisie struggled away from Gran and dashed after him. The bicycle, with its huge basket on the front for carrying the deliveries, had fallen over (or been pulled) and Eddie was half in, half out of the basket, letting out joyful little whines as he smelled bacon and kidneys and someone’s joint of beef.
“Get out of it!” yelled the butcher’s boy, and Eddie jumped out of the basket, trailing a string of plump pink sausages. He raced across the yard, the sausages bouncing behind him, and disappeared out of the open gate.
Maisie ran after him, wondering worriedly how much it would cost to replace the sausages—she didn’t think the butcher’s boy would want them back now, even if she could get them off Eddie.
The butcher’s boy was chasing them too, she realized as she darted out of the gate, but he was slowed down by picking up the bicycle and the scattered parcels from the basket. He looked furious. Maisie hurried after Eddie. She had to get to him before that boy did.
Out in the street, several people had clearly just turned to watch Eddie scamper past, and Maisie could see a little white shape approaching Callary Lane. There seemed to be fewer sausages than before—she was rather impressed that Eddie could eat and run at the same time.
“Come back here, you little rat!” the butcher’s boy yelled, pelting out of the yard on his bike and wobbling off in pursuit. He hadn’t loaded the basket very well and he was off-balance, which slowed him down.
Maisie took a deep breath and ran as fast as she could, calling, “Eddie! Eddie!”
He’d been called Eddie for less than a day, she realized sadly. He wasn’t likely to listen, not with all the carts and carriages rumbling past and that boy yelling after him too.
Eddie was in the middle of Callary Lane now, and Maisie could see a smart carriage coming down the road at a swift pace. “Eddie!” she screamed. “Here!”
Eddie turned back, still trailing sausages, and dithered in the middle of the road. The coachman yelled something that Maisie thought was probably even ruder than the words the butcher’s boy had said, and swerved sharply to the side of the road, nearly running down a flower stall. Eddie shot out of the road and back to Maisie, so shocked by the huge black carriage bearing down on him that he actually dropped the sausages.
Maisie scooped him up and raced away around a corner before the coachman could disentangle himself from some roses and catch her. But she’d forgotten about the butcher’s boy, who came lumbering after her on his bicycle, shouting. “What about the sausages, you little thief!”
“Sssshhhh!” Maisie hissed at him. “They’ll catch us. Eddie scratched the carriage’s paintwork, and there were dozens of roses all over the street. Be quiet, can’t you?”
“They oughter catch you!” the boy snapped back. “That dog’s a menace. And you owe me sixpence for the sausages. And I’m late for my round now. I’ll catch it off the old man.”
“I’ll pay you back, I promise,” Maisie sighed, thinking that the parrot’s cage was going to have to get cleaned out ever such a lot. “Tell the butcher to put the sausages on Gran’s account, and I’ll make it up to her. Can’t you just tell him what happened?”
“What? That I let a dog the size of a mouse tip my bike over and steal half the delivery?” the boy sighed. “Old Harrowby’s never going to believe that. Honestly, you’re a nuisance, Maisie Hitchins.”
Maisie Hitchins? How did he know her name? Maisie blinked and stared at him under his cap. Then she realized. She knew him. She felt quite cross with herself—a detective ought never to forget a face. The boy’s name was George, and she had been to the same school as he had. George had left once he was ten, a couple of years before Maisie had to leave to help Gran in the lodgings. And, of course, he had been taught in the boys’ class. But Maisie remembered his little sister, Lucy. George had brought her to school. They lived a few streets away, quite close to the butcher’s shop.
Maisie looked at him hopefully. “You could say Eddie was bigger,” she said. “A wolfhound, perhaps? There’s a wolfhound lives on Laurence Road. I’ve seen it—it’s huge. Please, George?”
“Oh, all right then,” George said, sighing and rolling his eyes. “But from now on you’d better keep that little horror quiet!”
Maisie was so glad to have found Eddie, unsquashed and not thrown back into the canal by furious coachmen or butcher’s boys, that she hurried back home with him in her arms. He kept wriggling and licking her nose.
It wasn’t until she reached the alley that ran along the back of the houses on Albion Street and saw her grandmother looking out the gate that she remembered. Her secret was out. Gran had seen Eddie and she knew that he’d been in Maisie’s room.
Maisie slowed to a walk. Gran didn’t like dogs. She thought they were messy and troublesome. (Based on this morning, she was right, but then she didn’t know how it felt to have a warm, solid lump of dog curled up beside you in bed.)
Eddie twisted in her arms as though he could feel that something was wrong.
“Don’t worry,” Maisie murmured to him. “I’ll persuade her. Somehow.”
Her grandmother was frowning, and she had her arms folded across her dark brown dress in a way that Maisie knew wasn’t a good sign.
“Exactly what was that animal doing in your room?” she snapped as Maisie trailed up to her. “Where did you get him from?”
“I found him, Gran. I rescued him out of a sack. Someone had tried to drown him.” Maisie hugged the puppy tightly. It still made her shiver to think of it.
“I’m not surprised. Dirty little thing.”
“Oh, Gran, he isn’t! I washed him, and he’s so good.”
“Good! He’s a disgrace! I shouldn’t think Harrowby’s will ever deliver here again! Where am I to get the meat from now, Maisie?”
Maisie shook her head. “They will! I spoke to the boy, Gran. He’ll put the sausages on our account. I’ll earn the money from Professor Tobin to pay you for them, and I’ll pay for all Eddie’s food, I promise. It was only that he was hungry. He’d been shut up all morning with nothing to eat. He’ll be a good guard dog, Gran. And a ratter. You’re always complaining about the horrible big rats.”
“A guard dog?” Gran shook her head in disbelief. “Maisie, he’s tiny. He couldn’t guard a cup of tea! And how can he catch rats when most of them are bigger than he is? I don’t have money to throw away feeding a dog, Maisie. You have to put him right back where you found him.”
“I can’t!” Maisie wailed. “I found him by the canal. He can’t go back there. He’ll grow ever so much bigger—he’s only a puppy now. He’ll make a good ratter, I promise.”
Her grandmother snorted crossly. “Lot of nonsense. And he isn’t growing bigger on the scraps from my kitchen.” She glared at Eddie, and he stared back at her with big, mournful eyes. “You can keep him until tomorrow. But you have to look for a new home for him. And he stays in the yard, Maisie, not in the house!”
Maisie sat on an upturned box in the yard, watching Eddie darting about. Really, she ought to be helping Sarah-Ann with the washing-up from lunch, but the young maid had hustled her out of the scullery. She said that Maisie was worse than useless today and she’d be better off outside. Sarah-Ann felt sorry for her, Maisie realized, sorry that Gran was making her get rid of Eddie.
What was she going to do? How could she find him another home by tomorrow? Maisie was quite sure that Gran meant what she said.
“Maybe Alice could hide you for a bit,” she murmured. But Alice’s house was so full of servants, and her governess had eyes in the back of her head. It wasn’t likely.
Maisie sighed and gazed helplessly around the yard. It was chilly, sitting out here, and it was going to be even chillier tonight. She’d have to make up a little bed for Eddie in the coal bunker. Or maybe in the outhouse—though if Gran or Sarah-Ann had a call of nature in the night, that might be a problem. And the smell might put Eddie off, too.
A movement in one of the upstairs windows caught her eye—it was Professor Tobin on the first floor. Maisie squinted at the window uncertainly. Was he waving at her? And now he was putting a finger to his lips . . .
The professor turned away for a moment, then he lifted the sash window and started to lower something—something brown and furry.
“Untie it!” the professor hissed as the brown thing came swiftly down, just missing the little window from the kitchen.
Maisie blinked, then did as she was told. It was one of his stuffed creatures, she realized. She thought this one was called a wombat—she remembered it, because it had sounded so funny. She undid the string and the professor quickly hauled it back up. “Put it in the middle of the yard!” he called quietly.
Maisie did as she was told, wondering if this was some sort of experiment. Eddie came trotting over—the wombat was about the same size as he was, and he stared into its glass eyes, looking very confused.