Chesapeake Crimes: Invitation to Murder. Donna Andrews

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СКАЧАТЬ the one to find it. He tossed the book onto the desk, knocked me aside, and entered numbers furiously. Since we’d already figured out three of the numbers, it wouldn’t take him long to find the fourth. But he entered number after number, with no luck.

      “Obviously a red herring,” he said.

      “Perhaps not,” Aunt Janet said. “The hints wouldn’t steer us to the coat if it weren’t important.”

      “Let me look at the book again.” I began to leaf through it, but Aunt Janet stopped my hand on the title page. A diagonal line was slashed across it.

      “This line must mean something. See?” I showed Delphine. “But I can’t figure out what. Aunt Janet?”

      Aunt Janet’s smile felt like a warm blanket around cold knees. “I’m not clever like you, David.” She leaned over to whisper, “And you are clever.” She straightened again. “But I do have an idea. I think that we’re meant to look at the books on the shelf, and arrange them in a similar diagonal line.”

      “Of course!” I ran to the bookshelf, with Delphine and Hubert so close behind, I could feel breath on my neck. Several numbered volumes in a series stood on the middle shelf, each with a slashed line on its spine. We rearranged them so the slashes lined up in a downward slope. Now, the numbers read six-four-one-three.

      “I solved the mystery!” Hubert waved his arms. “With more than twenty minutes to spare.”

      I was used to him always stealing the credit, but it still annoyed me. Then again, he hadn’t pointed out my overlooking the coat pocket. I kept quiet.

      Hubert ran to the combination lock and entered the sequence. The door creaked open. We piled through the narrow opening into a butler’s pantry, long and narrow with a small door at the opposite end. A dusty counter and white cabinets ran the length of the space. A serving tray with two glasses and a half-filled carafe sat on the counter.

      “I don’t think you solved the mystery yet, Hubert.” I opened a rickety drawer—empty but for dust that floated up, causing Hubert to sneeze.

      “Mon ami, we must trust the room to give up its secrets. I am like the little dog who stays on the scent.” He’d quoted Poirot nearly word for word.

      “How do you know Agatha Christie?” I asked him.

      “My dear fellow, I read one of her stories to Grandmama just last month.”

      Of course he had. He’d started paying a lot of attention to her once he knew she was dying.

      Hubert flung open a drawer, peered in, and pulled out a set of coasters with playing card images. “More numbers.” He fanned the coasters on the counter. A king, an eight, a four, and a two. Not a great hand.

      We ransacked the room, swishing and thunking as cabinets and drawers opened and closed. One drawer nearly fell out, and I wasted precious seconds jamming it back into place.

      With fifteen minutes to go, Felicia had unearthed a locked briefcase, Aunt Janet had found a paisley handkerchief, and we also had Hubert’s coasters.

      “The coasters have to be the clue,” Delphine said. “They’re the only items with numbers.”

      Cody sidled up to Delphine to inspect the coasters. Felicia grabbed his arm and pulled him away from Delphine.

      While Felicia and Cody were squabbling and Delphine was focused on the coasters, I noticed a door in a dark corner, behind a chair that I pushed aside. I hurried to it.

      “This door doesn’t have a combination lock,” I said. “It doesn’t even have a keyhole, just this metal plate.”

      Aunt Janet bent to inspect the strip of metal.

      I picked up the briefcase. “This has a lock, though.”

      Hubert yanked the briefcase from my hand. Not wanting to argue with him, I went to examine the coasters while Aunt Janet inspected the handkerchief. “Three coasters have numbers—eight, four, and two—but I can’t tell what order they should be in,” I said.

      Hubert spun the briefcase dial and entered the three numbers. No luck. He tried them again in a different order. The briefcase sprang open, revealing a stiletto letter opener and more dust.

      As Hubert sneezed again, Delphine laughed. “A letter opener as a clue? That’s a first.”

      “No, dear,” Aunt Janet said, picking up the opener. “But maybe a means to an end.” She examined it in the light before setting it and the handkerchief back down. “I think,” she said, “it’s a magnet. To open the door.”

      Hubert sniffled and snatched the handkerchief to dab his nose.

      “Gross,” Felicia said. “I can imagine where that thing’s been.”

      Hubert lifted his chin and stared at her contemptuously before using the handkerchief to lift the letter opener. “Of course! This is something a servant would use to open the family’s mail, and servants were often the culprits in Christie novels. Young women, especially. They were greedy and never smart enough to cover their tracks.” He smirked at Delphine as he dangled the handkerchief-wrapped opener.

      “You think you’re so smart, Hubert.” Delphine snatched the opener, dropping the handkerchief in the process. “You got to open the last door. My turn.”

      She held the letter opener next to the metal plate and pulled. The door swung open, revealing a drawing room with thick curtains. Threadbare wing chairs faced each other across a fireplace with a large clock above it. On the mantel stood a miniature sculpture of Rodin’s the Thinker. We’d studied it in art history. Next to the sculpture were four parrots, each in a different color, probably a reference to that series of mysteries with birds in the titles. Then again, those weren’t Agatha Christie mysteries. Four parrots in a row had to be a clue, something about the order of the colors. I just didn’t know yet what it meant.

      Between the two wingback chairs sat a small table, with a tattered copy of Christie’s Hickory Dickory Dock and two pieces of folded paper. A door with a combination lock taunted us from the far corner, under a television screen.

      I glanced at the screen. “Only eleven minutes left.”

      Aunt Janet hurried to the table to look at the book.

      “I will examine the clues.” Hubert strode to the table, elbowed himself in beside Aunt Janet, and unfolded the papers.

      “Hubert, you need to learn some manners.” She pushed him away.

      It was nice to see someone else as annoyed at Hubert as I was.

      Hubert discarded one piece of paper and held up the other. “Voila! A train schedule. The numbers probably reveal the exit code.” The armchair grunted as he plopped into it and began poring over the timetable.

      Aunt Janet studied the tattered book. I inspected the parrots, but without anything to match them to, it was no use. The paper Hubert had discarded drifted to the floor near my shoe. I picked it up. It was a wedding invitation for the Styles daughter. That hinted at a motive, since a common Christie theme was the rich family patriarch barring a child’s unsuitable marriage. But escape rooms weren’t СКАЧАТЬ