Chesapeake Crimes: Invitation to Murder. Donna AndrewsЧитать онлайн книгу.
five minutes passed already? “Let’s divide the room and each look for keys, and for things in rows or series,” I said.
Hubert pointed to a fake stone wall with a few small tables holding various objects. “I’ll take that side.”
“Hey, Delphine,” Cody said. “Let’s check out the bookshelves.”
Felicia’s mouth twisted into a grimace as the three of them shuffled to the bookshelf.
We explored the room at varying paces. I checked the coat rack near where we’d come in. Delphine and her friends ruffled through books at random. Hubert picked up small objects and peered at them. Aunt Janet poked through the ashes in the fireplace.
After shaking out the coats on the rack, I concentrated on the desk. I picked up a brass dog on the desk and put it right back. Clearly a red herring. I opened each drawer. Most were empty, but one held a magnifying glass. “Delphine, maybe we can use this later to read a clue.” We’d used a black light in the Harry Potter escape room.
“We found some mismatched bookends.” Delphine fiddled with a snarling plaster tiger, while Cody held up a plastic lion. “Maybe that’s a clue?”
Or maybe mismatched bookends were just less expensive.
“This painting is revealing.” Hubert gazed at the oil painting above the mantel. The tips of his loafers nearly collided with Aunt Janet’s knees as she moved a log in the fireplace.
I trotted over to take a look. The rural landscape was free of everything but rolling hills, lush trees, and a twisty river. Not even a grazing animal. “What clue do you see there, Hubert?”
“Just working ze little gray cells.”
In other words, he had nothing. Hubert could never own up to a mistake. The closest he’d ever come was admitting that a bottle of wine had gone bad.
Delphine pointed at the TV. “Look, David!” The screen read, “A scrap of wisdom is worth more than rubies. Time left: thirty-eight minutes.”
“A scrap of wisdom?” I crouched next to Aunt Janet, who cupped charred scraps of paper in her palm. They had handwriting on them. I helped her gather the pieces and spread them on the desk. Delphine and I pieced them together, with Hubert slowing us down by moving scraps after we’d positioned them. Finally, we had a complete page, revealing two scrawled sayings: “Clothes make the man” and “Search the corners of the world.”
“What does it mean?” Delphine prodded a stray scrap into place.
Hubert dipped one hand, like a conductor leading an orchestra. “Lucius Styles must have been a well-dressed, well-traveled man. That may be a clue to his murder.”
Aunt Janet coughed. “I think this refers to the coat hanging in the corner.”
Hubert raced to the coat rack and picked at the faded brown coat hanging there.
“I already checked it,” I said.
He whipped a small book from one pocket. “A clue,” he announced.
I felt like an idiot. I’d checked the coat but missed a pocket. At least Hubert wasn’t rubbing it in.
We huddled around Hubert and a paperback copy of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders. “Those are letters, not numbers,” I said. “We’re likely looking for a combination lock, remember? And they work with numbers.”
“Letters correspond to numbers, A being one, B being two, and so on.” Aunt Janet came up behind me and laid a warm hand on my spine.
“So ABC would be one two three,” I said, kicking myself for not seeing it right away. Another stupid oversight. Grandma’s cancer was upsetting me more than I’d realized.
“That’s one way of looking at it.” Aunt Janet watched the pages as Hubert flipped them. “But I wonder—”
“How many numbers do we need?” Delphine asked.
“We can’t tell until we find the lock we’re supposed to open, which will be on a hidden door,” I said.
The wood-paneled wall was the most likely to hide a door. Thirty minutes left. I pressed each panel. One was loose. I pressed harder. A square block popped open, revealing a combination lock with four numbers.
“Voila!” Hubert exclaimed, as if he’d been 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