The Eye of the Serpent Read online

  The owner of the stolen item, Vladimir Dubrovnik, 61, made a statement to local reporters in his home town of Minsk, Russia. He said, ‘This outrage destroys the very fabric of civilised society. Those responsible should be boiled alive in a vat of grease. If the Eye is not recovered soon, I will consider offering a huge reward to anyone – anyone at all – who can return it safely. And I’m rich, so when I say huge, I mean huge. You know, not just a few pounds. Huge.’. . .

  I didn’t realise it yet but the reward mentioned in this article was an important link in the chain of clues that would lead me to solving the riddle.

  The trouble with most newspapers is they fall apart so easily. By the time I arrived at Izzy’s, there were folded-up sections under each arm, the articles about the robbery were stuffed into my pockets, and most of the rest was gathered up in my arms in a crumpled heap. I was pretty sure I’d also lost two or three sheets somewhere between SuperSave and the Post Office.

  Izzy stared at me for a moment when she saw me.

  ‘Have you been trying to fold paper hats again?’ she said blankly.

  ‘Oh, ha ha,’ I said.

  Isobel ‘Izzy’ Moustique is the St Egbert’s School in-house superbrain, the person I turn to whenever there is in-depth research to be done. I’d phoned her the night before and given her the full story so far.

  Up in her extraordinarily girlie room, she bounced on to the fluffy chair at her desk and started clattering away at her computer. Her fingers, which were overflowing with rings as usual, skipped rapidly across the keyboard and a series of files flipped open.

  ‘Do you like the glittery edge I’ve put round my screen?’ she said.

  ‘Er, yes,’ I said, not liking it at all. ‘Very . . . attractive.’ As I was looking for something to sit on that wasn’t a beanbag, I suddenly noticed movement on the other side of the room. Carefully, I leaned towards Izzy and whispered, ‘There’s a baby in here.’

  Izzy swung around on her chair, grinning. The baby was blinking up at us from one of those kiddie car seats with a handle, happily dribbling away to itself.

  ‘This is my latest cousin, Ben. We’re looking after him for the weekend.’

  ‘Another cousin?’ I said, thinking back to the final entry in my fourth volume of case files. ‘How many have you got?’

  She looked at me as if I was asking a really weird question. ‘Only nineteen. Why? Ben’s a wickle ickly sweetie pie, aren’t you, eh, pookie pooooo?’ She giggled at him, tapping his tummy to make him smile.

  I felt slightly ill. ‘Can we get on?’ I asked.

  Izzy squiggled the mouse beside her computer and the first of her files filled the screen.

  ‘Given what you’ve already told me about this case,’ she said, ‘I’ve done some digging around this Eye of the Serpent, and around the gallery itself. But there’s surprisingly little info available.’

  ‘I was afraid of that,’ I muttered. ‘This case is knottier than a school tie in a knitting machine.’

  She smiled at me, doing that arched eyebrow thing she does. ‘Hmm. Could you have finally come across an insoluble mystery? Has Saxby Smart met his match?’

  ‘Not in a million years,’ I smiled back at her. I tried doing the eyebrow thing too but it was no good. Nobody can arch an eyebrow like Isobel Moustique.

  ‘As for Enid Bottomby,’ she said, ‘it’s true that she was a strangely unlucky person. She once broke both legs getting out of a car. All her hair turned green after a mix-up at the dentist’s. She was struck by lightning, twice, on her birthday. I could go on for hours! Obviously, all that stuff about curses and so on is rubbish —’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘— but you can see where the stories come from. Half her life’s work was destroyed by the last bomb to drop on England during World War II. She painted a famous portrait called Daisy Reclining in the Afternoon, which for years was thought to be lost, but then it turned up in a junk shop. It’s only these stories surrounding her which have made her remaining work so valuable. Collectors go potty over her. Someone once paid two hundred thousand pounds for the overcoat button which got stuck in her windpipe in 1927. Nearly killed her.’

  ‘So something like the Eye of the Serpent would be very hard for a thief to sell,’ I mused. ‘Without being found out, I mean.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Izzy ‘Because it’s a Bottomby, and therefore very, very famous in the art world. Frankly, stealing that Bottomby strikes me as completely pointless. There must be plenty of other pieces in that exhibition which a thief could sell undetected. Less valuable pieces, sure, but much more practical to nick!’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘What about the gallery?’

  ‘All I’ve got are a few facts and figures about Morris Pettibone,’ said Izzy, clicking on to a new file. ‘He comes from a very wealthy family, and owns houses in six different countries. He’s written books on the history of painting and he even did a TV series on historic pottery about thirty years ago. What Davina told you was right: he’s a real bigwig in arty circles. Or at least, he was. In the last few years he’s been in charge of a whole series of disastrous projects. Do you remember a row about a sculpture in London a couple of years ago?’

  ‘Er, yeah, was that the thing where it cost millions to put up, but everyone thought it was awful and it had to be taken away again?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Izzy ‘And guess who was in charge? Morris Pettibone. Things like that have badly damaged his career. This new gallery cost a lot to set up, and he’s under enormous pressure to make it a success. It’s his last chance.’

  ‘So a major robbery on opening night is absolutely the last thing he needed,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ agreed Izzy. ‘It’s no wonder it’s doing his head in.’

  ‘Glag glag gug ga,’ said the baby. Or something similar.

  ‘Is he hungweee?’ piped Izzy, crouching down in front of the creature’s throne. ‘Don’t you worry, ickle man, Izzy go get her mum, ’cos her mum got your wuvvery foodie-woodie, mmmmmmm!’

  ‘Yes, well, if there’s nothing else, I’ll be off,’ I said.

  Izzy hoisted the baby out of his chair, and cuddled him delicately in her arms. ‘He’s so cute! Isn’t he a ickle cutie-wootie-puddin’-pie, huh? Do you want to hold him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘G’won,’ said Izzy in the dopiest voice I’ve ever heard. ‘G’won, he likes you, look, he’s smiling. G’won.’

  Suddenly, I smelled something.

  I leaned forward, putting my nose close to the baby. I sniffed. Then I sniffed again, just to make sure I was sniffing what I thought I was sniffing.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Izzy, ‘has he done a giant poo again?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nononono. Smell him. What does he smell of?’

  Alarm bells were clanging in my brain. I’d come across this same smell before, very recently in fact. A sort of clean, bathroomy smell I couldn’t quite place. Where had I encountered it? Where?

  ‘Can’t smell anything,’ said Izzy. ‘Unless you mean his talc?’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘Talcum powder,’ said Izzy. ‘You know, baby powder.’

  ‘Actually, no, I don’t,’ I said.

  ‘He’s had a spot of nappy rash this week, haven’t you, pookie-woo? You keep his bottom dry with a little bit of this white powder stuff, comes in a plastic shaker. I’m sure talc is rather old-fashioned these days, and Mum says that —’

  I slapped my forehead. ‘Of course,’ I breathed. ‘That’s it. That’s it! I’ve solved the case!’

  Izzy pulled a face at me. ‘What? Because of the smell of Ben’s baby powder?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ I cried. ‘I really was looking at things the wrong way around! Now I can see the connection I was missing! What a clever ickle baby-waby you are!’

  Quickly I thanked Izzy zipped down the stairs, zipped down the road, and zipped off home. As I zipped, the elements of the crime gradually slotted together in my mind.

 
; The thief had carried out a daring and risky plan. And I might never have pieced it all together, if I hadn’t got a whiff of that baby!

  The whole case revolved around a number of apparently unrelated things, including:

  1. The exhibition catalogues which had been given out that evening.

  2. That highly polished floor in the exhibition room.

  3. The new late-night opening at James’s dad’s museum.

  How much of the truth can you work out?

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, AFTER SCHOOL, I hurried over to the gallery. I’d been avoiding James all day because I knew he’d start nagging me to tell him what I’d discovered. I made sure I was first out of the school gates and then ran like the wind so he wouldn’t catch up with me on the way.

  He caught me before I got to the end of the street.

  ‘You’re so unfit!’ he said.

  I grumbled wheezily I didn’t actually say anything because I was too out of breath to speak. One of these days I really must start getting more exercise.

  ‘What have you discovered? Awww, go on, tell me!’ he said. He said it seventeen more times before we got to the gallery. By then I was ready to thump him.

  ‘Let’s just get inside, shall we?’ I muttered crossly. ‘Did you make those phone calls I asked you to?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘What have you discovered? Awww, go on, tell me!’

  Eighteen. Grrrrr.

  Inside, the gallery was almost filled with visitors. The room which housed the Art Deco Experience was the busiest of all.

  ‘Wow,’ said James. ‘I never expected to see so many people in here.’

  ‘I did,’ I said quietly.

  The area around the crime scene had been cordoned off with blue-and-white tape which said Police – Do Not Cross. Assembled in this area were Davina, Mr Pettibone and Inspector Godalming.

  ‘Hi everyone,’ I said, with a wave. I was trying to look confident and businesslike, but I felt as nervous as a lamb chop in a tiger’s cage. If I was wrong, I could end up in big trouble over this.

  ‘I told you before,’ said Mr Pettibone, with a face like granite, ‘I am not interested in the opinions of amateurs, I am only here because my assistant Davina asked me to hear you out, is that clear, is it clear?’

  ‘That’s clear,’ I said. ‘I do appreciate your being here. And you, Inspector, I’m sure you’re a busy guy.’

  ‘I certainly am, sonny,’ said Inspector Godalming. He snapped and shifted inside his uniform as if his arms and legs would much rather have been somewhere else. ‘The investigation into this crime is going flat-out back at the station. I’m only prepared to hear your fanciful theories ’cos my chief constable says we got to listen to the community more. If you’re wasting my time, sonny well, that’s, er . . . that’s wasting police time. Very serious offence!’

  ‘What is it you’ve got to tell us, Saxby?’ said Davina. ‘As you can see, the gallery’s very busy today and I’ve got a lot to do.’

  ‘Yeah, go on, tell us,’ said James.

  I took a deep breath. ‘OK,’ I began. ‘If I’m correct, then in a matter of minutes I’ll be able to place the Eye of the Serpent back in its proper place, in that empty alcove there.’

  The four of them gawped at me. Then they turned and gawped at the alcove. Then they gawped at me again. In front of the Do Not Cross barrier, visitors shuffled along, examining exhibits and trying to overhear what was going on.

  ‘The theft of that statuette,’ I said, ‘was a carefully calculated scheme. One which involved a great deal of personal risk on the part of the thief, but one which, if successful, would bring major rewards.’

  ‘Quite right, sonny,’ said the Inspector. ‘That Bottomby’s worth two million smackers! Sizable loot for a desperate gang of low-lifes!’

  ‘I’m not talking about money, Inspector,’ I said. ‘That was the first mistake I made, assuming that this crime was carried out for money. That wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.’

  ‘Then what was it?’ said Davina.

  ‘This crime had a totally different motive,’ I said. ‘I’ll get to that in a minute.’

  ‘If it wasn’t done for money,’ cried James, ‘why would anyone steal it?’

  ‘Well, y’know,’ I said, ‘in a funny way, the statuette was never quite stolen, as such. More sort of . . . moved.’

  ‘The boy’s talking nonsense,’ grumbled Mr Pettibone. ‘If you won’t get to the point, child, kindly go away.’

  ‘One thing made the disappearance of the statuette possible,’ I said. ‘The high-tech computer equipment over there in the office. It can take photos of things and turn them into high-resolution, beautifully printed displays. Displays which are good enough to, at least briefly, fool a casual observer into thinking they’re looking at a real object. I was fooled for a moment into thinking I was sitting next to a real vase.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Davina, ‘are you saying that the Eye of the Serpent wasn’t really there? That it was replaced with a lifelike photo?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m saying the exact opposite. I’m saying that a picture was taken of that alcove where the statuette was to be placed. A picture of the empty alcove. Using the equipment in the office, you could print out that picture at life-size, cut it to be an exact fit in the real alcove, mount it on a board and place it in the alcove itself. Result? You’d look at the alcove and your eye would be fooled into thinking you were looking at an empty space. Not for long, and not if you examined it close up. But long enough. Long enough for someone a few metres away – that’s you, James – to stand up and say, “Hey, guys, there’s suddenly an empty space over there”.’

  ‘I get it,’ said James. ‘The alcove is a recess into the wall. So if you had a really top-notch photo of it, printed to the same dimensions as the alcove itself, and put them side-by-side, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart! Well, not straightaway.’

  ‘Correct,’ I said. ‘This end of the exhibition room gets very little natural light. The spotlights have to be on all the time. In other words, the lighting at this end of the room hardly changes at all. You could easily make an actual-sized photo of the empty alcove look identical to the real alcove. Fit the photo into the alcove, and any object placed inside the alcove would be perfectly hidden.’

  ‘But you’d have to look at the “covered-up” alcove straight-on,’ said James. ‘It wouldn’t work the same if you looked at it from an angle.’

  ‘Correct again,’ I said. ‘And that’s precisely what you have to do in this room. The view of that alcove is deliberately limited. You do have to look at it straight on, to get a good view of anything inside it.’

  ‘Wow,’ smiled James. ‘That’s really sneaky!’

  Inspector Godalming shook his head, his shoulders squaring themselves up like soldiers on a parade ground. ‘No no no, sonny,’ he said. ‘My men have examined that alcove every which way.’

  ‘Inspector,’ I sighed, ‘I’m not saying there’s a photo in the alcove now. It would only have been there for a matter of minutes, just until the thief had a chance to take the statuette away and leave the alcove empty for real. All the thief had to do was make the photo in the first place.’

  Mr Pettibone turned slowly, his face sliding into an expression of absolute disgust. ‘Davina, how could you, my trusted assistant, my loyal aide, my faithful —’

  ‘W-what?’ gasped Davina, wide-eyed. ‘It wasn’t me!’

  ‘You’re very skilled in the use of that computer,’ said Mr Pettibone, dismayed. ‘You created all these displays, you designed this entire exhibition, you did, you yourself.’

  ‘Yes,’ cried Davina, ‘following your instructions!’ Tears welled up in her eyes.

  ‘Wait!’ I said, loudly enough to cut them both off. ‘Davina had nothing to do with it. She’s completely innocent. Although, Davina, I have to admit you were Suspect No 1 right up until the last minute. Actually, James, I wondered f
or a while if you’d been involved.’

  ‘Eh? Thanks a heap!’ grumbled James.

  ‘But now I’m sure I was wrong,’ I said.

  This was the point of no return. I was now going to have to cross the line which would mean either success or failure.

  ‘I think it was you, Mr Pettibone,’ I said. ‘You also had full access to that computer equipment.’

  Mr Pettibone glared at me. ‘So did a number of people, both gallery staff and others – even James’s father has used that computer, as well you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, carefully, a stab of nerves slicing through my stomach, ‘but nobody else had your motive, and nobody else had the opportunity to remove the statuette from the alcove.’

  ‘Watch what you’re saying, sonny,’ growled the Inspector. ‘This is Morris Pettibone you’re talking to, not some petty crook in a hoodie! He’s a respectable citizen!’

  ‘Are you claiming,’ said Mr Pettibone, in a voice as icy as a frozen lake, ‘that I walked up to this alcove, that I placed a mounted photograph in it, without anyone paying me the slightest attention, are you, are you?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s a good point,’ said James. ‘You’d still have to position the photo in the alcove. Surely you’d be seen?’

  ‘This is where we have to remember the exact sequence of events on Friday night,’ I said. I took my notebook from my pocket, and checked through my scribbles (refer back to pages 54-58 during this next bit, if you like).

  ‘Just before eight o’clock,’ I said, ‘Mr Pettibone took a glass of wine from Davina’s tray. So, he now has a full glass of wine in one hand and a pile of exhibition catalogues in the other. Everything is ready for him to put his plan into operation, he’s just waiting for a convenient chance to begin.

  ‘He spots his chance just a few minutes later. He goes to the office, apparently to make a phone call. But he doesn’t make a phone call. He switches off the alarm system. Nobody can see that he’s switched off the alarm system because those laser beams are invisible.

  ‘He then comes back out. And here’s a crucial bit: he deliberately spills that full glass of wine on to the floor, right outside the office door. He probably glances around to make sure nobody’s looking in his direction. But even if someone does see him do it, oh dear, silly me, just an accident. Nothing suspicious.