The Maharajah's Monkey (3 page)

In our irritation both of us had raised our voices. I noticed the man in the tartan jacket, a perfect stranger, smirking at our tiff. The man winked at Waldo, as if to signal that girls will be girls. To my astonishment my so-called friend winked right back. This was too much. I turned round, presenting both the eavesdropper and Waldo, with my back. Pretending to be indifferent, I admired the room. I had never been to this new hotel before and was impressed by the gilt moldings on the ceiling, the huge plate-glass windows, the chandeliers dripping with glittering crystals. The Randolph was certainly a very modern place, with wonderful views down St. Giles of Oxford's ancient soot-colored colleges. While I was musing thus, I noticed a man, a groom from the look of his coat, scurry up to Aunt Hilda. She pulled out her watch and consulted the time, then with increasing agitation looked down at notes in front of her. Something was wrong.

I shouldered my way through the crowd to my aunt. She was barking at the groom who'd brought her the message.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

My aunt turned to me, distraught. “It's a catastrophe, Kit.”

“What is?”

“The conference was meant to start half an hour ago. Well, I thought Gaston was merely delayed but Jinks here informs me that his horse has gone. There is no sign of him! He's vanished! You realize what this means?”

“He may have just been called away,” I tried to soothe.

“Poppycock. Monsieur Champlon has played the foulest trick on me.”

“You can't know that, Aunt Hilda.”

“It is as clear as daylight. Gaston Champlon has run out on me, the cowardly cur. I went along with everything, just to please him! He persuaded me into this foolish dress for starters.” Her hands plucked at the ruffles on her bodice. “
This
is how he repays my trust. This is … is too, too awful. For
me
, Hilda Salter, to be humiliated like this, now, in front of everyone.” Aunt Hilda was no longer bothering to keep her voice low and I saw some of the people in the front row were plainly listening. “GASTON HAS JILTED ME.”

I wanted to point out to Aunt Hilda that she had
been about to form a new Anglo–French exploring team, not become Mrs. Champlon. But one look at her face and wiser counsel prevailed. Leaning over the podium I reached out for her. I was surprised, and touched, to feel her hand quivering in mine. Suddenly she felt vulnerable.

“Please, remember your dignity, Aunt Hilda,” I murmured gently. “People are staring. You don't want this to end up in the newspapers.”

It was the right thing to say. Her hand stiffened inside mine and a stubborn look came into her eyes: “Certainly not!” she growled. “I will let no man … No Frenchman humiliate me!”

“You must make an announcement,” I went on. “Think of some excuse.”

She nodded, composing herself. I could see the effort in the lines of strain that stood out on her neck. I left her and hurriedly made my way back through the crowd. Pointedly I ignored my friends' surprised looks. Usually I would have included them in my plans, but today I felt like working alone. As I left the room my aunt had risen and was delivering a speech, hardly a tremble in her bassoon of a voice. With typical bravado she made no mention of the missing Champlon, but forged right into her glorious vision for exploring the Himalayas, the greatest unconquered mountain range in the world. Hilda Salter
was going to venture to the roof of the world!

Mid-morning and Magdalen Street was relatively quiet. A few people gave me suspicious glances as I ran pell-mell past the golden stones of the new museum: the Ashmolean. I knew my father had organized rooms for Champlon in Jericho at Worcester College. It was a stroke of luck, for I was firm friends with the porter, a man named Simpson. I had fond memories of playing as an infant in the sunlit college grounds.

Simpson was dozing in the Porter's Lodge, almost hidden behind a haze of pipe smoke. When I rapped on the window he woke with a start.

“Bit early for a nap, isn't it?” I asked cheekily. Behind him the clock showed it was ten.

“You've forgotten your old friends, Miss Kit. What is it? A month since you came to see me? Too grand you are, now you're a fine young lady.”

“I'll never be a fine lady, Simpson,” I retorted. “Even if I wanted to, it'd be impossible to forget you—the lectures you've given me! How is the gout?”

One of the drawbacks of a college porter's job is the amount of fine port and food he is allowed to consume. Simpson paid dearly for his rich diet in shaky knees and chronic indigestion. Indeed, I feared that the college would soon retire him.

“Me stomach hurts something dreadful. Feels like I've
a bunch of eels in there, it does.”

“You must come round to Park Town. Cook's herbal remedies can cure anything,” I replied and then, the courtesies over, got to the point. “Simpson, I've come on an errand for Monsieur Champlon. I need to get into his rooms.”

“Right at the back of the college, up three flights of stairs. Me knees won't stand it.”

“Can I have the keys?”

“You're up to some sort of mischief, Miss Kit. I can see it in your eyes,” he grumbled, but nevertheless he trudged over to the key board and retrieved a set for me. I took the time to thank him though I was burning to be off. I could feel in my bones that there was some sort of mystery about Champlon's disappearance. Speed was of the essence.

My heart pounding, I raced up the dim and narrow stairwell to Champlon's rooms—3B on the third landing. The key was a hefty brass affair, which looked as though it had been made in the Middle Ages. It was almost impossible to turn in the lock, and I was just about to give up when, with a rending groan, the levers clicked into position and the door creaked open to reveal a large study. The walls were paneled with ancient oak and on them hung a number of rugby cups and rowing trophies that I guessed must belong to the student occupant of
the room. I could see no sign of Champlon. The room's usual inhabitant struck me as a hearty sort of person who played a lot of sport and didn't trouble himself too much with his lessons. Indeed there wasn't a single book in the study. Then I saw the open door to the bedroom.

Here there was plentiful evidence of the Frenchman in the rows and rows of dandified suits, the lines of polished shoes. There were remarkable quantities of eau de toilette, gold-plated razors, ebony hair- and shaving-brushes on the dressing table. One of the scent bottles was uncorked; I took a sniff and recoiled in disgust. It was sickly sweet, a combination of musk and jasmine which instantly called Champlon to mind. I knew the Frenchman carried a miniature silver bottle of this awful scent stuff around, I'd seen him take it out and dab some on his wrists. What looked like a brand-new full-length mirror had been hung up by the dressing table, probably so that Champlon could check that his attire was faultless. Everything was neatly hung up or lovingly folded and packed away. These were treasured possessions. I found it hard to believe that if the Frenchman had fled, he would have left his beloved things behind.

I sat down on the bed and studied the room, the conviction growing in me that Gaston Champlon hadn't, as my aunt believed, disappeared of his own free will. Something had happened to him. I was guessing it was
something sinister, because he was just as excited as Aunt Hilda about their new venture. If their Himalayan expedition was a success, both Aunt Hilda and Champlon stood to make a fortune, not to mention write their names in the history books. There was no way Champlon would have just left Aunt Hilda in the lurch. However, this room was so perfect, so spotlessly clean and tidy it wasn't going to give me any clues.

Or was it?

I shivered in the chill breeze that was blowing through the window. How could I have not noticed before? On a freezing winter's day the window had been violently thrust upward—and when I came closer it was clear that a pane of glass, now half-hidden by another glass pane, had been smashed. Blending in with the rich reds and browns of the Turkey rug below the window, a series of small muddy marks arrested my eyes. I bent down and examined them. They could have been bare footprints, but if so they were made by the smallest of children—no bigger than a five year old. The marks were curiously splayed out, with occasional indentations that must have been made by toenails. Remarkably long toenails.

The marks could, I guessed, have been made by a young thief, who had smashed the window to gain entrance to Champlon's bedroom. But what a nimble
thief! How was it possible to have climbed three stories up a sheer stone wall?

I leaned out of the window. Down below I could make out the cultivated greenery of the college gardens, the glint of boats on the canal and the untamed spaces of Port Meadow beyond. What I had assumed was a sheer stone wall, was, in fact, old and crumbling. Plenty of places where an enterprising urchin might grab on to jutting stones. But what made it even more likely that someone had climbed up these walls was the rampant Virginia creeper. The gnarled roots of the flourishing shrub that covered the Worcester College's walls were thick enough to support the weight of a child, I was sure of it.

I was glad Rachel was not here. Not to mention my father and all the other people in my life, lining up to tell me how reckless I was. Biting my lip, I eased myself over the window sill. Moving with extreme caution I found a foothold in the creeper. Then a handhold and then, so carefully, down I went. You might think I had taken a foolish risk. Believe me, I knew what I was doing. I have always enjoyed climbing trees, but this time I was not scrumping for apples. If I lost my hold and fell, or the creeper broke, I would be dashed to pieces on the flagstones eighty feet below.

Halfway down the creeper, I became convinced that
someone else had made this perilous descent, and very recently too. Fronds of the Virginia creeper were displaced and broken and many of her leaves flattened. Some twenty foot above the ground I saw something white poking out of the creeper's foliage, just past my hand. Straining, I reached out for it and retrieved the thing—a slip of cloth. It was only when I had safely reached the bottom that I examined the cloth. It was a handkerchief, a dainty piece, of the finest white linen. Embroidered in the corner was a monogram of curling letters: G C. Gaston Champlon.

I couldn't help crying out in triumph, causing a student in white cricket flannels who was strolling over the lawn with his nose in a book to look up in surprise. Luckily whatever he was reading was more interesting than a girl climbing the creeper, for he gave me but a glance. So, I thought, Gaston must have climbed down this creeper. Or, at the very least, someone who had stolen his handkerchief.

The slip of fabric clutched tightly in my hands, I fell down to the ground. The passage of human beings must have left
some
marks. Nothing, of course, in the flowerbeds under the walls except clods of earth and some withered, wintry stumps of plants. But on the frost-dusted lawn two sets of footprints were visible. The urchin's strange twig-like tracks and, following
them, at a run by the look of the smudged marks, a set of adult prints. The feet were hurrying away from the college toward the edge of the garden and the canal.

In hot pursuit, I set out after them.

Panting, I reached the canal and scanned the ground to the left and right. Nothing! I could have screamed in frustration. I knew they must have come this way. The footprints were perfectly clear. Yet as soon as the tracks reached the path they disappeared. To my right was the ancient stone of Worcester College and to my left the Eagle Ironworks and Lucy's factory, belching smoke. The pair of them could have gone either way—into town past the colleges, or to the industries of Jericho. There was simply no way to tell. For a moment I wished I hadn't set off on my mission in such a bad temper with my friends. If Rachel, Isaac and Waldo were here, we could split up into two teams, each of us trying to follow the tracks of the missing Frenchman.

I was a little downcast as I watched the sunlight sparkling on the canal. The banks were fresh with ragwort and lilies, the ducks hibernating under reeds to keep warm through the chill of winter. Then my eye was
arrested by a clump of vivid color just before the bridge. It was a knot of working barges, moored by the canal side. Of course! These canals were arteries of trade, horse-drawn boats taking coals to the mills of Manchester and returning with all manner of pottery and goods. Some people are nervous of the bargees and call them filthy, thieving rascals, little better than Gypsies. The Minchin, for example, would always take a detour if she saw a canal boat coming. Well, I have always liked boat-people and have never listened to such talk. When I was younger, I used to play with a girl called Rose Nell Coxon, whose family lived on a horse-drawn coal barge. Every few weeks the barge used to come into Oxford and she would scurry up to Worcester College to see me. Of course the bargees were dirty, you would be too if you had to live on a thirty-foot boat, thick with coal dust and crammed with ten of your brothers and sisters. There was nowhere to wash on the barges except the canal, and nobody fancied a dip in those foul waters.

Rose Nell was as good a friend as I've ever had.

If I was not mistaken, a figure was watching me from the nearest barge. I hastened toward it and saw that it was a massive woman, wearing layers of thick smocks, her hair wrapped in a strip of dirty cloth. She had paused in her work, a steaming copper bowl of suds lay on the deck at her feet. Her eyes were suspicious, giving no
indication that she would welcome a talk with me, but I persevered nonetheless.

“Hello,” I called out politely. “I wonder if you might help me with something.”

“'Pends what yer askin',” the woman replied, making no movement toward me. From where I stood on the bank I had to shout to make myself heard.

“I'm looking for someone. A man with a large mustache, a dapper little fellow.”