The Mystery of the Third Lucretia (11 page)

“We'll have to at least sneak a peek.”

For a second I thought about telling Lucas I didn't want to even go back and peek into the Rembrandt room. But then I realized that even if Gallery Guy was still there and saw us and recognized Lucas, there was nothing he could really do to us in the middle of a museum, especially with Mom there. I have to admit, having her around made me feel safer.

 

 

Mom is way more serious about looking at art than we are, and besides, she knew we'd already visited the museum. So we told her we wanted to go around on our own, and we'd meet her later in the cafeteria. As soon as we made sure she'd started on a whole other part of the museum, we wandered away to the Rembrandt room.

We took the roundabout way and ended up in Gallery 24, where we'd waited out of Bert's sight on our first day spying on Gallery Guy. Standing back and looking through the doorway, we weren't surprised to see Gallery Guy's usual spot empty. That was a relief.

“Well, we don't have to hide anymore,” Lucas said, and walked through the Rembrandt room toward the door to Gallery 22. And surprise surprise, somebody besides Bert was standing guard.

“Wonder what's up with Bert today,” Lucas muttered.

“Maybe he has a cold or something.”

“Or maybe they moved him to another gallery. Let's ask,” she said, and before I could comment, she'd walked straight up to the new guard.

“How can I help you?” the guard said. He was short and wiry, with red cheeks and bright blue eyes, and he had a really big accent.

“We were wondering about Bert, the guard who's usually here. Is he absent today?” Lucas asked.

The guard suddenly looked very serious. “How did you know old Bert? He wasn't your uncle or nothing, was he?”

“No, we don't know him,” Lucas said. “We just saw him in here sometimes, that's all.”

“I have bad news for you, missies,” the guard said slowly. “Bert died Saturday, on his way home from his half-day shift. Got run over by a bus, he did.”

“Saturday!” I said. “But we just saw him on Friday.” I felt like somebody had punched me. And from the look on Lucas's face, I think she felt the same.

“That's how these things go, my dears. Terrible shock, it was. He lived alone, did old Bert, so at least he didn't leave behind no missus or little kiddies needin' a dad.”

“But how did it happen?” Lucas asked. “Did he just fall, or what?”

“We-e-e-ll,” the guard began, and the way he said it, you knew he was winding up to tell us something interesting, “there's a woman was behind him in the queue, says he was pushed.”

Then, seeing our horrified expressions, he continued, “Oh yes, she says she saw a man push him under the oncoming bus. But others say it was an accident, and that's what I think, too. I don't know why anybody would want to push old Bert. He was harmless enough.

“It's been quite a week around here, with Bert's accident coming right after the snake incident and all.”

“What snake incident?” I said. I knew perfectly well what snake incident.

“We-e-e-ll,” he wound himself up again, “it was last Friday, it was. About the middle of the afternoon. Suddenly this here snake starts roamin' the galleries. Old Henry, he was the first one as seen it, over in the Impressionist section. Ted says he thought he seen somethin' out of the corner of his eye. That's in Eye-talian Ren-AY-zance.” He meant Italian Renaissance.

Lucas and I looked at each other. We knew that snake had only been on the floor for approximately ninety seconds, and only in the Rembrandt room.

“Then it crawled in here. Caused quite a stir, it did. Old Bert, he picked it up and carried it out, brave as you please, though he said afterward it near gave him heart failure. Well, it would, wouldn't it? Everyone bein' so afraid of snakes and all.”

We didn't tell him that we weren't the slightest bit afraid of snakes.

“The incident even made it into the Mirror.”

“What?” Lucas was almost shouting. The Daily Mirror is a newspaper.

“Not as you'd say a big article. Still, Bert got his name in it. Hope it made his last day a little happier, poor bloke.

“I says to my missus, I says, ‘It's eerie, him dying like that after just handling a snake. It's as if that snake was a omen, like.'”

 

 

I don't know when I've felt quite as miserable as I did after hearing about Bert dying. For one thing, just to know that someone you'd seen alive almost the day before was now dead was weird, and it made me sad, even though I didn't much like Bert when he was alive.

But there was something else, something totally huge that made me feel like I'd been socked in the stomach. With everything that was going on with Gallery Guy, I didn't think Bert's death was just an accident. Somebody had pushed him under that bus. And I kept thinking about those last words of the guard, the ones about the snake being an omen. Was there any connection between the snake incident and what happened to Bert? Because if there was, then in some way Lucas and I were responsible for his death.

Tuesday was a beautiful, sunny day. Not the kind of day when you expect something terrible to happen.

We were helping Mom with “London Looks” in a little park called Sloane Square in a busy part of town where there are lots of clothes shops and fashionable people. When we weren't doing something for Mom, we sat in the sunshine, writing in our travel journals. I hadn't written much since the whole thing with Gallery Guy had started the week before, so getting it all down, including my feelings about Bert dying, was going to take hours.

Lucas never seems to write as much as I do, and after about the first half hour I noticed that she was drawing on the journal pages. She did more sketches of Gallery Guy, and a big drawing of the hands with the intertwined fingers in the middle of Gallery Guy's canvas.

A little after noon, Mom gave us some money and asked us to walk a few blocks down a big street called King's Road to this little sandwich-and-salad takeout place called Pret a Manger to get us all some lunch.

The last thing Mom said before we left was, “It's busy around here, so be extra careful of the traffic.”

Lucas and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. We'd been walking around London for days in places a lot busier than Sloane Square and nothing had happened yet. We'd gotten good at it.

We found the place, no problem, and got our food.

“I'm hungry,” I said when we were back outside and I was stuffing the drinks on top of the hoodie in Lucas's backpack.

“Me, too. Let's get going.”

We took off at a trot. There was traffic up and down King's Road, but not anywhere near as bad as around Trafalgar Square.

Halfway down the first block a little kid got loose from his mom and ran straight into my legs. By the time his mother got hold of him again, Lucas was way ahead of me, just about to cross a quiet side street with no traffic lights.

She was running the last few steps to the corner when I noticed the car coming up beside me on King's Road—driving on the left-hand side of the road, of course, like they do in London. It was black and long and low and shiny. It wasn't slowing down and didn't have its blinker on. It was just another car in London traffic.

Then, at the very last minute, it speeded up and was suddenly turning left into the street Lucas was just going to cross.

I saw her, still trotting, turn her head the other way, to make sure no one was coming on the side street, then step off the curb and onto the pavement.

The car revved its engine as it roared around the corner, tires squealing. One more second—maybe half a second, maybe less—and the little silver jaguar on the hood of the car would be aimed directly at Lucas.

“LUUUCAAAS!” I screamed from way down in my throat, the loudest I've ever screamed in my life. I was sure I was too late. I was sure she'd be smashed, thrown to the pavement, run over.

She heard me just in time. Her head snapped to the right. She saw the car. I know this can't be true—she must have touched ground somewhere in there—but it seemed like she actually stopped and reversed in midair. I watched as she flew backward, saw the heel of her shoe hit the curb as she went down, falling, falling—but onto the sidewalk, not into the street.

She landed hard smack on her butt. Beyond her the black car sped away, tires still squealing.

Then it was quiet, and Lucas was sitting there. Somehow her backpack had slipped off her shoulders, the straps now around her elbows, and she was sitting on it.

I dropped to my knees next to her. “Are you okay?”

She grunted.

A youngish guy with supershort hair ran toward us from across the little street.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No,” Lucas said. “At least I don't think so.”

“Any painful bits?” he asked.

“Just . . . the part I sit on.”

He held out his hand and helped Lucas struggle to her feet. She took a few wobbly steps.

“Would have been worse without the rucksack,” the guy said. I figured that must be the British word for backpack.

I looked down. Lucas had landed on the hoodie, but she must have gotten a couple of the plastic bottles, too. I could see orange juice oozing out from one side onto the sidewalk.

“Driver must have been a nutter,” the guy said, “speeding around the corner like that. Miracle he didn't hit you.”

“Did you see what he looked like?” I asked.

“Nah, can't say I noticed. Just some toff in a Jaguar.” He pronounced it like jag-you-are.

He turned to Lucas. “So you're all right then? Nothing broken? You're sure now?”

Lucas held up a hand, which was badly skinned at the bottom of the palm, then flexed her wrist. “Yeah, I'm sure. Thank you.”

“Right.” The guy hesitated. “Well, I'll be off then.”

He gave Lucas a last, uncertain look.

“Right,” he said again. “Cheers.” Then away he went.

“You want to sit down?” I asked.

“Yeah. I guess so,” Lucas muttered. I pointed behind her, toward a bench a few steps from the corner. I grabbed her leaking backpack and helped her over.

She sucked in her breath and let out a little moan as she sat down. “I'm going to have some heavy-duty black and blue marks. Kari—”

“Yes?”

“Kari, thank you for screaming at me like that. If you hadn't, I'd probably have been run over.”

“No big deal. Anybody would have done it.”

“It is a big deal, Kari. You saved my life. That guy we just talked to was right. The driver must have been nuts.”

“Um, Lucas—”

I was just about to say something about the driver of the Jaguar, when I saw Mom coming down the sidewalk. When she got to us she said, “I looked over and saw you limping. What's up?”

“Lucas had an almost-but-not-quite accident,” I said.

“No! Are you hurt?” Mom dropped to her knees in front of Lucas, her expression suddenly serious.

“Not really. My butt's going to be black and blue, is all.”

“What happened?” Mom asked. She looked alarmed, and her eyebrows were pulled almost completely together.

“It was my fault,” Lucas said. “It was the first time since we got here that I forgot about the driving-on-the-left thing. I didn't look behind me to see if anybody was coming up in the left lane wanting to turn in front of me.”

“That's not how it happened!” I said. “You didn't see the whole thing. I did. It wouldn't have mattered if you'd have looked, Lucas. The guy didn't have his blinker on or anything, and at the last minute he just squealed around the corner without any warning.”

“When Kari saw the car turn she screamed, or I would have been hit.”

“Crazy driver! He should go to jail!” Mom was almost shouting, she was so upset. “Did you fall? What happened?”

“I ended up sitting down smack on my backpack on the sidewalk.”

I held up the dripping backpack to show Mom.

“You're sure you didn't injure anything?”

“Like I told you, my butt hurts. That's all. And I skinned my hand.” She held up her scratched palm.

“You're white as a sheet, and you're shaking.” Mom was up close now, looking into Lucas's face.

“Yeah, I guess I am a little.” I couldn't believe it. I'd never seen her get shaky about anything. Nobody asked me how I was feeling, and I didn't want to say anything since I wasn't the one who was hurt, but to be honest, I was shaky, too.

Mom got to her feet and helped Lucas up just like the guy had done. “Kari, why don't you run up and tell the photographer to be back in an hour? Let's find a restaurant and have a nice, relaxing lunch. And you need some strong tea with lots of sugar, young lady,” she said to Lucas. “It's what the English would prescribe, and it's probably as good for you as anything.”

After she ate, Lucas seemed better and her face was a lot less pale. I had some tea, too, and I was feeling more normal. Lucas said she didn't want to go back to Robert's, so we stopped at a store and got a couple cushions for her to sit on, then went back to our park bench.

And that was the first chance I had to talk to Lucas about what I was thinking. I let her get all comfortable and waited until Mom and the photographer were busy, then I said, “Uh, Lucas. About that car that almost hit you.”

“What about it?”