Wilma Tenderfoot and the Case of the Frozen Hearts (12 page)

“Well, out with it,” urged Theodore, stroking his mustache.

“The thing is,” said Dr. Kooks, his voice falling to a whisper, “their hearts were frozen. Frozen solid.”

Wilma felt her mouth drop open. Pickle yelped and shook his tool belt. Things had taken a spooky turn.

E
veryone knows that there are some places that people not wishing to get into trouble should probably never go, and on Cooper Island that place was the Twelve Rats' Tails, a notorious hangout for Criminal Elements. The tavern was tucked into a dark corner of Rotten-Egg Alley, a stinking, sewage-strewn street on the west side of the Cooper Island docks. A creaking wooden sign hung above its shabby door. On it was a faded painting of twelve severed rats' tails and beneath it a dire warning: “No one Welkom,” it read. “Go awaye.”

The walls of the Twelve Rats' Tails oozed with dirt and sweat, and the room was filled with clouds of pipe smoke and the smell of stale beer. The tavern was a maze of nooks and corners that even in the early morning were dark and packed with hunched thugs and lowlifes, caps pulled down low over foreheads and heavy jackets that hid a multitude of sins. As Barbu D'Anvers entered, he took a quick glance around him and curled his lip into a trademark sneer. “Utterly disgusting,” he snarled, lifting his cape to his nose. “I'd forgotten. Don't let me take my gloves off, Tully. Well, what are you standing there for? Go and find him!”

As Tully slunk off into the fog of pipe smoke, Barbu noticed that a grizzled woman in a broken top hat was staring at him. She had a patch over one eye and was sucking on what appeared to be a long, thin bone. “Revolting,” muttered Barbu under his breath. Sitting next to her was another woman whose face he couldn't quite see. She was wearing a heavy shawl that was pulled up over the top of her head so that, in the dank of the room, all Barbu could make out of her face were two tiny pinpricks of light as the candle on their table picked out her eyes, and one long, dark curl hanging down her cheek. She was playing with a deck of cards, splitting the pack and shuffling with great skill, her red fingernails flashing in the candlelight. Whoever she was, she seemed very interested in Barbu, but then, as Barbu thought to himself, he was the island's most notorious criminal. “Probably wants my autograph,” he muttered with a shrug.

“Over here, Mr. Barbu,” said a voice cutting through the gloom. It was Tully and he was gesturing toward a particularly pitch-black corner. As Barbu sat down, the man he had come to see took a large swig from the tankard in front of him and ran a filthy hand across his mouth. Flatnose Detoit had the sort of face that looked as if it wasn't quite on right. Everything about him was skewed and off center, his eyes sloped down to the left, his mouth veered off to the right, while his nose, so squashed as to be almost imperceptible, seemed not to know which way it was going.

“You know why I'm here, Flatnose,” began Barbu, placing his cane on the table. “The Katzin Stone. Who stole it? Where can I find them? How many people do I need to hurt?”

Flatnose shook his head slowly and leaned forward. “Here's the thing, Mr. D'Anvers,” he whispered, nose rattling as he spoke, “no one knows. Not a peep from anyone. Not since this . . .” Flatnose reached into his pocket and pulled out a crushed newspaper. “Look at that,” he added, tapping at that morning's headline. “Hearts frozen solid, Mr. D'Anvers. No normal man can do that.”

Barbu's eyes narrowed. “So? So someone can freeze people's hearts. Boring! What's wrong with using a gun? Or a pointy stick? Whoever it is, he's clearly just showing off. Which I'm forced to admire him for. That aside, I'm still going to kill him and get that stone. So, Flatnose, I just want to know who it is.” Barbu picked up his cane and shoved it into the informant's chest. “And I want to know now.”

“But I don't know, Mr. D'Anvers, I swear it,” said Flatnose, wild-eyed. “Everyone's been talking about Visser Haanstra being killed. Great forger. Terrible loss to the Criminal Element fraternity. He knew who did it. But the secret died with him. Although . . .” the snitch added in a low whisper, “they do say he had an order book. Kept all his secrets in it. If you can find that, then you might have the name you want.”

“Order book?” snapped Barbu, twisting the cane harder into Flatnose's chest. “What order book?”

“Visser kept an order book,” coughed Flatnose, gasping. “Never let anyone see it. Apart from his son, Janty. Now he's the only person left alive who knows what it looks like and where it is.”

Barbu released his cane. “So Visser has a son . . .” he mused. “Hmmm. Interesting.”

“Probably quite small,” said Tully, thinking aloud. “Easy to kill.”

“There's nothing wrong with small, Tully,” barked Barbu, rapping the henchman on the forehead with the end of his cane. “No. We shan't kill this boy . . . yet. I have a feeling he might be of use. Pay Flatnose, Tully. And meet me outside.”

 

The early-morning air was cold and piercing as Barbu swept out of the Twelve Rats' Tails, and as he stood in the alleyway he was aware of a presence to his left. Turning on his heel, he held out his cane. “You there,” he shouted, “come forward!”

Out from the murk stepped the shawl-clad woman who had been playing with the cards. She was hunched over a stick and carrying a basket. In her hand she was holding something small and blue. “Lucky lavender, mister,” she mumbled, creeping closer and holding the flower aloft.

“Get away!” shouted Barbu, swatting her hand as she thrust it toward his face. “Tully!” he yelled at the henchman bundling out from the tavern door. “I don't pay you to stand by while I have to deal with crazed fans. Get this creature off me.”

Tully pushed the woman back toward the wall, and as Barbu marched away the strange woman melted back into the shadows from whence she had come.

“
W
ilma Tenderfoot!” yelled Mrs. Waldock, waddling into the doorway of her sitting room. “I've been calling you for half an hour! Where have you been?”

Wilma, who had been awake all night making herself a Clue Board, scampered up to the hallway. She knew she was in trouble, and Pickle, who was far from stupid despite appearances to the contrary, knew it too, so as Wilma hurried toward the sitting room he trotted off to the kitchen. If he could stare nonchalantly in the direction of a pot of vegetable peelings and go unnoticed for long

Wilma was panting from running up the cellar stairs. “Never before!” wailed Mrs. Waldock, spit cascading from her lips. “Never before have I been sent a child so willful! Why are you standing there with your cheeks puffed out? Stop pulling faces and deliver this letter. And when you've done that, there's a sack of onions that need peeling, and when you've done that you can file my toenails. And look sharp, Wilma Tenderfoot! Or I shall have you put in a box and sent back to that Institute quicker than you can count to ten!”

Wilma was skating on thin ice. If she was sent away now, her detective dreams would never come true. And as a general rule, small, fidgety but determined girls in the employ of large, irascible women should do as they are told, but Wilma, who was so bubbling over with clues and half-baked deductions, could only think of one thing: how to follow the world's greatest detective to Visser Haanstra's workshop. It would be the perfect opportunity to practice her eavesdropping—top tip number four. This time she'd get it right and Mr. Goodman would just have to

Wilma's homemade Clue Board was as near to being like Detective Goodman's as she could manage, but without photos or blueprints or string it was a patchwork of torn-out pieces from the
Early Worm
newspaper around a navy blue sock with the word VAULT written on it in chalk. Wilma looked up at it as she pulled on her hat to go to the post office. “We must remember to write everything down so we don't forget it, Pickle,” she said to the beagle, who had followed her back down into their cellar. “There was the thing about the lavender. Which almost certainly means something. And the fish scale. Which might. And Visser and his sugar—and some poison. Then there was the thing about the frozen hearts. Which I can't work out. Maybe it's something to do with bees, who like lavender and can sting? And what if there's a special breed of bee that can sting ice? And might look like this?” While Wilma was thinking aloud she was drawing a picture of a giant ice-stinging bee on the back of the envelope Mrs. Waldock had given her to mail. Pickle, who had no idea what his companion was rattling on about, stood very still. As a general rule, if a dog is in doubt, that's what they do. Nothing at all. “It's like that case when Mr. Goodman caught the scientist who was breeding poisonous worms. Look here,” went on Wilma, flapping to the relevant newspaper article on her Clue Ring. “It's like that. But with bees. And ice stings. What do you think?”

She looked down at her faithful hound, who quickly decided that standing stiller than he'd ever stood before was the only way out of this one.

 

Theodore P. Goodman, the world's greatest detective, was taking care not to touch anything. Crime scenes, whether they involved the theft of something small, like a paper clip, or the murder of something enormous, like a hippopotamus, deserved to be treated with solemnity. Having found Visser dead on the workshop floor, Theodore wanted to simply stand and look around him. The great detective liked to do this in an atmosphere of quiet contemplation but, with Inspector Lemone standing behind him, that was verging on the impossible.

“Slug stew, Goodman,” the Inspector was saying, pointing toward the pot on the floor. “Never cared for it. Too chewy. Mind you, haven't had any lunch yet. Only had kippers and bacon for breakfast. And that cupcake. And those biscuits. And that sandwich. Bit peckish. Oh, and I had that pie. But all the same . . . Wonder if the slug stew's still warm . . .”

“Don't touch anything, please, Inspector,” murmured the detective, stopping the Inspector by the arm as he bent down to stick his finger into the pot. “Plenty of time for snacks. Someone, it would seem, is trying to cover their tracks. Witnesses are being eliminated.”

“Standard evil procedure.” The Inspector nodded, still staring at the stew. Then he got out his notebook to make it look as if he was actually doing something and secretly drew a small picture of someone who looked suspiciously like Mrs. Speckle.

Theodore had moved over to the body and, having established that there were signs of a violent struggle, bent down to take a closer look. “Interesting,” he said, peering at Visser through his magnifying glass. “This man was beaten, but that was not how he died. Blood vessels about the mouth are broken. Some sort of poison . . .”

“Get away from him,” shouted a voice, suddenly, from behind them. Theodore stood and turned around. There in front of them was a small boy with a mop of curly brown hair and eyes that were bloodshot and teary. “Don't touch him! Leave us alone!”

The great detective, quickly reading the situation for what it was, took a small step forward. “Was this your father?” he asked, gently reaching out to put a hand on the boy's shoulder. Janty nodded and stared down at his tatty shoes. “Did you see who did this?” Theodore asked carefully.

“No.” Janty sniffled, wiping a hand across his eyes. “He always told me to hide when we had trouble. I was outside.”

“Is your mother here?” inquired Theodore, shooting a quick glance around him.

“Haven't got a mother,” mumbled Janty. “I haven't got anyone now.”

“What's your name, young man?” asked the detective softly.

“Janty,” replied the boy, responding to Theodore's kindness. “Janty Haanstra.”

“Janty,” began the detective, hand still on the boy's shoulder, “I am very sorry for your loss. I will do my utmost to bring whoever did this to justice. But for now we need to get you away from here. Inspector,” he added, turning to his colleague, “see to it that this boy is looked after. And take my handkerchief, Lemone. Dry your eyes, for goodness' sake.”

“Much obliged,” sobbed the Inspector, who had a terrible weakness for bursting into tears wherever small children and bad news were concerned.

“Oh!” said a voice from the doorway. “It's appalling. I couldn't believe the news. My old friend . . . dead?”

Theodore turned, his jaw setting to granite as he heard a voice he knew all too well. “Barbu D'Anvers,” he whispered.

“Hello, Theodore,” said the tiny villain with a sneer. “How perfectly ghastly to see you.”

Inspector Lemone thrust his notebook away and stuck his chest out. “Now steady on, D'Anvers,” he blustered, wagging a finger in the criminal's direction. “We'll have no unpleasantness here.”