Goodly and Grave in a Deadly Case of Murder Read online

  “I really can’t bear reading any more of this rubbish,” Rivers declared and closed the Penny. He peered across the table at Lucy.

  “Mrs Crawley?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “I think Miss Goodly’s looking rather peaky.”

  Mrs Crawley put down the sprout-peeling knife she was washing and came over to have a look at Lucy.

  “Hmm. You’re right.”

  “I think she should have an early night? Maybe along with a glass of milk and a simple cheese sandwich for easy digestion?” Rivers winked at Lucy who smiled gratefully back.

  “That’s good advice, Rivers.” Mrs Crawley soon rustled up the milk and sandwich and gave them to Lucy on a tray so she could take them upstairs with her to eat in her room in peace and quiet. But once Lucy had finished her early supper, curiosity about all the strange and horrible events needled at her, making sleep impossible. She sat up in bed and thought hard, running through everything she knew so far:

  Someone was stealing grave dirt for unknown purposes.

  The graverobber was an animator, but perhaps not a very good one as Lucy had defeated him or her.

  There was a magical notebook (now missing) involved, but no one knew what it did exactly.

  A blonde-haired woman had stolen Roland Mole’s Emerald Eye, which was believed to be one of a pair.

  A woman, who wore gold and diamond earrings, had murdered Angus Reedy and stolen the notebook.

  Lucy had noticed what seemed to be identical web-like traces of magic at the scene of the break-in and the jewel robbery, which suggested the crimes were linked.

  None of it was much to go on, and try as she might Lucy couldn’t really see how everything connected. If only she could uncover more clues to help her make sense of it all. Then she remembered the piece of paper she’d found under Reedy’s bed. She’d forgotten all about it! It might be important. She took it out of her pocket, where it had become rather crumpled, and smoothed it out. With a twist of excitement, she saw there was a drawing on it, sketched out in pencil. But then her excitement died a little. It looked like a small child’s picture of a monster. It was just an outline with no features or details; the face was blank without eyes nose or mouth. At the bottom of the page, next to the monster’s left foot, were two small circles and an oblong. And in the far right corner were two initials. A. R.

  The excitement came flooding back. A. R! Angus Reedy must have drawn this before he died. It had to mean something! She stared closely at the drawing, but nothing jumped out at her. She turned it over and saw that two words had been hastily inked on the back. The letters were smudged, as though the paper had been unexpectedly snatched from the writer’s hand. Perhaps by the murderer? But why hadn’t she taken it with her? Perhaps she had dropped it without realising, and then the wind gusting through the broken window had blown it under the bed.

  Lucy studied the letters more closely:

  Lucy began to think of all the words she knew that began in ani and ended in e.

  Five minutes later, she had come up with precisely nothing and she was feeling most frustrated. She turned the paper over and stared at the roughly sketched monster.

  “Oh, what are you supposed to be for?” she said crossly.

  The monster’s foot twitched ever so slightly.

  “What did you just do?” Lucy asked the drawing.

  Nothing happened.

  Lucy turned the paper over again.

  Animate me!

  The paper shook in her hand as she turned it back over to the monster side. What was it that Lord Grave had said when she had tried animating the portrait of Uncle Ebenezer? Sometimes intense emotions enable us to perform magic we didn’t know we had in us.

  Well, she was certainly experiencing some intense emotion right now. She stared at the monster, trying to channel all her excitement and nervous energy into making the drawing move.

  The monster began to twitch again.

  “Reedy wanted you to show us something. What was it?” Lucy asked in a firm voice.

  The two circles at the monster’s left foot began to glow, yellow at first, deepening to green. Then they winked out before reappearing on the monster’s face as eyes. Lucy gasped. Next, writing appeared on the oblong at the monster’s feet. Lucy had to squint really hard to see the tiny word written there. It looked like “command”. Then the oblong vanished too, reappearing on the monster’s face, exactly where a mouth would be.

  Lucy stared at the drawing.

  The green circles, were they meant to be Emerald Eyes? Lucy remembered what Roland Mole had said about how the stolen Emerald Eye was rumoured to be one of a pair. And the oblong with the writing on, could that represent a page from the mysterious notebook? Did Angus Reedy animate this picture to show that whoever had stolen the notebook and the Emerald Eye was attempting to create a monster?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GOLEMS AND MURDER

  Lucy rushed out of her room and headed off to the drawing room where she knew that Lord Grave and the others would be enjoying a pre-dinner drink. As she sped down the last flight of stairs, she saw someone lurking outside the drawing-room door. She had the sudden wild thought that it was the graverobber. Her breath caught in her throat. But her imagination was running away with her. It was just Rivers, holding a silver tray with a bottle balanced on it. She hurried towards him.

  “Oh, Miss Goodly! Is everything all right? Why aren’t you resting?”

  “I need to tell Lord Grave something.”

  “What is it?”

  Before Lucy could reply the drawing-room door was flung open by Beguildy Beguildy. “Stop loitering out there, butler, and bring that gin in. I’ve been waiting hours.”

  Lucy squeezed herself between the two men, nearly knocking the tray out of Rivers’ hands, and skidded into the drawing room, startling everyone. Lady Sibyl dropped her glass of sherry and Bertie slopped raspberry cordial down his front while Smell choked on the milk he was lapping from a saucer.

  “What is it, Lucy?” Lord Grave asked. He’d managed to hang on to his whisky and soda.

  “A monster!”

  “Has the child had some kind of nightmare?” Beguildy asked, calmly holding out his gin glass for Rivers to top up. It had a straw and a fussy pink paper umbrella sticking out of it.

  “No. This. Look.” Lucy handed the monster drawing to Lord Grave.

  “Rivers, you can go now,” Lord Grave said hastily.

  “Are you sure you don’t need anything else, your Lordship?”

  “No, thank you.”

  When Rivers had left the room, everyone clustered around to examine the drawing. It was still animated, with the circles and oblong transforming themselves on the monster’s face and then fading and reappearing next to the monster’s feet before moving back to its face again in an endless loop.

  “Look at its eyes; they’re meant to be emeralds, I’m sure of it,” Lucy said.

  “The mouth,” Bertie said. “It’s like a piece of notepaper with something written on it. Oh, is it meant to be a page from the notebook?”

  “Oh my goodness, George, they’re right! It’s a golem!” Lady Sibyl exclaimed.

  Lucy frowned in confusion. “A what?”

  “A magical monster, created out of earth or clay,” Lord Grave said. “Immensely powerful and very dangerous. A golem knows nothing of good and evil; it exists simply to carry out its maker’s commands. The creation of golems is strictly forbidden in the magical world and no reputable magician would even think of making one.”

  “I think Reedy wanted to warn us that this is what the criminals are trying to do!” Lucy said.

  Beguildy peered at the drawing.

  “If Angus Reedy drew that, it’s a good thing he didn’t attempt an artistic career,” he remarked.

  There was a horrified silence.

  “Beguildy!” Lord Grave said. “Show some respect. A man has died here. A man who was a good friend to some of us!”

  Al
though Beguildy failed to apologise, he at least showed a shred of decency by looking very slightly shamefaced as he took a sip of his drink.

  “George,” Lady Sibyl said, her eyes wide. “Mortimer Thorne!”

  “I was thinking the same thing, Sibyl,” Lord Grave replied.

  “Mortimer Thorne? I remember that case from when we were at school,” Prudence said. “B, do you remember? That chap from O’Brien’s?”

  Prudence realised Lucy and Bertie were looking baffled.

  “He was a very gifted animator,” she explained. “He worked at O’Brien’s Midnight Circus, which as you may guess is a magical circus. He had a sideshow there, animating objects. Making cups walk, tables dance, that sort of thing. Ordinary people thought it was some clever trick with clockwork or an optical illusion. The sideshow was incredibly successful. I went with some school friends once and we all thought what he was doing was terribly clever. It seems awful now, but none of us realised what a bad man he was.”

  “Lots of people didn’t. But MAAM was never very happy with what Thorne was doing from the start,” Lord Grave said. “The circus itself is bad enough, but at least they try to ensure their magic can be explained away as clever tricks. Thorne grew more and more arrogant as time went on and didn’t bother to hide anything or perform magic in subtle ways.”

  “Is that why he went to prison, Father? For not concealing his magic?”

  “No, Bertie. It’s not against our laws exactly to be flagrant with magic, just against a good magician’s ethics. Everyone tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen. He considered himself better than any of us. Wanted to be the most powerful magician in the land. It was his view that we shouldn’t hide ourselves away from non-magicians, that we should show them our magic and make them afraid so they would look up to us. Even the circus folk couldn’t stomach him in the end. They threw him out. So he took his revenge. One night he went back to the circus with a golem he’d been secretly making. Now that is against our laws. Using magic to create living things is forbidden.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” Lady Sibyl said quietly. “When we arrived at the circus to investigate, we found complete carnage. Bodies everywhere. People who had been out for an evening’s entertainment but ended up never going home again. Of course, the non-magicians thought the golem was some kind of clockwork marionette controlled by Thorne, so he was arrested for murder. If Lord Grave hadn’t intervened he would have been hanged instead of going to prison.”

  “Why did you do that, Father? You should have let him die!” Bertie said angrily.

  “I don’t believe in killing people for their crimes. Rotting away in prison is a worse punishment in some ways. Especially for someone like Thorne, who had such delusions of grandeur. He’s been largely forgotten in the ten years he’s been in prison. He must hate that.”

  “Is there any chance that it’s Thorne behind everything that’s happening? Could he have escaped?” Lucy asked.

  “Very unlikely. We put many protections in place and he’s guarded round the clock by magicians. We made special arrangements with the prison authorities,” Lord Grave said.

  Lucy frowned. “But I thought you didn’t like non-magicians knowing about magic?”

  “Sometimes there’s no choice and we have to collaborate with the non-magical establishment.”

  “So what do we do next?” Lucy stared at the animated paper golem again, watching the eyes appear and disappear from its face.

  “We go to Millbank Prison. That’s where Mortimer Thorne is being held. We need to question him. Perhaps he has an accomplice on the outside who knows about golem-making.”

  “We should visit O’Brien too, George. The circus is in Hyde Park this month; my cousin’s footman went to see it. We could even go tonight.”

  Lord Grave took out his pocket watch. “I don’t know, Sibyl. If we left now, we wouldn’t arrive until around five am. That would be too early to visit the prison, too late to visit the circus.”

  “Couldn’t we shortcut?” Lucy asked, impatient to get on the case as soon as possible.

  “Shortcutting into London is tricky. Such a busy place – you might think you’re shortcutting into a quiet side street and end up in the middle of a crowd,” Lord Grave said. “We’d have to shortcut into countryside outside London, which can be difficult to navigate. And then of course we would still need to get from there into the city.”

  “Besides, I hate shortcutting,” Beguildy said and shuddered. “It makes me horribly sick.”

  “You could always stay behind,” Lucy muttered under her breath.

  “Well then, I suggest we set off in a few hours and aim to get to Millbank for around nine am. We can visit O’Brien tomorrow night,” Lord Grave said.

  “George,” Lady Sibyl said. “You’re being ridiculous. You know my horses can get us there in no time! I think we need to act as soon as we can. There is a murderer on the loose after all!”

  Lucy had quite forgotten about Lady Sibyl’s flying horses. “That’s a brilliant idea! Can we go now?”

  Lord Grave harrumphed. “Well, I don’t know. Might not be sensible to go haring off.” His face had taken on a slightly green tinge.

  “Oh, come on, Grave, admit it. You’re afraid of flying, ain’t you?” Smell said.

  “George. I’ve told you before. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; we all have our fears,” Lady Sibyl said.

  “Of course I’m not scared! What a ridiculous notion.” Lord Grave’s moustache bristled in annoyance. As if to demonstrate just how scared he wasn’t, he immediately rang the bell for Rivers. When he arrived, Lord Grave instructed him to ready Lady Sibyl’s carriage straight away and to ask Mrs Crawley to prepare some sandwiches in place of dinner.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LONDON SMOG

  As it was a chilly night and it would be even colder flying, Lucy ran up to her room to fetch her cloak before meeting everyone else at the carriage house. She was so eager to get on with the investigation that she was the first to arrive. Lady Sibyl’s coach was parked outside and Rivers was busy harnessing the horses.

  “There you are, my beauties,” Rivers was saying to them, his voice soft and caring. “Nice and comfortable, I hope?”

  “Hello, Rivers,” Lucy said.

  Rivers turned. “Miss Goodly! Are you looking forward to tonight’s flight?”

  “Oh yes.” Lucy went up to the horses to feed them a couple of apples she’d filched from the kitchen on her way out. “But … but the horses don’t have wings. How are they going to fly?”

  “You’ll see.” Rivers winked at her. “I hear you’ve been doing some excellent investigating? Everything’s moving so fast I’ve quite lost track!”

  “It is all very exciting, but a bit scary,” Lucy said, stroking the horses’ noses as they munched their apples. “We think someone’s trying to make a golem!”

  “A golem?” Rivers frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that at all. I don’t know much about them. Forbidden magic, of course. But the perpetrator must be a very dangerous magician. I do hope you’ll be careful.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I can look after myself.”

  “I’m sure you can. Oh, look sharp, here come the rest of my passengers.”

  Lord Grave, Lady Sibyl, Bertie, Beguildy and Smell joined Lucy next to the carriage. Prudence was staying at Grave Hall to keep an eye on things there along with Lord Percy, who had gone home for dinner but was now on his way back, summoned by a chit from Lord Grave.

  “Are we all going to fit inside?” Bertie asked.

  “That’s a good point, Bertie. It is only a four-seater really and a small four-seater at that,” Lady Sibyl said.

  “Could we hitch the horses to Father’s carriage? It’s bigger.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Lady Sibyl said. “This carriage is specially made, and all the materials are lightweight and designed for flight.”

  “If I might venture a suggestion?” Rivers said. “Someone could
travel up top with me.”

  “I will!” Lucy volunteered immediately, imagining how much more thrilling it would be to sit outside the coach. The view would be incredible.

  “You’re a braver person than me, Lucy,” Lord Grave remarked. For some strange reason he was holding a chamberpot in his hand.

  When everyone had settled inside the carriage, Rivers took a brush from his pocket. It began to glow like a tiny moon as Rivers ran it gently along the sides of the two horses. Sparks danced along their skin and elegant wings began to unfurl. Then Rivers carefully brushed the horses’ manes and tails, which became as light and fluffy as thistledown.

  Rivers stood back and studied the results of his endeavours with satisfaction. “I think we’re ready now, Miss Goodly. Let me help you up into the driver’s seat.”

  Once they were both seated and their knees covered with a thick blanket, Rivers flicked a whip lightly over the horses’ rumps.

  Lucy cried out, not liking to see the beautiful creatures hurt.

  “It doesn’t harm them,” Rivers reassured her. “It’s just a signal for them to—”

  The horses gave a great leap into the air, pulling the carriage with them. Lucy was jolted violently in her seat.

  “Take off! Grab the handrail, Miss Goodly!”

  Lucy did as Rivers said, hanging on fast to the rail as the carriage bounced and jerked into the sky. But once they were fully airborne they travelled surprisingly smoothly. The horses beat their wings so fast they were almost invisible.

  Lucy cautiously peered towards the ground that was now far below them. It was too dark to see much, but here and there she saw pinpricks of light as they passed over villages and farms. “Are you sure no one will see us?” Lucy asked.