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“Before who starts bawling?” I whispered back in alarm.
“Little Harry, of course. He’s getting teeth or something. Keeps on howling like a siren, anyway.”
“Uncle Harry?”
“Arista says we have to leave him to cry for educational reasons or he’ll grow up to be a wimp. But it’s more than anyone can stand. Sometimes I go in to see him on the sly, wimp or no wimp. If you sing him ‘The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night,’ he stops yelling.”
“Poor Uncle Harry. Sounds like a classic case of early childhood imprinting, if you ask me.” No wonder he was so keen on shooting everything he could turn his sporting gun on these days—wild duck, stags, grouse, pheasants, and in particular, foxes. He was chairman of a society campaigning for it to be legal to hunt foxes with hounds again in Gloucestershire. “Maybe you ought to try singing him something else. And buy him a cuddly fox toy.”
o;Yes, that’s the vital question,” said Nick.
“The vital question,” said Mr. Bernard, “is how we’re going to open the chest. Because the key to it disappeared, along with Lord Montrose’s diaries, at the time of that burglary.”
“What burglary?” asked Lesley and Nick in chorus.
“Thieves broke in on the day of your grandfather’s funeral,” Aunt Maddy explained. “While we were all saying our last good-byes to him at the graveyard. Such a sad day, wasn’t it, dear Mr. Bernard?” she added, looking up at him. He was listening with no sign of emotion.
The story did seem vaguely familiar. As far as I remembered, the burglars had been disturbed and ran away before they could take anything. But when I told Nick and Lesley that, Aunt Maddy contradicted me.
“No, no, my little angel. The police only assumed that nothing had been stolen because all the ready cash, the deeds to this house, and valuable jewelry were still in the safe.”
“And that made sense only if it was the diaries, and nothing else, that the burglars were after,” said Mr. Bernard. “I allowed myself to put that hypothesis to the police at the time, but no one believed me. What’s more, there was no sign that anyone had tried breaking into the safe. They’d have had to know the combination. So it was thought that Lord Montrose must have put his diaries somewhere else.”
“I believed you, dear Mr. Bernard,” said Aunt Maddy. “But I’m sorry to say that no one thought my opinion was worth much at the time. Or at any other time, really,” she added wistfully. “Anyway, three days before Lucas died, I had a vision, and I was convinced that he hadn’t died a natural death. But as usual, people thought I was crazy. Yet it was such a clear vision: a huge panther leaped at Lucas’s chest and tore his throat to pieces.”
“Oh, very clear,” muttered Lesley, and I asked, “What about the diaries?”
“They never turned up,” said Mr. Bernard. “Nor did the key to this chest, which was with them, because Lord Montrose always kept it stuck inside his current diary, as I know because I saw it with my own eyes.”
Xemerius was flapping his wings impatiently. “Why don’t you stop all this nattering and fetch a crowbar?”
“But … but Grandpa had a heart attack,” said Nick.
“Well, that’s what it looked like after the event, anyway.” Aunt Maddy sighed deeply. “After all, he was eighty years old. He collapsed at his desk in his office at the Temple. My vision obviously wasn’t a good enough reason for them to have an autopsy done. Arista was very cross with me when I wanted her to insist.”
“This is giving me goose bumps,” whispered Nick, moving a little closer and snuggling up to me. For a while, no one said anything. Xemerius kept circling around the ceiling light saying, “Oh, get a move on!” But of course I was the only one who could hear him.
“That adds up to a lot of coincidences,” said Lesley at last.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Lucas has the chest walled up, and purely by chance, he dies next day.”
“Right, and purely by chance, I have a vision three days before his death,” said Aunt Maddy.
“And purely by chance, his diaries vanish without trace,” added Nick.
“And purely by chance,” said Mr. Bernard almost apologetically, “the key that Miss Lesley here is wearing on a chain around her neck is the very image of the key to this chest. I couldn’t help staring at it all through supper.”
Lesley put her hand to her chain, looking baffled. “What, this one? The key to my heart?”
“But that can’t be it,” I said. “I pinched it from a desk drawer in the Temple sometime in the eighteenth century. That would be rather too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Chance is the only legitimate ruler of the universe, as Einstein said. And he ought to know.” Aunt Maddy leaned forward to look at the key with interest.
“It wasn’t Einstein, it was Napoleon,” Xemerius called down from the ceiling. “And Napoleon didn’t have all his marbles at the time.”
“I could be wrong, of course. Old keys look very like one another,” said Mr. Bernard.
Lesley fiddled with the clasp of the chain and handed me the key. “It’s worth a try, anyway.”
