The Emerald Casket (3 page)

‘She just wants a new friend, that's all,' Ruby said with a slight shudder. ‘She would have seen the news reports on TV—us recovering the stolen diamond, our run-in with Sir Mason Green—and she thinks we're worth knowing.'

Sam laughed. ‘Not you and me, sister. No one wants to be friends with Sam and Ruby Valentine. All this is addressed to one person: Gerald Wilkins, care of planet gazillionaire. Population: one. It's about money, pure and simple.'

They spent the rest of the morning going through the post.

Ruby upended another sack of mail across the rug and Sam groaned.

‘Are you sure there's nothing in here for me?' he said. A handful of envelopes slipped through his fingers and onto the floor.

Ruby looked at him. ‘Who would write to you out here in rural Somerset?'

‘Oh, I don't know. There might be a letter for me. From India, maybe. A little thank you note. Or something.'

Ruby laughed. ‘Sam, Alisha Gupta is not the least bit interested in you. She's not going to take time from her oh-so-busy social life to stick a stamp on an envelope for your sake.'

Sam bristled. ‘Just because you two hate each other. Her dad was really happy we got his diamond back from Mason Green. And Alisha thought I was pretty brave.'

‘I seem to recall the word she used was “foolish”. Or maybe it was “grossly stupid”. Anyway, it was Gerald she was drooling over, not you.'

Sam looked to Gerald for support but he was sitting boggle-eyed on the floor, amid a mountain of love letters.

‘They don't even know me,' he said. ‘I could have fangs and drink blood for breakfast for all they know.'

Sam flicked through a wad of photographs. ‘They'd probably find that attractive.'

Gerald surveyed the piles that surrounded them. ‘I didn't think being a billionaire would involve so much paperwork.'

He plucked a letter from a bright pink envelope, releasing a perfumed shower of glitter. Then, out of nowhere, he asked, ‘Do you think Sir Mason Green will resurface?'

The once-respected businessman, philanthropist and chairman of the British Museum Trust hadn't been far from Gerald's thoughts since the incident at Beaconsfield a fortnight earlier. Sir Mason Green was now an international fugitive, wanted for ordering the murder of Geraldine Archer—the very act that had paved the way for Gerald to inherit the Archer fortune.

‘We won't see him again,' Ruby said. ‘He found what he was looking for. Why would he come back?'

Gerald hoped that was true. He still found it difficult to sleep. And even when he did manage to drift off, there were the dreams.

The night in the cavern under Beaconsfield played over and over in his mind: Sir Mason Green using the stolen
Noor Jehan
diamond to unlock a legendary casket that had lain hidden in a burial chamber for 1700 years; Green reaching into the casket and removing an ornate golden sceptre and gazing upon it like he'd found some lost love. He'd grabbed Gerald by the hair and laid the rod across his forehead. That moment was now etched in high definition into Gerald's mind: the brain collapsing vision that Gerald had experienced, the sensation of being shattered into an infinite number of particles and blown by a hot wind into every moment throughout the sands of time. He hadn't told anyone about this vision, not even the Valentine twins.

‘Green's someplace overseas for sure,' Sam said. ‘He's a billionaire—he could be anywhere.'

‘Don't let it hassle you, Gerald,' Ruby said. ‘Inspector Parrott will take care of it. You don't need to worry about Sir Mason Green.'

Gerald picked up another pile of envelopes. The top one had an elegant letter ‘R' embossed in red on the back. He tore through the stiff paper.

‘Hey, look at this,' he said. ‘A get-well card from Lord Herring at the Rattigan Club.'

Sam laughed. ‘Didn't think you'd hear from him again.'

‘Unless he was threatening to sue you,' Ruby said.

Gerald smiled to himself. The exclusive Rattigan Club—they'd got up to some mischief there trying to find the stolen diamond. All that old world finery and stale cigar smoke. Those garishly-decorated rooms. The Pink Room, the Blue Room, the…

‘That's it!'

Ruby and Sam stared at Gerald with alarm.

‘What's it?'

Gerald jumped to his feet. ‘I've got to call Inspector Parrott.'

The next day, Gerald, Sam and Ruby stood in a long corridor on the first floor of the Rattigan Club in London outside a door painted a lustrous bottle green. Mr Fry had driven them up—three hours in the upholstered comfort of a customised Rolls Royce limousine. Fry didn't utter a word the entire trip.

They were joined by Inspector Parrott and Constable Lethbridge of the Metropolitan Police, and the Rattigan Club chairman, Lord Herring.

‘We've searched every inch of Sir Mason's office and his house and found nothing,' the inspector said. ‘This investigation has reached a dead end. And a great deal of the interview evidence central to the case has gone missing.' He cast a furious eye at Lethbridge. The constable glanced down at his shoes and absent-mindedly slipped a hand around to scratch at his left buttock. ‘I hope this theory of yours leads to something, Gerald,' the inspector said. ‘We need a breakthrough.'

‘It just struck me,' Gerald explained. ‘I'd been in the Pink Room and the Blue Room and we'd run past a door to the Green Room.'

Lord Herring pulled a key from his vest pocket. ‘Sir Mason was a member of this club for a very long time. He had the Green Room for his exclusive use. He said it was a tidy space away from his office—handy for his private papers and such. The staff tell me no one except Mason has been in here for five years. He even employed his own cleaner.'

Herring placed the key in the lock and turned. A heavy deadbolt slid aside. The door swung in and seven heads peered into the dark room.

‘Hold on,' Herring said. ‘There should be a switch.' He fumbled a hand around the wall. A bulb flickered on. Seven sets of eyes adjusted to the light.

After a moment of shocked silence, it was Ruby who spoke.

‘Oh my,' was all she could say.

Chapter 2

T
he Green Room gave up its secrets. On the right side, against the far wall, was a large wooden desk, neatly ordered with stacks of documents and magazines. The left side was lined with filing cabinets and bookshelves. In the middle of the room two armchairs sat either side of a low table, on which sat a single cup of very stale coffee.

Gerald saw none of that. His eyes were fixed on the wall in front of him. It was a good ten metres long and painted a light green. Its surface was covered in pen marks. At first glance, it could have been a work of modern art: an abstract wave of rectangles and lines sweeping inwards from the extremities to collide in the centre. But it was the image that sat in the hub of the converging arcs of ink that captured everyone's attention. There, at the heart of the bizarre mural, was a large colour photograph of Gerald Wilkins. It was held in place with a silver letter opener stabbed through Gerald's throat.

‘Are you serious?' Gerald yelped. He slumped back against the doorframe.

Everyone looked at Gerald, then back at the picture skewered to the wall.

‘Does this count as a breakthrough, inspector?' Ruby asked.

Sam pushed through the jumble of people in the doorway and crossed the floor. He reached out to touch the silver dagger when Inspector Parrott barked, ‘Stop!'

Sam whipped his hand back as if a Doberman was about to latch on to it.

‘This is a crime scene,' the inspector declared. He took a pair of thin rubber gloves from his pocket and stretched them over his hands. ‘Only Constable Lethbridge and I are to handle anything. Clear?'

Sam nodded but stepped as close to the wall as he could without touching it. The others joined him. Except for Gerald. He remained rooted to the spot by the door.

‘It's a family tree,' Ruby said, studying the scrawls on the wall. ‘There are names in all these boxes. Hundreds and hundreds of them.'

Everyone was drawn to the diagram of generation upon generation of Gerald's ancestors laid out with meticulous care.

Gerald still couldn't move. He stared unblinking at the wall opposite. What had he done to attract this attention? And what sort of man would go to this effort?

Gerald nearly hit the top of the doorframe at the sound of a gruff voice in his right ear: ‘Has the party started without me?'

He spun around to find a large red-headed man with an unkempt beard and a set of eyebrows like hairy awnings.

‘Professor McElderry!' Gerald said, with some relief. ‘What are you doing here?'

The man stepped past Gerald and cast his eyes around the room. ‘Someone had to bring some intelligence to this event. And by the look of it, I'm not a moment too soon.'

Inspector Parrott glanced up. ‘Ah, professor. Thank you for coming at such short notice.'

McElderry retrieved a pair of spectacles from his shirt pocket and joined the others by the wall. ‘The British Museum can spare me for a wee while,' he said. He peered at the marks that covered the wall. ‘Or possibly quite a long while.'

Gerald had last seen Professor McElderry over tea and scones at Avonleigh. It was shortly after the confrontation with Sir Mason Green. Since then the professor had been camped in the cavern under Beaconsfield, trying to decipher the riddles contained in the ancient burial chamber.

Inspector Parrott moved to the far right corner of the room, following the pen lines as they branched out across the wall. ‘The first name over here looks like it's Clea,' he said.

The professor had moved to the opposite corner. ‘Over here it's Quintus. Quintus Antonius, circa 350AD. Any of this sound familiar, Gerald?'

Gerald hadn't moved from the door, unwilling to get close to anything associated with Mason Green.

‘Never heard of them,' he said.

Professor McElderry grunted. He traced his way back along the web of lines until he reached their ultimate product: Gerald Wilkins. The full page photograph was torn from one of the hundreds of magazine articles that had been published about him. The headline on this one was
Who's a lucky boy?

Sam piped up. ‘Gerald, did you see this?' He pointed to a hole in the picture. It was about the size of a pound coin and was burned between Gerald's eyes. It looked like someone had twisted a hot poker into his forehead.

‘What's all this mean, professor?' Gerald asked in a soft voice. ‘Why would Mason Green want to know about my family?'

McElderry raked his fingers through his beard and took in the panorama before him. ‘There's a story from ancient Greece,' he began, ‘about the god Zeus. He released two eagles: one flew east and the other went west.' The professor spread his arms wide. ‘They flew clear round the globe and where they met'—McElderry brought his palms together with a sharp clap—‘marked the centre of the world.'

‘Looks like you're the centre of someone's world, Gerald,' Sam said.

Ruby's eyes scanned the length of the room. ‘Is this what they mean when they say the writing's on the wall?'

Gerald took a step inside. ‘I couldn't tell you who half my family was,' he said. ‘How can Green know so much about me?' More importantly, Gerald thought, why would he care?

Gerald crossed to the photograph. He saw a boy with a bewildered expression on his face. He stared at the hole between his eyes, its edges burnt brown and flaking. His fingers strayed to his head to the smooth gap flanked by his eyebrows. Had Sir Mason Green actually
branded
his face? He looked at the two names above his photograph. His mother Vi on the left, his father Eddie on the right.

Gerald hadn't seen his parents in weeks—not since he inherited his great aunt Geraldine's fortune. The last he'd heard from his mother was when she telephoned from the Archer island in the Caribbean. She'd spent the previous week aboard the luxury Archer motor yacht with its helicopters, jet skis and mini-submarine.

‘Been keeping well, dear?'
she'd said.

‘You mean since the insane billionaire tried to kill me?'

‘Try not to exaggerate, dear. It's irritating.'

His thoughts were interrupted by a shout from Ruby.

‘Come look at this, Gerald. These might be yours.'

She was peering at some documents on Green's desk. Three opened envelopes rested on a pile of newspaper clippings.

‘Seen these before?' she asked.

Gerald glanced over his shoulder. The inspector was going through the cabinets on the opposite side of the room. Sam was chatting to Lethbridge by the family tree and the professor was busy flipping through the contents of the bookcases. Fry was looking at the photo of Gerald, a bemused smile on his face.

Gerald picked up the envelopes—one had the word ‘Fraternity' on the front and another had ‘Family Tree', both in his great aunt's handwriting. The third had a line of doodles—the number 10, a circle with a line through it, a Y, an arrow and a triangle. All three were empty, sliced open at the top with razor precision.

‘These are the envelopes that my great aunt left me,' he said. ‘The ones that were stolen from her house.' Gerald had thought he'd never see them again. Together with a letter from Geraldine, they were the only clues to what Sir Mason Green was up to. They'd been stolen by Green's enforcer, a cadaverous psychopath whom Gerald and the Valentines called the thin man. The last time they saw him he was screaming for his life from the middle of a flaming wheel as it rolled down a hill and into the night. Gerald tried to focus. It had been a busy couple of weeks.

Sam looked over Gerald's shoulder.

‘That must be how Green got so much detail about your relatives,' he said, pointing to the envelope marked Family Tree. ‘What was in the other ones?'