181

CHAPTER TWENTY

182Alice wiped her workbench clean, reached into her pocket, drew out her notebook and turned to the page where she had written out the note that had been left for the twins.

my dear adele and hugo

I Need to let you know why i must leave. Everything must seem very odd for you at the moment, but never mind. Villains may threaten, but don’t worry. Right can win and i promise i am not in any danger and you will have all those fun days i promised. Everything points to victory.

Understand, this starts from where we are together again.

your loving

papa

X

There it was, that first odd capital on “need”. Why was it there? Why did “Everything points to victory” strike her as strange too? Victory for who? The more Alice stared at the letter, the stranger it seemed. The language did not feel natural.

“Everything points,” she muttered to herself. “Or 183does he mean compass points? Is the E of everything east and that odd N on ‘need’ really north?”

She let out a huff of disappointment. She was sure that something important lay in this letter, but she just could not fathom it out. She stared again at the last line. “Understand, this starts from where we are together again.” Surely he meant “when” we are together again, not “where”. It really did feel as though the letter had some sort of directions in it, but how? If the twins’ father was waiting till he was with them again to pass on important information, why bother sending the letter with directions in? Unless…

Alice put the note back in her pocket and made her way to Félicité’s cabin.

“I wanted to ask about your home,” said Alice, dropping down on to the bunk beside Adele. Hugo, stretched out behind her in a doze, looked up and frowned.

“What about it?” asked Adele.

“Do you have a family portrait?”

Adele laughed. “Why yes, how did you know? Papa commissioned it last year. It hangs in the main 184hall. Sitting for it took a ridiculous amount of time that would have been better spent on my bicycle. Hugo hates it because Papa wouldn’t let Columba be in it.”

From where we are all together again.

Alice looked again at the letter.

“I think I need to confess something,” she said, placing the note on the bedside table.

“Our note from Papa!” cried Adele. “But that’s not his handwriting.”

“I copied it out,” Alice admitted. “I stole it, I’m sorry.”

Adele looked at her, astonished. “You stole it!” she repeated. “You went through our things? Why?!”

“I know,” pleaded Alice. “I need to let you know something. And you might not believe it.”

Ten minutes and a hundred questions later, the twins sat open-mouthed opposite Alice.

“A spy!” said Hugo for the twentieth time. “I never would have believed it. Is Sophie a spy too?”

Alice paused. She was about to say no, but then Sophie had helped her with two missions now, so maybe she was a spy. 185

“Sophie knows all about my work,” she said finally.

“And this letter from Papa is in code?” said Adele, staring at the note. “Is that why there were none of his usual jokes in it?”

“I thought that was odd,” said Hugo. “But it was definitely his handwriting, so Adele said maybe he was trying to be all boring and grown up with us. He can be like that when Mama isn’t around. When she’s home he worries less and he’s much more fun.”

“I think he is giving you directions to something,” said Alice. “Something that he wants you to find, and the starting point is your family portrait.”

“But what could he want us to find?” Hugo asked.

“His medallion.”

“But why?” asked Hugo.

“I suppose it might be valuable?” offered Adele.

“It’s worth more than money,” said Alice. “It’s part of a cipher machine. The most powerful one ever built. Your father is a genius. But if it falls into the wrong hands, then the enemy could replicate it and produce ciphers we could never break. If Europe goes to war again, that could give them a huge advantage.” 186

The twins looked at one another.

“Well, we can’t allow that. We should head straight for home,” said Adele. “We live near Paris Lyon, just a few streets back from the station.”

Alice glanced at her watch. “We’ll be there in a few hours,” she said. “We’ll head for the house and then – look.” She pointed at the note.

“I think that the N here means north. We have to move north from the portrait. And here, ‘Everything’ starting with a capital E. That could mean we move east, but I can’t work out how far in each direction to go.”

Hugo frowned. “It’s like a chess game,” he said.

“A chess game?”

“Papa taught me to play. Each square on the board has a code. So ‘P to A3’ would mean that you move your pawn to the third square down in the first column.” He smiled. “Papa used to play human chess at parties, with all the guests lined up on the black and white tiles in the hall.”

Alice stared at him. “Is this the same hall that the portrait is in?”

Hugo nodded.

Alice smiled. “So we are meant to start at the 187portrait and move across the tiles! Oh, but we only have the directions and even then only north and east. We’d need numbers to know how many tiles.”

She frowned. Claude and Stella had already misinterpreted this code and now here she was stumped by it too.

“I’m sure you’ll crack it,” said Adele, breaking into her thoughts. “After all, you worked out what Bastien was up to and where he had taken us. We just need to think about it for a bit longer.”

Alice nodded. “I’m off to the kitchen.”

“More baking?” asked Hugo.

“More thinking.”

A few hours later, they got off the train at Paris Lyon, with Alice promising to write to Félicité and tell her everything about the Olympics, and Félicité pressing all sorts of treats into her hands “in case you get hungry on the way home”.

“Any more ideas?” asked Adele, helping Hugo lower his chair to the platform.

Alice nodded, thinking about the chess board she had sketched out in red and white icing on the galley kitchen surfaces on board. “I think so,” she 188said. “But I won’t know till we get to your house. First we have to find Sophie!” Alice waved goodbye to Félicité and dropped her friend’s gift of sugared almonds, croissants and a large packet of lemon sherbet into her pockets.

But there was no need. As they hurried along the platform, dodging between the passengers and station porters, Sophie dashed towards them, wiping her hands on a grimy handkerchief. She looked even more oil-smeared than usual, her hair and face a mess of coal smoke, and she had a bright grin on her face.

“You’ve been in the engine’s cab this whole time?” asked Adele.

Sophie nodded. “It’s AMAZING! They let me load and stoke the firebox and I even got to sound the whistle as we pulled into the stations. This engine is incredible. Wait till I tell you about—”

“Sophie!” Alice waved a hand. “It will have to wait. We need to get to Hugo and Adele’s house. I think I’ve solved the mystery of their father’s note.”

They made their way out of the station and through the streets towards a townhouse with 189cream-painted walls. The other houses in the street had flights of steep steps leading up to their front doors, but Adele shuffled them all on to a metal plate set back from the street. She reached for a handle sticking out of the railings and cranked it up and down. The plate began to rise, carrying them in the air till they were level with the front door, and Adele pushed the handle till it clicked loudly.

“That locks it,” she said to Alice. “Papa had this built for us so that Hugo’s chair can get in and out. He really can do anything with clockwork.”

“Have you still got your key, Addy?” Hugo asked. Adele’s face fell.

“No matter,” said Sophie. “Alice can let us in. It’s one of her many talents.”

Alice dug her lockpick set from deep in one of her pockets and set her mind to breaking in.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a spy can pick locks,” said Adele. “It explains how you entered our cabin to steal the letter anyway.”

Alice blushed. “Sorry about that,” she said again. Adele had said that she was forgiven, but it was clear that she was still a little annoyed at the intrusion into her privacy. That was one thing that Alice didn’t like 190about being a spy. She didn’t mind spying on bad people, but good people always seemed to get mixed up in it too.

She pushed her attention back to the lock, feeling for the bite as each prong inside caught at her picking tool. Finally, with a welcoming click, the door sprang open.

“Me first, I think,” said Adele, pushing past her into the hallway. She took two steps inside and then let out a cry of alarm.

The entire hallway was chaos. Papers were strewn everywhere. A bookshelf had been upended, its shelves broken and contents dashed to the floor. A glass cabinet full of clockwork models had been smashed and the models torn out. Cogs and springs spilled out of them, with one clockwork mouse clattering miserably around in circles. Casper sprang at it and, finding that it was not edible, made a beeline for a cushion that had been torn from a sofa instead.

“What’s happened?” gasped Hugo in shock.

“It’s been ransacked,” said Adele. “Probably by whoever is looking for Papa’s medallion. How dare they!” 191

“Then we need to find it,” said Hugo grimly. “We can’t let them win.”

Alice glanced down at the floor. It was just as Hugo had said, a sea of black and white tiles that spread out across the wide hall and through arched doorways into the rooms beyond. Adele’s feet clicked against the tiles as she crossed the hall to stand beneath a large framed portrait of herself and Hugo with a man whose smile settled in just the same way as Adele’s and a woman with Hugo’s curly hair. She turned to look at the others.

“Let’s find it,” she said.