CHAPTER 14

“THIEVES AND VILLAINS!” SOMEBODY was shouting.

Which was strange, because she was alone, shipwrecked on a desert island. A scarlet parrot flapped in the palm tree above her.

“BURGLARS AND HOUSEBREAKERS!” the parrot squawked.

The sea on the shore sounded like doors slamming. The sun beating on the waves sounded—could light make noise?—like a clanging bell.

“WAKE UP, CORDELIA!”

Cordelia sat up in bed.

Uncle Tiberius’s head was sticking into her bedroom through the trapdoor hole.

“WE’VE BEEN ROBBED!” the head shouted, before disappearing.

On the bench in the middle of the Hatmaking Workshop, there was nothing.

The wooden hat block was bald and shiny. The Peace Hat was gone.

“I locked the workshop before bed,” Aunt Ariadne was saying as she tore through all the drawers and cabinets. “And the key was on my belt all night!”

Buttons, feathers, and ribbons flew everywhere. In the Alchemy Parlor, Great-aunt Petronella, in her armchair, poked anything she could reach with her walking stick.

“Call the Thieftaker!” Cook screeched from the kitchen doorway, waving her wooden spoon and spraying flecks of hot porridge around.

“I’ll go and fetch him now!” Jones shouted, striding down the hall.

Cordelia frowned at the brass lock on the door to the Hatmaking Workshop. Aunt Ariadne had the only key, but around the keyhole itself there were several scratches.

Uncle Tiberius was frantically upending hatboxes and Aunt Ariadne was pacing around the room, saying firmly, “I locked … The clock struck eleven and I locked the door.”

“By the Great Horned Helmet of Odin!” Uncle Tiberius cried. “They’ve broken into the Menacing Cabinet!”

The strong iron doors of the Menacing Cabinet were swinging on their hinges.

“Empty!” Uncle Tiberius wailed. “The bottle of Lightning Strife, gone! And the Orcus Fox claws! Even the master key!”

He crumpled in a cold faint and Cordelia backed out of the room. Everybody had lost their heads, it seemed, as well as the Peace Hat. She scrambled back upstairs to her bedroom.

“I can’t get distracted,” she said aloud, dressing at lightning speed. “I’ve got to get to Wapping as soon as possible. I won’t bother Aunt and Uncle with it, in the middle of everything. I’ll just go now and tell them later.”

She hurried downstairs. As she passed the Library, she felt a breeze coming from the room. She poked her head around the door. Still no Agatha. The other Quest Pigeons were huddled together in a corner of their aviary, looking ruffled and cold. The window was wide open, which explained the breeze.

“How long has the window been open?” Cordelia asked them.

Tabitha cooed in a dispirited sort of way.

“A long time?” Cordelia asked. “All night?”

Coo.

Cordelia reached up to close the window and noticed two sooty black handprints on the windowsill. The fingers of the handprints were pointing into the room. It looked as though a shadow had clambered in through the window and left a trace of itself behind.

“How strange.”

Cordelia stuck her head out into the morning air.

The street was a long way down. There was a thin drainpipe and a narrow ledge of brickwork on the sheer side of the building. It would surely be impossible to climb up the outside of the house and through the Library window …

Uncle Tiberius was brought around from his fainting fit and given a thimbleful of Reviving Dew.

Just as Cordelia was about to slip out of the house, Jones clattered into the hall followed by a tall man, chest puffed out to show off his shiny badge.

Aunt Ariadne and Uncle Tiberius appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Thieftaker Sternlaw at your service,” the man announced, rocking on his polished boots.

Cordelia edged toward the front door.

“Oh, Thieftaker! Thank you for coming,” Uncle Tiberius said, clutching an Ice Cap to his head.

“This way, Mr. Sternlaw.” Aunt Ariadne ushered him upstairs.

“I need everyone present who was in the house at the time of the burglary,” the Thieftaker boomed.

“Come along, Cordelia,” Aunt Ariadne commanded.

“But …” Cordelia lingered reluctantly by the front door.

“Don’t keep the law waiting!” the Thieftaker barked from the landing.

Cordelia sighed as she traipsed back up the stairs.

“Ah! The scene of the crime, as we call it!” the Thieftaker announced in the doorway to the topsy-turvy workshop.

The Hatmakers all watched the Thieftaker prowl around. He inspected the floor, the ceiling and everything in between.

“Am I right in thinking the hat was here last night?” he asked, pointing at the bald hat block.

Aunt Ariadne nodded.

“But it is not here this morning?” he continued.

She nodded again.

He was silent for several minutes, staring at the hat block.

“The evidence would suggest,” he said, “that you have been robbed.”

There was a stunned pause.

“Yes,” said Aunt Ariadne. “We had worked that much out already.”

“My sources inform me that the French assassin has been very active in the last few days,” the Thieftaker pronounced.

“Assassin?” Uncle Tiberius repeated.

“Yes. I’m sure you heard about the assassination attempt at the theater last night?”

Aunt Ariadne shook her head, turning surprised eyes to Cordelia.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“Yes, but only a plaster cherub got hurt,” Cordelia assured her aunt.

“And the scoundrel got away,” the Thieftaker told them. “Like smoke in the night. Crafty devil.”

“Um … sir?” Cordelia said, pointing at the keyhole. “Have you seen these scratches?”

Thieftaker Sternlaw blinked down at Cordelia.

“Ah, an enquiring mind—that’s good,” he said. “But, sadly, the mind of a child.” He wagged a finger at her, continuing, “You see, little girl, those scratches are on the outside of the door. The crime happened on the inside of this room.”

Cordelia—and the other Hatmakers, from the looks on their faces—failed to follow his logic.

“But there are handprints on the windowsill in the Library,” Cordelia said. “That could be where the thief broke in!”

Her aunt gasped, but the Thieftaker held up his hand for silence.

“Again,” he said, “the Library, presumably, is a different room from this one. I am concerned with what has happened on the inside of this room.”

“But—” Cordelia began as the Thieftaker turned to the grown-ups.

“Is there anything else you have noticed is missing?” he asked them.

Great-aunt Petronella, who had been carried downstairs in her armchair by Jones, was poking through the ribbons.

“Three gold star sequins have gone from my Alchemy Parlor,” she croaked. “They’re made of Pyrite and forged in Vesuvian lava, so they’re rather unstable without the Angelite enamel I was going to put on them.”

Cordelia felt herself blush. She turned to search busily among the buttons for signs of the thief, while her cheeks cooled down. The three missing star sequins now adorned the hat of London’s most celebrated actor …

“One Peace Hat. Contents of Menacing Cabinet. Three gold sequins,” Thieftaker Sternlaw muttered, writing in his notebook.

“It’s those Bootmakers!” Uncle Tiberius burst out. “They’ve always been jealous of the Hatmakers! Ever since Great-great-grandfather Makepeace Hatmaker be-hatted King James I and put a silver buckle on his hat! Old Plumbago Bootmaker couldn’t stand the fact, said buckles were strictly for boots! The Bootmakers have been out for revenge since 1611!”

Uncle Tiberius looked as though he had swallowed a river of Great-aunt Petronella’s Vesuvian lava and was filling up from the inside with burning fury. Then he suddenly went white and fainted again.

Over Uncle Tiberius’s horizontal form, the Thieftaker told Aunt Ariadne that he would have to go back to his headquarters and fill out a report.

“It will take a rather long time for the ink to dry,” he explained. “So I shall deliver the report in two to three weeks.”

“B-but the Peace Hat?” Aunt Ariadne faltered. “What about finding the stolen Peace Hat?”

The Thieftaker assumed an expression of great wisdom and said, “The trouble with finding stolen goods, Madam Hatmaker, is that very often they are gone.”

This logic was so undeniable that Aunt Ariadne was rendered speechless.

“And whoever stole your hat is the sneakiest thief London has ever seen,” the Thieftaker said, into the baffled silence. “Or, rather, not seen. Good day.”

With that, Thieftaker Sternlaw departed. Cordelia revived Uncle Tiberius with a little more dew.

“There’s nothing else for it,” Aunt Ariadne announced, when she had recovered the power of speech. “The Peace Hat is needed in two days. We shall have to begin again. Luckily I have a little more Lullwool felt.”

“I shall spin more Politic Cord,” Uncle Tiberius said woozily from the floor. “All this, on the heels of Prospero’s loss. It really is too much.”

“More starlight can be gathered tonight,” Aunt Ariadne added determinedly. “Fresh starlight is best, anyway.”

“Mars is rising, Ariadne,” Great-aunt Petronella warned. “Be careful not to gather any Mars-light with the starlight.”

Aunt Ariadne nodded, frowning.

Cordelia saw an opportunity and jumped at it. “I could find some Mellow Daisies,” she suggested brightly.

“Excellent idea, Cordelia!” Aunt Ariadne said. “Run along and gather some!”

Cordelia grabbed a basket and a large piece of fruitcake from the kitchen table and hurried into the street.

She was finally on the way to Wapping.