I . . . V . . . I . . .” Neil called out the letters as Rose typed them into her computer. After they’d locked themselves inside the “office,” they’d started thinking about the notes again.
“With two attacks in one day let’s assume there are other people after the jewel and that time is of the essence,” Rose had observed.
Neil wished he could call the Queen and ask her a few questions about her royal police officers and why they were taking potshots at bystanders in a bizarre small car. “I know some strange police officers, but none who shot at me for no reason.”
“Those weren’t coppers,” Rose said as she stared at the computer. “Coppers don’t carry guns.”
“Seriously?” Neil said. He hadn’t actually seen who’d been shooting at them, but the bullets had arrived around the same time as the sirens.
“They use clubs,” Larry said, sipping his tea reluctantly. “Do people really think this stuff tastes good?”
Rose threw a cricket ball, which Larry expertly ducked. “Oh no. I spilled some of the tea. I think it’s eating away at the floor.”
“British bobbies—police—don’t carry guns, at least not the sort of bobbies who respond to calls about bloody clothes in condemned buildings. Now, let’s keep to the task at hand. Is there any more Kemp code?”
Neil took another look at the picture of the note. “Nope. That seems to be it.”
“Okay, let’s see what we get,” Rose said. She hit enter and the computer began quoting texts of Shakespeare at her. “There’s got to be some pattern.” Hundreds of lines of text scrolled down the screen. “Ugh,” Rose said.
“You’re sure these letters are references to Shakespeare’s plays?” Larry said, leaning over Rose’s shoulder and looking at the screen.
She nodded and glared at the computer, as if she were trying to force it to give her the answer she was looking for. “Seems logical as a starting point at least.”
“Why logical?” Larry said, pouring the remainder of his tea into a potted plant.
“Pay attention! Kemp makes all these insulting references to Shakespeare and then sends him a note, or intends to send him one, with clues to recovering some jewel that’s ‘stolen.’ He wanted Shakespeare to search his own, most personal, most visceral expressions of himself for the answer. He wanted him to suffer.” She smiled. “It’s a brilliant way to taunt a genius.”
“You are both beautiful and slightly warped,” Larry said, noticing that the plant was actually plastic and the tea was leaking out of the bottom.
“But why do you think the references are to Shakespeare plays?” Neil asked, trying to follow along.
“I think the ‘tasteless gruel’ is the bit that’s important here, obviously.”
“How is it obvious?”
“Well, think about it for a second, you daft punk! Kemp and Shakes had a falling-out. Shakes attacks Kemp in his plays, so Kemp attacks him back, calling his plays tasteless. He says ‘search thy tasteless gruel.’ That’s a pretty clear hint, to me, that Billy Shakes is supposed to examine his own work for answers. The letters correspond to scenes and acts in the plays, I think. Now we just have to figure out which ones.”
“Seems to make sense,” Larry said, leaning back in his chair.
“But for some reason he never got to send the note to Shakespeare,” Neil said.
Rose nodded. “You said the honey was found packed in the basement of a tavern?”
Neil and Larry nodded. “That’s what the construction guy told us anyway.”
Rose went on, as the text continued to stream onto her computer screen. “And this tavern is not in a great part of town.”
They nodded again, but Rose wasn’t really talking to them anymore. She seemed to be thinking out loud. “So maybe Kemp is down on his luck. He steals something from Shakespeare. I don’t know, maybe he plans to ransom it? Maybe he plans to keep it to cover debts from building the Globe Theatre.”
“He does mention Drake and a globe,” Larry said.
“Kemp likes codes, as I’ve said, and he was a clown, a comic, and a jester . . . so maybe he gives Shakes a sporting chance to find it first.”
“By leaving him clues?” Neil said.
“Or he meant to leave him clues,” Larry said. “But then he gets the plague and, well . . .”
Rose nodded. “Kemp gets nailed inside his plague house and quickly realizes, as the pus begins to ooze from his scabby flesh, that he will never see daylight again.”
“You are a scary woman. Impressive . . . but scary,” Larry said, giving a dramatic shudder.
Rose ignored him, again. “So Kemp hides the key in a jar of honey and then shoves it in a wall. He expects it to be found after they come for his body. But someone either doesn’t see it or doesn’t want to touch anything that’s been left behind by a corpse, so they just seal the wall up.”
“And the clue stays buried for hundreds of years,” Larry said, giving out a low whistle. “Good thing he chose honey instead of ketchup or barbecue sauce!”
“But why put the note in honey at all? Why not just put it in an empty jar?”
“You’re the chef, chef boy. You got any ideas?”
Neil shrugged.
Rose turned her attention back to the screen.
“Do you see any pattern yet?” Neil asked, watching the screen fill with lines of text.
Rose scanned the screen with her finger. “Well, there’s a repeat of the word ‘wretch’ in three of the scenes that match the letters, assuming the ii refers to act one, scene one.”
“Wretch?”
“I don’t know if that means anything, but it could be another insult. But quite a few of the scenes also mention kings, castles, swords . . .”
“In other words, we could be here for hours looking for something,” Neil said, under his breath, or so he thought.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rose said, annoyed. “Is this too taxing for your super-brain? Why don’t you go for a stroll and come back after I’ve solved the problem myself?”
“Or maybe I’ll solve it,” Larry said, grinning.
“That’s as likely as a ferret being named to the House of Lords.”
Neil headed for the door. “A walk might be a good idea. I’m supposed to be cooking at the palace in a few days, so I should probably get a look at the culinary offerings of London.” Neil opened the door and stuck his head out, peering both ways. The coast seemed clear.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Be careful and don’t let any great ape with a gun kill you,” Rose said, staring at the screen.
“Your concern is touching,” Neil called back over his shoulder.
“I don’t give a toss about you; I just need to keep this place a secret!”
“Hmph,” Neil said as he quietly closed the door. Neil needed to get away. He needed food. He didn’t need to eat food, necessarily, but he needed to be surrounded by it. Neil without gourmet food was like a fish without water. He could flop around for a bit, but it wouldn’t take long for him to croak. He missed Chez Flambé.
He cleared his mind and his nasal passages and closed his eyes. He sniffed. His nose would lead him to food. It always did.
Neil knew he was a genius at many things, and one of them was using his brain to pick out the best information his nose was sending to him.
There were many smells assaulting his nose at the moment—moldy leaves, metallic drizzle, dust, gum of various vintages stuck to the sidewalk—but piercing through them all was the unmistakable scent of food.
“Cheese!” Neil said. Somewhere, within range of his nose, there was a very good cheese shop. Neil snuck down the narrow curving alleyway between Rose’s hidden office and the building next to it, and emerged onto a busy London sidewalk.
He looked back and noticed that the angle of the buildings was so odd that it was almost impossible to see the gap between them.
Everyone seemed so busy on their cell phones or hiding under their umbrellas that they didn’t notice the ginger-headed teenager who seemed to join them from nowhere. A very good hiding place, Neil thought. He made sure to memorize the gum pattern on the sidewalk so he could find his way back.
The cheese smell was coming from a very humble pile of buildings down the street a short way away. As Neil got closer, he could differentiate the smells.
British cuisine got a bad reputation, but if there was one thing they could make better than anyone else, it was cheese. Just a few steps away waited pungent Stilton, cheddar, Red Windsor and Red Leicester, Caerphilly. Neil reached the door.
WENSLEYDALE’S—PURVEYORS OF FINE CHEESE said a sign over the shop. Neil walked in. The smell was almost overwhelming but amazing. He instantly imagined a thousand possible dishes he could make with the cheeses, each of which would knock the crown off any monarch.
“Hello, my good man,” said the young woman behind the counter. “Can I get you some cheese?”
“Um, yes,” Neil said, unable to contain his enthusiasm. “Let me take a few samples of those cheeses under the counter, the really ripe ones.”
The woman looked at him askance. “Under the counter? How do you know what’s under the counter?”
Neil could have kicked himself. His nose was powerful, but part of its power was that only a few people had any idea it was so sensitive. “Um, well . . . it’s like any store. The really good stuff is always hidden away. Any chef knows that.”
She looked at Neil suspiciously. “And you would be one of those? A kid like you?”
Unwittingly she had put Neil back in control. Calling him a kid was always a good way to get him to focus. “Yes, a kid like me who happens to be a chef. Would you like me to suggest a few cheese combinations that will make your head spin?” he said.
She held both hands up. “Whoa! No need to get your back up. I’m only twenty myself. But just out of curiosity, what would you recommend? My head could always use a good spin.”
Ten minutes later Neil was behind the counter, helping Brie—her name, as it turned out—present the cheeses in a more logical way.
“People think you can only have one cheese at a time,” Neil said. “But it’s like any food. Mix them together and the combination can become more powerful than each cheese on its own. It’s a miracle in your mouth!”
Brie laughed. Not at Neil, like most people in his experience, but actually at his joke!
Wow, Neil thought. Maybe there is a little Larry inside my brain after all? He felt a happy grin forming. This was new territory for him, and he kind of liked it.
“Look, Mr. Chef, in return for your master class on fermented curd, why don’t you pick a few cheeses that ‘go together like magic in your mouth’ and we’ll call the day even?”
“Sounds good,” Neil said, and shook her hand.
Neil chose some fromage castor de Venezuela, some amazing Camembert, and a strong sage Derby. Brie wrapped them in crinkly white paper.
“Oh, speaking of miracles,” Neil said as he turned to go, “you don’t by any chance have any coffee?” In fact, Neil had smelled the coffee among the other aromas, but he didn’t know if it was for sale or just for the staff.
Brie smiled. “This is your lucky day! I’ve never been much of a tea drinker, and I always keep some fair-trade beans on hand for discerning customers. I’ll go get some,” she said, walking through a curtain and into a back room.
Neil perused the shelves while he waited. Something caught his eye on a large shelf of cookbooks and cheese and wine guides. It was a thin red book, with the title Shakes and Bakes: Recipes from the Elizabethan Era.
“Shakes and bakes,” Neil said slowly. “Elizabethan recipes.” This was sparking something in his brain, but he wasn’t quite sure what yet.
Neil reached for the book and noticed two things at once.
One, a slight breeze snuck from the back room under the curtains, and two, that breeze carried a smell of tikka masala.
From behind the curtain Brie screamed. A man laughed.
Neil heard a thud as if someone had dropped a heavy sack of rice on the floor. Every cell screamed run, but Neil couldn’t. Brie was in trouble. And whoever had attacked her was probably after him, or Rose, or all of them. He’d brought this trouble here. He had to do something about it.
Neil grabbed a cheese knife from the counter and ran through the curtain. A mountain of a man, with short hair and wearing a suit that looked like it might rip at any moment, was hovering over Brie’s still body.
The man turned to face Neil. A giant scar ran down his face, and his scowl stopped Neil in his tracks. Neil held up the knife and waved it in front of him.
“Well, lookie here,” the man said, standing up so straight his head seemed to touch the ceiling. “It’s that kid what was with Rosie and the barmy blond guy.”
“What do you want?” Neil said. Did the man know who Neil was? Was he coming to kill him? Had Brie gotten in the way?
“I need you to pass along a message.”
“To?”
“Rose, you git. Your babysitter or whatever she is. I’m not sure why she’d let a brat like you hang around with her, but you can at least take a message back.”
“I don’t know where she is,” Neil lied.
“Tsk, tsk, my little nosey parker. I think you do. Now, I could just take you and keep you hostage and let her find me, but I’m too busy at the moment to deal with another kidnapping.”
“Another kidnapping? Did you kidnap Lane?” Neil asked.
A look of confusion or maybe anger passed over the man’s face, and was quickly replaced by a twisted grin. “Now, don’t ask too many questions, kid. You’re liable to get yourself into all sorts of trouble.”
“Kid?” Neil felt his anger rise. He waved the cheese knife in front of him and jabbed the air.
The man laughed loudly. “A cheese knife? I’ve got bits of those swimming in me veins from when I was a baby. You don’t scare me none.”
“I can butcher a pig in five minutes, and that might just come in handy if you don’t turn around and leave right now.”
“Don’t get cute,” the man said, reaching out faster than Neil thought possible and grabbing the knife.
Then he grabbed Neil by the collar, leaning in close. “I’m no little piggy, and you ain’t taking me to no market.”
Neil tried to break free, but the grip was iron tight. Neil took a swing; the bag of cheese he was holding smashed into the side of the man’s head. The bag erupted with a white shower of gooey and smelly cheese. It dripped down the man’s face and onto his suit.
“You little crumb!” the man bellowed. “This suit cost me a thousand pounds!”
“You got ripped off—the cheese was worth more!” Neil said, just as angry.
For a second Neil thought the man was going to pummel him. But then his face contorted in a twisted grin and he gave a loud, menacing laugh. “Well, well. I almost lost it there. What my parole officer would think of that. Tsk, tsk.” The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a large cloth. He kept one hand on Neil’s collar.
Neil detected another, sweet odor. What was it?
“Now you listen here, cheese boy. You tell that clever Rosie that the Crayfish brothers know she’s ‘digging around’—make sure you say that part about the digging—and that if she knows what’s good for her, she’ll let us in on the shoveling . . . or there’ll be a different kind of hole being dug for her, a six-foot-deep hole.”
“That’s a long message from such a small brain,” Neil said.
“And for that,” the man said, “you get a little snack.” With his enormous hands, the man covered Neil’s mouth with the cloth. Neil realized with a panic that the sweet smell was chloroform.
The man laughed even louder.
Neil swooned.
The room spun.
Then everything went black.
