Holly rolls her eyes “Mind-reading? Get real! And don’t start again with the Stealth Blankets.”
“He’s the one who mentioned the Stealth Blankets.” I point at Museum Curator Gnome. “You can’t have it both ways. If mind-reading is impossible then he came up with the phrase on his own and I had nothing to do with it.”
“You probably hissed it at him,” Holly says. “You did say you thought the brain ray and Space Rock were stolen by the Invisible Man.”
“That was a joke! I don’t think Ms Grimm was invisible. We could see her, but we couldn’t see her. I think she was the woman under the blanket.”
That grabs Holly’s attention.
“Remember the woman under the blanket?” I ask. “She was here, beside the Mars lander. She was here, near the Space Rock.” I’m screeching in my excitement, so I try to talk more slowly. “What if Remarkable Student Alexander was standing in front of the camera to hide her from view. What if she smuggled the brain ray out of ‘Exploring Space’ under a blanket? What if she took the Space Rock out the same way?”
Porter shakes his head. “They shut the museum down the minute it disappeared and searched everyone straight away. They’re hardly going to let somebody leave the building with a blanket over their head and a suspicious-looking bulge beneath it.”
Hmm. Good point.
“She wouldn’t need the blanket once she was outside the room,” I realise. “If she’s a volunteer she’d be a familiar face. Have you got a picture of your mother?”
Holly snorts. “Of course he doesn’t. She’s as good as disowne— Oh.”
Holly chews her lip as Porter’s face turns Ruby Starlet and he pulls a photograph out of his pocket. I tell Porter to show the picture to the Museum Curator Gnome.
He recognises her immediately. “That’s Mallory Trimm. But her hair’s all wrong.”
Mallory Trimm, Mallory Grimm. Makes sense. Easier to fake your ID if you only change one letter of your surname.
“Do you remember seeing her leave the museum on the day of the Space Rock’s disappearance?”
“No, but I remember she had to go early. To pick up her son from school.”
Porter stiffens. Hard to be used as an excuse when your mother won’t even open the front door to you.
“I don’t suppose the guards were told to search employees as they left?” I ask.
Museum Curator Gnome eyes me sharply. “Are you suggesting I am unaware how to do my own job?”
I think hard about the vital and valuable role Museum Curators play across the globe. The gnome’s shoulders relax and he stops twitching.
“Actually, my dear,” he says, sounding more like his old self, “I insisted the fine officers of the London Metropolitan search our employees twice as carefully. I didn’t want people suggesting it could have been an inside job.”
So Ms Grimm couldn’t have been carrying the Space Rock. Unless the security guards weren’t paying proper attention to . . . Oops. Forgot to block my thoughts.
Museum Curator Gnome glares at me over his glasses and I lift my hands in mock-surrender.
“What about a strange-looking thing wrapped in silver foil? Did you ever see Mallory Trimm with something that looked like a brain ray?” I try to picture it in my mind.
Museum Curator Gnome grabs his head with a groan. “There was something,” he says slowly. “But it was days later. I discovered Mrs Trimm carrying a rather peculiar-looking turquoise machine. I told her I would have to write the incident up, but she explained she’d just found it and was on her way to hand it in to Lost Property.”
“Clever,” I say, as a piece of the puzzle drops into place.
The suspicious look returns to the gnome’s face and he stares closely at Holly, who’s clearly not thinking positive thoughts about Museum Curators. “Of course I checked she’d handed it in. I do know how to conduct an investigation, whatever you may think, young lady.” His eyes do that strange rolling thing and he looks like he’s about to start yelling again.
“O-kay. Time to go.” Holly moves quickly, rooting around in her bag for her mobile to call Uncle Max. “This place is too weird.”
We push through a crowd of cameramen, all obviously hoping to catch exclusive footage of an exploding brain. I hear one ask if it’s worth buying animal offal to smear over a few exhibits. (The general consensus is that it would be hard to find anything grey and wrinkly enough to be convincing.) Another suggests using pre-existing exploding-brain images. Because they all seem so miserable, I pull a page out of my notebook and make a few helpful notes:
None of the cameramen seem particularly grateful. “No wonder nobody likes the press,” I mutter.
“Forget them,” Porter says. “I’m more worried about the Museum Curator.”
“I fear he may be experiencing the lethal effects of the Space Rock,” I say slowly.
“Mind-reading?” Porter scoffs. “Hardly lethal. Are you suggesting people’s heads fill up with so much psychic information they just explode like a bomb?”
“Hardly.” I laugh along with him, deciding not to admit that I googled the possibility yesterday after watching Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
“Forget the mind-reading.” Holly says. “The lethal part is that the Space Rock makes people crazy-angry.”
The enraged roar that follows us out of the Science Museum supports her point.
“I think the two are connected,” I tell them. “Imagine that the pressure in your brain has you hyped up and ‘crazy-angry’ and then you start to hear all the horrible things people are thinking about you.”
“Yikes,” says Porter.
“Double yikes,” agrees Holly. “We need to find that Space Rock, whatever it takes. And while we’re on the subject of crazy-angry . . .” She turns to Porter. “We need to talk to your mother.”