Joe scanned the names of the tenants next to the door buzzers. “Shah, apartment number three-B. We don’t need to talk to the building super, Frank, we need to call Detective Inspector Ryan.”
Thirty minutes later Detective Inspector Ryan had the property manager let them into Neville Shah’s second floor apartment.
Frank moved to an open window and looked out onto the back courtyard, but Neville Shah had disappeared again.
Joe noticed three identical framed posters depicting ornamented and costumed elephants. The posters were written in three different languages.
“Circus posters,” Joe said, looking closely at the lettering. “From America, France, and India, I think.” He spotted the picture of a spider in the top corner of each poster and read aloud the legend below the one printed in English: “ ‘Witness the astounding feats of Anacro, the Human Spider.’ ”
“Do you think Neville Shah is Anacro?” Frank asked.
“Either that or he really loved this circus,” Joe remarked.
“Mr. Shah had yet another profession,” Detective Inspector Ryan said, pulling a computer printout from his jacket pocket. “He served a five-year sentence for burglarizing luxury high rises in Chicago. I ran a check on the name before I left Scotland Yard.”
“But how could he do all that climbing with a broken wrist?” Chris wondered.
“Like this,” Joe said, pulling the wrist cast Shah had been wearing from beneath his bed.
“Do you mean that whole fall from the ladder last week was staged?” Chris asked.
“That’s my guess,” Joe said.
“Fine work, boys,” Detective Inspector Ryan said. “Looks like we have our man.”
“Our man,” Frank agreed, “but not our motive. Why would Shah break into the Quill Garden Theatre just to sabotage Innocent Victim?”
“I’ll take the investigation from here,” Detective Inspector Ryan said. “I might have more questions for you later.”
“We’ll be at the theater,” Chris told him.
• • •
Bleary eyed and weary, the boys found a café just opening its doors for breakfast. Frank ordered kippers with a side of bubble and squeak.
“What’s kippers and bubble and squeak?” Joe wondered.
Frank shrugged and looked at Chris.
“You’ll find out when it gets here,” his English friend said, smiling.
“I’ve had enough adventures for one day,” Joe said, smiling to the waitress. “I’ll have scrambled eggs and bacon.”
“What would make Neville Shah resort to this?” Chris wondered.
“He was a burglar, so we know that he used to commit crimes to make big money,” Joe pointed out.
“I heard Shah talking on a cellular phone in the cathedral,” Frank told them. “He said, ‘If I’m caught, you can forget about the corner kick.’ What could that mean?”
Joe shook his head. “You got me.”
“Corner kick is a football term,” Chris said, adding to Joe, “Sorry, I mean a soccer term.”
Joe sat straight up as a thought occurred to him. “The man on Kije Enterprises’ answering machine had an accent like Neville’s,” Joe said. “Do you think you could identify Neville’s voice, Chris?”
“I suppose,” Chris replied.
“Kije,” Frank muttered.
“What?” Joe asked.
“Nothing, go ahead,” Frank said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a cassette tape.
Joe and Chris walked to the rear of the café and found a pay phone. After dialing, Joe handed the receiver to Chris. He saw a look of distress cross Chris’s face as he listened to Kije Enterprises’ recorded announcement.
“So what do you think?” Joe asked.
“What? No, it’s not Neville,” Chris said, seeming suddenly preoccupied. “Let’s eat our breakfast.”
When they returned to the table, breakfast had been served. Frank was focused on the liner notes from the cassette tape he had borrowed from Mr. Paul.
“Looks like bubble and squeak is potatoes and cabbage,” Joe said, grinning over Frank’s mystery breakfast. “And kippers are little smoked fish.”
“I’m more interested in this,” Frank told him. “The ‘Lieutenant Kije Suite’ is a piece of classical music written by Prokofiev for an old movie.”
“That’s an odd bit of coincidence, but so what?” Chris said, pushing his food around on the plate but not eating.
“Listen,” Frank said, referencing the liner notes from the cassette tape. “In the movie, Lieutenant Kije was the name of an officer the other soldiers used as a scapegoat whenever they got into trouble. But in truth, Kije didn’t exist.”
“I still don’t see—” Chris began.
“Kije could be an alias,” Frank jumped in. “And your dad is the one who gave me this tape.”
“Are you accusing my father of something?” Chris asked. “Why aren’t we investigating Jennifer Mulhall?”
“Jennifer was with us,” Joe reminded him.
“But Shah must have an accomplice,” Chris countered. “Don’t you find her story odd? She hears ruddy rats crawling about and doesn’t wake us up?”
“I believe her,” Joe said.
“The lock on that roof door had to be unlocked from the inside, Joe,” Chris reminded him.
“And anyone with keys, including Mr. Jeffries or your father, could have unlocked it,” Joe replied.
“We’re the first renters Jeffries has had in over a year—why would he undermine the show?” Chris said. “And as for my father, he wrote and directed it.”
“And he’s ripping off the producer!” Joe exclaimed, his temper and exhaustion getting the best of him.
“We don’t know that for sure, Chris, but he looks suspicious,” Frank said, and explained to Chris about what had happened at the bank with the cashier’s check.
“The money the anonymous donor gave to Mr. Kije went right into your dad’s pocket,” Joe added.
Chris looked dumbstruck. “The anonymous donor,” he said, “was me.”
“You?” Joe asked.
“Three thousand pounds. My whole savings account,” Chris told them.
“Is that where you went the day you left us in the Lamb and Wolf Pub?” Joe asked. “To the bank to take out the money?”
Chris nodded. “Yes. And I’m afraid you may be right about my dad. That voice on the answering machine for Kije Enterprises is his.”
“What about the accent?” Frank asked.
“My dad’s a theater teacher, he can do all sorts of dialects,” Chris said. “That was Dad doing East Indian.”
“But why would he set up a dummy company like Kije Enterprises?” Joe asked.
Chris shook his head. “I don’t know.”
• • •
Outside the Quill Garden Theatre, the boys were surprised to find all was quiet. Frank wondered if the police had already come, talked to Jennifer, and left.
While Frank used Mr. Paul’s keys to open the front door, Joe went in through the back door of the adjacent building to check the roof.
Sure enough, he found foot prints in the snow there, too. Hidden under the debris on the roof, he discovered a twelve-foot wooden plank. He was certain now how the Human Spider had been getting into the theater unnoticed, but he still didn’t know why.
Inside the theater, Joe found Frank standing alone on the stage.
“Now that we know Shah was involved, we’re blowing all kinds of holes in the ghost theory,” Frank told him. “By coming in through the door on the roof, he could have pulled the screws out of the courthouse facade and sabotaged the lights with greasepaint without anyone seeing him.”
“What about the fire in Emily’s dressing room?” Joe asked.
“Remember, we couldn’t figure out how someone got past you and Chris?” Frank reminded him.
“Yeah.” Joe answered.
Chris suddenly popped up from beneath the stage through a trapdoor. “Like many stages, this one has a trapdoor,” Chris said. “There’s a crawl space beneath the stage, leads to the stage right wing.”
“So then Shah could have lit that fire and evaded Chris and me without being a ghost,” Joe realized.
Frank nodded. “The crawl space is almost directly under the stage right door. Shah could have ducked into it just as you and Chris came through the door. Then he could have come up through the trapdoor, climbed to the catwalk, and gone out over the roof.”
“That’s why the emergency exit siren wasn’t triggered,” Chris added.
Joe snapped his fingers as he figured out another piece of the puzzle. “Shah also had to be the person who stole the tour guide’s costume and tried to push the gate on top of you, Frank,” Joe guessed.
“But how did he escape from the roof of the abandoned building?” Frank wondered.
“The same way he always got from that roof into the theater,” Joe replied. “He walked the plank.”
“But how did Shah know to find us at the Seven Bells Pub?” Frank asked.
Joe shook his head. “And who was the white figure you saw in the lighting booth?”
“More unanswered questions,” Frank remarked.
“Speaking of questions, where’s Jennifer?” Joe asked.
“I rang her flat,” Chris said, “but no one answered.”
“Aren’t you a little concerned?” Joe pressed on. “The last thing we told her to do was phone the police. The police aren’t here, Mr. Paul’s not here, no one’s here.”
“Maybe she left a note,” Frank said.
While Joe and Chris checked the lobby, Frank checked the lighting booth. Frank found no note, but sensed something in the booth was different. The computerized lighting board was gone!
Rushing downstairs, Frank found Joe and Chris outside the theater talking with Mr. Paul.
“Hello, Frank,” Mr. Paul said. “The boys were telling me the disturbing news.”
“Hadn’t you heard already?” Frank asked.
“He hasn’t heard from Jennifer or the police,” Joe told him.
“I have more bad news,” Frank told them. “Someone stole the light board.”
“Neville Shah?” Chris wondered.
“No, Neville Shah wasn’t carrying anything when we chased him,” Joe said.
“He must have had an accomplice,” Frank said, looking at Dennis Paul, then at Chris.
“Dad, we need to discuss something,” Chris told his father. Chris confessed to being the anonymous donor and told his father everything they knew about Mr. Kije.
“Oh, Chris, you shouldn’t have used your money,” Mr. Paul scolded.
“Never mind about my money, Dad,” Chris said. “I want to know about Kije Enterprises.”
“I’m sorry, boys, I should have come out with it as soon as the trouble started,” Mr. Paul said, then sighed heavily. “I am Mr. Kije.”