Chapter Six

One Child

Sarah: Kudos to Skye-chan for figuring out the last riddle!

Basil looked over his shoulder. "Where is that scoundrel going?"

"Basil! He's just working for the Yard."

The detective muttered something unintelligible.

"What?"

We stepped into the carriage. "I don't like the sounds of this Gillespie character."

I sighed. "Oh, you're suspicious of everyone!"

"How do you know he was from the Yard?"

"He told me so."

"Did you see him talking to anyone from the Yard? Did you see a badge? Anything?"

"No..." I said uneasily. "Basil, stop it! I can't stand being cross- examined!"

"I have to question everything!"

"Dawson," I whined. "Please make him stop! He's making me nervous."

Dawson grinned. "Basil, leave Meg alone."

Basil glared at him.

I glared at Basil.

Dawson sighed.

Night had fallen by the time we returned to the Butler Manor. Mrs. Butler was anxiously waiting for us at the door. Her eyes seemed to question us if we had been successful.

Basil did not reveal anything until we were safely back in the study.

He handed Mrs. Butler a wooden box. "It was buried under the bench."

She seemed extremely relieved. She hugged the box to herself and walked to the window, looking out into the darkness.

Basil rapidly stepped towards the window and drew the curtains shut.

"For privacy," he explained.

Mrs. Butler sank down onto a chair, still hugging the box. We waited for her to open it.

After several minutes of apprehension, she still had not moved to open the box. I could not take it anymore.

"Don't you want to open it?" I asked.

She seemed to come back to earth. "I... I'm sorry." She lifted the lid of the box and took out two pieces of paper. She unfolded them and read them, her eyes moving across the lines.

"My Lord! Tom, what were you thinking?" she gasped, turning pale.

"What does it say?" Basil asked anxiously.

She handed the papers for him to read. The first paper read:

Poor little Sophia,

Why was this child taken?

The last daughter of tormented parents

Their last hope was forsaken.

Too short was your new-begun life,

Infant child you were,

Zero years of life

But your death is my cure.

You seek Saint Rose

Find her grave,

But first her family name

Within this riddle I gave.

On the second paper was a series of numbers:

11-11-2-4-16-6-1-12-2-1-10-11

"His clue is about a dead infant?" Dawson asked.

Mrs. Butler seemed very distressed.

"It's... morbid," I slowly.

Mrs. Butler let out a low moan as she sunk into a chair.

"It's terrible! It's awful! Tom, I hardly know anything about you! How could you be like this?"

"Mrs. Butler, it's all right," Dawson said quietly.

"No, it's not!" she cried. "I never knew he was like this."

Basil was counting to himself. I nudged him in the arm. He continued counting to himself. I nudged him harder. He brushed my arm away.

I meant to lightly step on his foot, but I ended up stomping on it.

He gasped. "Meeeeeeeeg!" he moaned. "What was that for?"

I winced. "I'm sorry. But please do something for Mrs. Butler."

"Like what?"

I was getting angry. "Basil, she feels like she knows nothing about her husband. She's upset. She feels like her husband is not the man she thought he was."

"Meg, I'm not good at comforting people."

I threw my hands up in disgust. "Fine." I went over to the distressed woman. "Mrs. Butler, what's wrong?"

Mrs. Butler gestured toward the poem. "I... it... it's horrible! He's morbid! He's disgusting! He's repulsive!"

"How?"

"A dead baby? 'But your death is my cure?' For all I know, he could have killed the baby!"

"Mrs. Butler, he risked his own life to guard his children. Why would he kill an infant?" Basil said quietly.

Mrs. Butler looked at him, tears in her eyes. "How can you be so sure?"

"Well, why would he reveal it to you? I believe the clue leads us to the grave of an infant, perhaps a child of a family he knows."

"Yes!" Dawson said. "Do you know of any family that lost a baby girl named Sophia?"

"No."

"Don't any of you see? The clue reveals the last name of this baby Sophia!" Basil exclaimed, betraying some impatience with all of us. "We will find her grave at St. Rose's Cemetery, where Butler has probably left us another clue!"

"But why did he pick that location?" Mrs. Butlre asked falteringly.

"I believe none of us can answer that," Basil said cautiously. "But please Mrs. Butler, we must continue with the search."

Mrs. Butler paused.

The shattering of glass met our ears. The curtains ruffled as a flying object went sailing past Dawson's head and thudded to the ground. I jumped. Mrs. Butler screamed.

Basil bounced to the object. It was a rock with a note tied around it.

"'Twenty-four hours, Mr. Basil. Meet me at London Bridge with the Eye of Diom. Come alone. Don't fail to show up without it, or else the children will be gotten rid of... permanently.'"

"I hate these threat notes," I groaned.

"So do I," Mrs. Butler replied quietly, closing her eyes..

"They're not being creative!" I said, pointing an accusing finger at Basil. "You said earlier today that creativity was a big part of the criminal's art. This is not creative!"

Basil and Dawson burst out laughing.

"All right, there's something wrong with this picture," I began. "We just got a threat note and you're both... laughing? We need to solve this clue!"

Basil smiled. "Consider it solved."

"YOU SOLVED IT?" everyone chorused in shock.

"Well, mostly."

"You're taking the fun out of all of this," I complained.

"Yes, I agree," Dawson said. "You're astounding!"

"Well, what's the answer?" Mrs. Butler asked eagerly.

"Try to figure it out yourselves."

"Basil!" Dawson and I yelled.

"Here, let me show you, step by step. Count how many lines there are in the riddle."

Dawson made a quick calculation. "Twelve."

"Now count how many numbers are in this sequence here."

Dawson and I counted those. "Twelve again?" he questioned.

"Odd..." Mrs. Butler whispered.

"So? What do the numbers mean?" I asked.

Basil pointed to the first line, then to the first number in the sequence. "Meg, find the eleventh letter in this line.

I counted it out. "S," I said.

"Now give me the eleventh letter in the next line."

"C."

"Now the second letter in the third line."

"H?"

We continued counting letters until we reached the twelfth line.

Dawson wrote out on a paper S-C-H-I-N-T-Z-H-O-F-E-R.

"I've never heard that last name before," Mrs. Butler said.

"We need to pay a visit to the undertaker of the cemetery," Basil said.

I stayed up with Mrs. Butler as Basil and Dawson went to the cemetery. Eventually she drifted off to sleep, exhausted from her ordeal. I went back downstairs to wait for Basil.

It was one o'clock in the morning. The rooms were dark and filled with shadows. To pass the time I went around the house, making sure all the doors and windows were secure.

It was while closing one door to a balcony that I noticed a shadow hanging on the side of the wall.

I shrieked. The shadow fell off the wall with an identical yell.

I raced to the edge of the balcony. The figure got gingerly to his feet and stepped into the moonlight. I recognized the soiled gray suit. "Mr. Gillespie?" I said in disbelief.

"Aye. Would that be Miss Meg? Could you help me a bit here, lass?"

I hurried downstairs to the French doors that led out to the garden. "Mr. Gillespie, I am so sorry," I said, leading him to the drawing room. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine." He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

"What were you doing out there anyway?" I asked, remembering Basil's suspicions.

"I was..." he huffed," lookin' for clues."

"On the wall?"

Arlen took something out of his pocket. "I found a piece o' cloth there. Probably left by the kidnapper."

I looked at the cloth. It was black, but looked like it had grease stains on it. "Basil would definitely be able to tell you anything you want to know about where the owner of this has been. Perhaps we can find the kidnapper!"

"Ah... think I will show it to Inspector Gordon first. But mum's the word, lass. We don't want just anyone to know about this, eh?" he said, pulling back his jacket to reveal a pistol sitting in a holster.

My eyes grew wide. "What?" I said weakly.

"Be a good girl," he said, patting me on the cheek. "I must be goin'. No rest for the police; not when there's crime around."

He got up and left through the French doors. I bolted the doors behind him.

Basil and Dawson had managed to "persuade" the undertaker to take them to the grave of Sophia Schintzhofer. One hour later they stood at the foot of the small plot.

Dawson read the iron cross erected over the plot.

SOPHIA SCHINTZHOFER

Jan. 1819- July 1819

There were four other identical crosses nearby: the two parents, Andrew and Anastasia, one infant daughter, Catherine, and a nine-year-old daughter, Anastasia. Sophia lived and died after the deaths of her sisters.

"Butler was right," Dawson said. "'The last daughter of tormented parents/ Their last hope was forsaken.'"

Basil looked at the ground. "There's a bare spot here, like someone had been digging there before. The ground is hard, so it was not recently, but it was not so long ago to give the grass a chance to grow back.

Basil took the small spade he had been carrying and dug. He had only to dig up two spadefuls of dirt before he struck something.

"Another box, Dawson! We've found the fifth clue!"

Meg: You find interesting things when you walk through a cemetery. I found the Schintzhofer family: Andrew and Anastasia, and their three young daughters Anastasia, Catherine, and Sophia. All I did was change the date of death for Sophia to be one hundred years before she actually died. It was so sad to see the three little crosses and their dates of death; they were so young.

RAEB: Can you say morbid?

Meg: I know, I have way too much time on my hands to be doing such things.