Journey to the River Sea

At that moment he heard the creaking of the revolving doors and peering out, realized that two people had come into the museum whom he recognized. The tall, thin woman who had been interested in Bernard Taverner’s collection and the schoolgirl who had been with her: a girl with a lot of dark hair and intelligent eyes.

  He came out of his office and said, ‘Good morning.’

  The tall woman smiled and at once looked less alarming. ‘This is Maia,’ she said. ‘She has come to make some drawings of birds’ wings. May I leave her here to work on her own? I’ll fetch her at three o’clock. I don’t think she’ll be any trouble.’

  ‘I’m sure she won’t,’ said the professor. He was still holding the false rib and looked distracted.

  ‘What a large rib,’ said Miss Minton.

  ‘Yes.’ He took a deep breath and poured out the problem of the missing bone. ‘No one would know it was not the real one,’ he said.

  Miss Minton looked severe. ‘You would know,’ she said.

  The professor sighed. ‘That’s what Taverner used to say.’

  ‘May we see it? The sloth?’ asked Maia.

  ‘Certainly.’

  He led them through his office and into the lab.

  ‘It’s not upside down,’ said Maia. ‘I thought sloths always hung from trees?’

  ‘Not the giant sloths. They’d have splintered any tree they tried to hang from. This one would have weighed about three tonnes when it was alive, but they’ve been extinct for thousands of years.’

  Once again the professor put the rib in and once again he took it out.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you should go and find the missing bone,’ said Miss Minton.

  The professor stared at her. Was she serious? Surely not . . .

  ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ he said. ‘The original skeleton came from a cave near the Xanti river, miles away to the north. And I’m too old for expeditions.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Miss Minton. ‘Anyone who can walk can go on expeditions.’

  Then she took her leave and Maia said ‘Good morning’ to the stuffed Pekinese before she settled down at a table near the ‘Birds in Flight’ exhibit, and began to draw. It was good to be in the museum again, and away from the Carters. Not just the Pekinese, but the Amazonian river slug, the lumpy manatee, the shrunken head, all seemed like old friends – and of course the Taverner Collection which she now saw with new eyes. And as she drew, Maia tried to puzzle out the problem of her governess.

  Maia had told Miss Minton that Clovis was safe with the Indian boy. Miss Minton had nodded, but she asked no more questions. It was strange how little she asked Maia about her comings and goings, when she pounced on every strand of unbrushed hair or a fingernail not scrubbed to cleanliness. Then when Maia said she needed to go and work in the museum to finish her project on ‘Birds of the Rainforest’, Minty had done no more than raise an eyebrow and had gone about arranging it. She had even persuaded Mrs Carter to let them go down on the rubber boat so as to give them more time in Manaus.

  And why did Finn want to know Miss Minton’s Christian name?

  But she wasn’t in the museum to think about Minty, or even to draw birds. She was here to do a job for Finn, and when she was sure the museum was empty she walked over to the door marked ‘Private’ and knocked.

  Professor Glastonberry came out at once. He really was a very nice man with his round, pink face and white fringe of hair.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you again,’ said Maia, ‘but I have a message for you.’ And she handed him the note that Finn had written in the hut.

  The professor read it and looked at her intently. So she had found Finn and made friends with him. Not only that, but she wanted to help him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see. You are a messenger and to be trusted. Come in.’

  He led her into his office and locked the door. Maia had never seen such a room. There wasn’t a centimetre that wasn’t covered in something: limb casts, snake skins, jumbled bones . . . and books everywhere, even on the floor. But it was a friendly clutter, not like the mess in Mr Carter’s room.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said, and moved a stuffed marmoset from a rickety chair. Then he read the note again. ‘I don’t see why not. If it’s just for one night. No, I really don’t see why not.’

  ‘He said you knew a good hiding place. He said you showed it to him.’

  Professor Glastonberry smiled. He must have been close on sixty, but he looked like a pleased pink baby.

  ‘Ah, he remembered, did he? Well, come along. If Finn says you’re to be trusted, I’m sure he’s right.’

  He took her into the lab and, for the second time, Maia was led to the giant sloth. But this time the professor put his shoulder to the heavy metal stand which moved slowly to one side. On the wooden floor, grimed with dirt, Maia could just make out a square of darker-coloured wood and an iron ring.

  ‘It’s a trapdoor,’ he said. ‘Goes down to a cellar and storeroom – but it’s well ventilated. Got one high window. Best hiding place in Manaus, we used to say. Finn liked to play down there when he was little, while his father helped me.’

  Maia stood looking at the flight of steps which led into the darkness.

  ‘Would you like to go down?’ the professor asked.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course. But you’d better have a light; there’s no electricity down there.’

  He brought her a hurricane lamp and she climbed down. The cellar was huge and vaulted, with a recess at the back full of packing cases. Between the cases were exhibits which the professor had not had room for, or those waiting to be repaired. A beam of light fell on the red eyes of a moth-eaten puma. There were unstrung bows and painted shields, and a harpy eagle sitting on a lopsided nest. In a corner was a heap of round objects which might have been carved coconuts, but might have been shrunken heads. But the floor was dry, and in the far end of the room, the high window gave a glimmer of light.

  ‘It’s marvellous,’ said Maia, coming up again. ‘No one could find you unless they knew.’

  The professor moved the stand back over the trapdoor. ‘I sometimes store Billy down there when the trustees come on an inspection. They don’t approve of stuffed Pekinese in a serious museum.’

  ‘There’s just one more thing,’ said Maia, as the professor led her out of the lab. ‘Finn thought that we should – that I should – steal the spare keys, so that no one gets into trouble. Your staff or you if anything goes wrong.’

  ‘I doubt if anyone could do much to me,’ said Professor Glastonberry, ‘but it’s true I wouldn’t want my cleaners or my caretaker blamed.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Maia, looking up at him, ‘I haven’t actually stolen anything before.’

  ‘There is always a first time,’ said the professor cheerfully. ‘The spare keys are hanging on that hook over there. And I’m going out in half an hour to have my lunch.’

  ‘There she is,’ said Mr Trapwood, looking out of the window of the Pension Maria at the slender blue funnel of HMS Bishop, the sister ship of the Cardinal, which had just come into port. She would spend four days on the turnabout while the crew cleaned the ship, took on supplies and had some time ashore. Then on Saturday morning she would set off again, to the mouth of the Amazon, across the Atlantic and back to Britain.

  The crows had been so sure of finding Taverner’s son that they had booked a three-berth cabin for the return journey.

  But they were beginning to give up hope. For it was clear that the wretched boy was deliberately hiding from them. At first people had tried to deny that Taverner had a son at all. Now, though, they were beginning to laugh behind their sleeves, and as the day for the detectives’ departure grew closer there were sly digs about the boy having outwitted them.

  But why? The crows were hurt. They had come as bearers of good tidings to bring a savage jungle boy the news of his inheritance. They had been prepared to introduce him gradually to polite society – pe
rhaps on the journey to teach him to use a knife and fork. Sir Aubrey had even given them some money to buy him clothes, in case he’d been brought up in a grass skirt.

  And they had expected gratitude. It was only natural.

  ‘Thank you, MrLow,’ the boy would have said, grasping them by the hand. And: ‘Thank you, Mr Trapwood. You have saved me from a life of toil and darkness.’

  Instead of that the boy was deliberately hiding and everyone in Manaus seemed to be helping him.

  ‘We’ve got three more days,’ said Mr Trapwood. ‘There’s still a chance to flush him out.’

  ‘To carry him aboard by force if necessary.’

  ‘To get the bonus from Sir Aubrey!’

  That was the most important thing of all. Sir Aubrey had promised them a hundred pounds each if they brought his grandson safely home.

  ‘I still think there was something fishy about that pigtailed girl at the Carters’ place.’

  Mr Low agreed. ‘She had a shifty look. We’ll have to keep an eye on her.’

  The crows were looking very much the worse for wear. Their black suits were dusty and torn; the maid at the Pension Maria had burnt every one of their shirts as she ironed them. Mr Trapwood’s face was covered in lumps where the bites of the tabernid fly had gone septic, and both their stomachs had become boiling caverns of agony and wind.

  ‘But we can still do it,’ said Mr Trapwood, punching the table. ‘We’ll try downriver this time. Those houses by the fishing place. The people there look poor enough; they should take some notice of the reward.’

  Mr Low nodded and made his way stealthily towards the door.

  ‘If you’re thinking of getting to the lavatory before me, don’t try,’ said Mr Trapwood. ‘I’m going first.’

  ‘No you aren’t. I need it!’

  ‘You need it . . . !’

  Shoving and jostling, the two detectives raced each other down the corridor.

  Professor Glastonberry, making his way up the hill to the café where he usually had his lunch, stopped, as he always did, by the bookshop in the Square. It was run by a man who bought in books from all over Brazil, specializing in books about Natural History.

  In the window was a copy of Travels in the Amazon, by Alfred Russel Wallace, open at a beautiful woodcut of an Indian village.

  He was admiring it, when he realized that the tall, straight-backed woman who was also staring in to the window was the lady who had left Maia in the museum.

  ‘A beautiful book,’ he said, raising his hat.

  She sighed. ‘Yes. Quite above my means, I fear.’

  ‘It is not a first edition,’ he said. ‘You might get it quite reasonably. I know the owner – perhaps he would put it aside for a while.’

  ‘Thank you, but he would have to put it aside for most of my life. My salary is not . . . princely . . . even when it is paid.’

  Both of them looked for a while longer at the book. Then Miss Minton gave her tight-lipped smile.

  ‘I was dismissed once for reading,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ The professor waited but she said no more. ‘I left Maia working hard,’ he went on. ‘The caretaker promised to keep an eye on her.’

  Did she know what Maia was really doing in the museum? he wondered. Probably not, yet she didn’t look like a person easy to hoodwink. As she bent down to pick up the basket with Mrs Carter’s shopping, he said, ‘Allow me.’

  She shook her head. ‘Thank you, but it’s not heavy.’

  They began to walk towards the main street with its cafés and shops.

  ‘I have been thinking about what you said – about the missing bone. Of Megatherium. The sloth, I mean.’

  ‘You have decided to go and look for it?’

  ‘No, no. But Taverner was also against putting in a false rib. He was a good naturalist and a good man. I miss him.’

  ‘Yes. I can imagine that. Was it he who found the skeleton?’

  ‘No. It was found many years ago. It went to a museum in Rio – too important for my little place – but no one had time to assemble it, so they sent it down to me. But Taverner knew the place it came from. Not only that—’ He broke off. ‘His wife came from up there,’ he went on. ‘It’s practically unexplored country.’

  ‘Did you know his wife?’

  ‘Yes. She was beautiful and gentle. She died in childbirth because the English doctor wouldn’t come out to an Indian girl at night. As you can imagine, it didn’t make Taverner any more anxious to return to England.’

  They walked on for a while without speaking. Then the professor, blushing a little for he was very shy, asked Miss Minton if she would care to join him for lunch. ‘It’s only a little local café but the food is good.’

  But as he had expected, she refused. ‘Thank you, I have some sandwiches.’

  But at the door of the café, Miss Minton was overcome suddenly by the glorious smell of real, strong Brazilian coffee.

  ‘Perhaps a cup of coffee,’ she said.

  It was a nice café; friendly and cheap and it cost Miss Minton some effort not to allow the professor to buy her a dish of chicken and rice. ‘I lunch here most days,’ he said. ‘Since my wife died.’

  ‘Was that a long time ago?’

  ‘Yes. Ten years now. I blame myself, the climate didn’t suit her. I should have taken her back to England.’

  Miss Minton frowned. She did not approve of people blaming themselves for what was done.

  ‘Are the caves difficult to reach? The ones where your sloth came from?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Difficult but not impossible.’

  ‘Did Taverner think there were more remains there? More bones?’

  ‘He thought there might be. But that’s neither here nor there. I shall be fifty-eight next year: an old man.’

  ‘That is the kind of remark I don’t enjoy,’ said Miss Minton cuttingly, and picked up her coffee cup.

  When she came back from the museum, Maia found the twins in an even worse mood than usual.

  ‘What are those supposed to be?’ sneered Beatrice, turning over Maia’s drawings. ‘I can’t make head or tail of them.’

  ‘I know . . .’ Maia sighed. ‘But birds are really difficult to draw.’

  ‘Well, why do you have to go and show off in the museum then? I suppose you want everyone to say how clever you are.’

  ‘And you’ve got a mosquito bite on your forehead,’ said Gwendolyn. ‘It looks like the kind that goes septic.’

  ‘You’ve probably caught lice too on that Indian boat. You’d better not come near.’

  Maia said nothing and went to her room. She had stopped wondering what she had done to annoy them. But to tell the truth, the poor twins had just learnt something which upset them very much, and they had learnt it from their mother.

  ‘We don’t like Maia, Mummy,’ the twins had said. ‘She’s a prig.’

  ‘The way she goes on practising the piano when she doesn’t have to.’

  ‘And she flirts with the boys at the dancing class and shows off the whole time.’

  ‘And she’s conceited about her hair. The way she brushes it and brushes it.’

  ‘And she sneaks off to talk to the servants.’

  Mrs Carter sighed. ‘I know you don’t like her,’ she said.

  ‘We hate her,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘When is she going away again?’ wailed Gwendolyn.

  ‘Oh, don’t!’ cried Mrs Carter, caught off her guard. ‘Don’t ever mention her going away. If Maia goes we are undone!’

  The twins stared at her. Their small, round mouths hung open.

  Mrs Carter tried to pull herself together. ‘No, no; it’s not as bad as that. But your father . . . there have been difficulties with the price of rubber . . . and so on . . . Maia’s allowance from her guardian is absolutely necessary to pay the bills.’

  ‘You mean she’s staying for ever and ever?’ said Beatrice. ‘Just because she’s rich and we’re poor?’

  ‘It isn’t fair
!’

  ‘Now, please, girls. I’m sure your father will find a way round, and when he does we can send her away. But just for now please try to be nicer to Maia.’

  The twins shot her a furious look from under their pale eyelashes.

  ‘We’ll have to think of something,’ said Beatrice when they were alone again.

  ‘We certainly will,’ said Gwendolyn.

  ‘But if we get rid of her we won’t be able to have any new clothes.’

  ‘Unless we can get hold of the reward for the Taverner boy.’

  ‘If we get that we won’t need to see Maia ever again,’ said Beatrice gloatingly.

  ‘I still think she knows something. I’m going to watch her night and day.’

  ‘I’m going to watch her too.’

  When she had first seen Finn’s hut and the lagoon, Maia thought it must be the nicest place in the whole world.

  Clovis did not think that at all. He liked being inside the hut, especially at meal-times, but he found the surrounding jungle most alarming. The anteater lumbering down to drink like a grey tank sent Clovis rushing back indoors, and the chattering of the monkeys in the trees kept him awake at night.

  Finn made him help with all the chores. Clovis had to keep the hut clean, scrub out the saucepans, and help get the Arabella ready for her journey. Clovis liked the humming birds; he learnt to refill their bottles of sugar water, and he didn’t mind painting the boat – he was used to painting scenery – but cleaning the bilges and burying the kitchen waste was not to his taste at all.

  But if Clovis wasn’t very good at rough work, he was absolutely first-class at learning his lines. Every morning and every afternoon, he sat down with the old red notebook in which Finn had written down all that his father had told him about Westwood, and when Finn tested him he found Clovis word-perfect.

  ‘There isn’t very much,’ Finn had told him at the beginning. ‘Because my father never talked about Westwood if he could help it. And remember, they won’t expect you to know anything – they probably think you’ve been brought up a savage. All the same, if you’re going to stay for a week or two without being found out, it might help you to know a little.’

  So Clovis sat by the table in the hut, twisting a curl round his finger, and studied the notebook, and every hour or two Finn came and tested him.