Curse of the Purple Pearl Read online

  Curse of the Purple Pearl

  A Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Mystery

  Copyright © 2015 by Adrian Speed

  All rights reserved

  Chapter I

  By my third year in London I felt like any other Londoner. I had removed the tourist eyes that gaze in wonder at every landmark, and now strode through the street with the same jaded sense of detachment as anyone else who spends the majority of their life in the city. Looking at me you would see an ordinary girl. Too short to be called tall, too tall to be called short, with long blonde hair and pale skin wrapped up in a blue coat against the cold and clearly trying to get from one end of Hyde Park to another simply because it was the shortest route from Imperial College to Marble Arch.

  No-one could tell I was a Canadian. No-one could tell I was a time traveller.

  It wasn’t exactly a job I was heading for and it wasn’t exactly for fun either. You could possibly call it an internship, if you assumed there was no friendship between me and my senior associate. My English friends might call it a holiday job, and those who had been to a private school might have called it a secondment. My father would have called it a vocation while my grandfather would have called it a gadabout. I never called it anything. I simply knew that 8 months of the year I was an engineering student at Imperial College London and the rest of the year I was a detective with the Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Company.

  If you had a mystery, the Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Company could step in to solve it, whether you were Ancient Greek or 24th-century Martian. You see it didn’t matter when you posted the letter or what language you wrote in, every letter posted to the Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Company found its way to us. Currently they found their way to the Spare Room, Above the Opticians, 173 Edgware Road, London. Papyrus reeds covered in hieroglyphs and rainbow coloured, trinary-coded data crystals alike fell through the letter box every day to the increasing confusion of the postman. The address was the home of my senior associate, Sir Reginald Derby III: The Time Traveller.

  It was not so long ago that the company was all his alone, and most letters were still addressed to him. In truth, the case I am about to relate to you was the first under our new joint name. It is not the tale of my first mystery, or my first time travel, and when I went to meet Sir Reginald on that cold, March evening that began my Easter vacation I had no reason to suspect it would be any different from our other cases. I had no reason to suspect I would forever after regard my life as split into two halves; the before and the after.

  This is the mystery of the Purple Pearl. This is the mystery where I truly became a Time Detective.

  *****

  Reaching the Edgware Road, I paused. The small shop squeezed in between McDonald’s and Starbucks could have been there for centuries. A sign above read 'Wilson and Sons' and the window was full of newspapers. I bit my lip for a moment. There was no escaping it. If I was going to check on Sir Reginald I would have to pay Amir a visit.

  “Ah! You! The sane one!” Amir snapped at me the moment I was over the threshold.

  “I’d prefer to be called Hannah,” I said. “Or Ms Delaronde.” Amir ignored me.

  “You need to talk to him. He's not listening to reason!”

  “How much does he owe?” I said quietly as I moved down the aisles of impulse shopping.

  “Five hundred pounds for groceries and another hundred for arrears,” Amir glared. “You know what he did when I sent my lad up there last week? He tried to offer us a ten-pound note. Said we weren't charging a fair price.” Amir snorted.

  “I'll make sure the debt is settled by the end of the day.” I spoke calmly as I reached the counter.

  “There's only so much a body can stand, after all,” Amir growled. “I only keep the deliveries going because I promised my old Dad I would. The world's moved on, little corner shops haven't done weekly deliveries since my Dad was a nipper.”

  “I know Amir,” I said and tried to smile. “Have you still been sending the deliveries?”

  “Of course,” Amir threw up his hands. “If I stop he comes down here and raises hell. He's beyond control. If he doesn't pay up by the end of this month he might as well have come down here and robbed us blind. He's taking food out of my children's mouths!”

  “I'll make sure it is sorted today, Amir,” I stressed, and, before Amir could open his mouth, “with the next three months paid in advance.”

  “Miss, you can't be around to clean up after him forever,” Amir slouched over the counter. “Sooner or later he’s going to have to sort this out. I don't even carry half the stuff he orders. I just nip down to Tesco’s and double the price.”

  “I know, Amir, Sir Reginald is...” I was about to say “an old-fashioned gentleman” but that wouldn't be quite right, “…a complicated individual. I’ll make sure it’s sorted.”

  “If you taught him to use a computer he could order it all online,” Amir grumbled.

  “Sir Reginald doesn't like computers. He doesn't trust calculations not made by himself,” I said. With a short nod I said goodbye to the shopkeeper and left. Amir didn't stir. He curled over his counter and watched me go.

  I breathed a sigh of relief once I was out of the shop and tried to hide my irritation with Sir Reginald. My eyes turned to the distant sign of the opticians. I took another deep breath and headed north, towards the future.

  The door was jammed. My key turned in the lock and my entire weight pushed against it but it wouldn't open more than a crack. I heaved and hauled and the crack widened another inch.

  “Sir Reginald!” I called up the stairs inside. No answer. A few people who had been umming and ahhing over frames in the opticians stared at me. Like a lot of old shops there were two entrances: the storefront, a collection of glass plates held together with putty and a belief in capitalism, and the access door to the flats above the shop. As far as I knew, Sir Reginald was the only person living there.

  My temper snapped. As adrenaline surged through me I kicked and shoved at the heavy Victorian door until it gave way with a shudder. I fell forward onto a soft pile of letters crammed against the stairs. The entire space between staircase and doorway was full of letters. And data crystals, I cursed as I peeled a rod of quartz off my skin.

  I pulled myself upright, made sure none of the letters had escaped into the street, and shut the door on the gawpers outside. The letters had formed a drift knee-deep by the door. No wonder it wouldn’t open.

  I pulled a voluminous silk bag out of my pocket, piled the most important-looking letters into it and hauled it upstairs. There was a flat on each floor. Only the spare room on the very top floor was occupied. A room wedged between the roof and the boiler would be the last choice on anyone's housing wish list. And yet, despite his wealth, Sir Reginald had lived there for as long as I’d known him.

  “Sir Reginald?” I knocked at the door and turned the knob. It was unlocked. It would be a very unlucky burglar to chance upon Sir Reginald. “It's only me.” I stepped inside.

  The room was sparsely furnished. Sir Reginald lived like a man on migration and travelled light. A travel clock stood on the mantelpiece, and a travel bureau that could be packed and unpacked on any other table in the world lay on the desk. A portable gas lamp hung above the bureau to add a little more light to the room that was otherwise lit by one 40-Watt bulb, and a wardrobe trunk of clothes stood at the end of an iron-framed bed. If the owner of this room wanted to, he could pack up all his things and be gone within an hour. Yet for the three years I’d known him, Sir Reginald had never shown any intentions of leaving, and I suspect he had been living here a lot longer than that.

  “Ah, my dear Hannah!” Sir Reginald, a small man about the
same height as me, stirred from his chair, catching at a book that nearly fell to the floor as he moved. He was about five years older than me, with a frame that could politely be called lithe, and more impolitely, skinny. He hid his small build under layers of clothing that would have been out of fashion a century before. Even relaxing alone he wore at least two shirts and a waistcoat of deepest red velvet. Copper-blond hair was kept hidden under a top hat when he was about town.

  “What a pleasure to see you again. It feels like months since you last visited.”

  “It has been months,” I reminded him, dropping the bag of letters by the door. “Remember? I had university classes?”

  “Oh yes. University classes. Yes indeed, engineering wasn't it?”

  “Mechanical engineering, yes,” I replied.

  “My, my, women learning at university, what an age we live in.” He rested his hands on his hips and took a deep, happy breath. A smile was spreading across his face. “You've brought me some letters.”

  “They've been piling up against the door,” I chided. “If you’d just go down to pick them up–”

  “Oh, you know how it is.” Sir Reginald waved a hand at me and walked to his wardrobe. He withdrew a dark suit jacket and slid into it. “Enthralled in a book one doesn't think to venture outside one’s own head for days.”

  “It's been months.”

  “I have a great many books.”

  “Amir needs you to settle your debt with him,” I changed the subject.

  “The fellow who runs Wilson’s? Oh, he sent his lackey to see me last week.” Sir Reginald pulled a red silk cravat around his neck. “Five hundred pounds for groceries. Beyond ridiculous, Hannah. I offered him more than a fair price.”

  “A ten-pound note?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Perfectly adequate compensation.”

  “Well perhaps he’ll be more responsive to a woman's touch,” I offered. “I'll make the same offer again. Where's your coin purse?”

  “In the bureau, top left drawer.” Sir Reginald pointed to the box stuffed with pens, papers and ink on his desk. I walked over and opened it up. The drawer slid open easily to reveal a small bag filled with gold. I counted out ten guineas stamped with the head of George III. Each one was worth a small fortune for the gold alone. As collector’s items they would raise enough to buy the entire shop.

  “I think the sight of gold might open his eyes to the true value of what you are offering,” I said.

  “Shrewd thinking,” Sir Reginald tapped his nose. “Small businessmen do like being able to hold their wealth in their hands.”

  “I'll bring back some change.”

  “Oh, you can keep it,” Sir Reginald waved a hand at me. “Students are always in want of money, I should know, I used to be one.”

  “I'll go settle the debt now,” I said, turning to leave.

  “Oh no, that won’t do, you've just arrived!” Sir Reginald moved quick as lightning to the door. “Tarry a while. There’s time later to settle debts, there's rarely enough time to catch up with friends.”

  I stared at him. There was nothing but honesty behind his eyes.

  “Oh, very well.” I slipped the coins into my own purse. “I should at least make sure you read some of the letters you've been sent.”

  “Capital!” Sir Reginald clapped his hands together and beamed.

  “How about a drink?” I said, pointing to the kettle resting on a small gas stove.

  “Hmm, what time is it?” Sir Reginald spun on his heel to look at the clock, making his jacket flap.

  “Coming up to five o'clock,” I said, managing to look at my watch faster.

  “In the afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it's too late for tea and too early for brandy.” Sir Reginald's face faltered until he broke into another smile. “I'll take both.”

  While I made the tea Sir Reginald asked about my studies. He sat in his arm chair in rapt attention as I detailed everything I had learnt and done. I mentioned I had joined the newspaper team; he demanded a copy of my first article. I talked about an interview for an internship with Rolls-Royce; he insisted on writing a letter of recommendation. When he heard I was taking classes in kendo he pressed me to a friendly duel, “to test the ancient Nipponese sword arts against the noble lineage of fencing!” Talking with Sir Reginald was like talking with a child and an elderly relative at the same time. Not until he had a cup of tea in one hand and a snifter of brandy resting on the table next to his other was I allowed to turn the subject back to his letters.

  “Pepi II Neferkare of Egypt would like you to investigate the death of his father, Merenre,” I read from a papyrus scroll, following the hieroglyphs’ unfamiliar shapes slowly. “Although this letter is written by the Pharaoh's vizier.”

  “No, I don't think so.” Sir Reginald took a sip of tea. “The vizier killed Merenre to gain control of the kingdom by controlling young Pepi. The vizier just wants me to make an investigation to shore up their claim to the throne because he assumes I will find no evidence of wrong doing.”

  “So you don't want to expose the vizier?”

  Sir Reginald shrugged. “Assassination is a risk you face when you enter the kinging business. A pharaoh should know better than to ever trust his vizier, especially when requesting a sleeping draught.”

  “How could you possibly know he has been killed by a sleeping draught overdose?” I said.

  “I solved the mystery of the disappearing pyramid for him five years ago – that's five of my years – and he was swallowing enough quicksilver and arsenic to help him sleep that he would have passed away even if the vizier had not intended his death,” Sir Reginald put a finger to his lips as he remembered. “That case was quite a tough chestnut to crack.”

  “So how did it disappear?”

  “Quicksand,” he said amiably. “Not a wizard at all, no matter what Merenre thought. A storm rolled in, shifted the foundations and it sank into the slurry that formed. We rebuilt it again on rock. Good thing too, the last thing the Old Kingdom needed was a pharaoh's curse in its final days.”

  I shuffled some papers looking for another promising letter. A Martian post mark. Holographic letters glittered in the air.

  “King Keith XIX of Mars requests you find the Keeler Crown which went missing on the twenty-first of October 2878,” I paraphrased from the rather more flowery writing of the King of Mars.

  “Not worth the trip.” Sir Reginald shook his head. “His wife has it. She intends to ransom it back to him under the guise of a terrorist organisation or some such, and then use the money to run away with her lover the Duke of Albor Tholus to a new life on Alpha Centauri.”

  “Don't you think the king should be told?” I waved the letter at him.

  “I was able to deduce this from the scantest mentions of his wife in previous letters. If a man cannot figure out when his own wife stole his crown he deserves neither.” Sir Reginald leaned in conspiratorially. “And I don't mind saying, King Keith XIX is a bit of a twit. Twenty-seven generations of marrying cousins in an already meagre gene pool creates a very odd fellow.”

  I cast aside the holograph and picked up a piece of parchment.

  “Henry Tudor requests you discover what happened to the Princes in the Tower–”

  “Ah, I'll stop you there, Hannah.” He held up a hand. “Every schoolboy knows the Princes in the Tower is an unsolved mystery, and they were probably murdered by Richard III. Although that could be Tudor propaganda, I'm not going to interfere in what I know of as history. It would make a paradox.”

  “And that would destroy the universe?”

  “No, they give me a headache.” He tapped his temple. “Next letter.”

  “A little girl called Ren Song asks you to find her doll,” My finger traced a Hong Kong postmark dated 1935. “She has been unable to find it for three weeks.”

  “Ah, she has written to me before. This time her brother has gone too far. Instead of just hiding the doll I belie
ve he has destroyed it,” Sir Reginald frowned, “as little boys are wont to do. A doll doesn't go missing for that long if it is still there to be found. Do you remember the last time we found her doll?”

  “Her brother had buried it in the garden in a cardboard coffin,” I scowled.

  “A truly beastly boy,” agreed Sir Reginald. “There is a fine doll-maker in Camden, I believe. Make a note to put in a commission. I may not be able to recover her poor doll but I can endeavour to replace it.”

  “Noted.” I flipped out my phone and tapped in a message.

  “You shouldn't trust to a computer what you can trust more securely to pen and paper, my dear,” he chastised.

  “You have your methods, I have mine.”

  Sir Reginald drained his teacup and stared at the pile of letters. “You have yet to find me a decent mystery. Is there not a single case worth my time today?”

  “General Quintinius Cassius wants you to investigate the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius,” I ran my eyes over the raw, two-thousand-year-old Latin.

  “No mystery there, the emperor was in his old age and a plague was ravaging the country,” he muttered.

  “…who was found dead this morning, in a locked room untouched save for one thing. The emperor's favoured Purple Pearl ring is missing,” I finished, ignoring the interruption. “Before we can allow the emperor his eternal rest we request an investigation by the fabled Tribune of Truth to clear the succession of any hint of foul play.”

  “Purple Pearl?” Sir Reginald launched himself forward in his seat and turned his ear to me. “Did I hear you clear?”

  “Yes. Purple Pearl. Apparently he liked it quite a lot.”

  “Now that rings a bell,” he muttered. “Why does it ring a bell? Purple Pearl, Purple Pearl.” He tapped his teeth. “They're devilishly rare you know. There can only be a handful of naturally occurring pearls of that colour in the entire world.” Possessed by sudden animation he leapt to his feet and drained his glass of brandy in a single swig. “Well then, that is our mystery.”

  “The death of Marcus Aurelius?”