The Case of the Spilled Ink by Holly Webb

Author:Holly Webb [Webb, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847155634
Publisher: Stripes Publishing
Published: 2014-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

Maisie blinked at her. She had expected Gran to say no at once, and she’d been ready to beg and plead and argue. Gran thought of Maisie’s detecting as just being nosy, and she usually tried to discourage it as much as possible.

A faint pink flush appeared across the tops of Gran’s cheekbones, and she sniffed. “That Miss Barnes next door was very impressed with your last bit of detecting, Maisie. When you worked out why all that washing kept disappearing.”

Maisie giggled. It was typical of Gran that solving the mystery of the washing would be more important than recovering thousands of pounds-worth of missing paintings.

“She said she was sure I was very proud of you,” Gran murmured. “And I am… I just worry that you’ll get yourself into something dangerous. And you did!”

It was quite true. One of the art thieves had caught Maisie following him. She sighed. She’d known that Gran would find that hard to forget.

“But I don’t suppose you can get into that much trouble in a school for young ladies. Oh, I do beg your pardon, an Academy…”

“You mean I can do it?” Maisie squeaked joyfully. “You’ll write me a reference?”

“What is the world coming to?” Gran muttered. “Lying for my own granddaughter. Oh yes, I’ll do it, Maisie. But you’ve got, let’s see … two weeks, that’s all. And I don’t approve. False references!”

She approved even less when Maisie and Alice vanished upstairs to talk to Miss Lottie Lane, the actress who lived on the third floor. Maisie was going to need a disguise, so that no one at the school recognized her as Alice’s friend. Gran had written the reference for her as Milly Tatham, which was the name of a girl who’d rented one of the upstairs rooms a long time ago, she said. Milly needed to look quite different from Maisie.

Even though Miss Lane was an actress, and Gran was always saying that she was flighty and unreliable, she was one of Maisie’s greatest allies as a detective. She had a stock of useful clothes for disguises, and she’d shown Maisie how to use greasepaint too. Now she looked at Maisie thoughtfully.

“It shouldn’t really be that difficult. After all, you still want to be a young girl. But I think it’s harder to do that than it is to turn you into an old lady, or a delivery boy. Hmmmm… What would you say is the most noticeable thing about Maisie?” she asked Alice suddenly.

“Her hair?” Alice answered, gazing at Maisie with her head on one side. Maisie’s hair was red and curly. It was hard to miss.

“Exactly. So we definitely have to deal with that. I suppose your gran would have forty fits if we dyed it?” she said to Maisie.

“I think she might faint,” Maisie agreed.

“A wig then.” Miss Lane opened a cupboard, humming happily to herself, and proceeded to lift out various hair pieces. “We can’t go too far away from your natural colour, Maisie, or it’ll look wrong.

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