The Missing Heir by Tracy Barrett

Author:Tracy Barrett
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2012-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

She got Xander’s magnifying glass and read H, then M, then S, then a long word. What was it? She squinted. Why did Sherlock have to write so small? Aha! It said “H.M.S. Pinafore.” She wasn’t sure what a pinafore was—an article of clothing, she thought. She looked it up in an online dictionary. It was something like an apron, and girls used to wear them to keep their clothes clean. The dictionary showed a picture from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to illustrate it.

But the princess who had been kidnapped was much too young to wear something like that, and there were no other little girls in the household, as far as she knew. Maybe Xander had turned up something in the papers—perhaps there was a niece visiting, or a young servant. Just as Xena thought of Xander, he sneezed.

“More musty old papers,” he said. “I wish I wasn’t allergic to them.” He carefully picked up a yellowed sheet, examined it, and added it to a stack. “There’s nothing useful here. It’s just a bunch of notes, like bills, and contracts with servants and security guards and that kind of thing. Nothing important.”

“There must be some reason why Sherlock saved them,” Xena reminded him. “Let’s go through them once more.”

Xena began to look through the yellowed papers. She felt a moment of hope when she found a copy of a birth certificate for the baby, but it didn’t say more than the fact that it was a girl named Stella, and they already knew that. There were bills from the workmen who had refurbished the palace, as well as blueprints for the addition built by King Boris and Queen Charlotte. The maze of white lines and arrows and notations on the architectural drawings meant nothing to Xena. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.” She was exasperated. “What’s that?” She pointed to another paper, which Xander had set aside. He leaned over her shoulder and sneezed again, this time almost right in her ear.

“Yuck!” she said. She closed the box of documents so that the musty smell would stay contained, and handed him a tissue.

“This one’s kind of interesting,” Xander said. “It’s a contract between Queen Charlotte and the nanny, Miss Mimsy. It must have been a pretty bad job. The nanny couldn’t do anything but take care of the princess. She had a half day off once a week, but the rest of the time, she had to be with the baby, night and day. She wasn’t allowed to get married and couldn’t even have a boyfriend. Here, this is what it says: ‘As is customary, you will not marry while in my employ, as you might be tempted to allow your duties to your own family to interfere with your duties to mine.’ Miss Mimsy didn’t have her own room but shared it with the princess. She couldn’t even make friends with the other servants.”

“How long had she been working for the queen when the baby was born?”

Xander examined the paper.

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