A Slip in Time Read online

  ‘So this locket,’ said Jack. ‘It’s just a stage prop?’

  Dr Watson shook his head. ‘I thought as much. It was obvious that the picture inside was only meant to be seen from a distance. And when I couldn’t find a goldsmith’s mark, I realised the locket must be either very old, or –’

  ‘Tat,’ Fadge finished the sentence for him. ‘So it’s not worth anything? There’s no reward?’

  Mr Bailey looked uncomfortable. ‘I was setting a trap for the thief. The thought of some honest citizen returning it was far from my thoughts. But what do you say to free tickets for the performance of your choice? Best seats in the house?’

  Dr Watson nodded. ‘I think that’s a very fair offer. What about you, Fadge? And afterwards I’ll treat you to the finest supper you’ve ever tasted! How about it?’

  ‘If you want.’ Fadge sadly picked up his broom.

  Behind him, he heard Queen Gertrude give a little cry, ‘Bill! It’s him! It’s Jo! We’ve found our Jo. Tell me it’s not Jo to the life!’

  Mr Bailey caught his breath. ‘You think so, Bella?’ he murmured, forgetting in his excitement that she was still Queen of Denmark.

  So did she. ‘Look at the way he moves, Bill. It’s Jo.’ She whisked out her blue-stained hankie and dabbed at her eyes again. ‘I knew it! I knew there was something about him. The first moment I set eyes on him.’

  ‘Boy!’ boomed the actor-manager. ‘You, boy! Fadge! Turn round. Let me look at you.’

  Slowly, broom in hand, Fadge turned, heart pounding in his breast. Always running a close second to his dream of The Reward came the one about turning out to be the Lost Heir. A rich man’s beloved child, stolen from his cradle. Or a prince, lost in a shipwreck when a baby and raised by soft-hearted pirates. Long-lost child to these two? All right. He wasn’t fussy.

  ‘Let me see you walk!’ commanded Mr Bailey.

  Fadge, broom in hand, shuffled up and down a bit, then stood waiting for further instructions, while the Baileys put their heads together.

  ‘You’re right, my dear!’

  ‘I’m always right!’

  ‘It’s Jo!’

  Mrs Bella Bailey beamed. ‘Jo, the Crossing Sweeper!’

  ‘In Bleak House!’ added Mr Bailey, turning to Fadge. ‘It’s a key part!’

  ‘A marvellous part!’

  ‘Not a dry eye in the house! “Dead, your majesty! Dead, ladies and gentlemen!” I forget the next bit… “And dying every day among us!”’

  ‘Hang on a minute!’ Fadge said nervously. ‘I’m not planning to die. Not yet!’

  ‘They’re talking about a play, Fadge, I think,’ said Jack. ‘They’re offering you a part in a play.’

  ‘It’s indoor work,’ said the Queen.

  ‘And no heavy lifting,’ added Mr Bailey.

  ‘Jo, the Crossing Sweeper!’ exclaimed Dr Watson. ‘I’ve read the book. The part’s tailor-made for you, Fadge!’

  ‘You’ve even got your own broom,’ Jack pointed out.

  Out of the rubble of yet another dream eluding him, Fadge struggled to build himself a different future. ‘Do I get paid?’ he asked.

  There came another knock at the door and Mr Musgrove stuck his head round again. ‘They’re getting restless,’ he said. ‘I’ve got Sam doing his strong man act, but we can’t hold them much longer.’

  ‘We’ll leave you with Mr Musgrove,’ said the actor-manager, ‘to sort out the details. Jo, the Crossing Sweeper, Mr Musgrove. Bleak House. The part is cast.’ He picked up a cardboard crown that had been hanging on the back of his chair and, twirling it merrily round his finger, swept out, arm-in-arm with Queen Gertrude.

  13

  Don’t Dob in Your Mates

  I must have died and gone to heaven, Fadge kept thinking, as Dr Watson read out the contract Mr Musgrove drew up for him. Three meals a day, a place to bed down under the stage, and a share of the profits, if any, as pocket money. Paradise! He made his cross on the dotted line.

  ‘There is just one thing,’ smirked Mr Musgrove, with his pen poised over the paper, a smudge and a blot away from making it all legal and Bristol-fashion. ‘The name of the person – or persons – who did steal the locket?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ asked Jack.

  Mr Musgrove had been pencilled in for Jo the Crossing Sweeper, though he was too tall by half, before Fadge happened along. Mr Musgrove gave a smirk. ‘Loyalty among thieves, is it? If the Law comes asking, Fadge, – and they will come, ’cause Mrs Bailey reported the locket missing. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to hear she’s got it back but, well, I’ll have to tell them, won’t I? About your part in this business and that you might be able to help them with their enquiries.’

  ‘You’d better tell him, Fadge,’ said Jack.

  Fadge hung his head. ‘Don’t know their proper names,’ he muttered. ‘Nor where they live. I don’t know nothing.’

  ‘Come on, Fadge,’ muttered the doctor. ‘They’re bad lots, both of them. Sooner or later the Law’s bound to catch up with them.’

  ‘Don’t know nothing,’ said Fadge again, so quietly, they barely heard. So help him, he couldn’t do it. Not if his life depended on it.

  He caught Jack’s eye.

  Jack understood. Don’t dob in your mates. Even if they’re not your mates.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Jack. He whispered in Fadge’s ear. Fadge caught on quick. By the time Jack finished, Fadge was almost doing flip-flaps, like a fish let off the hook.

  Jack said, ‘We’ll need to borrow the locket for a while.’

  ‘Why?’ Mr Musgrove looked at him narrowly. If he made himself any narrower, he’d disappear down one of the cracks between the floorboards and good riddance.

  ‘You don’t need to know that,’ said Jack. ‘But I promise you’ll get it back.’

  ‘I’ll leave my broom, if you like,’ offered Fadge. ‘As a hostage, sort of.’

  Mr Musgrove laid down his pen. ‘I’ll ask,’ he said. ‘As soon as Mr Bailey comes off stage.’

  14

  The Music Returns

  ‘But are you really sure,’ the doctor asked, as they made their way back the way they’d come, ‘that you can persuade these – friends – of yours to give themselves up?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about it,’ mumbled Fadge, through a mouthful of gingerbread the doctor had bought for him at the last stall they passed. Jack said he wasn’t hungry, so Fadge felt it was up to him to let the doctor be generous if he wanted to. But it was hard work, getting through it all on his own. The ham sandwich and the pocketful of peas and the toffee apple and the chestnuts.

  ‘You really think they’ll fall for it?’ said Jack.

  Fadge gave a loud burp – ‘Pardon!’ – before he answered. ‘They’re not too bright. Or they’d never have thought that was real gold and jewels in the first place.’

  Jack didn’t think this was the time to remind Fadge that he’d been fooled himself, the first time he saw the locket.

  As they moved away from the lights and the traffic, he started wondering: how long had he been here, stuck in this time zone, whatever? Hours, it must be. How was he going to explain it away when he got back? If he got back. Somewhere he’d read about hundreds of people going missing every year. What if just a few somehow slipped down some kind of crack in time and never managed to claw their way out again? What if he ended up as one of them?

  Mum and Grandad waiting and waiting for him to come back with the shopping. Grandad would be sick as a parrot if there was no All-Bran for his breakfast in the morning.

  And then…

  ‘Listen!’ said Jack. ‘I can hear a barrel organ.’ Playing a half-familiar tune…

  ‘Won’t you buy my pretty flowers?’ the doctor sang along, then went on pom-pomming when he ran out of words, beating time with his hand.

  ‘Silly thing to be playing, this time of year,’ mumbled Fadge, taking another swig of ginger beer from the bottle. ‘No flowers around now.’

  ‘
Where’s it coming from?’ asked Jack. The barrel organ! That was when it all began. With the music of the barrel organ.

  And the fog came tumbling out of the side alleys and up from the area steps where it had lain, biding its time, between then and now.

  ‘Where’s it coming from? The music?’ Jack turned and turned. Listening, trying to get a fix. This way? That way! There! Where the fog was gathering, thickening to a marmaladeyellow, billowing upwards and outwards, smelling of rotten eggs and stale fish. This was his chance – maybe his only chance. ‘I’ve got to go! There’s Grandad’s shopping to do and Mum’ll be getting worried.’ But if he went now – he glanced down at Fadge – he’d never know what happened. Could Fadge possibly deal with the Masher and Rusty on his own?

  Fadge swallowed. ‘You go on.’

  ‘You’ll be all right?’

  ‘All the better for not having to look after you, Jack Farthing.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jack forced a smile. ‘Cheers, then.’

  ‘What about the theatre?’ called the doctor.

  ‘The theatre?’ asked Jack, hands in his pockets, walking backwards, still keeping his options open.

  ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Best seats in the house?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll try and make it. If I can’t, you’d better take your friend instead.’

  ‘My friend?’

  ‘The one who’s coming to help you eat that chicken, remember?’

  ‘Oh, lord!’ Doctor Watson clapped a hand to his head. ‘The chicken! We left it on the kitchen table, stuffing half-in, half-out.’

  ‘Take care, right?’ said Jack.

  Then he turned and walked away, into the fog, towards the jangling music.

  ‘He’s dropped his scarf!’ Fadge darted forward, scooped it up and stood peering helplessly into the wall of fog. ‘I’ll look after it for him, shall I? Till he comes back.’

  He draped the scarf round his neck. He’d fancied that scarf, the first time he set eyes on it. Blue and white stripes, with lettering.

  The doctor was chuckling to himself. ‘Stolen goods hidden inside a chicken! I must tell my friend when he comes tomorrow. He collects odd stories. Sometimes he writes them down.’

  ‘A writing-gentleman? Is he famous? What’s his name?’

  ‘He’s not famous. His name’s Doyle.’ From somewhere beyond the swirling wall of fog, Jack caught the echo of the doctor’s voice. ‘Dr Arthur Conan Doyle.’

  He wanted to turn round, go back, ask the doctor if he meant the Arthur Conan Doyle, the one who wrote Sherlock Holmes, even though the doctor said he’d never heard of Sherlock Holmes.

  But there was no turning back now. He set off towards the familiar sound of traffic and the bright lights of the supermarket.

  15

  A Happy Trap

  Fadge was on his own, slouching along with his hands in his pockets, in the opposite direction from the one the doctor had taken.

  He’d had a bit of trouble shaking the doctor off. Persuading him he didn’t need protection. Told him first he ought to go home to deal with that chicken. Told him second that the Masher would never come near if he saw the doctor lurking. Finished up by saying angrily, ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me with Mrs B’s locket? That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t trust me!’

  So now he was on his own. No need to go looking for the Masher and Rusty. They’d find him soon enough. He wished he had his broom for company. He tried to whistle, but his mouth was dry, in spite of the bottle of ginger beer he’d just poured down his throat.

  When the attack came, they took him completely by surprise, closing in from both sides at once, pinning him up against the wall.

  ‘Oi! Gerroff!’ said Fadge. The Masher backed off to arm’s length, keeping his hand splayed against Fadge’s chest, while Fadge dusted himself down.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ demanded the Masher.

  ‘Up the town,’ Fadge said truthfully. He cut off more questions by counter-attacking. ‘You ran off and left me. What did you go and do that for?’

  The Masher took his hand away. Maybe he was just a bit ashamed, though Fadge wouldn’t have bet ready money on it. ‘No sense in all three of us getting caught.’

  ‘It was that Jack’s fault,’ grumbled Rusty. ‘Bringing the doctor back with him before we finished the job.’

  ‘Where is he, anyway?’ asked the Masher.

  ‘Who? The doctor?’

  ‘Your cousin.’

  ‘My cousin Jack? He had to go home.’

  ‘Good riddance!’ rasped Rusty.

  Fadge glowered at him.

  ‘Anyway,’ said the Masher. ‘We thought, best leave you to talk your way out. You being so small and pathetic and all.’

  Fadge forced a grin. ‘Poor starving child tempted by a larder window that shouldn’t have been left open in the first place?’

  ‘Yeah!’ The others grinned back.

  Fadge stopped grinning. ‘Poor starving child that had had his dinner stolen from under his nose! But I forgive you,’ he said nobly. ‘Because that doctor took pity on this poor, starving child. He took us up the town and he bought me a ham sandwich and a pocketful of peas, and gingerbread, and a toffee apple, and flapjack, and a bottle of ginger beer to wash it down. And hot chestnuts.’ He rummaged in his pockets. ‘I still got some left.’ He took out a grubby paper bag. ‘You want one?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘P’raps you’d rather have this?’ He pulled out his other hand. There was something in it. Something shining golden in the gaslight, with a twinkling of red and green stones.

  It was so unexpected, at first Rusty and the Masher just stood and gazed at Queen Gertrude’s locket, swinging gently before their eyes – to and fro, to and fro – like two boys hypnotised.

  Then, ‘Gimme!’ cried the Masher, snatching at it and missing by a mile.

  Fadge danced away.

  ‘That’s what you were after. Wasn’t it, Masher? Wasn’t it, Rusty?’ The look on their faces! Fadge tossed the prize from hand to hand and back again. ‘Wasn’t no chicken you wanted, it was what was inside it! Hey, Masher? Hey, Rusty?’ Every time the Masher reached out to grab it, the locket was somewhere else. ‘Soon as I twigged, I came looking for you two, so we could all claim the reward together.’

  ‘Reward?’ demanded the Masher, suddenly pulled up short.

  ‘Reward?’ wheezed Rusty, a dying echo.

  ‘Better than trying to sell it, eh?’ Fadge rattled on. ‘The Police must be onto it by now, if there’s a reward offered.’

  ‘What reward?’

  ‘There’s a poster up outside the theatre,’ he told them. ‘LOST, it said, one golden pendant set with red and green stones. Then something about a reward.’

  ‘Wait a minute! You can’t read.’ said Rusty.

  ‘I’ve got ears. I heard someone read it out,’ Fadge said patiently. ‘Lost, it said. And a reward offered. Only if I’d taken it in and told them I found it inside a chicken, they would never have believed me. Where did you find it, Masher?’

  ‘Find it?’ Rusty was still getting his head round the idea of giving the pendant back to the person it belonged to. ‘Wait a minute, Masher. She knows you, don’t she? Saw you when you snatched…’

  ‘Shut up, Rusty! I’m thinking. She saw me stopped and searched and I was clean as a whistle. And I was sorry for the lady – wasn’t I? – losing a valuable locket like that. So we hung around and looked, didn’t we? And we found it, where the thief threw it away, because they were after him. But we’re not telling you, Fadge, where we found it. So you’d better just give us it and we’ll split the reward three ways, like you said. That’s fair, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Fadge, hanging on tight to the locket, ready to skip out of reach. Make a run for it if he had to.

  ‘Hand it over, then.’

  ‘Which theatre was it?’

  ‘Don’t know the name of it,’ said Fadge. ‘Can’t read, can I, Rusty? But I
can show you. I’ll hold onto the goods till we get there, shall I, Masher? I’d like to have it just a little bit longer. Please, Masher?’

  Just in case they changed their minds on the way and decided to skip with it after all.

  Luckily the Masher was feeling generous. He let Fadge keep the locket all the way back to the theatre.

  The Masher peered at the billboard, struggling to make sense of it. ‘L-o-s-t.’ That was a good start. He stood back. ‘You read it, Rusty. Read it out loud, so Fadge can hear.’

  Painfully slowly Rusty spelled out the words, one speckled finger following the letters along. ‘Lost! Yes. One gol-den…’ Years of Fadge’s life seemed to pass, it took so long. Some of the words Rusty had to make up, so ‘receive’ came out as ‘get’ and ‘apply’ turned into ‘ask’ – but he was close enough.

  ‘Ba-iley! Right!’ said the Masher. ‘Give me that! You wait here, Fadge.’

  Meekly, Fadge handed over the prize. They’d earned it. ‘Whatever you say, Masher.’

  He crossed to the other side of the street, so as to have a good view. Then he waited, like the Masher had told him to do, while the two of them walked into Mr Bailey’s trap.

  ‘Beautiful!’ murmured Fadge, when they came out again. A sight for sore eyes: Rusty and the Masher collared by a policeman, one in each beefy hand, and both hollering fit to bust that it was a stitch-up! A fit-up! They’d been framed!

  ‘No sense in all three of us getting caught, eh, Masher?’ he grinned to himself. Then he gave a deep sigh, mainly of happiness, partly of indigestion, and made his way round to the stage door, where his broom and his new life were waiting.

  Watching from the window of a nearby tavern, young Dr Watson lifted his pint pot and drank a toast to Fadge and his rather odd friend.

  16

  The Slips Revealed

  ‘What happened to your scarf?’ said Mum to Jack, as she took the shopping from him. And that was all she said. Nothing about ‘Where have you been gone to all this time?’ and ‘I’ve been worried sick!’ like when he went round to Gary’s to deliver a geography textbook they’d been sharing and stayed to watch the football.