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Chapter 3
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It was already early evening as the gang walked back towards Oxford city center. Most shops were now shut and the city was quieter, but there were still groups of people wandering around, obviously tourists from their behavior. Most were in twos and threes, but there were some guided tours going on, a few with costumed guides.
As they entered a narrow, now deserted, street, they were faced by a thin cadaverous-looking man. He was dressed incongruously in Edwardian frock coat and checked pants with a top hat. The skin of his face and hands was a decayed gray color and his grin exposed a row of pointed fangs.
The three friends instinctively stopped walking and stood closer together.
“It’s always a man in a rubber mask,” whispered Daphne in a very small voice. “Isn’t it?”she added with just a trace of tremor.
The strange figure took off his top hat and bowed theatrically to the three of them. He then retrieved a small suitcase from a shop doorway, where it had apparently been hidden. He laid it on the ground and opened it then reached up and pulled his head off.
Daphne’s initial assessment had been wrong in only one respect: it was actually a woman in a rubber mask. Underneath the mask, she had pure white make-up shading almost to black around her eyes and blue lipstick, contrasting weirdly with her short spiky red hair. She took off the frock coat and then flung a long dark Victorian-style dress over her head, wriggling into it and pulling it down to conceal the jaunty checked pants. She put a straggly black wig on her head and checked the effect with a small hand mirror. She roughly folded the frock coat and put it in the case, followed by the hat, which proved to be a collapsible opera hat, then returned the case to its hiding place.
The woman turned to face the gang briefly. The make-up really did make it look as if she had just been dug up. “Haunted Oxford tour,” she explained as she gave them a cheery wave and ran off.
The gang stood and exchanged astonished glances. After a moment the sound of a tour party’s delighted shrieks came to them from a neighboring street.
“I told you the whole place was just a big theme park,” Daphne commented.
“So, what next?” Fred asked as they reached the High Street again.
“Back to the library?” Velma suggested.
“But you guys already looked for clues there,” Fred protested.
“True, but another pair of eyes might spot something we missed,” Daphne pointed out.
“What I still don’t get is why you’re busy looking up somebody’s family tree,” Fred remarked, as the trio headed back towards Shrewsbury College.
“Yeah, you’ve not really said what this project is about, Vel, and you’re being awfully secretive about it,” Daphne agreed.
“You’re only secretive when it’s something you think we might laugh at,” Fred added. “Besides, this is Mystery, Inc business now, so ’fess up.”
“I suppose you’re both right,” Velma responded with a resigned sigh. “You remember Hephzibah Griffin, my friend from college? Well, she has been trying to track down some of her family history to prove or disprove some mysterious family legends.”
“But you do science, not genealogy!” Daphne objected.
“Mysterious family legends sounds right up our street though,” Fred commented approvingly.
“Research is research, pretty much whatever the subject,” Velma countered, “and this has a lot of science in it. It seems that they had some sort of family story that Hephzibah’s great-grandfather was a fantastic inventor who came up with all sorts of things years and even decades ahead of their time but kept it all secret and never published his work.”
Fred burst out laughing. “I’ve heard that one before.” He put on an outraged wavering squeaky voice. “My great granddaddy invented lightbulbs in 1855 but that varmint Edison stole all his ideas!”
“That’s right,” Daphne agreed, laughing at Fred’s performance. “I investigated tales like that when I was a cub reporter. All you ever find is outrageous claims and diaries full of lunatic ravings.”
“See what I mean?” Velma burst out indignantly. “You’re both laughing at me!”
“Sorry,” Daphne said, trying to keep her face straight. “Do carry on.”
Fred stopped laughing and nodded his head but said nothing for fear of setting himself off again.
“Actually,” Velma continued soberly, “I hit hard evidence almost as soon as I started looking this morning.”
“Evidence of what?” Fred asked. “Any important inventions?”
“The military tank in 1901, for one,” Velma offered.
Fred and Daphne both wrinkled their brows.
“1916,” Velma prompted, laughing at their puzzlement. “Tanks were developed first by the British during World War 1.”
“And this 1901 tank?” Daphne queried. “Just an idea? Or something more?”
“Detailed drawings,” Velma replied, “you could build one. Not only that, but a solid description of how they could be used in action. The notebooks predict static defensive warfare with opposing armies in trenches. This tank, or ‘land-ship’ as Griffin called it, was longer than actual World War 1 tanks, but worked the same way. It had guns on the sides to fire along the length of trenches as it crossed them, just like real 1916 tanks. Not only that, but the guns would be remotely controlled from inside the tank with joystick controls to protect the gunners.”
“‘Land-ship’ sounds like something out of an SF story,” Daphne commented.
“Oddly enough, that’s exactly the term the British used before they adopted ‘tank’ as a cover name,” Velma confirmed.
“That’s a pretty startling find,” Fred conceded, “but you said there were more?”
“Fighter airplanes and bombers in 1906,” Velma replied.
“Now I do know the date for that,” Fred said excitedly. “1903. The Wright brothers.”
“So that one isn’t a new invention, then,” Daphne commented.
“I think the concept of the airplane as a fighting machine was new,” Velma responded. “Even in 1914, military pilots were throwing bricks at each other and trying to tangle their propellers with ropes. Certainly, Griffin’s drawings of rockets and bombs look very convincing and the descriptive notes in his journals are chilling. He foresaw defenseless cities razed by aerial bombardment.”
All three friends fell silent while they considered this grim prophecy, so terribly realized in subsequent decades.
“That’s fairly scary for one morning’s reading,” Fred remarked.
“I had just found one more before I was jumped.”
“Not more death and destruction?” Daphne asked.
Velma nodded. “I think he also came up with a workable atom bomb. And that was in 1913 or thereabouts.”
“What?!?” exclaimed Fred and Daphne together, stopping dead in their tracks.
“It certainly reads that way, although all the terminology is different from the words we would use today. The device he describes seems to be set off by removing an inhibitor of some kind rather than by bringing together a critical mass as World War 2 style bombs did.”
“Just a minute,” Fred said, the light of recognition dawning in his eyes. “This sounds familiar; at least the tanks and planes do. Didn’t H.G. Wells write science fiction stories with those things in them?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Velma confirmed. “I’m sure that Griffin and Wells knew each other. The tanks appear in The Land Ironclads, which appeared in 1903 and was mainly about devastating static warfare. Airplanes as weapons appear in The War in the Air in 1908 or so. Wells was mainly known as a socialist thinker and writer in his own time, so I wonder if Griffin was feeding him ideas to try to warn the world about the threat of technological warfare.”
“What about the atomic bomb?” Daphne asked.
“In a book by Wells called The World Set Free, published about the beginning of World War 1, I think,” Velma replied. “It’s a while since I’ve read any of those, but I don’t think the descriptions in Wells’s novels exactly match the ones in Griffin’s notes.”
“To keep the secrets safe?” postulated Daphne.
“Or maybe Wells just didn’t completely understand the science,” countered Velma.
“So what happened to this guy Griffin?” Fred asked.
“I’m not quite sure,” Velma answered. “He was active in England up until the outbreak of World War 1, and we know he died in the United States in 1928, but he just disappears in between.”
“Disappears!” Daphne exclaimed, startling her two friends. “The Invisible Man’s name was Griffin: I knew it sounded familiar and I couldn’t work out why.”
“That’s H.G. Wells too, but surely you’re not telling us that was true as well?” Fred demanded skeptically.
“I don’t think so,” Velma assured him, “but maybe Wells borrowed Griffin’s name for the antihero of the book.”
“What was Griffin’s first name?” Daphne asked.
“I don’t know,” Velma admitted. “The library just catalogs him as ‘Griffin’ and that’s the way he signed his drawings too. I think it may actually have been a pseudonym.”
“But your friend’s surname actually was Griffin,” Fred objected.
“Maybe Griffin adopted his alias as his actual name when he moved to the States,” Daphne speculated.
The gang continued their discussion until they reached Shrewsbury College library once again. Like most college libraries, it was open until late in the evening for students to pursue research or to work on essays. In the summer, during the university’s long vacation, there were very few people in evidence, probably mainly academic staff and graduate students taking advantage of the peace and quiet.
Elizabeth Wyvern was nowhere to be seen and an enigmatic note on her office door said Back Later,with no indication of when or even which day. Velma still had her reader’s card from earlier in the day and hoped that would still unlock the study room she had used earlier.
As the trio ascended the grand marble staircase in the entrance hall, Velma pointed out the painting of the first librarian, which was an impressively large full-length portrait almost life-size.
“Miss Wyvern looks a lot like her,” Daphne commented as he paused to study the painting.
“Well, she’s tall and thin and has her hair in a bun,” Velma conceded.
“No, there’s something about the eyes and cheekbones too,” Daphne persisted.
They continued up to the study that Velma had been using. She swiped her card through the slot on the door and it unlocked the door as she hoped. The room had been tidied since Velma and Daphne had last seen it earlier in the day and the tangle of blue rope had gone.
“I’ll show you what I found,” Velma announced. She logged herself into the computer terminal then performed a search for ‘Griffin’. There were no results. Puzzled, she tried again with a fuzzy search instead. The results included ‘Gribbin’, ‘Griffiths’ and several other near misses, but no ‘Griffin’.
“Odd,” she commented, trying a different approach. ‘Landship’ produced several references to reports produced by the British government committee that invented tanks, but nothing else.
“Very odd,” Velma concluded. She planted her elbows on the edge of the desk and rested her chin on her folded hands as she stared perplexed at the screen. The other two watched her silently, not wishing to disturb the train of thought.
“Jinkies!” Velma exclaimed after a moment’s silence. “The answer’s right under my nose!” She pointed to a number scribbled in ballpoint pen on the back of her left hand. “I jotted down one of the file references right here,” she explained, “so I can still go straight to one of the documents even if the index isn’t working.”
Velma tapped the reference into the terminal. An error message appeared. “Something isn’t right here,” she complained.
“So you’re stuck?” Fred asked sympathetically.
“Not quite!” Velma replied dramatically. “I…” Whatever she was about to say was interrupted by a buzzing sound from her purse lying on the floor behind her chair as the vibrating ringtone on her cellphone resonated against the other contents. With a slight mutter of irritation, she stood up and retrieved the phone.
Velma looked at the number showing on the display with a puzzled frown. She shrugged and pressed the green button anyway. “Velma Dinkley,” she announced. She listened to the reply then hissed, “It’s Mike!” to Fred and Daphne. She listened again and then gasped, “No!”
“What’s up?” Fred asked in consternation.
“Just a moment Mike,” Velma instructed, “I’m going to turn the volume up so Fred and Daphne can hear too.” She thumbed the scroll button to push the volume to maximum while the other two huddled close to her. “Right, say it again, Mike; we’re all listening.”
“OK, Velma,” the tinny caricature of Mike’s voice replied. “I went out to get some groceries earlier on, maybe an hour ago. It was just after you left, anyway. I got back about ten minutes ago and found Suzanne all tied up.”
“Is she OK?” Velma asked in alarm.
“Yes, she’s fine,” Mike confirmed. “Really annoyed but not hurt or anything. She says she was at her desk working at the computer when she heard the door opening. She went to investigate and got jumped and tied to a chair. I found her like that and everything had obviously been turned over.”
“How could he tell?” hissed Fred. “The place was a tip already.”
“Shut up, Fred,” Daphne hissed back.
“Did she see who jumped her?” Velma asked.
“Only that it was someone wearing black,” Mike replied. “Her spectacles came off and she was blindfolded, so she didn’t see much.”
“What did they take?” Fred asked.
Mike sounded puzzled. “That’s the funny thing. Hesperus has obviously been searched fairly thoroughly but, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing missing.”
“What do the police say?” Daphne asked him.
“I didn’t report it. After all, nobody got hurt and nothing was nicked, so we’re not going to bother. Besides, this has to be something to do with you lot. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Velma concurred. “Thanks for telling us and I hope Suzanne calms down soon.” She bade Mike farewell and hung up.
The gang looked at each other in puzzlement. This development contributed far more questions than answers to the case.
Daphne broke the silence first. “Maybe Suzanne was the real target all along,” she ventured.
“But in that case, why destroy Velma’s notes?” Fred objected.
“And why not steal anything at the houseboat?” Velma added.
They fell into silence again.
“Whoever attacked me was very careful only to steal my notes from this morning,” Velma pointed out. “They didn’t take my computer or my notebook, just the notes.”
“That must make you the real target,” Fred agreed.
“But why should anyone attack Suzanne at all in that case?” Daphne complained.
“Mistaken identity?” Fred offered in desperation.
“That just doesn’t make any kind of sense,” Velma replied emphatically. “Somebody could just about mistake me for Suzanne, except that I was somewhere she would never go and it would be obvious to anyone that my notes weren’t anything to do with genes.”
Daphne nodded her head in agreement. “It makes even less sense the other way round. Suzanne was at home but Velma is a visitor so she doesn’t have a home here.”
Put that way, Fred had to agree. There was no way that the attacker could have been in any reasonable doubt that Velma and Suzanne were different people. The puzzled silence descended once more.
“OK, try this,” Fred said at length. “Mike is the perpetrator. Velma saw him staring at her, after all. Suppose it was he who tied Suzanne up to divert attention away from himself.”
“No,” Daphne replied, shaking her head. “All that would do is to attract more attention onto Mike and Suzanne. Before this happened, all we had to connect Mike with the case was a chance resemblance between Velma and his girlfriend.”
“That’s true,” agreed Fred. He thought for a moment then his face brightened. “Maybe Suzanne is the perpetrator and she tied herself up to divert suspicion.”
“But there isn’t any suspicion to divert!” Velma protested. “We didn’t know Suzanne even existed until we visited Hesperus and there’s nothing to connect her with the incident at the library.”
“Of course,” Fred persisted, “we only have Mike’s word for it that Suzanne ever was attacked.”
“Well, that’s true,” admitted Velma, “but there’s no possible reason for him to make it up. Even if he was trying to hide something, this would only make him seem more suspicious.”
“I don’t think we actually know enough yet to make any sense of this incident,” Daphne pointed out wisely.
“Just before her phone rang, Velma had a ‘jinkies’ moment,” Fred reminded the others. “What were you going to tell us, Vel?”
Velma’s face brightened. “Oh yes! This file number refers to the file reference on the computer system, but if you need to look at an original document, it’s also the reference for the physical file down in the archives.” She pointed at the floor dramatically.
Velma logged out of the computer terminal and the three friends headed for the staircase down to the main entrance. A small door off the entrance hall led to a more humble staircase with plain stone stairs worn smooth and slightly concave by a century of traffic. The basement was cool, dry and dimly lit with the distant rumble of air-conditioning machinery maintaining the perfect atmosphere to preserve old books. Bank after bank of shelves filled the space between the stone walls and stretched off into the distance.
Using the small flashlight she carried in her purse, Velma consulted the reference number still written on her hand, glanced at the numbers on the nearest shelves and then led the way into the depths of the archives. At last they reached a narrow aisle between two bank of shelves marked with numbers in the right range.
Some documents were simply books standing on the shelves in the ordinary way. Some were stored in box-files, others in cardboard archive cases while tubes and portfolios presumably stored maps and drawings. The Griffin archives proved to be in a surprisingly small archive case and a tube of drawings about three feet long. It was on quite a high shelf, so Velma allowed Fred and Daphne to use their superior height to retrieve the items.
Velma opened the tube and knelt down on the floor to examine the contents while Daphne found the switch for some additional light above the aisle where they had found the Griffin documents. Fred and Daphne gazed in wonder at the drawings which Velma had described to them but which she had only seen on screen herself. The reality was breathtaking. The draftsmanship was quite exquisite, executed with boldness and clarity and a superb level of artistry. The drawings were in black ink on white gesso-coated linen and had been subtly colored in a watercolor wash that gave them depth and solidity as if they could be lifted right off the page. The colors and line-work were so fresh they could have been done yesterday. The tank, the flying machines and many other inventions were all there, exactly as Velma had promised.
Abruptly, the light over the trio’s head went out. They were not in complete darkness as the dim background lights were still on, but the contrast was dramatic and momentarily incapacitating. There was a flurry of unexplained activity during which Velma and Daphne were both pushed over onto the floor.
A few moments later, the lights came on again as Fred found the switch at the end of the shelves. Velma looked around in dismay as she realized that the drawings and the unopened archive case were all gone.
“Was that your ghost?” Daphne asked, still sitting on the floor, slightly stunned.
“Yes, I think so,” Velma replied, equally stunned.
“I get the feeling she doesn’t want you to read any of that stuff,” Daphne commented ruefully.
“I had a glimpse of a woman in green,” Fred confirmed, “just the way you described her.”
“But where did she go?” Daphne asked.
Fred looked around him then moved back to where he had been standing before. His shoulders almost touched the shelves on either side of the aisle where they had gathered.
“I’m sure Fred would have noticed if anyone had tried to squeeze past him,” Velma concluded.
All three turned to look in the other direction. The two banks of shelves stopped where they abutted a wall with wooden paneling on it. Fred stepped past Daphne and Velma and began inspecting the wall. After a few moments, a narrow door swung open.
“A secret passage!” exclaimed Daphne delightedly as she got back to her feet and joined Fred to inspect the new discovery.
“Let me see too!” Velma demanded.
The passage ran parallel with the wall away from the door in either direction. It was brick-lined with a cement floor and was scrupulously clean. A galvanized steel duct near the ceiling indicated that part of its present function was to contain cabling. As Fred stepped into the passage, it was suddenly lit by a series of small lightbulbs spaced every few yards along its length. He looked up and noticed an infrared detector above his head.
“This has to be the least spooky secret passage I have ever seen,” commented Fred, slightly disappointed.
“But why does a Victorian library have secret passages at all?” asked Daphne, now puzzled.
“Probably for the same reason that a big country house might have them:” Velma said, “so that servants could go about their duties largely unobserved and not disturb the household. I think the idea here is that library staff were regarded much like domestic servants and were to flit about invisibly, not distracting the daughters of gentlefolk who were students here.”
“So there’s going to be more passages like this?” Fred asked excitedly.
“I’m almost certain of it,” Velma assured him.
“OK, gang, let’s split up!” Fred announced confidently.
“Er, Fred, the passage only goes two ways,” Daphne pointed out helpfully, “and there’s three of us.”
“That’s OK,” Velma responded. “I’ll stay here. I’m sure there are more clues all around us if only I could spot them.”
As Fred and Daphne set off to explore the secret passages, Velma began a methodical consideration of the archive basement. Other than the secret door Fred had discovered, there was only one door into the basement, the one by which they had entered. Given the dim lighting, it was not impossible that someone could enter that way and creep right up to them unobserved. However, getting past Fred where he had been standing was probably too unlikely to consider. They must have been attacked via the secret passage.
Velma inspected the secret door closely. It was extraordinarily well made, only betrayed by fractionally thicker gaps in the woodwork than the joints in the paneling elsewhere. Velma entered the secret passage and looked along it in either direction as the lights came on. More doors were visible, clearly leading into adjacent aisles between banks of shelves in the basement. Satisfied at her discovery, Velma returned to the basement with its bank after bank of shelving. She explored some adjacent shelves and confirmed that there were secret doors at regular intervals right around the basement. That implied that there was nothing particularly special about the location of the Griffin papers; the ‘ghost’ could have jumped out at them in the same way anywhere else in the basement.
Secret passages were beguiling but possibly not where the important clues were to be found. Velma sat down on the floor with her back to the paneled wall to consider the other features of the basement. She methodically itemized the contents to sift them for ideas. There were the shelves, which were sturdily constructed from wood, possibly oak, Velma thought, and were probably as old as the building itself. The contents of the shelves were varied, with books, various shapes and sizes of containers for documents, big folders full of drawings and a few small glass containers, which on closer inspection held preserved zoological specimens in varying degrees of grossness. Nothing remotely enlightening so far, Velma realized.
Then there were the modern additions to the basement. There were light switches, Velma noted, feeling that she was reaching the bottom of the barrel and trying desperately to think of something interesting about light switches. There were also the other modern fittings, such as the fire alarm points.
Jinkies! Velma almost said aloud as she remembered what else would be likely go with fire alarm points. There were smoke detectors and infrared heat and movement detectors inconspicuously fitted into the ceiling. They had been designed to blend with the largely original 19th century interior, but were clearly there once you started to look for them. After further searching, Velma found a very small discreet CCTV camera. Once she had found the first and knew what to look for, she discovered that it was one of many.
It was now obvious to Velma that although the trio had been alone in the basement, they had almost certainly not been unobserved. That implied that whoever had attacked them was probably a member of the library staff, both to have access to the monitors for the CCTV cameras which must exist somewhere in the building and to have a working knowledge of the secret passages.
Fred and Daphne found that the passage they had entered was part of an extensive network threaded through the entire building, just as Velma had suspected. Exploring the library in this way proved to be confusing. The way the secret passages and narrow hidden staircases were connected together was quite different to the way that the rooms they served were connected.
Despite having set off in different directions, Fred and Daphne kept meeting up with each other again. After the third encounter, they decided that they might as well join forces and continued their exploration together. After discovering many dead ends and several seemingly promising routes that actually appeared to double back on themselves, they eventually found themselves inside the study room that Velma had been using earlier.
“Well, we know how the ghost got to Velma now,” Fred commented, pleased with their discovery.
“I had no idea this door was here,” Daphne said as she examined it from inside the study room. “But it still doesn’t help much if we don’t know why the ghost was after Velma.”
“If we catch the ghost, we can ask her,” Fred pointed out reasonably.
After some trial and error, Fred and Daphne worked their way back to their starting point in the basement, where Velma was still studying the security and surveillance equipment.”
As Fred and Daphne returned to the basement, Velma raised her finger to her lips and handed them a piece of paper. It read, “CCTV CAMERAS EVERYWHERE. DON’T KNOW IF MICROPHONES TOO. JUST TALK NORMALLY.”
“So did the passages lead anywhere interesting?” Velma asked brightly.
“Not really,” Fred replied disingenuously. “We just got lost a lot.” He scribbled an addition to Velma’s note and handed it back.
“PASSAGES GO EVERYWHERE. WE FOUND A WAY INTO YOUR STUDY,”she read. “That’s a pity,” Velma said. “I was really hoping we’d found a clue.” She added to the note again and passed it to Fred and Daphne.
Daphne studied it. “MUST BE MEMBER OF LIBRARY STAFF WATCHING VIA CCTV,” she read. “Whoever took the drawings we were looking at got clean away,” Daphne remarked aloud while adding her private comment to the note.
Velma read Daphne’s reply. “ANY IDEA WHO?”
“Maybe we should just give up on this one,” Fred suggested in reply to Daphne’s spoken comment, while Velma scribbled a reply to her written question.
“WOMAN WITH BOOK TROLLEY? DATABASE TECH? LIBRARIAN? PROBABLY LOTS MORE POSSIBILITIES,” Fred and Daphne read.
“I think you’re right, Fred,” Daphne replied. “Some cases just don’t pan out.” At the same time, she wrote, “FRED: WE NEED A TRAP!”
Fred indicated his agreement with a discreet thumbs up while Velma commented out loud, “I’d like to go back and try a little more research before we leave Oxford, but let’s go and grab a quick coffee first.”
The others murmured their assent and the three friends trooped back up to the entrance hall. Miss Wyvern was back in her office and seemed to be working with a manuscript. Velma looked in briefly to tell her of their plans.
| End of Chapter 3 | ||
| Back to Chapter 2 | Contents | On to Chapter 4 |
Text © Copyright Gillian B 2005
Pictures © Copyright Gillian B, Jaguaro, Amanda Dressel 2005
