Finding Arcadia Read online

  Praise for Raising Arcadia, the first book of the trilogy:

  “...pleasurably packed with clever, solvable, well-explained puzzles; hits the spot for a mystery lover.”

  Kirkus Reviews

  “Raising Arcadia is a pacy mystery novel that has, at its centre, the irrepressible (and perhaps sociopathic) heroine Arcadia, a sixteen-year-old searching for her place in the adult world. Stuffed with intrigue and mystery, it will be adored by young adults and by adults who prize curiosity and challenge. Read it—and then read it again, to see if you noticed all the clues.”

  Adrian Tan, lawyer and author of The Teenage Textbook

  “Chesterman’s compelling creation of Arcadia, a preternaturally precocious sleuth with an unsettlingly clear-sighted and plain-spoken manner, is matched by the twists and turns of a devious plot, making for a true page-turner.”

  Philip Jeyaretnam, S.C., lawyer and author of Abraham’s Promise

  “In prose so still and measured, Chesterman methodically uncovers Arcadia’s world. Beneath this astonishing portrait of a family is an invisible intellectual machinery at work that will intrigue readers at every turn. I am already impatient for the next book.”

  Leeya Mehta, author of The Towers of Silence

  “What a mind-racing read! Raising Arcadia is Fringe meets Perception, Hermione meets Sherlock... a wonderful exploration of destiny vs. potential.”

  Sharon Au, actress and founder of styleXstyle.com

  © 2017 Simon Chesterman

  Cover design by Cover Kitchen

  Illustrations by Ashley Penney

  Book design by Benson Tan

  Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions

  An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

  1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196

  All rights reserved

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  Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref

  The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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  National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Name(s): Chesterman, Simon.

  Title: Finding Arcadia / Simon Chesterman.

  Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, [2016] | Series: Raising Arcadia ; book 2.

  Identifier(s): OCN 958060290 | eISBN: 978 981 4751 80 3

  Subject(s): LCSH: High school girls--Fiction. | England--Fiction. | Detective and mystery stories. Classification: DDC 828.99343--dc23

  Printed in Singapore by JCS Digital Solutions Pte Ltd

  For V

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1 Tick

  2 Starr

  3 Marshmallows

  4 Cuckoo

  5 Mistletoe

  6 Oxford

  7 Tock

  8 Records

  9 Double

  10 Trouble

  11 Boom

  12 Breadcrumbs

  PROLOGUE

  A dream, but not a dream.

  Haze. A mist due not to steam long dissipated but to uncertainty. The water is warm. Residual bubbles cling to the skin. Now empty, the glass on the stool retains the faintly sweet smell of whisky. And something else?

  Bitterness.

  I am by the water; I am in the water. By the water or in the water? No struggle. Sacrificial limb or sacrificial lamb?

  Tendrils escape at first, wending their way as spirals, then clouds.

  Until the water of the bath runs red.

  1

  TICK

  “Might you persuade your friend to stop breathing quite so loudly? It’s more than a little distracting.”

  For a moment Henry stops respiring completely. It is at best a temporary measure; within a minute his short gasps have resumed, though he is trying to keep the noise to a minimum.

  “I don’t believe he is intending to distract you, Magnus,” she says. “Even you must understand that he finds this predicament somewhat stressful.”

  “Indeed, sister dear. But if we are to get him out of his ‘predicament’ it would be prudent to concentrate on the matter at hand.”

  “I didn’t realise that you were so easily diverted. How ever will you complete your doctorate if the mere breathing of those around you derails your train of thought?”

  Magnus puts down the screwdriver and gives her an exasperated look. “I agreed to assist you in this matter because you assured me that this was a friend of yours and that you needed my help. Is it too much to ask that I be spared unnecessary interruptions?”

  Her own breathing remains steady. Yet she cannot shake a slight tightening in the back of her throat. Anxiety? Another distraction. “Perhaps,” she says evenly, “you might return to what you were doing? There are indications that the mechanism includes a timer of some sort.”

  Magnus sniffs and picks up the screwdriver once more. “Everything is a rush with you. You invite me here, promise me high tea, and instead have me mucking about with tools. It’s really not my style, you know. Scones and clotted cream, you said.”

  Is time of the essence? Difficult to tell, but the consequences may be unfortunate if it runs out. Encourage rather than mock, then. “Very well, Magnus. Clotted cream and scones it shall be—once we are done here.”

  Between them, Henry has been trying not to move his body, even as his eyes dart from left to right. “Now,” he whispers, “that you’ve sorted out afternoon tea, maybe you could get back to disarming the bomb?”

  The visit was unannounced, as usual. She had been reading in her rooms when the creak of a floorboard outside interrupted her. The protestations of the timber were clearly more than would be occasioned by even the largest teacher—with the possible exception of Mr. Pratt. As it was highly unlikely that her erstwhile science teacher would be paying a social call on a Sunday, however, it left only one probable solution.

  “Come in, Magnus,” she called, before her brother had time to knock.

  Or had he even been going to knock? In any case, he entered the room and cast about for a chair. The journey from Cambridge—train ride, then taxi—had taken a toll on him, but on a previous trip to see her at the Priory School one of the standard-issue dormitory chairs had given way under his girth. He settled on the end of her bed.

  “You’re travelling first class now? How extravagant.”

  His face registered nothing, but a hand touched the pocket in which his return ticket was stored. Assuming it had been poking out for her to see? It was a guess, informed by the absence of creases on his jacket.

  “You look less rumpled than when you have to squeeze yourself into a seat in
standard.”

  A raised eyebrow. “Yes, well, it’s good to see you too, Arcadia. I came into some money after performing a modest service that returned St. Edward’s Sapphire to its rightful owner.” A pause, then awkwardly: “So, how have you been?”

  There was no hugging.

  “You can tell our aunt and uncle that I’m fine.” Aunt Jean and Uncle Arthur periodically express concern about her well-being, attempting to check up on her through phone calls and messages.

  And she was fine. Is fine.

  “I informed them of that before coming here, Arcadia,” he continued. “Though I shall not pass on the fact that you’ve lost three pounds in weight. Skipping… breakfast, is it? A mistake as it really is the most important meal of the day. With the possible exception of dessert.” He yawned, leaning back against the wall on which a copy of the periodic table hung. “But you probably should eat a little more red meat, or a lot more spinach. You obviously aren’t anaemic, but particularly at this time of the month—”

  “That’s quite enough, Magnus.” She stood. “Shall we take a walk in the gardens en route to Hall? In a remarkable coincidence, you arrive just in time for high tea.”

  No coincidence, of course. Yet a pre-prandial stroll was not what her brother had in mind. “A walk?” The mattress had settled under his weight; eventually it would revert to flatness. He watched her take a coat off its hook before starting the process of standing up himself. “I suppose it’s a necessary evil if there are scones and clotted cream at the end of it.”

  Outside, autumn colours were giving way to the bleakness of winter. From the rear exit to the dormitory building they began the short walk through the gardens that would deliver them back to the main quadrangle and Hall. Pretty enough, but Magnus clearly suspected (correctly) that she chose this path to make him trudge through the gravel.

  “And how goes your doctorate?” Neither of them is very good at phatic speech, the polite conversation that keeps the wheels of society lubricated.

  “Oh it goes, it goes,” Magnus replied at the time, amiably enough. “And your transition to full-boarding? The Priory School can be a somewhat confined environment if one does not have the occasional means of escape.”

  “Fine also. Your key does come in handy every now and then.” The master key, hidden for several years in Chapel after Magnus graduated, opens all the doors on campus. She uses it sparingly.

  “And the good Mr. Ormiston is still Acting Head?” Though there was an inflection at the end of the sentence, it was not a question.

  “The search for a new Headmaster continues, though I gather the Board is pedalling slowly while the scandal of how the position became vacant fades.”

  “Quite,” he intoned. “Suicide remains the accepted version of what took place here six months ago?”

  Six months. Almost to the day.

  “Yes. Both the public account and the version gossiped about by students and teachers alike.”

  “And no further contact with the woman, Sophia Alderman?”

  Again, not really a question; she would have told him. Or he would have known. Her non-response served as an answer. “I assume that your own various efforts to track down Miss Alderman came to nothing?”

  His irritation showed only in the slight increase in the force with which his shoes hit the gravel. “Candidly, I confess to some admiration for the woman,” he said at last. “As someone who has spent many years cultivating alternative personae online, I acknowledge a fellow practitioner.” A certain graciousness, uncharacteristic of her brother. But irritation also.

  They walked on for a full minute without speaking, the crunch of gravel supplemented by a wind tugging at the last autumnal leaves.

  “And mother?”

  Both of them had spoken at the same time. Both stopped. The movement of the air alone broke the silence.

  “You remember nothing at all about how this device came to be strapped to you?” She has asked this before, but any information would be useful—and getting Henry to focus on something other than Magnus’s furrowed brow might calm him down. Calm them both down.

  “Like I told you,” Henry says quietly, still trying not to move, “I didn’t feel well after lunch—woozy, like I was drunk or something. I went back to my room to lie down and then must have passed out. When I woke, this was attached to me.”

  “And the room was empty?”

  “Yes. And the door locked. But my phone was next to me on the bed and it seemed fairly clear that I should call you.”

  She and Magnus were near the end of their walk when the call came. Henry’s breathing communicated fear even before he spoke. “Arcadia,” he said. “I think I need some help.”

  The device is a metal box strapped to her classmate’s chest. The straps wrap around his body and have multicoloured wires running from the box sewn into them, suggesting that removing them may cause it to… activate? It would have taken a couple of minutes to attach. Lunch was served at noon. “You must have been unconscious for at least four hours. You didn’t eat or drink anything strange?”

  “No, the usual Sunday fare at Hall. Roast beef and potatoes.” His eyes widened. “Oh God, it’s not mad cow disease, is it?”

  “Highly unlikely,” Magnus looks up from removing the third screw on the front of the box. “Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is quite rare these days and takes years before the brain begins to deteriorate. This sounds more like flunitrazepam.”

  “Fluniwhat?” Henry’s eyes dart back to hers.

  “A fancy name for Rohypnol,” she says. “Also known as ‘roofies’—you might have heard about it used as a date-rape drug. It knocks you out and can cause brief amnesia.”

  “I was drugged?”

  “So it appears. You are sure your door was locked when you lay down?” She looks around the room. Window closed against the cold. No evidence of tampering on the door.

  “Yes.” He pauses. “Actually, how did you two get in?”

  While she weighs whether to tell him about the master key, Magnus looks up once more: “The lock was not very difficult to bypass. A credit card did the trick.” It might have, but she doubts it would have been as quick as the master key.

  Henry digests this. “When will the bomb squad get here?”

  Ah. After Henry’s brief phone call had shared the vital information—device, his rooms, anxiety—she prepared to call the police but Magnus stopped her. “Let us at least know what we are dealing with, first,” he said. His curiosity piqued, evidently. Yet it was reasonable to check that Henry was not simply the victim of some kind of a hoax.

  Once in the room it was obvious that this went beyond a student prank. The device itself appears to have been manufactured with considerable care. A glow can be seen through vents in the side of the box, indicating a power source. The front panel was attached with four screws. Intended to be removed? Probably. She carries in her bag a Swiss Army knife with a Phillips-head screwdriver, but hesitated.

  “Is it possible that unscrewing it will set off the device?” she whispered to Magnus, hoping not to alarm Henry further.

  “Yes, it’s possible,” her brother replied. “Though it does appear to be a package intended for you to open.” For the dark metal panel has been engraved with an elegant script, positioned so that Henry could see it when he regained consciousness:

  To Arcadia, with Love.

  And so they have not yet called the police.

  She is more likely to get information from Henry than Magnus and so her brother has taken the screwdriver while she questions her classmate. In the four—no, five minutes they have been in the room, that has yet to yield anything useful. Drugging suggests access to food or drink, though with the low security at school almost anyone could have snuck into the kitchens. Or something could have been dropped in his drink in Hall. Entry to the room points to a master key, a copy of his, or some basic locksmithery. Hard to trace. The device itself is the most likely clue. Magnus has touched no more of it
than required, though given the apparent care that has gone into its design the chance of fingerprints is small.

  And if it is a bomb and detonates then that chance reduces to zero.

  The third screw comes out and Magnus places it on the bedside table. One more.

  “You don’t recall,” he says, starting on the last screw, “a bitter taste in your drink? Flunitrazepam—‘roofies’, if you must—are sometimes said to taste slightly bitter when mixed into drinks, especially alcoholic ones.”

  “No,” Henry replies. “I only had orange juice to drink. The stuff they serve at Hall is never particularly good, but I didn’t notice anything strange.”

  “Pity.” Magnus is working on the final screw when his phone rings—a full choir singing “Land of Hope and Glory”—causing Henry to start.

  Magnus removes it from his pocket and looks at the screen. “Sorry old chap,” he says to Henry, passing the screwdriver to his sister. “I have to take this.”

  Henry’s mouth opens but no words come out as Magnus steps outside the room. With a brisk smile, she turns her attention to the metal panel and the final screw. It turns easily—Magnus’s perspiration was highly misleading. Theatrical?

  As the last screw comes out and she lifts the front panel from the box, there is the gentle click of a pressure-switch being released. Inside the casing, there is a simple LED timer. Its red digits were the source of light visible through the air vents. That light had been stable, the digits fixed on “3:00”. But now it emits a beep and begins to count down. “2:59”, “2:58”.

  Henry has been holding his breath but now gasps out: “Arcadia, what’s happening? What can you see?”

  “Magnus?” she calls, but her brother must be beyond earshot. No time to run for help. Time to run, perhaps? But not an option for Henry. Again, she tries a brisk smile at Henry. “So, at least we can now see what we’re dealing with. There’s a timing device with three wires—red, blue, and green—connecting it to a fist-sized lump of what looks like playdough.” Smells faintly like crayon. Curious.