Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond Read Free Page B

comment and seated herself at the little table only when invited to do so. Maddie sat in the other straight-backed chair and opened her sequined notebook.
    “You wanted to tell me something? About the mysterious, er, widow?”
    Clarice bit her lip. “Could you tell me something first?”
    “If I may.” That was sufficiently vague, allowing Maddie to withhold information for any number of reasons.
    “Is it true that Baron Bodmin’s nephew, Sir Ambrose Peacock, is coming here? To Cairo?”
    “It was mentioned in the aethernet news from London. Overland, so he won’t arrive for several days at best.”
    The pink niece sighed. “I hoped you might have heard from your newspaper sources whether he is truly coming, for he cannot send me another message unless Colonel Muster comes back to Egypt.”
    “Colonel Muster, that friend of the baron’s? What has he to do with Sir Ambrose?”
    Clarice looked down at her hands. “The colonel brought me holiday greetings from Sir Ambrose at Christmas.” The obvious question was why the baron’s nephew was sending messages by an intermediary, but that was nothing to Maddie.
    “If I hear anything particular about the nephew, I will tell you.” Ignoring the girl’s sigh, she set out Tweetle-D’s images of the jeweled collar and the Nefertiti brooch. “Do you remember the jewels the mysterious widow was wearing? Were they like these?”
    “Oh, yes, very like,” said Clarice, after a glance. “Colonel Muster was very put out about the baron buying them.”
    “Your aunt did not wish Colonel Muster discussed yesterday?”
    “Aunt disapproved of my talking aside with an older gentleman. Even a war hero like the colonel. She said the family would never allow me to throw myself away on a penniless ex-officer with tarnished medals. I did not quite understand what she meant, for his medals looked well-polished to me. But I could not say so, for he only took me aside to hand over a note and a little gift.” Clarice’s pink cheeks grew rosier. “From Sir Ambrose, that is. I dared not mention him to Aunt when she asked what the colonel wanted.”
    An illicit attachment to the baron’s nephew? When had it developed? “Sir Ambrose must have left Egypt before I arrived.”
    “Oh, he did not come to Egypt at all. He hoped to when Father sent me here, but his uncle, the baron, would not pay his passage. He paid for the colonel to come out, and that funny professor who visited him over Christmas. So why not his own nephew and only heir?”
    To that grievance there seemed no satisfactory answer. Maddie tried to draw Clarice back to exactly what the colonel had said of the widow, but the girl could not be swayed until she had told of her first meeting with Sir Ambrose at the British Museum, and their subsequent snatched moments, hand-pressings, and sweet compliments, finally finishing with her father’s outrage when her little romance came to light. “He said horrible things about dear Ambrose’s motives, and sent me all the way to Aunt in Egypt, where I am to remain until the start of the London Season. So you see, I could scarce mention dear Sir Ambrose to Aunt when she asked what Colonel Muster wanted, because he was bringing me news of the man I was forbidden to see.”
    “Yes, I quite comprehend,” said Maddie, suppressing an eye-roll. Clarice’s tale was exactly the silly debutante chatter she had abandoned along with her old life. Two years made a vast difference in the preoccupations of a gently-raised girl. Especially when that two years was filled, as Maddie’s had been, with far-ranging adventures and a vastly wider array of acquaintances than a peer’s daughter would ever meet under normal circumstances.
    “As soon as the baron is declared dead,” Clarice continued, “Sir Ambrose will inherit his uncle’s estate in Cornwall. I’m sure Father will let me speak to him then. But he hasn’t yet approached Father and Aunt won’t budge without Father’s word. You