youâre a right-angled triangle.â
âShut it, Sesame. SoâRob designs a little virus with the help of someone. He puts it in chocolates, which he gives to people on the team until he can get in. But then he forgets whichchocolates have the viruses, and keeps giving them to people accidentally. Remember those chocolates he gave us the other day? Theyâre the ones that were full of viruses.â
I whistled. âIâd forgotten about those chocolates. The virus could have been in there, itâs true.â
âSee,â said Toby, âmy hypothermia was completely right.â
âHypothesis. But no, Iâm afraid it canât be right, Toby. If someoneâs clever enough to think up a plan like that, theyâre not going to forget where theyâve put the deadly bug. But of course, Rob could well have another reason to want to poison everyoneâa reason thatâs got nothing to do with being on the first crew.â
âMaybe heâs an evil mastermind,â suggested Gemma, âjust doing it for fun and out of pure malevolence. Or an international terrorist employed by Lapland to destroy Cambridge.â
âYes. Somehow, Iâm not convinced.â
âWell, do you have another hypochondria?â asked Toby.
âHypothesis. Yes, I do. I think thereâs something we havenât yet thought about. And to find out what it is, we have to go back to the boathouse and investigate.â
So we escaped through the kitchen window, having checked that Mr. and Mrs. Appleyard were busy doing something else (she was telling him that one and a half buckets of goose fat and six packs of butter was quite enough fat for todayâs school lunch). Since Gemma didnât have her scooter with her, she sat on the back of Tobyâs bike, and after heâd finished complaining about how heavy she was (heavier than a blue whale whoâs swallowed an elephant whoâs pregnant with twins, apparently), we crossed town and stopped at the university boathouse.
Which was, unsurprisingly, locked and empty. So close to the race, the team must be spending most of the day in Ely, rowing on the river and doing gym sessions to wind down before eating kilos of pasta.
âTheyâve left the changing room window open again!â I said as we reached the little balcony,having climbed up the wooden beam.
We slithered inside, and immediately switched to supersleuth-and-sidekicks mode. My supersleuth radar, which is a sort of sixth sense you get when the stellar connections in your brain are particularly good at detecting criminal action, was on full blare.
âHere are Robâs chocolates!â called Gemma from the other side of the changing rooms. She read the label on the box. âAn assortment of drop-dead delicious fondants and lip-lickingly luscious ganaches.â
âDrop-dead, I bet,â Toby sniggered.
âBag them all,â I said. âWeâll analyze them later.â
âI donât have a bag,â remarked Gemma.
We looked everywhere for an appropriate bag, but of one there was no sign.
âJust put them in that silly woolly hat,â I said, pointing at the red-and-white hat weâd seen last time, and which was lying under a bench.
Toby dived under the bench to pick it up. âItâs full,â he said.
âOf what? Lice? Dandruff? Brains? Itâs funny, it reminds me ofââ
âOh wow,â he interrupted, looking inside it. âNot . . . quite. Look at that.â
And he emptied it on the floor.
And it went
cling-a-ling!
Ding-a-ding-a-cling-a-ling!
And showered us and the room with light.
Glitters.
Glimmers.
Shimmers.
For that woolly, silly, stripey red-and-white hat had been full of golden, silvery, diamondy, pearly . . .
â
Jewelry!
ââ gasped Gemma. âGeez! Since when has that been here?â
Since when do you say âgeezâ?â
Andrew Cartmel
Mary McCluskey
Marg McAlister
Julie Law
Stan Berenstain
Heidi Willard
Jayden Woods
Joy Dettman
Connie Monk
Jay Northcote