Page 17 of The Amsterdam Enigma (The Continental Capers of Melody Chesterton #3)

B y the time the foreman dismissed Rat and the other workers, it had been a long and tiring day.

Rat had never felt more clearly that his day-to-day existence, while it had its challenges, was still much easier than the lives of most people.

He often wondered what his life would have been like had he not turned up at the back door of Chesterton House with Melody all those years ago.

Would he even still be alive? It was almost certain he would have become a criminal of some sort, either as a pickpocket or working for a gang leader like Mickey D.

The lives of such individuals were often short and brutal, or they often ended up in a prison cell.

Whatever path he might have taken, long, physically arduous days would have certainly been far more routine than they were now.

For the most part, Rat had no regrets and was thankful to Tabitha, Wolf, and Lord Langley for all they had done for him and Melody.

Still, sometimes there was a faint voice in the back of his mind that whispered he had become soft and wouldn’t survive a day back on the rough Whitechapel streets he had roamed as a child.

These thoughts swirled in Rat’s mind as he walked back to the hotel.

Although he had left so early that morning that he hadn’t worried about walking through the lobby, he realised that returning in the early evening was a different matter.

Dressed as he was, he couldn’t risk attracting attention.

He presumed the hotel had a back door. Once he found it, Rat ducked inside and ascended a staircase.

Fortunately, the corridor on his floor was empty, allowing him to slip quickly into his room, encountering no one.

As much as he wanted to share all he had discovered with Melody, Rat needed to wash off the grime from the docks first. He took a bath and changed his clothes.

By this time, it was nearly half-past seven, and he wondered if he would find his sister in her room or downstairs for dinner.

Rat knocked on Melody’s door. Mary answered and informed him he would find his sister in the dining room.

Mary had been in service for too many years not to realise the impertinence of asking Rat how his mission had gone. Nevertheless, she had been so helpful in putting a costume together that Rat volunteered that his disguise had seemed more than adequate and thanked her for all her help.

A few minutes later, Rat entered the dining room and looked for Melody.

To his surprise, he saw her sitting at their usual table, accompanied by Alessandro.

Even more surprisingly, the two appeared relaxed and were laughing together.

Rat wasn’t sure what had changed, but he felt grateful for it.

He hadn’t enjoyed feeling caught between his beloved sister and his esteemed colleague.

The tension that always arose when Alessandro and Melody were in the same room had been exhausting for the young man to endure for weeks on end.

He could only hope that whatever had caused this rapprochement would last.

As Rat approached the table, Melody and Alessandro looked up and smiled.

“We have just ordered, Matthew,” Alessandro said.

“Why don’t you pull up a chair and join us?

” Rat realised how hungry he was, and the chance to share his discovery with Alessandro and Melody at the same time as he ate something was too good to pass up.

The dining room was bustling, but the tables were spaced sufficiently far apart for Rat to tell both of them about the manifests without the worry of being overheard.

Once he had finished explaining everything he thought he had discovered, Alessandro leaned back with his hands behind his head. “And you have copies of these manifests?” he asked.

“I do. However, I have not tried to decrypt them yet. Why don’t we retire to Melody’s suite when we have finished eating? Now that I have deciphered the original scrap of manifest, I don’t believe it will take me long to do the ones I copied today.”

There seemed to be no reason to argue, and thirty minutes later, they had finished their food and made their way up to Melody’s hotel room.

Once again, Mary slipped out of the room silently.

Rat had brought both the cypher key and the paper he had copied with him and he sat with a fresh sheet of notepaper, and a German dictionary, working to decipher what the manifests revealed.

Alessandro and Melody sat quietly while he worked.

Thirty minutes later, Rat looked up from his work. “The manifests I copied are an incomplete set, but based on what I have managed to decipher and my rudimentary German, it seems that the Germans are planning to escalate their activities.”

“What does escalate mean?” Melody asked.

“Again, I don’t have all the information here, but there seem to be explicit references to a planned bombing at a theatre”

“Do you have information on when and how?” Melody demanded. “Or which theatre, in fact?”

Rat shook his head. “I need to go back to the Entrepotdok and see what is in those crates and where they go.”

“Wouldn’t they have left the warehouse by now?”

Alessandro answered, “Maybe or maybe not. It’s my understanding that manifests are filed upon entry, but that, depending on the cargo, it might sit in the warehouse for two to three days. It is certainly worth going back tomorrow to see what more you can learn.”

Melody contemplated the implications of a bomb being detonated at a theatre. “There are potentially hundreds of lives at stake. We need to stop this at all costs.” Rat and Alessandro exchanged a glance. “What? What are you not telling me?” she demanded.

“Our job is not to stop such a bombing,” Alessandro explained. “Our job is to prove definitively that the Germans are behind it. I assume that their intention is to blame this on anarchists, putting the Dutch people on edge and making them more willing to look to their neighbour for some security.”

“Don’t you care that a lot of people might die?” Melody couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Of course we care. And of course, we hope to prevent the bombing from taking place. However, it is not sufficient merely to stop it; we need to do so in a way that provides us definitive proof that Germany is behind this and the other false flag operations. Otherwise, in the long run, far more people might die.”

Melody understood what he meant; of course she did.

However, the hypothetical large numbers of people who might die if the Netherlands were drawn into a war between Britain and Germany felt abstract; no one could predict what might happen.

The very real number of people who would die in such a bombing, however, was not in question.

Turning to her brother, Melody asked, “Are you alright with this, Rat?”

Rat looked uncomfortable with the question, but didn’t answer no.

“I cannot believe this!” Melody stood and looked at the two men.

“You may have your mission. However, as you are both so quick to remind me, I am not an official member of the Secret Service Bureau and do not share the same obligations that you seem to feel you do. I plan to prevent this bombing and stop hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people from being killed.”

“Melody, you cannot do anything that might jeopardise our work,” Alessandro cautioned.

“Or what?”

“Or we will cut you out of the investigation entirely,” he said in a firm voice. “Please do not doubt me when I say this. You are here, in this room, in Amsterdam, only because your brother and I have allowed it. That can change at any point.”

Melody was furious. So furious that she was tempted to storm out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Only the realisation that it was her hotel room stopped her doing so.

Seeking to calm the heated tempers of his sister and friend, Rat said, “Melody, just do not go off on your own and do anything that puts our mission at risk. If you promise that, I promise in return to do all I can to ensure that no one is killed in a bombing.”

Alessandro gave him a look that clearly questioned his confidence in making such a promise, but Rat ignored it. “Now sit back down, Melody, and let us discuss what else we need to do.”

Melody realised they hadn’t told Rat about their conversation with Karl Brenner’s common-law wife. She and Alessandro filled him in on what they had learned.

When they had finished, Rat expressed much the same opinion she and Alessandro had shared earlier: “Well, it does make far more sense why Vermeer, or I should say Brenner, has betrayed his native country. Did you get any sense that this woman knew anything about that betrayal?”

“Nothing,” Alessandro acknowledged. “All she knew was that he was nervous about something of late and had been planning for them to leave Amsterdam. She assumed that his murder was random or an attempted robbery.”

“There was one more thing,” Melody volunteered.

She then told Rat that both she and Alessandro felt they were being followed.

Initially, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to share this information with her brother.

Melody was certain he would revert to overprotectiveness and insist she withdraw from the investigation.

However, if she didn’t tell him about it, Melody was equally certain Alessandro would at some point.

At least this way, she maintained some control over the narrative.

As she predicted, Rat’s first instinct was to be fearful for her safety. “I will be carrying my Derringer with me whenever I leave the hotel,” Melody assured him.

“That wouldn’t have helped you against that supposed footpad,” Rat pointed out.

“If I learned anything from watching Tabby Cat and Wolfie over the years, it is that one can’t hide in the shadows for fear of what might happen. After all, in Morocco, you were the one abducted, not me.” Melody hated having to use this against Rat, but she felt she had no choice.

“Fine. But promise me you will be careful and let either of us know if anything else happens.” Melody promised.

Alessandro wore a thoughtful expression. He then asked Rat, “You said that Huis Jansen was on the manifests you copied. Wasn’t it also on the one Vermeer was holding when he died?”

Rat confirmed this and continued, “It doesn’t seem to be part of the cypher, so I assume it indicates that delivery should be to a private trading concern or perhaps a family-run importer.” “Huis Jansen?”

Alessandro mused. “I know I have heard that somewhere before. Melody, I think that tomorrow you and I may have somewhere to investigate.”

Alessandro would not explain further and merely stated that he would send Mustafa with word in the morning. Melody was pleasantly surprised that Alessandro’s default behaviour was not to exclude her, so she refrained from pressing him for more information that evening.