Lena Jones - The Silver Serpent

He glances round, one hand hovering just in front of the painting’s surface. ‘Shall we?’

‘ No! ’ I cry.

He bursts out laughing. ‘I wouldn’t really. It might be brittle, after all these years – I don’t want to be the boy who breaks one of Van Gogh’s masterpieces. I’m Arthur, by the way.’

‘Like Hercule Poirot’s friend!’ I say. I can’t stop myself blurting it out.

He smiles and bows. ‘Captain Arthur Hastings, at your service.’

‘You know the books?’ I say excitedly.

‘Know them? I’ve led my life according to the belief system of Hercule Poirot. I like to pretend my parents named me after his friend – but it was actually after some boring great-uncle or other.’

‘Well, I can do one better than that.’ I grin. ‘I’m named after the author herself,’ I announce. ‘I’m Agatha.’ We beam at each other. ‘So … do you work here?’ I finally ask.

‘I wish! No – I’m doing work experience at a printer’s nearby. I come in on my lunch hour, or if it’s quiet and there’s nothing for me to do at work. I’m not allowed to operate the machinery or anything, so when they’re busy I just get out from under their feet.’ He shakes his head in wonder, staring at Wheatfield with Cypresses . ‘Just look at that craftsmanship. It’s exquisite.’

‘It really is,’ I say. We stand side by side in silence for a moment. There’s something awe-inspiring about getting as close as this to a famous painting.

‘Well, I guess I’d better get back to the others,’ I say eventually.

He nods. ‘And they might have started to miss me at the printer’s. I’m not really supposed to go wandering off.’

We wave goodbye to each other and I walk quietly back through to the next room. Although it was great meeting Arthur, I wish I’d had another chance to look at that letter A. It reminds me of the first of the three tests I’d had to complete to become an agent – I only had an A to start with then as well. There’s no one in this part of the exhibition, so I spend a moment in front of another of my favourites, The Starry Night , with its yellow moon and swirly sky. Then I do my duty and examine Bedroom in Arles – admiring the bright colours and the bold simplicity of the bed, chair and door. I remember learning that the walls and door were originally purple rather than their current shade of blue: the paint has discoloured a lot over the years. The painting hangs beside The Yellow House – a picture of the house in Arles in which the bedroom was situated. Finally, I creep through to the next area, where Mrs Shelley is with the other students.

‘There you are!’ hisses Brianna. ‘You’ve been gone for ages! Mrs S asked where you were, and we had to say you’d got diarrhoea.’

‘Diarrhoea?’ I say in horror. Then I take in the glint in her eye. She’s just joking. She laughs.

‘Actually,’ says Liam, pushing his glasses up his nose, ‘nobody even noticed.’

‘Just another day of invisibility,’ I say brightly.

‘Do you really want this lot to notice you?’ says Brianna.

She has a point. There’s quite a lot of rivalry at St Regis. Lots of students live extraordinarily privileged lives, from a financial point of view at least. Their families own estates – or even whole islands. I attend the school on a scholarship and live in a park cottage, because my dad’s the head gardener there. I guess that’s still pretty privileged, but not by their standards. I wouldn’t change places with them for anything, though.

We take the minibuses back to school. Liam, Brianna and I sit close together, and I tell them about meeting Arthur.

‘Tall, blond and pretentious?’ says Liam. ‘Are you sure he’s not a St Regis boy?’

I roll my eyes. ‘He was nice , Liam. And not at all pretentious – he just knows stuff, that’s all.’

‘Whatever,’ he says.

Brianna starts singing some rhyme or other about Liam being jealous because he loves me and wants to do ‘kissing in a tree’. We ignore her. We learnt long ago that it’s the only way to get her to stop – she quickly gets bored if she can’t provoke a reaction.

We get back to St Regis just in time to take the register and then it’s time to head home.

‘Why does the school always insist we come back here after a trip?’ complains Brianna. Then she waves goodbye and walks over to a red sports car – her brother’s. He’s revving the engine, as if he can’t wait a moment longer. He’s one of those impatient, unreliable types and frequently lets Brianna down. But, as her parents are rarely in the country, he’s pretty much all she’s got.

I walk with Liam to his bus stop. I’m wearing my beautiful red wool coat (a birthday present from my dad), and my matching beret to keep my head warm, but there’s a cold wind that makes my ears ache. I pull my hat down as far as it will go and stuff my gloved hands in my pockets. It’s already dark and the streetlights cast orange reflections in the puddles.

‘Any word from the Gatekeepers?’ Liam asks as we walk.

‘Only the homework they keep giving me – no sign of an actual case,’ I reply.

The Gatekeepers’ Guild is the secret crime-fighting organisation that I’m an agent for. I’m their newest and youngest recruit – Agent Cipher X (OK – I made up the code name, but maybe it will catch on).

‘I don’t know why the professor said I’d be getting my first case soon,’ I grumble. ‘I haven’t heard a thing from her or from Sofia.’

Professor D’Oliveira is high up in the Gatekeepers’ organisation. She assigned the second-youngest Guild member, Sofia Solokov, to me as my mentor. The last four times when I’ve been over to HQ, there’s just been a folder full of homework waiting for me – ciphers to solve or information on new Guild rules and policies (as if the 3,051-page rule book wasn’t already enough).

We reach his bus stop and he waits in the shelter, rubbing his arms for warmth. I can see the steam from his breath in the bus-stop lighting.

‘I’m sure you’ll hear soon,’ he says. ‘After all, they were clearly impressed by your work on the museum murder and the water poisoning.’

‘I guess,’ I say with a shrug. ‘But sometimes I worry they’re going to forget about me.’

‘Forget about you ? Agatha Oddlow, crime-fighter extraordinaire?’ he says in mock horror. ‘Never!’

I laugh. Liam’s always so good at cheering me up.

‘Anyway,’ he continues, ‘since when have you waited to be allocated an investigation?’

‘True … Maybe I should go over to headquarters,’ I say, ‘and ask for a case. It might just be that the professor is waiting for me to be proactive.’

Liam nods. ‘I think that’s a good plan. And if all else fails, we could always investigate that woman over there,’ he says, pointing to a middle-aged woman across the street, who’s rummaging in a plastic bag. ‘She looks very suspicious.’ As he says this, the woman draws out a banana, peels it and takes a bite. ‘Definitely sinister,’ he says. ‘Could this be one for the Oddlow Agency?’ He raises an eyebrow.

I laugh. We’ve neglected our detective agency since I became a real investigator. The Oddlow Agency (‘No Case Too Odd’ – its motto inspired by my surname) seems a bit like a game now – almost as if we were different people back then. It feels as though we’ve done a lot of growing up in a short space of time.

Liam’s bus approaches, and he holds out his arm to signal to the driver to stop. It pulls up and Liam climbs aboard. I wave through the window at his outline, which is strangely distorted by the glass, then I continue along my way. I’ll drop off my school bag at home and change into more practical clothes, before heading over to the Guild headquarters.