Five frightfully British children's nannies find themselves tasked with pulling off the most extraordinary theft of all time - they must steal the gigantic, 200-million-year-old skeleton of a brontosaurus from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Why? Hidden somewhere in the skeleton is a microdot containing Chinese military secrets that could be vital to the survival of the British Empire. And they aren't the only ones looking for the stolen secrets. Chinese spies and American counter-espionage agents both have a bone to pick with Nannie Hettie and her cohorts. The Great Dinosaur Robbery is a British comedy classic that inpired the Disney film O ne of Our Dinosaurs is Missing starring Peter Ustinov.
Release date:
May 1, 2014
Publisher:
Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages:
192
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The 25th Earl is leaning on his umbrella – tightly rolled, cavalry style – in the main hall of the museum. His narrow face is sun-tanned beneath his curly-brimmed bowler. He has just arrived from Hawaii.
He looks at the museum clock, then checks it against the gold pocket-watch chained to his waistcoat. He has six minutes and thirty-one seconds before he meets his contact.
He swings the umbrella behind his back, paces over to the Theodore Roosevelt showcases, and stands there for a moment. He appears to be examining the president-explorer’s buckskin clothing, but in reality he’s keeping a lookout behind him in the plate glass of the display. Not that he’s nervous – the de Bapeau Charmaine-Botts are noted for the iciness of their sang-froid while facing danger, and the 25th Earl, Queen’s Courier, has faced it many times. He’s watchful because he carries microfilm of Chairman Mao’s plans for the Great Leap Downward, and he’s been told that Mao ordered the Tse Eih Aei, the sinister Chinese spy network, to use any means to stop the secret from being blown. He is cautious also because he knows the way these Chinese agents work. The six Britons who successfully ferried the information out of Peking all subsequently died hideous, vengeful deaths. That’s why the 25th Earl now carries a cyanide phial wedged in his cheek. What he doesn’t know, however, is that the man he is waiting for in the museum is also dead – murdered and buried ten minutes ago in four small boxes in the Canine Garden of Rest, and bewailed by four theatrically tearful groups of Oriental mourners.
* * *
The 25th Earl casually flipped the middle button of his Savile Row Suit and looked at his pocket-watch again. Five more minutes. He tapped his heels together and strolled, past the information desk, towards the other entrance on West 77th Street.
The giant-sized Haida-Indian canoe creaked as he passed. The Earl’s eyes hardened. He gripped his umbrella a little tighter. A shadow moved. The Earl ducked, and a bone-tipped war lance hissed through the air and stuck, quivering, in the body of a stuffed bear. He hung his umbrella on the shaft and turned to face the boat. The dugout crew of painted braves came to life, climbed over the side of the boat, and slowly, in a grim and silent half-circle, moved towards him.
There was the chatter of a party of rescuing schoolchildren. The Earl’s attackers hesitated as the footsteps approached. Then they scrambled back into the boat to resume their previous poses as slave paddlers. The children, schoolteachers and guides appeared. The 25th Earl retrieved his umbrella, nodded to a schoolmistress, who eyed the impaled bear suspiciously. He sprinted up the stairs, keeping close to the wall. He made for the auditorium. From the darkness came a hiccupping sound, and a bullet picked at his sleeve. ‘Dammit,’ he thought, ‘They’re closing in.’ He ducked into a side hall, glanced around quickly, and pulled a neat Georgian silver snuff-box from his waistcoat pocket. He flicked it open and shook a miniscule red and white striped cylinder into his hand. He studied the monster exhibit and vaulted on to the plinth. He reached up and dropped the cylinder into the mouth of the largest of the beasts.
He stepped off, smoothed down his jacket, adjusted his shirtcuff length and checked his tie knot. He smiled. Now it was safe. He’d collect later, and rearrange the hand-over.
Quincey de Bapeau Charmaine-Bott smiled again. Not long, now, and he’d be back in Hawaii, with the sun and the sophisticated young American heiress he’d left by the swimming pool of the Surfrider. Skirting the long hall which had hidden the gunman, and avoiding exhibits which could conceal further attackers, the 25th Earl reached the exit facing Central Park West.
A drably-clothed Oriental tourist moved towards him. Sunlight slanted off the tall walls of the building by the Theodore Roosevelt equestrian statue. The 25th Earl paused to accustom his eyes to the brilliant glare. Then he straightened his regimental tie and began a brisk walk down the steps. Half way, he looked back towards the entrance.
He trod on something soft, stumbled slightly and grabbed a well-rounded body for support.
‘M-M-Madam … most f-f-frightfully …’ he began. A stout children’s nurse, grey-haired and considerably affronted by having her bosom strangled, let go the handle of her push-chair and hit him across the side of his face with her handbag.
‘How dare you, you sex maniac!’ roared her Scots-accented voice.
‘G-G-Good God, N-N-Nanny Hettie,’ gasped the 25th Earl.
The nanny looked. Her eyes squinted. ‘My, my … Maister Quincey!’ she said. Her voice hardened, slightly. ‘And who taught you to be a rapist blackguard?’ She stooped and rubbed her ankle. ‘Kicking your nanny …’ She stood, tried her weight on the foot, then smiled at him. ‘Wheesht, and look at you – a Laird, perspiring in public!’
‘You really shouldn’t h-ha-have h-h-hit me, Nanny,’ said the 25th Earl, his face pale. ‘You’ve just c-c-c-crushed my suicide pill.’ He delicately felt his cheek, with his fingertips.
‘Och! Nonsense,’ exclaimed the nurse. ‘Away with your silly games, Maister Quincey.’
‘I’ve got l-l-less than s-s-s-sixty seconds to live. P-P-Poison. Thank heaven I can rely on you to deliver a m-m-message. No, don’t interrupt me.’ He turned to the young nurse accompanying the Scotswoman.
‘You have a timepiece? Yes? Well, start a c-c-countdown, p-p-please. Start now … at f-f-fifty … forty-five.’ He looked at his own watch, again. The young woman began.
‘Forty-five … forty-four … forty-three …’
The Scots nanny’s face coloured. She looked at him, threateningly. ‘Maister Quincey. Now see here, laddie …’
The 25th Earl took her arm, gently. ‘D-D-Don’t interrupt m-me, p-p-p-please, Nanny Hettie,’ he begged. ‘Just listen. It’s vital. V-VERY important … it’s g-g-government work … d-d-d-don’t have much time …’
‘Fifteen … fourteen … thirteen …’ counted the young nanny.
‘W-W-World security … avoid t-t-total destruction … m-m-museum … the m-m-message … microdot … room th-thirteen … largest beast … don’t t-t-trust anyone …’ The 25th Earl’s jaw stiffened. He struggled to speak. ‘Get it to … to …’
‘Three. Two. One,’ said the nurse-timekeeper. ‘Zero.’
The young Earl drew himself to attention. His eyes focused on the distance. He saluted. ‘G-G-God save the Q-Q-Queen,’ he gasped, collapsing rigidly backwards.
‘Good grief,’ said Nanny Hettie. She looked down at him. ‘Maister Quincey. Maister Quincey. Stop playing games, this minute,’ she commanded. Had he been alive, the 25th Earl wouldn’t have dared to disobey.
‘Maister Quincey …’ The Scotswoman bent anxiously over the prostrate figure and lifted its wrist. She felt for the pulse. A small knot of visitors gathered around them.
‘Is he?’ asked the young nanny, her eyes wide.
Her companion clamped an ear to the Earl’s chest. Then she squatted back on her heels.
‘Oh, God, we’re afraid he is,’ she said, quietly. ‘Oh, dearie us. Poor Maister Quincey, what have we done? He was such a bonnie bairn.’
An Oriental-looking spectator leant forward. He looked at the nannies. ‘Physician,’ he said, running his hands swiftly over the corpse.
‘Okay … okay … okay … Break it up, now. Get moving …’ A New York policeman shouldered his way through the growing crowd. ‘Okay, let me get to him. You, nurse,’ he said, looking at the stout Scotswoman. ‘You go call a meat wagon.’
* * *
Nanny Hettie MacPhish, sixty-year-old ex-royal nanny, had assumed, throughout her working life, so many of her employers’ names that she frequently forgot her own. Currently, she was Nanny Badenberg, working for Walter Badenberg, the New York industrialist. Over the years she’d been Nanny Trent, nurse for the Nottinghamshire barons; Nanny Norfolk, when she nurtured the Duke’s offspring; Nanny Derby; then Nanny Hastings, with Master Quincey. But most glorious of all, she’d been Nanny Windsor – royal Nanny Windsor. Her close friends noticed that, ever since the glorious day of her appointment to the crowned family, she’d also adopted the royal plural in her speech. Now, she never referred to herself as ‘I’ – it was always ‘We’.
‘Watch the bairn a moment,’ she told Melissa, her young companion. She kicked on the brake of young Simone’s push-chair and hurried to the telephone kiosk. After she’d phoned, she stood and listened to the siren as the long Plymouth wove through the traffic towards the museum. She watched the white-coated men jog up the steps and push their way through the persistent crowd around the 25th Earl. Seconds later, they carried his body into the ambulance. The policeman stood on the steps, jotting notes in his pocketbook. The crowd thinned and disappeared. After a minute, there was no sign of anything unusual having happened. She walked back towards Melissa. The policeman stopped her.
‘I’d like your name, ma’am.’
She nodded, and told him.
‘We might like a statement later,’ said the policeman, writing down her address in his book. ‘Must have been a heart attack. Heat, perhaps. Thank you for your help, ma’am.’ He saluted her, vaguely.
Hettie swallowed. Master Quincey had been one of her favourite children. She remembered his clumsy, comic first steps. She thought for a moment. She could remember even earlier, when he’d been carried out of the delivery room, and handed into her arms. Now, he was dead. It wasn’t possible. She hadn’t even seen him for years, although he’d never forgotten to send her gifts at Christmas and on her birthdays.
Nannies aren’t emotional, she reminded herself. She took a deep breath and clenched her fists. ‘Steady, Hettie, old lass,’ she said, quietly. ‘Chin up, chest out, firm step. There’s work to be done.’ She was sure that a Charmaine-Bott would only be involved in something very necessary.
She looked up the steps to the museum. An important message, Master Quincey had said with his dying words. Hettie gulped. Of world importance. It had to be delivered. It was in room thirteen.
The young nanny was sitting on the museum steps, very pale. Hettie thought of correcting her for getting dirt on her uniform, but she stopped herself. She rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Melissa,’ she said softly. ‘Just sit quietly for a few minutes. Wait for us, we’re going inside the museum.’ Melissa nodded.
Hettie adjusted the strap round baby Simone’s waist, and straightened the child’s sun bonnet, then she climbed the steps to the museum entrance. Room thirteen, Master Quincey had said. She looked for an attendant.
‘Sure, lady, you mean the Early Dinosaur Hall,’ said the uniformed man. ‘Everyone wants the Dinosaur Hall. You know, lady, that dinosaur’s nearly two hundred millions of years old. You get that? Millions. Take the elevator. Fourth floor.’
The Scots nanny took the lift to the fourth floor. Room thirteen, its number in gold paint, was easy to find. Hettie remembered more of the 25th Earl’s last words. ‘… Message … microdot … In largest beast …’ She looked inside the room. ‘Lawks!’ she exclaimed. ‘The dear laddie could hardly have chosen anything bigger.’ She walked in. Dominating the centre of the hall, and flanked by two lesser giants, was the fossilised skeleton of one of the largest creatures ever to roam this earth – a brontosaurus.
Hettie made her way to the limestone plinth on which the three petrified monsters stood. She glanced about her. There were two visitors at the far end of the hall. She waited until they had gone, then she squeezed under the guard-rail and climbed on to the plinth, close to the head of the sixty-six-feet-long brontosaurus. She listened for a moment, to make sure no one was near. Then, gritting her teeth and holding back a shudder, she stuck her hand into the beast’s jaws and felt around. She found nothing. She was surprised. It seemed the obvious place to hide a message. She looked for another hiding place. Inside the rib cage, perhaps? She searched as carefully as she could, again with no success. Puzzled, she examined the tail bones. She tried to visualise the size of the message. She recalled the 25th Earl’s words. ‘A microdot,’ he’d said. Would that be bigger than a pea? She decided it would probably be smaller. It must be pushed into one of the bones, then. There were hundreds. It could be anywhere. She made another fruitless search. Then came the sound of approaching footsteps.
Hettie sighed. Sadly, she left the hall.
* * *
William Badenberg boasts that he is 2,922 today. Days, that is. Actually, he’s eight years old, and he’s enjoying himself. Birthdays are one of the few times when he sees his mother and father together. They’re not divorced. It’s just that Mr. Badenberg is always busy being successful.
‘It’s William’s birthday on Tuesday,’ Mrs. Badenberg cabled him in Zurich.
‘Fine,’ Mr. Badenberg cabled back. ‘Fix him a cocktail party. Buy him a new car.’
‘At eight?’ cabled Mrs. Badenberg.
‘At any suitable time,’ replied her husband.
A telephone call to his Swiss office ended the confusion. Mr. Badenberg cancelled forty-three appointments, took two days from work, and flew home.
William has twenty guests, suitably chosen from Mrs. Badenberg’s social blue book, and all children of the right sort of people to know.
They are enjoying a lobster barbecue on the Badenberg patio. They are being entertained. They like Sammy Davis Jnr., Danny Kaye and Julie Andrews. Mr. Badenberg is glad he hired them. He knows that, otherwise, he wouldn’t have known how to entertain one child – let alone this lot. He is standing beside the french windows, anaesthetising his conscience with Martinis. He is feeling guilty about his neglected business.
Mrs. Badenberg flicks her teeth with an elegant fingernail. She’s worried. She’s wondering if the nannies’ champagne has been correctly chilled.
The nannies are a social conundrum. Mrs. Badenberg often discusses them with her friends. The nannies are efficient, polite, perfectly mannered and correct, but diffident. They never mix with their employers – even when encouraged. They prefer their own, élite, company.
* * *
While their charges giggled at Danny Kaye, the nannies sat and chatted in the lounge. They sipped the champagne, and nibbled cracker biscuits generously coated with caviar. They seemed relaxed, but Mrs. Badenberg knew their lynx-eyes missed nothing. She hoped she’d chosen the right year.
Mrs. Badenberg popped her head round the door of the lounge and looked. As usual, they sat in small knots, chatting quietly. No matter how often the nannies met, the cliques remained unchanged. They weren’t grouped by ages or salaries. She could understand a social gap caused by nationality, but these nannies were all British. She whispered to her own nurse.
‘Everything satisfactory?’
‘Perfectly, ma’am,’ nodded Nanny Hettie. Mrs. Badenberg left, pulled the door closed behind her, shrugged, and joined the children on the patio.
‘Terrible, terrible thing to happen,’ said Hettie, resuming her interrupted narrative. The other nannies in her five-strong coterie nodded in sympathy. ‘Poor, dear wee Maister Quincey. And after all these years. Such wonderful people, too, the de Bapeau Charmaine-Botts.’
‘Very thad, Nanny Hettie,’ lisped Susanne Martyn, the youngest nurse of her group, her blonde hair streaky from the reflected white of her uniform.
‘We brought him up. He had dreadful measles … and mumps. But he was always very brave.’
‘He must have been. He passed on heroically,’ said Melissa, the nanny who had made the countdown on the museum steps. ‘You could tell he’d had the right sort of training. Quite calm and collected. Really a credit to you, Nanny Hettie.’
The old nanny shook her head. ‘Not really, lassie. It’s blood that matters. We do our best, but without the right blood … nothing.’
The other nannies nodded again.
‘Foreign Office, wasn’t he?’ asked Emily Biddle, the oldest member of Hettie’s clique. Her hair stood out like porcupine quills. She blinked through a pair of pince-nez. ‘I can remember his grandfather. Victoria Cross – Zulu War, I think.’
Melissa leant for. . .
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