Free Crowns and Codebreakers by Elen Caldecott

unfolded and smoothed flat on the tabletop.
    Minnie hadn’t had time in the gallery to read the letter. She’d had to work fast just to get the photo and put the letter back in place.
    There was a heraldic crest at the top of the page: a shield with a lion on either side. A motto was written in a scroll beneath the lions – mens sana in corpore sano – and below that ‘St Aloysius High School’ and a Lagos address. Typewritten text filled the rest of the page, which Flora read aloud:

    Dear Mr Mainwaring,
    I write to thank you for your continued support of St Aloysius School. Your kindness in sponsoring equipment here is reaping rewards.
    Improvements have been incredible after the outbreak of flu, aggressive though it was. We have employed a permanent nurse to oversee the well-being of the children. Age seems no protection against ill health sadly.
    While donations are always welcome, we are also working hard ourselves. Our 14th auction of arts is scheduled. Class G3 are upmost in their hopes of raising our highest total ever.
    Together we will ensure a bright future for St Aloysius and our students.
    Yours faithfully,
    Hopeful Otlogetswe
    Dean of School

    On the face of it, it wasn’t quite the confession of a criminal gang that Minnie had been hoping for. But if they were right, if the postcard was a cipher, then this letter might have a lot more to tell them.
    Flora lifted the postcard, laid it on top of the letter and drew it slowly down the page. As soon as each of the empty squares framed a section of the text beneath, she froze.
    ‘Write this down,’ she told Andrew. He reached for her pen and scribbled on a napkin as she read out the text: ‘le, ft, lu, gg, ag, e3, 14, au, g3, pm.’
    ‘Oh.’ Andrew sounded disappointed. ‘It’s just gibberish.’
    Piotr grinned. ‘No! No, it isn’t. It’s just got the gaps in the wrong places. Look.’ Piotr drew his fingertip along the napkin as he read. ‘Left Luggage 3, 14 Aug, 3 p.m.’
    Minnie collapsed back on her seat. It really was a secret message. They’d been right. It took her breath away worse than the sprint from the gallery. There was an actual criminal gang operating in town. This was the proof. But doing what? She thought again of the orange T-shirt and the scruffy teddy in the battered black suitcase. This was real. They had to find the boy and get him away from the criminals.
    ‘What’s Left Luggage?’ Andrew asked, bringing Minnie back to the moment.
    ‘It’s when you want to leave your luggage for a while,’ Flora explained. ‘Say you’ve got a few hours in a city and you don’t want to carry your case around: you leave it in a Left Luggage locker. We went to Zurich last year by train and had a few hours in Paris. We left our luggage and went to the Champs-Élysées for macarons.’
    If it had been Sylvie who’d said that, Minnie might have been tempted to make a sarcastic remark. But it was Flora, and she was probably on to something. So Minnie kept her sarky comments to herself – with a bit of a struggle. ‘So you get Left Luggage at a railway station?’ Minnie asked.
    Flora nodded eagerly.
    ‘Is there one at the railway station in town?’ Andrew asked.
    There was a collective round of shrugging and head shaking – no one knew.
    ‘What’s the date today?’ Piotr asked. Without being at school, where the date would always be up on the whiteboard at the front of the class, they’d forgotten all about dates and days of the week.
    Except Flora. ‘It’s the 13th today,’ she said.
    ‘Well, then,’ Piotr said. ‘Tomorrow we need to get to the train station and watch the gang. Whatever is in Left Luggage locker 3 will lead us to the criminals.’

Chapter Thirteen
    ‘I’m going to go and check out the railway station,’ Piotr said. ‘Just to make sure it has a Left Luggage locker number 3.’
    Andrew was blocking Piotr’s way. But he didn’t move when Piotr made to leave. Instead, he planted his elbows heavily on the