The Case of the Black Arrow (A Great Mouse Detective Fanfic) (COMPLETED)

Chapter 3

The home of Edmund and Helen Chattoway was a spacious, posh place on Gloucester not terribly far from the Natural History Museum. They were a fairly young, well-to-do dormouse couple; Mr. Chattoway had some connections to the nobility. His father may have been a business heir, but to what, I never found out. Mrs. Chattoway was a pretty little thing, and quite a socialite too. Both of them were often seen at London's most exclusive parties. Now, however, they could be found on a sofa in their sitting room. Their little daughter, Hazel, was sitting in between them and fidgeting with a doll in her lap. The girl, a near carbon copy of her mother, couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old. She reminded me an awful lot of Olivia Flaversham, the girl from Basil's and my first case together, and that made the predicament that Hazel Chattoway had gone through all the more jarring for me.

The story, as it was recounted to Basil and me, was that four days prior, Mr. and Mrs. Chattoway had attended a gala event at the Museum. Hazel stayed home in the care of her nanny, Miss Lucille Fairfield. Miss Fairfield put Hazel to bed at her usual time, but when the young nanny went to check on Hazel a few hours later, the girl's bedroom window was wide open and Hazel was gone. The kidnapper, currently in police custody, left behind a note demanding five hundred pounds from Mr. and Mrs. Chattoway in return for their daughter, and told them to leave it in a sack in an inconspicuous location in Hyde Park. The Chattoways, desperate to get their child back safe and sound, had spent the next few days trying to come up with the ransom money; the couple may have been an upper class family, but not many people have five hundred pounds lying around. That morning, while Basil and I were questioning Mr. Crispin, the police had received another anonymous tip from The Black Arrow on a missing child's whereabouts. When they went to the location, an abandoned boarding house, The Black Arrow was nowhere to be found, but they found a mouse named Robert Chase. Mr. Chase was a bit worse for wear, not nearly as bad as the smugglers, but it would still take a long time for the bruises on his face to fade away. They also found Hazel mercifully unharmed, with a large envelope from The Black Arrow. Hazel was returned to her parents, and they were informed, to their utter horror, that Mr. Chase was the lover of Miss Fairfield, and that the whole plan was hatched by the nanny so she and Mr. Chase could get married and live comfortably until Mr. Chase found a job to support them. And so both Mr. Chase and Miss Fairfield were both in jail awaiting trial for conspiracy, kidnapping and extortion. The Chattoways were devastated to learn the woman they had entrusted with their daughter's care could betray them so completely. Looking at them sitting together, their faces were drawn and sullen, including little Hazel. Such an expression had no business on the face of a child.

"Now, Mr. and Mrs. Chattoway, are you absolutely certain you have told me everything? Even the smallest detail could have great importance in a case," said Basil, who had been pacing the whole time he had questioned the Chattoways while I sat in an armchair near the sofa.

Mr. Chattoway nodded his head, "Yes, Detective. That's the entirety of what we know," he turned to his wife for confirmation and she nodded her head.

"Is Miss Fairfield going to be arrested?" asked Mrs. Chattoway.

"She's already been arrested," stated Pine, who was standing nearby, "and she and her coconspirator will stand trial for what they have done".

"Will Hazel have to testify?"

Pine held Mrs. Chattoway's eye for a moment before turning his gaze to Hazel, and then back with a sigh, "Perhaps. We have confessions from both perpetrators and written evidence from The Black Arrow, but testimony from Hazel may help get a conviction. We won't know for sure until we turn the evidence over to the barristers".

"What about The Black Arrow?" Mr. Chattoway demanded. "He saved my daughter, and I would like to thank him".

"That's why we're here, Mr. Chattoway," I said. "Detective Basil and I are trying to locate him. We need all the information we can get if we are going to be successful".