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  DEDICATION

  For Nora

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  PART I: DETECTIVES’ ROW The Last Relative

  Inspector Webster’s Detection Correspondence Course

  A Curious Invitation

  A Visit to Mr. Abernathy

  PART II: A CONTEST OF WITS In Slaughter’s Lane

  Creeping Ivy

  Let the Games Begin!

  The Investigatorium

  Detectives In and Out

  Dead!

  Bertram’s Remarkable Digestive Tonic

  PART III: SUSPECTS AND SECRETS Madame Ermintrude

  Brandelburg Blue

  A Crowd at the Gates

  The Rattrap

  Friends and Enemies

  The Night Watch

  Answers and Questions

  PART IV: INTO THE MAZE The Vanishing Corpse

  The Gyptian Statuette

  Mr. Abernathy’s Secrets

  The Third M

  The End of the Rope

  Constable Trout

  PART V: WHODUNIT? A Visit to Mr. Peartree

  The Wrong Murder

  The Truth at Last

  A Full House

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Caroline Carlson

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART I

  DETECTIVES’ ROW

  CHAPTER 1

  THE LAST RELATIVE

  Most people who made their way to Detectives’ Row were in trouble, one way or another, and Toby Montrose was in a heap of it. He had been living with his uncle Gabriel for only two months, but trouble had always been good at finding Toby. This time it had tracked him down more quickly than ever.

  Currently, the trouble’s name was Mrs. Arthur-Abbot. She sat across from Toby in the one good chair Uncle Gabriel reserved for clients. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Arthur-Abbot. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me to do.”

  Mrs. Arthur-Abbot picked up the cup of tea Toby had brought her. She frowned at it. Then she frowned at the damp ring it had left on the dusty tabletop. “I want you,” Mrs. Arthur-Abbot repeated, “to tell me why I have paid you this visit.”

  Her words didn’t make any more sense to Toby the second time he heard them. Somewhere in the walls, behind the peeling flowered paper and the pictures yellowing in their frames, a mouse scampered past. Toby hoped Mrs. Arthur-Abbot wouldn’t notice the noise. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said, “but wouldn’t it be easier for you to explain to me why you’re here?”

  Mrs. Arthur-Abbot set down her cup without drinking from it. Her gold bracelets clacked together on her wrist. “You are a detective, are you not?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Strictly speaking, Toby was only a detective’s assistant, but he didn’t think Mrs. Arthur-Abbot would like the sound of that.

  “Then detect! Deduce! Study my person—the splatter of mud on my shoe, perhaps, or the faint scar above my left ear—and tell me what troubles have caused me to seek a detective’s assistance.” Mrs. Arthur-Abbot leaned forward, and Toby leaned away; the legs of his ancient chair creaked dangerously under him. “I’ve read my fair share of stories in the Sphinx Monthly Reader, young man, and I know how these things work. Hugh Abernathy is always able to determine his clients’ problems a good five minutes before they open their mouths. I’m sure any halfway decent investigator can do the same.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or aren’t you halfway decent?”

  “I’ve read the Sphinx, too, ma’am,” Toby said quickly. He hated to admit it under Uncle Gabriel’s roof, but at least Uncle Gabriel himself wasn’t home to hear the confession. He’d asked Toby to watch the office for him while he went into town, and he’d given Toby the usual jumble of old case records to organize, but he hadn’t said a word about what to do if a new client came to visit. The thought probably hadn’t occurred to him. Mrs. Arthur-Abbot was the first new client Toby had seen since he’d moved to Detectives’ Row, and he’d been so surprised when she knocked on the door of Montrose Investigations that by the time he realized he didn’t have any idea what to do with her, she was already sitting in Uncle Gabriel’s parlor and asking for tea.

  “I can see you’re not willing to help me,” she said now, rising from her chair. “In that case, I’ll take my business to another agency. I’m told Mr. Abernathy can identify criminals by doing nothing more than glancing at their fingernails.”

  “Wait!” said Toby. “Please don’t go!”

  He wished he didn’t sound so small and panicked, but he had to fix this trouble before Uncle Gabriel came home. In the motorcar on the way from Grandfather Montrose’s, with his small suitcase bouncing on his knees, Toby had made himself three promises: he would be polite, he would not forget to use soap anymore, and he wouldn’t disappoint Uncle Gabriel. The third promise was the most important. He couldn’t lose a potential client, her mystery, or her undoubtedly hefty fortune to another detective—and he especially couldn’t lose them to Hugh Abernathy. Just the sound of Mr. Abernathy’s name sent Uncle Gabriel into a fury whenever he heard it. “If you’ll only sit back down,” Toby told Mrs. Arthur-Abbot, trying to sound a little less panicked, “I’ll deduce why you’re here.”

  With a smile more fierce than friendly, Mrs. Arthur-Abbot slipped back into her seat. “That’s more like it,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Montrose.”

  Toby wasn’t sure he’d be ready anytime soon. Two months of organizing case records hadn’t taught him all that much about the art of detection. He couldn’t afford to visit any of the famous crime scenes tourists were always flocking to, and Uncle Gabriel never took him along on business. Still, he’d read enough detective stories to know the sort of thing Mrs. Arthur-Abbot was expecting. He stared dutifully at her peach-colored silk dress, her tightly laced boots, and her untidy hair, searching for clues. He’d already learned a few things about her—she was rich, for example, and very unpleasant—but he was smart enough to avoid saying any of this aloud. Instead, he tried to imagine that he was Hugh Abernathy himself, pacing back and forth in his parlor in an issue of the Sphinx. What conclusions would the world’s greatest detective have drawn from Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s appearance? He might have been able to tell by the number of bangles on her wrists if she’d been robbed by a jewel thief, or by the soles of her boots if she’d run away from a band of kidnappers. But nothing about Mrs. Arthur-Abbot looked all that unusual to Toby. He could feel his skin prickling with sweat, and he wondered if Mrs. Arthur-Abbot had deduced how nervous he was. Even the worst detective on the Row would have been able to manage that.

  There was a twitch of movement over Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s head, and Toby let his gaze slide upward. Dangling from the edge of one bedraggled window curtain was a small brown mouse. It must have gotten tired of running through the walls, but Toby didn’t think its new situation was much of an improvement: it clung desperately to the curtain fringe, hanging just above Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s tangle of curls and looking for all the world like a fashionable lady’s hairpiece. Toby knew he should be horrified, but he couldn’t help grinning at it.

  “Is my predicament amusing to you?” Mrs. Arthur-Abbot asked. “Or haven’t you guessed it yet?” She raised a hand to tuck a lock of hair back into place, almost brushing the mouse’s tail as she did so.

  Toby swallowed his grin. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said again. There was something unusual about Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s hair, now that he thought about it. She seemed like a very neat person—the sort of person who wouldn’t be happy to find a mouse hanging over her head, if you wanted to be specific about
it. Her dress was neat and her bootlaces were neat and all the buttons on her dress were fastened into the correct buttonholes. If Toby’s aunt Janet had been there, however, she would have taken a comb to Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s hair with a vengeance. Had she been wearing something over her head? Toby stole a glance at the coatrack in the hall, where a wide-brimmed black hat hung from a peg, half-shrouded by a black veil. On the peg below that, Mrs. Arthur-Abbot had hung a long black coat.

  Of course! Toby could have kicked himself. He’d been so shocked by the new client’s arrival that he’d barely noticed her clothes, but now that he saw them again, he felt sure he could guess why she needed his help. “You’ve just come from a funeral,” he told Mrs. Arthur-Abbot. For the first time in his life, he felt like the hero in a detective story, and the sensation was thrilling. “That’s why you were wearing a black coat and veil; you’ve been in mourning. Now, people at funerals don’t usually need to hire detectives, but something about the death seemed suspicious to you. You don’t think the person died normally.” Mrs. Arthur-Abbot was staring at Toby now, with her mouth slightly open; was that the sort of reaction people usually had to famous detectives? Toby hoped so. “There’s been a murder,” he announced, “and you want Uncle Gabriel to find the killer.”

  Mrs. Arthur-Abbot sat back in her chair. She didn’t stop staring at Toby. Then, horribly, she began to laugh.

  “A murder?” she said. “These are my motoring clothes! Haven’t you seen a lady’s driving veil before?”

  Toby hadn’t. He’d only ridden in a car twice himself, and most of the women he knew weren’t rich enough to need driving veils. The thrill he’d been feeling melted away, and trouble wound itself around him like an awful, itchy scarf. “But you didn’t come here in a motorcar,” he said. “There’s not one parked in the street.”

  “That’s because it was stolen!” Mrs. Arthur-Abbot crowed. “That should be obvious to any decent detective. A thief puttered away in my car while I was visiting my sister, and I walked here to find someone who could help me get it back. I can see that you, Mr. Montrose, are not that person. I only hope the line won’t be too long at Hugh Abernathy’s.”

  “Won’t you wait for my uncle to come home?” There was that small, panicked voice again, sneaking out of Toby before he could fix it. “I’m sure he’ll be able to help you. He’s one of the best detectives on the Row, and—”

  The mouse chose this moment to fall on Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s head.

  With a shriek, Mrs. Arthur-Abbot jumped to her feet. Tables overturned and knickknacks crashed to the floor as she tore through the parlor, swatting at her hair. One wild swipe of her hand knocked over the stack of case files that Toby had spent all morning putting in order. The mouse, which seemed to sense that it was in danger of becoming a murder victim, darted down her neck and slipped inside one of her capacious sleeves.

  Toby jumped up, too. “I’m sorry!” he said for the third time. He batted at the part of Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s sleeve where he thought the mouse might be, but this only made her shriek more loudly. Toby was surprised half of Detectives’ Row didn’t come running in hopes of finding a convenient crime in progress.

  Eventually, Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s shrieks turned into words. “This,” she sputtered, “is a sorry excuse for a detective agency!” She flung her arms wide. The mouse sailed out of her sleeve and across the room, where it took refuge behind one of Uncle Gabriel’s file cabinets; Toby wished he could do the same. “And you, boy, are a sorry excuse for a detective!” Mrs. Arthur-Abbot pulled on her long black coat and squashed her hat down on her head. “I don’t know why your uncle bothers to employ you, but rest assured he’ll be receiving a lengthy complaint from me, along with a bill for a new gown. I can’t imagine wearing this one again after it’s been so thoroughly moused.”

  The trouble had really outdone itself this time. How many more crimes would Uncle Gabriel have to solve before he’d made enough money to pay for Mrs. Arthur-Abbot’s new dress? Hundreds, probably. “Thank you for visiting Montrose Investigations,” Toby said miserably, wishing he hadn’t promised to be polite. Mrs. Arthur-Abbot, who must not have made a similar promise, scowled at him and slammed the front door behind her, leaving Toby alone to start cleaning up the mess.

  Until the year he turned eight, nothing very terrible had ever happened to Toby. He’d grown up in a stout white farmhouse where sunlight poured through the curtains his mother had sewn, and the old floorboards creaked with his parents’ comfortable footsteps. On his eighth birthday, the whole family, all three of them, had walked to the riverbank for a picnic. Nothing went the way they’d planned: Toby’s mother dropped the cake in the grass, and his father tripped and fell into the river, and a rainstorm swooped in from the west, washing away the lumpy frosting and making them all as damp as Toby’s father. It should have been a disaster. But Toby’s mother draped the picnic blanket over a branch to make a sort of tent, Toby’s father sliced the sodden cake, and they all sat in the grass, licking crumbs from their fingers and almost bursting with laughter.

  Then Toby’s parents had left for a trip to the seashore, and Toby himself had been sent to stay for a week with his aunt Janet. Aunt Janet had six children of her own, whom she mothered with military precision; she administered a kiss to Toby’s cheek each morning after checking his fingernails for dirt. Toby had never heard her laugh. She had, however, cried exactly once, when the police officer from the seashore came to the door to tell her there had been an accident.

  Toby hardly remembered the funeral. There had been eye-dabbing ladies in drab gowns and nose-blowing gentlemen in suits, he knew, but they’d floated around him in a thick black cloud, murmuring sad words he couldn’t make out. Since the rowboat his parents had disappeared in had never been found, there hadn’t even been any caskets at the front of the church. The only thing that had seemed real to Toby was the trouble. It wrapped itself around him for the very first time, filling his ears like cotton wool so he could hardly hear Aunt Janet saying she would take care of him from now on.

  The trouble, however, had other plans in mind. After a few months of daily fingernail inspections, Aunt Janet determined that she couldn’t afford to care for a seventh child, particularly one who tracked mud across her carpets and often forgot to scrub behind his ears. “It’s fortunate your parents had so many relations,” she told Toby as she handed him off to his uncle Francis, who managed a fancy hotel. “Otherwise, poor dear, you’d have to be sent to an orphanage.”

  The thought of being crammed into a cold, smelly bunk room with dozens of other miserable little boys turned Toby’s insides to jelly. A small piece of him still hoped that disappearing in a rowboat was just another kind of disaster his parents could fix, and that they’d turn up one day to collect him and bring him home. When this didn’t happen, however, he decided to be so well behaved and useful that Uncle Francis would have no choice but to keep him.

  It didn’t work. Toby tried to help in the hotel restaurant, but when he spilled an entire bottle of expensive wine all over a loud and short-tempered duke, Uncle Francis hurried Toby along to Aunt Ingrid, who owned a bakery. When he fell asleep at the oven and burned the morning’s bread loaves, Aunt Ingrid sent him to Cousin Celeste at the hospital, and when Cousin Celeste couldn’t find the money to pay for the clothes Toby was constantly growing out of, she sent him to Uncle Howard at the stables. In this way, Toby was passed around the family like a bowl of cold mashed potatoes at dinner until the day three years later, when ancient Grandfather Montrose unfolded his newspaper, took one last wheezing breath, and passed away right in the middle of the society pages. The housemaid shrieked and sent for Aunt Janet.

  “It’s a shame,” Aunt Janet had said as she packed Toby’s few belongings into his suitcase, “but we can’t avoid it any longer. You’ll have to go to your uncle Gabriel.”

  “The detective?” Toby had asked. He was as fond of detective stories as everyone else in the city of Colebridge, and the outside pocket of h
is suitcase was stuffed with his parents’ old copies of the Sphinx Monthly Reader. Living on Detectives’ Row sounded a hundred times more interesting than pouring Grandfather Montrose’s medicines, and Toby said so to Aunt Janet.

  Aunt Janet had wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelled something stale. “Gabriel,” she’d said, “is not a good influence. He spends his time rummaging through morgues and lurking in alleys, and as for his reputation—well, the less said about that, the better. He’s not fit to take care of a young boy, and I doubt he can afford to keep you on for more than a few months, but neither can the rest of us.” She’d snapped the suitcase shut and placed it in Toby’s hands. “Be good for your uncle, Toby,” she’d told him. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t give him any reason to turn you away. He’s your Last Relative, you know.”

  That was why Toby had to be clean and polite, and why he couldn’t possibly disappoint Uncle Gabriel, no matter what kind of influence he was. Toby had learned enough about his family to know by now that if Uncle Gabriel couldn’t afford to keep him—or worse, if Uncle Gabriel didn’t want to keep him—he’d be sent to the orphanage, and that would be that.

  Toby was still sweeping pieces of knickknack into the dustpan when Uncle Gabriel returned. “Good news, Tobias!” he said as he stomped inside. His enormous voice was slightly muffled, for once, by the pile of brown paper–wrapped parcels in his arms. “The butcher had a handsome stewing hen he needed to part with, so I took it off his hands. I’ll place it straight into Mrs. Satterthwaite’s stew pot, and we’ll all feast like kings for the rest of the week. Except for Mrs. Satterthwaite, that is; I expect she’ll feast like a queen.”

  As his uncle teetered into the kitchen with his stack of parcels, Toby hid the dustpan behind his back. He was pretty sure most actual kings and queens would turn up their royal noses at Uncle Gabriel’s cook’s chicken soup, but he wasn’t about to do the same. He didn’t even mind the rubbery carrots. They probably didn’t have any carrots at all at the orphanage.