The World's Greatest Detective Read online

  Only the young man in white seemed to notice him. “Hello,” he said to Toby. “Are you here for the contest?”

  Toby nodded. “I’m here as my uncle’s assistant,” he explained. “I’m Toby Montrose.”

  “Then your uncle must be Gabriel Montrose!” The young man looked awfully proud of himself for deducing this. “I’ve heard of him, of course, though I’m afraid we’ve never met. I’m Philip Elwood.” He held out a hand, and Toby shook it. “I hope you’ll introduce me to your uncle as soon as you can.”

  “I hope so, too,” said Toby. He didn’t know quite where Uncle Gabriel was at the moment, of course—he might be on a ferry halfway across the sea, or squashed in a Gallian train compartment—but he wasn’t going to tell Philip Elwood that.

  Before Philip could ask any uncomfortable questions about Uncle Gabriel’s whereabouts, the manor door opened and Mr. Peartree stepped outside. To Toby’s disappointment, Mr. Abernathy wasn’t with him. He wore a coat the color of a spring meadow and a verdant felt hat, and he crossed off names on a list with a green fountain pen as he greeted each of the guests. First, Mr. Rackham passed into the manor, then Miss March and Miss Price, then Julia Hartshorn. Philip Elwood fiddled with his straw hat the whole time; he hurried off toward the WELCOME, DETECTIVES! banner before Mr. Peartree had even finished crossing off his name.

  Then Mr. Peartree blinked down at Toby. “Welcome to Coleford Manor, Mr. Montrose,” he said. He raised his fountain pen over the list of guests and let it hover over Uncle Gabriel’s name. “It’s a delight to see you again, but I hope you aren’t the only Mr. Montrose who has joined us this weekend. Is your uncle here?”

  Luckily, Toby had planned for this moment. When you must be deceitful, Inspector Webster had written in lesson thirty-four of his correspondence course, deceive with confidence! A confident liar is much more difficult to spot than one who is wishy-washy. Hoping the inspector knew what he was talking about, Toby lifted his chin and met Mr. Peartree’s gaze. “He’s gone around to the back entrance,” he said. A house as huge as Coleford Manor was sure to have at least one back entrance, wasn’t it? “Uncle Gabriel’s brought some top secret detection devices with him this weekend, and he doesn’t want any of the other investigators to see them. He asked me to let you know he’s arrived.”

  Had Toby been confident enough? Mr. Peartree gave him a curious look. Then, slowly, he put his pen to paper and drew a bold green slash through the name Gabriel Montrose. “You and your uncle will be in the Marigold Room on the second floor,” Mr. Peartree said. “One of the servants will show you the way. Does your uncle need any help carrying his—ah, his devices?”

  Toby let himself breathe. “I don’t think so,” he said. And then, because he couldn’t help himself, “Is Mr. Abernathy here? Do you know if he’s found out anything about what happened to my parents?”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Abernathy hasn’t kept me up-to-date on that particular case,” Mr. Peartree said briskly, “but you’ll be seeing him soon. He’s asked all the guests to gather in the parlor at eleven o’clock.”

  According to the shiny new watch Mr. Peartree flipped open, it was already a few minutes past ten. “All the guests but Uncle Gabriel, you mean,” Toby said. “He’s got to stay in his room and think.”

  “Of course; I’d forgotten.” Mr. Peartree looked down at Toby and scratched the side of his nose. Then he lowered his voice to a murmur. “Are you sure you don’t need my assistance, Mr. Montrose?”

  If Toby hadn’t had a knack for observation, he might not have noticed the slight suspicious edge to Mr. Peartree’s voice. He did notice it, though, and he was suddenly horribly certain: Mr. Peartree knew everything. He knew Uncle Gabriel wasn’t really dragging mysterious devices up the servants’ stairs, and he knew Toby was there all alone, where he didn’t belong, trying to fib his way past Hugh Abernathy’s assistant and doing a spectacularly bad job of it. A brown blur dashed past Toby’s feet: it was the trouble and it had caught up with him, just the way it always did.

  Then someone shouted, the ground shook, and something fell from the sky onto Mr. Peartree’s head.

  It was the WELCOME, DETECTIVES! banner—though now that it had draped itself over Mr. Peartree, it was much harder to read. One of the wobbly ladders had come crashing down, bringing one of the dark-suited footmen with it. Now he lay on the ground next to Toby, clutching his ankle. “That damned dog!” he shouted. “Get him away from me, or I’ll wring his neck!”

  The dog—small, brown, and enthusiastically exploring the insides of the footman’s ears—didn’t seem to take the threat seriously, but Toby did. He scooped the dog up and hurried into the manor, passing Mr. Peartree, who was still stumbling around under the billowing cloth like a ghost in a children’s play. “There’s a man outside who’s hurt his leg,” he told the worried-looking maid who’d come running to see what had happened, “and I think Mr. Peartree needs to be rescued from that banner.”

  The maid ran out the door. The dog licked Toby’s nose and put his muddy paws on Toby’s chest. He seemed to think they’d known each other all their lives.

  Actually, Toby realized, there was something familiar about him. “Percival?” he asked, setting the dog down on the carpet. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

  The dog stared at Toby as though it were obvious.

  “We met on Detectives’ Row,” Toby explained. “Do you remember?” Of course he did; dogs were good with memories. “I was going to visit Mr. Abernathy, and you were with that strange girl. . . .”

  Toby trailed off. The strange girl stood in the doorway in front of him, looking just as shocked as he was.

  “It’s you!” they both said at the same time. And then, “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.” The girl set down the bags she was holding—a whole armful from the nicest shops in Colebridge, stuffed with colorful tissue. She wasn’t wearing a fedora today, or spectacles, either; she was dressed as though she were the sort of girl who always got lots of presents on her birthday and never had to do chores. “Come here, Percival,” she said.

  Percival looked up at the girl. Then he looked at Toby. He sighed through his nose.

  “I think you’re making him uncomfortable,” said Toby. “And anyway, how can you live here? Aren’t you a murderess?”

  The girl frowned. “A murderess-in-training,” she said. “That’s different. And it’s beside the point, Toby Montrose. You still haven’t told me why you’re standing in our front hall.”

  “I’m here for the contest,” Toby explained, “the detectives’ competition, and—how did you know my name?”

  “Ivy!” A dark-haired woman hurried through the front door, followed by a younger woman with her own armload of shopping bags. They both looked like taller, more glamorous versions of the girl in front of Toby. “Ivy, you know we all love Percival, but you’ve got to keep him on his lead when he’s outdoors,” the woman said. Her voice was stern, but not angry—the sort of voice that usually belonged to mothers. “Norton says he’s broken his ankle, and from the color of it, I think he might be right; I’ve never seen anything quite so purple. The driver’s gone to fetch Doctor Piper, but you should apologize to Norton before she gets here. And for heaven’s sake, keep Percival away from him! I think he’d like to roast that dog on a spit.”

  The girl—Ivy—wasn’t staring at Toby any longer, thank goodness. And he’d learned her name, too! Now they were even. “I’m sorry, Mother,” Ivy said. “I don’t know what got into Percival. He never runs away like that, except . . .” Her eyes darted back to Toby. “Never mind. Should I pick some flowers for Norton?” Toby thought she sounded awfully reluctant about the idea.

  “That would be thoughtful,” the woman said, guiding Ivy out the door. “Not the roses, please!”

  Toby didn’t know what to do. He wanted to go to his room before Mr. Peartree came inside and started questioning him again, but he couldn’t remember which room was supposed to be his. The Mag
nolia Room? The Marmalade Room? Whichever it was, if he didn’t get there quickly, he’d be stuck here in the middle of the rug with mud flaking off him while Ivy’s mother studied him as a scientist might examine her latest specimen.

  “You look lost,” she told him. “Don’t feel bad about that; it’s the house’s fault. We’ve lived here for years, but I still feel I ought to have a compass to navigate the place.” She raised her eyebrows at Percival, who had settled himself on Toby’s feet. “I see Percy has already introduced himself to you, so I’ll do the same. I’m Amina Webster, and this is my older daughter, Lillie.”

  The younger woman, who was putting away her hat and gloves, nodded to Toby. “Are you a friend of Ivy’s?” she asked.

  Whatever Ivy thought of him, Toby didn’t think it was friendly. “I’m here with my uncle, actually,” he said. “He’s a detective. His name is Gabriel Montrose.”

  “Which must make you Toby!” Mrs. Webster exclaimed. “Of course. Mr. Peartree told us Detective Montrose’s assistant would be joining him, but I assumed he’d be much more grown-up and dull. What a relief he’s not.” She thought for a moment. “You and your uncle are in the Marigold Room, aren’t you? Would you like me to show you the way?”

  Marigold—that was it. “Yes, please,” said Toby. He was having a hard time believing that a girl as strange as Ivy could have a mother as stubbornly normal as Mrs. Webster. She took Toby’s hat and coat herself—she didn’t even ask a servant to do it—and carried them across the hall and up the staircase. Toby followed at Mrs. Webster’s heels, and Percival followed at Toby’s.

  On the second-floor landing, Mrs. Webster turned left and led the way down a narrow hallway lined with doors. Each door had a different sort of flower carved into its wood, but Toby didn’t know any of their names. He’d always been more interested in the plants you could eat than in the ones you couldn’t. Besides, something much more important than flowers was tugging at the corner of his mind. “Excuse me,” he said, hurrying to keep up with Mrs. Webster’s long strides, “but have you ever heard of an Inspector Webster? Is he your husband?”

  “My husband,” Mrs. Webster said over her shoulder, “would have a difficult time finding eggs under a hen, let alone solving a crime.” She laughed. “Robert is a historian—he studies antiquities—and I’m an archaeolgist. We’re very good at digging up ancient pots and things like that, but our family is almost useless when it comes to detection.”

  “Lots of people are,” said Toby, thinking of some of Uncle Gabriel’s neighbors on the western end of the Row. “But that’s all right. At least you’re not all criminals.”

  Mrs. Webster gave him an odd look. “Why in the world would all of us be criminals?”

  “Because of Ivy’s grandmother,” Toby explained. “Since she’s teaching Ivy to be a murderess, I thought that maybe she’d taught the rest of you, and—”

  Mrs. Webster looked so confused by now that Toby stopped talking. Of course: Ivy had been lying to him. Why had he ever bothered to believe her? They’d met before he’d become a junior detective, but still, he should have known better. “Never mind,” he said to Mrs. Webster. “I was just thinking of a story Ivy told me once.”

  “A story about murder?” Mrs. Webster shook her head and sighed. “Yes, that sounds like Ivy.”

  At the end of the hallway, Mrs. Webster stopped in front of a door carved with a round-looking blossom that might have been a marigold. “Since there will be two of you,” she said, “I’ve given you the largest room in the wing. I hope you like orange.”

  When she opened the door, Toby saw what she meant. The Marigold Room was as big as Uncle Gabriel’s parlor on Detectives’ Row, and almost everything in it, from the curtains at the windows to the piles of cushions on the two beds, was the color of a brightly blooming marigold. He had to squint to take it all in. There was a pitcher full of water on a nightstand, a shelf of interesting-looking old books, and a tree just outside that looked close enough to climb down if Toby needed to escape in a hurry. “It’s wonderful,” he said, hoping Mrs. Webster would leave soon so he could stop being polite and dive into the piles of cushions.

  She hung his coat and hat in a closet and looked around the room. “Your uncle hasn’t made his way here yet,” she said. “Would you like me to send out a search party?”

  “That’s all right,” Toby told her. “I think I can find him myself.”

  “Then I’ll look forward to meeting him later.” Mrs. Webster smiled at Toby. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to speak to the doctor, apologize to poor Norton, and pour a cup of coffee for Mr. Abernathy.”

  The cushions were even softer than they’d looked. Toby let out a huge sigh as he collapsed into them: he’d actually done it! He was finally at Coleford Manor, in the fanciest bedroom he’d ever seen. Somewhere in the house, Hugh Abernathy himself was having coffee, and in only a few days, Mr. Abernathy might be putting ten thousand dollars in Toby’s hands. Still, there were other detectives to outwit, and he’d already lost Inspector Webster’s lessons. He had to make sure that nothing else could possibly go wrong. To start with, if he wanted to last more than five minutes at the manor, he had to build himself an uncle.

  Toby stood up, gathered a few of the cushions in his arms, and arranged them in the marigold-colored armchair in the corner, fluffing and poking them until, when he glimpsed them out of the corner of his eye, they looked a little like a well-upholstered detective deep in contemplation. If he’d still had his suitcase, he could have dressed the cushions up a little more convincingly, but he did what he could, draping his coat around the figure’s shoulders, placing his hat on its squarish head, and balancing a book in its lap. Then he turned the armchair to face one of the windows and pulled the curtains closed. Anyone who looked closely would be able to tell that the pile of pillows was nothing more than that, but if the other detectives saw the figure from the hallway or spied its silhouette behind the curtains, they might believe they’d actually caught a glimpse of the real Gabriel Montrose. “Think hard, Uncle Gabriel,” Toby said, patting the cushion person’s head.

  Percival, who had followed Toby into the Marigold Room, didn’t seem all that impressed by the fake Uncle Gabriel. He put his forepaws up on the bed, leaving mud prints on the coverlet. Toby would have scolded him about it, but he’d tracked in an awful lot of grime himself. “Don’t you think you ought to go back outside?” he asked instead. “I’m not sure you’re allowed to be in here.”

  Percival gave him a long and meaningful look.

  “Oh, all right. I guess that servant won’t be able to wring your neck as long as you’re with me.” Toby lifted Percival up and watched as he made himself comfortable on the orange blanket. “Thanks for distracting Mr. Peartree, by the way. I might have gotten in a lot of trouble if you hadn’t.” Percival yawned to show Toby that this didn’t surprise him at all.

  With water from the pitcher, Toby cleaned up the mud he and Percival had tracked inside. Then he wiped off Percival’s paws and scrubbed his own fingernails to a shine that even Aunt Janet would have approved of. He didn’t look exactly like the world’s greatest detective yet, he thought as he studied himself in the mirror: his shirt was rumpled from the journey, and his junior detective badge was a little bent, but at least he was clean and ready to solve a mystery. That would have to do for now.

  Through the open window of the Marigold Room, Toby could see Ivy stomping through the manor’s flower beds, pulling up plants by their roots and shoving away the hair that kept falling in her face. Even from a distance, she didn’t look happy. Toby felt a little guilty about spying on her until he remembered that she’d probably been watching him for months. “Why has she been following me?” Toby asked Percival. “How did she know my name?”

  Percival twitched his eyebrows. He might have known the answers, but he wasn’t talking.

  CHAPTER 7

  LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

  At eleven o’clock, Mr. Peartree rang the gong, a
nd six detectives gathered in the parlor. Five of them were among the finest investigators in Colebridge, which was, in turn, the finest investigative city in the world.

  The sixth was Toby. He had waited in the hallway for almost ten minutes, hoping for a chance to speak to Hugh Abernathy. He hadn’t heard a word from Mr. Abernathy since the day he’d snuck out to visit him, and he was anxious to find out if the detective had made any progress on his parents’ case. As soon as he was allowed inside the parlor, however, he could see he’d wasted his time: Mr. Abernathy wasn’t anywhere in sight. He was probably still having coffee in some distant wing of the manor. There wasn’t any time to go looking for him, though, so Toby sat down in a high-backed chair close to the doorway, where Mr. Abernathy would be sure to notice him when he finally arrived.

  “Hello, dear.” Miss Price slid into the chair next to Toby and patted his hand. “What a nice surprise! We didn’t expect to see you here, did we, Anthea?”

  “We certainly didn’t,” said Miss March. She was as sharp as Miss Price was round, and half a foot taller than her partner, but no less cheerful. “I could hardly believe it when I saw Gabriel’s name on Mr. Peartree’s guest list. After all that’s happened between him and Hugh Abernathy, I expected he’d want to stay as far away as possible. Leave the country, even!” She and Miss Price both chuckled at the thought.