“No,” said Toby, “but—”
“And your parents’ bodies? Were they recovered?”
Toby shook his head. “We couldn’t even have a burial.”
“Just as I thought.” Mr. Abernathy leaned forward in his chair. “I know hope when I see it, Toby, and you’ve got a speck of it in your eyes right now. You’re a practical child, but there’s a part of you that hopes your parents might walk through that doorway at any moment.” He pointed to the tall double doors behind Toby. “Isn’t there?”
Toby couldn’t help looking over his shoulder. The doors, of course, stayed closed. “It’s been three years, sir,” he told Mr. Abernathy. “Even if my parents did survive, I don’t think anyone would be able to find out what happened to them.”
At this, Mr. Abernathy looked wounded. “My boy!” he said. “You’re standing in front of the world’s greatest detective! It’s perfectly obvious to me that you want to know the truth of your parents’ disappearance, and when it comes to solving mysteries, I happen to be something of an expert.” He smiled at Toby. “Why don’t you let me look into it? If your parents are anywhere to be found, I’m sure I can find them.”
It was tempting to imagine it: just like he did in all those stories in the Sphinx, Hugh Abernathy would comb the beach sand for clues and plumb the truth from the ocean’s depths. Maybe he’d even let Toby come with him. But real life wasn’t a detective story, Toby reminded himself, and the police officer from the seashore had seemed awfully confident when he’d knocked on Aunt Janet’s door. “Do you really think there’s a chance my parents are alive?”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my line of work,” Mr. Abernathy said, “it’s that nothing is likely, but everything is possible. I can’t make any promises, but I’d like to take your case.”
“Are you sure?” Not even Uncle Gabriel had ever offered to do anything of the sort. “You must have more important work to do,” Toby said, “finding lost jewels and kidnapped millionaires and things.”
Mr. Abernathy waved a hand, as if jewels and millionaires meant nothing to him. “To be honest, Toby Montrose, you interest me.”
“But I can’t pay you!”
“Then consider it a favor.” Mr. Abernathy stood up. The springs and gears from Mr. Peartree’s shattered pocket watch crunched under his shoes as he walked Toby to the door. “We’ll see each other at Coleford Manor, won’t we? I’m sure you’ll have a chance to repay me then.”
PART II
A CONTEST OF WITS
CHAPTER 5
IN SLAUGHTER’S LANE
“Where in the world is Mrs. Satterthwaite?” Uncle Gabriel pushed the parlor curtains aside and squinted through the glass. “She should have been here ten minutes ago. If I don’t leave by eight, I’ll miss my train, and the ferry after that.” He picked up the suitcase at his feet, shifted it from hand to hand, and set it down again; Toby could tell he was a mess of nerves. “Do you think she could have forgotten she’d agreed to stay with you this weekend?”
“I’m sure she didn’t,” said Toby. He was a mess of nerves, too, but for an entirely different reason: while Uncle Gabriel was hoping Mrs. Satterthwaite would appear on the front step, Toby was hoping she wouldn’t. The letter he’d sent her the evening before had been perfectly clear, even if it had taken him three whole nights to copy out in his best approximation of Uncle Gabriel’s handwriting:
Dear Mrs. Satterthwaite,
I am writing to inform you that my nephew, Tobias, has been invited to stay with his dear aunt Janet while I am traveling in Gallis. Since she will be taking care of Tobias this weekend, I no longer need you to come to Detectives’ Row tomorrow morning to look after him. Please stay at home instead.
Sincerely yours,
Gabriel Montrose
Toby had been proud of that letter, but he hadn’t been at all certain that it would work. What if it didn’t arrive in time? What if Mrs. Satterthwaite spotted his forgery, and what if she showed it to Uncle Gabriel? He half expected the cook to come charging down the Row, waving his letter in her fist and dooming his plan to enter Mr. Abernathy’s contest before he’d even left the house. But the seconds ticked by on the mantelpiece clock, its chime struck the hour, and there was still no sign of her.
“Eight o’clock. I can’t stay any longer.” Uncle Gabriel stepped back from the window and picked up his suitcase, more confidently this time. “I’m sorry, Tobias. Will you be all right on your own until Mrs. Satterthwaite gets here? I hate to leave you in the lurch, but this trip is too important to miss, and this case is too important to lose.” He’d been working on nothing else for the past few weeks, going out at odd hours and staying awake late into the night, poring over Gallian newspaper clippings Toby couldn’t understand. More than once, Toby had come downstairs in the morning to find Uncle Gabriel asleep at his desk. He refused to discuss the case with Toby—Toby guessed it was another of the things he wasn’t supposed to worry about—but whatever it was, it had darkened the circles under Uncle Gabriel’s eyes and deepened the furrows in his brow.
“I’ll be fine,” Toby promised him. “I hope you solve your case.”
“I hope so, too.” Uncle Gabriel strode to the door. “If all goes well, you’ll hear my shouts of joy all the way from Gallis. If it doesn’t—well, let’s not waste time thinking about that.” He swung the door open and tipped his hat to Toby. “Either way, Tobias, I’ll see you soon. Be good for Mrs. Satterthwaite, and don’t let her tidy up too much.”
The windowpane in the parlor was cold and grimy, but Toby pressed his nose to it and watched as Uncle Gabriel ran down the Row toward the train station, his tweed coat billowing out behind him and his shoes kicking up clouds of spring dirt. Soon he was as small as Toby’s thumbnail. A few moments after that, he turned the corner into the High Street, and Toby couldn’t see him anymore.
Six dollars and fifty-three cents wasn’t a lot of money, but it was the amount Toby had managed to collect off the city sidewalks over the past few months, and he hoped it was enough to get him to Coleford Manor. He slipped it into the pocket of his pants, dragged his own suitcase down the stairs from his bedroom, and locked the front door of Montrose Investigations behind him with the key Uncle Gabriel had given him for emergencies. Under the door, he’d tucked another letter, this time in his own handwriting, though he hoped he’d be safely back at home before anyone else had a chance to read it:
To the person who finds this note:
I have gone to become the world’s greatest detective. Please do not worry about me. I’m sorry to sneak away, but I had to find a way to stop the trouble, and I think ten thousand dollars should be enough to do it.
Your friend,
Toby Montrose
Detectives’ Row was quiet for half past eight on a Friday morning, but Toby walked quickly and tried to keep his head down. Once he reached the High Street, with its busy bakeries and newspaper stands, he felt safer: he could blend into the crowd without worrying that one of Uncle Gabriel’s eagle-eyed neighbors might spot him and ask what he was doing. Horse-drawn carriages rolled up and down the High Street, carrying Colebridge’s moneylenders and lawyers and merchants to work at the banks and courts and market stalls in the city center. The train station was only a few blocks north, but no trains ran near Coleford Manor, and anyway, Toby didn’t want to risk running into Uncle Gabriel.
But hailing a carriage on the High Street was impossible. At first, Toby tried to copy the well-dressed men and women all around him, whistling and waving his hat hopefully whenever a driver approached. Although they stopped more often than not for the well-dressed men and women, none of the drivers seemed particularly interested in stopping for him, no matter how loudly he whistled or how hopefully he waved. People on the sidewalk jostled Toby from his left and his right, brushing past him as if they didn’t even realize he was there. A man in a pin-striped suit kicked over his suitcase, and a woman carrying loaves of bread shoved Toby so powerfully that he
fell into the street. As he picked himself up, brushing the dirt from his knees, all the well-dressed people gathered around him and shook their heads. Toby could feel the trouble there, too, squeezing him in. “Be careful, child!” someone shouted. “And for goodness’ sake, get out of the way!”
For once, Toby didn’t pause to search for his parents’ faces in the crowd: he grabbed his suitcase, pulled his hat low over his eyes, and made his way out of the High Street as fast as he could.
The street he’d turned into was narrow and empty. Dead-limbed trees crowded out the sunlight, and no flowers bloomed here, but at least it was quiet. Toby was so flustered that he walked almost a whole block, past rows of tall gray buildings and darkened storefronts, before he realized it: this was Slaughter’s Lane. No wonder all the well-dressed people from the High Street had disappeared; only the most eager tourists and the most desperate detectives were brave or foolish enough to come this way.
Now that Toby knew where he was, he couldn’t help looking around. This was, after all, the street where the Colebridge Cutthroat’s career had begun, and the street Uncle Gabriel had warned him to avoid. Over his head, a curtain in a window flicked open and closed again. A yellowing piece of newsprint blew down the sidewalk, past a billiard parlor and a deserted pub, before settling in the shadows. Something in the alley beyond him made a noise that might have been a laugh or a scream; he wasn’t sure he wanted to know which. Even though the weather was warm for May, Toby could feel goose bumps racing up his arms. If his suitcase hadn’t been so heavy, he would have turned around and run.
The noise came from the alley again. It was louder this time: not a laugh or a scream, after all, but a bleating sort of sound, like a horse asking for hay. Toby remembered that sound from the few weeks he’d spent working for his uncle Howard. Was it a horse? Toby inched forward toward the corner where the alley met the street. In Inspector Webster’s correspondence course (lesson thirty-six), he’d learned about using mirrors to look around corners; he didn’t have a mirror with him, but in the pub’s plate-glass window, he could see the dim reflection of two thin animals harnessed to a carriage.
“Who’s there?” The voice came from the alley. Too late, Toby realized he hadn’t been the only one using the pub’s window to watch the business of Slaughter’s Lane: a tall, sturdy man in a suit that had seen better days stepped around the corner and straight into Toby’s path. He looked Toby up and down, but his eyes lingered on the suitcase. “You’re a new one,” he said. His voice crackled like dead leaves. “What brings you here? Looking for work? You’re small enough to make a decent pickpocket.”
“No, sir.” Toby wasn’t sure whether you were supposed to be polite to men who were most likely on their way into prison or out of it, but he figured it couldn’t hurt.
The man shrugged. “Then you’re going somewhere. That case of yours looks heavy.”
“It’s not,” said Toby, although it was.
“You’ll never catch a cab on the High Street at this time of day—but it looks like you’ve found that out already.” He smiled, more at the suitcase than at Toby. “Lucky for you, and lucky for me, I’ve got a carriage around the corner and no fares to pick up for the rest of the morning. Where can I take you?”
Toby looked back over his shoulder toward the bustling High Street. The man with the carriage obviously couldn’t be trusted, but he was right: Toby had no hope of hailing a ride, and no other way of leaving the city. If he wanted to enter Mr. Abernathy’s contest, he didn’t have much of a choice. “I’m going to Coleford Manor,” he said, “a few miles over the river. And I’ve only got six dollars.”
“Six dollars?” The man raised his eyebrows. “That’s exactly my price.”
“I’m a detective, you know,” Toby said. “So is my uncle. He’ll be very upset if anything happens to me.”
The man laughed, showing all of his teeth. “Don’t worry about that, my boy. Climb aboard, and I’ll have you safe at the manor as quick as my mares can take us.”
As the carriage shuddered and squealed through the city streets, Toby pulled out his packet of lessons from Inspector Webster and studied it again to be sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He hadn’t quite reached level three of the correspondence course yet, but over the past few months, he’d learned how to follow strangers in the street, how to encipher a secret message, and how to set a trap for thieves using only a tablecloth and a few pieces of wire. He’d tested this trap a few weeks earlier in the downstairs hallway, and Mrs. Satterthwaite had walked straight into it when she came to cook dinner. She hadn’t seemed particularly impressed with Toby’s investigative skills when he’d helped her out from under the tablecloth, but at least she hadn’t mentioned the whole incident to Uncle Gabriel. Toby wasn’t sure he was entirely qualified to be the world’s greatest detective yet, but knowing he had Inspector Webster’s lessons to help him through the weekend made him feel as though he might have a chance of winning the prize money after all.
The carriage groaned to a halt, and Toby looked up. The horses had stopped on one of the small bridges that led over the river and into the countryside. “Where are we?” he asked the driver.
“City limits,” said the man, scratching his ear. He’d taken his jacket off in the morning heat, and his arm was scarred and hairy, tattooed with a thick black line that curled around it from his wrist all the way to his elbow. “That’s as far as your fare will take you.”
“But I have to get to Coleford Manor!” said Toby. “It’s miles down the road still. You said six dollars was enough to get me there.”
“Did I say that?” The man turned in his seat and winked, not kindly. “I must have meant it’d be six to the city limits, and six more to the manor.” He held out an empty palm. “Pay up, my boy, and we’ll be on our way.”
Toby wriggled away from the man’s hand. He should have known better than to expect the truth from a driver he’d met in Slaughter’s Lane. “I don’t have any more money,” he said, “so don’t bother trying to frighten me out of it.”
The driver shook his head. “It’s a shame,” he said, “leaving a boy as small as you out here all alone, so far from his home. I hate to do it.” His eyes went again to Toby’s suitcase. “Of course, I don’t need to be paid in money. Why don’t you hand that case over to me instead?”
Toby pulled the suitcase to his chest. “It’s just luggage, sir,” he said. “Clothes and things. You wouldn’t want any of it.”
“I don’t know about that. Those papers look worth a read.” The driver pointed to Inspector Webster’s lessons. “And aren’t those old Hugh Abernathy stories in the front pocket? Folks will pay more than a few pennies for those.”
“I don’t care,” said Toby. He could see the trouble now, swirling in the murky water below them. No matter where he went, it always caught up sooner or later—usually sooner. “You can’t have them.”
“Then you won’t be getting to the manor.” The driver turned back to his horses. “Do you think your uncle is a good enough detective to find you wandering along the riverbank a few days from now?”
The trouble began to curl its way out of the water and onto the bridge. Toby looked down at his suitcase. He’d packed his very best clothes—the only ones that still came close to fitting, and the ones Aunt Janet had ordered him not to lose. He couldn’t afford to lose the correspondence course, either; he didn’t know what he’d do at Coleford Manor without Inspector Webster’s instructions to guide him. Worst of all was the thought of putting his parents’ old Sphinx issues into the driver’s grimy hands. But he couldn’t see any way out of it. He might have been gullible enough to trust a third-rate criminal, but he wasn’t going to let this man ruin his chances to become the world’s greatest detective. At least he still had fifty-three cents in his pocket and his junior detective badge pinned under his coat. That would have to be enough.
“Fine,” he said, shoving the suitcase into the driver’s seat. His eyes stung at the corners, bu
t he couldn’t let the man see him cry. “You’ve got what you wanted. Now take me to the manor.”
The man gave Toby’s suitcase a pat and flicked his horses’ reins. “Right away, Detective.”
CHAPTER 6
CREEPING IVY
The road outside Coleford Manor was still puddled with the last evening’s rain, and the carriage splashed muddy water all over Toby as it rolled away. In front of him, two gateposts marked a curving drive that led through perfectly tended flower beds and fishponds, past a summerhouse and a hedge maze, and up the hill to the most impressive house Toby had ever seen.
The closer he got to it, the more enormous it looked. It might have been half the size of Colebridge’s government hall, with pointed towers rising from its corners, carved stone griffins perched along the roofline, and fluted columns sprouting from the walls, as though the builders had been so excited about constructing the manor that they’d forgotten to stop. It was the sort of house, Toby thought, where you lived if you didn’t mind losing track of everyone else in your family. All of his own aunts and uncles and cousins could have lived there for years without ever bumping into one another in the hallways. Toby wondered what sort of people did live at Coleford Manor, and whether they liked each other very much.
Over the manor’s front entrance, two dark-suited footmen on wobbly ladders were attempting to hang a banner that read WELCOME, DETECTIVES! in hand-painted letters that looked awfully wobbly themselves. Just beyond the ladders, a small crowd of people had gathered. Toby recognized most of them from Detectives’ Row: at the front of the group, handing his luggage to a waiting servant, was Mr. Rackham, Uncle Gabriel’s across-the-street neighbor. Miss Price was exclaiming happily over a flowering lilac bush, while Miss March had fallen into conversation with a young woman Toby sometimes saw riding her bicycle down the Row. Julia Hartshorn, he thought she was called. She was tall and serious-looking, and she lived in the house next door to Hugh Abernathy’s. On busy days, the line of clients waiting to see Mr. Abernathy stretched all the way to her doorstep. The only person Toby didn’t recognize at all was a young man wearing a white linen suit and a straw hat that shaded his face. He stood apart from the others, looking up at the manor’s stone griffins as though they might swoop down from their parapets and bite him. The young man didn’t look much like a detective, Toby thought—but then, neither did Toby. As he joined the others, he did his best to brush the mud from his clothes and wished for the tenth time in as many minutes that he still had his suitcase.
The World's Greatest Detective Page 5
