“That’s true,” said Mr. Rackham. “What we need to hear is an alibi. Miss Webster, do you swear you didn’t leave Mr. Jacobson’s company from noon to five o’clock on Friday?”
“I do,” Lillie said solemnly.
“And I swear the same for Lillie,” said Peter. “We never left each other’s sight, and I hope we never will again.” He unburdened himself of Mrs. Webster’s tablecloth and tucked it gallantly around Lillie’s shoulders.
Ivy buried her face in her hands. “I can’t bear to watch,” she whispered to Toby. “It’s too revolting.”
“I suppose that settles it,” said Julia as the clock chimed three. “Philip Elwood isn’t Philip Elwood after all, but he’s not likely to be a murderer, either.” She sounded awfully disappointed about it.
Mr. Rackham was disappointed, too. “The next time you’re tempted to drag us all out of bed,” he said to Toby, “please make sure that you’ve caught the right criminal first. The rest of us have a lot of important work to do, and we can’t afford to waste any more time on mere hunches.”
“Yes, sir,” Toby mumbled. “Sorry, sir.”
Julia and Mr. Peartree marched Peter Jacobson back to his bedroom with strict orders not to let him out until morning. The Websters did the same with Lillie, and the other detectives drifted back to their own rooms, leaving Toby and Ivy alone in the deserted hallway. “So much for our trap,” said Toby. “All we caught was a fake detective, and we still don’t have Mr. Abernathy’s papers.”
“Cheer up!” said Ivy. “For once, I’m the golden Webster daughter! And at least we know Peter didn’t poison anyone. That’s more information than we had before, isn’t it?”
It was, but Toby didn’t see how it could possibly be enough. “We only have one day left before your parents let the police in,” he said. “We’ve got too many suspects and not enough clues, and we still don’t know why anyone here would have wanted to kill Mr. Abernathy.”
“We’ll stay up the rest of the night, then,” said Ivy, stifling a yawn. “We’ll wait for the real criminal to spring our trap.”
“It’s no use,” said Toby. “The whole house is awake now. No one else is going to sneak outside tonight.”
“Then we’ll come up with a new plan in the morning,” said Ivy. “A better plan. The sort of plan Hugh Abernathy would make.” She picked up the lantern Miss Price had left in the hallway and began to make her way down the stairs. “You’ll see, Toby. Things are bound to improve soon.”
Toby hurried after her before the light from her lantern got swallowed up in the shadows. No matter how close he stayed to Ivy, though, he could feel the trouble nipping at his ankles. It was quick, it was hungry, and Toby was almost sure it was growing.
PART IV
INTO THE MAZE
CHAPTER 19
THE VANISHING CORPSE
The front page of Sunday’s Morning Bugle stared defiantly at the detectives from its place on the breakfast table. The detectives stared back. They could do nothing else.
ABERNATHY BODY DISAPPEARS! the headline screamed. MEDICAL EXPERTS BAFFLED! DETECTIVES MYSTIFIED!
“They’ve finally got one thing right,” said Miss Price, peering over her marmalade-heaped toast. “We are all mystified, aren’t we, dears?”
“It can’t be possible,” said Julia. “I refuse to believe it. That man was completely dead! We all saw him; I checked his pulse myself.”
“Lying on a table in the mortuary sounds deathly dull to me,” Miss Price said. “I’m sure Mr. Abernathy thought so, too. What if he picked himself up and strolled away? Is that the sort of thing your late employer might do, Mr. Peartree?”
“I don’t know!” Mr. Peartree’s hands were trembling, and half the cream he’d intended for his coffee poured into his lap instead. “Mr. Abernathy has never been dead before! This whole situation is outside my area of expertise.”
“It’s well within mine,” Julia told him, “and I can promise you that even the world’s greatest detective can’t bring himself back to life.”
Toby knew Julia was right, but he couldn’t help feeling that Hugh Abernathy was exactly the sort of person who wouldn’t let mere death stand in the way of his adventures. Even Doctor Piper didn’t have a better explanation for the corpse’s disappearance. She’d told the newspaper that she’d delivered Mr. Abernathy to the county mortuary herself and locked the doors behind her before going to fetch the medical examiner. When she returned with the examiner an hour later, the doors were still locked, but the body was nowhere to be found.
“I bet it was thieves,” Ivy said darkly. “Mr. Abernathy’s got to have the most valuable bones in Colebridge. Whoever stole him will chop him up and sell the bits to the murder tourists. They’ll ask five dollars apiece for his teeth, and fifty each for his kneecaps.”
“That’s awful!” Toby pushed away his half-eaten breakfast. “I don’t think I’m hungry any longer.”
Ivy shrugged and helped herself to a sausage off Toby’s plate. “I guess you won’t be wanting this, then.”
“Is something the matter, Toby?” Mrs. Webster had come in from the hallway. She wore a straw sun hat and thick brown gloves, and a wicker gardening basket dangled from her elbow. She must not have heard the news about the vanishing corpse, Toby guessed, since she was the only one of them who actually looked happy.
“I’m afraid Mr. Montrose isn’t the only one who has lost his appetite,” said Mr. Peartree. “Mr. Abernathy’s body has disappeared from the mortuary, and we’re all extremely perturbed.” He narrowed his eyes at Ivy. “At least, most of us are.”
“Oh dear.” Mrs. Webster’s smile faded. “What’s to be done? Can any of our sleuths go over there to investigate?”
“There’s nothing I’d like more,” Miss March said, “but we can’t leave the manor. I hate to think of that dreadful police squad tearing apart the scene. If there are any clues to be found, they’ll be destroyed before any of us get a chance to see them.”
“It’s all right, Anthea.” Miss Price squeezed Miss March’s hand. “At least we know that no one in this house could have pilfered the body. We’ve all remained present and accounted for this weekend—even that strange Peter Jacobson.”
Mrs. Webster drew in her breath at the mention of Peter’s name. He was still under Mr. Webster’s guard in the Delphinium Room, from which every last scrap of writing paper had been removed. “I don’t mean to be an ungracious hostess,” Mrs. Webster said, “but I’ll be happy to see the last of this weekend. A murderer is on the loose, a corpse is floating about somewhere, my servants’ nerves are shattered, my older daughter is threatening to run away with that journalist, and my younger daughter refuses to stay out of the whole mess. In fact, she seems to be thoroughly enjoying it.” She threw up her hands. “I give up! I’m going to weed the rose garden. If anyone else gets engaged or poisoned, please come let me know.”
“Poor Mother,” Ivy said as Mrs. Webster left the room. “I haven’t seen her make such a grand production since one of her dusty old artifacts was stolen from the museum. Mother is lovely, but she can be a very dramatic person.” She aimed her fork at Toby’s breakfast. “Are you going to eat that boiled tomato?”
Toby wasn’t. It had gone as cold as the murderer’s trail, and he couldn’t see how Webster and Montrose, Private Investigators would ever catch up. It had taken him ages to fall asleep the night before, with the trouble scratching at his bedroom door; when he finally did sleep, he dreamed that he was chasing a rat through the hedge maze on the Websters’ lawn. Whenever he came close to grabbing the rat by the tail, he made a wrong turn in the hedges and ended up even more lost than before. “You didn’t hear anyone else trying to sneak outside last night, did you?” he asked Ivy as they got up from the table. “Or early this morning?”
Ivy shook her head. “I didn’t even hear Percival growl at anyone.”
“Me either.” Toby hadn’t expected her to say anything different, but he still wished his trap ha
d caught something worth keeping. “The only person who’s left the house is your mother, and she didn’t look much like a creeping criminal.”
“Mother would never creep!” Ivy laughed as she headed up the stairs toward the Investigatorium. “She’s not a crime expert like we are, Toby. If she were a murderer, she’d have no idea how to behave properly. Can you imagine it?”
Toby tried, but it wasn’t easy. Amina Webster wasn’t much like the criminals Hugh Abernathy chased down each month in the Sphinx. “She might not know about wiping her fingerprints off the things she’d touched,” he said, “or about coming up with a good alibi.”
“Exactly,” said Ivy. “She’d probably try to carry those stolen files out of the house in plain sight, right under everyone’s noses.”
Toby froze. “Would she put them in a gardening basket?”
“Maybe,” said Ivy, “or—oh!” She sat down on the staircase and stared at him. “Oh, no. Not Mother!”
If she said anything after that, Toby couldn’t hear it. He was already halfway down the staircase, running as fast as he could toward the front door.
The crowd outside the manor had grown larger than ever. Worse yet, it was loud. The murder tourists had shown up that morning with dozens of harmonicas—the instrument Hugh Abernathy had so famously played—and in the hours since dawn, performing wheezy laments to the great detective had become something of a trend. The police officers at the scene had resorted to pressing their hands to their ears and yelling at one another over the din. Toby could hardly hear his own footsteps as he ran toward the manor gate. His legs were churning recklessly downhill, going much faster than the rest of him, and he could tell he was in danger of tumbling tail over teakettle, as Aunt Janet would have said. But his eyes were on Mrs. Webster in her huge straw sun hat, with her gardening basket over one arm, leaning forward to speak to the journalists on the other side of the fence.
She must have heard Toby coming over the swarm of harmonicas, because she set down her basket and wheeled around, putting her hands out to stop him from crashing into her. “Good heavens!” she said. “What’s happening, Toby? Is something wrong at the house?” He could feel her fingers tighten a little on his shoulders. “Is Ivy all right?”
Toby gulped the air. Furrows of worry had gathered around Mrs. Webster’s eyes; could she really be a murderer? “I thought you said you were going to weed the roses,” he said.
“Well, yes, I did.” Mrs. Webster’s fingers relaxed, and she offered Toby the same kind smile she’d given him when he’d turned up at the manor on Friday with no idea what to do next. “When I saw all these people at the gate, though, I thought I’d give them a scolding first. It’s only eight o’clock in the morning,” she said in a confidential tone, “and they’re already howling like hounds in search of a fox. I’ve asked them to leave us alone, but I’m afraid they haven’t taken my words to heart.”
As if to prove her point, one of the journalists rapped his pen against the iron bars. “You said you had some business to conduct with us, ma’am?” he asked.
“That’s right.” Mrs. Webster flattened her smile. “I want to request that you leave my family and our guests in peace. We won’t be granting any interviews, so I think you’ll be happier if you pack up your tents and return to wherever you came from.”
It was as if Mrs. Webster’s words had dissolved into the air. None of the journalists budged. “What about that boy?” one of them called, pointing at Toby. “Has he got any secrets to share?”
“He certainly doesn’t,” Mrs. Webster snapped. She turned her back on the journalists and bent down to face Toby. “I’d feel much less worried if you ran back to the house,” she told him. “I’m not sure it’s safe for you out here.”
Toby wasn’t sure, either. If Mrs. Webster was a murderer, the question he was about to ask her was extremely dangerous. He wished Ivy were there with him, but she hadn’t followed him out of the manor, and neither had Percival. All Toby had was his embroidered junior detective badge, a little battered from the night before but still pinned securely to his shirt. “Before I go,” he said to Mrs. Webster, “may I look inside your gardening basket?”
The harmonicas swelled as Mrs. Webster plucked up the basket from the ground. The worry had come back to her eyes. “What a strange request,” she said, laughing a little. “There’s nothing at all to see, I promise you. Just ordinary trowels and hedge clippers and things.”
“Then you won’t mind if I look at them,” Toby pointed out. Before Mrs. Webster had any time to realize what was happening, he reached out and flicked the lid off the gardening basket. Mrs. Webster sprang for it, but she moved too quickly; the basket slipped out of her hands and overturned on the drive. Dozens of pieces of crisp white paper spilled onto the ground. Toby looked down at the page that had fallen near his foot: it was covered from top to bottom with Hugh Abernathy’s bold handwriting.
“Bother!” cried Mrs. Webster. She got down on her hands and knees, staining her dress with dirt as she scrambled to gather the files.
“Oh, Mother,” said Ivy. She had come up behind Toby so quietly that he hadn’t noticed her, and her face was grim. “What in the world have you done?”
CHAPTER 20
THE GYPTIAN STATUETTE
Mrs. Webster had barely spoken as Toby and Ivy marched her up to the Investigatorium, but now, as she looked from the shelves of detectives’ tools to the racks of disguises, she seemed to be searching for words. “What is all this?” she asked at last.
“We’re the ones asking the questions, Mother,” Ivy snapped. “Sit down, please. And don’t try any funny business.”
Mrs. Webster wasn’t behaving like a mother any longer. That worried Toby. Instead of scolding Ivy for her rudeness, she only nodded and took a seat on the old velvet sofa. Egbert the skeleton stared down at her—or he would have if he’d had eyes in his skull to stare with. Every time a breeze blew through the cracked-open window, his bones rattled together, and Mrs. Webster flinched.
There was a sharp click as Ivy locked the Investigatorium door. “Do you have all the papers?” she asked Toby.
Toby was still holding Mrs. Webster’s gardening basket, filled with the pages covered with Hugh Abernathy’s handwriting. “I’ve got everything that was on the ground,” he said, “and everything that stayed in the basket, but there might be more we don’t know about.” He pulled the papers out and stacked them on the desk as neatly as he could. “These are Hugh Abernathy’s stolen files, aren’t they?” he asked Mrs. Webster.
“Of course they are,” she said, “and there aren’t any more. I should know, since I’m the one who took them in the first place.”
“I can’t believe this.” Ivy turned away from her mother and started sorting through the tangle of disguises on the clothes rack. She grabbed a yellow rain hat and threw it on the floor. “My mother’s a murderer!” A mangy fur cape, three skirts, and a pair of lederhosen flew through the air to join the rain hat. “Tell me, Mother, what does a murderer’s daughter wear? A gold tiara? A pair of handcuffs?”
“Ivy, wait!” Toby tried to gather up the disguises on the floor, but Ivy only threw more at him. “Shouldn’t we give our suspect a chance to explain herself?”
“Explain herself?” A pink ballet slipper whizzed past Toby’s left ear. “What’s there to explain? You heard what Mr. Rackham said as well as I did. Whoever stole those files must have poisoned Hugh Abernathy.” Ivy glared at her mother. “And we know exactly who stole the files.”
Mrs. Webster stood up. “Has it occurred to you,” she said in a voice just as fierce as Ivy’s, “that Mr. Rackham might be wrong?”
Ivy narrowed her eyes. She held a wadded-up wool cardigan in one hand and looked eager to throw it. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t poison anyone,” Mrs. Webster said calmly, “and I’m not a murderer. My goodness, Ivy! I hoped you knew me better than that.” She took the cardigan from Ivy’s hand, shook it out, and folded it. “The
n again, I can see now that there are a few things I should have known about you—and about Lillie, too.” She sat back down and sighed. “I always told your father this house was much too big.”
“I don’t see what the size of our house has to do with anything,” said Ivy. At least she wasn’t throwing disguises anymore, Toby thought. “If you really didn’t murder anyone, why did you want Mr. Abernathy’s files?”
“And why were you trying to sell them to those journalists?” Toby asked. This had been bothering him ever since he’d seen Mrs. Webster at the gate. His trap had finally worked, but he couldn’t understand why. “You’re rich! You don’t need the money.”
Mrs. Webster laughed at this—a sad laugh, like the one Uncle Gabriel gave whenever another day went by without a client at his doorstep. “We were rich,” she corrected Toby. “Now we’ve barely got enough to last the rest of the year. Almost every penny we’ve earned has gone into Hugh Abernathy’s pockets.”
Toby had known that Mr. Abernathy charged handsomely for his services, but he hadn’t expected they’d be expensive enough to drain the Websters’ fortune. “You hired him to solve a crime?” he asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“Neither did I,” said Ivy. She sounded suspicious.
“We did hire him,” said Mrs. Webster. “At least, that’s how it began. A while ago, there was a theft at the city museum. The stolen artifact was a statuette of an ancient Gyptian goddess of justice. I’d just acquired it on a dig, and Robert and I had loaned it to the museum. When the police had no luck tracing the thief, we decided to obtain the services of a private detective. I needed the very best, and everyone knows that’s exactly what Hugh Abernathy was.”
“Did he find the statuette?” Toby asked.
“Oh, he had no trouble with that. Some second-rate burglar had tried to sell it to half a dozen pawnshops in the city, and Mr. Abernathy retrieved it within a week. But when we went to his office to pick it up, he told us that he’d been even busier than we’d thought. Over the course of his investigation, he’d learned that we hadn’t been entirely truthful about the statuette’s origins.”
The World's Greatest Detective Page 17