The Pirate's Blood and Other Case Files by Simon Cheshire

Author:Simon Cheshire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Published: 2011-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

I’d arranged to meet up with Zoe at the bookshop a little later that afternoon. Walking along Good Street as I approached the shop, I could see that there was a large metal Dumpster placed across the shop’s entrance. The door was open and shovelfuls of mangled books were being heaved into it, thudding as they hit the books that were already in there.

It was Zoe who was wielding the shovel. She waved to me and called through the open doorway. “You’ll have to go around the back! I’ll come and let you in!”

From my previous case file The Pirate’s Blood, you’ll know that Rogers & Rogers secondhand bookshop was on the corner of a block of eight converted Georgian houses and that running between the two tall, back-to-back rows of four was a narrow alleyway.

To each side of the alley, there was almost nothing but blank brick wall. At one or two of the eight addresses (including Rogers & Rogers), a plain back door had been added, opening out onto the alleyway. And at one or two of the others (including the bank that backed on to the bookshop), there was a metal balcony jutting out of the first floor.

It was a dark, vaguely smelly place. Drips from a leaking gutter above the bookshop left a permanently muddy patch beside the bookshop’s back door, the obviously recent repairs to which showed where the—

“GRRROOOOWWOOWOWWW!”

I almost screamed with fright! A huge, snarling black dog had appeared on the balcony above. It was followed by a tiny old man wearing a gray cardigan and the droopiest mustache I’d ever seen. He tugged the dog back by its collar.

“Don’t mind ’im,” he called down to me. “He won’t hurt yer, he’s only a puppy. He always likes to come out and say hello to anyone he’s not seen before.”

The dog growled menacingly at me, its eyes blazing and its teeth dripping doggie spit.

“C’mon, Killer, suppertime,” said the old man cheerfully.

After a brief check to make sure my heart was still beating, an idea suddenly occurred to me. There was an obvious question I could ask the old man; one that would test my earlier deduction that the arsonist was someone who had the keys to the bookshop.

Have you worked out what I was about to ask him?

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