The World's Greatest Detective by Caroline Carlson

Author:Caroline Carlson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-03-10T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

A CROWD AT THE GATES

A lot of peculiar things lurked in the walls of old houses, and at Coleford Manor, one of those peculiar things was Ivy. As Toby stumbled out of the kitchen, she burst from a hallway cupboard and landed on her hands and knees on the floor a few inches in front of him. “Hey!” he shouted. “Look out!”

With great dignity, Ivy picked herself up. She was still dressed as Madame Ermintrude, but her hat was missing, and her hair was mostly cobwebs. “It’s not my job to look out, Detective Montrose,” she said solemnly. “My job is to teach you about the element of surprise.” She looked Toby up and down. “From the way your knees are wobbling, I can tell I’ve been successful.”

Toby’s knees had actually started wobbling sometime during his encounter with Julia, but Ivy’s flying leap hadn’t made him feel any calmer. “I don’t think I need any more lessons right now,” he told her. “Have you found Mr. Abernathy’s files yet?”

Ivy tugged a cobweb from her hair. “Use your powers of observation, Toby. Am I beaming? Am I holding a stack of papers? Have I told you that your parents are sailing around the world on a Gyptian yacht and they’re due back next Tuesday?” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve crawled through the attic, searched the broom cupboard, and ridden up and down in the dumbwaiter, but I haven’t found anything except mice and spiders and leaky bottles of hair tonic. Did you learn anything from Julia?”

“A little,” said Toby. He told her about the brilliant blue glow of the Brandelburg acid and about Julia’s opinion of Hugh Abernathy, although he decided to keep what she’d said about Uncle Gabriel to himself. And he wondered whether he should tell Ivy about the marks he’d seen on Julia’s arm. He’d promised he wouldn’t say a word—but Ivy was his partner! Partners told each other everything, didn’t they? Surely they weren’t supposed to keep secrets from each other. “There’s one more thing about Julia,” he said quietly. “She’s got a tattoo—a wavy black line that goes halfway up her arm—and she got awfully upset when I saw it. I don’t know what it means, but I saw the same mark on my carriage driver’s arm yesterday, and he turned out to be a thief.”

“A thief?” said Ivy. “Are you sure?”

“I’d be a lot less sure if he hadn’t stolen my suitcase.”

Ivy wrinkled her forehead. “All right,” she said, “but why would a detective and a criminal have the same tattoo? It doesn’t make any sense. If Miss Hartshorn didn’t want you to see that mark, though, it must mean something important. Maybe I can ask Father about it.”

“You can’t tell anyone else! I promised Julia. And she gave me something in exchange.” Toby looked up and down the hallway to make sure no detectives were listening in the doorways. “Philip Elwood was trying to get into Mr. Abernathy’s room yesterday afternoon while the other detectives were outside.

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