Mystery & Mayhem. Julia Golding

are so enjoyable is that they allow us to share the challenge of solving the puzzle. We too can experience the satisfaction of pitting our wits against the mystery, piecing together the clues and unravelling the evidence to work out what happened and why. The stories in this collection offer exactly this challenge: can you solve the crimes alongside the daring young detectives? But whether or not you manage to crack the cases, there’s a huge amount of fun to be had along the way.

      Happy sleuthing!

      Katherine Woodfine

IMPOSSIBLE MYSTERIES

      Sometimes crimes seem simply impossible. But intrepid detectives know that this is never really true. As Sherlock Holmes said, ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’

      These three locked-room mysteries seem unbelievable, but each case can be cracked – and as soon as they are, each of them make perfect sense.

EMILY AND THE DETECTIVES

       By Susie Day

      ‘No, but . . .’ said Emily.

      ‘Hush, dearest,’ said Mr Black – or Father, as she more usually called him. ‘We are on the brink! Of a discovery! We are mere instants from revealing all – are we not, Lord Copperbole?’

      Lord Copperbole – or Irritating Moustachioed Weasel, as she more usually called him – leapt back from the laboratory bench, as it erupted in blue flames.

      ‘The clue!’ moaned Mr Black.

      ‘The clue!’ howled Lord Copperbole, nursing a burnt thumb.

      ‘The bucket?’ suggested Emily, tugging a pail full of sand from beneath the bench, and dumping it unceremoniously on to the fire.

      A shame. The blue flame indicated atacamite, as she had expected from the sugary crystals gathered in the corner of the clue: an envelope addressed to Lady Tanqueray, greasy from travel, and impressed with the shape of a scarab beetle. It could not have been more obvious.

      It was lucky, really, that Mary the housemaid neglected to refill the bucket with sand.

      The Chinese puzzlebox Lord Copperbole brought to the house was a rare and beautiful thing: jet black, inlaid with a complex pattern of abalone shell.

      ‘My dear friend Lady Tanqueray has again entrusted me with unlocking a mystery,’ he explained, purring as he stroked his new-grown goatee. ‘A gift to her eldest daughter, from an admirer. We must be discreet, Charles.’

      ‘Of course, my dear fellow,’ said Mr Black, turning it this way and that. ‘But if your intellect cannot unlock it, I scarce presume to hope I might.’

      This was silly, Emily thought, since her father was a very clever – if amateur – scientist, and Lord Copperbole was just a person who happened to live in a large house full of expensive things. But Mr Black was indeed outfoxed – until Emily slid the abalone-shell catch up, left, down, left and up, mirroring the castellation pattern on the lid until it clicked.

      She smiled as the box sprang open.

      The secret within was a large furred spider (poisonous, clearly: anyone could identify those red markings), which scuttled out of its prison and on to the floor.

      ‘Oh!’ said her father.

      ‘Help!’ yelped Lord Copperbole.

      Emily reached under the table, placed the empty bucket over the spider, and stood on top in her black buttoned boots until an eminent zoologist could be located.

      The eminent zoologist revisited Mr Black’s house in Richmond three weeks later, accompanied by his weeping wife.

      He recounted the tragic tale of his wife’s mother – an elderly seamstress, formerly of the royal household – and her purloined silver spoons. All but one had been mysteriously stolen from her private collection.

      ‘The police are baffled, sir!’ declared the eminent zoologist. ‘Her eyesight failed many years ago; she only discovered the theft when she came, alas, to sell them. And she is quite distraught, the poor lady, for they were gifts given to her by her daughter, my dear Agatha: one for each Christmas since our marriage. And now there is but one left.’

      His weeping wife dabbed at her eyes.

      ‘I enjoy a mystery, sir,’ said Mr Black with a frown, ‘but I don’t know that we are quite the right people to –’

      ‘Nonsense!’ declared Lord Copperbole, snatching up a paisley velvet scarf and knotting it with a confident flounce. ‘I half see the solution already! What puzzles me is why the thief would take every other spoon, and leave only one.’

      ‘Or,’ said Emily, looking up from her book, ‘perhaps there only ever was one spoon, and the daughter gave her the same one every year?’

      The weeping wife stopped weeping, and attempted to leap through the window.

      Mr Black gripped her by the ankle, hauled her back inside, and Emily sat on her legs until the constable arrived.

      The police were not pleased to have been bested.

      The newspapers, however, became terribly keen on the exploits of Copperbole & Black.

      The Mystery of the Eminent Zoologist’s Wife’s Mother’s Spoons was reported in the Daily Telegraph.

      The Case of One-Legged Jack (who was, Emily discovered, actually Two-Legged Jill) was featured on the front page of the Illustrated London News.

      After the Adventure of the Magician’s Hatbox, their appeal extended into the society pages.

       Lord Copperbole is quite the fashionable gentleman, lately seen sporting a spotted cravat tied in a manner some have dubbed ‘The Detective’s Twist’. Meanwhile, in spite of his unfortunate dusky appearance, Mr Black cuts a more traditional figure, yet his habit of tucking a crocus into his lapel is also gaining regard.

      There was no mention of young Miss Emily Black’s contribution.

      ‘Or the way she wears her stockings all wrinkly about the ankle and her hair in knots,’ Mary the housemaid said, finding Emily gloomily scouring the back pages. ‘Fame’s not all it’s cracked up to be, miss. Fame brings trouble. You’re better off out of it.’

      Emily supposed so. Though it seemed to bring a lot of other things too.

      Lady Tanqueray’s favourite Parisian tailor made Lord Copperbole a new green brocade coat – ‘At no charge!’ said her father. ‘Can you imagine? And you know Basil; he is fond of a tailor.’

      Mr Black found himself invited to the Royal Society – not to join, of course, but to dine, once.

      But after the Case of the Lost Prince (who happily really was lost, not dead, and thanks to Emily soon found again, in a coal cellar) mere fame changed into true regard.

      Lord Copperbole and Mr Black were summoned to the palace, and each anointed with a new title: DBE, Detective of the British Empire.

      There is no crime they cannot solve, the papers declared. LONDON IS SAFE.

      Emily felt torn in two. One portion of her blazed with envy. Her second self glowed with secret pride.

      Until one day, everything changed.

      ‘Dearest Emily,’ said her father, ‘we are quite preoccupied, Lord Basil and I, with our work