Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 112, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 684 & 685, September/October 1998

The Colossus of Lilliput by James Powell

©1998 by James Powell

“James Powell ranks with Edward D. Hoch among contemporary mystery writers, and among the best of all time,” said William DeAndrea in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. “Powell’s stories are crisp, well told, and always surprising.” Like Edward D. Hock, James Powell has made his career with the short story, not the novel, and has developed several popular series that have run in EQMM since the 1960s.

Somewhere in the early morning darkness a clock struck three. “Okay,” said M. M. Q. Contreras, sitting on the edge of her desk, “maybe Billy G. wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he was your friend.”

“I only kept that double-crosser around to run errands,” said Dockerty, nodding approval as she crossed her shapely legs.

“Like sending him to me with that cock-and-bull story about people stealing your precious antique clock?”

The crooked judge shrugged. “You can’t prove insurance fraud. Not unless you find the clock. Which you won’t. With Billy G. dead, I’m the only one who knows where it’s stashed.”

He lowered his voice and took a step toward her. “Look, I was in to Anselmo Zangari for a bundle betting the ponies and he was leaning pretty heavy. I was paying him off with the insurance money when I spotted Billy G. across the street, pretending to be winding his pocket watch. I know blackmail when I smell it. So I ducked out of the shop at the back and followed until Billy G. turned into an alley. When he stopped to check his watch I came up behind and gave him the working end of my knife. Then I ground the watch under my heel to establish the time of his death and scrounged up some friends who’ll swear I was with them when the deed was done.”

Contreras laughed her hard private-investigatrix laugh. “You just don’t get it, do you?” she said. “Anselmo Zangari, mob enforcer, tries to pass himself off as legit. Zangari’s Clock Repair and Cleaning, right? And he likes his little joke, does Anselmo. Remember the sign over his shop, the painted clock face and the words ‘Let Anselmo clean your clock real good’?”

“So?” demanded Dockerty.

“So Billy G. was always late. When I called him on it he blamed his cheap pocket watch. But the real truth is he came by Zangari’s shop every morning to reset his watch.”

“So?” repeated Dockerty, moving closer.

“So, like I said, it’s a painted clock. It always says ten after ten. Which sure puts a hole in your alibi. Unless I explain things to the police. Which I won’t.”

With the roar of a man who’d more than met his match, Dockerty drew his knife and lunged. But the savvy private investigatrix jammed a stiletto heel into the man’s left kneecap. He dropped like a stone and lay moaning and thrashing on the floor.

Contreras started to dial the police. Then, unsure of the legality of clamming up about Billy G.’s watch, she decided to call her lawyer first. When Narcissa’s sleepy voice came on the line Contreras smiled. “Yo, Shystress, did I wake you up?”

The three neon letters from the Virbitski School of the Dance sign outside her office window flashed, “TSK-TSK, TSK-TSK.”

Polly MacDougal printed the final draft of “The Neon Reproach,” her latest children’s mystery story, and took it out front to the antiques shop. With tax time drawing nigh, her husband Wallis was working on the books while tending the store, a slight man dwarfed by the immense unsaleable bookcase and drop-front writing desk combination they now used as a desk/display case.

Polly laid the story by his elbow as he muttered over his addition. She did not expect Wallis would like it. He preferred her detectives male, like H. H. Hopp, the rabbit private eye, or Humbert Bugg, B.A., the riddle-solving grasshopper. But she valued his opinion, nonetheless.

Then she threaded her large body through the antique clutter to the display window and began the overdue job of taking down the small Christmas tree. As she wrapped each wooden icicle, spun-glass moon, celluloid santa, and tin angel in tissue paper, she put it away in the pigeonholed decoration box.

Snow was falling again in the midafternoon gloom. White Swan had recently experienced three heavy snowstorms. As Polly watched the slanting and thickening flakes, a figure in a well-cut gray overcoat and a maroon hound’s-tooth deerstalker came up the narrow trench the Claggett boy had dug for them. The man walked between the three-foot-high piles of snow, holding a large canvas carryall in front of him like a bass drum.

A moment later the street door opened and the man backed into the shop. “Mr. MacDougal?” he asked and, turning around, carefully set the carryall down on the floor.

Polly watched as Wallis eyed the man cautiously. Had he come to buy or sell? The new arrival appeared to be in his fifties, cheeks plump and red from the weather, eyes bright and frank, and manner grave. “My name is Charles Kern,” he said, turning to include Polly in his words. “Dr. Muir at Simon Cameron University suggested I place a certain matter before you.”

Polly’s pulse quickened. Angus Muir had joined the faculty there a year or so before Wallis retired. He was a devotee of detective fiction and an admirer of her husband’s skill as a solver of mysteries. It sounded like a case. And Polly, weary of playing Watson to her husband’s Holmes, had resolved that on the next one she and Wallis would work together as equal partners.

Inviting the man to take off his coat, Wallis introduced his wife. Kern bowed to Polly. “Delighted, dear lady.” Shedding his coat and scarf but keeping the deerstalker, he added, “My nephew subscribes to Hardboiled Humpty Magazine. He’s a real fan of yours, Mrs. MacDougal. Wait till I tell him we met.”

“Tell him you got two detectives for the price of one,” smiled Polly.

Wallis shot her a worried look before putting the shop ledger away and offering Kern one of a pair of kitchen Windsor chairs with original paint priced at $325. His worry increased when Polly marched over, sat in the other chair, and gave Kern her full attention.

“Where to begin, where to begin?” wondered Kern out loud. “Are you familiar with miniature rooms? Not dollhouses, just single rooms.”

“The kind you find in museums?” asked Wallis. “A French Empire salon, a Queen Anne dining room, done to a scale of one inch to the foot. That sort of thing?”

“Actually I meant something more modest,” said Kern. “Something for the average hobbyist to put together. Their growing popularity may be a sign of the times. Our shrinking apartments are too small for dollhouses. Enter the miniature room.”

Kern tapped his own chest. “And enter Murders in Miniature. I design and manufacture small scenes of the crime, scenes of famous murders. Julius Caesar being assassinated in the Senate, Macbeth killing Duncan, Sweeney Todd in his barbershop with his next victim in the chair and the tiny little bottles of bay rum on the shelf behind him, Lizzie Borden with her miniature axe, et cetera. The hobbyist can buy my plans and specifications, or a kit containing everything needed to put the room together for himself.

“I’m branching out into scenes of fictional crimes,” Kern continued, “a field where Dr. Muir has considerable expertise.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Actually I hope he’ll find us a nice, juicy Highland murder or two to begin with. My Macbeth scene of the crime has never sold well and I’ve got bolts of mini-plaid cloth all over the place.”

As he spoke, Kern drew two magnifying glasses from his jacket, passing one to Wallis and the other to Polly. “With each kit we will include a hand-glass and a deerstalker’s cap.” From the carryall he brought out the mate to the cap he was wearing. “I’d’ve brought two if I’d known you were going to be here, Mrs. MacDougal,” he said apologetically, offering the cap to Wallis. But Wallis had a thing about looking ridiculous to no purpose and waved the cap away. He regretted this at once when Polly, seeing Kern’s disappointment, intercepted the cap, took a deep breath, and put it on.

Thanking her with a smile, Kern said, “Here, this’ll show you what I’m talking about.” With their permission he brought down six volumes from a set of the works of Elbert Hubbard from the left bookcase and placed them in two piles of three each on the drop-front desk. Removing a dark rectangular box about a foot and a half long, a foot high, and a foot deep from the carryall, he set it at Polly’s eye level atop the books. Then, gently and apologetically, he wheeled Wallis and his office chair over beside his wife. Finally, Kern took a sheepshank of electrical cord from the back of the box and inserted the plug into the nearest electrical outlet.

Through the framed sheet of glass that formed the front of the box Polly saw a small, brightly lit room, a Victorian study. Three walls covered with a red and cream wallpaper in a lozenge pattern that rose up to high plaster moldings and a complicated plaster medallion from which hung a decorated gas chandelier. A white marble fireplace stood against the far wall with a merry fire in the grate. Its mantel held a heavy ormolu clock and above it, in a gilt frame, a tiny Landseer-like painting of stags. High bookcases stood on either side, and several chairs upholstered in deep blue. A large red Bokara rug covered the floor. In the center of the room was an elaborately carved, marble-topped table and beside it an elephant’s-foot wastebasket.

But the room’s overall look of solidity and correctness was marred by the figure of a man in a brocade dressing gown seated at the table with the upper part of his body thrown across the marble tabletop. Around the jeweled hilt of a small knife that protruded from the figure’s back was a small pool of what seemed to be fresh blood.

Leaning forward together, the MacDougals bumped heads. They backed off and, more cautiously, examined the murder scene through their hand-glasses.

From the clock on the mantel, the dressing gown, and the overturned nightcap glass on the table, Polly concluded the murder had occurred just before 11:53 in the evening.

“It’s all wonderfully done,” said Wallis. “Isn’t that a Belter table?”

Kern nodded proudly and drew a ballpoint pen from his pocket to use as a pointer. “Those upholstered chairs are Belters, too. I’m a bit of a collector.”

“But I sure don’t recognize the murder,” admitted Polly.

“I’m not surprised,” said Kern. “It’s a murder that hasn’t happened yet. One, I trust, that never will. You see, the little figure there is supposed to be me. This room is a replica of my study back in Brooklyn Heights. The murder weapon in my back is the letter opener I kept on the table. It disappeared two weeks ago, along with my cat.”

He turned to Wallis. “And, as you said, the workmanship is museum quality. My Murders in Miniature are much humbler efforts. In my Julius Caesar scene I’ve even stooped to using cake dividers for columns.”

“Those thingees they use to separate the layers on wedding cakes?” asked Polly.

With a nod Kern continued his confession. “Young Queen Victoria’s portrait on Sweeney Todd’s wall is a trimmed and framed penny postage stamp and, if the truth be known, Lizzie Borden’s axes come from a manufacturer of holiday charms for bracelets. They’re supposed to represent George Washington’s birthday.”

“Quite terrible, of course,” said Wallis drily. “But hardly a reason for murder.”

Kern bowed his agreement and added, “No, this room isn’t one of mine. It arrived in yesterday’s mail. Since I was coming to see Dr. Muir, I brought it along to show you.”

“No message? No return address?” asked Wallis.

“Oh, I know who sent it,” said Kern. “His name is Frederick Chapman, and he bestrides the world of dollhouses and miniature furniture like a colossus.”

“Doesn’t everybody?” asked Polly.

Kern gave her a stern look. “Chapman’s miniature furniture sells for thousands and you won’t find a complete room for under fifty thousand,” he said, perhaps hoping prices would set the conversation back in a more serious direction. “Chapman and I used to meet now and then at conventions and trade shows. He is a large, dark, brooding man. Two things seemed to drive his engine: perfection in his craftsmanship and the desire for money. When I first knew him he talked crackpot stuff, like alchemy and magic and selling his soul to the devil for a team of tiny mannikin craftsmen to produce miniature furniture under his direction.”

Kern shook his head sadly. “Don’t laugh,” he said. Then he laughed himself. “I’m in a weird business, that’s for sure. Sometimes after working in a world that’s one-twelfth scale you step out into the street and the size of things startles you, the towering buildings, the giant pedestrians. Come home to an empty apartment and go from room to room and you sometimes feel you’re being watched. (And, believe me, I’ve been feeling a lot of that recently.) You swing around quickly expecting to find an immense eye at the window. But it’s only the moon. All the switching back and forth from Lilliput to Brobdingnag can unhinge the mind.

“More recently, Chapman’s ravings turned electronic. One day he wrote to ask to borrow this very Belter table. Using some special optical scanning device he claimed he would create what he called an electronic template of the Belter which, by a holographic process, would allow him to reproduce the table in miniature at half the cost.”

Kern shrugged at the very idea. “Chapman wasn’t the kind of man you’d want as an enemy,” he explained. “So I loaned him the table, which, in due course, he returned. A few weeks later Chapman’s miniature furniture catalog arrived, showing my Belter table and many other fine pieces offered at half his usual price. Chapman did specify that payment must accompany each order, which was not unusual for a craftsman of his caliber. I imagined the orders pouring in from rich collectors and museums.

“Even these new prices were too much for me. Still, I thought, perhaps a less detailed piece like Sweeney Todd’s barber chair, ordered in quantity, might reduce the price to within my reach. I decided to put the proposition to Chapman on my next visit to Hoboken, where he lived.

“His car was out front. When I rang the bell and no one came, I went out back to his workshop and peered in the window. Standing in the middle of the workshop floor was what I took to be a steel garbage can surfaced with small bumps like the inside had been worked over with a peen-ball hammer and, leaning against it, a silver plaque of the god Mercury. Suddenly I realized I was looking at large reproductions of a thimble and a Mercury dime, the same items Chapman used in his catalog to establish scale.

“Then a car door slammed. There was Chapman. He’d just put two suitcases on the front passenger seat of his car. As he started around to the driver’s side he looked over and saw me standing there by the window and read the look on my face. Without a word he jumped in the car and roared away.

“An hour later he was arrested trying to get on a plane to Tahiti carrying close to a million dollars in cash. Apparently the government had been keeping him under surveillance on suspicion of mail fraud. But Chapman has always blamed me for his arrest and has sworn to kill me.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Polly. “This Chapman guy borrowed antiques like your Belter table and photographed them with garbage-can-sized thimbles and immense dimes to make them look small?”

Kern nodded. “The whole thing was a swindle. He’d planned to make this one big killing and skip the country. Anyway, since it was his first offense he got off with a suspended sentence on condition he give back the money. But the legal fees and the damage to his professional reputation bankrupted him.

“Already something of a crackpot, Chapman now became completely paranoid, claiming little people and giants were out to kill him. One day he shot an unlucky midget who happened to be walking behind him in the street. Chapman was put into an institution for the criminally insane from which he escaped several years ago. Then...”

Rubbing his high forehead in wonderment, Wallis interrupted to ask, “Mr. Kern, I don’t understand. Why come to us? You’ve enough here to go right to the police.”

Kern sighed. “I’m afraid Chapman did a job on me there. You see, last month he sent me a letter that read, ‘Kern, you bastard, get ready. I mean to kill you. First, I’ll show you a real scene of the crime. After that you’ll have a week to live. Yours truly, Frederick Chapman.’

“Oh, the police took a letter from an escaped homicidal maniac very seriously. Until they made three discoveries. One, the letter had been typed on the portable typewriter I keep in my study. Two, the stationery matched my own. And three...” Kern paused to give them a baffled look. “Three, Chapman’s signature was in my handwriting. I’d thought it looked oddly familiar.

“The police decided it was all a publicity stunt for my new fictional line of Murders in Miniature. They would’ve charged me if my lawyer hadn’t smoothed things over. But I’m hardly in a position to go back to the police. Besides, I’m sure my apartment is secure.” He tapped the miniature room. “If Chapman murders me it won’t be like that.”

Taking off the deerstalker with his thumb and forefinger on the visor, Kern scratched his head with the other fingers. “We wrote about the Belter table, so Chapman knew my stationery. And I recently sent the typewriter out for repair. Maybe he got his hands on it. But how could Chapman’s signature be in my handwriting?”

The question floated there in the long silence. Polly’s mind raced, for something told her she knew the answer.

Then Wallis asked, “Did you have any communication with Chapman in the asylum?”

Kern started to shake his head, then brightened. “His first month there he wrote to regret the intemperate things he’d said and asking me to think well of him. It was Christmas so I wrote the poor devil a few lines on a card, Scottie dogs in the snow, I recall it...” Kern stopped. “Ah,” he said.

Wallis nodded. “I’ll bet Chapman treasured the envelope more than the card. And the warders would find it quite the usual thing, a madman copying his name out over and over again.” Here Wallis cocked an eyebrow at Polly and mouthed the name Cornelia Otis Skinner.

Polly blushed and glared back. So that was how he’d figured it out. A mere week ago she’d read to him from her library book that when Cornelia Otis Skinner was away at school and received a letter from Otis Skinner, her famous stage-actor father, she would cut off the “Cornelia” on the envelope and sell the “Otis Skinner” part to her schoolmates as her father’s autograph.

“You also said the letter opener went missing,” said Wallis.

“And the cat,” added Polly.

“And the cat,” repeated her husband. “So the easiest explanation for the writing paper and the typewriter is that Chapman has access to your apartment.”

“Impossible,” insisted Kern. “Or at least I can’t see how. As for the letter opener, until yesterday I assumed I’d accidentally knocked it off the table into the wastebasket and it’d been thrown out with the trash. And I figured the poor cat had darted past me out the door one morning when I left for work.”

Kern thought for a moment before continuing. “Let me describe my situation. I live in an old Brooklyn Heights brownstone which my family purchased as a rental property some years ago. Do you know the type, two apartments per floor, each running the length of the building from front to back, five or six floors a building?”

“Thirty-eight years ago, in graduate school, I shared a fourth-floor walk-up just like that,” said Wallis.

“Good,” said Kern. “Well, I kept the upper floor for my own use, meaning to turn one apartment into my office and workshop and the other my living quarters. But I’m a light sleeper and the street traffic is noisy even at night. So I decided to put my place of business in the front and the living quarters in the back. My study, which you see here, and my bedroom are side by side at the rear of the building where the kitchens of the two apartments had been located.”

He turned back to the miniature room. “I had the study done in the Rococo-Revival style popular just before the Civil War. The wallpaper is a Birge architectural pattern called ‘Victorian.’ The fireplace in the wall is open on both sides, cheering both the study and my bedroom. A clever touch, I thought.”

“I admire the brocade dressing gown,” said Polly.

“Thank you. Ironically enough, it’s from Tom Thumb’s Secret, a mail-order house specializing in doll apparel. I liked it so much I had my tailor copy it full-size.”

“Is that a portable television next to the overturned brandy glass?” asked Polly.

“I think that’s this,” said Kern, tapping the miniature room with his pen.

“It does get a bit confusing,” said Polly.

“And what about security?” asked Wallis.

“I was just getting to that,” said Kern, adding, “When a madman has a grudge against you, you can’t be too careful.” He began counting things off on his fingers. “The apartment’s exterior door is steel with an anti-jimmy plate and two locks, a vertical deadbolt lock with a pick-resistant cylinder and a mortise lock. The windows are gated with iron bars. And there’s a perimeter alarm, a circuit routed through foil tape on the window glass and a magnetic catch on the door. Break the circuit and an alarm sounds at my security company’s office.”

“Ah, life in the big city,” remembered Wallis.

“They recommended a space alarm, too,” said Kern, “a sonic device to detect an intruder. But my cat was a curious little creature. She would have set it off, poking her nose in everywhere.” When he paused Polly could see he missed the cat. “And, oh,” he said, returning to the matter at hand, “after the business with the police over Chapman’s letter I had a security expert come in and tap around for secret entrances.”

“Cat ladders,” said Polly quickly.

Kern blinked and turned red, as if he’d been accused of talking hog-wash or horsefeathers.

“Your cat’s missing and you’ve got a fireplace,” explained Polly. “It made me think of cat ladders. In New England, way back when, they’d lean a board with strips nailed across its width in the flue during the months when the fireplace wasn’t in use. If a cat got shut up inside a room it could escape up the chimney to the fireplace in the room above.”

“But I don’t have a chimney,” explained Kern. “My fireplace is gas. It doesn’t need venting.”

“No chimney, no cat ladders,” said Wallis.

“And no cat,” Polly had the small pleasure of reminding him. But it didn’t make up for cat ladders being a dead end.

“Who else has a key to your apartment?” asked Wallis.

“My cleaning lady, Mrs. Brill, who’s been with me for years. When her invalid husband was alive I helped with his medical expenses and her daughter’s college tuition. I have complete trust in Mrs. Brill’s loyalty. She comes Thursdays, spends the day cleaning, leaves my dinner in the refrigerator for me to heat up. On her way out she takes down the week’s garbage and leaves it with the super for the Friday pickup.”

Wallis had thrown his head back and was staring into the far corner. The old house was a vast archipelago of ceiling stains, certain of which Wallis stared at when in concentrated thought. Polly had decided the far corner one was shaped something like the island of Cyprus.

“While I think of it,” said Kern to Polly to fill the silence, “Chapman would never have included a human figure in one of his own rooms as he’s done here. No, Chapman’s signature was to leave something to indicate a recent human presence: top hat and gloves on the table by the door, a shawl thrown across a chair, a tiny newspaper with the headline ‘Fort Sumter Fired Upon’ and the door to the spring garden flung wide as if someone had just rushed off to join his regiment.”

“A freshly stabbed corpse sure indicates the murderer’s recent presence,” suggested Polly.

Here Wallis rejoined the conversation. “Mr. Kern, do you know your tenants?”

“Only those I meet on the elevator. I leave the leasing and rent collection to a firm of property managers.”

“Good,” said Wallis. “Now, you said your Mrs. Brill took the garbage down for the weekly pickup. In my day a buzzer rang in the kitchen and the super sent up the dumbwaiter from the basement. Putting in the garbage was always my job. One of my roommates was a philosopher and much above such things. The other slept all day, prowled the night, and claimed to be a poet.”

Polly was delighted. “You never told me about that. It’s just like La Bohéme only with garbage.”

Her husband asked, “Mr. Kern, when you remodeled and put your bedroom and study where the two kitchens had been, what happened to the dumbwaiter?”

“Oh, it’s still in operation. I just had them lower the machinery to the next floor, closed off the shaft, and installed my fireplace over it.”

Wallis spread his fingers and tapped their tips wisely together, a gesture Polly found particularly theatrical.

“Then I suggest Chapman has taken an apartment in your building,” said her husband solemnly. “In fact, I think it’s one of the two immediately under you. Any working day except Thursday he would then be able to come up the dumbwaiter shaft and cut a way into your apartment.”

“You mean stick a ladder up the shaft?” asked Kern.

“Your missing cat suggests he sloped up a plank with some kind of a platform angled onto it. Chapman’s a craftsman, after all, and he’d want a place to stand on when he’s working around the wheels and counterweights of the dumbwaiter machinery. On one of his visits he must have left the trapdoor open and...”

“And Mr. Kern’s cat decided to investigate and ended up down in Chapman’s apartment,” said Polly, happy that her “cat ladder” suggestion had contributed something, however indirectly.

Wallis nodded. “It wouldn’t have been difficult for Chapman to turn the new flooring under the fireplace into a trap door. By replacing a length of the copper gas pipe with a rubber hose he could raise up the hearth, fake logs and all, and enter your apartment at will. That’s how he did all his mischief. And it was no accident his letter came in the winter. After the stationery and typewriter business he knew you’d bring in a security expert to look for secret entrances. But the man wouldn’t waste much time tapping around a burning fireplace.

“So there you are, feeling you’re secure. Then one day before you come home from work Chapman will enter your apartment by the fireplace. He’ll hide and wait until you’re in the study with your nightcap. Then he’ll strike you down from behind. When he’s arranged everything as it is here in the miniature room, he’ll leave by the front door.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” demanded Kern. “Move to a hotel? Nail down the fireplace?”

Wallis shook his head. “Chapman would only come at you another way another time. No, I’d better call my old poet-roommate friend who recently retired from the New York police force.” He reached for the telephone behind the Hubbard volumes, adding, “Maybe Dr. Muir can tell you why so many police captains are spoiled poets.”

“While you’re at it,” suggested Polly, “ask him why so many poetry professors are spoiled detectives.”

Wallis ignored the remark. “When I’ve filled my friend in he’ll know what to do, Mr. Kern. Our homicidal Chapman will be in police custody before you get home. I can see it all now. Detectives pounding up the stairs, the splintering of the door, and there stands Chapman, transfixed with astonishment.”

“With your cat purring around his ankles,” added Polly.

As the telephone connection was being made Wallis turned back to Kern. “Or would you like the police to wait so you can be in on the kill? How about this? Chapman tries to escape up the dumbwaiter shaft. He raises the fireplace and there you stand with two sturdy policemen at your side.”

Kern spoke decisively. “Please have the police move as quickly as they can.” Then he sagged visibly as though free of a great weight. After a moment he looked at Polly. “Still,” he said in a sad voice, “it’s hard not to pity Chapman.”

“I understand,” she said.

“Yes,” agreed Wallis, hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. “But I’d save all that until he’s safely tucked away.”

After dinner Polly asked her husband if he wanted to watch television. “I’ve had my share of staring into little boxes for today,” he told her. “Besides, I’ve still got the books to do.”

That was fine with Polly, who was already working out her next story in her head. It would introduce a pair of brand new detectives, the ten-year-old Cody twins, Dorothy and Dashiell, who would pedal their blue tandem bike around their hometown searching for crimes to solve. She thought they would be perfect for The Mysterious Hornbook magazine. She would call their first story “The Haunted Tree House” and it would begin:

Dashiell Cody pumped the tandem up Yeggman Hill, shoulders hunched high, head down. As always, just as he reached the top the male twin swung around and said, “Put your back into it, Dot.” And as always, his sister pretended to be pumping and replied, “Watch where you’re going, Dash.”

Indeed, coming over the rise, they nearly collided with their startled neighbor, Miss Borden, pedaling home from the hardware store where she’d taken her axe to be sharpened.

The Cody twins coasted down the gentle grade into Hooligan Falls, a town whose dark tree-lined streets, sharp picket fences, and brooding clapboard houses held more mysteries than even a child’s mind could encompass. They passed the donut shop Scotty Macbeth inherited after Mr. Duncan’s unexpected death. They passed the bank and waved at Constable Stumbleton crossing the town square. Turning his head to wave back, he marched right into the flagpole. They passed Julio’s pizzeria with the banner in the window promoting the new giant pie, the Brute. “Nobody’s Ever Et Two Brutes!” it declared. Julio’s pizzas were better than his grammar.

In the vacant lot at the corner of Burke and Hare the James boys were waiting beneath the plywood shed which stood some thirty feet off the ground in the sycamore tree. Among the children of Hooligan Falls the tree house was a marvel like Valhalla, and the James boys’ two older brothers, who built it for them, had the status of giants in their eyes.

“We heard the ghost up there again last night after supper, Dot,” said Jesse, who had been chosen spokesman because he had the most freckles. “He was talking to somebody.” Jesse addressed the female twin who, since Dash did all the tandem pedaling, was widely regarded as the brains of the detective team.

“Then let’s see what we’ve got,” said Dot, leading the way up the steps to the tree house.

“I still say cornstarch would have been just as good as sprinkling flour,” said Dash.

Dot gave him a pitying look. “And scare off whatever it is with the crunch?” she asked, pushing open the tree-house door.

“Geez!” everybody said. A single set of large footprints in the flour led from the door over to the tree house’s three windows and back to the door. “Like I said yesterday,” said Dot, “ghosts don’t leave footprints.”

“A Sasquatch, then,” said Dash. “A baby Bigfoot.”

“Why can’t it just be a grownup?” demanded Dot.

Dash laughed. “A grownup in a tree house?” he said. “Grownups only go where the money is.”

Stroking her chin the way her father did when thinking, Dot had to admit her twin brother was right.