First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
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Text copyright © Justine Windsor 2017
Illustrations copyright © Becka Moor 2017
All rights reserved.
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Justine Windsor and Becka Moor assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780008183561
Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780008183578
Version: 2017-07-04
For Charlie and Nikki
Contents
Chapter Two: The Coachman and the Stinking Bishop
Chapter Four: The Not so Pitiless Predator
Chapter Five: The Snake Ouroboros
Chapter Seven: Cockroach Crunch
Chapter Eight: Uncle Ebenezer’s Quill
Chapter Ten: A Very Precise Death
Chapter Eleven: A Mouthful of Dust
Chapter Twelve: Golems and Murder
Chapter Fourteen: O’Brien’s Midnight Circus
Chapter Fifteen: A Den of Iniquity
Chapter Sixteen: The Poodle That Barked in the Night
Chapter Seventeen: Lucy Cracks the Case
Chapter Eighteen: The Real Jerome Wormwood
Chapter Twenty: Meeting Mortimer Thorne
Chapter Twenty-One: Stone and Earth
Chapter Twenty-Two: A Pact or Two
The graveyard was silent and deserted. An owl hooted from the great oak tree that grew next to the church. A fox slunk stealthily between the headstones, perhaps hunting for voles or on its way to raid the vicar’s henhouse. When the church gate creaked open, the fox froze and listened intently, sniffing the night air. A man crept into view, carrying a lantern in one hand and a spade in the other. A large bag was slung over his shoulder. The fox trotted silently away, melting into the dark of the moonless night. As for the man, he made his way over to two freshly dug graves. A cage of iron encased one of them and the man cursed softly under his breath when he saw it. But the other grave had no such protection. The man put his bag and his lantern down next to it, plunged his spade into the mound of soil and began to dig.
“So