Chapter Text
Junior Detective Mikael Heidelstam glares at his subordinates.
“Officer Private Major Luke,” he says in his best grown-up voice, “have you secured the perimeter?”
Luke salutes. The cardboard loop on his wrist drops to his elbow. “Aye, sir!”
Mikael proceeds to examine the criss-crossed fence of masking tape that rings the crime scene. Luke did a pretty good job, actually. The fence covers around half of the playroom and comes up to Mikael’s shoulder, so nosy civilians won't disrupt their investigation. It’s also supported by several makeshift posts, which includes four chairs, three desks, two bookshelves, and a teddy bear. Luke even scribbled “CRIME SEEN GIT OUT” all over the tape in black crayon, which must have taken him a while to do.
“Officer Private Major Leo!” Mikael says.
Leo salutes too. “Yeah?”
“You gotta say, ‘Aye, sir,’” his twin brother whispers.
“Why? Ain’t ‘yeah’ and ‘aye’ the same thing?” Leo says, frowning.
Everyone else thinks about that for a moment.
Mikael recovers first. “Have you autopsized the victim?” he asks.
“Mmhmm.” Leo pulls out a tattered notebook from his pocket, then squints at a page.
“Lamby got his head ripped off,” he solemnly declares.
He closes his notebook.
“That’s it?” Mikael asks. He’s never heard an autopsy before, but he has a really strong feeling that it should be longer than one sentence.
“Aye,” says Leo, who has also never heard an autopsy before, but who has also been exposed to far fewer sentences than Mikael. “What else is there?”
“Was there any blood? Did you find any bullets? Were any of his organs missing?” Mikael asks with increasing hopefulness.
Leo thinks about it.
“Nah,” he says. “He just got his head ripped off.”
Mikael sighs. Autopsizing wasn’t as exciting as he thought it would be.
"Officer Private Major Lily!" he says.
"Aye, sir!" Lily chirps, saluting much more cheerfully than her brothers. There's a nub of white chalk between her fingers.
"Did you draw the chalk outline around the body?"
"Yup!" Lily points to the floor. "I drew 'round his head and the fluffy pieces, just like you told me to!"
Mikael studies her handiwork. There is indeed a chalk outline drawn around Lamby's severed head, along with a halo, a pair of angel's wings, and several white flowers. Smaller chalk outlines, with much fewer embellishments, surround the pieces of stuffing strewn around the floor. Then there's the outline around his body...
"Lily?"
"Hmm?"
"Where's the body?" Mikael asks, frowning at the small, headless, four-limbed, and very empty chalk outline.
"Oh!" Lily skips over to the chalk outline and deposits Lamby's corpse onto it. "Sorry! He looked real lonely, lyin’ there by himself."
She carefully arranges Lamby’s limbs to fit the outline before zipping back to her brothers.
Mikael sighs again. Detective work is hard. No wonder his Uncle Jean looks tired all the time.
"Good work, everyone!" he says. "Now that the crime scene's secured, we can start looking for clues."
Lily raises her hand.
"What're clooos?" she asks.
"Well," Mikael says, unconsciously adopting his father's Educational Experience Tone. "Clues are stuff that'll help us figure out who killed Lamby. Stuff that the killer left behind, like, like...footprints! Or broken glass! Or a bloody kitchen knife!"
His friends look around the crime scene.
"Don't see any of those," Luke says. He turns to his brother. "You see anythin’?"
Leo shakes his head. "Nuh-uh," he says, sounding a bit disappointed. He would've wanted to see a bloody kitchen knife, at least.
"What if...What if the killer didn't leave any clues?" Lily asks, her eyes wide with worry. "Does that mean we won't catch them?"
“Killers always leave clues behind," Mikael says with the absolute certainty of a seven-year-old whose knowledge of killers consists entirely of the ones that his Uncle Jean’s managed to catch. "They're not very smart. If they were, they wouldn't have killed Lamby in the first place!"
The siblings nod. That’s a really good point.
“Clues are hard to find too,” Mikael continues, warming up to the topic. “You need a mag-knee-fire glass to spot the really, really small ones!”
The twins perk up at the sound of the word “fire.”
"D'you have one of those?" Leo asks hopefully.
"No," Mikael admits. "But that's okay!" he quickly adds when his friends' faces fall. "There's four of us, so we'll be able to spot all the clues in no time!"
Luke raises his hand.
"Can clues be big, or do they all gotta be small?"
"They can be big," Mikael replies.
"Okay," Luke says.
He points to the open window above a bookshelf-slash-masking-tape-fence-post.
"The window's open, and the stuff under it’s all messed up,” he says. “Is that a clue?"
His friends stare at the window.
Then they look at the toppled books on top of the bookshelf.
"It's usually closed, right?" Luke continues in the oblivious manner of a farmer who just discovered a really weird-looking rock in his garden that turns out to be the Cocaine Skull. “It was open this morning though. We didn’t bother closing it ‘cause it was too high up.”
"That's right!" Leo lifts his chin, basking in his twin brother's accidental moment of glory. "We didn't close it 'cuz it was too high up," he repeats for emphasis.
Mikael doesn't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, they've just discovered their first clue! On the other hand, he wasn't the one who discovered it. And he's the Junior Detective around here, not Luke!
He briefly surveys his options. First, he could throw a tantrum. He hasn't thrown one in a long time, so he might be rusty. Second, he could act like the big boy that he is and congratulate Luke for finding the really obvious clue that Mikael should really have seen first--
The urge to throw a tantrum intensifies.
In the end, Mikael settles for the cushy middle.
He pouts.
“Good job, Luke,” he says grudgingly. “That’s a really good clue!”
His friends beam. Finding clues is easy!
Bolstered by Luke’s success, they comb the play area for the next thirty minutes. Mikael gives them one alphabet block each and tells them to put these next to any clues that they find.
"We shouldn't move things around," he says as he hands out the blocks. "That's called 'disturbing the crime scene', and it's a big no-no for detectives!"
The siblings look at the crime scene. It seems pretty disturbed already, with tape-barricade, the chalk outlines, and Lamby's mangled body. But hey, Mikael's the detective around here, not them.
Once all the blocks are in place, they tally their finds.
Exhibit A (Luke) - A large dust bunny (approx. two thumbs long and one thumb wide)
Exhibit B (Leo) - A moldy, half-eaten cookie ("So that's where it went!" Luke says before pocketing the cookie for future consumption.)
Exhibit C (Lily) - A Princess Prolly story book (dog-eared front cover; nibble marks on the edges of page 3)
Exhibit D (Mikael) - A toppled chair (next to the table with the tea set)
"Did we do good, Mik?" Lily asks in the manner of a child who's very much hoping that the answer will be yes.
"Erm," Mikael says.
"'Course we did." Leo nods to himself. "We found a buncha clues. A grown-up couldn't have done as good as we did."
"Mmmm," Mikael says, glancing around discreetly for the nearest exit.
"That's right," Luke says. "We did real good."
They all look at Mikael expectantly.
If Mikael were his father, he would have stammered something about how murder investigations were quite outside his area of expertise, he wasn't sure what he was doing here actually and oh, will you look at the time! He'd better get going. So sorry he couldn't be more helpful.
But since his backpedalling instincts haven't fully developed yet, he looks at his friends' eager faces, then at their sad little pile of clues, and tells them the truth.
"I think we did our best," he says.
Lily and the twins don't t know a lot of words yet, but they do know what 'best' means.
General jubilation occurs. Lily jumps and shouts, "YAY!" while her brothers exchange Ace's Highs. Then, Leo raises his hand.
"We can be Junior Detectives now, right?" he asks. "We found them clues, after all."
Before Mikael can go "Erm," once again, he's saved by the sound of the playroom door being pushed open.
"Hi, everyone!" a cheerful voice says. "Sorry I'm--"
The voice breaks off.
The four little detectives stare at the newcomer, who's looking at the tape-barricade with a baffled expression.
"Hi, Annette!" Lily says, waving happily. "Come join us! We're playin' dee-teck-tives!"
The Whirling's current student population can be counted on two hands. Within this population, those who can count beyond two hands can be counted on four fingers: Pam and Pauline Méjean, Mikael, and Annette.
Mikael likes Annette. They have a lot in common—They both love to read, enjoy doing crossword puzzles, don't have any siblings, and have parents who hoist grown-up things upon them. Most of the books in the Whirling’s libary were donated by Annette's mother, Plaisance, who used to own a bookstore nearby. She closed it down last year, though, after a spirit medium had confirmed that yes, the place was indeed cursed, hexed, jinxed, bewitched, star-crossed, ill-omened, and most of all, haunted by the spectral hand of the market.
...Oh, and there’s a novelty dicemaker living in the chimney. She’s harmless, though.
Plaisance didn’t heed these dire warnings right away. Her husband had poured a significant amount of capital into that bookselling venture, and something deep within her ultraliberal soul flinched at the thought of letting all that money go to waste. So she dithered and pondered and paced around her cursed bookshop while Annette watched on, nervous and unsure of what the future held for Crimes, Romances, and Biographies of Famous People.
Then the Incident happened.
Two months later, once Plaisance was able to set foot in the wrecked shell of the bookstore without screaming, crying, and babbling ancient Iilmarian incantations of protection, she salvaged all the books, board games, and other knick knacks that weren’t too badly riddled by bullets and donated these to the new school that had opened next door. She attended the Open House too, just to reassure herself that her Investment was going to be put to good use. It had been a pleasant affair. Garte served snacks. Sylvie made mocktails. A blonde gentleman with laugh lines around his eyes asked several questions during the Q&A session.
In the end, Plaisance decided to send Annette to the Whirling as well. She was one of the school's benefactors, after all.
Mikael glimpses Ms. Sylvie carefully arranging the Snack Table behind Annette.
"Nette!" he hisses while executing a series of panicked gestures that roughly translate to, "Close the door!!!"
Annette gets the message. She closes the door as quietly as she can, then jogs over to the tape-barricade.
"Wow," she says, running her hand over Luke's architectural masterpiece. "This is a really great fence, guys!"
Luke gives her a gap-toothed grin. Upon seeing this, Leo pouts and raises his hand.
"I helped write the words on the tape," he graciously informs Annette. "And I autopsized Lamby!"
Annette's not sure what "autopsized" means. But it's nothing that a quick peek at a dictionary won't fix.
"That sounds really cool, Luke—"
Leo's lower lip begins to wobble dangerously.
"—I mean, Leo!" Annette says with an apologetic smile. She shifts her attention to Lily and Mikael to avoid a diplomatic incident. "You said you were playing a detective game?"
"Yeah!" Lily says, practically bouncing with delight. "Mik's teaching us how to play dee-teck-tive so we can catch the bad person who hurt Lamby!"
Annette frowns. "The bad person who--"
Then she looks down, sees Lamby, and gasps.
"Lamby!!! What happened???"
"Somebody ripped his head off," Leo says, proud to be in his area of expertise once again.
The four of them give Annette a quick rundown of the events that led up to the discovery of Lamby's body, then take turns marching up to the fence to show her the clues they've found. She dutifully "oohs" and "aahs" over Luke's dust bunny and Lily's storybook, wrinkles her nose at Leo's cookie, and nods with approval at Mikael's toppled chair.
"It's just like a Dick Mullen mystery!" she says afterwards.
Luke and Leo snigger.
"Mom says 'dick' is a bad word," Luke says.
"Yeah, she says we're not allowed to say it 'till we're older," Leo chimes in.
"'Dick' is his nickname," Annette says, valiantly defending her literary hero. "He's a detective from a book, and he's solved a million murders. In fact," she lowers her voice to a whisper, "he even solved his own murder!"
The children gasp. Mikael makes a mental note to ask his Uncle Jean if he's ever solved his own murder. And also what 'dick' means.
"Have you come up with a deduction yet?" Annette asks "It's a guess about what you think happened to Lamby, based on the clues that you found," she says, anticipating the needs of her little audience.
Lily and the twins look at Mikael.
"Well," he says, with a confidence that he doesn't really feel, "I think the killer came through the window when Lily was out. Then they attacked Lamby there," he points to the toppled chair, "and escaped out the window again before Lily came back."
Annette smiles. "That's a really good deduction, Mik! I was..." She sniffs. "I was..."
She sneezes, a tiny, squeaky sound that's less of an "ACHOO!" and more of a, "chew!" If mice could sneeze, Mikael thinks, they would sound just like that.
"Excuse me." She sniffs and wipes her nose on the sleeve of her coat. "I was just about to say that I had the same deduction as you!"
Lily and her brothers look at Mikael with awe. His cheeks grow warm.
"But how're we gonna catch the killer if they escaped?" Luke asks. He looks at the window with excitement. "Are we gonna jump out the window too?"
"Good question." Annette strokes her chin, which makes her look very smart indeed. The children copy her immediately. "We'll need to go out and check the yard for more clues. They could have left a footprint. Or the murder weapon!"
The children stop stroking their chins.
"The...the yard?" Lily asks, her voice small and scared.
"We can't go to the yard," Leo says quietly.
Luke nods. "Yeah. The Coocoos are gonna kill us."
Mikael's heard of the Coocoos. Everyone in school's scared of them. They're the reason why no one's allowed to go into the yard, except for grown-ups like Ms. Sylvie, Mr. Garte, and the nice gardener lady.
Luke and Leo drew a picture of the Coocoos for Mikael once. It featured lots of teeth. And horns. And the color red.
"They're not so bad," Annette says. Then, she frowns. "Well, at least Cuno isn't. Anyway," she brightens up again, “they might have seen the killer, so we should interview them."
"Maybe they're the killers," Leo whispers, his round little face as pale as a grimy moon. "Maybe they jumped through the window and ripped Lamby's head off."
Lily looks at the window, then at Lamby's chalk-outlined body. Her lower lip trembles, but she scowls and stands up straighter.
"I wanna talk to them," she says. "I wanna find out why they hurt Lamby!"
Annette reaches over the fence to ruffle Lily’s hair. “I’m sure the Coocoos didn’t hurt Lamby, Lil. They might be mean, but they’re not that mean.” She pauses. “Okay, maybe Esse could have. But Cuno wouldn’t let her do something like that.”
“I’ll go too,” Mikael says, even though his knees feel all wobbly and his stomach's churning like a pleasure wheel. “I’m about to slay a Grand Würm tonight, and I’m a detective. So I’m not afraid of any Coocoos!”
Luke and Leo exchange a look.
“We ain’t scared either,” Leo says. He punches his brother’s shoulder. “Right, Luke?”
Luke rubs his shoulder. “Yeah.” He punches his brother too, but harder. “We’re gonna beat up the Coocoos if they try to kill us.”
Leo’s face turns red, which Annette wisely interprets as her cue to step in.
“Great! Let’s go eat our snacks, then we can head out and talk to the Coocoos.”
The word “snacks” douses the flames of war faster than an international peace treaty. Luke and Leo glare at each other one last time, silently agreeing to postpone their pointless squabble until after snacktime.
With their course of action decided, Annette heads for the door. She should check out 'Dick Mullen and the Monkey-faced Murderer' from the library, she thinks to herself. The killer in that story came through the window too...
“Uhm. Nette?” Mikael says.
She turns around. “Yes?”
The four children stare helplessly at her from behind the very impressive barrier of masking tape that surrounds them.
“You made the fence too high, stupid,” Leo tells Luke.
Luke punches him in the face.