//This is an automated message from RoboTOP. RoboTOP copyright 2009 by Silicon Intelligence.

Asdfghjkl, oh my goodness, Bakerloo, this is so good. Like, one of the best ski lodges I have ever been in. It's suspenseful and sad and I absolutely love your writing style. I can't wait for the next part, although I'm honestly kind of glad that I didn't miss too many updates during the time I have been drifting in and out of hiatus.

It's back!! This part was so suspenseful, I can't wait to see what happens next! I think I'm gone, which is a shame, but hopefully the detectives will avenge us all! This is so amazing, Bakerloo, I'm so excited to read more.

Chapter Thirteen

“Lost and Found”

Who on earth would steal a corpse?

Spirit had seen a lot of strange and terrible things during their stay at Ellingham Manor, but this was simply cruel. Spirit had gone downstairs to eat their breakfast and had returned to their room to find that Mary was nowhere to be seen. The room was otherwise undisturbed, and other than the fact that the bed where Mary had lain was now made, there seemed to be no evidence of who could have taken Mary.

Why Mary had been taken was also a mystery. She was dead -- if she was keeping any secrets, she certainly wouldn’t be telling them to anyone anytime soon. Spirit lay down on their bed and stared up at the blank white ceiling. The Week of Wonder and Whimsy -- which was in its… fourth-no, sixth-no, fifth day -- was long forgotten. As far as Spirit was aware, Lady Ellingham was still working away on the carriage. They could hear a dull clanging noise from far away, birdsong, the rustling noise of the rippling long grasses, shouting from the back of the house--

Spirit got to their feet and began to run. They already knew what was waiting there, but felt oddly compelled to go and see what had happened.

Luminescence and Barnaby --  who both had been screaming -- were already there. So were Darkling and Quill, although they were far beyond screaming by then. Spirit clamped their hands over their ears as they ran through a sitting room and a set of French doors which led out onto the smooth stone balcony. Lumi’s mouth was a perfect circle; the scream she was letting out was high-pitched and warbly. Barnaby’s scream was rough and low and carried through the estate, attracting everybody. Magnus and Roxann dashed around a corner with Lady Ellingham in Magnus’s arms. Nyx ran out of the house’s rear doors and skidded to a stop. PygmyOwl and QueenOfWolves poked their heads out of a window far above everybody else.

So they’re still out there, Spirit thought to themselves as they looked up.

“Oh, no.” Magnus came to stand next to Lumi. 

“This always seems to happen to her,” Roxann blubbered.

“Poor kids,” Barnaby said rather noncommitally. 

Lady Ellingham remained silent. She stared at the two victims with her big blue eyes for several minutes, as if searching for a bit of life, a fluttering eyelid, a twitching finger. There was nothing.

Magnus caught her as she fell headfirst towards the ground. The remaining guests gasped. Her head was lost in the long grass. Only her feet, which Magnus was holding onto fiercely, were still visible.

There was a great shuffling movement. Roxann began to push Lumi and Nyx towards the house, while Barnaby did the same with Spirit. Spirit glanced up to see Pygmy writing something down in her notebook. Barnaby caught their gaze and looked up. They were gone. 

“Come on,” Barnaby grunted.

“I am,” Spirit replied.

A moment of silence.

“What happened to--”

“Regular fainting spell. Might have happened to anyone.” Barnaby began to walk faster, pushing Spirit so hard that they nearly tripped over their own feet.

“Will she be alright, do you think?”

“She,” Barnaby growled, “will be fine.”

“She didn’t seem too fazed by the other murders. Why is this one--”

Their sweater was suddenly pulled back. With a yank that was surprisingly strong considering his size, Barnaby pulled Spirit back so that the CBer and the robot were standing next to each other.

“Lady Ellingham has been through more than you could ever imagine,” Barnaby said in a voice filled with anger and -- was that pride? “She has borne great pain and greater sorrow, and there is no way that I am letting some stuck-up” -- he grabbed Spirit’s sweater again and began to pull them closer -- “little children playing at detectives open a wound that has finally, finally closed.”

They walked to the entrance hall in silence. All the guests, bar Pygmy and Queen, were there.

“...only half the group’s left…” Lumi was muttering something to Nyx.

Nyx gestured subtly, indicating that Barnaby was within earshot. Barnaby, however, was not listening. He was muttering to himself, wondering how things could have gone so wrong.

“...half the guests dead…” He shook his head and walked off towards the dining room and kitchen.

Spirit didn’t move closer to Lumi and Nyx. They stayed as if rooted to the spot where they had stopped. Their brain was humming, humming with thoughts and questions all mixed together into a jumble of cognition. One question stood out amongst the others, shiny silver in a sea of grey and black.

How does Barnaby know about Mary?

Even though their recent misadventures with the dumbwaiter were still fresh in their minds, Queen and Pygmy used it to head down into the kitchen. They had waited as long after lunch as possible, to lower the risk of being caught by Roxann in the kitchen, but it was now three in the afternoon and they were both starving. Besides, Pygmy pointed out, Roxann would probably cry if they walked in on her like that.

“I almost wish we were there,” Queen said as she consulted her notebook.

“I most certainly do not.” Pygmy shuddered. “Witnessing a crime sounds dreadful, in my humble opinion.”

“But don’t you wish you knew what had happened to Kitten?”

“It is hard to deny that it would make our detective work much easier, but all we need to do is to ask someone. Barnaby and Roxann might know something, they were there right before she disappeared by Lumi’s account.”

“We are not speaking to the robots.”

Pygmy sighed. “I wish we could. Magnus was so kind, and Barnaby and Roxann were… less so, but at least Roxann was a proficient cook. I haven’t had anything hot to eat in a long while.”

The dumbwaiter came to a bumpy stop. After glancing through the dirty glass door, the detectives stepped out into the kitchen. It had clearly seen better days -- even since the girls had started using the dumbwaiter to access the kitchen, it had become much dirtier. The stack of dishes in the sink had become a tower; there was a compost bin that was in desperate need of taking outside. Directly across from the dumbwaiter were two doors -- the left one led to the pantry, and the girls weren’t sure what was behind the other one. They were a bit hesitant to go looking -- the experience in the Memory Room had chastened them a little, and they were in no mood to go exploring.

“...and it turns out that she had it with her the entire time!”

“Oh dear! Oh dear…” 

Roxann and Barnaby were coming down the servants’ staircase.

“Oh, my Claaws! Not this again!” The detectives dashed for the nearest door -- the unexplored one. 

It was cold. Frost lined the walls and the inside of the door. It took all of both Pygmy and Queen’s efforts to close the heavy door before the twins arrived in the kitchen.

“But Quill always seemed so nice? Are you sure that she wasn’t planning on bringing it back to you?”

“Yes, I’m sure. These brats are going to be the end of me, I swear. You realize that the key to the” -- Barnaby whispered something here that the girls didn’t hear -- “is gone? I’ll bet you anything it’s at the bottom of the lake or somewhere equally inaccessible.”

There was a clanging of pots and pans. Pygmy looked around. There were shelves lining the walls of the room they were hiding out in, and on those shelves was --

“Ice cream,” Pygmy breathed, letting out a puff of warm air that swirled through the bitter cold.

“Does Lady Ellingham like ice cream?” Queen got to her feet and began to survey the shelves.

“It’s Red Sun.” Pygmy made a face as she picked up a carton. “I never liked that brand.” 

She went to put the carton back on the shelf. She recoiled and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“What is it?” Queen walked over and gasped.

Staring with unseeing eyes right back at the detectives was Kitten.

Chapter Fourteen

“Party of Seven”

Not for the first time during her stay at Ellingham Manor, and not for the last either, Nyx wondered why Lady Ellingham had hidden away all of her inventions. Lady Ellingham loved diagnosing and solving problems -- so why had she hidden so many of her fantastical devices, which she was proud of, away? Nyx didn’t understand this one bit. Why hide away your greatest achievements? Nyx knew she wouldn’t.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Roxann had been watching Nyx, who suddenly realized that her lunch had been served for quite a few minutes, and she hadn’t even taken a bite.

“Is it dreadful?” Roxann was not rude; her lip trembled, and she genuinely believed that she had lost her touch. “Please save me from the agony and just tell me if it’s dreadful.”

Nyx picked up half of the cucumber sandwich and took a delicate bite. “It’s lovely, Roxann,” she said after swallowing. “Thank you.”

Roxann’s whole body relaxed and she slumped rather ungracefully into a chair. The room was quiet for a moment. All three CBers -- Luminescence, Spirit, and Nyx -- were eating quietly, spread far apart. The table which had been full when the carriage arrived was now nearly empty. Lady Ellingham was nowhere to be seen; Magnus had spirited her away after she fainted and neither one had been seen since. Barnaby was also out of sight, but that was more of a blessing than a curse; Nyx thought that he might completely lose his marbles at any moment. He had last been seen by Spirit, kicking a telephone desk in a dark and cobwebby hallway on the ground floor. The enormous mural of the futuristic city that had enchanted the guests on their first night looked like it was about to crumble. The light that came through the tall windows was harsh and hurt Nyx’s eyes.

The three guests and Roxann were pulled from their stupor by the familiar sound of the dining hall’s doors opening, and the clunking of metal feet on the wooden floor. Magnus walked purposefully up to the chair that nearly engulfed Roxann and came to a neat stop. He leaned over to whisper to Roxann.

“What?” Roxann cupped a hand to the side of her head where there should have been an ear.

Magnus tried whispering again.

“I really can’t hear you,” Roxann moaned. Nyx was somewhat surprised by how exhausted and exasperated Roxann sounded.

Magnus cleared his throat and began to speak quietly. Of course, Magnus being such a large robot, what was quiet for him was not really very quiet, so the guests all heard what he said without even trying to eavesdrop.

“I’m… trying to retrieve the answer that will enable us to lift her spirits. Thing is, I’ve… ah… forgotten how to access it.”

“Speak proper English, why don’t you?” Roxann snapped. Lumi abruptly sat up straight, and Spirit glanced at the robots out of the corner of their eyes.

“I can’t.”

“Why on earth not -- ohh.” Roxann understood, just as Nyx realized with a slight lift of her eyebrows that she did too.

“It’s… ah… a collection of digits that make up the date of birth for our… um… darling Adham Flinn Guillermo,” Roxann murmured with a shifty look on her face.

“You’re really dreadful at this,” Magnus said.

“I’d have liked to see you do better. Now go away! I’m watching the guests!” Roxann turned toward the windows with a “humph”. Magnus smiled slightly and left the room, nodding to the guests.

Just underneath the dining hall, a few hours later, an incident that would have interested Nyx greatly was in progress.

“It’s a party down here,” PygmyOwl said dryly. After discovering Kitten, the girls had continued their search and found Agent Winter, Majestic Mary (who the detectives discovered with shock and sadness, having never been informed of her death), Darkling, and Quill. They were all quite dead.

QueenOfWolves, who was very much alive, shivered. “Who on earth did this?”

“I don’t know,” Pygmy said, stacking several canisters of Red Sun Ice Cream into a pyramid.

“It was a rhetorical question,” Queen groused.

All the CBers were still in the clothes they had been in when they were found. Their faces were stuck in shock or, even worse, a completely flat expression. There was nothing else in the freezer, other than the ice cream cans, Pygmy and Queen, a piece of rotten green lunchmeat, and a saxe knife, sitting quietly on the shelf and minding its own business.

“It’s got to be what did Kitten in.”

“How do you know?” Pygmy whirled round to look at Queen, who was examining the knife.

“Because we know how everyone else died. Winter was crushed by that book, Darkling and Quill fell off that balcony, and Mary… well, we don’t really know what happened to Mary, but her face and neck are all blue, and that’s not exactly usual for people that have been stabbed.”

“Impressive detective skills,” Pygmy said. “So you think…”

“I’m afraid so.” Queen pointed at the blade of the knife, covered in a dried brownish substance that Pygmy recognized from years of scabs on her skinned knees.

“That’s simply dreadful.” Pygmy wanted to stop looking at the saxe knife, but found that she couldn’t break eye contact with it. “Not to mention completely unlike the murderer. So far, all the murders have been staged in ways that could conceivably be accidents.”

“All the murders that we know of,” Queen said. “We still aren’t sure what happened to Mary.”

“The murderer must have panicked somehow when it came to Kitten. Maybe their first plan didn’t work.”

“Maybe there are two murderers, with different ways of going about things.” Queen hated saying it, but it was necessary.

“Maybe.” Pygmy didn’t like to think about it either. “Whose dagger is this, anyway?”

She moved to pick it up. No sooner had she touched it then it scuttled out of her hand and across the shelf. Pygmy tried again, and managed to hold the saxe knife for a moment before it leaped out of her hand and stuck itself in the stainless steel wall with a thunk.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Queen whispered.

Nyx sat in her bedroom, which felt quite empty now that Darkling was gone, and thought. She was not the kind of person to rush into any sort of big decision, and this was the sort of decision that could spell death. As she did when she had a decision to make, she made a list of pros and cons. There were lots of both, and it took many hours of deep thought to come to her conclusion. Finally, she got to her feet. She had made her choice, and she firmly believed that it was worth the risk. She opened the door out to the hallway silently and began to run just as silently towards one of the many storage rooms scattered around the Manor.

She had important work to do.