Wilma Tenderfoot and the Case of the Putrid Poison by Emma Kennedy Page A

and pin it to the Clue Board, please, Wilma.” Theodore clasped his hands behind his back. “Corpsing has a double meaning. In theatrical terms, it means to laugh when you’re not supposed to. But given recent events, it clearly has a more sinister overtone.”
    â€œVery sinister indeed, I’d say,” said Inspector Lemone, looking concerned. “Do you think there’s going to be another murder next week?”
    â€œHard to say,” answered Theodore, pacing. “Although I’m afraid we must assume that there will be. But why would the killer want to warn us? Surely every killer needs the element of surprise? It’s almost as if the killer wants an audience. There’s more to this than meets the eye, Inspector. Fetch the tandem! We’re off to the Valiant!”
    Pickle sighed and made a half-hearted attempt at a stretch. Things were taking a nasty turn. He was going to have to get up. And there he was, thinking if he snoozed through, he might miss all the horrible bits.
    Â 
    Yeah. Right.

11
    A s Wilma bounced along in the trailer on the back of Theodore’s tandem, she sat, arms crossed and lips pursed, deep in thought and contemplation. They were on their way to the Valiant, as Theodore, given the morning’s revelation, wanted to speak to Baron von Worms urgently. Wilma’s thoughts, however, were on the letter she had received from her headmistress. The Clue Board she had made for the Case of the Missing Relative earlier that morning in her bedroom was alarmingly empty. In the middle there was a hand-drawn picture of herself, a piece of Mrs. Speckle’s leftover Wellington wool stretching from that toward an old photograph of the Institute for Woeful Children and then to the luggage tag that had been left tied around her wrist when she was abandoned. Upon it were the words that had haunted Wilma ever since— because they gone.
    â€œThere’s not much to go on, is there, Pickle?” she shouted to her beagle, whose ears were flapping in the wind. “Maybe if I try to think in a wonky way it might bubble up something useful . . . Ten years ago,” Wilma began, thrusting a finger upward into the air, “I was left at the gates of the Institute for Woeful Children on a night so stormy the tree in the front yard was struck by lightning and split in two. I know that because whenever anyone asked about the tree Madam Skratch used to say it had happened on the night I’d arrived, and it was an omen that proved I was no good and probably rotten. She was wrong. I am neither. Nobody saw who left me at the gates, but, whoever it was, I don’t think it was my parents or a relative. The luggage tag refers to ‘They’ and not ‘We’! It was also written by someone who’s not very good at grammar. Mr. Goodman always tells me to look out for that. The luggage tag should have read ‘Because they HAVE gone’ and then told us where they have gone.” Wilma gripped the sides of the trailer as they bumped over a pothole. “But it did not. So I think the person who left me at the Institute won’t be a really clever person like Mr. Goodman or Penbert. It will be . . .” Wilma stopped and then, with a quick adjustment of her goggles, delivered her big conclusion: “Someone else!”
    Pickle gave a small huff of encouragement. One of a dog’s basic duties is to show support at all times, even in the face of utter hopelessness.
    Wilma reached for the notebook in her pinafore pocket and opened it to the page where she had previously made some scribbles. “What was that bit I found before in my Academy textbook? ‘Relatives can be slippery and easily lost,’ ” she read out, over the wind. “ ‘The first thing you need to establish is who the last person was to have contact with them.’ ” She stared up at the cloudless sky, deep in thought. “That’s it, Pickle!”