Free Sleuth on Skates by Clementine Beauvais

wasn’t smelly! It was well cool! There’s this Russian guy who wants to kill everyone—and that girl, Anastasia, doesn’t even know she’s a princess, and—”
    â€œA princess?” I choked. “A Russian princess?”
    â€œYes, of course!” exclaimed Toby. “Come on, Sesame, it’s the story of that Russian princess, you know? The one that got away when the rest of her family was killed. I’ll lend you the DVD. Maybe.”
    â€œA Russian princess,” I repeated. “A Tsarina. Called Anastasia.”
    And Gemma and I threw each other a glance which must have been meaningful, because Toby noticed there was something we hadn’t told him. So we told him. We told him about the time when we’d been hijacked by Dad and forced to sit through his meeting with Reverend Tan, who’d revealed his mystifyingly interrupted conversation with Tsarina.

    â€œIllegal activity at her department . . .” repeated Toby. “If that Stacy really is Tsarina, that means it’s happening at the computer science department. Look, it’s written here on the program—she studies computer science at Trinity College.”
    This set my sleuthing radar on full blare, and for a good reason, too. “Archie Philips is a professor of computer science at Trinity!” I exclaimed.
    â€œThat,” said Gemma, “is one funny coincidence.”
    â€œBut if there’s a professor of computer science at her college,” whispered Toby, “why would she tell the Chaplain about the thing she’d found out? Why not Archie Philips?”
    My sleuthing brain was on autopilot, obligingly slotting the few jigsaw pieces together. “Well, how about because she’d found out
he
was the one doing it? So she had to find someone else to tell it to. And that’s not all there is to it. Who do you talk to when you’re stuck? Apart from your college Chaplain.”
    â€œYour best friend?” asked Gemma.
    â€œRight. Especially when your best friend is also a nosy journalist . . .”
    â€œJenna Jenkins? You think she told Jenna Jenkins?”
    â€œWell, isn’t it a bit strange that Jenna got kidnapped by Ian Philips right after her best friend Stacy found out that Archie Philips was doing something very wrong?”
    â€œThat,” conceded Gemma, “is one funny bunch of coincidences.”

    Coincidentally, the subject of that day’s English lesson was coincidences.
    â€œNow, children, we’re going to talk about coincidences. What’s a coincidence? Any idea, Lucas?”
    â€œIt’s like, when, for example, I think ‘Wow, it’d be great if the fire alarm went off and we’d all have to leave the class and have fun outside,’ and like, right when I’m thinking about that, it would be a coincidence if the fire alarm . . .”
    BRIIIIIIINNNNNNG
    â€œ. . . actually went off.”
    Like just now.
    â€œRight,” said Mr. Halitosis, a bit astounded. “Erm . . . OK, everyone, don’t run, we’re all going downstairs.”
    After ten fun minutes we were allowed back in the classroom, and Mr. Halitosis, still a bit shaken up, started again. “Right, so Lucas gave us a good example of what a coincidence can be. Any other ideas? Radha?”
    â€œWell, for instance, if I think ‘Wouldn’t it be a lot of fun if a massive spider dropped from the ceiling right on your head, and . . .’”
    â€œThat will be all, thank you,” said Mr. Halitosis, throwing nervous glances at the ceiling. “Sophie, can you please give us a definition of a coincidence? Not using examples.”
    A coincidence. For instance, when a girl is called Anastasia, and somewhere else in town someone is using the screen name Tsarina. For instance, when the same green and white C in a circle keeps popping up in unrelated places. On a