Free 1997 - The Chocolate Money Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith

Chapter 1
    Maz and Maddy—Private Detectives
    On the very edge of the town in which Max and Maddy Twist lived there was an icecream parlour. It was not a large ice-cream parlour—in fact it was quite small—but it was very popular with people who liked really good ice cream, in lots of different flavours (there were thirty-seven, to be exact).
    Behind the parlour there was a house, and this is where Max and Maddy lived with their parents. Mr and Mrs Twist had not been making ice cream for long. They used to be private detectives, and had been the owners of the best private detective agency in the country. They had even won prizes for their detective work—the Best Disguise Award (which they won two years running), and the Most Difficult Clue Solved Award. Then, quite without warning, something terrible happened and they had been forced out of business.
    What happened was not their fault, but was the work of an extremely cunning man called Professor Claude Sardine. This man had been wicked since birth. When he was a baby, he had hidden other babies’ rattles, and made them cry. Then, when he was a little bit older and was at school, he had cheated in the egg and spoon race, secretly sticking the egg to his spoon so that it would not fall off. A little later he had soaked all the school chalk in water, so that it would not write when the teacher tried to use it. And then, when he was much bigger—about eighteen—he had ruined the world’s most famous cycle, race, the Tour de France, by scattering drawing pins on the roads by night. That was a particularly mean and nasty thing to do, but then Professor Sardine was a very nasty man.
    Mr and Mrs Twist had once managed to thwart one of Professor Sardine’s evil schemes and he had never forgiven them for it. The professor had got hold of two thousand pairs of underpants and had treated them all with…itching powder! He was on the point of selling them at bargain prices to the public, when Mr and Mrs Twist stepped in and put a stop to it.
    They had just been investigating the strange loss of two thousand pairs of underpants from a knicker factory on the edge of town. The only lead they had was a sardine, left at the scene of the crime.
    For a while, Mr and Mrs Twist were stumped. But not for long. Because soon after that there was another burglary—this time at a joke factory. Two thousand bags of itching powder had been stolen, and once again the mysterious sardine left behind. But here the professor had made his fatal mistake. Little did he know that he was dealing with two real professionals.
    The Twists, with the sardines as evidence, questioned the town’s fishmonger, deducing, quite rightly, that anyone dastardly enough to steal two thousand pairs of underpants and two thousand bags of itching powder would not be likely to pay honest money for a couple of sardines. And sure enough, the fishmonger was able to give a very good description of a man who had entered his shop, stolen the sardines and run off, laughing in a chilling manner.
    An Identikit picture of the professor was soon drawn up by the Twists and pasted all over town with the words Do Not Buy Underpants from This Man written underneath it. This spoiled Professor Sardine’s fun, and he swore to drive the Twists out of business.
    His revenge had come in the shape of a simple, but very wicked plan. He had gone to every newspaper in the country and paid for the publication of a large notice. This notice simply said that Mr and Mrs Twist, the famous detectives, had been arrested and sent to prison for thirty-three years and three months! Of course this was not true, but everybody believed it and Mr and Mrs Twist’s business was ruined. There was nothing for Mr and Mrs Twist to do but give up being detectives and open an ice-cream parlour.
    Listening to their parents’ stories, Max and Maddy soon found out a great deal about how to be a private detective. They also learned a lot from the books which lined the