Free The Case of the Petrified Man by Caroline Lawrence

Auctioneers, up on B Street. That must be where everything had been taken.
    My heart sank.
    There were no clews to be found.
    I crossed the empty room & opened the door there to find a narrow closet at the back of the crib. There were wooden pegs on the inner wall & another door in the outer wall & also a dustpan & broom. It was even smaller than the room at the back of my office. I could smell Martha’s hair oil and I reckoned this closet must be where she slept.
    I closed the closet door & looked back into the main room through the latch hole, which was bigger & cruder than a keyhole. Even though the bed was over on the right, I reckon Martha could just about have witnessed the dastardly deed.
    I wondered if Martha had stifled a cry or a sob when she saw the killer strangulating her mistress.
    I wondered if that noise had made him turn his gaze towards her hiding place.
    Martha must have been terrified as he started for the door. Terrified enough to flee barefoot in nothing but her nightdress and night bonnet.
    A single step took me to the back door. I opened it & almost tumbled out but caught myself. Then I saw that the back of the crib was on stilts with a ladder going down to the steep slope.
    My nose told me that was where people emptied their chamber pots. I did not want to go down there. There was other rubbish down there, including lots of tin cans. Farther down the slope was a lumberyard and beyond that the outskirts of Chinatown.
    I went back into the front room & I looked around at the Scene of the Crime.
    “Show me, Lord,” I prayed. “Give me a sign.”
    Immediately the terrible image of my own murdered foster parents rose before my eyes. I tried to push it away.
    Then I had a Thought.
    In tracking animals, sometimes the Lack of Sign can be as important as the Presence of Spoor. I went over to the brighter square of carpet that had been hidden under the bed.Neither the Brussels Carpet nor any of the floorboards by the wall carried even the faintest stain of blood. If Sally’s throat had been cut, the room would not be this clean. Even if the bedding had soaked up most of the blood there would have been drops from the blade. There would be a big old bloodstain right there. Even if it had been scrubbed there would be a mark.
    I sniffed the air. No lingering scent of blood. Only the faint smell of Sally’s lemon perfume mixed with the rank undertone of tobacco-tinted spit, which was pretty much everywhere in Virginia City.
    Short Sally must surely have been strangulated, not cut. My client had told me the truth.
    I reached into my pocket to get out my notebook, in order to record this Important Revelation.
    But before I could, I heard the door behind me open & a raspy voice said, “Make one move and it will be your last!”

Ledger Sheet 18
    I FROZE RIGHT THERE with my Detective Notebook half out of my pocket. I could smell cigar smoke mixed with a flowery undertone.
    “Who are you?” said the raspy voice behind me. “And what are you doing in my place?”
    At first I had thought the raspy voice belonged to one of my mortal enemies: Dubois “Extra Dub” Donahue. But now it sounded like a woman’s. Only I had never heard of a cigar-smoking woman. I started to turn my head.
    Something like a rifle barrel poked me hard between my shoulder blades. “I said don’t move!” said the voice. “What is your name and what are you doing here?”
    I was now certain that the voice belonged to a woman.
    But I did not relax. I had learned the hard way that women are just as dangerous as men in Virginia City.
    I said, “My name is P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye. I am investigating the Murder of Miss Sally Sampson. I thought this was her crib.”
    I felt the rifle barrel withdraw. “All right. Turn around.”
    I turned to see a stout woman in brown and lavender. She was holding a broom in her hands. I had mistaken it for a rifle barrel. I felt mighty foolish.
    “This ain’t Sally’s crib,” said the woman in her