Midmorning, Thomas was sitting in the Odditorium, rereading The Probability of Everything, having already finished Statistics for Everybody, which he had found disappointing. Suddenly, he heard a loud commotion from the entrance hall.

“You’ve got some nerve showing up here.” Miss Fitch’s voice was shrill as a fire bell. “After all those lies you wrote up in the paper. I don’t know how you sleep at night. I ought to snip your fingers off—”

Rounding the corner, Thomas saw that Miss Fitch had Bill Evans cornered and was waving a heavy pair of sewing scissors threateningly in his direction.

“It’s all right, Miss Fitch,” Mr. Dumfrey said. He, too, had been attracted by the noise. Miss Fitch gave a final, injured snip of her scissors, then turned and stalked off, muttering under her breath about the shame of it.

Mr. Evans eased off the wall and adjusted his tie. “Charming woman,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Is she always that friendly?”

“What do you want?” Thomas blurted out, before he could stop himself. He thought Mr. Dumfrey might scold him for being rude, but instead he saw a smile pass briefly across Dumfrey’s face.

Mr. Evans addressed his words to Dumfrey. “You’re not mad about what I wrote, are you?” He took off his hat and spread his hands in a gesture of appeal. “You know how it is, Mr. D. Gotta spice things up, give stories a bit of a twist if you want to sell papers. And, boy, are we selling them.” He grinned. “They’re going like hotcakes. People love a good horror story, and this business of the head’s got everyone riled up.”

Mr. Dumfrey stared at him with no expression. Mr. Evans’s smile faltered, and he coughed.

“Look at it this way,” he said, trying a new tack. “You need a little bit of publicity, now that the head’s up and vanished.” Thomas had to admit that Mr. Evans had a point. “Think of it: The Four Orphan Freaks of Dumfrey’s Dime Museum. It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? That’ll bring in the crowds. I thought maybe I could do a little roundup of the kids, a few interviews, maybe a photograph—”

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Dumfrey said stiffly.

“Maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” Thomas interjected. “He’s right. We could use the publicity.”

Mr. Dumfrey shot Thomas a withering glance, and Thomas wished he hadn’t spoken. Mr. Dumfrey returned his gaze to Bill Evans, drawing himself up to his full five feet five inches. “Now listen here, Evans. You don’t have to tell me about publicity. I practically invented it. But I won’t have you implicating Thomas or Sam or any of them. I won’t have you hurling imprecations or insinuating allegations or—or—”

“Dragging us into it,” Thomas suggested.

“Exactly,” Mr. Dumfrey said.

Mr. Evans smiled. “All due respect, Mr. D., they’re already implicated.” His two front teeth were large and somewhat protruding, which gave him the look of a tall, skinny, eager rabbit. “Murder’s no common potato, Mr. Dumfrey, and they’re neck-deep in it.”

“Murder?” Mr. Dumfrey repeated.

Bill Evans had started to make for the door. Now he turned around and said with false casualness, “Oh, yeah. The medical examiner’s report came back. Mr. Anderson didn’t do himself in after all. He was strung up by someone who wanted to make it look that way.” Evans’s eyes slid over to Thomas and Thomas quickly looked away. His heart was beating fast in his chest.

He had been right.

“You can read all about it in the afternoon papers,” Mr. Evans said, jamming his hat on his head. “Afternoon to you both. If you change your mind about the interviews, Mr. D., you know where to find me.”

Then he was gone.

“So what now?” Pippa said.

They were all gathered after dinner in the loft. Sam had cleared a small central space in the cluttered room, and Pippa had poached some unused props and old exhibits from the storage cellar, including a large Navajo blanket, several woven pillows sent to Mr. Dumfrey by a maharaja, a three-legged stool once owned by George Washington, and a walnut table inlaid with ivory. Now they were all sitting, drinking Ovaltine from earthenware mugs. Steam from their cups intermingled above their heads.

“What do you mean?” Max took a long slurp of hot chocolate. “You heard what Dumfrey said. It ain’t our business.”

“Isn’t.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Ain’t.”

“But we have to do something,” Thomas insisted, jumping in. “Mr. Anderson wanted the head back. And then he was killed.”

“Maybe there is a curse,” said Max.

“You can’t really believe that,” Thomas said, and Max shrugged.

“Does it matter? We’re no closer to finding the head than we ever were,” Sam pointed out.

There was a minute of heavy silence. Thomas’s stomach made a noise like a dog’s whimper. It had been a slow day, as Mr. Dumfrey had predicted. The murder of Mr. Anderson and continued talk of Mrs. Weathersby’s death had eclipsed the short mention of Mr. Dumfrey and the museum from which the head had been stolen. With the exception of a few local kids, who had pressed grubby palms against the front door and peered in through the glass, and one rich-looking man and his snub-nosed daughter, who had come after lunch and imperiously demanded to see the “freaks,” then inquired whether they might be rented out for a birthday party, there had been no customers at all.

The entertainers had passed the hours performing various chores and tiptoeing around Mr. Dumfrey, who remained locked in his study doing the books with Monsieur Cabillaud, as though he were a pressure cooker in danger of explosion. But in the absence of Mrs. Cobble, no one had remembered to go to the markets. And so dinner had been canned tuna and day-old bread and mustard.

Thomas took a long sip of his Ovaltine, hoping it would help ease the cramping in his stomach. “I still think Potts knows something,” he said.

Pippa nodded. Her dark bangs practically concealed her eyes. “He knew Mr. Anderson. Or at least they’d met. So why doesn’t he say so?”

Max shrugged. “Might not be anything to it. Maybe he pawned some stuff. Or did business for Mr. Dumfrey.”

“Maybe,” Thomas said, unconvinced. He had the vague, prickling sense that they were missing something—and that something very bad would happen as a result. “But then why—?”

“Shhh,” Sam said sharply. “Someone’s coming.”

A stair creaked; there was a shuffling, a rustling of skirts, and a murmured word. Thomas held his breath. Max had frozen with her mug halfway to her lips. Pippa leaned close to the door, listening.

More footsteps. Then a voice, low, urgent, on the other side of the door at the top of the stairs.

“Were you careful?”

Sam’s eyebrows shot nearly through his hairline. Thomas and Pippa exchanged a glance, and Max barely managed to swallow her hot chocolate without choking on it. They knew that voice. It was Phoebe.

“Very.”

And that one: Hugo.

“Do you think—do you think anyone knows?”

“No. They might suspect. But they can’t possibly know. We took every precaution.”

“But if Dumfrey finds out . . .”

“Dumfrey won’t find out.”

Thomas was holding his breath, and he could feel his lungs like two water-filled balloons in his chest. As far as he knew, Phoebe and Hugo never even spoke to each other, unless it was to inquire about who was performing first or where the talcum powder had got to.

It was quiet for a moment—so quiet, he could hear a scuffling sound he couldn’t quite identify. A mouse poked its head out from between two crates just next to Pippa. Pippa’s eyes were tightly closed. Thomas knew she must be trying to think her way out through the door, into the minds of Hugo and Phoebe. Encouraged, the mouse advanced forward, sniffing experimentally at her bare calves.

Thomas opened his mouth to warn her, or try and frighten it off, but then Phoebe spoke again and he clamped it shut.

“And you’re sure—you’re sure the money will be enough?” She sounded breathless.

Even through the door, Thomas could hear the smile in Hugo’s voice. “My dear,” he said, “we will not have to worry about money for a long, long time.”

At that moment several things happened. The mouse, having reached Pippa’s big toe and decided it looked (or smelled) sufficiently like a wedge of cheese, bit down; Pippa’s eyes flew open and she gasped, and kicked, and sent the mouse directly into the pot of cooling hot chocolate perched on the three-legged stool, where it landed with a small splash.

“What’s that?” Phoebe cried from outside the door. “Did you hear that?”

“Who’s there?” Hugo called out. Then, in a low voice: “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Good night, Phoebe.”

The stairs creaked again, and Hugo and Phoebe’s footsteps receded. The mouse, now covered in chocolate, sat up contentedly and began grooming itself.

“I guess I won’t have a refill,” Max said, making a face.

With painstaking care, Sam lifted the mouse carefully from the pot by its tail and placed it on the ground after giving it a shake. The mouse squeaked in protest and scampered off, shooting Sam an injured look.

Pippa exhaled a long breath. “That was close,” she said.

“All that talk about money and Dumfrey . . .” Sam looked up at Thomas. “Do you think they had something to do with this mess?”

“I don’t know.” Thomas shook his head. He had that feeling in his chest again: something bad was coming. “But I think we have to find out.”