“Almonds,” Hardaway said, leaning down toward Potts’s ghastly white face and sniffing like a hound dog. “Smell that? Almonds. Unmistakable.”

Webb grunted. “You think he had some kinda allergy?”

Hardaway shot his partner a scathing look. “I think he had a cyanide allergy. That smell is a sign of cyanide poisoning. I’d bet my badge on it.”

Cyanide. The word was like a cold sliver of rain down Sam’s spine. It spread through the assembled crowd, hissing from lip to lip. And slowly, everyone turned to face Mr. Dumfrey.

Mr. Dumfrey, who kept an old tin of cyanide from the famous Morrison murder trial of 1843 on one of the shelves above his desk.

“Why is everyone looking at me?” Mr. Dumfrey’s frown slowly transformed to a look of horror. “Surely you don’t think . . . For God’s sake . . . I had nothing to do with this!”

There was another awkward pause. Then Hugo broke the silence.

“We know you didn’t, Mr. D.,” he said, patting Mr. Dumfrey on the shoulder. Relief and guilt commingled in Sam’s chest—he had, for just one second, been wondering . . . But of course Mr. Dumfrey could not have killed Potts. Why would he?

The other performers murmured their agreement.

A very unpleasant light was shining in Hardaway’s eyes. “But you keep cyanide, don’t you, Mr. Dumfrey? I saw it there myself.”

“It was part of an old exhibit,” he said, waving a hand. “‘Pernicious Poisoners’—a nice little tableau—very popular.”

Lieutenant Webb, who was still standing in the hallway, grunted. “Sounds like bunk to me.”

Mr. Dumfrey whirled on him. “It isn’t bunk, young man,” he said, in an exasperated voice. “I’ll have you know that the ‘Malevolent Murders’ section of the Hall of Wax attracts more visitors than—”

“Dumfrey!” Hardaway snapped, and Dumfrey quickly shut up. Hardaway took two steps toward Dumfrey, past a still-quivering Miss Fitch. His large jaw was working back and forth, and it reminded Sam of the fossilized jaw of the prehistoric ferret they kept in the Hall of Worldwide Wonders. “Get your things together You’re coming with us.”

“Are you arresting me?” For a second, Mr. Dumfrey looked truly afraid.

Hardaway smiled meanly. “Should I?”

“Of course not!” Mr. Dumfrey said. “I told you, I had nothing to do with poor Potts’s death.”

“Then you got nothing to worry about,” Hardaway said. But he didn’t sound as if he meant it. “Now step on it.”

“Mr. Dumfrey!” Sam burst out. He wanted to say something—anything—to show Mr. Dumfrey they were all on his side. But the words had caught in his throat.

“Don’t worry,” Mr. Dumfrey assured him in a whisper. “It’s just a matter of routine. Some questions and quibbles. I’ll be back in no time. You’ll see.”

He placed a reassuring hand on Sam’s shoulder, and then he was gone.

But hours passed, and Mr. Dumfrey did not return. Instead, more police officers arrived. The street was bathed in rotating red lights, and Sam watched from the windows as a crowd gathered outside the museum. He saw Billy the sidewalk apple peddler and Sol from the corner candy store and Sergio pushing his pretzel cart—all of them whispering and pointing and shaking their heads. He could only imagine what they were saying.

Two men lifted Potts onto a wheeled stretcher and covered his face with a white sheet. They carried him outside and loaded the body into a waiting van, and when the front door opened, Sam heard the roar of conversation from the crowd gathered outside.

“Poisoned . . .”

“Police took Mr. Dumfrey . . .”

“There was always something off about him . . .”

“About all of them . . .”

He turned away from the windows, letting the curtains swing closed, feeling sick. He turned around and saw Pippa standing right behind him.

“Mr. Dumfrey will be okay, Sam,” she said. Sometimes it did really seem as though she could read minds, even though he knew that her gift was fuzzy, undirected, and usually only allowed her to see matchbooks and penknives in pockets and loose paper clips at the bottom of briefcases. In this instance, however, he knew she was probably just as worried about Mr. Dumfrey as he was.

“You’d have to be dumber than a dung beetle to think Mr. Dumfrey could kill anyone,” she continued.

Sam did not say that he wouldn’t be surprised if Hardaway and Webb were dumber than dung beetles. He just said, “Who did kill him, then?”

“You heard what Mr. Dumfrey said. It’s not our business anymore.” She sucked a strand of dark hair into her mouth, as she did when she was anxious or upset. Funny that they had spent so many years living here, side by side, but had only recently started to become close.

Started to become friends.

“Mr. Dumfrey needs our help, Pip. You were the one who said so.”

“Mr. Dumfrey can take care of himself,” she said, but she didn’t sound totally convinced.

No one bothered to open the museum for the day. There seemed no point, with Dumfrey gone. Besides, they would only attract gawkers and gossips, people who wanted to point and sniff around and see the room where Potts had died. At 2:00 p.m., a policeman arrived and, in a high voice trembling with its own self-importance, instructed them that the museum would stay closed pending an investigation.

“Until when?” Monsieur Cabillaud cried.

“Until we say so,” the policeman said. Before leaving, he posted a large sign on the double-fronted glass doors: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE BY ORDER OF THE POLICE.

There was nothing to do but wait. Thomas tried to distract them with a game of DeathTrap, but Sam had trouble understanding the rules and an argument broke out after Pippa accused Max of moving around the pieces when no one was looking.

Later on, as evening fell, Danny retrieved his violin, but after he launched into a mournful rendition of “My Love Was Sent to Hang for Murder,” everyone begged him to stop. Phoebe made pancakes for dinner, and Miss Fitch was too distracted to lecture the children about sugar consumption. In fact, she even served them extra-large portions of whipped cream, which made Sam feel somehow worse.

“‘The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails,’” Smalls said solemnly, laying one of his massive hands on Sam’s head, as if Sam were still a child. “Shakespeare.”

It might have made Sam feel better, if he understood what it meant.

At nine o’clock, Sam once again went to the window, and saw that although the crowd had mostly dispersed, there were still a half dozen people gathered in the street, including Bill Evans. Almost as soon as Sam had parted the curtains to peek out, a woman with a face so narrow it looked as though it had been compressed between two heavy metal plates, pointed at him and screeched “Look! It’s one of them freaks! Right there, see? A face like the devil.”

Sam stepped back from the window, his heart beating very fast.

At ten o’clock, when Mr. Dumfrey still hadn’t returned, Monsieur Cabillaud wrapped his small head in a voluminous scarf, straightened his bow tie, and affixed a small gold pin to the front of his lapel, which he had allegedly earned for secret acts of bravery related to the Belgian government.

“I, Monsieur Cabillaud, will go and speak to your American police,” he said grandly. “I will tell zem that zey have made a gravest error.”

At ten thirty, Miss Fitch appeared in the attic, and in a shrill voice commanded everyone to go to bed. But no sooner had she left the room than Monsieur Cabillaud burst into the room, his bow tie crooked, his scarf in disarray, his face drained of color.

“It is too late,” he panted out, leaning against the doorway, sucking in deep breaths of air. “Zee police have arrested Mr. Dumfrey. Zey have arrested him for zee murder of Mr. Potts.”