“I about swallowed my tongue when the old balloon sat up,” Max said. “I thought for sure she’d croaked.”

Philippa shot her a look. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

Max shrugged.

“It’s too bad she didn’t, in a way,” Thomas said thoughtfully. He was still covered with dust from the vent, which he had used to travel between floors to report on the progress of the police and hospital workers as they loaded the old woman, whose name was Mrs. Weathersby, onto a stretcher. “The probability of someone dropping dead from shock is one in forty million. It would have been kind of exciting.”

“Thomas!” Philippa said.

The four children were gathered in Mr. Dumfrey’s office on the third floor, where they had been ordered to wait by Miss Fitch so they would be out of the way.

“Have any of you ever seen one?” Max asked. Seeing Philippa’s expression, she rolled her eyes. “You know, a stiff? A body? A dead person?”

“I saw the magician hold his breath underwater for seven minutes,” Thomas piped up. “He looked dead.”

“That’s not the same,” Max said.

“Have you?” Philippa demanded. Max colored briefly.

“I known plenty of dead people,” she mumbled.

“But have you seen one?” Philippa pressed.

From the way Max’s lips went tight, Philippa knew that she had not.

“I have,” Sam said suddenly from his position in the corner, where he was pushing crumbs of bread to Mr. Dumfrey’s pet cockatoo, Cornelius, through the bars of its cage.

For as long as Pippa had known him, Sam was the quietest person she had ever met. He could go for days without talking. She remembered the time, a few years back, when he was sick with chicken pox and had lain in bed for a week without saying a word. Finally, Thomas had asked him what chicken pox felt like. “Itches,” he had replied.

Hearing his voice now, she practically tumbled out of her chair.

“What did you say?” she squeaked at him.

“I have,” he said. As usual, he wouldn’t make eye contact, and looked everywhere—the piles of yellowing papers on Mr. Dumfrey’s desk, the shriveled big toe of an albino orangutan floating in an alcohol-filled bottle on the bookshelf, the hissing radiator—but at Philippa. “Seen dead people.”

“Where?” Max said, and her voice held a challenge. “When?”

To Pippa’s deep surprise, Sam turned his eyes to Max calmly. “When I was little,” he said. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Max said.

Sam shrugged. “That’s because you never saw one. If you did, you’d understand.”

A moment of tense silence settled on the group. Max and Sam continued staring each other down. Max looked like she was considering whipping out one of her knives and trying to puncture Sam with it.

The door flew open, banging hard against the wall and rattling the various shelves. Cornelius the cockatoo squawked loudly.

“They’re gone! Gone at last!” Mr. Dumfrey stood in the doorway, mopping his face with a handkerchief. “I tell you, children, I thought they would never leave. Between the questions, and explanations, and questionable explanations . . .” He exhaled loudly. “Well. This calls for a celebration, don’t you think?”

“A celebration?” Philippa repeated.

“My dear child,” Mr. Dumfrey said as he crossed the room and filled a kettle from the tap in the corner, then plunked it down on the electric hot plate perched precariously on an overstuffed leather stool. “Mrs. Weathersby did us a tremendous favor this evening. One look at the shrunken head, and she was struck down with terror! She collapsed under the fierce gaze of its eyes! And to think that Bill Evans was right there to witness it . . . really most convenient. He used to be one of the best of his kind, you know. Broke the story of the great stock market crash even before the stockbrokers knew about it! Of course, his name doesn’t mean what it used to. He got into some trouble because of his fondness for the—you know.” Mr. Dumfrey whistled and made a drinking motion with his thumb and pinkie finger. “But even so. Most exceptionally fortuitous!”

As he spoke, Mr. Dumfrey reached for the tin of cocoa powder but grabbed instead a tin of cyanide—once used as evidence in the infamous Morrison murder trial—in his distraction.

Thomas scrambled to his feet and plucked the cyanide out of Mr. Dumfrey’s hand, replacing it with the correct tin. Mr. Dumfrey patted him on the head absently.

“I thought the old lady had ate something bad,” Max said. “And that’s why she keeled over.”

“Eaten, my dear,” Mr. Dumfrey said, now setting down five mugs on his desk. “You thought the old lady had eaten something bad. And she did—trout, she told me, from Corrigan’s Chophouse. Poor thing. No wonder she dropped so fast. You can get food poisoning just from reading the menu!” Mr. Dumfrey roused himself and smiled. “Ah, well. But the point is they don’t know that, do they?”

“Who’s they?” Philippa asked. She loved Mr. Dumfrey dearly, but his mind, it seemed to her, was like one of those Chinese knots that Thomas often worked his way out of in his solo acts: strings all over, everything a tangled mess.

Mr. Dumfrey’s eyes grew dreamy and unfocused. “The public,” he said in a hushed voice. “The vast and hungry public. They need us, you see. They’re starving. They’re dying! They hunger for the tiniest spark, the kindling to their imagination, the stories to light their brains and hearts on fire!” By this time, the kettle was shrieking, and the sound roused Mr. Dumfrey from his reverie.

“And by golly, we’ll give it to them,” he said cheerfully. “The Curse of the Shrunken Head. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? I thought so. And so did Bill Evans. Now be a good girl, Pippa, and help me spoon out the cocoa.”

“Cocoa, cocoa, cocoa!” Cornelius repeated, ruffling his feathers in a satisfied way.