When I say it was my first, I don’t mean it was my first dead creature. In the Cat Wars, I’d seen far too many. But I’d never seen a dead body like this. This dead body hadn’t been killed in conflict or as the natural result of being part of the food chain. This body had been murdered.

As I said, it was my first. And as such, completely unforgettable. In fact, it was so startling, I couldn’t look away from it, couldn’t take in anything else in the room.

Murder—it’s just wrong, somehow.

I wanted to run as far away from it as possible. I also wanted desperately to find out what had happened to cause it to be in this state. And I also really, really wanted my nap. So overdue.

“Well, what do you think, Bones?” Inspector Strange repeated.

“What do you think, Dr. Catson?” Bones asked, turning to me and causing the others to turn to me as well.

Me?

“Well, he’s dead, of course,” I said.

The others continued to look at me.

“Well, come on.” I pointed at the corpse before us. “Just look at the man! I mean, he’s really, really dead.”

Still, they waited.

“I don’t think it’s possible for a man to be deader than that,” I said.

I could be wrong, but I think all three rolled their eyes at me.

“Yes, that part is obvious,” Bones said. “But what can you tell us about the murder?”

Now that my initial shock was lessening, I found I could think more clearly. Tilting my head, I considered the body.

I may have mentioned that I don’t pay too much attention to humans. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all just stick figures with round heads attached at the top. But if this was a murder investigation, and I was meant to help, I supposed I should at least take notice of what the dead chap looked like.

He looked to be in his forties, as human ages go. He was medium in most ways, but had wide shoulders and dark hair—on his head, of course. He had a suit on, so for all I knew his shoulders could have been hairy too. He also had a close-cropped beard. And was very, very dead.

I tilted my head to the other side, considering something else.

“But how do we know it was a murder?” I asked.

“Excuse me?” Bones said.

“There’s no blood, no obvious wounds, no signs whatsoever of a struggle. I mean, couldn’t he have just died there right where he was? Like that?”

“Because death doesn’t happen like that!” Bones said.

It doesn’t? I thought. One time, I knocked a goldfish bowl over, and the fish died where he was, exactly like that.

Having apparently decided that I was of limited use, at least for the time being, Inspector Strange turned to Bones once more.

“Well?” he said.

“There’s what looks to be blood over there,” Bones said, pointing toward a space on the carpet several feet away from the body, which he now nudged until it was lying on its back. It looked even worse in this position. “And yet there is not a single drop on the body itself. So, not shot, not stabbed, not a whole lot of other things. Not strangled either. See? There are no marks on his neck.”

“What then?” Inspector Strange demanded, as though growing impatient with the dog. “Is it possible that your furry little companion is right?”

His furry little what?

“Is it possible,” Inspector Strange pressed, “that this man wasn’t murdered at all?”

“Of course not,” Bones said. “He was murdered.”

And then, before the dog could say it, I said it myself:

“He was poisoned.”