Quinne arrived at the library to find Toby rifling through one of the big fairytale books. As the elder brother caught his breath, the younger slammed the book down on a table excitedly.
"There!" he exclaimed. "I thought so! Some of the pages have been ripped out!"
Tarquin leant over his brother's shoulder.
"But why those pages?" he asked.
"I don't know" Toby replied, making a note of the page number and flicking back to the contents. His finger skimmed down the table, but then stopped dead.
"Quinne?" he breathed.
"What?" his brother asked, seemingly oblivious to what Toby had spotted.
"Look at the story that's missing" Toby prompted, heart in mouth. Just to show his brother further proof, he flicked back and forward in the old book, from the missing pages to the contents again.
"Through The Looking Glass?" Tarquin said bluntly. "It's..."
"The sequel to Alice In Wonderland" Toby finished. "Alice in Wonderland. Alice. Alice Through The Looking Glass, and a looking glass can also be mirror. So technically, Alice went through the looking glass when she was hit over the head."
The penny dropped.
"That's insane" Tarquin breathed.
"It's got to be relevant in some way to her death!" Toby pointed out excitedly. "I don't know how, but it has to be, doesn't it?"
"Check some of the other books" his brother ordered quickly. "See if it's just this one."
"Cos either way, it's still relevant. We just need to find out which way" Toby realised aloud, and Quinne looked suprisedly at him.
"Yeah."
The two of them rifled quickly through the shelves, until Quinne slammed another book down on top of the first.
"This one's gone too, Toby."
"And this." Toby pointed to where a gap in the shelving lay, on the right of which was the original Alice In Wonderland.
"Right" Quinne sighed heavily, picking up the books again and stocking them back on the shelves. "What do we do?"
"We try and find a copy of Through The Looking Glass" Toby replied firmly. "See if it can't give us any other clues."
"How will reading a book help?" Tarquin questioned, as the two of them left the library again, trying their best to get home before their mother realized they were gone.
"I'll know it when I read it" Toby replied. "But as of yet, I can't be sure."
The two of them successfully sneaked back into the Snug without their mother noticing, and whilst Tarquin pulled down their copy of the fairytales Toby began pulling pages out of a notebook.
"So" he said aloud. "Alice Carroll is killed, and we've got two main possible leads on her death. The physical ones, which as of yet we haven't pieced together, and the fact that all the copies of Through The Looking Glass, a fairytale written by Lewis Carroll about a girl called Alice, have gone missing from the local library, a book which seems to have some parallels with the killing."
As he had been speaking, he had drawn a rather crude version of Alice's body the way he had found it, and had pinned it up on their shared notice board after taking everything else down. Now, he translated what he had just spoken aloud into words, and stuck that to the left of the picture.
"Toby?" Tarquin warned.
"Quinne?" Toby asked, in precisely the same tone of voice, and without turning round.
"I believe this falls under the category of 'getting involved'."
"I believe you're reading Through The Looking Glass behind my back, so don't you start" Toby retorted firmly. Quinne snorted.
"Fair enough."
"What does it say?" Toby asked, having finished writing and sat back down on his armchair.
"Brief synopsis; a few months after visiting Wonderland, Alice sees an alternate world through a mirror, and after jumping through, she enters another fantasy world mirroring a giant chess set, where her aim is to become a queen in the chess set. She almost does it, but then she wakes up and realizes she's dreaming, and realizes that her two kittens are symbolistic of the two queens she met in the world."
"Chess?" Toby mused, although he made it sound like a question.
"That is what I said, cakebrain."
"Shut up, Quinne."
There was a pause.
"You know" Quinne carried on. "This falling through the looking glass thing, if you look at it in a contemporary light, could easily be mistaken for death."
There was another pause, in which Toby slipped naturally into his 'thinking pose'.
"But how does it translate over into real life?" he asked his brother, who was by now sitting on the trunk again. "What parts of it didn't someone want us to read?"
"Maybe it was association" Quinne suggested. "Maybe if we thought about Through The Looking Glass, it would give us some crazy hint towards the identity of the murderer."
"Well I'm thinking about it, and I'm getting nothing" Toby grumbled.
"Ditto" his brother replied grumpily.
"We're missing something" both boys said together.
"Let's try the physical side" Toby said, changing tack. "Where was Alice at the time she was murdered? Because she certainly wasn't outside our bakery."
"Because of the lack of blood" Tarquin added, and Toby nodded.
"Because of the lack of blood, indeed. Now. We know she went to Book Club last night-don't give me that look, Quinne, I've just been doing a bit of general digging..."
Toby rolled his eyes, folding his arms and pouting at his brother, who was indeed giving him a very disapproving look.
"If she went home from Book Club, it would mean she was walking the same way home as quite a few people" Tarquin reasoned, without removing the disapproving glare from his face.
"So how did she get separated?" Toby asked from his chair.
"That's what we need to find out" Quinne replied, before seeming to mentally catch himself.
"We're going to be in serious trouble, Toby, if people find out we're getting involved" he pointed out. Toby sighed.
"I know, Quinne. But we both know how to solve that, don't we?"
"Don't get involved?" his brother asked hopefully. Toby shook his head derisively.
"Don't get caught" he corrected. "Come on, Quinne. You know you want to. It's just the attempt at a responsible adult in you that's holding you back."
Tarquin snorted gently, shuffling off the chest and grabbing a pencil from the desk.
"Pass me some paper, Toby. We'll add in what I found out today" he ordered.
"Dirty great hypocrite" Toby muttered under his breath.
"Shut up and listen" Quinne snapped. "Look. We already know who Alice would have walked home with, as it would have been everyone who live to the right of the library, as you come out-"
"Lily Faraday...Brian and Charlotte Thackray, Holly Brown and...Maisie McKinnon" Toby chipped in helpfully. "I think that was it."
Tarquin scowled at him for butting in. "But here's the thing" the elder brother carried on. "Bridget and I were chatting to Edward Faraday, you know, Lily's elder brother, and both Bridget and Edward say their siblings don't remember Alice being with them as they walked home."
"So Alice was taken from the Book Club?" Toby asked aloud. In his head, he was boiling at the fact that Quinne had spent the day with Bridget. It wasn't fair that Bridget and Quinne were in the same school section and he wasn't. It meant his brother could spend far too much time talking to her.
"Perhaps" Quinne had said. He stuck his notes up on the board and fanned his face with his hand.
"It's a hot night, Toby. Open the windows."
"It might be just the bakery" Toby complained, scrambling up and opening the two little windows of the Snug. As he did, he realised his brother was right. It was a practically tropical evening.
"Speaking of which..." Quinne trailed off, looking guiltily at his little brother.
"Who's shift was it supposed to be this evening?" Toby realised with a jolt.
"I'll bet it was yours" Quinne smirked.
"Nah. It'll have been yours" Toby replied, quick as a wink.
To be honest, neither of them really wanted to find out.