Beneath it was tucked the lithograph of a house, a three-story building in a quiet New England port town-the same house in which I now stood, only ten years younger-it looked simpler and sadder back in 1882. Before me lay the police report, which described the grisly murder of an innocent woman and the mysterious disappearance of her fiancé. My pulse hammered against the inside of my skull, and I concentrated, trying to slow my heartbeat as I propped myself up on the desk. One lonely file remained on the desk at my fingertips-a mess of fading newsprint and gritty photographs. The stack of case files I had spent all morning sorting lay strewn across the carpet, and the house's resident duck was cowering behind the legs of my employer's dusty chalkboard, shuffling anxiously from one webbed foot to the other.
My head was throbbing, as though a shard of ice had pierced through one temple and out the other, but the sensation was gradually subsiding. Leaning heavily on the desk, I caught my breath in shuddering gulps. Jackaby's cluttered office spun around me.
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