“What has changed?” Frightening asked.

“Up until this point we’ve been waiting for the exact location of the dagger,” said Vex. “We knew Johann Starke had it in his possession, but didn’t know exactly where. Now we do. It’s on display at his house, along with a collection of other undoubtedly priceless trinkets. We have to get to it before he hides it away again. Once we have it, we go after the others.”

“It won’t be easy,” said Aurora.

“Which is why I have you people with me – people I would trust with my life. Apart from you, Wilhelm. No offence.”

Wilhelm shook his head quickly. “No, of course not. I’m just honoured to be part of the team, and I know that if you give me a chance I will prove myself worthy of—”

“Where’s the psychic?” Aurora interrupted. “Or, oh, sorry, the clairvoyant? Last time we were all together the air was filled with his ridiculous ramblings and pretentious claptrap. What was that he said? I feel a great darkness, like unto a cloud upon a starless night. Swear to God I wanted to hit him so hard.”

“Sadly,” Vex said, “Jerry Ordain is no longer with us. He died last year.”

“Oh,” said Aurora. “Oh, now I actually feel mean. Natural causes?”

“Decapitation.”

“So... not too natural, then.”

“Who killed him?” asked Saracen.

“I don’t know,” said Vex. “I looked into it with the time I had, but couldn’t find any leads.”

Aurora raised an eyebrow. “Uh, no offence or anything, Dexter, but what do you know about solving a murder?”

“Quite a lot,” Vex said. “Skulduggery Pleasant didn’t wait for the war to be over to suddenly decide to become a detective, you know. He’d always been one, even when he was a soldier. And Saracen and I were there. We saw him in action. Solving a mystery is fairly straightforward... mostly. You look for clues. Clues come in many forms.”

“Sometimes it’s a footprint,” said Saracen, “sometimes it’s a piece of dirt. Other times it’s a word, or a name, or a reference. Sometimes the reference is obvious, sometimes it’s hidden.”

Vex nodded. “So you take the word or the name or the reference, and if you find more than one, then you put them together, sort them into groups and you find the thing they share. Or you take the piece of dirt, and find where it came from. Or you take the footprint, and find the foot that made it.”

“And that’s how you solve a mystery, is it?” Aurora asked, unimpressed. “Dirt, footprints and references? That’s the grand total of what you’ve learned from Skulduggery?”

“Yes,” said Vex. “And I applied it all to Jerry Ordain’s murder, and found nothing overly suspicious.”

“Apart from the fact that he’d had his head chopped off.”