Floods 5 by Colin Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

found prints inside the professor’s ears and right up his nose, I knew they had to be his,’ said Avid. ‘I mean, I’ve never heard of a murderer clearing the wax out of his victim’s ears and picking his nose before killing him.’
    â€˜Except for the Lake Eerie Earwax Killer of ’83,’ said Grusom. ‘But he never touched his victims’ noses and besides, he died in a massive earwax fire at his secret hideaway in the Big Forest.’
    In forensic science there is, unfortunately, no end to all the possibilities. For example: could the Lake Eerie Earwax Killer of ’83 have left behind a child who was now wreaking havoc on the world for his father’s early demise?
    â€˜No,’ said Grusom, thinking it through. ‘The Lake Eerie Earwax Killer of ’83 never married and had no children. He did have a small poodle, but I can’t see Fifi-Waxybelle doing anything like this.Stealing cutlets from butchers’ shops was more her line.’
    The most likely and yet the most unlikely fact was that whoever killed Professor Randolf Open-Graves only touched the tips of his fingers.
    In the situation where a perfect set of prints are found, they are immediately faxed or emailed to a great big secret database that has EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD’S fingerprints on it. Of course, all the major governments pretend this database doesn’t exist.
    â€˜The prints belong to a pair of twins,’ said Avid when the message came back from the top secret database that doesn’t exist. ‘And they are pupils at this school.’

‘Morbid and Silent Flood?’ said the headmaster when Grusom confronted him in his office. ‘I doubt it.’
    As far as the headmaster and most of the teachers were concerned, the Flood children were the school’s star pupils. He could not believe that they could have been involved in the professor’s demise. And yet history had shown that even the prettiest, nicest, best behaved, cleverest people who loved puppies and went out of their way to help old ladies across the road even when they didn’t want to go, quite often turned out to be psychoticaxe-murderers. Though of course the professor did not appear to have been killed with an axe.
    â€˜I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there,’ he said.
    â€˜Absolutely,’ said Satanella Flood, who was sitting under the headmaster’s desk chewing her way through his shoe. ‘And if there are any trees that need barking up, that’s my job.’
    A dog that talks? I don’t think so, Grusom thought. Amazing disguise, though.
    â€˜Back to class, please, Satanella Flood,’ said the headmaster as Satanella’s chewing reached his toe. She trotted reluctantly out of the room.
    Grusom put two and two together and got five. Five Flood children. Five suspects. Merlinmary had kidnapped him in the catacombs. 23 Creepy Winchflat Flood had brought him Elanora Bedlam’s cookbook. These twins, Morbid and Silent, must have had access to the body. And nowa girl pretending to be a dog. Obviously the whole family was involved.
    On the other hand, if the professor had been murdered eleven times it would mean each of the Flood children at Quicklime College had killed him twice, with one left over. Unless they all killed him two-and-one-fifths times each.
    If Grusom had a weak link – and if the truth be known, his entire brain was held together with weak links – it was that he was rubbish at mathematics, like most incredibly clever people are. That’s why calculators were invented by someone incredibly clever.
    The headmaster sent for the deputy headmaster, who, being a vampire, could only come out after dark or he would melt. As most of the children went home before it got dark, he did not seem the ideal candidate for the job. He had, however, sucked the blood out of all the other candidates and was therefore judged to be the perfect