Sleuth on Skates

To my very own
Maman chérie
, who thankfully isn't at all like Sesame's.

First Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder Children's Books. The rights of Clémentine Beauvais and Sarah Horne to be identified as the Author and Illustrator respectively of the Work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Text copyright © 2013 Clémentine Beauvais
Illustrations copyright © 2013 Sarah Horne

First published in the United States of America by Holiday House in 2014
All Rights Reserved
HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
www.holidayhouse.com

ISBN 978-0-8234-3255-4 (ebook)w
ISBN 978-0-8234-3256-1 (ebook)r

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beauvais, Clémentine.
Sleuth on skates / by Clémentine Beauvais ; illustrated by Sarah Horne.—
First American edition.
pages cm.— (A Sesame Seade mystery ; #1)
“First Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder Children's Books.”
Summary: Precocious eleven-year-old self-made-supersleuth Sophie “Sesame” Seade investigates the disappearance of Jenna Jenkins, a student at Cambridge University, where Sophie's father is chaplain and her mother is Head of Christ's College.
ISBN 978-0-8234-3197-7 (hardcover)
[1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Family life—England—Cambridge—Fiction. 3. University of Cambridge. 4. Cambridge (England)—Fiction. 5. England—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Horne, Sarah, 1979- illustrator.
II. Title.
PZ7.B380587Sle 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014010154

by

Clémentine Beauvais

illustrated by

Sarah Horne

Holiday House / New York

You're not born a supersleuth on skates; you become one.

And believe me (me's Sesame Seade, as it says on the cover), there are more requirements than you'd think.

What you need is, primo, a pair of roller skates (purple) and secundo, this simple little philosophy of life:

If there are as many connections in your brain as there are stars in the universe, why ask for superpowers? If your feet can run and skate and if your hands can climb and swim, why want to fly?

Oh, yes, you also need a mysterious mission. And let me tell you, there aren't as many of those
as there are roller skates and philosophies of life. Especially not in Cambridge, where I live. It's just a small city with a university in it, and probably the most boringly peaceful place in England, though I haven't been absolutely everywhere.

But one superior Sunday, after eleven years, five months and seventeen days of waiting, a mysterious mission found me—and at last I became Cambridge's number one self-made supersleuth on skates.

It all started very much like a normal Sunday afternoon. A normal Sunday afternoon is when my parents have all the time in the world to
ask each other bizarre questions about me. “I don't know,” said Professor Seade (my mother), “whether our daughter's particularly bad manners come from a naturally evil personality or from some neglect on our behalf.”

“Children are not naturally evil, darling,' said Reverend Seade (my father), ‘so I'm afraid we must have done something wrong.”

They both looked up at me. Up, because I was up a tree.

“What are you doing, Sophie?”

My parents, I'm sorry to say, live under the illusion that their daughter is called Sophie Margaret Catriona Seade, which makes no sense. Call me Sesame.

“I'm playing with Peter Mortimer and my binoculars.”

“Don't look into students rooms: it's rude.”

“Mother, I never look into students' rooms. It's either boring or disgusting.”

Living around students isn't easy, but I have to endure it because my house is in a college, and colleges are where the university stores its students. They sleep there, eat there, work there, and produce a lot of noises and smells in the process.

I live in a college for parent-related reasons: my mum is the Head of Christ's College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Earth. That makes her the local queen. That makes me the local princess, which means I can cross that off my to-do list: good to get it out of the way. As for Dad, being married to Mum could make him the local prince consort, but he prefers to be the college Chaplain.