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The Ghost Word
BRIEFING
- SETTING
- November 1899. The Holloway English Dictionary, housed in a converted chapel the staff call the Scriptorium — three months from its first complete edition after twenty years of work.
- VICTIM
- Dr. Aurelius Crane, Editor-in-Chief
- CRIME
- Dr. Aurelius Crane is found at dawn face-down on the galley proofs for the letter S. The house surgeon calls it apoplexy. But his thumb and lower lip are stained blue-black, one corner of the topmost proof is still tacky to the touch, and he died reaching for a single word. The night-porter, Mr. Quill, swears that from dusk to dawn no one came in or went out.
FREE CARD
THE PROOF
On the proof beneath him, one word is ringed in his own red editor's ink: "margreave — NOT A WORD. Strike, and find who set it." No such word exists in any dictionary. Someone planted it. He found it the night he died.
TESTIMONY
- Mr. Lionel ReaveEVIDENCE
He took me in when I had no one. Whatever you found, I owed that man everything.