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The Second Encore
The Second Encore

The Margins

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Chapter 3 of 10

The famous songbook sits on the piano in the empty club, and Dinah Brooks, who owes nobody here anything, finally opens it. The binding is cracked, the staves faded to tea, the showpiece running eleven pages in a copyist's copperplate, every chorus and bridge laid out like architecture, the melody phrased in long confident slurs. It is the margins that stop her. Penciled fingerings ride above the trumpet line, page after page, worn silver. A copyist writes notes; a player writes fingerings; these are decades old, in the same precise hand as the staves. Whoever wrote this arrangement also played or taught it, long before the pawnshop, long before Lonnie. Dinah closes the book and sits a while at the dark piano. She is new here, and starting to understand what kind of room she has been hired into.

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About this case

A chapter of The Second Encore, a mystery told in word searches. Each chapter leaves you one clue; the finale needs them all.

How a mystery chapter works

  1. 1
    Read the scene first.Every chapter opens with a scene from the case. The word list is drawn from it, and so is the clue.
  2. 2
    Find the words.Tap a word's first letter, then tap along to its last, or press and drag. Found words colour themselves in and cross off the list.
  3. 3
    One listed word is not in the grid.Find the other nine and the word left over is the chapter's clue. Note it down, or let the case page keep it for you.
  4. 4
    The finale needs every clue.The last puzzle's word list is the clues you collected, and once you find them all, the leftover letters spell out who did it, and why.

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Print The Second Encore as one large-print booklet: every chapter and its puzzle, a clue ledger, and the ending sealed on the last page.

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