1 Chapter One:

Alexander Versace was a respectable man. He was quiet, refined, and had more acquaintances than friends. He often threw parties, of the "cocktail" variety; or so his wife called them.

She, although she was very happy in her marriage, despised the predictableness of her dutiful husband's personality. Ginette was quite the opposite of her spouse, and it showed.

She had plenty of friends, and enjoyed a night out at a dance hall a lot better than staying in with Alexander's business associates. However, her evenings usually consisted of the latter.

The Versaces' owned a saw mill down by the harbor. They protruded much of their wealth from it, and credited most of their "connections'' from it. ("acquaintances'' in Alexander's words, "friends" in Ginette's.) They had plenty of sawyers working for them, many of which had befriended their goddaughter, Maude Miller. Maude had been born in Wisconsin, to American parents. Very soon, at about seven years of age, John and Helen Miller shipped themselves, and their young daughter to Westminster. However, they decided the crime rate was too high. Again, at nine years of age, Maude was off to Manchester. Maude loved her parents, but all she wanted was to go back to America. Her wish came true, not ten years later. Nineteen-year-old Maude traveled to Illinois. That's where her godparents had always lived, just outside of Chicago. Crime-ridden, brothel-infested, gang-abounded Chicago. And Maude loved the whole six-hundred and six (point one) squared kilometers of it.

One day; more precisely the second Tuesday of July, Maude was having tea with Alexander and Ginette.(Maude had always called her Ginny.) The tea was delicious, the biscuits scrumptious; and they were all prepared by the Versaces' maid! It's true, Miss June Davis had always been a fabulous cook. Of course, that's why the Versaces' hired her. However, Maude always thought that June should have used her skills wisely, and gone into a higher-paying profession. Maude even did so much as vocalize this point on several occasions, but Miss Davis had always loved her humble job, although it was low-paying. And she was on such good terms with the Versaces', that she couldn't even think about abandoning Ginny. Lucky for the lot of them, June didn't care for such "civil" and "expensive" things, or else she would've been long gone, a long time ago.

Maude had everything she had ever wanted, but she still wanted more. Not the greedy kind of things that were for herself, but she wanted a change of pace.

Maude wanted to be a detective.

It's true, she had studied the cases in the newspapers, and had read more than her fair share of penny dreadfuls, all finding the killer within the first few chapters. This is what made Maude think she would be a wonderful detective, but she had already put so much strain on the nerves of her godparents, and so much wear-and-tear on the hearts of her parents, becoming a detective would add one more thing to the major list of inconveniences she had already caused her family. But they loved her, the lot of them, and the most spontaneous thing they would let her do was move to Chicago. Maude currently lived about twenty-five minutes from her godparents, they lived in Gary; which was twenty minutes outside of Chicago, but it was a big city, and it took her the extra five to reach her boarding house. (If she was to reach it.)