The Last Unfinished File

Every school day, Mrs. Keene stops Bus 11 at the Mill Street tracks, rolls down her window and listens. So when a thin, faraway ringing drifts down the line one cold morning and the gates swing down with no train in sight, Maren Vale asks her what it is. A crossing bell is electric, Mrs. Keene says. It hammers. This one swings. Somebody is ringing it by hand.

The sound comes from Station Cut, the little crossing past the old depot, where the rails dip between two banks and you can’t see a train until it is on top of you. It has never had lights or a gate, and the town stopped looking at it long ago. Now the bell rings at ten past four, in broad daylight, even on a Saturday.

Maren and her friends know what happens when Rattlecross leaves something unfinished. They start with an unopened carton in a basement on Track Lane, marked STATION CUT. But this mystery doesn’t behave like the others. In the final book of The Rattlecross Files, the town is about to find out how long a question can wait.