by Mark Haddon
53. Mother died two weeks later.
I had not been into hospital to see her but Father had taken in lots of food from Marks and Spencer's. He said that she had been looking OK and seemed to be getting better. She had sent me lots of love and had my Get Well card on the table beside her bed. Father said that she liked it very much.
The card had pictures of cars on the front. It looked like this
I did it at school with Mrs. Peters, who does art, and it was a lino cut, which is when you draw a picture on a piece of lino and Mrs. Peters cuts round the picture with a Stanley knife and then you put ink on the lino and press it onto the paper, which is why all the cars looked the same, because I did one car and pressed it onto the paper 9 times. And it was Mrs. Peters's idea to do lots of cars, which I liked. And I colored all the cars in with red paint to make it a Super Super Good Day for Mother.
Father said that she died of a heart attack and it wasn't expected.
I said, “What kind of heart attack?” because I was surprised.
Mother was only 38 years old and heart attacks usually happen to older people, and Mother was very active and rode a bicycle and ate food which was healthy and high in fiber and low in saturated fat like chicken and vegetables and muesli.
Father said that he didn't know what kind of heart attack she had and now wasn't the moment to be asking questions like that.
I said that it was probably an aneurysm.
A heart attack is when some of the muscles in the heart stop getting blood and die. There are two main types of heart attack. The first is an embolism. That is when a blood clot blocks one of the blood vessels taking blood to the muscles in the heart. And you can stop this from happening by taking aspirin and eating fish. Which is why Eskimos don't get this sort of heart attack, because they eat fish and fish stops their blood from clotting, but if they cut themselves badly they can bleed to death.
But an aneurysm is when a blood vessel breaks and the blood doesn't get to the heart muscles because it is leaking. And some people get aneurysms just because there is a weak bit in their blood vessels, like Mrs. Hardisty, who lived at number 72 in our street, who had a weak bit in the blood vessels in her neck and died just because she turned her head round to reverse her car into a parking space.
On the other hand, it could have been an embolism, because your blood clots much more easily when you are lying down for a long time, like when you are in hospital.
Father said, “I'm sorry, Christopher, I'm really sorry.”
But it wasn't his fault.
Then Mrs. Shears came over and cooked supper for us. And she was wearing sandals and jeans and a T-shirt which had the words WINDSURF and CORFU and a picture of a windsurfer on it.
And Father was sitting down and she stood next to him and held his head against her bosoms and said, “Come on, Ed. We're going to get you through this.”
And then she made us spaghetti and tomato sauce.
And after dinner she played Scrabble with me and I beat her 247 points to 134.
59. I decided that I was going to find out who killed Wellington even though Father had told me to stay out of other people's business.
This is because I do not always do what I am told.
And this is because when people tell you what to do it is usually confusing and does not make sense.
For example, people often say “Be quiet,” but they don't tell you how long to be quiet for. Or you see a sign which says KEEP OFF THE GRASS but it should say KEEP OFF THE GRASS AROUND THIS SIGN or KEEP OFF ALL THE GRASS IN THIS PARK because there is lots of grass you are allowed to walk on.
Also people break rules all the time. For example, Father often drives at over 30 mph in a 30 mph zone and sometimes he drives when he has been drinking and often he doesn't wear his seat belt when he is driving his van. And in the Bible it says Thou shalt not kill but there were the Crusades and two world wars and the Gulf War and there were Christians killing people in all of them.
Also I don't know what Father means when he says “Stay out of other people's business” because I do not know what he means by “other people's business” because I do lots of things with other people, at school and in the shop and on the bus, and his job is going into other people's houses and fixing their boilers and their heating. And all of these things are other people's business.
Siobhan understands. When she tells me not to do something she tells me exactly what it is that I am not allowed to do. And I like this.
For example, she once said, “You must never punch Sarah or hit her in any way, Christopher. Even if she hits you first. If she does hit you again, move away from her and stand still and count from 1 to 50, then come and tell me what she has done, or tell one of the other members of staff what she has done.”
Or, for example, she once said, “If you want to go on the swings and there are already people on the swings, you must never push them off. You must ask them if you can have a go. And then you must wait until they have finished.”
But when other people tell you what you can't do they don't do it like this. So I decide for myself what I am going to do and what I am not going to do.
That evening I went round to Mrs. Shears's house and knocked on the door and waited for her to answer it.
When she opened the door she was holding a mug of tea and she was wearing sheepskin slippers and she had been watching a quiz program on the television because there was a television on and I could hear someone saying, “The capital city of Venezuela is . . . (a) Maracas, (b) Caracas, (c) Bogotá or (d) Georgetown.” And I knew that it was Caracas.
She said, “Christopher, I really don't think I want to see you right now.”
I said, “I didn't kill Wellington.”
And she replied, “What are you doing here?”
I said, “I wanted to come and tell you that I didn't kill Wellington. And also I want to find out who killed him.”
Some of her tea spilled onto the carpet.
I said, “Do you know who killed Wellington?”
She didn't answer my question. She just said, “Goodbye, Christopher,” and closed the door.
Then I decided to do some detective work.
I could see that she was watching me and waiting for me to leave because I could see her standing in her hall on the other side of the frosted glass in her front door. So I walked down the path and out of the garden. Then I turned round and saw that she wasn't standing in her hall any longer. I made sure that there was no one watching and climbed over the wall and walked down the side of the house into her back garden to the shed where she kept all her gardening tools.
The shed was locked with a padlock and I couldn't go inside so I walked round to the window in the side. Then I had some good luck. When I looked through the window I could see a fork that looked exactly the same as the fork that had been sticking out of Wellington. It was lying on the bench by the window and it had been cleaned because there was no blood on the spikes. I could see some other tools as well, a spade and a rake and one of those long clippers people use for cutting branches which are too high to reach. And they all had the same green plastic handles like the fork. This meant that the fork belonged to Mrs. Shears. Either that or it was a Red Herring, which is a clue which makes you come to a wrong conclusion or something which looks like a clue but isn't.
I wondered if Mrs. Shears had killed Wellington herself. But if she had killed Wellington herself, why had she come out of the house shouting, “What in fuck's name have you done to my dog?”
I thought that Mrs. Shears probably didn't kill Wellington. But whoever had killed him had probably killed him with Mrs. Shears's fork. And the shed was locked. This meant that it was someone who had the key to Mrs. Shears's shed, or that she had left it unlocked, or that she had left her fork lying around in the garden.
I heard a noise and turned round and saw Mrs. Shears standing on the lawn looking at me.
I said, “I came to see if the fork was in the shed.”
/> And she said, “If you don't go now I will call the police again.”
So I went home.
When I got home I said hello to Father and went upstairs and fed Toby, my rat, and felt happy because I was being a detective and finding things out.
61. Mrs. Forbes at school said that when Mother died she had gone to heaven. That was because Mrs. Forbes is very old and she believes in heaven. And she wears tracksuit trousers because she says that they are more comfortable than normal trousers. And one of her legs is very slightly shorter than the other one because of an accident on a motorbike.
But when Mother died she didn't go to heaven because heaven doesn't exist.
Mrs. Peters's husband is a vicar called the Reverend Peters, and he comes to our school sometimes to talk to us, and I asked him where heaven was and he said, “It's not in our universe. It's another kind of place altogether.”
The Reverend Peters makes a funny ticking noise with his tongue sometimes when he is thinking. And he smokes cigarettes and you can smell them on his breath and I don't like this.
I said that there wasn't anything outside the universe and there wasn't another kind of place altogether. Except that there might be if you went through a black hole, but a black hole is what is called a singularity, which means it is impossible to find out what is on the other side because the gravity of a black hole is so big that even electromagnetic waves like light can't get out of it, and electromagnetic waves are how we get information about things which are far away. And if heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't or people would notice.
I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.
The Reverend Peters said, “Well, when I say that heaven is outside the universe it's really just a manner of speaking. I suppose what it really means is that they are with God.”
And I replied, “But where is God?”
And the Reverend Peters said that we should talk about this on another day when he had more time.
What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.
When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.
But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.
67. The next day was Saturday and there is not much to do on a Saturday unless Father takes me out somewhere on an outing to the boating lake or to the garden center, but on this Saturday England were playing Romania at football, which meant that we weren't going to go on an outing because Father wanted to watch the match on the television. So I decided to do some more detection on my own.
I decided that I would go and ask some of the other people who lived in our street if they had seen anyone killing Wellington or whether they had seen anything strange happening in the street on Thursday night.
Talking to strangers is not something I usually do. I do not like talking to strangers. This is not because of Stranger Danger, which they tell us about at school, which is where a strange man offers you sweets or a ride in his car because he wants to do sex with you. I am not worried about that. If a strange man touched me I would hit him, and I can hit people very hard. For example, when I punched Sarah because she had pulled my hair I knocked her unconscious and she had concussion and they had to take her to the Accident and Emergency Department at the hospital. And also I always have my Swiss Army knife in my pocket and it has a saw blade which could cut a man's fingers off.
I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand. It is like being in France, which is where we went on holiday sometimes when Mother was alive, to camp. And I hated it because if you went into a shop or a restaurant or on a beach you couldn't understand what anyone was saying, which was frightening.
It takes me a long time to get used to people I do not know. For example, when there is a new member of staff at school I do not talk to them for weeks and weeks. I just watch them until I know that they are safe. Then I ask them questions about themselves, like whether they have pets and what is their favorite color and what do they know about the Apollo space missions and I get them to draw a plan of their house and I ask them what kind of car they drive, so I get to know them. Then I don't mind if I am in the same room as them and don't have to watch them all the time.
So talking to the other people in our street was brave. But if you are going to do detective work you have to be brave, so I had no choice.
First of all I made a plan of our part of the street, which is called Randolph Street, like this
Then I made sure I had my Swiss Army knife in my pocket and I went out and I knocked on the door of number 40, which is opposite Mrs. Shears's house, which means that they were most likely to have seen something. The people who live at number 40 are called Thompson.
Mr. Thompson answered the door. He was wearing a T-shirt which said
BEER
Helping ugly people
have sex for 2,000 years
Mr. Thompson said, “Can I help you?”
I said, “Do you know who killed Wellington?”
I did not look at his face. I do not like looking at people's faces, especially if they are strangers. He did not say anything for a few seconds.
Then he said, “Who are you?”
I said, “I'm Christopher Boone from number 36 and I know you. You're Mr. Thompson.”
He said, “I'm Mr. Thompson's brother.”
I said, “Do you know who killed Wellington?”
He said, “Who the fuck is Wellington?”
I said, “Mrs. Shears's dog. Mrs. Shears is from number 41.”
He said, “Someone killed her dog?”
I said, “With a fork.”
He said, “Jesus Christ.”
I said, “A garden fork,” in case he thought I meant a fork you eat your food with. Then I said, “Do you know who killed him?”
He said, “I haven't a bloody clue.”
I said, “Did you see anything suspicious on Thursday evening?”
He said, “Look, son, do you really think you should be going around asking questions like this?”
And I said, “Yes, because I want to find out who killed Wellington, and I am writing a book about it.”
And he said, “Well, I was in Colchester on Thursday, so you're asking the wrong bloke.”
I said, “Thank you,” and I walked away.
There was no answer at house number 42.
I had seen the people who lived at number 44, but I did not know what their names were. They were black people and they were a man and a lady with two children, a boy and a girl. The lady answered the door. She was wearing boots which looked like army boots and there were 5 bracelets made out of a silver-colored metal on her wrist and they made a jangling noise. She said, “It's Christopher, isn't it.”
I said that it was, and I asked her if she knew who
killed Wellington. She knew who Wellington was so I didn't have to explain, and she had heard about him being killed.
I asked if she had seen anything suspicious on Thursday evening which might be a clue.
She said, “Like what?”
And I said, “Like strangers. Or like the sound of people arguing.”
But she said she hadn't.
And then I decided to do what is called Trying a Different Tack, and I asked her whether she knew of anyone who might want to make Mrs. Shears sad.
And she said, “Perhaps you should be talking to your father about this.”
And I explained that I couldn't ask my father because the investigation was a secret because he had told me to stay out of other people's business.
She said, “Well, maybe he has a point, Christopher.”
And I said, “So, you don't know anything which might be a clue.”
And she said, “No,” and then she said, “You be careful, young man.”
I said that I would be careful and then I said thank you to her for helping me with my questions and I went to number 43, which is the house next to Mrs. Shears's house.
The people who live at number 43 are Mr. Wise and Mr. Wise's mother, who is in a wheelchair, which is why he lives with her, so he can take her to the shops and drive her around.
It was Mr. Wise who answered the door. He smelled of body odor and old biscuits and off popcorn, which is what you smell of if you haven't washed for a very long time, like Jason at school smells because his family is poor.
I asked Mr. Wise if he knew who had killed Wellington on Thursday night.
He said, “Bloody hell, policemen really are getting younger, aren't they.”
Then he laughed. I do not like people laughing at me, so I turned and walked away.
I did not knock at the door of number 38, which is the house next to our house, because the people there take drugs and Father says that I should never talk to them, so I don't. And they play loud music at night and they make me scared sometimes when I see them in the street. And it is not really their house.
