Dubious Deeds

by Philip Ardagh

  Brother Felch led the horse out into the yard. The nasty cut between Horsey’s eyes was healing nicely. ‘He’ll soon be as fit as a fiddle,’ he announced, slipping him a carrot from a bag slung on the rope belt tied around his waist.

  Eddie patted him on the muzzle. ‘Goodbye, boy,’ he said.

  It was just as Fudd reached the gatehouse, Eddie hobbling beside him on his stick, that Abbot Po called out after them.

  ‘Just a moment, Mr Fudd!’ he said.

  Fudd stopped and turned. ‘Yes, Abbot?’

  ‘I haven’t heard you ask young Fabian about his injuries.’

  ‘Beg pardon?’ said the gypsy, an uneasy feeling creeping over him.

  ‘You haven’t once asked the boy how he is.’

  ‘S’not true,’ said Fudd defensively. ‘I asked the lad if he remembered me.’

  ‘You enquired about his memory, yes,’ said Po, ‘but, despite the puncture holes all over him and his walking with a stick, you’ve never once asked how he’s feeling. You, the chief and father to them all.’

  ‘We’re manly men, us gypsies,’ said Fudd.

  ‘And if this boy really is Fabian and one of your own, I’m sure you’d have asked him about his wellbeing by now.’

  ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ asked Fudd, raising his knobbly stick above Po’s head.

  ‘I’m simply saying that, before you leave with the boy, I feel that we need more proof that he is who you say he is.’

  Now, before we go any further, I think I’d better do a little explaining here. Ready? When Fudd arrived at Lamberley Monastery, he really was hoping to find Fabian. It’s not that he’d made Fabian up with a view to kidnapping Eddie for some nefarious purposes (and if you’re not altogether sure what nefarious actually means, you could always look it up). Fabian existed and he was exactly whom Fudd had said he was: one of the gypsy children whose mother hadn’t been born a gypsy but had fallen in love with one and married him. It was just that when Eddie was led into Abbot Po’s office and turned out not to be the boy, Fudd saw an interesting opportunity. And Fudd was not one to turn down an opportunity in a hurry.

  A plan formed very quickly in his mind. He would claim this Neddie as being Fabian, take him away with him and then track down his real parents. There was bound to be a reward, and Fudd would be far better at tracking them down than a bunch of monks who didn’t get out much. And he’d still be on the lookout for the real Fabian in the meantime.

  Clever, huh?

  And if you’re sitting there/standing there/squatting there/kneeling there/lying there thinking, ‘Poor old gypsies! Here’s yet another book giving them and travelling people a bad name,’ let me say this:

  Fudd was just Fudd, and was not representative of all gypsies.

  There are good gypsies and bad gypsies in just the same way that there are good dentists and bad dentists. They’re only human. (Bad example. I’m not sure my dentist is.)

  Eddie came across a wide variety of unsavoury characters over the years, and Fudd the gypsy was just one of them. So, as a percentage of the not-so-marvellous people Eddie encountered, gypsies probably made up less than one per cent.

  Fudd wasn’t that bad anyway!

  Enough said.

  Fudd lowered his stick. ‘I’m sorry, Abbot,’ he said. ‘I had no real intention of hitting you.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Po.

  ‘Not just because you’re a man of God, but because I don’t hit no defenceless man with nothing but me fists.’

  ‘Even one as ugly as me?’ asked Po.

  ‘’specially one as ugly as you,’ grinned the gypsy.

  ‘Is this boy really Fabian?’ Po asked, staring straight into the man’s eyes.

  Fudd blinked and looked away. ‘How come God made one so kind and clever as you so ugly?’

  ‘Perhaps to remind us that we shouldn’t always judge a book by its cover,’ said Po, putting his arm around Eddie’s shoulders. ‘Come on, Neddie,’ he said. ‘It looks as though you won’t be leaving our company just yet after all.’

  ‘You mean, I’m not this Fabian fellow?’ asked Eddie. He turned to Fudd, who shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, son. No,’ he said. ‘Though you are like two peas in a pod. Uncanny it is. Unnatural.’

  ‘Then why –?’

  ‘I’d have found your real folks for you, and no mistake,’ he said.

  ‘At a price, I suppose?’ said Po.

  The gypsy nodded again.

  ‘Good day to you, Mr Fudd,’ said Abbot Po briskly.

  ‘You’ll be reporting this to the authorities?’ asked Fudd, who wasn’t on the best of terms with police throughout the country.

  It was Po’s turn to shake his head. ‘I report to the highest authority,’ he said, looking skywards. ‘If you never return to Lamberley, I have no reason to tell anyone of what happened here.’

  ‘Right … Well – er – Good luck with your memory and the like,’ said Fudd, then he marched through the gatehouse out into the world.

  One of his men was waiting by his horse. ‘Was it Fabian, chief?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Fudd, jumping up on to his animal. ‘There’s nothing for us here.’

  *

  By the time Fandango Jones returned to Awful End in the horse-drawn police van (his bicycle slung up on to its roof), Dr Humple had arrived to tend to the wounded.

  For someone who’d had a chimney dropped on him from a great height, Mr Dickens was, the doctor declared, in remarkably good condition. Humple had ordered all the chutney and brown paper removed before he could make his initial examination of the patient. Mrs Dickens had managed to get much of the chutney back into the earthenware jar, declaring that it would be ‘a shame for it to go to waste’, whilst Even Madder Aunt Maud was busy licking what remained stuck to the brown paper.

  According to Dr Humple, it was Dawkins who was in need of more immediate attention. ‘Time will heal your husband’s broken bones, Mrs Dickens,’ he said, ‘but Dawkins needs those bee stings extracted this instant.’

  Feeling a little guilty that it was her applying of the chutney to the gentleman’s gentleman that had attracted the swarm of bees in the first place, Mrs Dickens insisted on helping the doctor pull out the stings. Even Madder Aunt Maud, who’d been watching from the sidelines, decided that she wanted a go, too, which is why, on entering the house, Detective Inspector Bunyon found three people attacking Dawkins with tweezers.

  Fandango Jones had then taken the policeman and his constables up on to the roof, shown him where the chimney had originally stood, shown him where it must have been dropped over the edge and, leaning over the parapet, pointed out where they’d all been standing below. He then produced the piece of brocade from the back of his notebook and handed it to the inspector, pointing out the exact spot where he’d found it.

  ‘Remarkable!’ said Bunyon. ‘If you ever decide to give up being an engineer, Mr Jones, I’m sure there’d be a place for you in the detective branch of the police force!’ What he didn’t add out loud, but was certainly thinking, was, if you didn’t spit so much.

  When the detective inspector showed the piece of gold brocade to various members of the household, Mad Uncle Jack recognised it at once.

  ‘That’s off Private No-Sir’s uniform!’ he said.

  ‘Private No-Sir, sir?’ asked the detective inspector.

  ‘One of my men.’

  ‘Men?’

  ‘One of the four ex-soldiers in my old regiment who now work for me.’

  ‘Aha,’ nodded the inspector. ‘One of them. Is his name really No-Sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  Mad Uncle Jack shook his head, his beakie nose cutting through the air like a wire cutter through cheese. ‘I can’t remember his real name. Called him No-Sir for so long.’

  ‘And why do you call him that?’

  ‘Damned if I can remember!’ snorted MUJ.

  Only seven people under Mad Uncle Jack survi
ved from his entire regiment, after whatever the final campaign it was that they fought in. It wasn’t the biggest of regiments, but that was still a pitifully small number. Soon after, two men died (one in an accident and the other of an extremely rare disease contracted from sponging down cacti in a private botanical garden near Norwich). This left five men, all of whom were in the ‘lower ranks’ and all of whom chose to go and work for Mad Major Jack Dickens at Awful End. Since then, one (a certain Private Gorey) had died not so very long before the events related in this book. Then there were four.

  Private No-Sir’s real name was Private Norman Sorrel, but the joke in his ever-decreasing regiment was that his initials, N.S., actually stood for ‘No Sir’ because he was always refusing to carry out orders. This is probably what saved his life. Officers even more senior that MUJ were forever sending men on terribly dangerous missions from which it was unlikely they’d ever return … except, perhaps in small pieces. MUJ, meanwhile, was forever making equally dangerous demands of them, but in a more low-key manner. Instead of ordering them to ‘capture an enemy position’ or ‘hold the line’ (whatever that may mean), he was asking them to try to catch cannon balls, or to nip across to the enemy encampment to ask them to keep the noise down.

  Private Sorrel should probably have been court-martialled for insubordination in the ranks, or some such thing. Instead, he ended up with the nickname Private No-Sir, ignored all crazy orders – though he was always happy to retreat when told to – and came out of the various conflicts in one piece.

  What’s interesting is that those five survivors remained very loyal to MUJ and were happy to work for him at Awful End. This was, no doubt, partly to do with the fact that he appeared to know no fear.

  Having never had it explained to him that being hit by a cannon ball or a mortar shell or a bullet might not only hurt him but also do some serious damage or even, believe it or not, kill him, Mad Major Jack Dickens pottered about various battlefields as though he was surveying his vegetable patch. He thought nothing of strolling through enemy fire to inspect a particularly interesting specimen of insect, or to heave a wounded soldier on to his back and carry him off to a hospital tent with little more than a ‘And what have you managed to do to yourself this time?’

  Occasionally he would have lucid moments where he seemed to realise that there were nasty foreigners trying to make life difficult for him; or that a particular bridge, or building or piece of land needed defending, but much of the time was spent asking people not to point that thing at him.

  Detective Inspector Bunyon rubbed the gold brocade between his fingers. ‘And why does Ex-Private No-Sir still go around in uniform?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ said MUJ. ‘He always does, that’s all. Perhaps he doesn’t own any other clothes. Come to think of it, all four of them pong a bit …’

  ‘Couldn’t you insist that they spend some of their wages on new clothing?’ the inspector suggested.

  ‘Wages?’ asked Mad Uncle Jack, as though the word was new to him.

  The policeman steered the conversation back on track. ‘You suspect that this comes from No-Sir’s uniform because he’s the only one who still wears a uniform?’

  MUJ nodded. ‘Of course, Gorey used to as well.’

  ‘Gorey used to as well?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘And who’s Gorey, sir?’

  ‘He’s a very ex ex-private,’ sighed Eddie’s great-uncle. ‘Sadly no more.’

  The detective inspector asked to see No-Sir and they found him with the others playing cards on an iron girder. (All work had stopped on the bridge following the accident that increasingly looked like it hadn’t been an accident.) Mad Uncle Jack asked him to step to one side.

  Sure enough, No-Sir was in uniform – albeit a very tatty, worn and faded one – and even had a row of four medals. One, battered and bent, read ‘BEST OF BREED’ and had originally belonged to Gorey. Another was a campaign medal. The third read ‘I’VE BEEN TO BLACKPOOL’ and the fourth, on closer inspection, appeared not to be a medal at all but a flattened bottle top.

  Detective Inspector Bunyon looked at No-Sir’s epaulettes (or what was left of them) and at the piece of brocade in his hand. It would have been clear even to the untrained eye that the material came from the ex-private’s left shoulder.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain what you were doing on the roof,’ said the policeman.

  ‘When, sir?’ asked the ex-soldier.

  ‘When what?’ asked the detective inspector.

  ‘What was I doing on the roof when?’ asked No-Sir.

  ‘You mean to tell me that you regularly go up onto the roof?’ asked Bunyon. ‘Why?’

  Ex-Private Norman No-Sir Sorrel nodded his head in the direction of his ex-commanding officer.

  The detective inspector took the hint. He was a good detective inspector. He turned to Mad Uncle Jack. ‘I think I’d better talk to this man alone, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Very well,’ said MUJ, who was rapidly losing interest anyway. ‘I shall stride purposefully in this direction!’

  The two men watched him go. Detective Inspector Bunyon turned back to Sorrel. ‘Why do you go up to the roof sometimes?’ he asked.

  ‘To hide,’ said No-Sir.

  ‘To hide?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘From whom?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘From Mad Major Dickens … from Even Madder Mrs Dickens … their nephew, Mr Dickens … his nephew’s wife …’

  ‘Basically, the entire Dickens family?’ asked Bunyon.

  ‘Except for Master Edmund,’ said the ex-soldier, referring, of course, to Eddie. ‘He seems …’

  There was a pause. ‘Normal?’ the policeman suggested.

  ‘That’s it, sir,’ nodded No-Sir. ‘The very word I was looking for.’

  ‘But why hide?’

  ‘They’re always wanting us to do things and I don’t always want to.’

  ‘And saying “no, sir” doesn’t always work?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And when were you last up on the roof?’

  ‘When Mad Major Dickens wanted us to beat the bounds,’ said No-Sir.

  ‘And you had nothing to do with dropping the chimney over the edge?’ asked Bunyon.

  ‘Oh, no, sir! I’d never do nothing like that.’

  ‘So you know nothing about it?’

  The old soldier looked at the detective inspector long and hard. ‘I didn’t say that,’ he said.

  Episode 9

  Two Neds

  In which some bright spark could point out that two Neds are better than one

  Baby Ned cried all the way back to Lamberley Monastery. Brother Guck only stopped once in his journey, and that was to stick moss in his ears. It didn’t do much to block out the sound, but it looked nice.

  Brother Guck tried singing. (He was good at chanting.) He tried a few monkish jokes. He tried everything he could think of, but Ned just cried and cried and cried.

  Back at the monastery, Abbot Po didn’t fare any better. His soothing voice which, given half the chance, could probably have convinced man-eating tigers to become vegetarian, had no effect whatsoever. Ned simply went on crying.

  He only stopped crying when Eddie came to the abbot’s office to find out what the noise was about. Eddie looked at Ned. Ned looked at Eddie. And smiled. And gurgled. And coooooed.

  ‘Neddie, meet Ned,’ said the abbot. ‘Though I’m still not absolutely clear how he comes to be with us, I think from what Brother Guck here, said, Baby Ned is another lost soul.’

  Brother Guck was watching the way the two boys were looking at each other.

  ‘Do you know this baby, Neddie?’ he asked.

  ‘He does look familiar,’ said Eddie, trying to fight his way through the fog of amnesia. It was no use.

  ‘He was found by the family living over at Awful End,’ said the monk.

  ‘Awful End?’ said Eddie. The name me
ant nothing to him.

  ‘It’s the biggest house around here after Lamberley Hall,’ said Abbot Po.

  (Lamberley Hall has since been converted into ‘luxury apartments’ which, in this instance, is a posh phrase for lots of badly converted flats. It’s almost entirely populated by people who like to crunch up the swish driveway imagining that they own the whole house, when they really live in a few awkwardly shaped rooms and pay a huge annual service fee for someone to mow all the lawns and put over-the-top bouquets of flowers on the big round table in the centre of the communal hall.)

  ‘Awful End is a strange name for a house,’ said Eddie.

  ‘And a strange family lives there!’ said Brother Guck. And maybe if he’d had a chance to describe a few of what were, unbeknownst to all three of them, Eddie’s closest relatives, something might have jogged Eddie’s befuddled mind.

  As it was, Abbot Po interrupted. ‘It’s not for us to judge who is strange and who is not. Our behaviour may seem strange to some outsiders.’

  ‘You mean the scratchy habits, the humorous undergarments and the nearly-but-not-quite cutting yourself off from everyone?’

  Po nodded. ‘That and our belief in God,’ he added.

  Eddie was now holding Baby Ned. There was something familiar about him. The freshly powdered baby smell, perhaps?

  ‘Until I decide what we can do about the child, perhaps you’d be kind enough to look after him, Neddie?’ the abbot asked Eddie. ‘Know you or not, he’s certainly taken a shine to you.’

  ‘I’d be happy to,’ said Eddie.

  *

  The detective inspector was staring at No-Sir. ‘You’re claiming that you saw Master Edmund push the chimney on to his father?’ he asked, struggling to control his professional composure.