Dubious Deeds

by Philip Ardagh

  Then the day came when, much sooner than most of them had expected, the picture was completed.

  ‘Why don’t you unveil it on Monday, before the first-night opening of the play, sir?’ Eddie suggested when he heard the news. ‘You’ll have a ready-made audience.’

  ‘Of course, the official unveiling will be at a small ceremony at the War Office itself,’ A. C. Pryden reminded him, ‘but it would be an excellent opportunity to show it to the Major, his family and friends. A capital idea, Edmund!’

  Eddie’s father was less than pleased. ‘That’s supposed to be my night, Eddie,’ he said. ‘Our night. Mine because I wrote it. Yours because the play is all about your life –’

  ‘Well, a version of it, father –’

  ‘And you play the leading role on stage. Having A. C. Pryden unveil his picture of your great-uncle would … well, would steal your limelight.’ (The especially bright light at the front of stages used to be created by burning lime, which is where the phrase comes from, if you were wondering.)

  ‘It makes perfect sense, father,’ said Eddie. ‘After all, Mad Uncle Jack has been a big part of my life since I first headed for Awful End.’

  The orphan girl playing Even Madder Aunt Maud happened to be waddling by at that moment. She hit Eddie over the head with her papier-mâché Malcolm. ‘Drink more milk!’ she snapped, stomping off. This particular aspect of acting is called ‘staying in character’.

  ‘She’s very good, isn’t she?’ said Mr Dickens.

  ‘Very,’ agreed Eddie, rubbing the top of his head. If the truth be told, one of Eddie’s greatest fears regarding the whole play was how MUJ and EMAM would react. Would they be outraged? It wasn’t that his father had written anything particularly outrageous about them, it was just that they were inclined to take offence at the slightest thing …

  … and if they were outraged, how would they express it? He wasn’t worried about shouts from the audience, or one of them stomping off in disgust, though he’d far rather they loved every minute of it, of course, and showered him with accolades.* No, what bothered him was that they might storm the stage and take matters into their own hands.

  When Eddie raised the matter with the actor-manager-director-cum-just-about-everything-else, Mr Pumblesnook, he simply chuckled and said, ‘The whole raison d’être behind acting is to stimulate an emotional response from your audience, me boy! Joy … sadness … anger … rage. All is fuel for the actor’s craft!’

  ‘I’m thinking more about actors getting hurt. Being hit with Malcolm is no joke –’

  Mr Pumblesnook grinned, to reveal a chipped tooth. ‘You’re forgetting that I too have been a victim of the stoat’s scorn,’ he boomed. ‘But when in character, a good actor must simply overcome such distractions.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I remember being horse-whipped by an agent of the Shah of Persia who leapt up onto the stage during Turban Trysts in Greenwich back in ’56. If anything, it made my performance all the more riveting. As he was dragged from the stage, rest assured that all eyes remained on me. I had that audience under my spell, and it would take more than a few tattered clothes and a few dozen, painful lashes to put me off my stride!’ he said. ‘It was only a matter of weeks before the welts stopped bleeding and the pain subsided.’

  If Mr Pumblesnook was trying to reassure Eddie, he probably wasn’t going the best way about it. Eddie now had the image of Even Madder Aunt Maud with a horse whip in her hand, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  ‘Then there was the time that a minor member of royalty attempted to drown me during my cameo performance in the second act of Storm in a Teacup. I had just –’

  Eddie stopped listening after that. He was beginning to wonder whether he could get away with wearing cushion padding under his clothes on the night, without anyone noticing. (Ex-Private Drabb had done much the same when he was most recently ‘volunteered’ by his colleagues to take part in the beating of the bounds of the Awful End estate. In Drabb’s case, it made the wizened old man look impressively muscly.)

  As it was, it would turn out that his great-aunt’s and uncle’s reaction was one of the least of his worries on the play’s opening night.

  *

  See that last sentence? I suspect there’s a technical term for such sentences in creative-writing course circles. If not, there jolly well should be. It’s one of those sentences hinting at what’s to come. It’s also a way of saying to the reader, ‘I know that there ain’t much happening at the moment and it might be more fun spending a few minutes going through your old toenail clippings collection, but trust me: things really are going to liven up eventually’… which means that such sentences might be seen as being a bit of a cheat.

  Rather than saying ‘hang on in there’, wouldn’t it be better for an author to make every page so interesting that they don’t have to resort to whetting the appetite with promises? (Whetting – with an ‘h’ – refers to sharpening the appetite, here, and has nothing to do with slobbering.)

  On the other hand, such sentences can make you, the reader, reassess what you’ve just read. Take the shopping list currently attached to the fridge door (by a magnet shaped like a sticking plaster) in this house. It must have been left here by the owner.

  Here’s what it says:

  Now, what if I was to tell you that what makes this particular shopping list so interesting is that one of these items has been poisoned ..?

  Aha! Not such a boring list after all now, is it? Well, it is, the truth be told, but at least you might be wondering which the poisonous item is … and whether it was deliberately poisoned … and, if so, who the intended victim was.

  Or what if I told you the person who wrote it was supposed to be on a diet? Now all that chocolate is telling a different story … or if the person who wrote it was having a rabbit to stay, or conducting experiments about trying to see in the dark which might – in both instances – explain the carrots … and how come the list is still here?

  So maybe my As-it-was-it-would-turn-out-that-his-great-aunt’s-and-uncle’s-reaction-was-one-of-the-least-of-his-worries-on-the-play’s-opening-night line is part of a worthy tradition and doesn’t deserve such contempt after all. I’ll let you decide.

  It’s just that I didn’t want to try to sneak it in under the radar.

  My conscience is clear.

  *

  In the weeks that Eddie had been rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing, and watching A. C. Pryden’s portrait of Mad Uncle Jack turn from a few lines on an otherwise blank canvas into a startlingly lifelike representation of his great uncle, his cousin Fabian had become a very skilled props assistant. Bless Him – sorry, it’s that nickname again, of course his real name was Mr Blessing – had never really had a title before but, now that he had an assistant, things changed. He became ‘Props Master’.

  It wasn’t only Fabian’s job to make some of the props – which included coming up with ideas on what to use and how to construct them – but he also had to help source props that didn’t need making. For example, one day Bless Him gave him the job of trying to create the impression that there was a hot-air balloon on stage. (Mr Pumblesnook was to play the role of Woolf Tablet, the famous photographer, in whose balloon various members of the Dickens family, accompanied by a private detective – also played by Pumblesnook – had chased Eddie’s kidnapper, driving a stolen hearse across the moors below.) Creating the basket of the balloon had been straightforward enough. Fabian ‘borrowed’ the self-same laundry basket that Dawkins had previously been trapped in. The envelope – the actual balloony part of the balloon – was a lot harder to solve and it was whilst Fabian was searching the warren of rooms in Awful End for inspiration that he saw a chandelier and realised that he could use one of the crystal baubles as a prop for the Dog’s Bone Diamond.

  As Fabian was crossing the driveway to the stable block, which housed the props’ store, he encountered EMAM and Mad Uncle Jack walking hand in hand. Annabelle was trotting behind them
– or, at least, doing as passable an attempt at trotting as a little crocodile could – delicately holding poor Malcolm between her jaws. (Think of a faithful dog carrying a newspaper.)

  ‘What’s that you’ve got there, Edmund?’ demanded Even Madder Aunt Maud, looking at the bauble in his hand.

  ‘Fabian,’ he corrected her.

  ‘Don’t lie to your great-aunt,’ snapped Mad Uncle Jack. ‘That’s far too small to be Fabian.’

  ‘Oh, this? This is from one of the chandeliers, Mad Aunt Maud –’ began Fabian, breaking off as he saw an extraordinary glint appear in EMAM’s eye.

  ‘Shiny,’ she said, elongating the word so that it came out as: ‘Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiineeeeeeeeeeeeeee!’ She reached out to try to touch the cut crystal.

  Mad Uncle Jack grabbed her wrist. ‘Go and put that thing away at once! You know full well that your great-aunt suffers from picanosis.’

  Of course, Fabian didn’t know full well that Even Madder Aunt Maud suffered from picanosis because he was Fabian, not Eddie … and, equally importantly, he had no idea what picanosis was either.

  Because I’ve been unable to find any contemporary medical reference to such an ailment, I can only guess at what it was supposed to be. It’s a pretty educated guess, though. Firstly, as any reader of Terrible Times will know, Even Madder Aunt Maud had a strange attraction to shiny things (a polished shell case and a fabulously expensive diamond, to name but two). Secondly, there are a few birds with reputations for collecting shiny things, too, including jackdaws and magpies. And the Latin name for magpie is Pica pica. And, thirdly, the word-ending nosis comes from the Greek nosos, meaning disease. See where I’m heading? I think it’s a pretty safe bet that – whether made up or not by the doctor who originally diagnosed her with it – picanosis must be a form of magpie-disease or shiny-nosis.

  Fabian slipped the bauble in his pocket, wished his great-aunt and great-uncle a pleasant day and hurried on his way.

  Inside the stable, he expected to find Bless Him hard at work with a pot of glue or a hammer and nails turning something into something else that would look good from where the audience was sitting. Instead, he found him wrestling with a chimney-sweep.

  * a type of champagne†

  † a terrible lie

  Episode 11

  An Old Acquaintance

  In which Eddie dodges punches and low-flying vegetables

  Traditionally, chimney-sweeps are considered good luck, though I’m not sure why that should be. It can’t have been much fun being a chimney sweep in Victorian England, particularly if you were a child, seeing as how you were often sent up the actual chimney. The description ‘sooty’ doesn’t do justice to the state these poor boys ended up in. But lucky they were considered to be, if you followed certain rituals. According to Old Roxbee’s Book of Etiquette & Folklore, if you came across a sweep – and he had to be in his working clothes and good ’n’ dirty, or it didn’t count – you had to raise your hat, or bow, or call out a cheery greeting, or (if you were of the female persuasion) curtsey.

  Eddie Dickens didn’t feel inclined to do any of these when he caught sight of this particular sweep, who tumbled out of the stable block, in a mass of tangled arms and legs which seemed to include his cousin Fabian and the props man.

  There was much shouting and grunting, and the occasional punch was thrown by all three parties. Eddie quickly deduced that Fabian and Bless Him were on the same side, in a united front against the sweep – not that all the blows reached their intended target – so decided he should go to their aid. Three against one is always better than two against one, as the old saying goes. (Not fairer, just better if you’re trying to win.)

  Eddie launched into the melee and somehow managed to grab the sweep’s collar which came off in his hand. It wasn’t that he’d ripped the shirt, it was just that many more people wore detachable collars back then.

  With Eddie now having entered the fray, the chimney-sweep admitted defeat. He simply stopped struggling and slumped, dead-weight, to the ground. ‘I surrender,’ he groaned.

  ‘What did he do?’ Eddie asked Fabian, helping his cousin to his feet.

  Fabian shrugged. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know,’ he admitted.

  ‘Then why were you fighting him?’

  ‘Why were you fighting him?’ Fabian asked Eddie in return.

  ‘Well – er – because you were. I thought you could do with some help!’

  ‘Well, I was helping him,’ said Fabian, indicating Mr Blessing, who was yanking the chimney-sweep to his feet.

  I don’t want you to be under the impression that the sweep was a boy. Far from it. (Look at the picture here). Though younger than the white-haired Props Master, he was old enough to be Eddie’s father and then some. He was also very large. Not large in the same way that the detective (now chief-) inspector was large before his unintended diet, which was on the fat side of fat. Nor large in the sense that an escaped convict by the name of Bonecrusher – whom Eddie had once had the misfortune to meet – was large, which was on the great-big-wall-of-muscle side of large. The sweep was large-framed and stocky. Which is why it had taken three of them to calm him.

  It also meant that if he didn’t want to be yanked to his feet he could probably have made sure that he wasn’t, but he didn’t put up any resistance.

  ‘What’s going on, Mister B?’ Eddie asked Bless Him.

  ‘I found him tampering with some of the equipment,’ said the Props Master, ‘and when I confronted him, he came at me.’

  ‘I did nuffink of the sort,’ the sweep protested. ‘I was lookin’ that’s all, an’ you startled me.’

  ‘A likely story!’ said Bless Him who, like Eddie and Fabian, had become smeared with soot following their brief skirmish.

  ‘Look,’ said the hulk of a man. ‘If I ’ave something to ’ide, why haven’t I legged it outa ’ere? It ain’t likes you three could stop me.’

  ‘True,’ said Eddie and Fabian, not only simultaneously but also at the same time.

  ‘So what are you doing here, Mister –?’

  ‘Scarple,’ said Mr Scarple.

  The name sounded very familiar to Eddie, though he couldn’t quite place it. ‘So what brings you to Awful End, Mr Scarple? I know it’s not to clean chimneys. My great-uncle has his ex-privates to do that for him.’

  ‘I’m ’ere to meet an old acquaintance, and to send greetin’s from my daughter to another,’ said the sweep. ‘One of you lads ain’t by any chance Master Edmund? Daniella never said there was two of yous.’

  ‘Daniella!’ said Eddie in amazement. Of course! That’s where Eddie had heard the name Scarple before. The lovely Daniella Scarple had been the assistant to the escapologist the Great Zucchini! Despite bearing more than a passing resemblance to a horse and treating Eddie as though he were an idiot – not surprisingly, because at the outset he had become a mumbling, dribbling buffoon in her presence – Eddie had taken quite a shine to her. ‘You’re Daniella’s father?’

  The sweep put out his hand. ‘I most certainly am. So you’re Edmund. My daughter laughs about you still, and sends ’er best regards.’

  ‘Is she nearby?’

  Scarple shook his head. ‘’Er an’ that man Zucchini is currently in Paris, entertainin’ the crowned ’eads of Europe, or so she’d ’ave us believe.’

  ‘A pity,’ said Eddie. ‘It’d have been good to see her again … What were you, in fact, doing when Mr Blessing came in on you?’

  ‘Daniella ’ad told me ’ows you’d first met Zucchini in a coffin in this ’ere stable block, so I took the liberty of ’aving a quick look round before presentin’ meself at the ’ouse –’

  ‘If that’s true,’ said Bless Him, ‘why were you tampering with the mechanism of that dagger?’ One of the props which had been in the possession of Mr Pumblesnook’s band of wandering theatricals for many a year was a spring-loaded dagger. When pressed against an actor, the blade retracted into the handle, giving the impression tha
t it was sinking into the victim’s flesh. If anyone was to cause the blade to jam, it could give someone a nasty injury.

  ‘I weren’t tamperin’,’ Scarple protested. ‘Just lookin’, I assures you.’

  ‘And who’s the old acquaintance?’ asked Fabian, who’d been busy trying to brush the soot off his clothes.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘You said that you were here to see an old acquaintance.’

  ‘Oh, ’im. I’m ’ere to see a certain Gherkin. I’m sure you knows who I mean, if you’ve met ’im.’

  ‘You know Gherkin!’ Eddie smiled. ‘It certainly is a small world.’

  ‘It’s just that I do weddin’s and ’e used to do funerals. Our paths would sometimes cross in churchyards.’

  ‘Weddings?’ frowned Eddie.

  ‘Most certainly, Master Edmund. It’s considered good luck to ’ave a sweep outside the church at ya weddin’. I not only gets an ’andshake from the groom ’an a kiss from the bride but, most important of all, some money for me troubles. It’s what Gherkin would describe as a lucrative sideline.’

  ‘Do we believe him, Master Eddie?’ asked Bless Him, who would defer to a Dickens on the matter, but didn’t want to ask Fabian because Fabian was supposed to be working under him.

  ‘If Gherkin can vouch for Mr Scarple, then everything’s fine by me … Forgive our less than friendly welcome, Mr Scarple.’

  ‘A misundertandin’, that’s all,’ said the sweep. He limped back into the stable block to retrieve his battered top hat from the floor of the props room, where it had fallen at the outbreak of the scuffle. The condition of the hat didn’t bother him in the slightest. It had been second-or third-hand when he’d first acquired it, and had been battered even then.