According to A. C. Pryden, he had knocked the easel when opening the flap in the desk in his room in order to write a letter, and the curtain had fallen from it, revealing the picture beneath. He had replaced the curtain and, finding that he’d run out of writing paper, went downstairs to get some which he’d seen on a writing table in the drawing room. Whilst in the drawing room, he’d looked through the window and witnessed the antics at the bottom of the top lawn, involving Eddie, Peevance and the others. His short time at Awful End had taught him one thing: DON’T GET INVOLVED. He went back upstairs to write his letter. He’d been gone from his room for less than ten minutes.
Just as he was about to sit down at his desk, he noticed something strange – he had an artist’s eye for things, remember. The curtain over the painting was the wrong way up. Technically, of course, there was no right way or wrong way. There was no pattern on the curtain, and the hem was the same on all four sides. It was just that the thick material had a pile: brush it in one direction and it lay beautifully flat. Brush against the pile and it stuck up. Pryden always hung the curtain so that the pile could be smoothed downwards. Puzzled, he lifted the curtain. The painting had gone, and the thief’s only window of opportunity had been the ten minutes or so that he’d been away from the room.
‘Has he sent for the police?’ asked Eddie’s father.
‘No,’ said Eddie. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to know yet, father. Not even the police. You must promise not to tell anybody. No one. Both of you, please.’
‘My lips are sealed,’ Mr Dickens reassured him.
‘Fow aw moy,’ said his mother, which was mouth-full-of-ball bearings for ‘so are mine’.
‘Thank you,’ said Eddie. ‘It’s just that it’s a little – er – embarrassing for him. He doesn’t want the War Office to get wind of it until he’s exhausted all other avenues. Those were his very words.’
‘What does he plan to do, hire a private investigator?’ Mr Dickens asked.
‘No, not yet,’ said Eddie, whose own experience of a private investigator hadn’t been an entirely happy one.
Now that Eddie had spoken to his parents, and believed that they genuinely knew nothing about it, he returned to Mr Pryden’s room.
He found the artist sitting on his bed, holding the large blank canvas across his lap. He looked up as Eddie entered the room.
‘This must have been a carefully planned theft with someone who had inside information,’ said Eddie.
‘How did you work that out?’ Pryden asked.
‘The canvas,’ said Eddie. ‘It’s exactly the same size as the painting they replaced under the curtain.’
‘Which means that someone must have seen and measured the original and had it made especially!’ said the painter, in that penguiny way of his. ‘This was no spur of the moment thing. It was carefully plotted –’
‘Which means that the whole Mr Peevance firing the cabbages from the cannon could have been a diversion!’
‘I suppose he could have been a decoy,’ said Pryden. He didn’t sound convinced.
‘But how could they have got him to play his part?’ said Eddie. ‘I’m afraid Mr Peevance appears to have – er – lost control … I seriously doubt he could have been following orders.’
‘An unwitting accomplice?’ said the painter.
‘Does anyone know how he got out of jail, and from the jail to here?’ asked Eddie. ‘Where did he get those cabbages from? How did he know that there was a cannon here in the first place?’
‘We’ll never know,’ said Pryden.
‘You could try asking him,’ Eddie suggested.
‘How?’ asked the painter. ‘I thought the peelers had carted him off to the local police station whilst they decide what to do with him next.’
‘Exactly,’ said Eddie. ‘You can speak to him there.’
‘The peelers will want to know why, and I really want to keep this our secret –’
‘Then we won’t ask them,’ said Eddie.
*
Eddie was familiar with the cells in the basement of the local constabulary, and knew that each had a little barred window which was at ankle-height with the pavement outside (not that pavements have ankles). Eddie crouched down and looked into the first cell. There was an extremely large woman, smelling of grog – even from where Eddie was – and snoring loudly. He moved on to the next window. This revealed a man dressed as a cleric, playing a game of patience on a rickety table, with home-made cards. (Based on information gleaned from local papers of the time, it seems likely that this was Barnaby Hawthorne, the notorious con artist whose speciality was tricking ladies of a certain age to part with their money. His modus operandi was to dress as a clergyman of some description or other, in order to gain their trust more quickly.)
The third cell housed two men, both in handcuffs, sitting glaring at each other from opposite sides of the room. Through the fourth barred window, Eddie saw the back view of the unmistakeable figure of Lance Peevance.
‘He’s in there,’ said Eddie, straightening up.
‘Good luck.’ He and A. C. Pryden had agreed that there was no point in him trying to talk to Peevance. Not only because of their confrontation by the cannon but also because it would now be obvious to the ex-schoolteacher that Eddie was one of the dreaded Dickenses. Pryden would have a far better chance of getting information from the man. ‘I’ll walk the streets and keep an eye out for peelers.’
‘I’m still not sure about this,’ said Pryden.
‘There’s nothing to lose,’ Eddie reminded him.
The artist crouched by the window. He stuck his head up against the bars. ‘Psssst! Peevance!’ he whispered.
Eddie wandered to the corner of the building and looked both ways down the street. He tried to look as casual as possible when the desk sergeant strode purposefully down the steps of the police station and across the road. The policeman entered a small bow-fronted shop named TRUMBLES, emerging soon after with a large paper bag.
When the sergeant recrossed the street, Eddie turned away and pretended to be interested in a horse-drawn open-topped omnibus which was approaching from the opposite direction. His interest became genuine when he saw a familiar face sitting on the top deck: it was Daniella’s chimney-sweep father. Then he recognised the man he was talking to. The bandaged head should have been a clue. It was Doctor ‘Moo-Cow’ Moot. How curious, thought Eddie. What are Scarple and Moot doing travelling on a bus together? Doctors and chimney sweeps didn’t mix in ordinary society except perhaps, as Eddie had so recently learnt, at weddings.
Eddie put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handful of pennies, ha’pennies and a farthing, which was more than enough for a bus fare. He was tempted to jump on the vehicle as it came to a halt a few yards away, and passengers hopped on and off. The only thing which stopped him was that he was on lookout duty for Mr Pryden.
The desk sergeant now back inside the station – probably behind his beloved desk – and the omnibus now moving off down the street, Eddie went back around the corner to check up on Pryden. There was no sign of him. Eddie hurried down the pavement and glanced through the tiny barred window into the ex-schoolteacher’s cell. Peevance was lying face down on the large wooden bench set into the wall below, which was used as a bed. He appeared to be chewing his pillow, or more tearing at it with his teeth. Eddie could hear ripping sounds between Lance Peevance’s anguished mutterings, and the odd stray feather fluttered about the cell.
Eddie guessed that A. C. Pryden’s conversation with him hadn’t gone too well … but where was the artist now? Eddie straightened up and went in search of him, wanting to tell him about the strange sight of a well-to-do doctor in an exclusive practice talking with Scarple, as thick as thieves … Thieves. Were they somehow involved in the theft of the painting? If so – and if Peevance really had been some kind of a diversion – it can’t all have gone to plan. The possibility of Scarple’s head being blown off by a cabbage cannonball had been a very real one
.
Eddie had been so deep in thought that he almost walked slap-bang into a lamppost and, in avoiding it at the last moment, stepped on the foot of a child hurrying past him.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Eddie. The child said nothing, just kept on moving. Eddie turned to watch him go, realising that this was no child after all. Sure, the figure was dressed in a sailor suit and carrying a lollipop almost as big as his head, but Eddie would have recognised the distinctive body shape and spritely walk anywhere. It was Gherkin the dwarf!
Eddie almost called out his name, but stopped himself just in time. It was obvious that the man hadn’t wanted to be recognised. With A. C. Pryden nowhere in sight, there was nothing to stop Eddie following someone this time.
Gherkin, outsized lollipop in hand, was now skipping down the street. Despite his ridiculous outfit, Eddie thought it unlikely that anyone looking at his face would be fooled into thinking that he was a child for one minute. It wasn’t only a man’s face but a fairly old man’s face at that. Then again, he was way below most adults’ eye level, and people didn’t generally pay much attention to children. And he’s probably using that lollipop to hide behind, thought Eddie.
Gherkin passed the police station, the post office and a shop selling everything you ever needed for riding and looking after horses (except, perhaps for stables, which would have been difficult to store out at the back). Taking a quick look from left to right – not noticing Eddie who had positioned himself behind two conveniently large women who were deep in conversation about the merits of a certain type of hat ribbon – he darted down a narrow alley. Eddie waited a moment, then nipped over to the entrance, peered around it and, seeing that the coast was clear, hurried down the alley himself, just in time to see Gherkin disappear through a large door. When Eddie reached it, he could make out faded lettering on the wood. What did it say?
I ATE PROPER Y
‘I ate proper y’. Who ate proper y? What was proper y anyway? And was there such a thing as improper y, Eddie wondered. Then it occurred to him that it might originally have read ‘I ATE PROPERLY’, like someone was announcing that they’d eaten a decent meal.
It was then, and only then, that Eddie realised that what the writing must have originally said was: PRIVATE PROPERTY. Feeling the tiniest bit foolish, Eddie gave the door a push. It wouldn’t budge. Now what? he wondered.
He would’ve liked to have dragged an old packing crate under a window and have climbed up on it to take a look inside. The problem was twofold, though: there was neither a packing crate nor a window. The handleless door was set into a blank brick wall. The wall was only blank in the sense that there were no windows in it. It wasn’t blank like the canvas that had been switched for A. C. Pryden’s portrait of Mad Uncle Jack. There was an advertisement painted directly onto the brickwork which read:
It looked like it had been there a long time, but that – unlike the writing on the door – the black lettering had been regularly touched up with paint to keep it looking fresh.
Eddie was no expert on the subtleties of advertising but, the more he looked at it, the more puzzled he was by this advertisement. Firstly, most advertisements painted on the side of buildings were painted high up for all to see, not at chest and head height. Secondly, such adverts were usually painted on main roads or at least where lots of passers-by would pass by … not down some narrow little alleyway.
Eddie was beginning to wonder whether he was seeing mysteries where none existed. Maybe there was a perfectly good reason for Dr Moot to have been on a bus, rather than in his pony and trap, speaking to Scarple. And what business of Eddie’s was it if Gherkin dressed as a child? He’d worked in a team of tumblers hadn’t he? And they must have worn costumes … Maybe he’d always played the role of a youngster in ‘The Remarkably Small Garfields’, and wore the outfit occasionally, whilst hankering after the good old days?
Eddie heard a sound, and managed to duck into another doorway, just as the door by the Old Roxbee’s safety match advert swung open. Gherkin emerged, clutching a brown paper parcel under his left arm. He nipped back down the alley the way he’d come. Once the dwarf had reached the street and turned left, in the opposite direction to the police station, Eddie broke his cover and ran up the alley after him.
Eddie found that he was very good at not being noticed. The moment he sensed or suspected that Gherkin might be about to look around, Eddie would duck into a doorway, or look into a shop window, or obscure himself behind an object or person and, on one occasion, a sheep on a lead, which tried to bite him. Its owner – a smartly dressed haughty woman whose expression seemed to dare him to ask her what on Earth she was doing taking a sheep for a walk – scowled at him, which seemed to suggest that he shouldn’t tempt Isobel (her name was engraved on a tag on her collar) by putting his biteable human body so close to the animal’s teeth. Remembering some Scottish police sheep of yesteryear, Eddie wondered why no one reminded sheep the world over that they were supposed to be herbivores, but his mind was soon back on his task.
Eddie suspected that Gherkin might have recognised him when he’d stepped on the dwarf ’s foot by the side of the police station, but didn’t think that he knew that he was following him. Gherkin – whatever he was up to – was being generally cautious, rather than watching out for Eddie in particular.
They were nearing the eastern outskirts of the town now, where there were far fewer pedestrians on the pavements, more trees and less traffic on the roads. Gherkin, who’d been moving at a pace which had left Eddie a little breathless, now came to a halt at the corner of Corncrake Avenue and the Lamberley Road. Eddie looked at the house on the corner. He recognised it immediately. It had been the home and medical practice of the late Dr Humple, but the brand-new brass plaque screwed onto the brick and plaster gatepost read: DR SAMUEL MOOT.
All roads lead to Moo-Cow Moot, thought Eddie, wondering what would happen next.
Gherkin had been busy unwrapping the brown-paper parcel. From it he produced what appeared to be a very large stick of dynamite.
Episode 14
Den of Thieves
In which Eddie sees various acquaintances in a different light
I expect many of you have heard of the Nobel Prize for Peace, and some of you may also have heard of other Nobel Prizes, including the Nobel Prize for Literature. (I wonder how long before I have to go to Stockholm and accept that little award? Perhaps I should start on my acceptance speech just as soon as I’ve finished this book.) I expect far fewer of you knew that the prizes are named after Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite. (I know YOU knew, I was talking about the others.)
The story goes that, feeling guilty about the death and destruction his explosive invention caused – which had many peaceful applications, including mining – he decided to give large sums of money to recognise the higher achievements of Mankind with a capital M (which, in Swedish is Mänskligheten with a capital M). Which would all be very interesting if what Eddie could see Gherkin holding was the stick of dynamite it appeared to be.
Eddie’s first thought was to go straight back to the police station to get help. By the time he’d run all the way back there, managed to convince someone to take him seriously – some of the peelers Eddie had met over the years weren’t the most shining examples of the human race – and had then run all the way back here again, however, it would be far too late. Gherkin would have done whatever it was he was going to do. Eddie should have known that there was something odd about an official mourner who’d been given a card by Mad Uncle Jack forty or fifty (or however many years) ago it had been, suddenly turning up out of the blue like that. The trouble was, living with such a potty family, it was easy to forget what normal behaviour was. A dwarf dressed as a child with what appeared to be a huge lollipop in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other could only be classed as normal by Dickens family standards.
With the remarkable agility of an ex-acrobat, Gherkin leapt over the side wall into Dr Moot’s fro
nt garden. There was a rustling through the laurel bushes, like ripples on the surface of water hinting at hidden activity below, then he appeared beneath a large bay window. The only difference was that he was now holding a match in his right hand instead of the lolly. He lit the fuse.
‘NO!!!’ shouted Eddie, running through the gate. ‘STOP!’
This didn’t have the desired effect. The opposite, in fact. An angry-looking man threw open the bottom sash window in the middle of the bay, and demanded. ‘What’s the meanin’ of this?’
And Gherkin took the opportunity to throw the stick into the house, fuse burning. Eddie, meanwhile, threw himself to the pavement, waiting for the bang …
… that never came. The room, however, began to fill with smoke. It billowed from the window in great clouds. The front door flew open and the angry man, the bandaged Doctor Moot and Harry Scarple ran down the stairs. Before the first man’s foot touched the garden path, Gherkin had jumped up, caught the windowsill and back-flipped up and in through the open window.
To say that Eddie’s head was in a spin would be like saying that an ostrich is slightly larger than the average chicken. He didn’t know who to trust or what to think, so he decided the best thing to do was to hide. He dived into a bush in the garden next door, just before the three men dashed out onto the pavement; which was when he got his next surprise.
‘Sssssh!’ said a voice, with great authority.
Eddie turned in amazement to find that Detective Chief Inspector Bunyon had claimed the hiding place before him. (Weren’t you wondering if he might turn up? I certainly was.)
Eddie ssssh-ed.
‘Who threw the bomb, did you see?’ spluttered Scarple.
‘Na,’ said the angry man. ‘There was a saucer-eyed kid out ’ere shoutin’, but ’e didn’t throw nuffink.’ He coughed a bit.
‘That’ll be Eddie – young Edmund Dickens,’ said the chimney-sweep.
Dubious Deeds Page 28
