Dubious Deeds

by Philip Ardagh

  ‘You don’t think he –?’

  ‘He don’t know nothing, Moot, calm down … and that weren’t no bomb, Thunk.’

  Thunk? thought Eddie. Who’s Thunk? Has a fourth man come out of the house?

  ‘Then what was it ’arry? ’Cos I’d say old Moot’s ’ouse ’as gone up in smoke!’ said Scarple.

  Just a minute, thought Eddie. I thought Scarple’s name was Harry, and why is this other Harry calling him Thunk?

  ‘It’s an hincendiary device, that’s what that is,’ said Harry, the angry man.

  ‘An hincendiary device?’

  ‘An incendiary device,’ said Doctor Moot. ‘Something which starts fires.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly done that,’ said Scarple.

  ‘’Ere, ’old on! I ain’t so sure, Thunk. ’Ave you actually seen any flames?’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen plenty of smoke, ’arry, and there’s ain’t no smoke without fire!’

  ‘Harry’s right!’ gasped Moot. ‘We’ve been tricked! Come on!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Back inside, of course!’

  ‘Are you mad, Moot? You’re supposed to run outa burnin’ buildin’s. Not into ’em!’

  There was a sound of footsteps as the three men ran back up the black-and-white tiled garden path.

  ‘Stay put,’ Detective Chief Inspector Bunyon whispered in Eddie’s ear. Eddie repositioned himself so that a particularly spiky branch stopped jabbing him so painfully in the ribs but, apart from that, stayed right where he was. So did the policeman. Even from his cramped position, Eddie could tell that the detective chief inspector had gained an impressive amount of weight since he’d last seen him, but was still nowhere as large as he’d been during their first encounter. Still, it was fortunate that it was such a large bush.

  They sat in silence for a while. No one appeared to come in or out again but, through the leaves, Eddie could see Harry Scarple opening some of the ground floor windows to let the smoke escape.

  Eventually, Bunyon spoke. ‘Time we made our exit,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’ He crawled out of the bush on his hands and knees, and – still in this position, crawled out through the gate of Dr Moot’s neighbour, and onto the pavement. Eddie did the same. A revolver fell from the detective’s pocket.

  Without a word, he picked it up and slipped it back inside his checked jacket. ‘This way,’ he said. They crawled along the pavement, further from the medical practice. When Bunyon deemed that they were a safe enough distance, he stood up, dusting down his trousers. Eddie removed a twig from his hair. A passing group of philosophers eyed them suspiciously.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ they said as one.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said the detective chief inspector. He led Eddie to the corner of Wisteria Road where a covered carriage was waiting. ‘Get in,’ he said.

  No sooner had Eddie shut the door than the horse trotted off. He – Eddie, not the horse (which was a she called Moonlight, anyway) – had a whole host of questions to ask the policeman.

  Bunyon obviously guessed as much, and put up his hand for silence. ‘I don’t know what you thought you saw back there, Master Dickens, but one thing you can be sure of is that nothing is what it seems.’

  ‘What I do know I saw was a dwarf calling himself Gherkin, dressed as a child, throw what looked like a stick of dynamite – which he got from a building a stone’s throw from your own police station, sir – but which may have been some kind of smoke bomb, and –’

  ‘It was a modified plumber’s mate,’ said Bunyon, as the carriage went over a bump.

  Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that a plumber’s mate was someone who held the plumber’s bag of plumbery tools for him, or went for a drink with him after a hard day of strangling pipes, but you’d be wrong. What Bunyon was refering to was a plumber’s smoke rocket. Those of you familiar with Victorian plumbing methods and readers of the first Sherlock Holmes short story, A Scandal in Bohemia, will know that a plumber’s smoke rocket was a kind of smoke bomb fired up pipes to reveal holes (the smoke coming out of them). In the aforementioned story, Sherlock Holmes sets one off to trick a woman into thinking her house is on fire so that she’ll rescue an important photograph, thus revealing its hidden whereabouts.

  ‘They make very effective smoke bombs,’ said the detective.

  ‘But why?’ asked Eddie. ‘And –’ He stopped. The detective had obviously positioned himself in the bush before Gherkin had arrived. He knew exactly what Gherkin had thrown through the window. He’d been expecting him. ‘How did you know this was going to happen?’

  ‘How did I know this was going to happen?’ asked Bunyon.

  ‘How did you know this was going to happen?’ repeated Eddie.

  ‘A good policeman has plenty of underworld informants,’ said Bunyon, ‘People who’ll sell their own mothers for the price of a drink.’

  Eddie thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think any underworld informant told you about Gherkin. I think he’s working for you!’

  Detective Chief Inspector Bunyon glared at Eddie. ‘Think he’s working for me? We do have height requirements in the police force, Master Dickens, and I can assure you that your Mr Gherkin wouldn’t reach them.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not exactly a policeman,’ Eddie suggested, ‘simply someone you can use when you need an acrobat who can get through small spaces.’

  The chief inspector smiled. ‘An acrobat who can get through small spaces …’

  ‘I really think you owe it to me to tell me, sir. I’ve already been in a fight with Mr Scarple, or Thunk, or whatever his name is … I’ve been fired on in a summerhouse, with cabbages. I’ve been kicked and jumped on by Mr Peevance –’

  Eddie was interrupted by a cry of, ‘There he is, sir,’ by the driver, and the cab slowed to a halt.

  The door opened and Gherkin scrambled in. He looked at Eddie. ‘I thought that was you outside the house. You could have ruined everything. What were you –?’

  ‘He followed you,’ said Bunyon.

  ‘He can’t have!’

  ‘I did,’ said Eddie.

  The dwarf didn’t know whether to be annoyed, or embarrassed or impressed, so he was all three.

  ‘Dr Moot, Harry Scarple and that other man called Harry all have something to do with Mr Pryden’s stolen painting, don’t they?’ said Eddie.

  The detective chief inspector looked at Gherkin. Gherkin looked at the detective chief inspector. They both turned to Eddie. ‘What stolen painting?’ they asked.

  Episode 15

  The Final Act

  In which the curtain rises and the plot is revealed

  That had been Friday. It was now Monday evening and, after over a month of preparation and rehearsal, Mr Dickens’s play was ready for its opening-night performance. After much deliberation, and a last-minute change of mind, he had entitled it That’s My Boy. Dawkins had been sent to the local printer to give him the change of title. Unfortunately, Eddie’s father hadn’t written it down, and Dawkins delivered the message verbally. Unfortunate because, after years of working amongst the clatter of printing presses, Mr Sodkin was a little hard of hearing. The posters and programme came back with the title That’s Mabel, and there was nothing much anyone could do about it.

  Mr Pumblesnook had suggested that they might make a few last-minute changes to the script, making one of the orphans Mabel, but Eddie’s father had argued that this would simply confuse matters, giving the character undue importance. Fabian had come up with the idea that they could write a whole new scene at the beginning in which Eddie’s parents – played by Mr and Mrs Pumblesnook – decide that if they have a girl they’ll call her Mabel, and if it’s a boy they’ll call him Edmund. ‘But when Eddie’s born they still mistakenly call him Mabel once in a while.’ Laudanum Dickens hadn’t been keen on that idea either. In the end, they left the play unaltered and had Mad Uncle Jack’s Ex-Privates Dabble, No-Sir, Babcock and Glee cross out the word ‘Mabel’on the programmes and replace it w
ith ‘My Boy’.

  The stage itself, however, was most impressive, in the beautiful setting of the lower lawn with the lake beyond.

  As Mr Dickens had promised his nephew, Fabian, the audience was made up of family members, both immediate and distant, and friends, including those members of the Thackery family not in prison. What Eddie knew and most others did not was that there were plain-clothed policemen in both the audience and ‘mingling’ backstage. They were plain clothed in that they were uniformed policemen out of uniform, not from a special division, and Eddie’s fear had been that they might have stuck out like sore thumbs. He was impressed, however, by how well they blended in with the other misfits around them.

  Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud sat in the front row. Dawkins sat next to EMAM with Annabelle on his lap. He just knew that she was going to bite him. It was only a matter of when. Even Madder Aunt Maud looked incomplete. It’s the only way to describe it; rather like encountering someone you’ve only ever known with a beard after they’ve shaved it off. She was without Malcolm. She was Malcolmless. She hadn’t seen him since Friday, when she’d been out walking with MUJ before Peevance had started firing those cabbages. She felt heartbroken. Guilty. Forlorn. How could she have put a baby crocodile – anyone or anything – above her beloved Malcolm? Now she was paying the price. She picked up her programme (which had somehow remained uncorrected). ‘That’s Mabel: Being The Dramatic Early Years Of My Only Son Edmund,’ she read. ‘Excellent title!’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ snorted Mad Uncle Jack.

  Backstage, Eddie was jiggling from one foot to the other. Mr Pumblesnook gave him such a hearty slap on the back that Eddie could have sworn his teeth rattled.

  ‘Nervous, me boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Very,’ said Eddie. What he didn’t say was that, quite apart from the play, he was nervous about what Dr Moot and others had in store, and what the detective chief inspector had in store for them.

  ‘Stagefright is what fuels some of the great actors of our generation,’ Mr Pumblesnook tried to reassure him. ‘Frockle swears that his performances would be a mere shadow of what they are without the benefit of stagefright.’

  Eddie wondered whether the actor-manager had made up Frockle on the spot. Frockle certainly sounded like a made-up name.

  ‘Five minutes to curtain, Mr Pumblesnook,’ said a boy a year or two younger than Eddie. A former inmate of St Horrid’s, he’d only just been promoted to assistant stage manager since the boy who’d been supposed to be doing the job had disappeared.

  ‘Thank you, Fishy!’ said Mr Pumblesnook, the boy’s name being Turbot. ‘Nothing beats the excitement of a first night,’ he said with the same enthusiasm that he’d said that nothing beat the excitement of the first read-through of a new play, or the first dress rehearsal, or a hundred-and-one other things theatrical.

  ‘Don’t forget the announcement,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Your father’s speech? How could I?’

  ‘I mean the announcement of the reward for anyone who finds Malcolm. Mad Aunt Maud insisted that it be done before the curtain goes up, and by you. She’s a great admirer of your performing skills, as you know.’

  ‘She first saw me as Pompom in All About Alex if memory serves,’ said the actor-manager, warming to EMAM once again now that rehearsals were over. ‘She came up to me afterwards and presented me with a pair of opera glasses she’d stolen from the seat in front of her. Most generous.’ He meant it.

  ‘Positions, please!’ said Fishy Turbot. The curtain was ready to rise.

  Mr Pumblesnook walked onto the stage amid cheers from those he’d ordered to cheer, and ripples of polite applause from the others.

  His speech was incredibly long and remarkably boring so let me give you the edited highlights, which are quite enough, I promise you.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Firstly, let me welcome you to the beautiful grounds of Awful End, as the guest of … blah, blah, blah … Secondly, let me introduce myself … blah, blah, blah … Tonight is a very special night. It’s special, because the play you are about to see was written by Mr Laudanum Dickens about his own son, Edmund. And, if that weren’t enough, not only will Edmund be playing the part of himself, but also, other members of the cast shall also be reliving events in which they too participated … blah, blah, blah … and so to one correction, and one announcement. The first concerns the title of the play as it is printed upon the programmes you have before you … blah, blah, blah … The second concerns a missing stuffed stoat –’

  ‘My Malcolm!’ shouted EMAM, leaping to her feet. ‘There’s a substantial reward –’

  ‘– and no questions will be asked of the one returning it,’ said Mr Pumblesnook, attempting to seize back control of the moment.

  ‘Him,’ said EMAM.

  ‘Him,’ said the actor-manager, finally winding up his speech, with an all-that-it-remains-for-me-to-do section that lasted another eight-and-a-half minutes. Then it was curtains up.

  *

  Bunyon and Gherkin may not have known about the theft of A. C. Pryden’s portrait of MUJ, but they certainly knew plenty about Harry ‘Thunk’ Scarple, Harry ‘The Fingers’ Morton and Doctor Samuel ‘Moo-Cow’ Moot.

  ‘Scarple’s called Thunk for two reasons,’ Bunyon had told Eddie in the back of the carriage. ‘First off, he got the nickname from falling down chimneys so often. It’s the sound he makes when he hits the hearth. Secondly, as far as Harry Morton is concerned, he wants to be the only Harry in their little gang, and what he says goes.’

  ‘What about the doctor?’ Eddie had asked.

  ‘No criminal record. We thought at first that Scarple and Morton might have been blackmailing him, then Gherkin discovered that it was revenge.’

  ‘He’s going to help them strip Awful End of all its finery,’ the dwarf had explained.

  ‘But revenge for what?’ Eddie had said. ‘He was the one who shot Mad Uncle Jack twice –’

  ‘But on the one occasion,’ Bunyon and Gherkin had said, together.

  ‘Don’t forget that your great-uncle won the ultimate prize, though, Master Edmund.’

  ‘Even Madder Aunt Maud?’

  ‘Even Madder Aunt Maud.’

  Eddie found it hard to imagine his great-aunt as a prize. ‘But, surely, if Dr Moot is as in love with Mad Aunt Maud as he claims to be, he wouldn’t want to upset her by robbing her home?’

  ‘Years of jealousy can do terrible things to a person,’ said Gherkin. ‘Dr Moot stopped seeing things straight long before your Aunt Hester hit him over the head with the end of the steakbeater. He has grown so jealous of Mad Major Dickens that it was easy for Thunk and Morton to get him to be their “inside man” on the job.’

  Eddie had frowned at this. ‘But if my Uncle Alfie hadn’t been so ill, we’d never have called Dr Moot to Awful End.’

  ‘It didn’t matter. If Moot hadn’t had the good fortune of being asked to attend your poor uncle, he’d have simply turned up on your front doorstep one day. He would have claimed it was a courtesy call: an old acquaintance taking over the medical practice and that. Once he had his foot in the door, he’d be able to return.’

  The carriage had pulled up beside what turned out to be the other end of the alley that Eddie had followed Gherkin down. The three of them had stepped out, and Eddie had followed them through the door (almost) marked ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY’ (which was opened from the inside after Bunyon knocked on it with a series of rat-a-tat-tats). He found himself in the back of the police station.

  ‘Saves me being seen walking through the front entrance,’ Gherkin had explained. ‘I don’t want everyone knowing my business now, do I?’

  This had led Eddie to ask the question he’d been dying to ask: why Gherkin had thrown the makeshift smoke bomb through the window. He’d guessed that it was to get them out of the house, but why exactly?

  ‘We’ve had our eye on those three for a while,’ the detective inspector – sorry, the detective chief inspector – had said,
leading them into his office. ‘It soon became obvious that their latest target was your home, but we want to catch them red-handed, so they can’t deny it –’

  ‘Which is why we did nothing to stop them getting that poor deranged Mr Peevance out of debtors’ prison,’ Gherkin had added.

  ‘Precisely. But then Larkin disappeared.’

  ‘Larkin?’

  ‘Larkin. Larry Larkin. A member of Mr Pumblesnook’s group of wandering theatricals.’

  ‘Oh, I know who you mean,’ Eddie had nodded. ‘He’s – he was – the assistant stage manager. I remember Mrs Pumblesnook saying that he’d gone missing. She didn’t seem too concerned. She said he’d wandered off for a few days once before.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ Gherkin had said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Bunyon had added, ‘but we wanted to make sure that the boy hadn’t overheard something he shouldn’t, and been kidnapped by the gang. Morton, Scarple and Moot aren’t murderers, but they may not be averse to locking some poor child up in a back room, so we had to be sure.’ The detective chief inspector had personal experience of being locked in a trunk (against his will, obviously).

  ‘But you couldn’t send a bunch of peelers bursting in on them, because they’d know the game is up … so you did the smoke trick?’

  ‘And in I went, only to find absolutely nothing. Which means they’re either holding Larkin elsewhere, or he really has just wandered off for a few days.’

  This had been a lot of information for Eddie to take in, but it all seemed to make a certain kind of sense. ‘But won’t the smoke trick make them suspicious that something’s going on?’ he’d asked, just as the detective inspector had gone to sit on a large pile of books, which began to topple. The policeman grabbed the nearest thing, which was a bust of Queen Victoria, and both he and Her Majesty would have hit the floorboards if the acrobatic dwarf hadn’t sprung to their rescue.

  ‘A point well made, Master Edmund,’ Bunyon had continued, completely unruffled as though nothing had happened. ‘Which is why we had the foresight to attach a note to the plumber’s mate.’