Five Seconds to Doomsday

by Simon Cheshire

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s proof that I was right. Remember, I said that whoever-it-was hadn’t found what they were looking for? Well, this proves it. They had to come back. It was break, there were people about, they might only have had a few seconds alone. So they had no time to search again, instead they took it all away.’

  ‘But why?’ gasped Mrs McEwan.

  ‘Well, to search through it somewhere else,’ I said. ‘Somewhere out of sight.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ grumbled Mrs McEwan. ‘They’ve run off with all my work.’

  ‘If I were you,’ I said, ‘I’d have a discreet look around in cupboards and under chairs. This whoever-it-is will want to search that paperwork, take whatever-it-is they want and then get rid of the rest of it. Fast. There’s too much of it to just put in a waste-paper basket, and I doubt they’d want to risk taking it all out to the big recycling bin because they’d probably be seen. My guess is they’ll dump it all somewhere.’

  Mrs McEwan snorted unhappily as she whipped a lipstick out of her handbag and re-smeared her lips.

  ‘In the meantime,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to get back to class again.’

  I couldn’t concentrate during maths. Well, to be honest, my concentration during maths is usually pretty feeble, but today I really definitely couldn’t concentrate.

  I looked again at the last entries in my notebook (from the end of Chapter Three). This latest development took two people off my list of suspects. Two of the people I’d mentioned in those notes definitely didn’t do that breaktime raid on the office.

  Can you name them?

  The first one I could eliminate was Mr Gray. I’d seen him sitting in the staff room all the way through break. So he’d had no opportunity to go to the office.

  The second person was Sinead. I was with her for the first part of break. She could have raided the office afterwards, but she’d have to have been very quick about it. In any case, if she was after that crumpled-up permission letter, she knew I had it with me. There’d be no point in her raiding the office!

  Once again, the Bug Man was left unaccounted for. Where had he been during break? Was that stuff about a lost beetle just a smokescreen? But . . . did he deserve to be on my suspect list in the first place? I still couldn’t see what motive he could have. I still couldn’t make a connection between him and the office paperwork, or with the school in general.

  Ideas and theories swirled around my brain, taking up the space where maths should have been. Luckily, Mrs Penzler didn’t ask me anything, otherwise I’d probably have just blurble-blurbled some rubbish or other.

  The moment lunchtime began, I hurried back to the office. To my delight – and amazement – the stolen heap of paperwork was back on Mrs McEwan’s desk.

  ‘You found it!’ I exclaimed.

  Mrs McEwan nodded. ‘You were right. It was all sitting in one of the cubicles in the ladies’ toilets. Just over there, next to the main hall.’

  The ladies’ toilets? Did that mean I could eliminate any male suspects from my list? Was the Bug Man now in the clear? Was Paul Pollard’s dad out of the picture?

  ‘And guess what I found sitting on top of the pile?’ said Mrs McEwan.

  ‘What?’

  She held up an unopened box of elastic bands and a pair of pencils.

  ‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘They put back the things they took. Did they have a sudden attack of guilt?’

  I gazed grimly at the heap of paperwork. ‘Er, y’know,’ I said, ‘the next thing to do is to see if anything’s been taken from amongst this pile.’

  ‘I thought you did that earlier?’ said Mrs McEwan.

  ‘I did, but it’s all been taken and brought back since then, hasn’t it? I’m going to have to check the whole lot a second time.’

  I groaned. Loudly.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  ONCE MY SECOND CROSS-CHECK OF the entire office was complete, I sat back on the swivel chair. I swivelled a little.

  ‘Well?’ said Mrs McEwan. ‘Nothing was missing last time. What’s gone from the pile now that the culprit has had a chance to search it again?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Once again, nothing at all.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ cried Mrs McEwan. ‘They took all this stuff away. Their first search had to be at lightning speed, but this time they could have been as slow and careful as they liked. And they still took nothing? This puts us back to square one, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, grinning. ‘This is exactly the result I was hoping for. If they’ve taken nothing from the office paperwork second time around, it’s a big help to my investigation. It confirms something.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Mrs McEwan, screwing up her nose. ‘How?’

  This case was rapidly being narrowed down! One aspect of the mystery could now be clarified!

  Have you worked it out?

  ‘This confirms something very important,’ I said. ‘If they took nothing this second time, it means that, once again, they didn’t find what they were looking for.’

  ‘Yes, so?’ said Mrs McEwan.

  ‘So why would that be? Because what they were looking for wasn’t there. And the only pieces of the office paperwork which weren’t there were these three letters that I took away with me at break. It must be one of those letters they’re after!’

  Mrs McEwan nodded, her eyes shut in a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that expression. ‘Yes, this clears up the whole problem of what it is they wanted in the first place. Up to now, we’ve been guessing.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I only picked out these letters because they were the only ones with anything unusual about them. They might have been totally unconnected to all this. But now, I can say for sure that one of them is the vital clue.’

  My re-sorting of the paperwork had turned the one big heap into a series of much smaller heaps. As I spoke, Mrs McEwan started re-re-sorting everything, to put things back into line with her new, personal system of tidiness and efficiency.

  ‘Let’s see . . .’ she muttered to herself, ‘I need the figures on . . . yes, that can go there, and these need to be put in here . . . [shuffle, shuffle] Now, where’s the last SATS report . . . [shuffle] must be here . . . [shuffle] somewhere . . . [shuffle] . . . Wait! It’s gone! Saxby, the SATS report’s gone! They’ve taken it! That’s what they were after! It’s totally gone! What are we —’

  She suddenly halted in mid-panic. ‘Oh. It’s right here in front of me. Sorry. What am I like? Right under my nose all the time! This is why I need my new system of tidiness and efficiency.’

  Mrs McEwan’s panic had distracted me. I was suddenly reminded of a famous detective story I’d read at home, The Purloined Letter by a guy called Edgar Allan Poe. In the story nobody can find a stolen letter because they’re searching in all the sneaky hidden places, when all the time it’s sitting right in front of —

  Wait a minute.

  A thought snapped into my head: I wonder if that was why —

  ‘Arggghh!’

  A howling cry came from outside the office. Mrs McEwan and I raced out into the corridor.

  We were just in time to see the door of the men’s toilets slam back on its hinges. Mr Gray leaped out, his face distorted with more emotions than I could count. His trousers were flapping around his knees and he was clutching his backside as he half-hopped, half-ran towards the car park exit.

  ‘ARGH! ARGH! Something’s bitten me! Oh my God! Argh! Do something, you idiots! As if I haven’t got enough bottom trouble today! Oh oww! Owwwwwww!’

  The noise quickly brought people scurrying out of the main hall and elsewhere. Everyone over the age of about twelve looked shocked and concerned. Everyone under the age of about twelve burst out laughing.

  The Bug Man appeared, scooting after Mr Gray with a plastic box in his outstretched hands. ‘Oi! Don’t hurt it! That’s a Red-Backed Pinching Beetle of Western Sumatra, it’s very rare! Oi!’

  The Head bustled out of the main hall and sc
ooted after the pair of them. ‘Nothing to see, everyone!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Carry on as normal!’

  While everyone else was either giggling loudly or else whispering that society must be in an even worse state than they’d previously feared, I wandered back into the office. My thoughts were crashing into each other like particles in a giant collider.

  I took the three letters out of my pocket. I re-examined them: two permission letters – one for a visit to Pizza Panik, one for a theatre trip – and a letter of complaint about school dinners. One or other of them was the key to this mystery.

  If the Bug Man had spent half the day looking for that missing beetle, could I remove him from the suspect list too? What did that leave me with? How did this connect to one of the letters? Was there one small piece of the jigsaw still missing?

  I turned those letters over and over in my hands. What was I missing? Was the solution staring me in the face?

  ‘Saxby?’

  ‘Huh?’ I said, jolted away from my reeling thoughts for a moment.

  ‘I said, do you know the date?’ said Mrs McEwan. She was back at her desk, filling out an ‘Injuries on School Premises’ report sheet.

  Was it the seventeenth? I wasn’t sure, and without Mrs McEwan switching the computer on, there wasn’t an immediate way to check. I looked at the three letters I was holding. The one on top was the one about the theatre trip.

  ‘When did this one go out?’ I said. ‘It’s dated the fourth.’

  ‘Er . . . the Wednesday before half-term, so that’s twelve days ago.’

  ‘Ah! So it’s the sixteenth today,’ I declared.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mrs McEwan. ‘Hmm,’ she muttered to herself. ‘What do I put for “Location of Injury”?’

  ‘Toilets?’ I suggested.

  At that moment, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. ‘That’s it!’ I cried. ‘I’ve got the key to the whole problem!’

  ‘What, “toilets”?’ asked Mrs McEwan.

  ‘No,’ I cried. ‘The date!’

  There was one little detail that didn’t match up. One little detail that showed me which of the three letters was the important one, and what today’s strange events had all been about.

  It was a question of dates and the order in which things had happened. I thought back to those three conversations I’d had at break. Have you spotted the mismatch?

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  AT THE END OF THE school day, five people were gathered together in the school office: me, Mrs McEwan, Mrs Penzler, Katie Brewer and Katie’s mum.

  ‘What’s this about?’ said Mrs Brewer. ‘Will this take long? I’ve got shopping to do.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll only take a minute,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to check something.’ I pulled out Katie’s permission letter, the one about the theatre trip, the one with the name Ellie Brewer written half a dozen times on the back. I held it up. ‘Is this what you’ve been looking for all day?’

  Mrs Brewer smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Are you sure of your facts, Saxby?’ warned Mrs Penzler, eyeing me sternly. ‘Mrs Brewer was in the PTA meeting until shortly after lunchtime.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘And yes, I’m sure. Well, er, pretty sure. I’ll set out the chain of events and then you’ll see what I’m talking about.’

  All of them eyed me sternly now. Nervous ripples shuddered icily down the back of my neck. I was worried that what I had to say would sound ruthless and accusing and that at the very least it would upset Katie Brewer. But the truth is the truth.

  ‘OK,’ I began, my voice wobbling only slightly. ‘Early this morning, Mrs Brewer arrives at school. She intends to go to the office and ask for this permission letter back. What excuse she’s going to use, I don’t know. But she needs this letter back at all costs.

  ‘She gets to the office. By chance, it’s empty. Mrs McEwan is busy with preparations for the PTA meeting. Mrs Brewer realises that, if she’s quick, she can retrieve the letter herself. She won’t even have to ask for it, which might have been awkward and suspicious in any case.

  ‘She starts to search through the office. Mrs McEwan is now using her personal system of tidiness and efficiency. The Head can’t follow the logic of this system, and neither, it turns out, can Mrs Brewer. The letter is here, right under her nose, but just like the characters in The Purloined Letter she can’t see it for looking, if you see what I mean.

  ‘Her search becomes frantic. Paper gets scattered everywhere. That letter has got to be here somewhere! But the seconds are ticking away, someone could walk past at any moment. As a last resort, Mrs Brewer breaks open the cash box on the desk, in case for some reason the letter is inside. It isn’t.

  ‘But the breaking of the box has been overheard. The Head calls out. Mrs Brewer realises she’s on the point of being caught. She’s got to get out of here. But look at this mess! In her panic, she thinks that the only thing to do is make this look like a break-in. So, flustered and not thinking straight, she simply grabs the first things she sees – a box of elastic bands and two pencils – and legs it.

  ‘Calming down slightly, she realises that she’s now going to need an alibi. Messing up the office and faking a robbery was a mistake, a moment’s madness, because now questions are going to be asked. So she keeps out of sight for a few minutes. A couple of other parents arrive for the PTA. She follows along behind them and comes back to the office making it look like she’s just this minute arrived at school. Oh no, shocking, look what’s happened to the office!

  ‘She goes into the hall over there, trying to decide what to do next. Can she go and ask for the letter back now? Not without looking highly suspicious. She’s going to have to think of something else.

  ‘A few minutes later, I turn up. I start asking questions about where people were at the time of the so-called robbery. Mrs Brewer realises that she’s going to have to act fast, if she’s going to get to the letter before I do.

  ‘She heads back to the office at break. There’s no time to search through the paperwork again, especially now it’s sitting in one big heap on Mrs McEwan’s desk. So, quick as she can, while everyone else from the PTA is down in the staff room, she carries the paperwork over to the ladies’ loos. Out of sight, she searches through the paperwork again. But still she can’t find that letter. What she doesn’t realise is that I’ve already got it with me. She abandons the paperwork in the toilets. She also leaves the box of elastic bands and the two pencils. After all, she doesn’t usually go around pocketing things, even if it’s nothing more than elastic bands and pencils.

  ‘By now, she sees that there are only two possibilities: either she was mistaken, and the letter was never in the office, or else I’ve got it. Either way, she’s going to have to think carefully about what to do next. However, I’ve been too quick for her. I’ve worked out what happened, and here we are.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Katie. ‘Why on earth would anyone be so desperate to get the letter back? It’s only a simple school permission thing about a theatre trip.’

  ‘It’s not the letter,’ I said. ‘It’s what’s on the back of it. The signature of your great aunt, Ellie Brewer, written half a dozen times.’

  Katie laughed. ‘I told you, Aunt Ellie kept signing all sorts of funny things.’

  ‘And perhaps that’s what gave your mother the idea in the first place,’ I said. ‘Seeing that signature on various odds and ends.’

  ‘Idea?’ said Katie. ‘Idea for what?’

  ‘Ah, well,’ I said, ‘that’s the one thing I don’t know. I can’t be sure why that signature is here on the back of this letter. But I do know one thing about it.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of all this,’ announced Mrs Brewer. ‘Come on, Katie, we’ve got things to do. Sorry to waste your time, Mrs Penzler, Mrs McEwan.’

  ‘Wait a moment, Mum!’ cried Katie. She turned back to me. ‘Saxby, what’s this “one thing” you know?’
>
  ‘I know that Ellie Brewer’s signature on this letter is a forgery,’ I said. ‘Someone’s been practising that signature. Probably, the forger didn’t realise at first what they were writing on the back of.’

  ‘A forged signature?’ said Mrs Penzler. ‘That’s a very serious allegation, Saxby. How can you be sure?’

  ‘It’s a matter of dates,’ I said. ‘Katie told me earlier today that her great aunt died exactly two weeks ago. But this letter wasn’t even printed out until the following Wednesday. Aunt Ellie can’t possibly have signed it herself.

  ‘Katie, you also told me that your mum had been in a funny mood all last week, during half-term. You put it down to her being upset about Aunt Ellie. But it may be that she’d been trying to make sure that she got rid of any stray piece of paper she’d practised Ellie Brewer’s signature on. It may be that she realised she’d written on the back of a school letter by mistake and that you’d brought that letter back here to the office. It may be that she was frantic to get the letter back. She had a PTA meeting here today, so she decided to retrieve the letter as soon as she got here.’

  ‘But why would she want to fake that signature in the first place?’ said Mrs McEwan.

  ‘That’s the part I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can only guess that Ellie Brewer died before signing some important document or other. But exactly what, I have no idea. The point is, this letter is proof that someone has been trying to fake Ellie Brewer’s signature, for whatever reason.’

  For the first time, I looked over at Mrs Brewer. She seemed oddly rigid and determined, like a last toffee that’s stuck to the bottom of the tin, determined not to budge even though it knows it’s going to get eaten.

  ‘Well, you’re quite a detective, Saxby, I’ll give you that,’ she said quietly, eyeing me.

  There was silence for a moment. And then, as if the silence had suddenly punctured her confidence, Mrs Brewer dropped her gaze to the floor. She sniffed sharply. ‘But as you say, you have proof. I don’t suppose there’s any point in denying it.’