Dead Funny

by Tanya Landman

  He laughed cruelly. “Like I said, she was gullible. She’d outlived her usefulness. And I think I can manage to find someone more attractive than Sylvia, don’t you? A model. An actress. An heiress, maybe. Especially now I’ve got millions of dollars to my name.”

  “But how did you get into the grounds?” I asked. “The place was crawling with police.”

  “Sweetie, I was raised there. I know every tree, every rock, every hiding place. It’s easy to avoid attention if you know where you’re going.” He finished securing me to the chair and stood up. “That’s enough shooting the breeze. It’s been real nice talking to you, Poppy, but now I’ve got to get going. So long.” He smiled his rich, warm smile and turned towards the door.

  “Are you just going to leave me here?” I yelled.

  “Well, yes. I have to go and comfort your geeky friend and your poor mother for the tragic loss of her daughter.”

  “You leave Mum and Graham alone!”

  “No can do, Poppy. Sorry. You know, I have something special planned for you. The finale to the whole show. It’s a perfect ending, believe me.”

  My brain was working frantically, wondering what Toby meant. What did he have in mind? How was he going to finish me off? What was the last scene of the Punch and Judy show?

  Before I could ask him anything, he was gone. Stepping over the corpse of Len Radstock, he walked up the narrow hallway. The front door slammed. There was silence. And I was left in an empty flat with a dead Punch and Judy man.

  Panic rose in my chest like a great bubble, swelling into my throat and threatening to choke me. I had to get out of there!

  I began to wriggle in the chair. I’d dimly remembered that old circus escapologist’s trick and tensed my muscles when Toby tied me up. I relaxed and could feel the ropes slacken a little. But only a little. I sighed. Circus escapologists were big, brawny men with massive biceps. I didn’t have enough muscles to give me the slack I needed.

  Perhaps I could reach the door. If I leant forward I could edge the chair across the room. My ankles were tied to its legs, but if I wobbled from side to side I could probably make slow progress. Quite how I’d open the door when I got there I didn’t know. I’d work that out later. But first there was the obstacle of Len Radstock’s body blocking my way. How would I get across him?

  I looked at his lifeless form, and a wave of pity and despair washed over me. I began to cry. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have got here sooner.”

  “Not at all, my dear,” a voice replied in a crisp English accent. “I would have said your entrance was perfectly timed.”

  Jaw dropping, I stared at the body. An open eye stared back at me. For a moment I couldn’t decide which was worse: sharing a room with a corpse, or sharing it with a member of the living dead.

  But then Len Radstock prised himself off the carpet, and I realized he wasn’t a zombie. He was alive, unharmed and untying the knots that bound me.

  “But…” I croaked. “How…?”

  “We’ll do explanations another time, shall we? I think first we’d better both get out of here, before the final curtain falls.”

  “But you’re bleeding…”

  “Ketchup,” he said briefly. “I was eating a hot dog when Toby walloped me. I lay still, hoping he’d think I was a goner. Then you turned up and he didn’t think to check whether I was still breathing.”

  When the last knot was untied we both ran for the door. As we reached it an image came into my head. Mr Punch. The devil. A big fight. Punch winning – sending Satan back to hell in a puff of smoke.

  It all flashed through my head a split second before a mobile phone rang, and the room was ripped apart by a violent explosion.

  the flames of hell

  The blood was real this time, and Len’s eyes wouldn’t open no matter how loudly I yelled at him. We’d been thrown through the front door and across the hall by the force of the blast. Len had smashed his head on the metal lift doors and slid down, smearing a scarlet stain all the way to the floor. I’d been behind him, and he’d cushioned my fall, although my back had taken more of the blast. I could feel lacerations across it and on my legs. I knew I was injured, but at least I was conscious. It was up to me to get us both out.

  The apartment behind us was ablaze and already flames were licking out of the front door and edging towards us.

  I tried again. “Len! Mr Radstock! Can you hear me?” I screamed. “Wake up!”

  He gave a faint groan, but that was all. I’d have to drag him.

  I knew better than to use the lift. Graham had once told me that lifts stopped working in fires, and we’d be trapped inside like chickens in an oven. If we were going to escape it had to be by the stairs.

  I took an arm and tugged, but he was so heavy; so awkwardly floppy. I couldn’t shift him. Flames had reached the soles of his shoes and for a moment I was tempted to leave him – to run away and save my own skin. But if I left him to die, I’d be no better than Toby.

  I bent down and tried again. Sliding my hands under his armpits I laced my fingers together across his chest and heaved. He moved. Just a fraction, but enough to give me hope. I tugged again and dragged him towards the stairs. Pulling for the third time, I tripped over something and fell backwards. Pain tore through me but I got up and yanked him away from the flames.

  We were fifteen floors up. We’d never get down the stairs at this rate. The building would crumble before we were even halfway!

  Then I noticed what I’d tripped over. The door to the flat. It had been blown off its hinges. If I could get Len onto that it might be easier to move him.

  I rolled the Punch and Judy man onto the smooth wood. Then I shoved it to the top of the stairs. The flames were roaring now, eating into the roof behind me. Timbers were crashing down, and I didn’t have time to think. I gave a hard shove and gravity took over. The door – with the insensible Len Radstock lying, singed and bloody, on top of it – took off down the stairs like a bobsleigh.

  Turning the corner was the difficult bit. When the door reached the end of the first flight of stairs it hit the wall with a sickening thud and Len crumpled like a concertina. I leapt down after him, thanking my lucky stars that I’d put him on the door feet first because otherwise it would have been his head that had hit the wall. Heaving the door around the corner I launched him once again, and waited for him to hit the wall below. Hoping desperately that the violent bumping and crunching wasn’t going to kill him, I sped down.

  We’d done three bone-shaking, exhausting flights of stairs when other tenants started appearing, fleeing for their lives with their most precious possessions clasped in their arms. I was so glad to see other living, breathing people that I could have wept. And when two of them dropped what they were carrying and picked Len up as if he was on a stretcher, tears of gratitude flowed down my sooty face. As we ran down the stairs there came the miraculous sound of sirens. Flashing blue lights bounced off the walls, and several burly firemen appeared through the smoke. Hoisting him over a shoulder, one took Len to safety. And then there was Graham – running into a burning building to find me – shouting, “I told the police! I saw Toby coming out and I phoned them. Are you OK?”

  I managed to give Graham a reassuring smile as, just before I fell into unconsciousness, I was hoisted off the ground and carried from 1171 Orangeblossom Boulevard in the arms of the biggest fireman I’d ever seen.

  toby’s grand plan

  The first thing I thought when I came round was “Ouch!” closely followed by, “Where’s Graham?” and “Where’s Len?” and then, frantically, “Where’s Toby?”

  I was on a bed, and my back was screaming with pain. I knew from the antiseptic smell and the faint beeping of medical machinery that I was in a hospital. When I opened my eyes, the blotchy face of my weeping mother slowly came into focus.

  “Don’t cry, I’m fine,” I said, my voice sounding scratchy and dry.

  “Thank God!” said Mum furiously. “How coul
d you? What were you thinking, trying to get yourself killed like that?”

  “Where’s Toby?”

  It was Graham that answered. “At the police station. Lieutenant Weinburger has taken him in for questioning.”

  I nodded. “Good.”

  “The lieutenant wants to talk to you,” Mum told me. “As soon as you wake up, he said. There are things he needs to double-check.”

  “Fine,” I replied. “Send him in. But first… Is Mr Radstock all right?”

  “He’s still out cold, but he’ll pull through, apparently. I wish I understood what on earth’s been going on.”

  When he came in to see me, Lieutenant Weinburger got straight to the point.

  “OK, kid,” he said. “Give me the full story.”

  I told him what had happened in the apartment, filling in the bits that Graham hadn’t been able to tell him. “Who benefits? That’s what we wondered,” I finished. “And we had the answer all along. I just feel so stupid for not seeing it before.”

  “But you had it all worked out,” said Mum, mystified. “The clues… The Punch and Judy show… I don’t get it.”

  “It was a trick,” I said. “I should have realized. I mean, Baby Sugarcandy wasn’t scared of Len Radstock like Toby said. She loved Punch and Judy – she had those red-and-white curtains; she was wearing that red-and-white sash on her dress. She called her daughter Judy, for heaven’s sake! And her son Toby – that’s the name of the Punch and Judy dog. You wouldn’t do that if you wanted to wipe out the past. She must have told Toby about the show when he was little – that’s why he knew so much about it.” I heaved a deep sigh of regret. “There was always something wrong about those murders. I wish I’d spotted it earlier. If you really wanted to kill someone, why would you advertise it like that? You might as well wear a big flashing badge saying ARREST ME. The drowning in the toilet, the throwing down the stairs, the sausages and everything… It was all pointing a great big arrow at the murderer, only it was pointing in the wrong direction. And that’s my fault. If I’d spotted it sooner, maybe Sylvia wouldn’t have died.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for that, kid,” said Lieutenant Weinburger.

  “But I do,” I said. “I should have seen that they didn’t quite add up. I mean, it’s Punch’s baby that goes down the toilet, not an old woman. And Judy is Punch’s wife and she doesn’t get strangled with sausages. She never even meets the crocodile! As for that policeman’s helmet – well, Sylvia wasn’t a policeman, was she? It just didn’t fit with the proper show. A real Punch and Judy man wouldn’t make those sorts of mistakes!”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Lieutenant Weinburger.

  “But it was,” I protested. “The whole plan wouldn’t have worked without me.”

  “Don’t be silly, Poppy,” said Mum. “How could you possibly be part of it?”

  “Do you remember that photograph? The one at the Chelsea Flower Show?” I asked. Mum nodded. “Sylvia had drawn a circle around my head, hadn’t she? Not yours. And she made sure I invited a friend along too. Toby wanted us over here, but it wasn’t anything to do with the garden. For all we know Baby Sugarcandy didn’t even know we were coming – it was Sylvia who made the arrangements, wasn’t it?”

  Mum nodded but didn’t speak.

  “The important thing as far as Toby was concerned was to get a couple of English kids over here – ones who would make the link between the weirdness of the murders and the Punch and Judy show. Graham and I were fed big obvious clues until it fell into place. They used us to frame Len Radstock. And then Toby planned to kill him before anyone could find out he was innocent. He triggered that great big explosion so it would look as though Len had topped himself as the grand finale to his murder spree.”

  “Can you convict Toby?” Mum demanded. “I mean, will you be able to find enough evidence?”

  “Sure we will,” the lieutenant said. “Arson. Attempted murder. That’s not a bad beginning. We’ve got witnesses to that. As for the other murders, he’ll have left a paper trail – receipts, letters, phone records. We’ll do the ninety-nine per cent, kid.” Suddenly, unexpectedly, he winked at me and grinned. “And my guess is that Sylvia would have told someone she was planning to marry him – her mother, perhaps, a sister, a friend. There’ll be someone who can testify that they had a relationship. Some way, somehow, we’ll get what we need to put him away for a very long time.”

  The next day I was well enough to get up, and Graham and I went to visit Len Radstock in his hospital bed. He was sitting bolt upright, wearing a pair of red-and-white striped pyjamas and reading The Times. As soon as he saw us, he folded his newspaper and extended an arm.

  “I believe I owe you my life,” he said, shaking my hand.

  “I believe I owe you mine, too.” I smiled back at him. “Thank you for untying me. I’m sorry I had to shove you down the stairs like that. Did it give you a very bad headache?”

  “It was a bit of a bone-shaker, but don’t you worry. I’m just glad to be alive.” He looked down for a moment and then said quietly, “I only wish Biddy was too.”

  There was a long pause, and then Len said, “I followed her career, you know, watched all her films, bought all her records. I was so thrilled when she wrote back to me saying she wanted to see me. Of course I don’t know now if it was really she who wrote the letter or if it was forged by that secretary of hers. It was Sylvia who arranged our meeting. I got myself spruced up, red buttonhole and everything just like I’d worn at our wedding. Sylvia had sent me a key so that I could let myself in. But when I got there I saw…” His voice dwindled to nothing. When he started speaking again it was in no more than a faint whisper. “I could see how she’d been killed. Wet hair … that smell of toilet cleaner. That dear, delicate creature destroyed! I knew then that I’d been set up. I just ran. Cowardly of me, I suppose, but I was terribly shocked. I’d been so desperate to see her once more, and then to lose her all over again! I came straight back to the apartment and wept. And when I saw that her daughter had been killed I knew I would be blamed for that too. ‘The Punch and Judy murderer!’ I knew whoever was doing it would eventually come for me. Frankly I was beyond caring.”

  “You know,” I said carefully, “if it’s any consolation I don’t think Sylvia did forge that letter. I think Biddy did want to see you.”

  The hope in Len Radstock’s face was heartbreaking. “Do you? It would mean so much to think she still cared.”

  “Yes,” I continued. “She was wearing that red-and-white sash, wasn’t she? She was all dressed up – like she was seeing someone really important. As if she was excited about it, and wanted to impress whoever it was. I thought she looked like she was about to step on to a red carpet.”

  “She did. She was so beautiful.”

  “Well, she did that for you. That bit was real.”

  “It would be a great comfort to know she thought fondly of me. I do hope you’re right.”

  “I know I am.” I handed him a crumpled photograph. “The police found this tucked beneath her pillow. She must have looked at it every night before she fell asleep.”

  Len Radstock didn’t answer. He took the photograph, in which a youthful version of himself was standing on a sandy beach with his arm around a woman who was as pretty as a china doll. A radiant smile lit up Len’s face like sunshine after a storm.

  Graham and I crept quietly away. We could see that Len Radstock was lost in happy memories, and we didn’t want to disturb him.

  There’s not much to add, really. We were allowed home on the next plane much to Mum’s relief. We had to go back to the States when Toby’s trial started and by then the police had managed to unearth a whole load of bad stuff about him. They discovered he hadn’t been saving the South American rainforests at all – he’d been dealing in drugs and was involved in all kinds of organized crime. So what with my evidence, and Graham’s and Len’s and everything else they found out, they banged him up and practically threw away the k
ey. And it seemed that all his scheming and plotting had been a total waste of time in any case. When they read Baby Sugarcandy’s will they discovered that she’d changed it a couple of months before she’d died. It turned out that she’d left all her worldly goods to The Last Slapstick – a luxurious rest home for retired puppeteers.

  dead funny

  Tanya Landman is the author of many books for children including Waking Merlin and Merlin’s Apprentice, The World’s Bellybutton and The Kraken Snores, and three stories featuring the characters Flotsam and Jetsam. Of Dead Funny Tanya writes, “I’ve always found Hollywood fascinating. How can you know who’s telling the truth and who’s acting? Who’s real and who’s fake? It occurred to me that Beverly Hills would make a great backdrop for a murder mystery.”

  Tanya is the author of two novels for teenagers: Apache, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize, and The Goldsmith’s Daughter, which was nominated for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Since 1992, she has also been part of Storybox Theatre. She lives with her family in Devon.

  You can find out more about Tanya Landman and her books by visiting her website at

  www.tanyalandman.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, informationand material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on foraccuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

  First published in Great Britain 2009 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2009 Tanya Landman

  The right of Tanya Landman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.