William the Good

by Richmal Crompton

  ‘You mustn’t do any such things, Robert,’ said Mrs Brown indignantly, ‘ruining the carpets!’

  William took no part in the discussion. William believed in doing one thing at a time and he was giving his whole attention to the Irish stew. Moreover, he realised that Robert must be approached privately, man to man, on the subject. Women had such queer ideas. Both his mother and his sister would, he knew, want to mess up the whole thing by bringing in the police.

  So he followed Robert into the garden after lunch to impart his information.

  ‘I say, Robert,’ he began carelessly. ‘I know all about those burglars. They aren’t comin’ here today. They’re going’ to Latham House. At three o’clock. I heard ’em say so.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Robert with elder brother contempt and severity.

  ‘Honest, Robert!’ persisted William. ‘I’m not makin’ it up. Honest, I’m not. Ask Ginger. We heard ’em talkin’ when we was out this morning.’

  ‘Where did you hear them talking?’ said Robert.

  William hesitated. To answer that question accurately would be to reveal the whole parrot episode – an episode far better left unrevealed. Robert would have no compunction at all about informing Ginger’s aunt that it had been Ginger and William who had let her parrot out. After a slight hesitation William replied unblushingly:

  ‘Up on the common. On one of the seats.’

  He assuaged his conscience (that very amenable organ) firstly by the consideration that the story in the main was true and the details were unessential and secondly that probably all land was common land before they built houses on it, so really he wasn’t telling a story at all.

  ‘What were they saying?’ said Robert with slightly less contempt and severity.

  ‘Well, one of them was a woman and she said, “Let’s go an’ burgle Latham House tomorrow,” an’ they arranged to do that, an’ they said that they knew that it would be empty an’ they said they’d get their jemmies and things ready in the coach-house an’ one of them said what a lot of fine things they got out of Fremshams’.

  ‘Yes, they said that,’ said William vaguely, ‘at least, I think they said that. They said somethin’ like it, anyway. About all the fine things they stole out of it.’

  ‘What were they like to look at?’ said Robert.

  William realised that if he’d heard them talking on a bench he must have seen them.

  ‘Oh, they looked – they jus’ looked like thieves,’ said William vaguely. ‘He’d got a beard an’ she’d got black hair.’

  So plainly did William visualise the couple he described – a Russian communist and a vamp once seen on the pictures – that he could hardly believe he hadn’t really seen them.

  ‘She’d got a lot of jewellery on – things she’d stole, I suppose – an’ he’d got a muffler halfway up his face an’ a cap pulled down low over his eyes.’

  ‘How did you know he’d got a beard then?’ said Robert.

  William was taken aback just for a second, but quickly recovered himself.

  ‘It was one of those sorts of beards that stretch right up to the top of the person’s face and then it went down underneath his muffler too. It was a big sort of beard.’

  ‘Did you say Ginger was with you?’

  ‘Yes. We thought you an’ Hector would like to catch ’em without troublin’ the police.’

  ‘Oh, the police!’ said Robert with a scornful laugh (Robert had been reading a good many detective stories lately). ‘The police aren’t much good at anything like this. They muddle every case they touch. But,’ rather coldly, ‘I don’t see why it was necessary to bring Hector into it. I could have managed it perfectly well without Hector.’

  ‘Well, nacherally,’ retorted William. ‘Ginger wanted to have Hector in it same as I wanted to have you in it. If we thought we could have done it ourselves we wouldn’t have had either of you in it, but we thought that probably bein’ bigger than what we are they’d overpower us before we’d time to catch ’em properly. But, anyway, Ginger heard it same as I did, an’ he’s as much right to have Hector in it as I have to have you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Robert stiffly, ‘I suppose it cannot be helped now, in any case. I suppose he’ll have told him.’

  A month ago Robert would have delighted in having Hector to catch the thieves with him. A month ago Hector had been his bosom friend. But since a month ago they had both met Miss Julia Bellairs, and now Hector was no longer his bosom friend but his rival. They gave each other now only the barest sign of recognition when meeting in the street, and when they were both in the presence of the beloved they affected to be unaware of each other’s existence. . . . The one drawback in Robert’s eyes to the present situation was that the glory of catching the thieves red-handed would have to be shared with Hector. Still, probably the beloved would understand that Hector had been merely Watson to his Sherlock Holmes. If she did not so understand Robert decided it should not be for lack of hints. . . . ‘A useful fellow, Hector,’ he would say, ‘of course, I couldn’t have brought it off without him. I planned the whole thing, of course, but I couldn’t have pulled it off without someone to help me.’

  ‘How’re you goin’ to catch ’em?’ said William with interest.

  Robert tore himself with an effort from a pleasant daydream in which Miss Julia Bellairs was saying, ‘But how splendid! How wonderful! How brave! . . . Weren’t you afraid of being killed?’

  And he was replying with a modest laugh: ‘Well, you know, I never thought of it. I never do when there’s any danger.’

  ‘Er – you said three o’clock, didn’t you?’ he said coldly to William.

  He wished he’d discovered the thing himself. It spoilt it somehow to have William and Ginger and Hector in it. . . .

  ‘Yes,’ said William, ‘an’ they were goin’ to get their tools ready in the coach-house.’

  ‘Well,’ said Robert assuming a stern and superior air, as befitted a master detective, addressing one of his underlings, ‘I’ll see Hector and tell him what to do.’

  They were all in the coach-house of Latham House. It was five minutes to three, Robert had fixed up a very complicated erection – consisting of a lot of ropes and a pail of water – over the door of the coach-house in such a way that anyone opening the door would receive the contents of the pail in full force upon their head. At least Robert hoped he would. His band of underlings had proved disappointingly unaccommodating about that. He had urged them – or one of them – to go out by the window and enter by the door in order to see whether the contrivance worked and all of them had refused. Robert rather hoped that Hector would offer. His pride as he gazed up at the elaborate erection was clouded only by the thought that no official of Scotland Yard would see it. He felt that if any official in Scotland Yard were to see it, they would at once offer him a high salaried post on the staff. Robert had often thought that he would make a good detective. . . .

  Hector was bitterly resenting the airs that Robert was putting on over this. He was afraid that Miss Julia Bellairs would think that Robert’s share in the capture was more important than it really was. He was indulging in a daydream in which the beloved was saying to him: ‘How wonderful! How brave! But weren’t you afraid?’

  And he was saying nonchalantly:

  ‘Oh, no. Not a bit. I never am, you know. I’d really as soon have done it without Robert, but the poor boy was very anxious to help and I didn’t like to refuse him.’

  ‘It’s nearly three,’ said William hopefully.

  William was feeling that if he could just live to see that pail of water overturning on to somebody he didn’t mind how soon he died after it.

  ‘Quick,’ said Robert. ‘We’d better hide! They mustn’t see us through the window.’

  ‘Hide quickly,’ said Hector, in order to prove to himself that he was giving orders, not taking them from Robert.

  They retired to the shadowy corner of the room – only just in time. Almost at once two figures
were seen to pass the window walking furtively in single file. The windows were smeared and dusty, but it was clear that the figures were those of a man and a woman. They stopped at the door. Very cautiously they opened it and entered.

  Robert’s contrivance acted. It acted even more effectively than he had intended it to act. Not only did the bucket discharge its contents upon the couple as they entered. It discharged itself as well, completely enveloping both of them. The four amateur Sherlock Holmes’ came out of their hiding-places to behold the amazing spectacle of two drenched forms – one a man and the other a woman – sitting back to back, the upper portion of both their forms completely enveloped by a tin bucket which had very neatly caught them both. Muffled screams and shouts came from beneath the bucket. With admirable presence of mind Robert darted forward and firmly held down the extinguisher.

  ‘Get the rope quick, Hector,’ he said.

  Even as he said it he was mentally composing an account of the affair for Miss Julia Bellairs.

  ‘At once I held down the bucket quite firmly despite their struggling and called to Hector to get the rope for me to tie them up.’

  How he wished she were here to see him. . . .

  The two were firmly bound together and then Robert with a flourish removed the extinguisher.

  It revealed the bedraggled upper portions of Miss Julia Bellairs and her cousin.

  There followed a scene that baffles description.

  William and Ginger crept unostentatiously away before it had even reached its climax, but before they departed they had gathered that Miss Julia Bellairs and her cousin were not burglars, but that they were engaged in the production of a little souvenir booklet of the village to be presented to every guest at a garden party they were giving the next month. The booklet was to contain a photograph of the house of every guest but this was to be a surprise – hence the mystery surrounding the taking of the photographs.

  ROBERT, WITH A FLOURISH, REMOVED THE BUCKET. ‘JULIA!’ HE GASPED.

  As William said: ‘With a cracked idea like that they couldn’t expect anythin’ but trouble.’

  It was that evening.

  William and Ginger walked slowly and sadly down the road.

  ‘Then there’s that parrot,’ said Ginger gloomily.

  ‘Yes. I’d been quite forgetting the parrot,’ said William.

  ‘It started it all,’ said Ginger yet more gloomily.

  ‘I s’pose so,’ said William, ‘but she doesn’t know you let it out. She’s not been to see your father about it yet, has she?’

  ‘No, but she might any time – an’ on the top of the other—’

  ‘Let’s g’n’ see what she’s doin’ about it,’ said William, who never could resist the temptation to revisit the scene of a crime.

  They approached Ginger’s aunt’s house and once more crept cautiously up to the drawing-room window.

  The first sight that met their eyes was the reassuring one of Ginger’s Aunt’s parrot hanging as usual in the cage and swinging to and fro on his perch.

  Further investigation revealed the figure of Ginger’s aunt and a friend sitting over a tea table.

  Their conversation reached the watchers through the open window.

  ‘Oh, yes, he’s a very clever bird,’ Ginger’s aunt was saying proudly. ‘Why, do you know what he did this morning? Some one must have left the window open and he opened his cage door himself and got out. Right out of the window. I was distracted when I came home and found him gone. And then just when I was in the middle of ringing up the police about it he came back. Simply came in again through the window and went back into his cage.’

  The two Outlaws crept back to the road.

  ‘Well, that’s all right!’ said William.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Ginger, ‘that’s cert’nly one thing all right. . . . What’re you goin’ to do now?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ said William. ‘Only,’ very firmly, ‘I’m not goin’ home jus’ yet. Robert’s goin’ out at six o’clock an’ I’m not goin’ home till after that.’

  ‘I’m not either,’ said Ginger. ‘Hector’s goin’ out about then an’ I’m not goin’ home till after that . . . you’d think they’d be grateful to us, wouldn’t you? It made them friends again.’

  ‘Yes, but they aren’t grateful to us,’ said William, ‘and, of course, it made Robert madder still to find that the burglars had been to our house while he’d been out tryin’ to catch ’em at Latham House.’

  ‘Yes, and the way they make it all out our faults—’ said Ginger bitterly.

  ‘They always do that,’ said William.

  ‘She said she’d never speak to ’em again,’ said Ginger meditatively, ‘but she said some jolly fine things to ’em first. Before she said that.’

  ‘So did he,’ said William.

  With reminiscent appreciative smiles on their countenances they walked on slowly down the road.

  Richmal Crompton was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in Home magazine in 1919, and the first collection of William stories was published in book form three years later. In all, thirty-eight William books were published, the last one in 1970, after Richmal Crompton’s death.

  ‘Probably the funniest, toughest children’s books ever written’

  Sunday Times on the Just William series

  ‘Richmal Crompton’s creation [has] been famed for his cavalier attitude to life and those who would seek to circumscribe his enjoyment of it ever since he first appeared’

  Guardian

  Books available in the Just William series

  Just William

  More William

  William Again

  William the Fourth

  Still William

  William the Conqueror

  William the Outlaw

  William in Trouble

  William the Good

  William at War

  First published 1928

  This selection first published 1984 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-1000-9 EPUB

  All stories copyright © Richmal C. Ashbee

  This selection copyright © 1984 Richmal C. Ashbee

  Foreword copyright © Daniel Roche 2011

  Illustrations copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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