The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

by Philip Ardagh

  A tiny door opened in the top of the cell door, to reveal a glassless window. ‘What?’ demanded the peeler, peering through it.

  ‘What about the others? Daniella and Mr Zucchini?’

  ‘Wait until the inspector comes,’ said the peeler, shutting the tiny door and stomping off down the corridor.

  A moment later, a strangely beaky shadow was cast across the cell floor. Eddie turned to the small window, set high in the stone wall, and there was Mad Uncle Jack’s face staring back down at him through the bars.

  ‘All right, m’boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine, thank you, Uncle Jack,’ said Eddie, ‘except that I’m locked up when I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Is that a starfish?’ asked Eddie’s great-uncle, pointing between the bars.

  ‘Why, yes it is,’ said Eddie. ‘I found it in the bed, just now.’

  ‘Pass it up, would you?’ he asked. ‘It must have fallen from my pocket last night.’

  ‘Last night?’ asked Eddie, confused.

  ‘I came to speak to you at this very window, but you were sleeping. The starfish must have fallen from my pocket then.’

  Eddie thought back to the electric eel that had fallen on him at the beginning of Episode One – not that he knew it was the beginning of Episode One, of course – and wondered, once again, why Mad Uncle Jack had taken to carrying live sea creatures, rather than the more familiar dried variety.

  He stood on the bed, on tiptoe, and passed the starfish through the bars. ‘Many thanks,’ said Mad Uncle Jack.

  ‘What did you want to say to me last night?’ Eddie asked, as he climbed back down onto the floor.

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘When you came to see me, but found me sleeping,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Did I?’ Mad Uncle Jack frowned. ‘I mean, I did?’

  ‘You –’ Eddie stopped. He heard voices in the corridor. ‘The inspector’s coming!’ he said in a harsh whisper. ‘You’d better go.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Mad Uncle Jack, ‘but take this, quickly, just so you know that you’re not alone.’

  He slipped something out of his jacket and held it in his hand. Eddie jumped back onto the bed and took it from him, jumping to the floor just as a key clattered in the lock and the door to the cell swung inwards. Eddie looked to see what his great-uncle had given him.

  It was the starfish.

  The man who came into the cell with the peeler was as wide as he was tall and wore a very loud checked suit. Of course, checked suits can’t really make a noise – except, of course, of material rubbing against material – but this was the kind of suit with checks so loud that if they could have talked they would have SHOUTED. It was the sort of suit that when, years later, television was invented, made the picture go fuzzy. Even when the man was standing stock-still, the checks on his suit seemed to be zinging all over the place saying – shouting – ‘Look at me!’ It wasn’t a very new suit, Eddie noticed. The cuffs were a little frayed and the material a little grubby. He was relieved about that. The suit was giving him a headache just looking at it, and he was trying to imagine how much worse he’d feel if he’d had to look at a dazzling brand new one.

  ‘This is the inspector,’ said the peeler.

  ‘I am the inspector,’ said the inspector.

  ‘The inspector would like to ask you some questions,’ said the peeler.

  ‘I would like to ask you some questions,’ said the inspector.

  The peeler gave the inspector a funny look out of the corner of his eye. To be fair, this was a deliberately funny look. Most of this particular peeler’s looks were funny, whether intended or not, because he was a funny-looking peeler, but he really, really meant this one to be funny.

  ‘Follow me,’ said the peeler.

  ‘Follow me,’ said the inspector.

  Eddie was led back to the room where he’d been interviewed or interrogated (or both) the previous day and sat in the same old chair. He looked over to the same old mouse hole in the skirting board and was pleased to see that the same old piece of cheese was in the trap, suggesting that the mouse hadn’t fallen for it.

  ‘Master Dickens,’ said the inspector, who’d taken up position at the opposite side of the table but whose enormous stomach meant that the rest of him appeared to be sitting rather a long way away. ‘Let me start by apologising for the way that you have been treated.’

  Eddie was stunned. He was Master Dickens now, was he? And the policeman was actually apologising.

  ‘You see, I would ask you to see things from our point of view. Firstly, a group of hardened convicts escapes from Grimpen Jail and are believed to be hiding somewhere on the moors. Secondly, the world-famous photographer Mr Wolfe Tablet is found bound and gagged in his room at the Rancid Rat. Thirdly, his hot-air balloon is stolen. You are aware of these facts?’

  Eddie nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said politely.

  ‘Good,’ said the inspector. His suit said nothing, but you could see that those loud checks were crying out to be heard. ‘You also admit that you were found by the hot-air balloon in the company of one Daniella …?’ He looked up at the peeler who’d been standing silently by his side since they’d sat at the table.

  ‘No last name,’ said the peeler.

  ‘No last name,’ repeated the inspector, ‘who was not only seen in the stolen balloon by a number of eyewitnesses but has also admitted to being an accomplice of Mr Merryweather who attacked Mr Tablet?’

  ‘Yes, the balloon crashed in my back garden. That is, the back garden of Awful End, my great-uncle’s house,’ Eddie agreed.

  ‘Crashed, you say?’ asked the inspector, sticking his little finger into his left ear and shaking it so violently that his whole tummy rippled.

  Eddie noticed the peeler give the inspector another funny look – out of the other corner of his eye this time.

  ‘Yes,’ said Eddie. ‘She – Daniella – landed in a rose bush. I told him all this yesterday,’ said Eddie, nodding in the direction of the peeler. ‘He wrote it down and everything. Didn’t you read the report?’

  ‘Mr Chevy’s handwriting is poor and his spelling atrocious,’ said the inspector. ‘What’s more, I can’t read.’

  Eddie looked surprised.

  ‘We haven’t all had the advantage of a proper education, Master Dickens,’ said the inspector, ‘and, though no doubt useful, one doesn’t have to be able to read to be an excellent detective inspector.’ He gave his little finger another jolly good wiggle in his ear.

  Eddie felt guilty again and cleared his throat. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Good,’ said the inspector. ‘Rather a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ asked Eddie Dickens, suddenly wondering whether he’d been trapped into something or other, but he couldn’t quite see what.

  ‘Rather a coincidence that Daniella should crash near the very spot where her employer, Mr Zucchini was seated.’

  ‘Well … when I said crashed, I meant crash-landed. I mean she’d been on the lookout for the Great Zucchini and was trying to come in to land and –’

  ‘Aha!’ said the inspector, pushing his chair even further from the table, his weight causing it to grate across the floor. ‘So she intended to land roughly where she did land and you were with Mr Zucchini?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ Eddie said.

  ‘So you can see, Master Dickens, why we wrongly assumed you to be an accomplice in the taking prisoner of Mr Wolfe Tablet and the theft of his hot-air balloon?’

  Wrongly? Had the inspector just said ‘wrongly’?

  ‘Y-Yes, I can see how you might have come to the wrong conclusion,’ said Eddie, cautiously.

  ‘Good,’ said the inspector rising to his feet. ‘So I do hope that you can find it in your heart of hearts to forgive us for holding you in the cell overnight.’ He turned to the peeler, who Eddie – and you, dear readers – should already know was named Mr Chevy. ‘The lollipop, please, Mr Chevy,’ he said.r />
  With a frown, the peeler dug his right hand into the pocket of his uniform and pulled out a round lollipop, covered in bits of blue fluff, exactly matching the colour of the fluff you sometimes find in your tummy button. (Don’t think I don’t know about these things.) He picked off the bits as best he could, and handed the lollipop to the inspector.

  In turn, the inspector handed the lollipop to Eddie. ‘Please accept this lollipop as a token of our regret for any inconvenience we might have caused you,’ he said, patting Eddie on the head. Three times. Very awkwardly.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Eddie, quickly stuffing the lollipop in his own pocket. He had no intention of eating the thing.

  The peeler disappeared from the room, returning a couple of minutes later with a piece of paper, a quill pen, an ink well and an old brown envelope containing the items he’d taken from Eddie before locking him up for the night: a few sugar lumps and the jagged stump of a well-chewed whittling carrot. (And if you can’t remember what a whittling carrot is, I suggest you soak your brain in a mild vinegar solution overnight, or refer back to pages 146 and 147.) He handed them back to Eddie.

  ‘We also need you to sign this special piece of paper,’ said the peeler.

  ‘We also need you to sign this special piece of paper,’ said the inspector. ‘What does it say?’

  Eddie took it off the peeler. ‘It says: “I, Eddie Dickens, do not mind having been locked up overnight and will not go complaining to a judge, dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot”,’ he said. What it actually said was:

  ‘What are the dot-dot-dots, Mr Chevy?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘They’re the dotted line for Dickens to sign along, sir,’ said the peeler.

  ‘Good thinking!’

  The peeler dipped the quill in the ink well and handed it to Eddie. He was about to sign when he stopped. ‘I’ll sign this, but only if you let me see Daniella first. I assume you’re not letting her go?’

  ‘Too right we’re not,’ said the peeler. ‘She’s a thief and an accomplice.’

  ‘Then let me see her and I’ll sign.’

  ‘Promise?’ asked the peeler.

  ‘Promise,’ said Eddie.

  The peeler looked at the inspector. The inspector nodded. ‘Very well, Master Dickens.’

  *

  When the door to her cell opened, the last thing Daniella expected to see was Eddie. ‘Don’t say they’re bangin’ us up in ’ere togever, two to a cell?’ she groaned.

  For a fleeting moment, Eddie was all excited at the thought of being locked up with her, then felt guilty knowing that he was about to walk free and she wasn’t. How brave and defiant she looked, her nostrils flaring like those of a cornered horse, her …

  ‘You didn’t come in ’ere just to dribble and gawp, did ya?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Eddie hurriedly. ‘They are letting me go, though.’

  ‘And are keeping me ’n’ Harold banged up, I suppose? That’d be right. An’ they’ve already got poor Skillet and Mr Merryweather. That sounds fair.’

  Eddie strode over to Daniella and gripped her hand. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help from the outside, just tell me and it’s done,’ he whispered.

  Daniella wiped her hand on the back of her dress. ‘You’re all sweaty,’ she said. ‘And, yeah, you can help. Send me a cake baked out of dynamite.’

  Eddie’s face reddened. ‘I’d love to do that … but I meant legally … Anything that I can do to help within the law … and wouldn’t a cake made of dynamite explode if you ..?’ His sentence petered out and his face went even more red.

  ‘Yeah, I was jokin’,’ said Daniella. ‘Get that Wolfe Tablet to agree that he asked to be tied up, to see how Harold does his escaping tricks, and get him to say that he leant us the balloon. That’d be a big ’elp.’

  ‘But how can I get him to do that?’ asked Eddie, fearing failure.

  ‘You’re the bright kid who realised that the Great Zucchini couldn’t really get out of ’is coffin with all that soil on top of ’im. You’ll find a way.’

  A loud checked stomach appeared around Daniella’s cell door, soon followed by the rest of the roundest of round inspectors. ‘Time to go and sign that paper, Master Dickens,’ he said.

  ‘I will find a way!’ said Eddie. He took Daniella’s hand and gave it a squeeze. His heart pounded. He felt like a hero in an adventure story (being totally unaware, of course, that he was a hero in an adventure story … though probably not quite the sort of adventure he was thinking of).

  ‘You’ve got dribble on your chin,’ said Daniella.

  Episode 6

  Making Things Better

  In which Eddie is faced with raspberry jam, an ear trumpet and a very large moustache

  Back at Awful End, repairs were already under way to the damage caused by the gas leak. Unfortunately they were being undertaken by Mad Uncle Jack and his team of incompetent ex-soldiers who’d fought under him during a few fruitless skirmishes on foreign soil, many, many years before. They’d been incompetent soldiers and now they were incompetent ex-soldiers, but they were extremely loyal to Mad Uncle Jack.

  Most of the men under Mad Uncle Jack had, not surprisingly, been killed – particularly those who’d followed his orders. It was only those too incompetent to carry out the simplest of orders – ‘Catch the next shell as it comes over before it harms anyone, there’s a good chap,’ or: ‘Ask that man over by that cannon to stop firing, would you?’ or ‘CHARGE!!!’ – who’d survived. There had been seven survivors, but two had since died, which left five ex-soldiers, Dawkins and Mad Uncle Jack himself doing the building work. Gibbering Jane was in charge of refreshments.

  Mad Uncle Jack was delighted at his great-nephew’s return. ‘So they let you go, did they? … Or did you escape? Escaping from cells isn’t becoming a habit now, is it?’

  ‘They were rooms at St Horrid’s,’ reminded Eddie, referring to his earlier adventures in a previous book. ‘And, this time, the peelers let me go. I was innocent!’

  ‘Of course you were, my dear boy! Of course …’ Mad Uncle Jack placed his trowel on the brickwork he was supposedly repairing. ‘You haven’t seen my missing starfish have you, Edmund?’

  ‘Why yes,’ said Eddie, ‘and I’ve discovered that he’s rather partial to lollipops.’ Sure enough, as Eddie carefully removed the starfish from his pocket, one of its five arms was clutching the lolly stick and Eddie could have sworn he heard the faintest slurping noise.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Mad Uncle Jack. ‘I must return him to the rock pool I’ve built in my study.’ He hurried off.

  ‘He’s built a rock pool in his study?’ said a bemused Eddie, though nothing should have surprised him in that house.

  ‘Yes, Master Edmund,’ said a rather dusty and very incompetent ex-corporal still in uniform (without the jacket). ‘We helped him build it the other week. Dug up the floor and everything.’

  Eddie had a sudden thought. ‘You weren’t at Colonel Marley’s side at the Fall of St Geobad, were you?’ he asked. ‘Any of you?’

  There were murmurings of ‘What’s St Geobad?’ as though he was somehow accusing them of knocking it down.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Eddie. ‘Er, what are you using as mortar to bond these bricks together?’

  ‘Your Mad Uncle Jack’s special mixture!’ said the slightly dusty and very incompetent ex-corporal.

  ‘It’s jam, isn’t it?’ said Eddie, running his finger along the raspberry-coloured goo between the new bricks.

  ‘It might have jam in it, Master Dickens,’ said the ex-corporal.

  Eddie tasted it. ‘It’s just jam, isn’t it?’

  ‘Jam might be a part of your Mad Uncle Jack’s secret bonding formula.’

  ‘It’s just jam and nothing more, isn’t it? No preservatives. No cement. No mortar. Just raspberry jam.’

  The incompetent ex-corporal nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘from a seven-pound earthenware jar he found in the pantry.’

  ‘And it’s not re
ally going to repair this huge hole in the side of the house, is it?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Well … er … no,’ agreed the ex-soldier. ‘But we are just carrying out orders.’

  Eddie sighed and decided to go in search of his parents. He found his father, Mr Dickens, in the library. This was a fantastic room with shelves taking up every inch of every wall (except where there were windows, otherwise it would have been – you guessed it – pitch-black). Even the doors had shelves on them, with carved and painted wood to look like rows of book spines.

  Eddie’s father was sitting in a high-backed leather chair and was reading a copy of PUNCH, a new periodical about bare-knuckle fighting. A periodical is just another name for a magazine. Bare-knuckle fighting is boxing without boxing gloves, which isn’t much fun for the fighters – it hurts much more – or for the boxing-glove manufacturers, who don’t get to sell so many pairs.

  He looked up as his son entered. ‘Hullo, Edmund,’ he said. ‘How was prison?’

  ‘It was only a police cell, Father,’ said Edmund, respectfully. There were no Social Services Departments back then, so children had to respect their parents in case they decided to lock them in a flooded cellar or tie them to the mast of a ship, without a social worker coming along saying ‘Er, you can’t do that!’

  ‘Good, good,’ nodded Mr Dickens. Although he’d had several baths since the explosion, he still had a pale and dusty look about him as though he’d been made up to look like a music-hall ghost. (Music hall was cheap theatre with plenty of songs.)

  ‘How are you feeling, Father?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Good. Good,’ nodded his father.

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Eddie. ‘I was looking for Mother. Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Good. Good,’ nodded his father. It was then that Eddie realised that he must still be very deaf after being blown up into the rafters just the previous morning.