The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

by Philip Ardagh

  ‘Er, this is Mr Barking,’ he said. ‘He’s a friend of my Uncle Jack.’

  ‘Why ain’t you got no clothes on?’ asked Daniella.

  ‘Er … fresh air and exercise,’ said Eddie quickly. ‘My great-uncle is very keen on me taking more healthy exercise. Mr Barking is my trainer. I’m doing an early-morning run –’

  ‘Exercise ball,’ said a voice. It was Barking’s. He handed Eddie the ball on the end of his chain.

  Eddie dropped it with a thud on the earth, hurriedly picking it up with an idiot grin. ‘Running … lifting exercise balls … er … digging,’ said Eddie, helplessly.

  ‘But why dig here?’ asked the Great Zucchini.

  ‘And how comes ’e’s wearin’ your clothes?’ asked Daniella.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Eddie, desperately. He was running out of excuses!

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing … I mean …’

  The Great Zucchini stepped forward and sank his shovel into the soil. ‘Much as I would like to stay and talk,’ he said, ‘I need to get my coffin dug up and in the back of the hearse before the peelers find us gone.’

  ‘We’ll help you,’ said Barking. The sharp pain in Eddie’s back suddenly stopped. Eddie’s eyes met the convict’s. The words ‘no funny business’ went through his mind.

  Eddie took the shovel off Daniella and started digging with the Great Zucchini, with Barking carrying on with his front paws – hands – as before.

  If Eddie had been very brave, perhaps he would have hit Barking over the head with the shovel, but that’s easier said than done. It takes a lot to bash somebody that way. What if you hit them too hard and split their head open by mistake? What if you don’t hit them hard enough and they grab the shovel and hit you? So Eddie concentrated on digging.

  Daniella sat on the wall. Even the sight of her frilly petticoats wasn’t enough to stop Eddie worrying about what Barking might do next.

  By the time they reached the top of the coffin, all three were a lot hotter and a lot sweatier. Eddie’s long johns were streaked with soil, the boot polish colouring Zucchini’s hair trickled down his cheeks, and Barking’s little head was glowing red with all the effort.

  Zucchini lowered himself down onto the lid of the coffin and Daniella threw him a coil of rope. Quickly and efficiently, he tied it to the coffin, then Eddie and Daniella gave him a hand out. They pulled the coffin to the surface and laid it on the grass. Zucchini untied the rope.

  ‘Skillet and Merryweather should be here with the hearse and the rest of my belongings shortly,’ he said. ‘The peelers found the hearse on the village green. The horses were drinking from the pond … They were good enough to put it in the stable at the back of the police station. Most convenient!’

  ‘Then what are you going to do?’ asked Eddie. ‘You can’t perform your Dreadful Acts if you’re a wanted man!’

  ‘I will either find a way of getting Mr Wolfe Tablet to drop the charges –’

  ‘Something which you promised to do,’ Daniella reminded Eddie, who blushed. If only he could tell her about the convicts … about who the harmless-looking Mr Barking really was.

  ‘Or I’ll send a large hamper to your local police station this Christmas,’ Zucchini continued. ‘It’s amazing what peelers are willing to forgive and forget in exchange for a few bottles of port, a goose and some plum pudding.’

  ‘Open it!’ yapped a voice in Eddie’s ear. Barking rattled the lid of the coffin.

  ‘Could we open the coffin, please?’ Eddie asked the escapologist.

  ‘What on earth for?’ he asked.

  ‘What are you two up to?’ asked Daniella. ‘See, I knew you wasn’t just diggin’ here by accident.’

  ‘Please,’ said Eddie, looking directly at Zucchini.

  ‘Very well,’ said Zucchini, ‘but there are only a couple of sandbags inside. It won’t give away how the rest of the trick was done.’ He crouched down beside the coffin and, producing something that looked like a cross between a corkscrew and a screwdriver, he undid the screws around the edges and, finally, lifted off the lid.

  They all four peered inside. Sure enough, there were two large hessian sandbags labelled:

  GRIMPEN JAIL

  Just then, a commanding voice cracked the silence like a whip: ‘Hands up, then nobody move!’

  Eddie gave a silent groan. First Barking and now – now what? He looked up and was amazed to see Mr Lalligag, the man from the library! There was something very different about him since their meeting back at Awful End the previous day. He was still wearing the pinstripe suit and black waistcoat, slightly shiny with wear. He was still as bald as he had been, with what little hair he had brushed over his pate. He still had one of the biggest moustaches Eddie had ever had the honour of being that close to … but today? Today Mr Lalligag was holding an enormous revolver.

  ‘Not again!’ Eddie muttered and, if you’ve read the book Awful End, you’ll know why. He, the Great Zucchini and Daniella all let go of the coffin lid and put their hands in the air. The lid thudded shut on the coffin, then there was silence.

  ‘This place is gettin’ busier than Piccadilly Circus,’ muttered Daniella.

  ‘Who have we here?’ said Mr Lalligag, at last. ‘Mr Collins the ironmonger, Master Edmund Dickens from the big house, and who might you be, m’dear?’

  ‘Me name’s Daniella,’ said Daniella, ‘’n’ what I wanna know is, what’s such a small guy like you doin’ wiv such a big gun?’

  Eddie was so proud of her! She didn’t seem in the least bit frightened of Lalligag. She turned to him. ‘’n’ you can stop dribblin’ and all!’ she said.

  ‘And I am not Mr Collins the –’ Zucchini began.

  ‘And, as you may have guessed, Master Dickens, I’m not really a librarian,’ Mr Lalligag interrupted.

  Now, before one of you readers gets all nasty and says, ‘But you said he was a librarian in the DRAMATIS PERSONAE and if you, the narrator, can’t tell the truth, then who can we trust?’ I urge you all to look back at page 210, but keep your finger in this page so you don’t lose your place. See? What I wrote was:

  MR LALLIGAG – who says he’s a librarian

  Now, I can’t be much fairer than that, can I?

  ‘And you weren’t really hired by my great-aunt to catalogue the books, were you?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘No,’ Mr Lalligag agreed. ‘The great thing about a house like Awful End is that nobody seems to know who’s who or what anybody else is up to. Did you know, for example, that there’s a woman living under the main stairs? She wears the top left-hand corner of a knitted egg cosy on a piece of string around her neck?’

  ‘Of course I know. That’s Gibbering Jane. She came with us to live there.’

  ‘Oh …’ said Mr Lalligag, obviously a little put out. ‘Anyway, as soon as I learnt that the Great Zucchini was in the vicinity, I used a false identity to get into the house and keep an eye on what was going on.’

  ‘So who are ya, then? If you ain’t a librarian?’ asked Daniella, decidedly unimpressed.

  ‘I’m someone looking out for other people’s interests,’ said Mr Lalligag. ‘Now, if you’ll be kind enough to step away from the coffin, I’ll take what I came for. Forgive this –’ he waved the gun in the air ‘– but I’m not sure who to trust, so keep your hands up, go over to the wall and lie face down in the grass. If any of you so much as looks up, I’ll plug you.’

  Though not familiar with all the euphemisms for shooting or being shot – a euphemism is a nice word or phrase replacing a nasty one so, for example, a euphemism for a three-hour exam might be ‘a nice little test’ – Eddie was quick to realise that ‘being plugged’ meant ending up with a bullet inside him; which is why he did exactly what Mr Lalligag had told him to do, and lay face down. Zucchini and Daniella did the same, which is why none of them saw what happened next.

  They heard the cry, the barking and the clanking of chains, but it was only when they heard the excited yapping that they all
looked up and worked out what had happened.

  Standing in the open coffin was Barking, with a huge grin on his excited little face. Now he was holding the revolver, which somehow seemed even bigger in his tiny paw. Its previous owner lay slumped half in and half out of the coffin, and it was obvious that Barking had hit him with his ball and chain.

  Mr Lalligag had opened what he’d expected to be a coffin containing nothing more than two harmless hessian sacks, to be confronted by a far-from-harmless convict, ready to pounce.

  Now, the brighter readers amongst you – that’s 37.2 per cent of you – will have been wondering what happened to Barking all of this time and will have been wondering whether I made a mistake. A few of you might have been muttering things along the lines of ‘he must have got confused and has suddenly written Barking out of the story altogether. One minute he has the ex-convict there. The next minute it’s just Eddie, Zucchini and Daniella.’

  Of that 37.2 per cent, 26 per cent of you believed that I hadn’t, in fact, lost my marbles and that Barking had managed to slide down the hole, unnoticed, as Mr Lalligag approached. Only 14 per cent of the original 37.2 per cent of you who noticed that Barking wasn’t around guessed that he’d hidden himself in the coffin before the others had time to drop the lid and put up their hands.

  I’m told by someone who doesn’t get out much, and whose room smells of – well, I’d rather not talk about that – that 14 per cent of the 37.2 per cent of readers who noticed Barking had gone is just 5.2 per cent of all you readers … so, if you were one of those who realised where Barking had been all this time, please accept this well-earned round of applause:

  Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Cheer! Cheer! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Cheer! Cheer! Cheer! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Cheer! Cheer! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Cheer! Cheer! Cheer! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Cheer! Cheer!

  Right. That’s enough. We don’t want it going to your heads. Let’s get back to the action:

  ‘Well done, Mr Barking,’ said the Great Zucchini, scrambling to his feet and striding over towards the coffin, unaware that he was now facing an armed escaped convict. ‘Well done!’

  Eddie leapt to his feet and took Daniella’s hand, pulling her up. Touching her skin made him feel all funny in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Who Skillet and Merryweather?’ asked Barking. He must have remembered Zucchini talking of their imminent arrival before Mr Lalligag had burst onto the scene.

  ‘My manager and my props man. They should be here shortly,’ said Zucchini. ‘You can put that gun down now, my good man. The bonk on the head you gave this Lalligag chap has knocked him out well and good.’

  ‘Into hole please,’ said Barking, pressing the revolver into Zucchini’s stomach.

  ‘I don’t understand …’ the escapologist protested.

  ‘He wants us to get into the hole,’ sighed Eddie.

  ‘No. You with me,’ Barking told Eddie.

  ‘Barking is one of the escaped convicts everyone’s been talking about,’ Eddie explained. ‘We’d better do exactly as he says.’

  The Great Zucchini and Daniella climbed into the hole while Eddie dragged the unconscious body of Mr Lalligag over to them and passed him in.

  He then squeezed into the coffin with Barking, his ball and chain, the revolver and the sandbags. The situation was clear: one peep out of those three in the hole and Eddie would end up filled full of lead, or any other euphemisms you can think of.

  *

  Imagine the scene when Mr Merryweather and Skillet rode up the track beside the field, in the hearse Eddie’d first seen in the driveway of Awful End, what seemed like ages ago. They were expecting to be greeted by the Great Zucchini and Daniella, carrying the coffin, all ready to throw it in the back for a quick getaway. Instead, all they saw was the hole, a pile of earth, the deserted coffin, and not a soul in sight!

  Being on the run from the peelers, neither Mr Merryweather nor Skillet wanted to attract attention by calling out their missing colleagues’ names, so they decided to collect the coffin and put it in the hearse, then go looking for them.

  Of course, when they reached the coffin, Barking (who’d been watching their approach across the grass through a gap between the lid and the side) jumped to his feet and trained his revolver on the new arrivals.

  ‘Blimey!’ said Skillet, who had spent one or two years behind bars himself, for stealing a coat button. ‘It’s Arthur Brunt, the billionaire burglar!’

  ‘Actually, his name is Barking,’ said Eddie, getting to his feet. He had a stiff neck.

  ‘He comes from Barking,’ said Skillet. ‘It’s a place.’

  Eddie looked at his captor with new respect. Was this man really the billionaire burglar the papers had written about when he’d finally been arrested and tried a few years back? He was supposed to be some kind of criminal genius. A mastermind.

  Barking glared at Skillet, but then his expression changed and all pretence was dropped. ‘How clever of you to recognise me,’ he said at last. Gone was the strange yappy voice he’d used until now, to be replaced by a voice as smooth as silk: a gentleman’s voice. He also looked different now. You know when a teacher says, ‘Wipe that silly grin off your face.’ Well, it was as if Barking had done just that. When he stopped grinning, his eyebrows lowered and he no longer looked like the puppy in the window of the pet shop which you just had to rush in and buy … He almost looked sophisticated; debonair.

  ‘I do so hate the term burglar,’ he said. ‘It conjures up some sneak thief in the night. I usually stole from houses to which I was invited, and only the best jewellery from the best people. Whilst on the run, I thought it best to adopt a very different persona’ (which means, ‘I thought it was a good idea to seem a very different type of bloke.’). ‘Do either of you have a knife?’

  ‘What about the one you stuck in my back to keep me quiet?’ Eddie demanded, still reeling at Barking’s transformation.

  ‘That was no knife, Eddie,’ he said. ‘It was a half-chewed carrot I found in your pocket when I put on your clothes.’

  Eddie groaned. He’d been tricked by his own whittling carrot! Skillet, meanwhile, cautiously handed Barking a pocket knife.

  Barking lined up Eddie and the newcomers in front of the hole, so he could keep the gun trained on everybody. Crouching down, but without taking his eyes off anyone for a moment, he cut open one of the sandbags with the knife. And can you guess what poured out? Sand, of course – they were sandbags … but when Barking put his free hand into the sack, he pulled out a fistful of jewels.

  True to form, the jewels glinted in the sunlight, just as all jewels should. He put in his hand again and pulled out more. There were necklaces, earrings, brooches, bracelets: gold, silver, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls.

  ‘How did they get into our sandbags?’ gasped Skillet, Zucchini’s props man, amazed that they’d been carrying around a fortune without even knowing it!

  ‘The sandbags were made at the prison …’ Eddie recalled. ‘Zucchini said that they usually sewed mailbags but they’d sewn these sandbags specially for him –’

  ‘Quiet, please!’ commanded Barking. ‘Mr Skillet. You look to me like a man who is good at knots.’

  *

  Several hours later, when the rector of St Botolph’s was taking a short cut across the field to the church, he noticed someone had been digging near the churchyard wall.

  ‘What a silly place to dig a hole!’ he thought. ‘Anyone might fall in!’ When he peered inside he found the Great Zucchini, his manger Mr Merryweather, his props man Mr Skillet, his lovely assistant Daniella, and a man with a huge walrus moustache all tied together with a single piece of rope. Each had a gag in his – or her – mouth, made from what appeared to be a torn-off strip of hessian sacking. They were sitting on an empty coffin and were speckled with sand.

  Having helped to free them, the rector was later horrified to discover that all but one of them was, for one reason or another, wanted by the police!

 
But what of Eddie and Barking (as Arthur Brunt the billionaire burglar from Barking now chose to be called)? They were in a hearse, rattling at breakneck speed towards the moors, the tiny convict cracking the whip like a mad circus ringmaster.

  Episode 10

  That Sinking Feeling

  In which most of Eddie’s family cram themselves into a basket

  Wolfe Tablet, the famous photographer – and there were very few photographers back then, famous or otherwise – stood in the police inspector’s office, looking out of the window at his precious hot-air balloon.

  ‘I’m very grateful that you retrieved my balloon, inspector,’ he said, ‘but what I fail to understand is why I cannot take it with me. I have a race meeting to attend. I intend to photograph the galloping horses from the air.’

  ‘We need to keep it as evidence,’ said Mr Chevy, the peeler stationed at the door.

  ‘Evidence,’ said the inspector from behind his desk. Well, his loud-check-covered tummy was immediately behind his desk. The rest of him was up against the wall.

  ‘But you have eyewitnesses who can swear in court who stole my balloon and it was your own men who got it back for me. Surely you don’t need to keep it tethered here until the trial?’ the photographer protested.

  ‘The law’s the law,’ said the peeler.

  ‘The law’s the law,’ said the inspector. If the truth be told, the police were desperate to hold on to something. Zucchini and his staff had escaped, taking the recently captured hearse with them. All the police had left in this whole case was the hot-air balloon, so they were more than a little reluctant to let it go. That and the fact that it was great fun to go up and down in when they had nothing better to do … which was why the envelope (the actual balloon part above the basket) was fired up and ready to fly. A bit of a giveaway!

  ‘But the balloon is my livelihood!’ Wolfe Tablet complained. He was an important man. An impressive man. A man used to having his own way. The inspector squirmed in his creaking chair.