by R. A. Spratt
But then, just after lunch—a family-sized coffee cake and a dozen chocolate bars—Nanny Piggins saw a major crime in progress. She saw Mr. Henderson chasing his wife around the kitchen, hitting her on the back. Nanny Piggins immediately called the police. She was actually on the phone with them when she saw Mr. Henderson grab his wife and shake her. Nanny Piggins was so outraged that, despite her doctor’s orders, she got up, hopped over to her dresser, picked up her blowgun, hopped back to the window, and shot Mr. Henderson in the neck with a paralyzing dart (given to her years earlier by a generous South American pygmy who was impressed by her circus performance).
The police arrived moments later (the doughnut shop was just around the corner so the Police Sergeant had not gone far) only to find a distraught Mrs. Henderson wanting to prosecute Nanny Piggins for killing her husband.
As Nanny Piggins was to say later in her official police statement: “How was I to know that Mrs. Henderson was choking on a hazelnut and that Mr. Henderson was simply trying to administer the Heimlich maneuver?”
Once Nanny Piggins had assured Mrs. Henderson that her husband was not dead, he would just be asleep for four or five days, the Police Sergeant banned Nanny Piggins from reporting any more crime for the rest of the day. He even took away her girl-detective novels and gave her a boring police manual titled How to Be a Good Citizen to read instead.
Nanny Piggins was very glum as she sat in the big, empty house. She still had two hours until the children came home from school, and goodness knows how long until Boris came home from teaching the bank tellers to dance (he had not returned home until three AM the previous day because the tellers had such bad attitudes. They kept trying to charge him a transaction fee every time he spoke to them). So Nanny Piggins was sitting there eating chocolate and feeling sorry for herself when she heard the front door slam downstairs.
“That’s odd,” thought Nanny Piggins.
Then she heard a muffled voice and, suddenly, the distinct sound of Mr. Green yelling, “That won’t do! That just won’t do! I won’t stand for it! Do you hear me?!”
Nanny Piggins was intrigued. It was unusual for Mr. Green to be home in the middle of the day, and it was unusual for him to be so assertive. Who could he be yelling at? But just then her thoughts were interrupted by a bloodcurdling feminine scream.
“Yaaaagggghhh!”
Nanny Piggins leaped to her feet. Then the shooting pain in her ankle reminded her that she could not stand, and she fell back down.
“Take that! And that! And that!” yelled Mr. Green, his words punctuated by dull thuds. When the yelling and thudding eventually stopped, Nanny Piggins could hear the sound of Mr. Green breathing heavily. (He was not a man who exercised regularly, because he was rightly embarrassed by his appearance in shorts.)
“Oh no, what have I done?” wailed Mr. Green. “What am I going to do?”
Next Nanny Piggins heard the sound of something being moved about, a few thuds, a whack, a bang, something heavy being dragged along the floor, and then the sound of the front door opening.
Nanny Piggins hobbled to the window, where she saw Mr. Green drag the rolled-up living room rug over to his Rolls-Royce and, with some effort, lift it into the trunk of his car.
“Mr. Green’s killed someone!” exclaimed Nanny Piggins. Unfortunately, she had used her last paralyzing dart on Mr. Henderson only that morning, so she had no way of stopping him from getting away. What was she to do? What would Tracey McWeldon, girl detective, do?
When Derrick, Samantha, and Michael returned home from school, they were surprised to discover Nanny Piggins downstairs, sitting in the living room, wearing a smoking jacket and a deerstalker hat.
“Are you all right, Nanny Piggins?” asked Derrick.
“Is there any particular reason you are dressed up as Sherlock Holmes?”
“Oh, I have never been better,” said Nanny Piggins cryptically. “But someone among us has been a victim of a foul crime.”
Crash!—Boris burst in through the back door and slammed through the kitchen and into the living room. “What’s going on?!” he demanded. “I got a message down at the dance studio saying that a tanker full of honey had smashed into the house.”
“You will have to forgive me. That was merely a pretext to separate you from your students,” said Nanny Piggins.
“Nanny Piggins, are we going to have to ban you from reading detective novels?” asked Michael sternly.
Just then they heard the wail of a police siren and the screech of tires as the Police Sergeant pulled up and leaped out of his car.
“Oh no,” said Samantha. “You aren’t going to be arrested, are you?”
“Don’t worry; if you are, we’ll come down to the prison and smuggle in cakes hidden inside cakes,” promised Derrick.
The Police Sergeant, followed by a young deputy, rushed up the Greens’ front steps, and let himself in. “This had better be good, Nanny Piggins,” said the Police Sergeant, “or I’m arresting you for wasting police time.”
“Ha,” laughed Nanny Piggins. “You’ll be pinning a medal on me for doing your job in a minute. Just you wait and see.”
“Deputy, make a note,” grumbled the Police Sergeant. “This afternoon we must talk to the man at the bookstore about not selling detective novels to anyone who lives in this house.”
“When all of you have gathered around, I shall reveal the perpetrator,” said Nanny Piggins, twirling an imaginary mustache.
“Perhaps we should call a doctor?” suggested Samantha. “Nanny Piggins is on pain medication for her ankle. They may need to lower the dose.”
But before they could call the hospital, someone else burst in through the front door. It was Mr. Green. (Boris immediately put a lampshade on his head to hide.) “Where do I sign? Where do I sign?!” yelled Mr. Green.
“Ah good, we’re all here,” said Nanny Piggins. “Derrick, bar the doors.”
“What’s going on?” demanded Mr. Green. “I got a message saying my children had been accepted into a wilderness-survival television show, and if I rushed home to sign the permission slips I wouldn’t see them for eight months.”
“That was merely my cunning ruse to lure you into my trap,” announced Nanny Piggins.
“Oh no, Nanny Piggins, you’re not going to be arrested and fired, are you?” said Michael resignedly.
“Au contraire; there is a wicked murderer among us, and it is he who shall be arrested and lose his job!” declared Nanny Piggins.
“If you don’t explain what you are talking about this second, I am going to get very angry,” said the Police Sergeant.
“All right, I will begin. I have gathered you all here because at one fifty-seven PM this afternoon I heard Mr. Green murder a woman with the carpet sweeper in this very room!” proclaimed Nanny Piggins.
Mr. Green sat down and dabbed his forehead. He was not accused of murder every day; at least not on any day in the last two and a half years since his wife died. On that occasion he did have to answer some very sticky questions about how Mrs. Green managed to go missing on a crowded boat under such mysterious circumstances. “I did no such thing,” he whimpered.
“Ha!” accused Nanny Piggins. “That’s the excuse all murderers use.”
The Police Sergeant nodded. She was quite right.
“Do you have any evidence?” asked Derrick. Derrick was not as fond of his father as a son usually is, but that did not mean he wanted his father to rot in jail. Also, having lived in the same house as his father for eleven years, Derrick seriously doubted that Mr. Green was capable of doing anything as interesting as committing murder.
“I heard it with my own ears,” explained Nanny Piggins. “At one fifty-six PM I was sitting quietly in my room, on the lookout for criminal activity on the street, when I distinctly heard Mr. Green come home, yell at someone, then beat them repeatedly with a blunt instrument.”
Everyone turned to look at Mr. Green. He whimpered again. “There’s no proof.”
> “Ah, that is where you are wrong. You will note,” said Nanny Piggins, whipping a telescopic pointer out of her sleeve (her years in the circus had taught her to have props at the ready), “that the red armchair is not where it usually is.”
“Gosh! She’s right,” said Samantha. “The red armchair isn’t usually jammed up against the television screen. It’s usually over on the other side of the room by the window.”
“Derrick, if you move the chair to one side, we will be able to observe more physical evidence,” said Nanny Piggins.
Derrick moved the chair, and there in the floorboards were several deep, nasty dents. Everyone gasped.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” said the Police Sergeant.
“It’s going to be a devil of a job to get them out with a disc sander,” said the Police Deputy knowledgably. (He was very fond of doing woodwork in his spare time.)
“And, Samantha, if you reach under the sofa, you will find another item of interest. Make sure you use your handkerchief to pick it up. You don’t want to smudge the fingerprints,” instructed Nanny Piggins.
Samantha reached under the sofa and pulled out a very battered carpet sweeper.
Everyone gasped again.
“That’s going to be no good for cleaning floors anymore,” said Boris (even though he was still hidden under the lampshade).
“And finally I draw your attention to the spot on the floor where the Police Sergeant is standing,” said Nanny Piggins. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” said the Police Sergeant, looking at the floor beneath his feet.
“Exactly!” said Nanny Piggins triumphantly. “Where is the brand-new hearth rug?!”
Everyone gasped for a third time.
“She’s right! Father brought home a new hearth rug last week, and now it’s missing!” exclaimed Michael.
“That is because he”—Nanny Piggins pointed her trotter dramatically at Mr. Green—“used it to roll up his victim and drag her to his car!”
“Deputy, you’d better get out your handcuffs,” said the Police Sergeant.
Mr. Green leaped to his feet. “I can explain,” he wailed.
The Deputy crash-tackled him to the ground.
“What are you doing, Deputy?” asked the Police Sergeant.
“I thought he was trying to escape,” explained the Deputy.
“You were just trying to get in some rugby practice, weren’t you?” chided the Police Sergeant. “All right, sir, if you can explain this damning litany of evidence against you then we’d better have it.”
“I didn’t murder anyone, I swear. I did put the dents in the floor but only because I saw a cockroach and I used the carpet sweeper to kill it,” said Mr. Green.
“Piffle!” said Nanny Piggins. “Look at all the marks on the floor. Why would you beat a cockroach so many times?”
“Because I kept missing,” admitted Mr. Green.
“Oh,” said Nanny Piggins. This actually made sense. They all knew Mr. Green had terrible hand-eye coordination. “But how do you explain the missing carpet? Why would you roll up the carpet and put it in your trunk if there wasn’t a dead body inside?”
“Because there was a dead cockroach squashed into the fibers, so I took it straight to the carpet store to get it cleaned,” shuddered Mr. Green. “It was yucky.”
“Oh,” said Nanny Piggins. “But how do you explain the yelling and the high-pitched feminine scream?”
“That was me,” said Mr. Green. “I was yelling at my secretary on the telephone. She was trying to reschedule my haircut appointment from two PM to two fifteen PM. And I wouldn’t stand for it. I don’t see why I should have to rearrange my day just because my hairdresser has to go to a funeral.”
“But, sir, the high-pitched feminine scream?” asked the Police Sergeant.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The pig must have been hearing things,” said Mr. Green shiftily.
“Sir,” reproached the Police Sergeant.
“All right, all right,” burst out Mr. Green. “I admit it! The cockroach ran up my leg, and I panicked—I took my trousers off. But at that very moment a woman collecting for the Salvation Army came to the door. And when she saw me through the window in my underwear, she screamed.”
“Preposterous! You’ll never be able to prove that,” scoffed Nanny Piggins.
“Well, actually I can,” said Mr. Green sheepishly, as he opened a drawer in the sideboard and took out a Salvation Army collection tin. “She dropped this as she ran away.”
“You were going to hand that in, weren’t you, sir?” said the Police Sergeant sternly.
“Oh yes,” lied Mr. Green.
And so, while the abandoned collection tin proved that Mr. Green was morally bankrupt, it also proved that he was innocent of the charge of murder.
“Oh dear,” said the Police Sergeant. “I’m sorry, Nanny Piggins, I think I really will have to arrest you for wasting police time this time.”
But just then the doorbell rang, and the man from the carpet shop came in. “We got all the cockroach goo out of your carpet, Mr. Green,” he said as he unrolled the rug on the floor.
Now it was the Police Sergeant and the Deputy’s turn to gasp.
“Get out your handcuffs, Deputy, it looks like we’re going to arrest Mr. Green after all,” announced the Police Sergeant.
“What? What for?” asked Mr. Green, desperately trying to guess which one of the many not-quite-legal things he did in his daily life as a tax lawyer that the Police Sergeant might be arresting him for.
“That is the famous Great Luxor Carpet from the Highcrest Mansion that was stolen last week. So either you are a cat burglar or you have received stolen property,” accused the Police Sergeant.
“It was a gift from a client,” protested Mr. Green.
“Why would a client give you one of the most valuable handmade Persian rugs in the entire world?” asked the Police Sergeant.
“He was a friend?” suggested Mr. Green.
“Sir,” chided the Police Sergeant.
“It was a reward for helping him set up an offshore truffle-trading scheme for funneling money out of the country,” blurted Mr. Green, “which technically is not in any way illegal. I know because I had my clerk triple-check the law books.”
“Deputy, get out your notepad. Okay, Mr. Green, tell us, which client? What was his name?” ordered the Police Sergeant.
Mr. Green gulped. But he did as he was told. Much as he hated losing a client to the prison system, he much preferred that to having to spend time in the prison system himself.
And so, just as she had predicted, Nanny Piggins managed to use her recuperation time to foil a gang of wicked international thieves, which just goes to show, if you set yourself goals, you can achieve anything. But Boris and the children were relieved a few days later when Nanny Piggins was able to start walking again, so she could return her energy to being the world’s most glamorous flying pig/nanny, and leave the girl-detective work to the likes of Tracey McWeldon.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nanny Piggins and the Evil Boarding School
anny Piggins and the children were sitting around the dining table having breakfast when Mr. Green came in carrying the mail.
“There’s one for you,” he grumbled as he disrespectfully dumped an envelope in front of Nanny Piggins.
“I wonder what it could be?” said Nanny Piggins. “I hope it isn’t the government again. They are always begging me to become an international super-spy, and I just don’t have the time. International intrigue doesn’t stop once a day for The Young and the Irritable, and I do.”
Nanny Piggins tore open the envelope and was immediately surprised. “Leaping Lamingtons!!!” she exclaimed.
“What is it?” asked Derrick.
“If you’re going to become a super-spy, can we come too?” asked Michael.
“No, it’s better than that,” explained Nanny Piggins. “It’s a letter from the mayor. They are giving away free ch
ocolate at Town Hall this morning between eight forty-six and eight fifty-two AM.”
“That’s awfully specific,” said Samantha.
“Who are we to question free chocolate?” declared Nanny Piggins. “We must go.”
“But we have to go to school,” said Derrick, while jerking his head meaningfully in the direction of his father to remind Nanny Piggins that Mr. Green was still sitting at the table.
“Oh,” said Nanny Piggins. “Perhaps your father will give you permission to take the morning off?” Nanny Piggins knew there was no chance of this, but she thought it was worth asking, just on the off chance that Mr. Green had a brain lapse and agreed.
“I certainly will not,” growled Mr. Green, not even bothering to take the newspaper away from in front of his face.
“Never mind. You go, Nanny Piggins,” said Samantha. “You can tell us all about it when we get back.”
“And take a suitcase!” suggested Michael. “That way you can bring lots home.”
“Good thinking,” agreed Nanny Piggins. “Now, what is the time?”
They all turned to look at the clock. It was 8:39.
“Oh dear,” said Nanny Piggins. “I don’t see how I can send you all off on the school bus and still make it to Town Hall in time.”
“I’ll see the children off,” said Mr. Green.
Nanny Piggins and the children turned and stared at him in astonishment. Rather, they stared at the back of his newspaper because he still had not put it aside.
“You’ll do wh—?” began Nanny Piggins.
But then Derrick grabbed her hand. “Don’t question it, Nanny Piggins. Just grab the opportunity. Find the biggest suitcase in the house and run like the wind!”
Nanny Piggins did not need to be told twice. In less than three seconds, she was out of the house and sprinting down the street with her circus trunk, a giant suitcase, and the biggest Tupperware container from the kitchen.
When she returned twenty minutes later, Nanny Piggins was a less-than-happy pig. Instead of sprinting, she trudged, and instead of carrying her containers, she dragged them. And not because they were heavy, but because she was heavy of heart. There had been no free chocolate at Town Hall. The doors were not even open. Nanny Piggins had to kick them in with her trotter, which was not easy given that they were the type of heavy two-hundred-year-old antique doors especially designed to stop angry peasants from kicking them down and demanding their taxes back.
