Dubious Deeds Read online

  Foreword

  In which the author blathers on about this and that whilst you skip the page

  It’s hard for me to remember a time without Eddie Dickens. I wrote the very first Eddie Dickens adventure in the late 1990s as a series of letters to my nephew, Ben; it was published as Awful End in 2000; and the final Further Adventure was published in 2006. But it didn’t end there. Eddie ended up being published in over thirty languages – each foreign-language edition using David Roberts’s fantastic illustrations – and I still get to travel the globe today because of that one boy, his crazy relatives and six adventures. So, yup, Eddie Dickens really did change my life.

  And, over these years, I’ve often been asked who’s my favourite character and I’ve always skirted around the issue, pussyfooted about, and mixed my metaphors. Here’s the truth: I love Even Madder Aunt Maud and her stuffed stoat Malcolm, which is why what happens in these Further Adventures is all the more shocking … Now read on!

  PHILIP ARDAGH

  England, 2014

  Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Book One: Dubious Deeds

  Dedication

  A Message from the Author

  Contents

  1 The Tartan Tiger

  2 A Mixed Clan

  3 A Surprise for All Concerned

  4 A Clash of Wills

  5 Many a MacMuckle …

  6 Disputed Deeds

  7 Something in the Air

  8 A Highland Fling

  9 A Right Royal Arrival

  10 Not Quite What It Seems

  11 Thwarted Plots!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Book Two: Horrendous Habits

  Dedication

  A Message from the Author

  Contents

  1 A New Arrival

  2 Disaster Strikes

  3 Flat Out

  4 A Crash after the Crunch

  5 Getting to Know You

  6 The Game’s Afoot

  7 Caped Capers

  8 On the Case

  9 Two Neds

  10 ‘Here’s Eddie!’

  11 Falling Into Place

  12 A Conclusion of Sorts

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Book Three: Final Curtain

  Dedication

  A Message from the Author

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 Is This a Dagger?

  2 Goodbyes, Hellos & Tallyhos!

  3 A Cracking Time

  4 Doctor! Doctor!

  5 Surprising News

  6 Making a Splash

  7 Remembrance of Things Past

  8 Lurkin’ with Gherkin

  9 Warts and All

  Intermission

  10 State of Play

  11 An Old Acquaintance

  12 A Blast from the Past

  13 Eddie on the Case!

  14 Den of Thieves

  15 The Final Act

  16 The Grand Finale

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Dubious Deeds

  Book One of the Further Adventures of Eddie Dickens Trilogy

  This one’s for Scottish Lassie,

  Tessa MacGregor,

  and for Aussie Sheila, Louise Sherwin-Stark.

  A big professional ‘thank you’ to you both.

  A Message from the Author

  Who’s glad to be back

  Eddie Dickens is back and this time he’s angry! Well, that’s not strictly true, but it’d be a good line to have running along the bottom of the poster if this were a movie.

  Eddie’s adventures didn’t end with the Eddie Dickens Trilogy. Life had a lot more in store for him, and here’s the first of his Further Adventures. Dubious Deeds finds Eddie where I am right now, in the heathery Highlands of Scotland. He may be away from the familiar surroundings of Awful End but you can be sure that his family are very much in mind.

  So raise your stuffed stoats in the air and let the story commence …

  PHILIP ARDAGH

  Scotland, 2003

  Contents

  1 The Tartan Tiger,

  In which Eddie sets foot in a strange country and in warm horse manure

  2 A Mixed Clan,

  In which Eddie meets more McFeeeeeeees and other local wildlife

  3 A Surprise for All Concerned,

  In which the reason for Eddie’s trip to Scotland is revealed

  4 A Clash of Wills,

  In which Eddie waves a temporary bye-bye to his lawyer and meets some strange fruit-eaters

  5 Many a MacMuckle …,

  In which Eddie is given a local history lesson and a punch on the nose

  6 Disputed Deeds,

  In which Eddie gets a guided tour and a right royal surprise

  7 Something in the Air,

  In which Eddie gets to confront a suspect and consume some rather nice cake

  8 A Highland Fling,

  In which plans are made and we meet the Q-PUS

  9 A Right Royal Arrival,

  In which a jam-filled biscuit and a lone piper get trodden on by royal feet

  10 Not Quite What It Seems,

  In which Eddie makes a discovery and the author writes the longest episode in the book

  11 Thwarted Plots!,

  In which Eddie is both wrong and right and Malcolm plays his part

  Episode 1

  The Tartan Tiger

  In which Eddie sets foot in a strange country and in warm horse manure

  Scotland was nothing like Eddie Dickens had imagined because Eddie Dickens had never imagined Scotland. All things Scottish were all the rage when Eddie arrived in the heathery Highlands, but no one could accuse the Dickens family of being swayed by fashion. Eddie was there on business. One of Scotland’s biggest fans in those days was Queen Victoria, who was on the throne at the time, except for when she nipped to the loo or made public appearances, thus giving her subjects the opportunity to try to assassinate her (which was also a popular pastime in those days). Victoria (whose first name was really Alexandrina) had a castle in Scotland and once had a Scottish ghillie as her favourite. If you’re wondering whether a ghillie is fish, fowl or geological feature, I should tell you that the answer is ‘none of the above’. A ghillie is a Scottish servant, and Queen Victoria’s Scottish servant was a rather tall, hairy chap called John Brown who is one of the few Scottish characters in this book whose name doesn’t begin with ‘Mac’ or ‘Mc’.

  The Scotsman who greeted Eddie at the tiny railway station was also very hairy but was very, very small indeed.

  ‘I’m McFeeeeeeee,’ he said, lifting Eddie’s carpetbag down from the railway carriage which, if you’re an American, you’d probably call a ‘railroad car’, but it’s the same difference. Either way, it was pulled by that famous London-to-Scotland locomotive, the Tartan Tiger.

  The way the little ginger-haired man said ‘McFeeeeeeee’ made Eddie suspect that it was spelled with seven ‘e’s, but he was wrong. There were eight and, if you don’t believe me, you can count them. See?

  Eddie used to travel with a large trunk but – ever since a nasty incident where Even Madder Aunt Maud (who was really his great-aunt) had stowed away on board a ship inside it – he now liked to travel with luggage that was smaller than his smallest relative, thus ensuring none of them could be hiding inside.

  ‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr McFeeeeeee,’ said Eddie.

  ‘That should be eight “e”s,’ said Mr McFeeeeeeee.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Eddie, stepping on to the platform, closing the door of the railway carriage behind him.

  ‘You said my name as though it were spelled with only seven “e”s,
Master Edmund, and there are eight,’ Angus McFeeeeeeee explained. He spoke with a very broad Scottish accent. Actually, he spoke with his mouth, but the words that came out were in broad Scots.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Eddie repeated, but as an apology this time rather than meaning ‘what-do-you-mean?’ … if you see what I mean?

  ‘I forgive you,’ said McFeeeeeeee, ‘what with you being a wee Sassenach and all.’

  ‘A wee whaty-what?’ Eddie asked politely. He had discovered early on in life that, if you don’t understand something or know what’s going on, it’s best to ask … or who knew where it might lead?

  ‘A Sassenach is someone not from the Highlands,’ explained McFeeeeeeee. ‘A foreigner.’

  ‘I’ve never been a foreigner before,’ Eddie confessed. He didn’t feel any different, which, the truth be told, made him feel a little disappointed.

  ‘You’ve always been a wee foreigner to me,’ the man pointed out.

  ‘I suppose I must have been,’ said Eddie. ‘Funny to think that I’ve always been a foreigner to some people, without really thinking about it.’

  Back in VR’s day – VR being short for Victoria Regina which was Latin for ‘Queen Victoria’ but using up more letters of the alphabet and italics – the English thought that everyone else in their right minds would want to be English too, so being a foreigner was being second best. And shifty. And untrustworthy.

  And here was McFeeeeeeee not only calling him a foreigner, but a wee one. Eddie knew what ‘wee’ meant – apart from that, of course. It meant ‘small’ and he thought it was a bit of a cheek to be called a ‘wee’ anything by a fully grown man who was actually smaller than he was and who, with that tartan tam-o’-shanter on his head, resembled nothing more than a hairy mushroom!

  A tam-o’-shanter is a type of hat. (Have a look at the picture of McFeeeeeeee, which should be around here somewhere if I remembered to ask the illustrator to draw one.) Tartan – a checked pattern – requires a little more explanation but, have no fear, one of the characters will do that later, thus saving me the bother of having to do so now. (I have plants to water and cats to feed.)

  Mr Angus McFeeeeeeee was the Dickens family lawyer in Scotland. Like the Queen, the Dickens family – or, to be more precise, Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud – had property in Scotland but, unlike Her Majesty, they very rarely went there. They preferred to stay in their treehouse and hollow cow, respectively, back in the garden of Awful End (where Eddie now lived with his parents).

  Back in the days when Even Madder Aunt Maud was no one’s mad aunt, let alone an even madder great-aunt, she was just plain Mad Mrs Jack Dickens. You may think that ‘Jack’ was an odd name for a woman, especially one called Maud, but married women were referred to by their husbands’ first as well as last names. (It’s true, I tell you!) If you were married to a Bill Bloggs, you were called Mrs Bill Bloggs. Before Maud had married, though, her maiden – unmarried – name had been MacMuckle so, until she and Jack Dickens tied the knot, she was plain Mad Maud MacMuckle.

  (‘Tying the knot’ is another way of saying ‘getting married’, by the way, and probably dates back to some strange knot-tying ritual but I’ve no idea what, and the thought of knot-tying doesn’t excite me enough to go and look it up. If, however, string is your thing, then perhaps you could investigate this one for yourself, string and knots being so closely associated. But please leave me out of it. I don’t want to get involved. Don’t write and tell me the answer. Please. I mean it. If I really wanted to know that badly, I could always visit the Rope Museum at Mickleham Priory and see if anyone there knows. After all, rope is really very fat string, isn’t it? But ‘very fat string’ sounds stupid, so someone came up with another name for it. And, anyway, perhaps it was a hanky which had a knot tied in it in this marriage ritual and not string – fat or otherwise – at all.)

  Meanwhile, back in the adventure: according to Even Madder Aunt Maud, the MacMuckle family had once owned huge swathes of Scotland (not that Eddie knew what a swathe was) and a number of very fine Scottish properties. Now, however, all that was left in family hands was Tall Hall by the MacMuckle Falls, which Maud had inherited and, therefore, by law now belonged to her husband. (In other words, if a woman was lucky enough to get married back then, all she ended up with was her husband’s names and all he ended up with was everything she owned: property, money, everything! Unless, of course, your name was Queen Victoria, then the rules were conveniently different.)

  Apparently, Tall Hall by the MacMuckle Falls was more than just a manor house but less than a castle. The clue is in the name. The MacMuckles had started to build it with a castle in mind, and had got as far as erecting some very fine, tall walls but then the money had run out, so they put an ordinary roof on it. There were no exciting battlements or turrets. Hence Tall Hall. The MacMuckle Falls that Tall Hall was next to was rather a grand name for a rather unimpressive waterfall.

  ‘It was more like a burst pipe than one of Nature’s wonders,’ Even Madder Aunt Maud had told Eddie before his departure. Soon he’d find out for himself, because Tall Hall by the MacMuckle Falls was Eddie’s destination but, for impatient readers, here’s a picture of both the house and the falls in the meantime:

  Hasn’t that nice illustrator David Roberts done a lovely job, as always? He should think about taking up drawing professionally.

  Those of you who’ve read the Eddie Dickens Trilogy – hi there, I thought I recognised you – will be aware that, more often than not, Eddie never reaches his destination or takes a very, very long time getting there, so you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that Eddie will reach Tall Hall by the MacMuckle Falls near the beginning of Episode 3. Author’s honour. Which is the same as ‘scout’s honour’, except from an author who was never in the scouts. Perhaps I should have said ‘on my honour’, which is nice and old-fashioned and fits in with the feel of this ‘Further Adventure’.

  ‘When will we reach Tall Hall, Mr McFeeeeeeeee?’ Eddie asked the Scottish lawyer as he followed him out of the tiny country station and into a lane, where a pony and trap was waiting for them.

  ‘You’re to spend the night in my house and tomorrow I shall take you there,’ said Mr McFeeeeeeee. ‘And that was nine “e”s you used just then to say my name, Master Edmund. Don’t you go overdoing it now, laddie.’

  ‘It’s an unusual name, Mr McFeeeeeeee,’ said Eddie, being extremely careful to get it right this time. (Angus McFeeeeeeee obviously had a very keen ear when it came to the pronunciation of his name.)

  The lawyer shook his head. ‘Not in these parts it ain’t, laddie, though the spelling is. There’s many a McFee and MacFee – with an “m-a-c” – in the Highlands, but ours is the only branch of the clan with quite so many “e”s.’ Eddie could hear the pride in the little man’s voice.

  McFeeeeeeee put Eddie’s carpetbag in the back of the trap and climbed into the driver’s seat. Eddie jumped up behind him. With a flick of the reins, they were off.

  ‘What exactly is a clan?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘A tribe. A family,’ Angus McFeeeeeeee explained. ‘My particular branch of the family were fearsome fighters. Back in the days when we were openly at war with you English, my ancestors used to be famous for jumping out of trees on to unsuspecting English soldiers riding beneath them … and strangling them with their bare hands.’

  ‘H-H-How interesting,’ said Eddie, politely. He looked at the tiny, mushroom-like man at the reins of the pony and trap and couldn’t imagine him coming from fearsome fighter stock.

  ‘My ancestors wanted their victims to know which clan had defeated them before they gasped their last breath,’ Angus McFeeeeeeee continued. ‘So, as they jumped from their treeeeeeees, they shouted McFeeeeeeee!’

  ‘And their battle-cry became your unique branch of the family name? Amazing,’ said Eddie. ‘What about the MacMuckles? Did they go around killing the English too?’

  The lawyer frowned, his eyebrows – like two furry ginger cat
erpillars – forming a ‘v’ above his eyes. ‘There are those who claim that the MacMuckles were English,’ he said, as though the word ‘English’ was something unpleasant, like dog poo. ‘There’re some historians who argue that they began life as the Mac-less Muckle family and that the “Mac” was added at a later date. Many a true Scot wouldnae have anything to do with them.’

  Eddie thought about Even Madder Aunt Maud. She certainly didn’t sound Scottish. ‘Do people get on with the MacMuckles nowadays?’ asked Eddie.

  The trap went over a bump as the horse left the lane and set off down a rutted track. Both Angus McFeeeeeeee and Eddieeeeeeee – oops, sorry, that should, of course, be Eddie. I was wondering how long it would be before I got confused – bounced up and down on the wooden bench seat.

  ‘Short cut,’ the lawyer explained.

  ‘The MacMuckles,’ Eddie repeated. ‘Do they get on with their neighbours nowadays?’

  ‘There are no MacMuckles,’ said the Scotsman. ‘Well, that’s not strictly true, of course. I should say that your great-aunt is the last of the MacMuckles; though, technically, she is now a Dickens.’

  ‘The whole family – the whole clan – has died out?’ asked Eddie, obviously amazed. ‘I’m amazed,’ he added, which he needn’t have done. (I said it was obvious that he was, didn’t I?)

  ‘Well, they couldn’t keep marrying each other and the other clans wouldnae have anything to do with them, so they eventually began to die out until only your great-aunt was left,’ said the lawyer.

  ‘Wow!’ mused Eddie. ‘So Even Madder Aunt Maud is the Last of the MacMuckles of Tall Hall by the MacMuckle Falls!’