Dubious Deeds Read online

  ‡ If I knew what cleaning crystals were, I’d explain in a footnote right here.

  § It was later in life that his lordship began to miss the isolation of a besieged town, and so took to living down a hole for three years, only coming out to eat four square meals a day or to have a wash and a shave, and to sleep, of course.

  Episode 6

  Making a Splash

  In which a doctor pays two visits and later pays the price

  It transpired – which is a posh word for ‘turned out’ – that the Dr Moot who came to attend poor Alfie Grout and his terrible cough was indeed the same Dr Moot who’d challenged Mad Uncle Jack to a duel all those years before and had shot him twice, but on the one occasion. On the surface, there appeared to be no hard feelings between the two men, though it was obvious in a moment that, to use old-fashioned parlance, he still held a torch for EMAM despite her change of circumstance and the passing years (or, to put it in slightly more modern English: he still fancied Maud something rotten, despite her being married and having aged like a prune).

  There was nothing he’d like more than to sit with Even Madder Aunt Maud in a secluded spot in the garden, holding her tiny hand in his and reading her poems about larks and dewy leaves and sublimely beautiful sunsets tinged with pink. (I know this for a fact because I was given exclusive access to his diary written at the time.) But, in much the same way that the detective inspector, who more often than not turns up in these books, was a good policeman, Dr Moot was a good doctor. At that precise moment, his interests lay first and foremost with his new patient, Alfie Grout, who was married to the niece of the lovely Mad Maud MacMuckle.

  It didn’t take Dr Moot long to realise what was wrong with Alfie. As a gypsy, he’d never had access to conventional medicine and, as I’ve explained elsewhere, the particular band of gypsies he was part of, did not include a healer familiar with the old ways and folklore of nature’s medicine. Instead, he’d had to make do with chewing lucky heather and that, no pun intended, was the root of the problem. He was full of the stuff. He was a giant version of one of those little pillows stuffed with sweet-smelling lavender that you give your grandmother for Christmas, and she puts it away in a drawer to give to someone else the following year.

  ‘To use a purely non-medical term, Mrs Grout,’ said Dr Moot in muted tones, in the corner of the bedroom out of Alfie’s earshot, ‘he is packed to the gills with the stuff. Once he’s free from the heather, I’m sure you’ll find him improved beyond recognition.’

  ‘I’ll have him stop eating it at once,’ said Hetty. ‘How long before it – er – passes through the system?’

  Dr Moot, who had no humorous characteristics in appearance or character (except for a remarkably droopy moustache and the extraordinary matter of his being besotted by Even Madder Aunt Maud), flipped open his bag and produced a small dark-brown bottle of pills with a handwritten label gummed to one side. ‘Give him one of these every morning at the same time,’ he instructed. ‘No more than one, and it must be swallowed without food or drink.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said. It was such a relief that Alfie was going to be fine, and to speak to a sane adult once in a while.

  There was a problem, though. It lay with the ‘swallowed without food or drink’ part. Swallowing the pills without food wasn’t a problem because one of the last things Uncle Alfie felt like doing in his current condition – hacking cough and being full of not-so-lucky heather – was eating. What he felt like doing was pretty much what he was doing, which was being propped up in bed groaning (and he did it very well). The problem was not being allowed to wash down the pills with a drink; not even a glass of water.

  The pills weren’t enormous. They certainly weren’t nearly as large as the ones the vet had insisted on giving Edgar, the horse Eddie had ‘acquired’ from Mr and Mrs Cruel-Streak when he’d hitched him up to the cow-shaped carnival float – yup, we’re talking Marjorie – jam-packed full of children escaping from St Horrid’s Home for Grateful Orphans. Edgar had needed the pills when he was being weaned off the diet of rich food the Cruel-Streaks had fed him – which included cheese and biscuits at the end of every meal, washed down with some fine vintage port – and put back onto more ordinary horse fare, of the bag-of-oats variety. These pills had been impressively large. Once, after a particularly fretful game of bridge – not the card game, but a party game of the Dickenses’ own invention which involved two teams trying to build a structure long enough and strong enough to support two ‘team’ members (one on the shoulders of the other) running across the lake at Awful End – Eddie’s mother (aka Mrs Dickens, aka Florinda) had somehow found one of Edgar’s horse pills, and had stuffed it in her mouth for comfort. She had no intention of swallowing it and probably couldn’t have even if she’d tried. But she did suck it, and suffered the consequences of its medicinal effects.

  No one is absolutely clear what followed, least of all Mrs Dickens herself. It was Dawkins who discovered her the following morning in the orangery,* dressed in nothing but a pair of frilly drawers and a bearskin rug, brandishing a poker in one hand and an out-of-date copy of Bradshaw’s railway timetable in the other. The rather startled gentleman’s gentleman later told Ex-Private Gorey – this was before he died, of course, there’d have been little point in talking to him otherwise – that the lady had been screaming at the top of her voice that someone should hurry up and invent the telephone (which, of course, someone already had).

  Whoa! That illustration came as a bit of a surprise, didn’t it? I mean, you’d have thought it would have gone somewhere on the previous page next to the part where I first mentioned Eddie’s mother in frilly drawers and bearskin rug … but, no, just when you are lulled into thinking that such a vivid scene will be left to your own imaginations, you turn the page and: POW, this massive image hits you fair and square – well fair and oblong, actually, which is a friendlier word for a rectangle – right between the eyes.

  As well as being an Eddie Dickens first – it being the first time we’ve had a full-page David Roberts drawing in the middle of the text – it also gives us an opportunity to take in more of the scene. If you look closely at the bearskin rug, for example, you’ll see that it’s not – I repeat NOT – the same bearskin rug as the one Mad Uncle Jack collapsed next to on his study floor when he was pronged in the bottom with a toasting fork that time by Even Madder Aunt Maud. It has a very different expression on its face.

  Then there’s the strange carving on that rather nice stand by the big potted fern. That’s one of Eddie’s father’s sculptures. Research suggests that it depicts ‘Jason with the Golden Fleece from Classical Mythology’ though, to me, it looks more like ‘Tree Man with a Clump of Moss from the Car Boot Sale’.

  You’ll also have noticed – and, if not, you’ll now have to flip back a page to have a look – that there’s a pane of broken glass in the orangery. This was probably caused by Mad Uncle Jack’s beakiest of beaky noses on the occasion (not previously recounted) when he wanted to prove that he knew every inch of his own home so well that he could walk around it equally well in the dark as in daylight. That was the same occasion that he broke his foot, a pile of ‘best’ china, and fell out of an upstairs window. This occurred in the days before Eddie and his parents lived at Awful End, so Jack had had to be aided by the then Bishop of Durham, the dinner guest to whom he had made the original (ridiculous) claim.

  This only leaves one or two more items of interest to point out in the splendid illustration, before returning to the main action of this final Further Adventure. Firstly, there’s the floor which, at first glance, appears to be made of traditional black and white floor tiles, laid out in the traditional checked pattern. Look again, and you’ll see that although the white tiles are indeed white tiles, the black ‘tiles’ are, in truth, very large slices of dried pressed meat.

  These had been intended as supplies for an expedition Mad Uncle Jack had been planning to lead in an attempt to discover the Northwest P
assage, whether or not it had been discovered already. Not the northwest passage at Awful End (which led from the boot room to the tack room, or from the tack room to the boot room, depending upon which direction you were going) but the fabled Northwest Passage, a possible route between Europe and the Orient which would make sailing times so much shorter.

  Mad Uncle Jack had given up on the expedition when he remembered that he didn’t like cold places. The crew he’d assembled got on so well together (without MUJ) that, when the expedition was abandoned, rather than disbanding, they remained friends and opened a seafood restaurant with a nautical theme that became so successful that they opened another one and then another one. Today, there’s a whole chain of these restaurants. (You can read about them in an out-of-print paperback entitled Recipe For Success.) Never one to waste perfectly good dried pressed meat, Mad Uncle Jack had had the black tiles of the orangery floor pulled up, and the meat trimmed to fit and laid in their place. As to what he did with the black tiles, everyone forgot.

  And finally? See that little picture in the oval frame, next to the stuffed heron in the domed glass case? Even Madder Aunt Maud drew that when she was a little girl in Scotland. It’s of a butterfly drinking a tankard of foaming ale.

  *

  ‘I can’t swallow the pill without water,’ said Uncle Alfie, between splutters, the first time he tried.

  Aunt Hetty urged him to try again, but it was no good. ‘Try chewing it,’ she suggested. That was no good either. It was rock hard, and his teeth weren’t in the best of condition. ‘I’ll see if I can grind it into a powder,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back soon, darling.’

  Aunt Hetty hurried downstairs into the kitchen and looked for the pestle and mortar. She found the mortar – the bowl part – soon enough, but the pestle – the mini-club part – was nowhere to be seen, which was hardly surprising. Even Madder Aunt Maud had drawn a fish face on it and thrown it into the little formal ornamental pond in the rose garden, for Annabelle to play with.

  Rummaging in a drawer by the sink, Aunt Hetty found a steakbeater: an enormous square-headed wooden hammer with some nasty spikes on its head, designed for tenderising meat.

  Eddie’s Aunt Hetty placed the pill on a cutting block on the kitchen table, raised the steakbeater and brought it down with a resounding crash. The pill didn’t break, but the huge wooden hammer did, its head flying loose and hitting –

  Now, I must pause here because I want you to appreciate the problems of being an author. Someone is about to get hit by the head of the steakbeater.

  In previous books, in this self-same kitchen, we’ve had a stray diamond ring (used to grade the size of broad beans) hit Malcolm and subsequently swallowed, in error, by Even Madder Aunt Maud. We’ve had a piece of devilled kidney fly through the air which, once again deflected by Malcolm, became lodged in the brim of the stovepipe hat of that fairly well-known engineer, Fandango Jones.

  Elsewhere, we’ve had Eddie’s father, Mr Dickens, hit by a falling chimney, fall from a tree (following an explosion), and fall from a scaffolding rig onto Dawkins, plus Eddie himself falling from a horse and trap into a gorse bush …

  … and here we go again. Accidents aren’t unusual around the place, and yet another one might be seen as ‘old hat’. But don’t blame the messenger. Another accident there was, and I’m here to tell it like it is.

  The flying chunk of wood hit none other than Dr Moot who’d returned to the house that following morning on the pretext of seeing his patient, Alfie Grout, but amongst other things, really in the hope of seeing his beloved Maud again. Instead, he saw stars, or blue birds tweeting around his head, or whatever it is one sees on being knocked unconscious. There was a lot of blood.

  Mad Uncle Jack was one of the first on the scene. He’d woken up in his treehouse, washed and shaved at the foot of the ladder with the aid of a mirror – one shard to look into and one particularly sharp piece to use as a razor – and had wandered through the back door in search of a piece of string. Instead, he was confronted by a bloodied Dr Moot lying next to a sack of potatoes.

  ‘Shot him did you?’ he asked Hetty. ‘Not on my account, I hope? Let bygones be bygones, I always say.’

  Aunt Hetty was dumbfounded. Speechless and still brandishing the wooden handle of the steakbeater, she stared down at her unintended victim, shaking in shock at what she’d done.

  ‘Suppose we’d better dispose of the body before that confounded Chief Inspector Bunyon comes sniffing about the place,’ said MUJ, matter of factly. Hetty wasn’t sure whether her uncle was joking or not. (Bunyon was the detective inspector I referred to a while back. He’d been recently promoted.)

  MUJ took charge. He bent down and took Dr Moot’s pulse. ‘Still alive, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Assuming, that is, that you wanted him dead.’

  ‘I – I –’ Hetty spluttered. Mad Uncle Jack already had his hands under the doctor’s arms and was dragging him out of the room. Hetty feared that he might be about to bury him or something. She dashed out of the back door after him.

  As Mad Uncle Jack dragged the unconscious Moot across a brick courtyard, Eddie appeared around the corner, hands in pockets, humming to himself. He stopped in his tracks. Eddie thought nothing Mad Uncle Jack did could surprise him any more. Here was a man who lived up a tree and paid for everything with dried fish … yet, here he now was heaving the blood covered body of Moo-Cow Moot out of the kitchen: Moo-Cow Moot who’d once shot Jack twice (but on the one occasion) and who’d obviously still been in love with his wife.

  Did Eddie think, even for a fleeting moment, that MUJ had murdered his rival? We have no way of knowing for sure. What we can be sure of, though, is that Eddie wondered what on Earth was going on.

  ‘Tap!’ MUJ shouted over to him.

  ‘Tap?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Tap!’ MUJ repeated, making the conversation sound like one involving Detective Chief Inspector Bunyon, who was the past master at repeating what the previous person had just said. Mad Uncle Jack jerked his head in the direction of an outside tap – that’s a faucet, my American chums – set into a wall.

  Eddie ran over and switched it on. There was a spluttering belch followed by an icy jet of water cascading to the ground. With one final heave, his great-uncle unceremoniously dumped Dr Moot in its path. The water had its desired effect. Dr Moot spluttered almost as much as the tap and sat up. The blood momentarily washed from the wound on his forehead, Eddie could make out a strange pattern on his skin. It was almost as if someone had hit him with a steakb-e-a-t-e-r …

  Eddie gasped. What was that thing mild-mannered Aunt Hetty was holding in her hand?

  * An orangery is like a lemonery, but for oranges.

  Episode 7

  Remembrance of Things Past

  In which readers are given a short account of the death of Malcontent, and meet a very short man

  Once upon a time, not that long ago, there lived a man named Squire Dickens and he owned all the land as far as the eye could see (and he had very good eyesight). The squire had a number of children, but his son-and-heir was Malcontent Dickens, whom the less cloth-eared of you may remember my having mentioned before. The first thing Malcontent did on inheriting Awful End when his father died, was to have it pulled down, and the Awful End that Eddie knew built in its place.

  Today, it’s one of the finest examples of a Victorian manor house in Britain, in either private or public hands. The only slight shame is that some of the building materials Malcontent used were substandard to say the least: downright shoddy would be more accurate, which is why parts of it were crumbling just a few years after Malcontent’s death (and partly to blame for the chimney landing on Eddie’s father that time). Such materials included bits of the old house, bits found lying around, and even bits stolen from nearby walls and other houses. The story goes that the vicarage over at Stourgate disappeared overnight, with the vicar and his favourite cat, Hook, still in it.

  Possibly the finest room in the entire house was t
he private chapel, with richly carved woodwork throughout. Malcontent was not a particularly religious man but, just to be on the safe side, prayed seven or eight times a day, and more on Sundays, and had an effigy of God on a cloud in his bedroom. The woodwork in the chapel and the effigy in the bedroom were carved by a master-craftsman by the name of Geo Gibbons. I assume that Geo was shot for George – very short, in fact – but this hardly matters because, ever since he first picked up an awl – which may sound like a sea-bird but is, apparently, some form of woodworking tool – he was known as Grinning Gibbons. Why? Because carving wood made him grin like an idiot. Here’s a diagram to prove it:

  Hmmm. The idiot that David Roberts drew reminds me of someone … Now, where was I? Yes, Malcontent Dickens, son of Squire Dickens. He lived into his fifties but had had every intention of living far longer. Sadly, Fate had had other ideas (which is also why we’re left with two ‘had had’s together in a few short lines). Fate is often spelled with a capital ‘F’ – and not just at the beginning of sentences – because it’s such an important thing. It’s Fate which decides whether you’re the one who wins the outsized cuddly polar bear in the raffle, or whether it’s you or the person next to you who gets soaked in muddy water when the passing buffalo stampede the water hole.

  In the case of Dr Malcontent Dickens, Fate decreed that he be walking past Wyndham Field the day that the stalls and tents of the Lamberley Fayre were pitched on it, just as Count Orville the Amazing Human Cannonball was fired from his custom-built cannon … and Fate decided that the cannon would inexplicably lurch and tilt down at the point of firing so, instead of his usual trajectory of up-and-over the heads of the cheering crowds, Count Orville (whose real name was Thomas Plunke) flew past the startled onlookers to their right, and ploughed into Eddie’s great-grandfather. The human cannonball survived, not least because he’d been wearing body armour, including a metal helmet of his own design. Malcontent Dickens didn’t, not least because the human cannonball had been wearing body armour, including a metal helmet of his own design.