Dubious Deeds

by Philip Ardagh

  Back to the receiving end of violence. Mad Uncle Jack had been stabbed in the bottom with a toasting fork and regularly fell out of his treehouse, and both of Eddie’s parents had been victims of the two explosions already outlined, and Eddie himself had been kidnapped by escaped convicts once and locked up in that orphanage and a police cell or two …

  … but, otherwise, he and his family had never really been touched by violence. Eddie suspected that this was not the case with the MacMuckles, who seemed almost eager to get involved in fisticuffs, as his nose attested. Well, the male MacMuckles, anyway. He looked across the table at Miss Roberta – Robbie – and caught her looking at him. She looked down at her lap, blushing.

  Angus McFeeeeeeee was very keen that the MacMuckles ‘or whoever they are’ leave Tall Hall whilst the matter was being resolved. As far as he was concerned, it was down to them to prove their right to the property and not the other way around, the house having been in the Dickenses’ hands for many years without anyone contesting their right, and with the deeds in his safe at his office in town.

  ‘If we let them stay, they may refuse to leave. They may steal property rightfully belonging to your family. They may –’

  ‘And how do you intend to get them out?’ Eddie interrupted the lawyer. They were whispering in a dusty corner of the great hall, below one of the many stags’ heads mounted on the wall; one of the hundreds of victims of MacMuckle hunts over the years. ‘Will you bring in the police? We could end up with a full-scale battle on our hands, Mr McFeeeeeeee! I know that you’re a lawyer and I’m just a boy but I’m here representing my family, and … and I think it’d be best if we let the MacMuckles stay here while everything gets sorted out. The house’d be empty otherwise, anyway.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Angus McFeeeeeeee, somewhat reluctantly, ‘but I’ll have to write to your great-uncle for further instructions.’

  With the news that the Dickenses’ lawyer wasn’t about to try to have them thrown out, the MacMuckles became civil once more; almost friendly, some of them.

  ‘I’d like to stay and look around Tall Hall, whoever it rightfully belongs to,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Can I show him?’ asked Robbie.

  Nelly, the girl’s mother, shook her head. ‘No, let Hamish,’ she said, ‘by way of an apology for what he did to ya, laddie.’

  Eddie would far rather have had the guided tour from the heather-smelling Miss Roberta than the hairy nose-puncher. (By putting a hyphen between the words ‘nose’ and ‘puncher’, I’m making it clear that it’s the nose-puncher who was hairy and not the noses he punched. If he were a non-hairy puncher of hairy noses, I would have written either ‘hairy nose puncher’ without any hyphens or ‘hairy-nose puncher’ like this. If he were a hairy puncher of hairy noses, I would probably have given up altogether. As for describing Robbie/Roberta as ‘heather-smelling’, there’s a problem in English that ‘smelling’ can mean to smell something (as in ‘he smells the cheese’) or to smell of something (as in ‘he smells of cheese’) which is why this old joke works:

  MAUD: My Malcolm has no nose.

  EDDIE: How does he smell?

  MAUD: Stoaty.

  In this instance, I mean that Robbie smelt of heather (as did her hanky) because she was wearing toilet water, which may sound like something that needs mopping up but was, in this case, water with crushed heather in it, making a kind of weak smelling-of-heather perfume. She may, of course, have gone out of her way to run through the wild heather, rubbing her hands against the flowers to release their scent and sniff it in, but that’s not what I meant.

  Phew! I’m pleased to have clarified that.)

  *

  It didn’t take Eddie long to realise who little Hamish MacMuckle reminded him of. Why, it was young Magnus McFeeeeeeee, of course: the lawyer’s son. Admittedly, Magnus didn’t have a great big red beard covering most of his face and hadn’t (yet) punched Eddie on the nose, but Eddie suspected that he’d very much like to, what with Eddie being English and all that! Both Hamish and Magnus reminded Eddie of coiled springs – not unlike the ones in his mother’s home-made sandwiches – full of energy and waiting to ‘BOING!’.

  Hamish’s guided tour of Tall Hall was certainly fast and consisted more of grunts and single words rather than fully formed sentences, all spoken in broad Scots: ‘… another bathroom … bedroom … bedroom … damp patch … wardrobe …’ Although Eddie was probably taller than him, he found it difficult to keep up with the little nose-bopping Scotsman.

  ‘How long have you been staying here?’ asked Eddie as they hurried down yet another flight of servants’ stairs at the back of the house (far more cramped than the grand, ornately carved wooden staircase which the owners would usually have used).

  ‘Wuz born here,’ said Hamish, charging through an open doorway into a large kitchen.

  ‘But I thought this place had been empty for years.’

  ‘Has been,’ said Hamish, marching them past a long kitchen table on which lay apple cores, skins, nutshells and the peel of a wide variety of vegetables, from potatoes to turnips and parsnips. ‘We only moved back in t’other day.’

  Hamish led him past an open door to a small room with a tiny window. It looked to Eddie like a prison cell.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Game larder,’ said Hamish.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Where they used to hang the poor wee dead animals and birds killed in the hunt,’ said the Scot, clenching his fist.

  Eddie was half-expecting another punch on the nose, but for being a meat-eater this time. ‘Are all your branch of the MacMuckle family tree vegetarians?’ he asked.

  ‘Each and every one of us,’ said Hamish, with obvious pride.

  They were now in a wide passageway. ‘What’s in there?’ asked Eddie, nodding in the direction of an impressive door, studded with black nails.

  ‘Cellar,’ said Hamish without stopping.

  ‘Can we take a look?’ asked Eddie, thinking back to the cellar at Awful End and all the wine bottles his father had opened and drunk, just so that he could carve the corks. Eddie wasn’t a great fan of his father’s artistic endeavours – the truth be told, he thought his father was a dreadful painter and an appalling sculptor – but he admired his dedication.

  ‘Can’t go down there,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Why not?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘We havenae found the key yet.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Eddie, a little disappointed.

  The tour continued.

  Eddie had to admit, to himself at least, that he was in two minds about the strange predicament he’d found himself in. On the one hand, he thought it was a shame that this extraordinary house, in such beautiful surroundings, might not actually belong to his family, and that some of the wonderful pieces of furniture and bits-and-bobs/knick-knacks might not be theirs to keep. On the other hand, the plan was for the Dickenses to sell the house anyway, which meant that it would be lived in by strangers. And, if these MacMuckles had a genuine claim to Tall Hall, wouldn’t it be nice that it stayed in Even Madder Aunt Maud’s family for its rightful heirs to enjoy?

  In other words, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted Angus McFeeeeeeee to have to hand over the deeds of the property and land to Alexander MacMuckle or not. And he had no idea how long such a thing might take to happen in Scottish Law anyway.

  He knew that English Law (also with a capital ‘L’) could be a very slow process. Once a local schoolteacher had tried to sue when Mad Uncle Jack had grown a particularly ugly hybrid vegetable and named it after him. Some gardeners made it their life’s work to grow new varieties of flowers and vegetables, with varying degrees of success. Mad Uncle Jack’s cross between a pea and some root vegetable or other had come about accidentally and the result looked like a very large, very hard and very knobbly pea; the kind of evil giant pea that would be discovered pulling levers behind a curtain at the end of a film in which vegetables were rising up against their human mast
ers.

  Mad Uncle Jack had decided to give a name to this extraordinary new vegetable, which didn’t taste too bad if boiled long enough and was served with plenty of salt, ground black pepper and butter. Eventually, he settled on ‘Lance Peevance’ because, as he later explained in the local court, ‘Peevance incorporates the pea element of my triumphant vegetable-child, and it is also the name of that man there,’ he paused to point at the schoolteacher who was also in court that day because he’d brought the legal action against Eddie’s great-uncle, ‘who bears more than a passing resemblance to it.’

  Lance Peevance – the man not the vegetable – had, by now, had quite enough of Mad Mr Dickens and tried to make a lunge at him, screaming: ‘I’ll get you yet, Dickens!’ which didn’t please the judge.

  The judge was already on Mad Uncle Jack’s side, as it happened. Although schoolteachers were well-respected members of society and seen as ‘better’ than scullery maids, for example, they still had to work for a living. Mad Uncle Jack, on the other hand, was a true gentleman and lived up at the big house, which meant that, in the judge’s eyes, he should really be allowed to do what he liked and that included calling ugly vegetables after Mr Peevance.

  Having said that, both Mad Uncle Jack’s and Mr Peevance’s lawyers wanted to make as much money from the case as possible, so kept on raising very complicated legal objections on both sides, and sending each other very expensive letters (which their respective clients would, of course, eventually have to pay for).

  After three and a half years, judgement was finally passed in Mad Uncle Jack’s favour and Lance Peevance was ruined. As a result, he owed his lawyer and the courts so much money that he fled the country disguised as a bag of coal.

  On a matter of principle, Mad Uncle Jack paid for WANTED posters to be printed at his own expense. On them was an artist’s impression of his own new variety of vegetable, under which were the words:

  HAVE YOU SEEN A MISSING SCHOOLTEACHER, WITH MORE THAN A PASSING RESEMBLANCE TO THIS VEGETABLE?

  As a direct result of seeing a copy of the poster, a Briton holidaying in France later recognised Lance Peevance and had him arrested. Mad Uncle Jack felt that this was proof, if proof were needed, that calling his vegetable-child ‘Lance Peevance’ in the first place had been completely and utterly justified.

  Amazingly, a few years back, this very trial was turned into a modern (and somewhat avant-garde) opera called Vegetation Litigation! for a TV series on one of those arty satellite channels, but the names of the people were changed to ones that were easier to rhyme with ‘vegetable patch’ and ‘court case’.

  Back in Tall Hall, however, Eddie’s tour was about to be cut short by the sudden arrival of Angus’s son Magnus McFeeeeeeee.

  ‘Victoria!’ he shouted, bursting into the great hall which Eddie and Hamish were crossing whilst the others were still deep in conversation around one end of the huge table. ‘Queen Victoria!’ He’d obviously been running and was dripping with sweat. He had a stitch and was clutching his side. He took in great gulps of air, then spoke again. ‘She’s paying a visit!’

  Episode 7

  Something in the Air

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

  Two days had passed since Magnus MacMuckle had burst into Tall Hall with his extraordinary news. At first, everyone had assumed that he’d meant that Queen Victoria was turning up at the hall unannounced at any moment. Then it became clear that he meant that Her Majesty was paying a visit to the area, and not then and there, but the following week.

  Eddie was excited because he’d never laid eyes on his monarch and was hoping to catch a glimpse of her at the very least. Perhaps she’d arrive at the same station he had, but on her special royal train (so she could sit on her special lightweight portable travelling throne), and he could be in the crowd waving a small Union Flag – which he had learnt was the correct name for the Union Jack when it was being flown on land.

  Angus McFeeeeeeee seemed excited in the same way, making comments such as ‘Can ya imagine it? Our own dear queen comin’ to these parts?’ But Eddie wasn’t so sure about the MacMuckles. They seemed to be experiencing a different kind of excitement.

  When Eddie was older and recalling the events that happened that year in Scotland, he wrote: ‘Looking back on it, it is obvious that their reaction was very different to ours.’ Hindsight – looking back on events with the knowledge you could only have after they’d happened – is a very fine thing, but it’s true to say that there was certainly something about the MacMuckles’ reaction that made him very uneasy.

  Another thing which bothered Eddie was young Magnus McFeeeeeeee’s reaction on discovering Tall Hall full of strangers. Unlike his father, who’d been surprised, Magnus didn’t even ask who anyone was. It was almost as if he knew them already. And now, two days later, Eddie decided to approach him on that very subject.

  Magnus McFeeeeeeee was outside the back door of his home scraping dried mud off a pair of his father’s walking boots with an old butter knife.

  ‘You already knew that the MacMuckles had moved into Tall Hall, didn’t you?’ said Eddie, coming up behind him from the garden and leaning over his shoulder. Magnus jerked back in surprise.

  ‘Ya shouldnae creep up on people, English,’ he said. ‘Did your mammie no teach ya manners?’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Is that what that was?’ said Magnus, busying himself with the boots.

  ‘You weren’t surprised to see them there. The truth be told, I was wondering whether the message about the Queen was more for them than for me and your father,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I walk into the house to find me da and half a dozen other folk seated at a table. For all I know they’re furniture removers or people come to see the house with a view to buy. There’s no mystery.’

  ‘If this were a town, I might believe you,’ said Eddie, above the noise of scraping knife on mud and boot, ‘but in the countryside everyone knows everyone’s business – unless they deliberately want it kept secret. You’d have known if there were furniture movers or prospective buyers around! And then there’s the matter of how the MacMuckles got into the hall in the first place.’

  Magnus avoided his gaze.

  ‘Aha!’ said Eddie triumphantly. ‘So I was right! You lent them the key, didn’t you? As my family’s lawyer, your father holds the key to Tall Hall and you must somehow have “borrowed” it and given it to the MacMuckles.’

  ‘Then how did my father come to have the key in order for ya to open the door yusself, the other day, English? Answer me that.’

  Eddie had already thought of that before he’d confronted Magnus, so had an immediate response. ‘The MacMuckles must have made a copy. All they had to do was press the original in some melted wax or a cake of soap to make a mould.’

  The lawyer’s son was clearly impressed. ‘You’ve thought of everything,’ he said.

  ‘Do you deny it?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘I neither deny nor admit anything, English,’ said Magnus. The blade of the butter knife flashed in the weak sunlight. He sounded like a lawyer.

  ‘Didn’t you stop to think what this might do to your father?’ asked Eddie. ‘What if these people had stolen everything from the hall or wrecked the place? Your father would have been held responsible. He’s supposed to be looking after it.’

  ‘He’s no father of mine,’ muttered the boy.

  ‘Magnus?’ called Mrs McFeeeeeeee’s voice from the parlour. ‘Have you not finished your father’s boots yet?’

  ‘Nearly, Mother,’ Magnus called back. ‘But English keeps gettin’ in me way.’

  ‘Who?’ called his mother.

  ‘Edmund,’ replied Magnus, sheepishly, just as Mrs McFeeeeeeee appeared at the back door. ‘I said Edmund.’

  Magnus’s mum was holding her large ladle again. ‘Sure you did, son,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve got the mud off, perhaps you’d be kind e
nough to give them a good polish?’

  ‘I’ll be sure to, Mother,’ said Magnus, deliberately stepping on Eddie’s toe as he stomped off around the side of the house.

  ‘Come and sit with me, Master Edmund,’ said Mrs McFeeeeeeee. ‘We’ll have some cake and talk about the Queen’s visit. It’ll be one of the most exciting things ever to have happened around here.’

  The cake was excellent. There was no denying that Eddie enjoyed some of the best food he’d ever eaten whilst staying with the McFeeeeeeees. The conversation was most interesting too. It turned out that Mrs McFeeeeeeee knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew Sir James Clark. Now, that’s not very interesting unless you know that Sir James – another Scotsman – either was or used to be the Queen’s Personal Physician (which is a posh title for the Queen’s Own Doctor).

  ‘I’m sure he’d fit in well at Awful End,’ said Mrs McFeeeeeeee, who had – as you may have gathered from her earlier comments – had the pleasure (?!) of meeting Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud on their one joint trip to Tall Hall, and had no illusions about their sanity. ‘Apparently he’s quite mad. I have it on good authority that he’s little more than a naval doctor but, as a friend of Her Majesty’s mother, somehow landed himself this plum job!’ She offered Eddie another piece of cake. He couldn’t resist.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Eddie. A cake without broad beans or springs was a rare treat.

  ‘I also have it on good authority that Sir James is a great believer in fresh air as the cure for all ills but is highly suspicious of foliage. I’m told that he planned to have Buckingham Palace pumped full of air to protect it from the surrounding trees which were, he was convinced, clogging up the atmosphere!’