Dubious Deeds

by Philip Ardagh

  This didn’t stop MUJ, though, who was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was probably secretly rather pleased that he didn’t have to do any actual shooting, being such a dreadful shot. Unfortunately (or not, as we shall see), Mad Uncle Jack suddenly became distracted by a particular clump of heather, the shape of which reminded him of his father’s – Dr Malcontent Dickens’s – head, at exactly the same time that he was drawing from his jacket pocket the dried swordfish he used as a back-scratcher. Twisting around rather suddenly whilst clutching the fish, he knocked the startled man with the moustache to the ground.

  When members of Her Majesty’s security detail – yup, Mr Digg and Mr Delve again – rushed forward to help him up, they noticed that the man’s moustache had fallen off, and, being highly trained police officers, they registered that it was unusual for such facial hair to come off in one piece like that, so they were immediately very suspicious. When the man himself noticed his moustache lying on the ground like a very hairy, very dead caterpillar, he tried to make a run for it but the hands which had been helping him to his feet now grabbed him. Mr Digg held his right arm and Mr Delve his left.

  It was during this struggle that a pistol fell from one of the man’s pockets.

  Polite as always, and a little guilty at having accidentally knocked the poor chap to the ground, Mad Uncle Jack bent down and picked the pistol out of the springy heather, with the intention of returning it to the would-be assassin.

  ‘You dropped this, sir,’ he announced.

  As I’ve already pointed out more than once, Mad Uncle Jack was not very good with guns and his waving this one around made everyone very nervous.

  Particularly Eddie.

  ‘WEAPON!’ shouted the Q-PUS when he saw the pistol, causing Mad Uncle Jack to turn towards him to see what all the fuss was about.

  As his great-uncle began to turn, Eddie feared the worst and, literally, sprang into action.

  ‘I prefer a pocket knife myself,’ Mad Uncle Jack was saying, just as he accidentally pulled the trigger.

  In the meantime, Eddie was throwing himself bodily between the Queen and the bullet, which was a very brave, or very foolish, thing to do.

  He didn’t make it in time.

  Fortunately for HM Queen Victoria and her adoring (English) subjects, Malcolm did.

  Eddie had still been holding Malcolm whilst Even Madder Aunt Maud was digging for truffles in the undergrowth. The stuffed stoat had reached Her Majesty before Eddie had, as this freeze-frame diagram below clearly illustrates.

  And that is why, six months later, the Dickens family came to be at Buckingham Palace and how Malcolm the stuffed stoat came to be presented with a medal for bravery by a grateful monarch. Eddie, of course, got nothing. Think back to that incident with John Brown and Prince Arthur. You don’t get medals for coming second – well, you do at the Olympics but not when it comes to saving monarchs from potential assassins – and it was Malcolm who took the bullet for her. He didn’t seem to mind; Malcolm, that is. Even Madder Aunt Maud had the bullet removed and kept it in a jar on a shelf inside Marjorie. Malcolm, meanwhile, was stitched up and was as good as … well … certainly not as good as new, but as good as he had been prior to saving the life of the monarch. He didn’t get £25 a year for life but, being stuffed, he didn’t mind and, being mad, neither did Even Madder Aunt Maud. (She was impressed that her friend Charlotte ‘Queenie’ Hailstrom lived in such a nice big house, though.)

  And what became of the McMickles? The Dickenses were very happy to let them stay in Tall Hall. The McMickle clan had been loyal servants to the MacMuckle clan in the past – I’m not clear what the egg-spoon incident had been which had caused the rift between the two families but it clearly didn’t bother Even Madder Aunt Maud – and Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud were perfectly willing to give them a (very high) roof over their heads. Eddie was very satisfied that Robbie and her family ended up living there. One of the McMickles’ first jobs now that they were legitimately living in Tall Hall was to fence off the grounds so that, once they were released from the cellar, the animals didn’t end up straight back on the Gloaming estate where Lord Rhome could take pot shots at them.

  Of course, Lord Rhome was furious. After all, they were his animals and he had every right to have them back, but the McMickles had a very good lawyer indeed, in the form of Angus McFeeeeeeee, who knew the Scottish Law (with a capital ‘S’ and a capital ‘L’) inside out and who kept Lord Rhome’s Scottish lawyer (McFeeeeeeee’s good friend Marcus MacGoon) busy with endless legal paperwork.

  Whenever, on one of his less and less frequent trips to his Scottish estate, Lord Rhome summoned Mr MacGoon, the lawyer kept on reminding him that ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law,’ which always threw His Lordship into a terrible rage.

  Fighting an English absentee landlord made Angus McFeeeeeeee a hero in his son Magnus’s eyes and when, many, many years after this adventure ended, Angus McFeeeeeeee died an old, old man, Magnus McFeeeeeeee gave a very stirring speech in memory of his much-loved dad. Magnus too became a lawyer and campaigned for Scottish independence throughout his life. Today, a McFeeeeeeee sits in the Scottish Parliament. He may be very small but he has a loud voice and strong opinions and makes sure that McFeeeeeeee is spelt with eight ‘e’s on the order papers.

  And that nugget of information almost brings us to the close of this, the first of Eddie’s Further Adventures.

  Almost.

  But not quite.

  There’s the small matter of the MacMuckle Falls or Gudger’s Dump. Take your pick. You may recall that this feeble apology of a waterfall was somewhat black and slimy. Small wonder. One morning, about two years after Eddie’s eventful visit, it erupted in a fountain of thick, black liquid. The earth had revealed its secret: beneath the grounds of Tall Hall lay one of the very few, if not the only, oil deposits on mainland Scotland.

  When the McMickles reported this to Mad Uncle Jack, he ordered it plugged. (He even drew a sketch of what he’d like the plug to look like; with a long chain like the one in his favourite bathroom at Awful End.) What did he want with all that oil or the money it could generate? It would only mean that a rig would have to be built, along with roads and buildings and all sorts of other things that would mess up the peaceful life of the Highlands and upset the animals. He was quite happy to leave things the way they were. It was dried fish he was interested in. Not oil.

  If you think he was mad to turn down the opportunity to make money – especially when he’d been planning to sell Tall Hall in the first place in order to make some – I need only remind you what members of his family called him: Mad Uncle Jack and – do you know what? – I expect that they loved him all the more for it anyway.

  It’s adventures that make life really worth living, not money. And Eddie had plenty more of those to come.

  THE END

  until a further Further Adventure

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Some readers have mentioned that they’re not sure which parts (if any) of my books are made up and which parts (if any) are true. I know how they feel.

  Horrendous Habits

  Book Two of the Further Adventures of Eddie Dickens Trilogy

  For my son, Frederick.

  Hi, Freddie!

  A Message from the Author

  Who’s admiring his new pair of trousers

  This book is full of monks. In fact, it’s so full of monks that my wife Héloïse suggested that I call it ‘Monkey Business’ but, as you can see, I didn’t. It’s a very good title though, but please don’t tell her I said so. I don’t want to encourage her. Where would it end?

  In the previous Further Adventure, Dubious Deeds, Eddie spent most of his time in Scotland. This time around he’s much closer to home but might just as well be in Scotland because he can’t remember where he lives.

  Confused? Then read on …

  PHILIP ARDAGH

  East Sussex, 2005

  Contents

  1 A New Arri
val,

  In which, somewhat surprisingly, a baby is found in the bulrushes

  2 Disaster Strikes,

  In which we learn of a proposed beating, and end with a ‘CRUNCH!’

  3 Flat Out,

  In which fate, in the form of a chimney, deals a blow to poor Mr Dickens

  4 A Crash after the Crunch,

  In which Eddie Dickens doesn’t know he is

  5 Getting to Know You,

  In which we recall a couple of Greats, and encounter the author dressed as a chicken

  6 The Game’s Afoot,

  In which Fandango Jones plays detective and Even Madder Aunt Maud plays the bagpipes

  7 Caped Capers,

  In which the author makes an apology and Brother Gault makes a potion

  8 On the Case,

  In which Fandango Jones helps the police with their enquires

  9 Two Neds,

  In which some bright spark could point out that two Neds are better than one

  10 ‘Here’s Eddie!’,

  In which saying too much here might give the game away

  11 Falling Into Place,

  In which Eddie Dickens makes a startling discovery and a late breakfast

  12 A Conclusion of Sorts,

  In which things fall into place, and a rock falls on the floor

  Episode 1

  A New Arrival

  In which, somewhat surprisingly, a baby is found in the bulrushes

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Even Madder Aunt Maud, stomping towards a patch of bulrushes, with Malcolm her stuffed stoat (who looked suspiciously like a stuffed ferret) under one arm.

  ‘It sounds like a baby,’ said Eddie, above the wailing which had attracted them down to the water’s edge in the first place. (At Even Madder Aunt Maud’s insistence, she and Eddie had been playing an unusual game of croquet on the lower lawn at Awful End. Unusual because, instead of croquet balls, they’d been using croquet turnips, or ‘rutabagas’ as our American friends would say. She’d found a whole sack of them down by the compost heaps and hadn’t wanted them to go to waste.)

  Eddie ran past Maud to the edge of the ornamental lake. ‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘It’s a baby!’

  ‘A baby what?’ demanded Even Madder Aunt Maud.

  ‘A baby,’ Eddie repeated, wading into the shallows and parting the bulrushes. He didn’t think he could put it any more simply than that.

  ‘A baby carrot? A baby carriage? A baby possum?’ Even Madder Aunt Maud wanted to know. She’d recently read about the extraordinary wildlife of the continent of Australia in a book entitled The Extraordinary Wildlife of the Continent of Australia and was delighted to have the opportunity to introduce the word possum into a conversation quite legitimately. (It’s a tree-dwelling animal with a pouch like a kangaroo’s and a tail designed for grasping branches, in case you didn’t already know.)

  ‘A baby baby,’ said Eddie, lifting the crying child out of a basket firmly wedged amongst the tall stalks at the water’s edge. (That’s the tall stalks of the bulrushes, of course, spelled s-t-a-l-k-s. I don’t want you to go thinking that the baby in the basket was in the lake wedged between the bird kind of storks, spelled s-t-o-r-k-s. It’s important to clear this up right now because, in Eddie’s day, children were often told that it was the stork – the bird not the bulrush stems – that delivered new babies to households.) ‘It’s a human baby.’

  Eddie held the crying infant in his arms and waded back on to the lawn. It stopped crying almost immediately.

  Even Madder Aunt Maud glared down at the little bundle of joy. ‘It’s got a very large head,’ she announced.

  ‘Babies generally have, Mad Aunt Maud,’ said Eddie.

  ‘What was it doing floating around in my lake like … like …’

  ‘Like Moses in the bulrushes?’ Eddie suggested helpfully.

  ‘Who in the what?’ asked his great-aunt.

  ‘Moses in the Bible,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I thought you said in the bulrushes?’ said Even Madder Aunt Maud, narrowing her eyes as though suspecting Eddie of playing some trick on her.

  ‘Moses in the bulrushes in the Bible,’ he explained.

  Even Madder Aunt Maud seemed to have absolutely no idea what he was talking about, so she hit him over the head with Malcolm. ‘Oh do be quiet,’ she said.

  The moment the very rigid (and very hard) stuffed stoat came into contact with Eddie’s head, it was the babe in his arms who cried out and not Eddie. It glared at Even Madder Aunt Maud and let out a particularly plaintive wail.

  ‘That thing just threatened me!’ said EMAM in amazement. ‘Did you see the look it gave me? Well, did you?’

  ‘It’s only a baby, Mad Aunt Maud,’ said Eddie. ‘I’m sure it meant no harm.’

  ‘Then what was it doing lurking in my cake?’

  ‘You mean lake,’ Eddie corrected her, as politely as possible.

  ‘And she said lake,’ said Eddie’s father, Mr Dickens, appearing at her side. ‘The cake thing was a typing error. Mr Ardagh gets sloppy like that sometimes. Some readers even write in to complain.’

  Eddie had less than no idea of what his father was talking about.

  ‘Where did you find that child?’ Mr Dickens wanted to know.

  ‘It was in a basket in the bulrushes,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Like Moses in the Bible,’ said Even Madder Aunt Maud, which surprised Eddie more than a little.

  ‘What kind of basket?’ asked Mr Dickens.

  ‘Does that matter, Father?’ asked Eddie. ‘I mean, shouldn’t we get the poor thing inside and make sure it’s dry and … and suchlike?’

  ‘Matter? Of course it matters. If we are to return this baby to its rightful owners, then the basket might contain a vital clue as to their identity.’

  Even Madder Aunt Maud was seized by the idea and when she was seized by an idea she ran with it, mixed metaphors or no mixed metaphors. ‘If it’s a laundry basket, then the baby’s parents could work in a laundry. If it’s a snake charmer’s basket, its parents could be snake charmers. If it’s a picnic basket, its parents could … could, er –’

  ‘Like sandwiches?’ Mr Dickens suggested, helpfully, one eyebrow – though I’m not sure which – slightly raised.

  Eddie carefully handed the baby, who was wrapped in a snow-white blanket, to his father, who accepted him – he’ll turn out to be a he – like a man who’d never held a baby in his life. He’d certainly never held Eddie when he was a baby. Victorian fathers didn’t generally do such things. Their job as fathers was to look at their offspring over the top of a newspaper once in a while, or demand to see them in their study in their Sunday best.

  The baby now safely in Mr Dickens’s arms (where he started wailing again the moment Eddie let go of him), Eddie waded back into the shallows of the ornamental lake and dragged out the basket.

  He inspected it. It was a very ordinary baskety-looking basket and there was no conveniently placed luggage label with a name and address on it, either. In fact, there was no label of any kind, and nothing to offer any obvious clues that Eddie could see. ‘It’s just a basket,’ he said.

  ‘Couldn’t we put it back?’ suggested Even Madder Aunt Maud, looking down at the baby.

  ‘WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ said the baby (for much longer than space in this book permits).

  ‘The basket or the baby, Even Madder Aunt Maud?’ asked a disbelieving Eddie.

  ‘Put it back?’ asked Mr Dickens above the din, raising the other eyebrow (whichever one that was). He handed his son the baby, who instantly fell silent again.

  ‘In my youth, I went fishing with my brothers in the lochs of Scotland,’ said Even Madder Aunt Maud. ‘If they didn’t like the look of a fish they caught, they put it back.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Mr Dickens. ‘An interesting idea, Aunt,’ he said, ‘but might I suggest that it’s rather a short-term solution.’

  ‘But you never had any brothers,’ Eddie pointed out as politely as possible.

 
; ‘And we never went fishing!’ Even Madder Aunt Maud added triumphantly, as though this were some sort of game and she’d just scored big points off Eddie.

  ‘I’ll take the baby to Mother. She’ll know what to do,’ said Eddie, though the truth be told, he rather suspected that she might not. In the brief time that Eddie had not been at school or at sea in his early childhood, Eddie had been looked after by Nanny Louche, an onion-seller by profession who’d been given the job of caring for Baby Edmund by default. (Here, ‘by default’ means ‘by mistake’, only more so.) Eddie had no memory of her now, but had a nice warm feeling every time he smelt raw unpeeled onions or saw someone wearing a stripy shirt.

  He eventually found his mother in the drawing room, unravelling the flowery-patterned cover of one of the armchairs. ‘This will make useful string,’ she explained, rolling the unpicked thread into a ball. ‘Is that your baby, dearest?’

  ‘No, Mother. I just found it.’

  ‘Well you can’t keep it, I’m afraid, Edmund. They’re very demanding and very expensive to maintain. I had one once, you know.’

  ‘Yes I do know, Mother,’ said Eddie. ‘That was me.’

  Mrs Dickens got up off her knees and sat herself down in the chair that she’d been quietly ruining. ‘Why so it was!’ she laughed. ‘Now do explain what’s going on.’

  Eddie sat on a footstool opposite her, still carefully cradling the baby in his arms. The baby gurgled contentedly, whilst the water in Eddie’s shoes squelched noisily. He’d left a trail of muddy wet footprints across the room. ‘Even Madder Aunt Maud and I were playing croquet on the lower lawn when we heard a baby crying and I found it in a basket in the bulrushes, like Moses.’