by R. A. Spratt
‘They are not,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They’ll all have three-scoop cones with a scoop of chocolate, a scoop of chocolate-chip and a scoop of chocolate with choc-chips.’
‘You heard the lady,’ laughed the Senior Partner.
Mr Green ran off to do as he was told.
‘But I suspect I should really be congratulating Green on his ability to delegate to a certain glamorous assistant coach,’ said the Senior Partner, winking at Nanny Piggins.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Nanny Piggins, although her blush gave her away.
It was April Fools’ Day, so Nanny Piggins and the children were baking biscuits in the shape of letters from the alphabet. This may seem like an unexpectedly educational thing to do, but the only reason they were making the letters was so Nanny Piggins could send Headmaster Pimplestock a rude message. She thought this was a tremendously funny idea. And how could the headmaster complain when he received an insult in the form of 812 delicious sugar-coated shortbread cookies. (Nanny Piggins had thought up quite a long rude message.)
Unfortunately, just as they were sprinkling icing sugar over the warm biscuits, their festive activity was interrupted by the sound of a helicopter overhead. Now you are probably thinking – why would the sound of a helicopter interrupt a baking session? That is because you are thinking of the noise a helicopter makes when it is a long way overhead. But trust me, when a helicopter is hovering just thirty metres directly above your house it makes a noise so loud that all the furniture shakes, the crockery rattles and conversation becomes impossible.
‘What’s going on?!’ yelled Nanny Piggins as she bent over the cookies. Just in case the house did collapse, she wanted to shield the biscuits with her body. (Spending two days trapped in the rubble of a building would not be so bad if you had 812 biscuits to keep you company.)
Just then, the helicopter pulled away and there was an even louder sound, a voice bellowing from outside, ‘Nanny Piggins, we have the house surrounded. Come out with your hands up!’
‘I don’t know what to do, children,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Normally I never like to obey anyone who does not say “please”. But I am ever so curious to know why they have surrounded the house.’
‘Would you like us to hide you in the cellar until they go away?’ asked Michael. ‘We could build a secret wall and you could live as a recluse.’
‘Hmm, tempting as that does sound because the heroine in the Regency Romance novel I’ve just been reading did a very similar thing,’ mused Nanny Piggins, ‘I think I’d prefer to answer the door. I bet it is just someone we know playing a lovely practical joke. And the sooner we answer the door, the sooner I can play my own practical joke back, by biting them on the leg.’
And so Nanny Piggins and the children went to the front door fully expecting lots of laughing and joking and perhaps a pie fight to follow. They were soon to be bitterly disappointed, because when they threw open the door there was no smiling face. Just the grim expression of the Police Sergeant standing on the doorstep. And looking past him, they could see a dozen police patrol cars blocking the street with police officers cowering behind them.
‘Hello, Nanny Piggins,’ said the Police Sergeant. He was not looking his normal happy self this morning.
‘Hello, Police Sergeant,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Have you naughty boys from the police station decided to play an April Fools’ trick on me? Well, it is a lovely thought. And I am flattered. But shouldn’t you have left some of your officers at the station in case a real crime happens.’
‘A real crime has happened,’ said the Police Sergeant.
‘Oh dear, and so early in the day. Poor you, Sergeant. I know you are not a morning person. Would you like a biscuit?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘I am prepared to edit the rude message I am writing to Headmaster Pimplestock because your need does seem greater.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ said the Police Sergeant.
‘Really?’ said Nanny Piggins, very surprised. ‘But you love my butter shortbread biscuits.’
The Police Sergeant sniffed the air. The biscuits did smell good. But then he remembered why he had come and girded himself. ‘I can’t eat your biscuits because I have come here to arrest you,’ he said. ‘Sorry,’ he added as an afterthought, because he really was a very polite policeman.
The children were horrified.
‘But you can’t arrest Nanny Piggins,’ protested Derrick, ‘because, because …’ (He struggled here because he knew his nanny well, so he knew that there were actually several dozen reasons why the Police Sergeant probably should arrest her.)
‘You can’t arrest her because we won’t let you!’ declared Samantha boldly, standing in front of her nanny with her arms outstretched.
‘It’s all right, Samantha,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The Police Sergeant is only joking. Men in uniform are always such tremendous pranksters. The helicopter overhead, the twelve police cars and the snipers I can see on Mrs Lau’s roof are all just part of a very elaborate practical joke. We should play along with it, it will be fun.’
‘I don’t think so, Nanny Piggins,’ worried Michael (and he was not a child normally given to worrying). ‘Snipers aren’t known for their sense of humour.’
‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It would be rude not to play along when they have gone to so much trouble. All right, Police Sergeant,’ she said, winking at him as she offered up her wrists to be handcuffed, ‘why don’t you take me downtown and throw the book at me.’
And so the Police Sergeant was able to take Nanny Piggins down to the station without her escaping in a cannon blast, swinging from building to building using her trapeze skills, disguising herself as a sanitation worker and disappearing into the sewers, or any of the other brilliant things he had imagined she might do.
It was only when she was down at the station and the Police Sergeant had the audacity to fingerprint her trotters, using ink that did not easily wash off with soap, that Nanny Piggins first began to suspect this was either a very poorly thought through practical joke, or she had really just been arrested. At this point she got very cross, and chased all the police officers around and around the station, giving them each several nasty bites on the leg and stamping on their feet. Eventually they were able to trap her in a cell (by throwing in a packet of chocolate biscuits, then slamming the door closed behind her when she instinctively lunged after them).
By the time the children had fetched Boris and caught the bus down to the police station, Nanny Piggins was a very sad pig indeed. Fortunately she was able to buck herself up by eating three or four hundred of the biscuits that the children had brought in for her. (The rude message to Headmaster Pimplestock would have to wait for another day.)
‘So why have they arrested you? What did you do?’ asked Samantha.
‘I didn’t do anything!’ protested Nanny Piggins, stuffing another two dozen biscuits in her mouth in an effort to control her rage.
‘No, of course not,’ comforted Derrick, ‘but what do they think you did?’
‘They are saying I broke into the Natural History Museum and stole the Giant Mumbai Diamond – which I certainly did not!’ said Nanny Piggins angrily, rattling the bars of her cell.
‘Oh, I read about that in the paper,’ said Samantha, ‘but it happened on Monday night, so it can’t have been you. That was the night you spent in Mrs Simpson’s attic trying to catch her possum.’
‘I know! That’s what I told the police,’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins, ‘but they say they are unable to verify my alibi.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Michael.
‘Mrs Simpson won’t back her up,’ explained Derrick.
‘I probably should have told her that’s what I was doing,’ said Nanny Piggins regretfully. ‘She says she heard a lot of banging and crashing, and saw a foot stamp through the ceiling. But she thought it was just her dead husband’s ghost, haunting her for forgetting to water his geraniums.’
‘But wh
y did they arrest you?’ asked Michael. ‘If a giant chocolate cake had gone missing, I could see why you might be a suspect. But it’s not like you have a criminal record for stealing the world’s most valuable diamonds. You don’t, do you?’
‘Of course not!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘No, they have arrested me because they have a witness who says he saw me.’
‘A witness!’ exclaimed the children.
‘But what sort of mean sneaking low-life would dob someone in for a crime she did not commit?’ asked Boris.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but there is going to be a line-up this afternoon where the witness has to pick me out. Which, under normal circumstances, would be thrilling because whenever I’ve seen line-ups in police programs I’ve always wanted to be in one so I could bite the real criminal. But it’s not so thrilling now there is a prospect of me being identified as the real criminal.’
‘Never mind,’ said Boris reassuringly. ‘I’m sure it’s all just a horrible mistake and the witness won’t be able to pick you out. It was probably one of those incredibly glamorous supermodels who did it. You look so much like them, it would be an easy mistake to make.’
A short time later, Nanny Piggins was led into a room and asked to line up against the wall between four bedraggled-looking women.
Meanwhile in the next room, behind a two-way mirror, the witness was lead in to view the line-up.
‘All right sir, rest assured they can’t see you, so take your time,’ began the Police Sergeant.
‘It’s her, it’s her, it’s the pig in the middle!’ cried the witness before he’d barely even entered the room.
On the other side of the glass it was completely silent, but Nanny Piggins sniffed the air. She did not have to see or hear the witness to know who was dobbing her in.
‘I’d know that slightly mouldy smell anywhere,’ she declared. ‘That’s Mr Green! You dibber-dobber!! How dare you wrongly accuse me!!!’
She launched herself at the two-way mirror and put a large crack in it, even though it was bulletproof glass.
‘You said she couldn’t see me!’ squealed Mr Green.
‘Yes, but we didn’t realise she’d be able to smell you,’ protested the Police Sergeant.
The Police Sergeant tried to bustle Mr Green out of the police station before there could be an ugly confrontation, but he was too late. They met six burly police constables trying to restrain Nanny Piggins in the corridor.
‘Right, I demand you take these cuffs off immediately,’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘I shall need to get a good grip of his leg before I bite him.’
‘It was her! I knew it, I knew she was trouble!’ yelled Mr Green triumphantly.
‘Oh, Father, how could you?’ asked Samantha. ‘You know you will only have to look after us yourself if you have Nanny Piggins arrested.’
That wiped the smile off his face.
‘I’m only dobbing her in because it is the truth,’ Mr Green complained petulantly.
‘Sir,’ chided the Police Sergeant.
‘And because of the $20,000 reward,’ added Mr Green, ‘but it was her I saw running out of the museum at two o’clock in the morning.’
‘But what were you doing outside the museum at 2 am?’ Derrick asked.
‘That’s none of your business,’ said Mr Green.
‘You were trying to avoid going home, weren’t you?’ accused Nanny Piggins. ‘Monday night is the night they wax the floors in your office and you were just walking the streets until you’d be allowed back in.’
‘It’s not a crime that I love my job,’ sniped Mr Green.
‘You don’t love your job,’ accused Nanny Piggins. ‘You just love sitting in a room where someone else pays the electricity bills!’
Mr Green was eventually escorted from the building and taken home, with only a few small bite marks on his leg. Not that Nanny Piggins had a chance to bite him. It was Michael who’d had a go, when he saw his nanny was not able to reach.
‘What are we going to do?’ said Samantha as they all sat in Nanny Piggins’ cell, keeping her company. (The Police Sergeant was very good about letting Nanny Piggins bend the police station rules. He quite enjoyed it on the many occasions when she had been under arrest. Nanny Piggins was a lot more fun than the drunks, petty thieves and junior police officers he usually had to spend time with.)
‘Everything will be all right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If your father’s evidence is all they’ve got against me, I’m in the clear.’
‘But he’s prepared to testify in court,’ said Derrick.
‘Yes, but the jury will soon see he’s a sneaking weasel,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘Even if they believe him they’ll let me off just to spite him. It’s human nature.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Michael.
‘Absolutely,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘as long as the police don’t find any more evidence, I’ll be fine.’
But at that very moment a constable burst into the police station brandishing a tape. ‘We’ve got the surveillance footage!’
‘Oh dear,’ said Boris.
Samantha started to hyperventilate.
‘What’s he talking about?’ demanded Nanny Piggins. ‘A surveillance tape of what?’
‘Let’s see,’ said the Police Sergeant, putting the tape in the VCR. A grainy black and white picture of the front of the museum appeared on the screen.
‘There’s father!’ exclaimed Michael, pointing at the picture. They could see Mr Green out the front of the museum. He was on his hands and knees, with his sleeves rolled up, trying to fish change out of the museum’s fountain.
‘Tsk tsk tsk,’ said the Police Sergeant, shaking his head. ‘Constable, make a note. This afternoon we must find time to arrest Mr Green for attempting to steal small change from a charity again.’
They all turned their attention back to the screen, which was a good thing because it suddenly exploded into action. The front door of the museum burst open. The alarm siren started sounding. Mr Green was so startled he flinched forward and fell into the fountain. And an incredibly glamorous pig, with a neat little bob haircut and a black beanie jauntily perched on top of her head – ran down the front steps of the museum.
Everyone turned and looked at Nanny Piggins.
‘All right, so she looks a little like me,’ conceded Nanny Piggins, ‘but you can’t prove she took the diamond.’
Unfortunately, Nanny Piggins was immediately contradicted by the video evidence when the pig on screen paused at the bottom of the museum steps, opened her handbag, took out an enormous diamond the size of a coffee cup, looked at it, put it back in the bag, and then ran off down the street.
The children did not know what to say. They wanted to exclaim, ‘That was you!’ but they did not want their words to be taken down and used as evidence against their nanny.
‘How do you explain that then, Nanny Piggins?’ asked the Police Sergeant. ‘You say you were in your neighbour’s attic. And yet there you are running out of the museum holding the Giant Mumbai Diamond.’
‘Serg!’ called another young constable, running over with a sheet of paper. ‘The lab has just faxed through the results of the trotter-print analysis.’
The Police Sergeant took the fax and read it. ‘I’m afraid the prints at the scene are an exact match to yours, Nanny Piggins.’
‘Please say it wasn’t you,’ pleaded Samantha.
‘Or it was you, but you had to do it because you were being blackmailed by someone really wicked,’ pleaded Michael.
Nanny Piggins was still glaring at the frozen image of herself on the screen. ‘There is a third option. It just so happens that I do know of a pig who both looks exactly like me and is a master thief.’
‘You do?’ said the Police Sergeant.
‘Yes, my identical twin sister – Anthea Piggins!’ declared Nanny Piggins.
Everyone gasped.
‘Of course,’ said Derrick. ‘One of your identical fourteenuplet sisters!’
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‘It is sad that so many of your identical twin sisters don’t share your strong sense of morality and public duty,’ said Boris, shaking his head.
‘I know,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but mother was not big on morality. Except when it came to food. She had very strict principles about that.’
‘So you’re saying that even though the pig in the surveillance footage looks exactly like you, acts exactly like you and has your exact same trotter print – that it isn’t you?’ asked the Police Sergeant.
‘Exactly,’ confirmed Nanny Piggins.
‘And you expect me to believe that?’ enquired the Police Sergeant.
‘Well, I had assumed,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘that you would be too much of a gentleman to call a lady a liar.’
‘All right, then assuming I believe in this criminal doppelganger, how do you intend to prove it?’ asked the Police Sergeant.
‘By catching her, of course,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘I don’t think I can get three divisions’ worth of squad cars and the sniper unit back today to track down another Piggins,’ said the Police Sergeant.
‘Oh, there’s no need for that,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know exactly where to find her. And if you take me along I will use my superior athletic skills to arrest her myself.’
‘You’re going to bite her on the leg, aren’t you?’ said Michael.
‘Of course I am,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Coming to my home town and framing me for grand theft is inexcusable. My sisters can be very rude sometimes.’
‘Surely if she has the skills of a master thief,’ said the Police Sergeant, ‘she would have the sense to stay hidden for a while.’
‘You would think so,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but my sister Anthea has one great weakness.’
‘Kryptonite?’ guessed Michael.
‘Silver bullets?’ guessed Derrick.
‘She can’t read?’ guessed Samantha.
‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Her great weakness is her overwhelming devotion to apricot danishes!’