The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

by Philip Ardagh

  Relieved that no one was injured from the explosion, Mad Uncle Jack and Eddie returned their attention to the lonely coffin lying further down the driveway.

  ‘What’s your father’s gentleman’s gentleman called?’ asked Uncle Jack.

  ‘Dawkins,’ said Eddie. Dawkins had moved to Awful End with Eddie and his parents, along with a failed chambermaid called Gibbering Jane.

  ‘I thought it was something like Daphne,’ said Mad Uncle Jack, a thin, puzzled frown fighting to find enough space to fit on his thinnest of thin faces.

  ‘So does Father,’ Eddie explained, ‘which must be where you got the idea from.’

  ‘Well, would you please go and find Dawkins and ask him to help us move this coffin to the stable block, where it will be free from casual discovery,’ said Mad Uncle Jack. ‘Who knows what distress it might cause your poor dear mother or my dear wife to stumble upon such a thing by accident … particularly after this morning’s other events?’

  Eddie was impressed by his great-uncle’s clear thinking and complete lack of concern for the state of his property. He returned with Dawkins who, through years of training as a gentleman’s gentleman didn’t bat an eyelid at being instructed to assist in hiding a coffin in a stable block.

  It was only when the coffin was nestling on a bed of straw that Eddie had time to read the inscription on a small brass plate screwed to the lid with four small brass screws. There were no dates for birth or death, just a name … but no ordinary name. It seemed more like a title, in fact. It read:

  THE GREAT ZUCCHINI

  Eddie felt sure that he’d heard the name somewhere before. Was it something to do with ice cream, perhaps?

  In the days before people had learnt to harness the power of electricity, people didn’t have electric fridges – I’ll leave you to work out why – and ice cream was a new and exciting food brought over from Italy. It was sold in big towns and cities by Italians, out of little carts (a bit like prams) kept cool with big blocks of ice. The ice-cream sellers often painted their names on their carts. Eddie thought he’d probably seen the name ‘Zucchini’ on just such a cart … no, that wasn’t it.

  Eddie Dickens was so busy trying to remember where he’d seen or heard the name ‘The Great Zucchini’ before, that he didn’t pay much attention to the creaking sound at first. Then he did. Especially when he realised where it was coming from …

  The coffin was creaking. Correction, the lid of the coffin was creaking as someone was opening it from the inside.

  Episode 3

  To the Very Top!

  In which Mad Aunt Maud is hit by a low-flying object

  The man who sat up in the coffin certainly didn’t look very dead. Eddie was surprised to find that he was actually a little disappointed that the occupant didn’t have a skinless skull for a head, or at least scary teeth. In fact, he reminded Eddie of Mr Collins who worked in the ironmonger’s. He had a very round head with very little hair and sparkling eyes.

  He looked very surprised when he saw Eddie.

  ‘Where on earth am I?’ he asked. ‘Where are the crowds … Mr Skillet and Mr Merryweather? Where is my Daniella?’

  Eddie had no idea what he was talking about. ‘You’re in the stable block of Awful End, sir,’ he explained politely.

  ‘Awful what?’ asked the man. He certainly didn’t sound ‘Great’, or Italian.

  ‘Awful End, sir,’ said Eddie. ‘The home of the Dickens family … I’m Eddie Dickens.’ He put out his hand. The man in the coffin shook it.

  ‘I’m the Great Zucchini,’ said the Great Zucchini.

  ‘You’re not dead, are you?’ asked Eddie then, realising how stupid he sounded, added hurriedly: ‘I mean, you didn’t think you were?’

  ‘Whatever makes you think that?’ asked the Great Zucchini, swinging his legs over the edge of the coffin and onto the straw.

  ‘Oh, just little clues,’ said Eddie, ‘such as finding you in a coffin with your name on it, in the back of a hearse.’

  The man nodded. ‘A good point, young man. I see what you’re alluding to. No, I went into this coffin very much alive and intended to come out that way, which is, as you can see, what has occurred. Unfortunately, instead of emerging to the applause and approbation of an eager crowd, I find myself in a private stable block with an audience of one.’

  The word ‘audience’ made Eddie feel a little uneasy. He’d once had a run-in with a man by the name of Mr Pumblesnook – an actor-manager of a band of wandering theatricals – who had caused poor old Eddie nothing but Grief with a capital ‘G’ (which is how I just spelled it, anyway).

  ‘You’re not a wandering theatrical, are you, sir?’ asked Eddie, trying to keep the revulsion out of his voice but failing spectacularly.

  The man leapt to his feet and looked even less ‘Great’ and even more like Mr Collins, the ironmonger. Eddie noticed that what little hair the Great Zucchini did have – a patch just above each ear – was dyed black rather than naturally black. If the truth be told, from the smell of boot polish Eddie’d just detected, ‘dyed’ was probably too strong a word for it. Eddie suspected that the hair was polished black. The man was quivering.

  ‘Indeed I am NOT a wandering theatrical,’ he protested, and was obviously upset.

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ Eddie assured him. ‘I was simply trying to make sense of what you were doing in a coffin in the back of a hearse.’

  ‘And I’m still trying to puzzle out how I came to be here,’ said the Great Zucchini.

  ‘My great-uncle woke me at six o’clock this morning to say that he’d found a hearse in our driveway,’ said Eddie. ‘He sleeps in a tree house at the rear but has excellent hearing and was probably aroused by the horses’ hooves on the gravel. There was no driver and, by the time I came to look, your coffin was half in and half out of the vehicle.’

  ‘Your great-uncle sleeps in a tree house?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eddie, wishing he hadn’t mentioned that part. He’d so have liked his family to be normal. He certainly had no intention of telling the Great Zucchini about Mad Aunt Maud living in Marjorie.

  ‘And my hearse turned up riderless in your driveway?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eddie. He led the man out of the stable block and over to the spot where he’d first seen the hearse.

  ‘Where is the hearse now?’ asked the Great Zucchini. Standing next to each other as they now were, Eddie realised that the man wasn’t actually that much taller than he was.

  ‘There was an explosion in the house –’

  ‘In the tree house?’

  ‘In the main house –’

  ‘An explosion?’

  ‘Yes, and it frightened the horses and your coffin fell out of the back and we carried the coffin – you – into the stable, and here we are,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Here we are indeed, Mr Eddie Dickens, and what an extraordinary story it is too,’ said the Great Zucchini. He slapped Eddie on the back.

  ‘Would you be good enough to explain your part of it?’ asked Eddie, as they scrunched their way up the drive towards the front door.

  ‘I am an escapologist, young man. An escapologist. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘Someone who studies pyramids and mummies … The kind in bandages, I mean?’ Eddie suggested.

  ‘You’re thinking of an Egyptologist,’ grinned the man and, when he grinned, he looked so like Mr Collins, the ironmonger, that Eddie half-expected him to try to sell him a box of screws or a new shovel for the coal scuttle because that’s what ironmongers do, you see: they monger iron. (And no, if the truth be told, I’m not 100 per cent sure what ‘monger’ actually means either.) ‘An escapologist is a professional escaper,’ he explained.

  ‘I escaped from an orphanage once,’ said Eddie proudly. ‘Does that make me a professional escapologist?’

  ‘Were you paid for it?’ asked the Great Zucchini.

  Eddie shook his head.

  ‘Then I’m afraid not,’ said the man from the
coffin. ‘Escaping is how I earn my daily bread. Anyone can escape – just think of all those convicts who keep escaping to the moors.’ He looked in the direction of the nearby moors, neatly bringing them into the story and lodging them in the reader’s mind for later. (M-O-O-R-S. E-S-C-A-P-E-D C-O-N-V-I-C-T-S. Okay? Good … as if you’d forget such a thing, what with your big brain and beady eyes.) ‘The skill is to escape from something interesting in an exciting way, and in front of a paying audience,’ he added.

  Mad Uncle Jack appeared at the side of the house and fished the stuffed stoat out of the birdbath. ‘Your great-aunt wants Sally,’ he said, on seeing Eddie. ‘She’s inside the cow. Take it to her, would you?’ Then he noticed the Great Zucchini. ‘Good morning, Mr Collins,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t aware that ironmongers made house calls.’

  The escapologist looked confused. ‘You have mistaken me for someone else, sir,’ he said.

  ‘I think not, Mr Collins,’ said Mad Uncle Jack. ‘I would recognise your hair anywhere.’

  ‘But I have no hair,’ said the Great Zucchini. ‘At least, very little.’

  ‘Exactly, Mr Collins! Exactly!’ said Mad Uncle Jack, as though he’d cleverly proved his point. With that, he thrust the dripping-wet Malcolm into Eddie’s arms and marched indoors.

  Eddie held the stoat by its rigid tail and let the water run off its nose onto the gravel: drip drip drip.

  ‘I take it that that is your great-uncle?’ said the Great Zucchini.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Eddie.

  ‘The one who lives in a tree house?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Eddie.

  ‘And Sally?’ asked the Great Zucchini, looking at Malcolm, with eyebrows raised.

  ‘My great-aunt’s companion,’ Eddie tried to explain. ‘A stuffed stoat.’

  ‘It looks more like a ferret to me,’ said the escapologist. ‘Stoats have rounder noses.’

  ‘Perhaps it was stuffed by someone who’d never seen a live stoat?’ Eddie suggested and, keen to steer the subject away from the strangeness of his relatives – I’m sure you know the feeling – he said: ‘You were telling me about being an escapologist.’

  ‘Indeed I was,’ said the Great Zucchini, following Eddie, who’d given Malcolm one final shake and was striding off around the side of the house in search of Mad Aunt Maud. ‘I specialise in Dreadful Acts – which is, in fact, the name of my travelling escapology show. I face death at every turn, escaping from a water tank filled with flesh-eating fish, from a flaming trunk suspended high in the air … but the great escape which brought me to this place was entitled “Back From the Dead” – a rather good title, though I say so myself. Mr Merryweather had suggested we call it “Arisen!” but I thought it too subtle.’

  ‘Mr Merryweather?’

  ‘My manager,’ said the Great Zucchini, ‘though I can’t say that he’s managed this particular escape very successfully!’

  ‘What was supposed to happen?’ asked Eddie. They wove through the narrow paths of the rose garden and emerged in a large area given over to lawn. Unfamiliar with Mad Aunt Maud’s unusual living arrangements, the escapologist – with more than a passing resemblance to Mr Collins, the ironmonger – was surprised to see what appeared to be a giant cow in amongst some flowering shrubs.

  ‘What was supposed to happen was that my assistant Daniella was supposed to bind me hand and foot, gag me and, with the aid of Mr Skillet, place me in the coffin,’ he explained. ‘The coffin would be screwed shut and placed in the back of a hearse. Mr Skillet would then ride the hearse, at a respectfully slow speed, with the audience walking behind – hopefully attracting more attention and more followers as others became interested and joined our most unusual of funeral cortèges.’

  They had reached the back end of the cow, from which a crazy-eyed woman peered at them both through an opening. When she saw that Eddie was carrying Malcolm, she eagerly took her pet, stroking him between the glass eyes.

  ‘Did Malcolm have a nice bath? Did he?’ she asked. She suddenly noticed the Great Zucchini and glared at him. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ she demanded in a voice that was enough to frighten an army of well-armed badgers.

  ‘It seems that I bear a resemblance to someone named Mr Collins,’ sighed the escapologist.

  ‘The ironmonger?’

  ‘Apparently,’ he said.

  ‘Ridiculous!’ snapped Mad Aunt Maud. ‘Mr Collins has great long droopy ears and shaggy fur. You, on the other hand, have no ears worthy of mention and certainly no hair, let alone fur. Ridiculous!’

  ‘The one with great long droopy ears and shaggy fur is Mr Collins’s cocker spaniel, Aunt Maud,’ said Eddie hurriedly.

  ‘Well, I know you from somewhere, I’m sure of it,’ said Eddie’s great-aunt, through narrowed eyes. ‘What I can’t remember, offhand, is whether I like you or not.’

  ‘See you later, Aunt Maud!’ said Eddie with false cheerfulness. He took the escapologist’s elbow and steered him behind a box hedge. ‘Forgive my great-aunt,’ he said in a loud whisper. ‘I’m sure she doesn’t mean to offend.’

  ‘I’m sure not,’ said the Great Zucchini.

  ‘Please carry on with what you were telling me,’ said Eddie. ‘It’s most intriguing.’

  ‘What was supposed to happen was that I would be taken to a field next to the churchyard of St Botolph’s –’

  ‘That’s St Botolph’s there,’ said Eddie, excitedly. He pointed to a distant church spire, poking above a line of trees.

  ‘We wanted the atmosphere of a churchyard for my great escape,’ the Great Zucchini explained, ‘but it would have been disrespectful to actually bury me in the consecrated ground of a churchyard.’

  ‘You were going to be buried … in the ground?’ gasped Eddie.

  ‘That was the plan. Daniella and Mr Skillet were to lower the coffin into the ground, shovel earth on top and then erect a screen around it. A large clock would be started to indicate the exact amount of time it took me to escape, bound hand and foot, from my premature grave, to emerge from behind the screen. In the meantime, Daniella would keep the audience occupied, and the tension high, by playing stirring tunes upon a portable church organ.’

  ‘Incredible!’ said Eddie. ‘Absolutely incredible.’

  The Great Zucchini looked sad. ‘This was to have been my crowning glory,’ he said, the quiver returning to his voice. (What do you mean, you don’t remember the quiver? I first mentioned it back on page 159.) ‘Mr Merryweather had arranged for the gentlemen of the press to be present at the grave side. This was going to be bigger than “The Underwater Box” trick … more daring than escaping from “The Lions’ Den” … and look what happened.’

  ‘What did happen?’

  ‘How should I know!’ he quivered – see, it’s spread from his voice to his whole body now – ‘I was bound and gagged in a coffin with the lid screwed down in the back of the hearse. It’s obvious that we never made it to the field by the churchyard!’

  The Great Zucchini saw a garden bench and sat on it. He looked tired. Eddie had seen Mr Collins look like that after a hard day selling ironmongery, on one of his very rare visits to the shops. As you’ll discover later, Eddie didn’t get out much.

  ‘Something must have frightened the horses,’ Eddie suggested. ‘They must have bolted and made off with you in the back … but how come you weren’t bound and gagged back in the stable? And I thought you said the coffin lid was screwed down? You opened it easily enough.’

  ‘For the very reason that I’m a professional escapologist!’ said the Great Zucchini. ‘I freed myself from my bonds within the coffin and unscrewed the screws from the inside. All I had to do was lift the lid off.’

  Eddie sat down next to the escapologist and looked up at the gaping hole in the side of the house where he and his parents’ bedrooms had once been. He was thinking. ‘I can see how you might be able to open the coffin lid back in the stable block … but how would you have been able to open it with tons of earth on top of it? Surel
y that’s impossible?’

  The Great Zucchini gave Eddie a sideways glance. ‘You’re a clever boy, aren’t you?’ he said. And it didn’t necessarily sound like a compliment.

  ‘And what about air?’ Eddie went on.

  ‘Why does everyone go on about it!’ cried the escapologist, leaping to his feet. ‘So I have very little hair and, what little hair I do have, I dye! Is it a crime? Is it? I’m going bald and I dye my hair! Let’s tell the world shall we?’ He climbed onto the bench and shouted: ‘I’M GOING BALD AND DYE MY HAIR!’ Then he sat down with a bump. ‘There? Happy now, Eddie Dickens?’ he demanded.

  ‘I said air,’ said Eddie, in a little voice. He spelled it out: ‘A-I-R … How could you breathe in a sealed-up coffin … You must have been in there for hours?’

  The escapologist was obviously embarrassed about the little hair/air misunderstanding and pretended to find his shoes of sudden interest. He stared at his neatly polished toecaps instead of looking at Eddie when he spoke. ‘Er … that’s a trade secret,’ he said.

  There was a cough. He looked up. Mad Aunt Maud was standing before them. ‘Ah, Mr Collins,’ she beamed. ‘How nice of you to come. I’ll have half a dozen three-and-a-quarter-inch galvanised nails, please,’ she said. ‘There’s a crack in Marjorie’s udder and I want to repair it whilst the weather’s fine.’

  The Great Zucchini put his head in his hands and wailed. It was at that exact moment that the hot-air balloon skimmed the oak tree nearest to the house and came crashing to the ground.

  Episode 4

  Sent From the Skies

  In which Eddie does rather a lot of dribbling

  ‘How exciting!’ said Mad Aunt Maud, dragging herself from beneath the basket of the crash-landed hot-air balloon and pulling the twigs from her hair. ‘I can’t say I ever imagined that I’d be hit by a hot-air balloon but, now that it’s happened, I must confess to having enjoyed it.’ She tore off the corner of a rhubarb leaf and pressed it against a cut above her eye. ‘Really most enjoyable. Yes.’ She crawled off into the bushes and back towards Marjorie, dragging a sprained ankle behind her.