The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

by Philip Ardagh

  ‘Agreed,’ sighed Eddie but, in his heart of hearts, he wanted to inform the captain right then.

  *

  When Eddie later told Lady Constance of his suspicions – his conviction – that Even Madder Aunt Maud had somehow got on board the ship, her reaction was completely different.

  ‘We must warn … er, that is tell Mr Briggs at once. We must find your poor great-aunt before she harms herself or, possibly, the Pompous Pig. Who knows what she and that stuffed stoat of hers might get up to unchecked!’

  They hurried off together to find the first mate. He was on the smaller upper deck, where the huge steering wheel thingy was – I don’t know the nautical term – standing by a scruffy young boy who was actually ‘at the wheel’, steering the vessel.

  ‘We have reason to believe that there’s a stowaway on board,’ said Lady Constance, whom Eddie noticed was fluttering her eyebrows at the handsome Mr Spartacus Briggs in a way he’d never seen her flutter them in front of anyone else.

  ‘Really, Lady Constance?’ asked the first mate, straightening himself to his full height in his fine uniform. ‘Do you have any idea who it is?’

  ‘Young Master Edmund’s great-aunt,’ said Lady Constance.

  The boy – for he was no more than that – at the wheel smirked at Eddie. He was in a tattered sailor suit and had gaps in his teeth. He reminded Eddie of the orphans he’d helped escape from St Horrid’s a while back.

  Mr Briggs looked disappointed. ‘Your great-aunt?’ he said, turning his attention to Eddie.

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mr Briggs,’ he said. The first mate had insisted, at their first meeting, that it would be wrong to call him ‘sir’. ‘She’s the sea witch with the ferret your men have been reporting seeing … only she’s not a witch, just Even Madder Aunt Maud, and it’s not a ferret but her stuffed stoat Malcolm.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Spartacus Briggs, though he obviously didn’t. It was hard for Eddie to explain his relatives to someone who’d not met them face to face. ‘How do you think she got on board?’

  ‘She must have been inside my trunk,’ said Eddie. ‘It was very heavy but, when I opened it after your men put it in my cabin, there was only an apple core and a single handkerchief inside.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to report it?’ asked Mr Briggs. ‘I mean, didn’t you consider the possibility that say, for example, some of the men aboard this ship might have stolen its contents?’

  ‘It was mainly clothes,’ said Eddie, ‘and, with the way things happen in my family, I assumed one of my relatives must simply have unpacked what I’d packed.’

  ‘The Dickenses are a most unusual family,’ Lady Constance added helpfully. ‘Unique, I hope.’

  Eddie wasn’t listening. ‘Now it’s obvious that Even Madder Aunt Maud must have emptied the trunk and climbed inside.’

  ‘But why would she want to be a stowaway on a ship to America?’ pondered Mr Briggs.

  ‘Oh, I doubt she planned anything like that,’ said Eddie, surprised that the first mate should even consider that his great-aunt would have had anything sensible, like a plan! ‘I expect she saw the trunk and thought it was a comfortable place to have a quick sleep, or some such thing.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Briggs. ‘Er, I have just two more questions before I report this to the captain.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Firstly, have you any idea how we might – er – get your great-aunt to come out into the open?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘He means do you have any thoughts on how they might capture her?’ explained Lady Constance.

  A big grin spread across Eddie’s face. He’d just had a brilliant idea. It was obvious! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He needn’t have involved the crew. ‘Shiny things!’ he cried. ‘It’s worked before and it’ll work again. Shiny things!’

  ‘Shiny fings?’ asked the boy at the wheel.

  ‘Quiet, Powder Monkey!’ the first mate ordered. ‘Concentrate on steering.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy, looking down at the ship’s wheel deck with a sheepish look on his face.

  ‘Shiny things?’ asked Mr Spartacus Briggs and Lady Constance Bustle as one.

  Eddie nodded. ‘My great-aunt’s a bit like a jackdaw,’ Eddie began.

  ‘But your great-uncle’s the one with a nose like a beak,’ said Lady Constance, which was another of her not-so-ladylike comments.

  ‘I mean that she seems to love collecting shiny objects nowadays. Last summer there was a highly polished mortar shell … recently there was the crystal bauble from a chandelier … She can’t resist them.’

  ‘So if we were to bait a trap with a shiny object, we could lie in wait and – er – encourage her to stay in your cabin with you rather than frighten the men?’ nodded Mr Briggs. ‘I think we have the makings of a plan here, Master Dickens. Well done!’

  ‘That’s all very well, Mr Briggs,’ said Eddie’s travelling companion. ‘But do you have anything particularly shiny on board?’

  ‘There’s always the sextant,’ said Mr Briggs.

  ‘The what?’ asked Lady Constance.

  ‘It’s the instrument used for calculating latitude, by working out the angle of the sun from the horizon,’ said Eddie, to their amazement. ‘It’s often made of polished brass.’ (This boy had been to sea before, remember.)

  ‘Exactly!’ said Mr Briggs. He slapped Eddie on the back. ‘Well done, lad.’ Eddie only just managed to stop himself falling to the deck. That was some slap!

  ‘Sorry to spoil the party,’ said Lady Constance, ‘but you must have been using your sextant throughout the voyage already.’

  ‘And?’ asked Mr Briggs.

  ‘It ain’t attracted the dotty old lady yet, so why should it now?’ said Powder Monkey, getting a thwack around the ear for his trouble.

  ‘Back down to the galley with you!’ ordered the first mate, but he didn’t look too angry. Powder Monkey scurried off between their legs and Mr Briggs took the wheel.

  ‘He seems rather young to be steering this ship,’ said Lady Constance.

  Mr Briggs smiled. ‘He’s really a galley hand – a kitchen helper – but he’s a good lad and has been pestering me to show him the ropes.’

  ‘You’re a kind man,’ said Lady Constance, fluttering those eyelashes of hers again.

  ‘You have a good point about the sextant,’ said Eddie. ‘We’ll have to think of something really shiny to bring Even Madder Aunt Maud out of hiding.’

  With one hand on the wheel, and his eyes on the horizon – not literally, of course, or they’d have to be on very long stalks – the first mate rubbed his chin, deep in thought. ‘I can think of just the thing to attract her,’ he said. ‘The shiniest of shiny things. It can’t fail … but I must talk with Captain Skrimshank first.’

  ‘Excellent!’ said Lady Constance.

  ‘What was your second question?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You originally said you had two questions for me, Mr Briggs.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the first mate. ‘I was wondering why you didn’t have any clothes on?’

  Of course Eddie wasn’t naked naked, he was almost naked – he was in his undies – but that was still a very odd way for a paying passenger (back then) to be wandering around a ship.

  ‘As I said, Mr Briggs, all my clothes were missing from my trunk. I’ve only got the ones I came aboard with and Lady Constance has kindly washed those because they were beginning to … to …’

  ‘Smell a little ripe,’ said his professional companion, finding the right words. ‘They’re currently drying in the rigging.’ She nodded in the direction of one of the masts where, sure enough, Eddie’s clothes were tied to a rope like flags, fluttering in the breeze.

  ‘Remarkable,’ said Mr Briggs. ‘Truly remarkable. Now, if you will excuse me, I shall have Jolly take the wheel and will consult the captain about our plan.’

  Despite his various aches and pa
ins from attacks with a toasting fork and a stuffed stoat, Mad Uncle Jack somehow made it to the top of his nephew’s wooden scaffolding rig, in the hallway of Awful End. Eddie’s father was, of course, lying at the top, busy painting something which looked suspiciously like – you guessed it – a liver sausage.

  ‘We have to get her back,’ said Mad Uncle Jack. ‘I can’t live without her for that long, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mr Dickens.

  ‘She may live in a hollow cow and me in my tree house,’ MUJ continued, ‘but we’re always in the same vicinity. She is my love, my joy, my reason for living … I cannot bear to be away from her grating voice and violent attacks.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Mr Dickens, wiping his paintbrush on a stained rag before dabbing it in a different colour on the palette that lay on his chest. ‘But what if the detective inspector is wrong, Mad Uncle Jack? What if Even Madder Aunt Maud isn’t on board the Pompous Pig but riding the trains up and down the line, or living on wild berries up on the moors? She was very taken with the place after we all crash-landed there in that hot-air balloon, remember?’

  This would be an excellent place for me to go on about one of my earlier books again, but I’m writing this part on a Sunday and it somehow doesn’t feel right … but perhaps Suzy, my editor, will read it on a weekday and say: ‘Go on! Mention the title. It’d be a waste not to!’ We’ll just have to wait and see.

  ‘I cannot take the risk that my darling love-pumpkin is aboard the Pompous Pig with young Edmund and do nothing about it,’ said Mad Uncle Jack. He was distracted for a moment by something Eddie’s father had finished painting on the ceiling the day before. To any sane person, what it most resembled was a large marrow, or some such vegetable, with arms and legs, clutching a large – yup – liver sausage. ‘Moses holding the Ten Commandments?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Dickens beamed with pride.

  ‘Such delicate brushwork!’ said Mad Uncle Jack. ‘Breathtaking!’ He began to wheeze.

  ‘But how can anyone hope to catch up with Simon’s ship?’ asked Mr Dickens. By Simon he, of course, meant his son Eddie. ‘They have over a week’s start on us.’

  ‘I have a plan!’ said Mad Uncle Jack dramatically throwing his arms wide which, in his crouched position, caused him to topple off the edge of the scaffolding.

  Gibbering Jane emerged from under the stairs, with a sinking feeling, to find out what had caused the nasty ‘CRUNCH’.

  Episode 10

  Dazzling Events

  In which not only Even Madder Aunt Maud shows an interest in a priceless shiny thing

  Later that same day, Eddie and Lady Constance were taken to the captain’s cabin. In fact, Captain Skrimshank had a suite of rooms, including the dining room where Eddie and Lady Constance ate their evening meals with the captain and first mate, served by the steward.

  They’d only been in this room once before, though, and that had been when they had first been introduced to Skrimshank. It was like an office, with a big table laid out with charts, a compass on some kind of gyroscope so that it was always level, even when the ship listed (which is nautical/maritime/sailor-speak for tilted or rocked about), and various other brass implements from a magnifying glass to a pair of dividers. There were books on shelves on the walls and a small safe in the corner, by the door. Behind the captain and his table were the biggest windows in a ship where some of the rooms below decks had none.

  Captain Skrimshank was busy writing in a ledger marked ‘LOG BOOK’ as Mr Briggs knocked on the door and led Eddie and Lady Constance into the cabin. He was dressed as he was always dressed, in a beautifully clean and pressed uniform, which looked fresh on that morning.

  Eddie had never actually seen Captain Skrimshank do much, except walk about the various decks, once in a while, with his hands clasped behind his back, whilst his men acknowledged him with a salute, a nod, a greeting of ‘Cap’n’, or all three. He certainly looked the part, though. Eddie could imagine him being a Royal Navy captain with a ship bristling with cannons, rather than the captain of a clipper – a merchant ship.

  When Eddie had been confused with that other trunk all those years ago and first sent to sea, the sailing ship he’d been on had been entirely made of wood. Although, at first glance, the Pompous Pig also looked wooden, she – yup, ships were referred to as though they were women back then, something which only changed at Lloyds of London (the mighty ship insurers) in the year 2002, which sounds pretty recent to me – was what was called a ‘composite’; planks of wood over an iron frame.

  If you think it odd that Eddie and Lady Constance were travelling in a sailing ship – relying on the wind and currents – long after steamships had been invented, I should point out that a nifty sail-powered clipper could easily do 16 to 18 knots an hour (a ‘knot’ being a measure of distance, as well as something to do with string) whereas, back then, most big, bulky steamships could only do a mere 12 knots and needed to carry huge amounts of coal to burn.

  ‘Mr Briggs tells me that you have a plan for enticing your errant great-aunt out of hiding,’ said Captain Skrimshank rising from his seat and nodding his head in deference to Lady Constance, pausing for a brief second or two to admire his features in a small, circular looking-glass riveted to the wall. ‘And that something shiny is in order.’

  ‘The shinier the better, Captain,’ said Eddie, still in his underwear because his dried clothes had mysteriously gone missing.

  The captain unbuttoned the top of his tunic and pulled a gold chain from around his neck. On it was a large key. He handed it to Spartacus Briggs. ‘If you would do the honours, Mr Briggs?’ he said. While Mr Briggs took the key and proceeded to open the safe with it, Captain Skrimshank continued to talk. ‘Are you aware what cargo it is that we’re carrying to America on this particular voyage?’ he asked.

  ‘From what I was able to gather from your men, you have a cargo hold full of shoes,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Left shoes,’ added Lady Constance.

  ‘Exactly right,’ said the captain. ‘A recently mechanised shoe factory in Nottingham ran into serious problems with its machinery and could only produce shoes for the left foot, as opposed to matching pairs. This would have led to serious financial losses and even the loss of jobs had it not been for the brilliance of the owner’s son, Young Mr Dunkle – as opposed to the owner himself, who was called “Old Mr Dunkle”, that is. Mr Dunkle Junior was aware of the newly opened Ooops Hospital in Boston Massachusetts set up specifically for those who have lost limbs in accidents. He has secured the sole contract, no pun intended, for supplying shoes for one-legged patients whose remaining leg is of the left variety. The patients are delighted to be wearing the latest fashions. The hospital is delighted at the reasonable price they have agreed upon, and Dunkle Footwear of Nottingham are delighted that their future is safe.’

  ‘How very …’ Eddie wondered what the captain’s anecdote had to do with the Even Madder Aunt Maud situation, unless some of these left shoes had very shiny buckles which were placed in the safe for safe-keeping. (Hence the word safe.) ‘… interesting,’ he said.

  ‘Interesting in that the shoes are not the only cargo,’ said Captain Skrimshank with a dramatic air. Mr Briggs had opened the safe and pulled out a red leather box about the size of one that could hold a single cricket ball. He handed it to the captain with great care. ‘There is also this,’ said the captain, twisting a gold clasp and slowly opening the lid of the box, ‘and it is worth more than this entire ship and all those shoes put together.’

  Eddie actually gasped. There, nestling in the crushed red velvet lining of the box, was a dazzling jewel. It reminded Eddie of the bauble from the chandelier, but that had been cut crystal glass; this was obviously a real diamond, sparkling like fire, and, at the very centre, was a flaw – a dark blemish or naturally formed mark – in the almost perfect shape of a cartoon dog’s bone.

  ‘It’s … It’s beautiful,’ said the stunned Lady Constance. ‘Even more
beautiful than I ever dreamed possible. Surely this must be the world famous Dog’s Bone Diamond?’

  The captain nodded proudly. ‘So named because of the shape of the flaw at the very heart of it. It was recently purchased from its British owner by Dr Eli Bowser, the American dog-food tycoon, and we aboard the Pompous Pig have been given the honour and responsibility of transporting it.’

  ‘Wow!’ said Eddie, which wasn’t an everyday Victorian expression but neatly summed up how he felt. ‘But why no armed guards? And surely a steamship would have been more reliable?’ He was a bright kid.

  ‘As a precaution,’ the captain explained. ‘As a subterfuge, if you like. Two days after we set sail, it was announced in the British and American press that the dazzling Dog’s Bone Diamond was being sent to America, with an armed escort, aboard the American steamship Pine Cone. There are, indeed, two detectives from the Pickleton Detective Agency now aboard the Pine Cone and they are, indeed, guarding a so-called diamond, but even they don’t know that it is a fake. If there are any crooks out there, their attention will be centred on the wrong ship!’

  Eddie immediately thought of the escaped convict Swags aboard this ship. He knew that he must say something at once. He was about to speak, but his travelling companion got in first.

  ‘Was your idea to use this as the shiny bait to lure out Master Edmund’s great-aunt?’ asked Lady Constance, her eyes still on the diamond and nothing else.

  ‘Yes,’ said the captain. ‘Unless someone’s flying overhead in a hot-air balloon, our secret is going to remain on board. We’re still a good few days away from land.’

  Once again Eddie opened his mouth to mention the possible dangers of Swags and, once again, Lady Constance managed to jump in first.

  ‘Too dangerous, Captain,’ she said. ‘What if his great-aunt actually managed to get hold of it before we could stop her and threw it overboard?’