Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage (2 page)

Much to Bets’ relief, Mr. Goon didn’t appear at her home that day. When she and Pip set out the next morning to go to Fatty’s shed, they both kept a good lookout for the fat policeman, but he didn’t appear either on foot or on his bicycle.

Larry and Daisy were already down in the shed with Fatty. It was warm and cosy, for the oil-lamp was lighted and burning well. Fatty was just the same old Fatty, handing out bars of chocolate, and opening bottles of ginger-beer and lemonade. He grinned at Pip and Bets.

‘Come on in. Seen old Goon?’

‘No. Has anybody seen him?’ asked Bets.

Nobody had. Buster went over to Bets and lay down beside her. ‘He feels as if he belongs to you as well as to me, now,’ said. Fatty, smiling at Bets. He was very fond of little Bets, and she thought the world of Fatty.

‘You are brown, Fatty!’ said Bets, looking at his sunburnt face. ‘If you wanted to disguise yourself as an Indian or some other foreigner you’d easily pass for one.’

‘Good idea!’ said Fatty. ‘I might try it on old Goon! I’m longing to get back to some real detective work again, and try out a few disguises. I don’t get much chance at school - I only dressed up once last term.’

‘What as?’ asked Daisy, with a giggle. ‘Go on - tell us. I know you want to!’

‘It wasn’t anything much,’ said Fatty airily. ‘Our French master fell ill and the Head had to send for a new one - and he - er - arrived early, and made a bit of a fool of himself.’

‘Oh - did you pretend to be him?’ said Pip. ‘What did you do, Fatty? You really are a caution!’

‘Well, I togged myself up, put on a moustache and those false teeth of mine,’ said Fatty, ‘and a wig of curly black hair, and a smile you could see a mile off because of the teeth…’

The others laughed. They knew Fatty’s frightful false front teeth!

‘Did you ask for the Head?’ asked Bets.

‘Gosh no - I’m not as fatheaded as all that!’ said Fatty. ‘I knew I’d find three or four of the masters watching the football that afternoon, so I made my way to them and talked to them very earnestly about the school. ‘And ze dear boys - zey await my coming, is it not? And ze - how you call him - ze Head - he awaits me also? Zis is ze football, is it not? Boom-boom - how zat boy kicked ze ball!’

Fatty acted a Frenchman to the life, and the others roared at him. ‘I don’t think they liked me very much,’ said Fatty. ‘They all muttered something about classes and wandered off one by one. My teeth put them off, I suppose. They were jolly surprised when the real French master turned up!’

‘What was he like? Anything like you pretended to be?’ asked Larry.

‘Not a bit. He was little and rather bald, and had a beard and teeth you’d hardly notice!’ said Fatty. ‘It all caused quite a commotion. A scare went round that the first man must have been someone who wanted to get in and rob the Head’s safe - and the poor new man couldn’t think why people were so surprised to see him.’

‘I don’t know how you dare to do such things,’ said Pip. ‘I’d never dare - and if I did I’d be found out at once. I can’t think why you’re hardly ever spotted, Fatty. There must be something about you - you do carry things off so well!’

Fatty looked pleased. ‘Oh well - I’ve got to practise a bit if I’m going to be a real detective some day. Have some more ginger-beer? Now - have you found any mystery? A mystery would be just about the best news I could hear.’

‘There’s not been a sniff of one,’ said Larry, drinking his ginger-beer. ‘Goon must have been thoroughly bored this Christmas - I don’t believe anything’s happened at all.’

‘Sad,’ said Fatty. ‘After two weeks of doing nothing but fall about in snow I did hope I could exercise my brains as soon as I got home.’

‘Tell us about Switzerland,’ said Bets. ‘Did you really fall down much?’

It appeared that, far from falling down even once, Fatty had done extremely well in all forms of winter sport, and had carried off quite a few prizes. He tried to talk about them modestly, but, being Fatty, this was very difficult.

‘Still the same old Fatty,’ said Larry, after about twenty minutes of listening to Fatty’s exploits. ‘The Wonder Boy! Can’t put a foot wrong even on skis!’

‘Didn’t stand on his head once!’ said Pip, grinning. ‘My cousin Ronald said he was more often upside-down than the right way up, when he went to the winter sports. But not our Fatty!’

‘Don’t tease him!’ said Daisy. ‘You’ll stop his traveller’s tales. He’s got plenty more, haven’t you, Fatty?’

‘Well, I want to hear them, even if nobody else does!’ said Bets, who never minded Fatty’s boasting.

Fatty sighed heavily. ‘Ah well - I don’t want to bore you!’ he said. ‘You tell me your news. How many Christmas cards did you have? Was your turkey done to a turn? Did the fairy doll look nice at the top of your Christmas trees?’

‘Shut up, Fatty,’ said Pip, and gave him a punch. That was the signal for a general scrimmage in which Buster joined in delight. They were all shrieking so loudly that nobody heard a knock at the shed door. Buster was almost barking his head off, and he didn’t hear it either.

The shed door opened, and Fatty’s mother, Mrs. Trotteville, looked in. ‘Frederick!’ she called, in amazement. ‘FREDERICK! Whatever is going on here? You’ll have the oil-stove over. FREDERICK!’

Buster heard her first, and stopped barking. He stood and stared at her, and then gave a yelp as if to say ‘Stop this fooling, everybody! Beware!’

Pip suddenly caught sight of Mrs. Trotteville and extricated himself from the heap of bodies on the floor. Fatty’s was underneath, having been well and truly pummelled.

‘Fatty!’ said Pip, in Fatty’s ear. ‘Look out - danger!’

With a great heave Fatty sat up and looked round. He saw the open door and his mother standing in astonishment there. He smoothed back his hair and grinned.

‘Oh - Mother! I didn’t hear you, I can’t think why!’ said Fatty, politely. ‘Do come in. Have a chocolate - or some lemonade? I think there’s a drop left.’

‘Don’t be foolish, Frederick,’ said his mother. ‘Really, to see you behaving like this - you must all have gone mad! You’ll certainly have that oil-stove over, and then the whole place will go up in flames.’

‘I’ve got a bucket of water ready over there, Mother,’ said Fatty. ‘Honestly, you don’t need to worry. We were only - well, actually we were so pleased to be together again that we - er - we…’

‘I can’t wait while you think up some silly explanation,’ said Mrs. Trotteville impatiently. ‘I just came to say that that policeman, Mr. Goon, is on the telephone and wants to speak to you. I do hope, Frederick, that you haven’t upset him already. You only came back yesterday.’

Goon on the telephone! The Five looked at one another in dismay. That meant he was going to get after old Buster after all. Blow!

‘All right. I’ll go and speak to him,’ said Fatty, getting up and brushing the dust off various parts of himself. ‘Blow Goon! It’s all right, Mother - don’t look at me like that, there’s a dear. I HAVEN T DONE ANYTHING WRONG, truly I haven’t.’

And off he went up the garden path and into the house, Mrs. Trotteville behind him, and Buster scampering along too.

The others looked at one another. Now what horrid things had Goon to say?

Mr. Goon was getting impatient. Why didn’t that Toad of a Boy come to the telephone? He began to bellow into it at his end.

‘Hallo! HALLO! Are you there? HALLO!’

When Fatty picked up the receiver he was almost deafened by Mr. Goon’s yells. He shouted back.

‘HALLO, HALLO, GOOD MORNING, HALLO, HALLO, HAL…’

This time it was Goon that was almost deafened. ‘Ho - you’ve come at last, have you?’ he said. ‘What you yelling at me like that for?’

‘Nothing. I just thought we were having a kind of shouting-match,’ said Fatty, in a most polite voice.

Goon began to boil. Fatty always had a very bad effect on him. He spluttered into the telephone.

‘Now then, you look here, and don’t you…’

‘Can’t hear you properly,’ said Fatty, in a most concerned voice. ‘Mr. Goon, can you speak a little closer to the mouth-piece?’

‘No!’ roared the angry policeman, ‘and just you look here, I…’

‘Look where? Down the telephone, do you mean?’ said Fatty inquiringly.

Poor Mr. Goon nearly flung down the telephone. He roared again. ‘I want you to come down here to my house tomorrow morning at ten o’clock sharp,’ he shouted. ‘About that complaint, see! That dog’s out of control, and well you know it.’

‘There wasn’t time for you to get a proper complaint,’ said Fatty.

‘Ho, I got enough to go on,’ said Goon.

‘Ho, you didn’t,’ said Fatty, exasperated.

‘What’s that you say!’ bellowed Goon.

‘Nothing of any importance,’ said Fatty. ‘Right - I’ll be along tomorrow - with my witnesses - including Buster.’

‘No - don’t you bring that there pest of a dog!’ cried Mr. Goon. But it was too late - Fatty had put down the receiver with a bang. Blow Goon!

He went to tell the others, and they listened gloomily.

‘We’ll all come with you,’ said Bets loyally. ‘And of course we’ll take Buster. He’s the defendant, isn’t he? - is that what you call it? - and he ought to speak up for himself!’

‘He’ll speak all right!’ said Pip. ‘What a nuisance Goon is! We haven’t got a great deal of the holiday left, and we don’t want it messed up by Goon.’

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ said Fatty. ‘The sun’s out now, and I want to get the taste of Goon out of my mouth!’

They all laughed. ‘You say such silly things!’ said Daisy. ‘Come on - let’s go down to the river. There are some baby swans there, and the parents bring them to be fed. We’ll take some bread.’

They put on hats and coats and went up the garden path to the kitchen door to ask for bread. The cook put it into a basket for them and they set off for the river.

They fed the swans and then wandered up the river-path, enjoying the pale January sun. The swans swam with them for some way, the little cygnets following behind. They came to a small gate that gave on to the river-path, and Bets looked over it idly.

Then she pulled at Fatty’s arm. ‘Look - isn’t that exactly like the dear little poodle we saw yesterday at the station - the one whose mistress made all the fuss about Buster?’

They all looked over the gate. ‘No - I don’t think it’s the poodle,’ said Pip, adding, in his usual brotherly way, ‘you always jump to conclusions, Bets. Now I come to look more closely, it’s not a bit like the poodle we saw. It’s too big.’

An argument began. ‘It’s not too big - it’s about the right size,’ said Daisy.

‘You girls have no idea of size,’ said Larry loftily.

‘I’ll soon prove it, anyway,’ said Bets suddenly, and she began to call loudly. ‘Poppet! Poppet, are you Poppet? Here, Poppet!’

And the poodle straightway ran over to the gate, its stiff little tail wagging like a pendulum!

‘There you are!’ said Bets triumphantly. ‘What did I tell you? Poppet, you’re a darling! Fatty, isn’t she sweet? She trots about as if she learns ballet-dancing!’

‘So she does,’ said Fatty, seeing exactly what Bets meant. ‘At any moment now Poppet will rise on her toes and pirouette! Poppet, why did you cause all that upset with Buster?’

Poppet put her little pointed nose through the gate and sniffed at Buster, who sniffed back. He licked the tip of Poppet’s nose, and Bets laughed.

‘He likes her! I wonder if she’s lonely without her mistress? I didn’t much like the look of that man who took her back home, did you?’

‘Well, I didn’t like what I could see of him, which wasn’t much,’ said Fatty. ‘I wonder where they live - in that cottage there, I suppose.’

A small, not very well-kept cottage stood at the side of the garden. Much further away rose a big house, probably the one that Poppet’s master and mistress had left the day before. No smoke rose from its chimney, so presumably it was now empty. But smoke rose up from the chimneys of the little cottage steadily and thickly, and the five children immediately pictured the muffled-up man sitting hunched over a roaring fire.

Poppet wanted Buster to play with her. She pranced away from the gate, came back, and pranced away again, looking over her shoulder as if to say, ‘Do come! I’d like a game with you!’

Buster scraped at the gate and whined. ‘No, no, Buster,’ said Fatty. ‘You’re already in enough trouble with Mr. Goon without getting into any more! We’d better go.’

They were just turning away when a voice came from the cottage. ‘Poppet! ’Ere, Poppet. Where are you? You come along in!’

Poppet immediately disappeared into a bush to hide, and lay there quietly. The children watched in amusement.

‘Where’s that dog gone?’ said the voice, and footsteps came down a path - limping, shuffling steps - and into view came the same man they had seen the day before, dressed in much the same way, except that now he had no scarf round his neck.

The children saw that he had a dirty-looking, unkempt beard and moustache, shaggy eyebrows and bits of grey-black hair sticking out from under his cap. He wore glasses with thick lenses, and seemed to be short-sighted as he peered here and there for the hidden dog.

‘I bet you could dress up EXACTLY like that awful man,’ whispered Bets in Fatty’s ear. He turned and nodded, amused.

‘Just what I was thinking!’ he said. ‘He’d be very easy to copy, shuffle and all! Look at Poppet - she’s not going to give herself away - she’s lying as still as a mouse.’

‘Poppet! Poppet! Where is that wretched dog!’ said the man in an exasperated voice. ‘Wait till I get you, I’ll show you I mean what I ses! Slipping out like that! I won’t half thrash you!’

Bets and Daisy looked horrified. What, thrash a little thing like Poppet? Surely the man couldn’t mean it!

Another voice came on the clear wintry air. ‘Bob Larkin! Didn’t I tell you to help me with them potatoes? You come in and do them!’

The man scowled. ‘I’m just coming!’ he said. ‘I’m after this dratted dog! It’s got out.’

‘Oh my word - I hope as how that gate’s shut!’ cried the second voice. ‘We’ll get into trouble all right if anything happens to that precious dog!’

A woman now came into sight, very thin, wearing a draggled skirt and a dull red shawl wrapped tightly round her. Her hair was so extraordinary that the children gaped to see it. It was obviously a wig, mouse-colour and much too curly - and much too crooked!