Nanny Piggins and the Accidental Blast-off (11 page)

‘Good morning, this is quite a surprise,’ said the curator. He was a small neatly dressed man in his sixties. His eyes almost twinkled he seemed so delighted to be confronted by such a large group of people. ‘Can I offer you anything? A slice of cake, perhaps?’

‘What sort?’ asked Nanny Piggins, sniffing in the general direction of the large brown cake sitting on his desk.

‘Carrot cake. I made it myself,’ said the curator.

‘Yuck!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘You’ll have to come up with something better than that if you want to distract us while you leap out the window and make a run for it.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked the curator, with just a little bit too much amused innocence.

‘This pig –’ began the Police Sergeant.

‘Ahem,’ interrupted Anthea and Nanny Piggins, pointedly clearing their throats.

‘I mean, this lovely young lady …’ corrected the Police Sergeant gallantly.

Nanny Piggins and Anthea smiled.

‘… tells us that she stole the Giant Mumbai Diamond on your orders, and that she handed the diamond back to you,’ explained the Police Sergeant.

‘Really?’ said the curator. ‘But surely you’re not going to take her word for it. The word of a pig and a thief, who I just saw take the watch off your very wrist.’

Anthea handed the Police Sergeant his watch.

‘Sorry,’ said Anthea. ‘Would you like your garters back too?’

‘What?’ asked the Police Sergeant.

‘The garters that hold your socks up,’ explained Anthea. ‘I nabbed them in the police car.’

The Police Sergeant pulled up his trouser leg to see his crumpled socks. ‘Yes, please.’

‘You see, she can’t help herself,’ continued the curator, ‘whereas I am a respected pillar of the museum community.’ He smirked now, he was so delighted with his own cleverness.

‘Would you like me to bite him, Police Sergeant?’ asked Nanny Piggins as she glowered at the curator.

‘I don’t think that would help get a confession,’ said the Police Sergeant.

‘Neither do I, but it might be fun,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘And if I had stolen the diamond I’d be halfway to Venezuela by now,’ added the curator, ‘but I have not left this room since they first informed me of the crime.’

‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If you haven’t left this room since the robbery, and my sister, who is a perfectly honest pig in all respects that don’t involve apricot danishes, says she gave you the diamond, then we can deduce that the diamond must be hidden somewhere in this room.’ As Nanny Piggins mulled this over she began twirling an imaginary moustache.

‘Oh no,’ groaned Michael. ‘Nanny Piggins has been reading detective novels again.’

‘I have indeed,’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve been reading
The Purloined Letter
by Edgar Allan Poe, so I know the best way to hide something is –’ she paused for dramatic effect – ‘in plain view!’

‘It is?’ said Boris. ‘I thought the best way to hide something was to put a lampshade on it.’

‘Oh yes, that is the best way to hide bears,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but the best place to hide anything else is out in the open. Because that is the last place anybody would ever think to look.’ Nanny Piggins prowled about the office. ‘And so the Giant Mumbai Diamond must be hidden … here! In this display of rocks!’ Nanny Piggins picked up a display case and dashed it on the floor, smashing the glass to smithereens. ‘Behold – the Mumbai Diamond!’

Everyone looked at the grey rocks on the floor.

‘You’ve just smashed a priceless collection of lunar specimens,’ smiled the curator.

‘Well then, the diamond must be here among this display of crystals,’ said Nanny Piggins, picking up a second display case and throwing that on the floor too. The crystals shattered into a thousand pieces (just as a diamond would not).

‘No, that was just a case of unique Amazonian crystals,’ supplied the curator. ‘Our staff go to a lot of trouble to label our displays; you really should take a moment to read them.’

‘But the diamond has to be here somewhere!’ protested Nanny Piggins.

‘You’ll never find it,’ chortled the curator.

‘Perhaps he’s hidden it somewhere traditional like a wall safe or a sock drawer,’ suggested Boris.

‘No, criminal masterminds never do that,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘I know where it is!’ yelped Samantha, more surprised than anybody by her sudden insight.

‘You do?’ said Nanny Piggins and the Police Sergeant.

‘Think about it,’ said Samantha. ‘Something has happened since we came in this room. Something that is not quite right.’

Everyone thought, but nobody could work it out.

‘He offered us a piece of carrot cake that
he baked himself
,’ said Samantha.

Nanny Piggins was immediately electrified by the importance of this fact. ‘Nobody makes carrot cake for themselves because it tastes disgusting!’ She turned and glared at the curator. ‘The only reason
anyone would bake a carrot cake is if they wanted to torture a small child by making them eat it, or if they wanted a cake that they could be sure no-one else would ever eat.’

The curator was not smiling anymore.

‘Therefore,’ continued Nanny Piggins, ‘the diamond is in the cake!’

Nanny Piggins launched herself at the cake. And even though she was standing on the far side of the room surrounded by broken glass, lunar rocks and shards of crystal, she still had her trotters on the cake before the curator could get there. Nanny Piggins then tore the cake apart and found among the cloggy lumps of sugar, flour, butter and grated carrot (the curator was not good at baking) the spark ling perfection of the Giant Mumbai Diamond.

‘Wow!’ said the children.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Almost as pretty as an apricot danish,’ agreed Anthea Piggins, taking an apricot danish out of her pocket and biting into it.

So the curator was sent away to prison for a very long time, and Nanny Piggins and the children went home. They had been given the $20,000 reward for discovering who stole the Giant Mumbai Diamond, but Nanny Piggins let Anthea keep the money. She
had racked up a lot of debt because of her crippling apricot danish habit.

‘Have you been traumatised by your brush with the law?’ Samantha asked her nanny.

‘Not at all,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I thought it was a wonderful April Fools’ Day prank.’

‘But the curator didn’t mean it as an April Fools’ Day prank,’ said Derrick.

‘I know, but we must give him credit where it’s due,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘He may be a rotten thief and a terrible cake baker, but if he had intended this whole debacle to be a prank, then it was definitely a jolly good one.’

Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children were on their hands and knees under Mrs Simpson’s azalea bushes, looking for insects. For once they were not hunting for bugs to put in a teacher’s handbag or to run up a rude shopkeeper’s leg; their search was purely for academic purposes. You see, Samantha had to do a project on insects for school. And Nanny Piggins reasoned that if a picture tells a thousand words, then an actual jar full of live insects must be
a million times better than the 800-word essay the teacher had actually asked for.

They already had the common fly, a ladybird, several dozen cockroaches and a worm (Nanny Piggins refused to believe that a worm was not an insect, because it was creepy and yucky and she thought it should be even if it was not). Now they were on the lookout for something venomous. Despite Samantha’s protests, Nanny Piggins insisted she should try to get bonus marks by handing in something deadly. So they were just about to uproot Mrs Simpson’s prize-winning dahlias to see what they would find when they heard the sound of jaunty whistling.

‘What’s that?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Someone whistling,’ said Derrick.

‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I distrust whistling. Only men do it. Women are too polite to inflict their bad taste in music on others.’

‘I thought people whistled because they didn’t know the words to the song,’ said Samantha.

‘That too,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘And thank goodness they don’t know the words. It would be unbearable to have men wandering the streets bursting into show tunes. But that’s beside the point. What I want to know is, who would be whistling in
the street at this hour? It’s too early in the morning to be that happy.’

‘Shall we have a look?’ suggested Michael.

‘Yes, that’s a good idea,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but we should stay hidden just in case it’s that naughty Pied Piper of Hamlin.’ (Nanny Piggins had read the story of the Pied Piper with the children the night before, and it had had a big impact on her. She could not believe such a horrific tale of kidnapping and rat massacre could be considered a children’s story.)

Nanny Piggins and the children followed the whistler by crawling along under the hedge. All they could see of him was his shiny shoes.

‘It does not bode well that his shoes are so polished,’ whispered Nanny Piggins. ‘Anyone who takes that much care with their appearance must want something. It’s like he’s trying to hypnotise us with the glare from his footwear.’

Just then the whistler stopped and turned into the Greens’ very own gateway.

‘He’s going to our house!’ whispered Samantha, panicking.

‘It
is
the Pied Piper of Hamlin!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Don’t worry, children, I won’t let him lead you off into a cave no matter how well he plays the flute.’

But as he strode up their front path they got a view of the man with the shiny shoes for the first time. He was wearing the distinctive red tailcoat, black top hat and oily moustache that they all instantly recognised.

‘The Ringmaster!’ they all gasped.

‘The Ringmaster is the Pied Piper of Hamlin?’ whispered Michael.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Why is he carrying a big bunch of flowers and a huge box of chocolates?’ asked Derrick.

‘It’s just as I suspected,’ whispered Nanny Piggins. ‘He must want something. Here, hold my handbag, I’m going to bite him.’

‘Hang on,’ said Derrick, ‘shouldn’t you talk to him first. He hasn’t done anything wrong yet.’

‘Yes, but why wait?’ argued Nanny Piggins. ‘We all know it’s just a matter of time.’

Just then the Ringmaster turned, bent down and looked straight at them.

‘Sarah Piggins, darling!’ said the Ringmaster. ‘Is that you covered in dirt and hiding under the hedge?’

‘Maybe,’ admitted Nanny Piggins.

‘How wonderful to see you again,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘Are you going to come out? Or should I crawl under there to talk to you?’

‘I suppose we’ll come out,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins, ‘but we’re very busy. We still haven’t found a scorpion, so we don’t have much time to talk.’

‘A scorpion isn’t an insect, it’s an arachnid,’ Samantha pointed out.

‘Your teachers can talk their scientific mumbo-jumbo all they like,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘As far as I’m concerned, one chitin-covered invertebrate is the same as another.’

Nanny Piggins then turned and glared beadily at the Ringmaster. The box of chocolates he was carrying was a large one.

‘So why are you bringing me flowers and chocolate? What do you want?’ Nanny Piggins asked, resisting the urge to just grab the chocolates and make a run for it.

‘Actually, darling, these aren’t for you,’ said the Ringmaster.

‘They aren’t?’ questioned Nanny Piggins. ‘Then what are you doing here knocking on our door?’ Suddenly Nanny Piggins recoiled in shock. ‘You’re not after Mr Green, are you?! Although I can’t deny he would make a good freak show exhibit at the circus. People would travel for miles to see the world’s most boring man sitting in a damp circus tent and being boring.’

‘No no, I’m not here to see him either,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘Although I would certainly love to meet him. The way you describe this Mr Green sounds most intriguing.’

‘Then why are you here?’ demanded Nanny Piggins. ‘Come on, spit it out. If you’re trying to use some roundabout, reverse-psychology way of luring me back to the circus, just get on with it so I can say no and carry on with my day.’

‘Rest assured, I don’t want a flying pig,’ said the Ringmaster disdainfully, as though this was the most ridiculous idea ever.

‘You don’t?’ asked Nanny Piggins, taken aback.

‘Goodness, no! Pigs are so out of fashion,’ explained the Ringmaster. ‘Everyone is concerned about calories and cholesterol these days. So the idea of airborne bacon no longer has any appeal whatsoever.’

Nanny Piggins was now secretly starting to feel a little bit hurt.

‘No, these days what people want is culture, art, elegance and class,’ continued the Ringmaster. ‘In short, they want a ballet dancing bear!’

‘Boris!’ gasped the children.

‘Precisely,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘I have come to see my dear old friend Boris.’

‘Hah!’ scoffed Nanny Piggins. ‘He’ll never go anywhere with you. You hurt his feelings when you cut his act, sold his tent and made him sleep in a puddle. He’ll never forget the tyrannical way you –’

But Nanny Piggins never got to finish her sentence because at that moment, Boris himself came barrelling round the corner of the house, leapt in the air, slammed into the Ringmaster and pinned him to the ground.

‘Oh my goodness, Boris is going to bite the Ringmaster!’ exclaimed Samantha.

But it was not to be. Instead, Boris ripped the box of chocolates out of the Ringmaster’s hands, tore open the packaging and started gobbling them right there on the lawn,
without sharing
.

‘Mmmnmmmglobgolbmmm,’ said Boris as he devoured the chocolates.

‘Boris!’ said Nanny Piggins sternly. No-one loved chocolate more than her, but as far as she was concerned having a box of chocolates and not sharing with your friends was a sin so great the offender should immediately be put in jail for cruelty to chocolate lovers.

‘Sorry mmmrglog can’t bbmmyum resist numnumyum,’ said Boris.

Eventually when every last chocolate was gone
and the wrapping had been thoroughly licked, Boris collapsed on the ground in a state of complete gluttonous exhaustion.

‘I brought you flowers too,’ said the Ringmaster, holding the flowers out for Boris to see.

‘No thanks, I’m full now, maybe later,’ said Boris.

‘How could you, Boris?’ chided Nanny Piggins. ‘To eat a whole box of chocolates without sharing a single one! And in front of the children!!’

‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ said Boris sincerely, ‘but they were chocolate honey cups and you know they’re my Achilles heel.’

Nanny Piggins was horrified. She turned on the Ringmaster. ‘You came here to our home with chocolate honey cups! How dare you!’ yelled Nanny Piggins. ‘You know he’s a recovering addict.’

‘I only wanted to give a gift to my dear friend because I love him so,’ said the Ringmaster.

‘You can stop it with your oily lies,’ glowered Nanny Piggins. ‘My brother is wise to your ways now. He’s not going anywhere with you.’

‘Yes, I will,’ said Boris scrambling to his feet. ‘I’d do anything for another box of chocolate honey cups.’

‘Boris, get a hold of yourself,’ wailed Nanny
Piggins. ‘Am I going to have to fetch the stepladder so I can slap you?’

‘It’s all right, Sarah,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘I’m not a bad man.’

Nanny Piggins snorted. Even the children raised their eyebrows at the brazenness of his untruths.

‘Well, not very bad,’ conceded the Ringmaster. ‘I only want what is best for Boris and ballet lovers everywhere. It is a terrible shame for his talent to go unwitnessed.’

‘It doesn’t go unwitnessed,’ protested Michael. ‘He teaches the preschool class down at Mrs Krinklestein’s ballet school.’

‘And I’m sure that is very nice,’ oozed the Ringmaster, ‘but if he returns to the circus with me I can guarantee he will be performing to 20,000 people a night.’

‘And I’ll get more chocolate honey cups, right?’ asked Boris.

‘Of course, anything for my favourite star,’ said the Ringmaster.

‘You used to say I was your favourite star,’ said Nanny Piggins, trying (and failing) not to look hurt.

‘But you’re a retiree now, darling,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘It’s time for a younger generation to shine.’

Michael hugged Boris’ leg tightly. ‘You’re not really going to go with him, are you?’ He did not want his favourite ten-foot-tall friend to leave.

‘I don’t want to,’ said Boris, ‘but when you have a talent like mine it is a responsibility. I owe it to ballet to dance.’

Nanny Piggins snorted. ‘We all know you’re just doing it for the chocolate honey cups, so why not admit it?’

‘So what if I am?!’ protested Boris. ‘You once swam the length of Lake Michigan because you could smell someone eating a cinnamon bun on the far shore.’

Nanny Piggins and Boris glowered at each other. They did not often fight, so it was distressing for the children to see them so at odds. Nanny Piggins was better at glowering than her brother. But he was six feet taller so he had a height advantage.

‘Oh dear,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘I hate to be the cause of family disharmony.’ (That was a big fat fib.) ‘Perhaps Boris and I had better just leave now. You can write him a letter to apologise when you get control of your emotions, Sarah.’

The Ringmaster took Boris by the hand and started leading him away.

‘Boris, don’t go!’ called Samantha.

Boris hesitated. He turned and looked back.

‘I’ve got a box of chocolate honey cups in my car,’ said the Ringmaster.

And that was the last they saw of Boris. He bounded down the street towards the Ringmaster’s car, scrambled in through the open window and started gobbling.

‘No hard feelings I hope, Sarah,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘You can’t be cross. He came voluntarily.’

‘Just go now, before your shins feel the wrath of my teeth,’ advised Nanny Piggins.

The Ringmaster turned and strolled back to his car, whistling the same jaunty tune as when he’d arrived.

As soon at the car pulled away and turned around the corner, Nanny Piggins burst into tears. ‘Quick, children, fetch me some chocolate, I’m so upset.’

‘Do you want us to get you some chocolate honey cups?’ asked Michael.

‘No, I do not!’ yelled Nanny Piggins. ‘I say “Pish!” to that accursed confectionary and its controlling effect on my brother.’

‘But if he’s just going to perform ballet, surely that’s not too bad,’ said Samantha. ‘It really is a shame that Boris is the best ballet-dancing bear in the entire world and no-one gets to see it.’

‘You don’t know the Ringmaster like I do,’ sobbed Nanny Piggins between bites of the chocolate bar Michael had found sewn into the hem of her skirt. ‘Anything involving him never ends well.’

Nanny Piggins sulked for a full forty minutes before she had eaten enough chocolate and cake to cheer herself up again. Then she got out a pen and paper to write Boris a letter.

‘What are you going to write?’ asked Samantha.

‘Are you going to denounce him?’ asked Michael.

‘You are very good at denouncing,’ said Derrick. ‘Do you want us to fetch the thesaurus so you can look up new names to call him?’

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I am going to apologise and beg forgiveness.’

‘Really?’ said the children. They were surprised. Nanny Piggins was normally very good at holding grudges. There were dozens of grudges she personally had been harbouring for years. Plus all the inherited grudges passed down from her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother that the Piggins family had been carefully nursing for decades. (For further
information see the Buzzy Bee Biscuits chapter in
Nanny Piggins and the Wicked Plan.
)

‘I love my brother and it is my duty to protect him,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘It is not his fault that honey is delicious, and that he has no willpower. But to save him from the Ringmaster I need to be with him, which means I have to start by writing a full and frank apology.’