The Great Cake Mystery (7 page)

“Monkeys!” he said.

Precious smiled. “They were watching us.”

And then, just as she spoke, one of the monkeys dropped something. It fell down from the tree and landed on a sunny patch of ground. Poloko watched it and then ran forward to pick it up, paying no heed to the
excited chattering of the monkeys above his head.

For a moment or two he stared at it before passing it to Precious.

It was a piece of iced bun.

Now she was sure Poloko was not the thief. But it was one thing to be sure about something and quite another to prove it to others. That is something that all detectives know. Although she had only started being a detective, Precious was well aware that you had to be able to show people something if you wanted them to believe it.

That night, as she lay on her sleeping mat, she went over in her mind what she had seen. The monkeys were the culprits—they had given themselves away—but it would not be easy to catch them in the act. Monkeys were very quick and, in their own
special monkeyish way, very cunning. It was much easier to catch a human being than to catch a monkey.

She closed her eyes and imagined how monkeys would steal buns. They would dart in through the window when nobody was looking and their little hands—so like human hands in every respect, but a bit hairier—would stretch out and snatch.

She settled down and closed her eyes. It took some time for her to drop off, as it often did when she was thinking about a mystery, but eventually she became drowsier and drowsier and went to sleep.

She dreamed and of course her dreams were about monkeys. She was walking under some trees in her dream, and the monkeys were up in the branches above her. They were calling out and, to her surprise, they were calling her name.
Come up here, Precious. Come up here and join us
.

In your dreams you can often do things that you just cannot do when you are awake. Precious couldn't normally climb trees very well, but in her dreams she could. It was very easy, in fact, and within moments she was up in the branches with the monkeys. They gathered about her, their tiny, wizened faces filled with joy at finding a new friend. Soft, tiny hands touched her, stroking her gently, while other hands explored her ears and hair.

Then they took her by the hand and led her along one of the branches. The ground was far below, and hard and rocky.
Don't be frightened
, said one of the monkeys.
It's very easy, you know
.

And with that, Precious began to swing from branch to branch, just as the monkeys did. It was the most wonderful, light feeling, and her heart soared as she moved effortlessly through the canopy of leaves. So this was what it was like to live in the trees—it
was like living in the sky. And it was like flying too. As she let go of one branch and swung through the air to another, she felt as light as a leaf itself might feel as it dropped from a bough.

She moved through the trees, the monkeys all about her, waving to her with their little hands, encouraging her. And then slowly the trees thinned out and she was on the ground again. She looked for her friends, the monkeys, and saw that they were gone.

Those little hands … What if the thing they were trying to snatch was even stickier than the stickiest of iced buns?

Like all good ideas, it was enough to make you sit bolt upright. And that was what Precious did, her eyes wide, a broad
smile on her face. Yes! The dream had shown her. She had worked out how to trap a thief, particularly one with tiny hands!

he next morning, Precious was the first in the house to get out of bed. She had work to do—detective work—and her first task was to bake a cake. This was not difficult, as she was a good cook and had a well-tried recipe for sponge cake. Precious had learned to cook because she had to—her mother died when she was very small—and, although her father thought he was looking after her, when it came to cooking meals Precious looked after him!

The cake did not take long and was soon out of the oven. It smelled delicious, but she resisted the temptation to cut a slice for herself
and try it. Rather than doing that, she took a knife and cut out the middle of the cake so that it was left with a large hole in it.

The next bit of the plan was more difficult. Her father had a workshop next to the house—a place where he fixed fence posts and did odd carpentry jobs for friends. On a shelf in this workshop was a large pot of glue that he used for sticking wood together—it was very strong glue, a thick, sticky paste.

Very carefully, making sure to get none on her fingers, Precious ladled out several spoonfuls of this glue onto a plate. After replacing the glue-pot on the shelf, she went back to the kitchen. Now she took the piece of cake that she had cut from the center and mixed it up with the glue. It made a wonderfully sticky mess—just the thing she was looking for.