Read The Hangman's Lair Online
Authors: Simon Cheshire
The Hangman's Lair
The
Saxby Smart - Private Detective
series:
The Curse of the Ancient Mask and other case files
The Fangs of the Dragon and other case files
The Pirate’s Blood and other case files
Coming soon:
The Eye of the Serpent and other case files
Five Seconds to Doomsday and other case files
Solve another Saxby mystery,
exclusively online at:
www.piccadillypress.co.uk/saxbysmart
First published in Great Britain in 2008
by Piccadilly Press Ltd,
5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR
www.piccadillypress.co.uk
Text copyright © Simon Cheshire, 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.
The right of Simon Cheshire to be identified as Author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 85340 994 3 (paperback)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon CR0 4TD
Cover design by Fielding Design
C
ONTENTS
Case File Ten: The Hangman’s Lair
Case File Eleven: Diary Of Fear
Case File Twelve: Whispers From The Dead
I
NTRODUCTION:
I
MPORTANT
F
ACTS
My name is Saxby Smart and I’m a private detective. I go to St Egbert’ School, my office is in the garden shed, and this is the fourth book of my case files. Unlike some detectives, I don’t have a sidekick, so that part I’ leaving up to you – pay attention, I’ll ask questions.
ASE
F
ILE
T
EN:
HE
H
ANGMAN’S
L
AIR
C
HAPTER
O
NE
S
OMETIMES IT’S FAR FROM EASY
being a brilliant schoolboy detective like me. After a while, you get a reputation around school for being able to solve any mystery, no matter how strange or mind-mangling.
So I was very embarrassed when
The Mystery of the Money Stolen From the School Office
left me completely clueless. Half of St Egbert’s School was keeping a close eye on me as I examined the scene of the crime and talked to possible suspects. The pressure on me to get a result was made even worse by the fact that the headteacher had only allowed me to investigate once the police had been called in and
they’d
been left clueless too.
It was like this: a wad of cash, totalling four hundred and twenty pounds, had been sitting on the school secretary’s desk at lunchtime on Monday. This money had been collected from pupils, and was going to pay for a school trip that all of my year group had been looking forward to.
The secretary, Mrs McEwan, had been in the office the whole time. She’d turned away from her desk for about ten seconds (to thump the computer’s very expensive printer to get it working, she told me quietly, but shh, don’t tell anyone, especially the Head). When she turned back, the money was gone.
She’d run out into the corridor. Nobody in sight. She’d searched the office. Nothing had fallen off her desk.
The police left later that day, scratching their heads (although that may have been something to do with the headlice epidemic we had at St Egbert’s that week). Everyone turned to me.
At first, I was fairly confident that I’d come up with an explanation for the theft, and be able to catch the culprit. But as the days wore on, everyone started looking grumpier and grumpier at me, and I started going redder and redder in the face. By the time the lice had been beaten back with sprays and lotions, I had to admit that I was beaten too.
Like I said, it was very embarrassing. Even more embarrassing than the time I wore my tattiest pants instead of my swimming trunks by mistake. And
that
was oh-help-I-want-to-crawl-under-a-stone time!
Late one afternoon, I was sitting in my garden shed - or my Crime Headquarters, as I prefer to call it. I was flopped in my Thinking Chair - the battered old leather armchair where I do all my flopping and thinking.
I gazed around me at my desk, at my files of case notes, and at the gardening and DIY stuff I’m forced to share the shed with. I took off my glasses and gave them a quick polish with my sleeve. I stared out of the shed’s perspex window.
I was utterly clueless. This case had got me more baffled than . . . than . . . good grief, there wasn’t even a simile to describe how baffled I was! There were no clues and I had no idea how to uncover more information.
I let out a deep sigh and flicked back through my notebook, just in case there was some tiny detail I’d missed, something that would unlock the mystery.
‘Who am I fooling?’ I muttered to myself. ‘There’s no way I’m going to find out who stole that money now.’
Suddenly, there was a thunderous knocking at the shed door. I almost fell off my Thinking Chair in fright.
‘Who’s that?’ I cried.
The door swung open and Bob Thompson stood there, blocking out the daylight like a slab of concrete with a head stuck on top of it. I shrank back a little in my Thinking Chair.
‘H-hi, Bob,’ I stuttered.
Bob Thompson was St Egbert’s School’s number one thug. In terms of sheer villainy, he was second only to my arch enemy, that low-down rat Harry Lovecraft. As readers of my earlier case files will know, Harry Lovecraft hatched his evil schemes using sneakiness, cunning, deceit and trickery. Bob Thompson just hit people. Everyone was scared of Bob Thompson. As he stood there, looming over me, three feeble thoughts kept running up and down in panic inside my head:
1. Oh dear, Bob Thompson knows where I live.
2. Oh dear, Bob Thompson’s in my shed.
3. Oh dear, Bob Thompson’s going to hit me
‘Please don’t hit me,’ I said.
Suddenly, he looked a little sheepish. ‘Why would I do that?’
I sat up. ‘Well, you hit most people,’ I grumbled.
Now he looked sheepish enough to fool a shepherd. ‘Yes, well, I suppose that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about,’ he said quietly.
I would have offered him my Thinking Chair to sit in, or my desk to perch on, but I had a feeling that neither of them would take the weight.
‘How can I help you?’ I said.
‘Well, y’see,’ he said. ‘It was
me
who took that money from the office.’
HAPTER
T
WO
F
OR A MOMENT OR TWO,
I wasn’t sure whether to be either a) relieved that the mystery was solved, or b) annoyed that I hadn’t been able to track Bob down as the thief. Bob Thompson wasn’t someone I’d ever have expected to outwit me. Out-thump me, yes, but not outwit me.
‘How did you manage it?’ I gasped. ‘I take it you devised some brilliantly complex plot? You worked out a fiendishly clever method for pinpointing the cash and smuggling it out of the building?’
‘No, I just snatched the money ‘n’ legged it.’
‘Oh . . . But where did you go? Mrs McEwan came out of her office only a few seconds later and there was nobody around.’
‘I hid behind the display boards in the waiting area,’ said Bob. ‘There was a load of project work on Victorians pinned up there for visitors to look at.’
I slapped myself on the forehead. ‘Of
course!’
I’d used exactly the same hiding place myself, during the case of
The Tomb of Death.
‘So you hadn’t pre-planned the robbery at all?’
‘No.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Yes, well, it must have been the, umm, chance factor which threw me off the scent. Yes, that must be it.’
‘I had to go to the office to give them a form,’ said Bob. ‘Just by chance there was nobody else in the corridor. Just by chance, Mrs McEwan turned away as I got to the office door. While she was giving her printer a good thump, I saw the money, and I took it. I hid behind the display boards until she went back into her office, then I legged it. I didn’t know there’d be nobody about. I didn’t even know that money would be sitting there on the desk. I just saw it there, and grabbed it. You do believe me, don’t you?’
I had one good reason to believe him. There was a detail in his story which convinced me he was telling the truth.
Have you spotted it?
Mrs McEwan had asked me to keep quiet about having to give that very expensive printer of hers a good thump, to get it to work. If Bob knew about that too, he must have been there to witness it.