The Hangman's Lair (13 page)

As soon as they’d gone, I scurried out of my hiding place and raced back to Izzy and her mum in the pub. Well, first I had a good cough,
then
I scurried back to Izzy and her mum in the pub.

‘What happened?’ gasped Izzy, wide-eyed.

‘I’ll tell you in the car,’ I said. ‘You will not believe it.’

‘Oh, there you are at last, Saxby,’ said Izzy’s mum. ‘Come on, time to go.’

The night air out on the street was cool, breezy and fresh-smelling. Izzy’s mum had parked a short distance away and I was looking forward to the walk, to clear the smog out of my poor, suffering lungs.

We passed the narrow alleyway that ran between The Pig and Fiddle and the first of the houses next door. As we did so, something suddenly caught my eye - a brief flash of light.

Keeping out of sight around the corner of the building, I peered into the darkness. There it was again! The night breeze must have blown the first match out. There was Godfrey Frye, striking a second match to light a cigarette. The yellowy flash lit up his face for a second or so. And I could see that there was someone with him. They were talking together in hushed tones.

I couldn’t quite make out who it was Frye was talking to. The flash of the match only revealed a wildhaired shape, which . . .

I suddenly realised it was Jimmy, the singer with The Fat Dads. And in that instant, several things slotted together in my mind.

‘Saxby!’ called Izzy’s mum. ‘Don’t dawdle! It’s getting late!’

I hurried to catch up. ‘I’ve got it!’ I said to Izzy. T know how Godfrey Frye is finding stuff out about people! I know how he comes out with all those spookily accurate facts!’

It all revolved around two things. Can you work out what they were? (You’ll have to wait till the next chapter to see if you’re right.)

B
Y THE END OF SCHOOL
the next day, I’d told Izzy all about my conclusions. Then she’d done a bit of forehead slapping and a bit of ‘why didn’t I think of that’-ing. Then she’d phoned her uncle and arranged for the two of us to go over to The Pig and Fiddle as soon as lessons were finished to talk to him and her cousins and anyone else who’d listen.

On the way over, Izzy handed me a set of printouts.

‘I did some checking in the IT suite at lunchtime,’ she said. ‘You need a licence to run a place like The Pig and Fiddle. If my uncle starts allowing gambling to go on, he’ll probably lose that licence and be in a lot of trouble on top of that. If the police discover what he’s planning, it’s game over. Literally.’

‘You think that’ll be enough to persuade him to call this whole thing off?’ I said.

‘No way,’ huffed Izzy. ‘He’s so convinced his scheme’s going to work, he’ll think it’s worth the risk.’

‘If the police mustn’t find out about this,’ I said, ‘then we won’t let on that
we
know about his scheme. Let’s keep it as quiet as possible. We’ll simply concentrate on exposing Frye as a fake, OK?’

‘Good idea,’ said Izzy. ‘That way, once we’ve made my uncle see the truth about Frye, he’ll cancel the game himself. That way he’ll think it was all his idea. He’s stubborn as well as gullible, remember.’

Things were looking worse and worse for Izzy’s uncle. And once the Big Holiday Fund was gone, they’d look pretty miserable for Izzy’s aunt and six cousins too!

By half past four that afternoon, Izzy and I were perched on stools in The Pig and Fiddle’s pub section, facing the bar and an assortment of people: there was Izzy’s uncle, the restaurant’s head chef (a skinny, ginger-haired man who was also convinced that Godfrey Frye was genuine) and Izzy’s six cousins, who ranged in age from early twenties down to about five.

‘This,’ said Izzy, pointing to each in turn, ‘is Coral, Jade, Sapphire, Ruby, Pearl and Emerald.’

‘Hello, cousins,’ I said. They waved.

There were a handful of customers in the pub, mostly sitting towards the other side of the room. None of them took much notice of what I was saying.

‘OK,’ I announced. ‘Let’s talk about Godfrey Frye. Or rather, let’s talk about, er, let’s see now, you, Coral.’

Coral was the eldest, a tall young woman with a tapering face, wearing a kitchen apron. She did a comical ‘Ooh, me?’ gesture.

I became very serious. I closed my eyes and allowed my features to freeze in concentration. I held my hands to the sides of my head. ‘You are planning a journey. I see a green car, with . . . something on the passenger seat. No, it’s a rip in the fabric. Taped over. I see . . . is it a pet? It’s a toy, a little toy nodding dog, sitting on the car’s dashboard. It came from . . . a Christmas cracker. The green car is . . . being driven by a man with a scar on his arm. His name begins with a J. Is it James? No, it’s John. You are travelling towards . . . music?’

I opened my eyes. Coral was staring at me, open-mouthed. ‘How the bloomin’ heck did —?’

Emerald, the youngest cousin, tutted loudly. ‘Izzy must have told him, dum-dum.’

Coral shook her head as if clearing out cobwebs. ‘Blindlingly obvious. Why didn’t I see that instantly?’

‘Because I dressed it up in all that mind-reading rubbish, that’s why,’ I said. ‘You weren’t expecting me to come out with that, so you took what I said at face value. Izzy told me about you and your boyfriend going to a rock festival next month and I simply muddied up the details a bit.’

Uncle Raphael cleared his throat noisily. ‘Yes, good trick ‘n’ all that, but what does this have to do with Godfrey Frye, young man?’

‘You
really
don’t know?’ gasped Izzy.

‘Suppose someone bumped into you in the street,’ I said to Uncle Raphael. ‘Someone you’d never met. A complete stranger. And instead of simply apologising and walking on, they suddenly started saying that the instant you bumped into them they’d had a psychic glimpse into your mind. What if that person could immediately reel off information about you? What if they could describe where you live? What if they then claimed they could follow your life into the future? What would you think about that?’

‘I’d be amazed and astounded!’ declared Uncle Raphael. ‘And so would you be, young man!’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘But if that happened to you, which is the more reasonable explanation? That they read your mind?
Or,
that they’d found out about you
in advance?’

‘You can’t dismiss the psychic arts as trickery,’ bumbled Uncle Raphael. ‘To quote Hamlet,
There are
more things in heaven and earth
—’

‘Yesyesyes,’ I said. ‘I’m not saying that
all
out-of-the-ordinary things are rubbish. They need proper, scientific investigation. What I’m saying is that they’re open to trickery and they’re
certainly
open to trickery in the case of Godfrey Frye and his whispers from the dead.’

‘I’m afraid that really doesn’t wash,’ chuckled Raphael. ‘Godfrey Frye’s been abroad for years. He doesn’t know anyone in this area. There’s no way he could find out information about people in advance.’

There are two ways; he has two sources of information,’ I said. ‘Number one. The local newspapers. More specifically, the local obituaries. It’s perfectly easy to find out the names of people in the area who’ve died recently and some other names and facts associated with them. Just read all the obituaries. Then, bingo, you can produce the names of dead relatives as if by magic.’

‘You’re barking up the wrong tree.’ Uncle Raphael smiled, clearly amused. ‘You couldn’t possibly link up what you’d read in obituaries with the random people who turn up in an audience to see your act.’

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘That’s where source number two comes in. Number two is Jimmy, the singer with The Fat Dads. He’s the local gossip. He knows everyone around here and everyone knows him. He’d be perfect for supplying Godfrey Frye with
all kinds
of information. About who’s in the audience, about what connections there are between different people, about
endless
things that are going on.’

‘Are you suggesting that my old pal Jimmy is in league with Godfrey Frye to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes?’ exclaimed Uncle Raphael.

‘Yes!’ I cried. ‘What Godfrey Frye is doing has been standard practice for fake mediums since Victorian times!’

‘He’s right,’ said Izzy. ‘It’s all in my research. Nineteenth century mystics used to go to amazing lengths to find out stuff. They’d also set up incredibly elaborate tricks to make it look like spirits were in the room.’

‘But not my friend Jimmy,’ said Uncle Raphael, sounding slightly hurt. ‘We’ve known each other for years. He’s a mate.’

‘He’s also a stage performer,’ I said. ‘Just like Godfrey Frye. He’s no fool. He’ll be well aware of just how these things work. Godfrey Frye will have turned up in this town deliberately looking for someone like Jimmy. The local know-it-all, the local everyone’s-friend. You find them wherever you go. All Frye has to do is sneakily get Jimmy on his side, possibly even pay him for info, and all of a sudden he’s got loads of personal facts at his fingertips. Think about it. All Jimmy’s got to do is take a good look around a crowded pub and he can pick out a couple of dozen people he knows, or more. He tells Frye who they are, and what he knows about them. If he strikes lucky, Frye can cross-reference that info with stuff he’s got from the obituaries. If not, then any audience will still contain people who’ve lost
some
relative at
some
time. And ta-daa, Frye can go on stage, claim he’s talking to the dead and produce true facts about people in the audience.’

Raphael sighed and shook his head. ‘No, no, no. Godfrey Frye’s results have been more impressive than that. He knows so
much
about people. If you were going to pull off a trick in that way, you’d have to gather absolutely vast oodles of data. Tonnes of it.’

‘But this is the guy’s
job,’
I said. ‘He’s got a very strong motive to gather absolutely vast oodles of data. The trick is in using information cleverly.’ I had a sudden thought. ‘Aha! He picked out Izzy, the other night! Perfect example! There you are, he had information about Izzy and her mum and so he picked them out and started doing his mystic bit on them!’

‘But I’ve never spoken to him about Izzy,’ said Uncle Raphael.

‘Nooooo,’ I said, sliding my hands down my face in frustration. ‘He got it all from
Jimmy.
Izzy’s mum and Jimmy know each other. They were yattering together for ages last night.’

That was how Frye knew about Saxby,’ said Izzy ‘Mum had talked to Jimmy about him. Jimmy told Frye. Frye heard “spirits” talking about him in front of me. Although, actually, I’m still not sure why.’

‘That’s easy,’ I said. ‘Frye’s a fake. He’s heard I’m a brilliant schoolboy detective. He doesn’t want any brilliant schoolboy detectives nosing around, revealing his methods, does he? So what does he do? He makes sure that you, Izzy, a friend of this detective, get told that there’s failure and disaster in my future.’

‘To scare you?’ said Izzy. ‘To put you off going anywhere near him? To make others doubt your deductions?’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘He didn’t know how much of a threat I’d be to him. So he played safe and tried to warn me off. Hah! Well, he didn’t reckon on who he was dealing with, did he? He didn’t reckon on Saxby Smart!’

The moment I stopped speaking, I noticed that everyone in front of me was staring glumly over my shoulder.

‘So,’ said a slow, scratchy voice behind me, ‘you are the detective I’ve been hearing about, eh? Not Mr Lovecraft after all?’

I turned, a prickling sensation creeping along the back of my neck. The bar stool creaked beneath me.

Godfrey Frye was standing less than a metre away. His creased, parchment face loomed over me.