The Hangman's Lair (6 page)

‘Well,’ I shrugged, ‘a certain amount is clear to me already. You’ve recently lost a personal item, a small one. After an extensive search, you have - in the last couple of hours - come to the conclusion that it has been stolen. It’s probably not something that’s valuable in terms of money, but it’s very precious to you. You also need to get it back urgently.’

She stared at me for a moment, boggle-eyed.

‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘that’s right. All of it. How could you
possibly
know all that?’

‘From your appearance,’ I said.

There was one detail about her in particular that had given me my first clue. And everything else could be deduced from that first clue, in a kind of logical spiral.

Can you work out how I came to my conclusions?

‘There’s a lot of dust on your knees and elbows,’ I said. ‘And your fingers are also grubby. That implies you’ve been mucking around somewhere mucky. It’s not mud or anything like that, just ordinary dust, so you’ve been indoors.’

‘How do you know I don’t walk around like this all the time?’ said Amy.

‘Those are expensive jeans you’re wearing,’ I said. ‘If you were dusty all the time, like my friend Muddy, you’d wear scruffier clothes. And the fact that you’re not usually dusty tells me you’ve probably been searching for something in dusty places. Under a bed, behind a desk, at the back of cupboards, that sort of thing.’

‘And how could you tell I’ve been looking for something small?’ said Amy,

‘If you were looking for something large, you wouldn’t have needed to go searching under a bed or in a cupboard, would you? You wouldn’t get dusty elbows looking for a bike or a beach ball.’

Amy blinked at me, a disconcerted look on her face. ‘And the rest? The fact that I think it’s been stolen? The urgency thing?’

‘Well, that’s easy,’ I said. ‘The simple fact that you’ve come here to ask for my help tells me that you can’t find this item and so you now think it was stolen. It must be precious to you, but not actually valuable, because you’ve come to me and not your parents or the police. Getting it back is a matter of urgency because you’ve obviously come here immediately, without bothering to even dust yourself down.’

Amy half-grinned, half-groaned. ‘Which also tells you that it’s only in the last couple of hours that I’ve given up looking.’

‘Exactly. Easy.’

Amy sat back in my Thinking Chair, gawping at me as if I’d said something clever or unusual. ‘Y’know, James Russell told me how you’d solved a mystery over at the museum. I thought he was exaggerating when he said you’re the best detective ever.’ (She was talking about the case of
The Pirate’s Blood
- see volume three of my case files for details.)

‘Well, umm, it’s always nice to have a recommendation,’ I blushed. ‘But honestly, all I do is keep my eyes open. And my brain switched on. And my mouth shut. Well, sometimes. Anyway, I’m guessing that this item you’ve lost is perhaps jewellery? Or, possibly, judging again from your appearance, an expensive designer shirt?’

She frowned slightly. ‘No. That’s completely wrong.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I blushed again. ‘Schoolbook?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Phone?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Camera?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. MP3 player packed with your complete collection of music and videos?’

‘No.’

‘Sorry, you’re going to have to tell me,’ I said weakly

‘It’s, er, my diary.’

‘Oh yeeees, of course,’ I said, snapping my fingers. ‘That would explain why . . . yes, sorry, carry on. Your diary?’

Now it was Amy’s turn to blush. ‘It’s about the size of a paperback book. It has a chunky lock on it, and I’ve put my name in big letters across the front cover.’

‘So, you’ve lost all your notes about when people’s birthdays are coming up, and when you’ve got appointments at the dentist, that sort of thing? Why would anyone want to steal that?’

She blushed a bit more, the sort of red that’s usually reserved for peppers and school sweatshirts.

‘It’s . . . not that sort of diary,’ she said.

W
HY?
W
HY?
WHY
WOULD ANYONE
keep a diary? Not the birthdays-and-appointments-at-the-dentist type - that’s OK, that’s no problem. I mean the writing-down-stuff-you-don’t-want-people-to-see type. A diary like that is
asking
for trouble. You just
know
that someone, sometime, is going to read it. I mean, if you don’t want the world to discover your innermost thoughts - Don’t. Write. Them. Down. I mean, arrgghhhh!

Ahem.

OK, I’ve calmed down again.

As Amy told me about her secret diary, grumbling thoughts such as those I’ve just mentioned went spinning round and round inside my head like a loose sock in a tumble dryer.

This diary, then,’ I said. ‘It’s something you keep quiet about?’

Amy nodded. ‘Only my family know it exists. Not even my best friends know I keep it. I write in it most nights before I go to sleep. I put down all the classroom gossip. I write about all the secrets that my friends have told me and I write about what I think of everyone.’

She kind of winced as she spoke. I had the feeling that she realised what I was thinking.

‘And, er, some of it isn’t very . . . complimentary,’ she said.

I let out a long, slow breath. I’d have quite liked to let out a long speech too, a speech which included several repetitions of the word ‘why’. But I didn’t.

‘OoKaay,’ I said. ‘Tell me why you think it’s been stolen.’

‘On Thursday, after school, the other three people I’m doing this Twentieth Century thing with all came over to my house. We were going to get some of the artwork done.’ (To explain: Mrs Penzler, our form teacher, had got the whole year group doing a huge project on twentieth century history. We’d been divided into small groups and given separate tasks to do. Amy’s group was making a timeline wallchart, which was going to be put up all along the corridor outside our classrooms. I’d been given the job of writing some ‘eyewitness’ newspaper reports on various major events.)

‘Who’s in your group?’ I said.

‘Apart from me,’ said Amy, ‘there’s Nicola Norris, Paul Welles and Kelly Fitzgerald.’

They were all kids from another class in our year group. I didn’t know any of them very well, but none of these names jumped out at me waving a big sign saying ‘Potential Diary Robber’.

‘Whose idea was it to do this homework together at your house?’ I said.

‘Mrs Penzler’s,’ said Amy. ‘Or, rather, she suggested we should work together. I volunteered to have the others over.’

‘So are these three friends of yours?’

‘No, quite the opposite,’ said Amy. ‘Mrs Penzler just stuck us together for this project because we’re all good at art. Paul’s obsessed with his collection of FrogWar figures, Nicola changes her likes and dislikes like the rest of us change underwear and Kelly’s just a miserable moo.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘You think one of them swiped the diary on Thursday?’

‘Yes. They all went home at about half past five. Then I went straight out with my mum, my dad and my older sister. We went for a pizza, then we went to the cinema. We didn’t get back until late, so I went straight to bed and didn’t even think about my diary. Yesterday morning, Friday, I was running late, so I never had a chance to notice the diary was gone. But last night, I went up to my room and no diary.’

‘Do you always keep it in the same place?’ I said.

‘Always. It’s on my window sill, under this sort of wooden pencil case thing I’ve got. I never put it anywhere else, ever. It’s always under that pencil case. Nothing else had moved, the case included.’

‘Are you sure one of your family haven’t got it?’ I said.

‘They know,’ said Amy sweetly, ‘that if they so much as
touch
my diary, or breathe a word of its existence, I will tear them apart with my bare hands and rain hellfire and fury down upon them for all eternity.’

I thought for a moment. ‘So, they’re clear on that, then,’ I nodded.

‘I’ve spent all this morning searching,’ said Amy. ‘I’ve covered every square millimetre of my room, and every other room. I’ve even been poking behind the central heating radiators with a ruler. My diary is gone.’

I stood up and paced around a bit. Those paint pots were far too uncomfortable to sit on any longer.

‘Do you still have the key?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Amy. ‘That was in my bedside cabinet. It’s not been touched. The diary’s lock is quite large, you’d have to rip half the cover off to force it open. But you’d only need a screwdriver, or something like that.’

I tapped at my chin in a particularly detective-y way.

‘I still don’t quite get what the
motive
for stealing it would be.
Why
would someone want your diary?’

Amy half-laughed. ‘Well, that’s obvious!’ she spluttered. ‘The contents are absolute dynamite! There’ll be the most
incredible
rows if what I’ve written in there gets spread around school! Someone wants to cause some major trouble. Kelly would certainly be up for that, and I wouldn’t put it past Nicola either. And Paul’s a complete oddball who doesn’t like me one little bit. Actually, some of the choicest comments in the diary are reserved for those three.’

‘Even so,’ I said, ‘I really don’t think that was what the thief had in mind. Well, probably not.’

‘What makes you say that?’ said Amy. ‘They might even have
planned
to steal it!’

I had a logical reason to think that the theft was
not
carried out simply to create trouble at school. A reason based on the fact that the diary was taken on Thursday, and today was Saturday.

I also had a logical reason to think that the theft was definitely
not
planned.

Have you worked out my reasoning?

‘You said you’ve kept your diary a secret,’ I said. ‘Nobody could have planned to steal it, because nobody knew it was there. Well, except your family.’

‘So someone took it on impulse?’ said Amy. ‘They just happened to see it there?’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think they had troublemaking in mind for the simple reason that they’ve caused no trouble! They took the diary two days ago. You said it wouldn’t be hard to force the lock open. And yet Friday has been and gone, a whole school day has passed during which the thief could have plastered the diary on every noticeboard from the Staff Room to the sports field. And yet, nothing.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Amy. ‘Perhaps the thief just wanted to be nosey?’

‘And risk being found out, by stealing something that’s
certain
to be missed?’ I said. ‘No, that doesn’t seem quite right either. They’d have to be unbelievably nosey for that . . . Hmm, I just don’t know . . .’

Amy sat forward on my Thinking Chair again. ‘Can you help me? Please?’

‘I’m almost tempted to say that anyone who writes a diary like that deserves all they get. But a crime has been committed, and crime is my business. Never fear, Saxby Smart is on the case!’

‘What can I do to help?’ said Amy.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘assuming that one of these three
did
take the diary . . .’

‘Nobody else has even visited the house all week, and my parents and sister have sworn on their lives they’ve never even been near it.’

‘ . . . then I’ll need to establish the exact sequence of events at your house on Thursday afternoon. Could you write a detailed timetable for me by Monday morning?’

‘Will do!’

After Amy had gone home, I slumped into my Thinking Chair. Now then, what should I do first? Get all this stuff put back into the shed? Or sit here and make some notes on the case?

No contest, really.