The Complete Roderick

paragraph. For some time, Roderick had been meeting him by the corner mailbox for these little detective sessions, and had so far taught him to detect the alphabet, numbers up to a hundred, addition, subtraction and quite a few words. This book was going to be too hard maybe, but Roderick planned to read it, tell Louie the story, and then stop every now and then to detect a sentence with him.

When they had finished the first paragraph (‘The body lay on the carpet. It was very very dead.’) Roderick gave him a secret detective handshake and went home.

It was only later that he discovered the book to be incomplete.

‘I’ve called you all together,’ said the wizened detective, ‘to get at the bottom of this. Let’s just recall the facts. We know that Lord Bayswater was brutally bludgeoned to death in this drawing-room. We know that on the evening in question, only four people could have been here alone with him. We know that each of the four dropped one clue, and that each had access to only one of the four weapons. You, Adam, his wastrel playboy nephew were the only one with access to a polo-stick. You, Lady Brett Bayswater, his so-called wife (in love with the doctor, aren’t you?) left clear fingerprints on the poker. You, Dr Coue, were seen entering this room at 8:00, leaving it at 8:15. And you, Mr Drumm, his so-called secretary (slyly playing on the affections of his daughter, I believe) entered at 8:14 and left at 8:30 — the last visitor, hmm?’

White-faced, Drumm stammered, ‘But-but the thread was left by the first person in the room. And no one knows who left the smudge of soot.’

‘We know it came from the poker. You do admit dropping a blood-soaked handkerchief on the floor, however? Drumm?’

The young man nodded guiltily. ‘But not the hair.’

‘Well,’ said the wizened sleuth, ‘we have begun to marshal our facts. Let us continue: the weapon may have been the statuette, eh? We know that if you, Dr Coue, picked up that statuette, it was at first to take from under it a folded message. We also know that if the weapon was not the billiard cue, then either Drumm was embezzling from his employer or Dr Coue was being blackmailed — or both. What is more, we know that if there was a message under the statuette, then young Adam here was, without doubt, the thief!’

‘The murderer!’ screamed Lady Brett.

‘Not necessarily, but the thief. We also know that if Drumm embezzled, it was because he had compromised your daughter. And if the bloodstained handkerchief was not used to wipe the statuette, then you, Lady Brett, only pretended to be in your room reading all evening. And we know that Coue could only have been blackmailed because he was supplying your butler Yes! Supplying him with morphia! For his addiction!’

‘Good God!^’ said Adam. ‘The murdering—!’

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions. I did not mean that your butler is an addict — not necessarily — but let us press on: We know that if you, Lady Brett, left your room during the night, then Adam could not have been the thief at all! We have established that your daughter is not compromised, it is my happy duty to report. And finally we know that if Jenkins the butler is addicted to vile morphia, then the weapon can only be the billiard-cue.’

Lady Brett spoke sharply. ‘But what does it all mean?’

‘It means, your ladyship, that I can now name the murderer, the time and the weapon. I must therefore caution one of you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. I hereby arrest you,

And that was all. A lot of perfectly blank pages followed. Roderick flipped through them again and again, until finally a minute slip of paper fell out.

The publisher regrets that, due to unforeseen technical problems, the last chapter of this book has been lost. However, the publisher is willing to offer the sum of five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) to the first person coming forward with the correct solution to Die Die Your Lordship. The clues are all there, it’s up to you. Send solutions to the address below:

What a cheat. Roderick set to work and solved the mystery that evening, wrote out his answer and explanation (which appears on page 339 below) and signed Louie’s name. Boy, wouldn’t Louie be surprised when he got all that money! Half a million, he could afford to hire a real detective — or a real teacher.

Next day he was at the corner mailbox, trying to reach the envelope up to the slot, when Louie came skipping along on one leg.

‘Here, chief, lemme help ya.’ Louie popped the envelope inside and clanged the door. ‘There. That’s my good deed, Roddy. Ain’t it?’

Roderick wished he could grin.

XIV

‘Love?’ Pa was so startled that he scratched his head with the hand holding the soldering iron. Later on he said: ‘Well I don’t know, some people say it’s everything, some say it doesn’t exist, some say it’s just using a fabric conditioner to make your family’s clothes soft or pouring some breakfast food in their trough every morning. Some say it’s the secret of the universe, some say you can buy it in any massage parlour, some say it’s priceless, some say it’s a lot of trouble and to hell with it.’

‘Yeah, but what do you say?’

‘Ask your Ma.’

Ma was working on her greatest project so far, File: drawings of all drawable nouns to be filed alphabetically in one cabinet and cross-indexed by shape. She was now up to claviers, claymores and clepsydras. ‘Have you asked Pa?’

‘He said ask you. See I been reading these stories and it’s always got hearts in it, love is always a heart thing, like in the Constant Tin Soldier see, where he loves this paper girl and when she falls in the fire he throws himself in after her, and he melts down into a little heart. And then like in this Wizard story—’

‘The Wizard of Oz, you’re reading that?’

‘Yeah and it says “The Tin Woodman appeared to think deeply for a moment. Then he said: ‘Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?’” See because he can’t love this girl he’s supposed to love. So like you can’t have a love situation I guess without a heart thing.’

Ma sketched a clam. ‘Then you’ve been poking around up in the attic?’

‘Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of these Wizard I mean these Oz books, and lots of old clothes and other junk. I found this old picture of somebody getting married, it kinda looked like you and Pa only it wasn’t. Was it?’

Her cheeks were pink. ‘No, I think… must be my cousin’s wedding…’

‘And I found this here box of joke cards, pictures of hearts and stuff, and little people with tabs on ’em you wiggle ’em and they move.’

‘Valentines…’

‘Yeah, like one’s got this dog with a heart in his mouth, you wiggle the tab and he jumps up and down it says, “I’ll bark and whine Valentine and dog your footsteps till you say you’re mine”.’

She seemed lost in a dream. ‘Pa gave me one once, nothing but a slip of paper with a formula, a cardioid…’

‘Hey this heart thing do you think if maybe I got one of them mechanical hearts like I could do these easy payments do you think…?’

‘Pa, it looks like there’s some big story you know? Behind all these little stories.’

Pa had just come in from the snow, coughing and cursing as he emptied out his sack of junk on the work- bench. He could not answer until he’d sat down, unbuckled his over-shoes, and wheezed a while. ‘What big story,