The Fangs of the Dragon (10 page)

I
ZZY
, M
UDDY
, J
ACK
, J
ACK’S PARENTS
and I
assembled in the rubble-strewn tip that was going to be the house’s main dining area, once all the refurbishment was complete. It had been a week since we unearthed Silas Middlewich’s
journal, and I now had the means to put right a great injustice.

The others all sat on upturned packing crates. I stood in front of them holding the journal.

‘We expected to find gold and jewels,’ I began. ‘Or something similar. You’re all still asking yourselves: so, what actually happened to Silas Middlewich’s
ill-gotten gains? Where
did
he hide all the cash he’d squeezed out of those he’d swindled? The answer is: he never had any in the first place.’

‘What?’ said Izzy. ‘That completely contradicts everything that’s known about him.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Everything that’s known about him is wrong. This journal proves it. Silas Middlewich had a reputation as a crook and a cruel workhouse owner, but in
reality he was the exact reverse. He was a champion of the poor. This house, the workhouse he built, was used to shelter destitute people. He put every penny he had into keeping them safe and
properly fed.’

‘But how, then, could he get such a terrible reputation?’ said Jack.

‘Izzy discovered,’ I said, ‘that he got the money to build this place from various dodgy land deals with local bigwigs. That much is true. I can’t say I follow all the
legal ins and outs of it, but basically the bigwigs were buying and selling each other’s land illegally. They
knew
what they were doing was criminal, but they
thought
Middlewich
was on their side. He wasn’t. Brilliantly clever of him. He got them paying all kinds of rents and allowances to him, and they couldn’t do a thing about it, because every last deal
they’d signed would have landed them in jail.’

‘So, these landowners then started calling him a crook?’ said Jack.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘They couldn’t go to the police, so they used their influence to try to ruin Silas Middlewich some other way.’

‘Hang on,’ said Izzy. ‘Surely what Middlewich did was wrong too? I mean, he
did
swindle those landowners, even if he did it for the best of reasons.’

‘Absolutely right,’ I explained. ‘But he realised that these wealthy landowners had a lot more to lose than he did, if it all came out in public. He wasn’t interested in
his reputation. He didn’t care who called him a crook. He’d been born into a poor family, and he saw it as his mission in life to help others in the same position. He was a kind of
Victorian Robin Hood!’

‘So where does the treasure trail come in?’ said Jack’s dad, a scattering of plaster dust falling lightly from his hair.

‘Ah!’ I said, holding up the journal. ‘It wasn’t long before the landowners were plotting amongst themselves to have Middlewich run out of town. Of course, they
wouldn’t do their own dirty work, so they persuaded the local schoolteacher to organise efforts against Middlewich.’

‘Josiah Flagg,’ said Muddy.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘But Middlewich stayed put. Soooo, Plan B, one of the landowners, Isaac Kenton, sends his own wife to Middlewich’s workhouse, pretending she’s a
pauper. The idea is for her to find and destroy any evidence Middlewich has against her husband and his cronies.’

‘Good grief,’ said Izzy quietly. ‘And the landowners spread a rumour that Middlewich had murdered her.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘The perfect way to make Middlewich look like even more of a despicable low-life. The trouble was, Mrs Kenton didn’t find the evidence she was looking
for. So, somehow, the landowners managed to persuade the police to raid the house twice, and
they
didn’t find anything either. Why?’

I paused for a moment. Smiles began to creep across the faces of my audience. Then they began to nod knowingly.

‘Because,’ I said, ‘the evidence was hidden behind that wall panelling.
That
was what the secret compartment was for. Hiding
this
journal. Middlewich was a clever
man. He knew those landowners would be after his blood, so he kept every last piece of evidence here, in his journal, safely tucked away, ready for when trouble started brewing.’

‘Which it did,’ said Jack.

I nodded. ‘By now it was 1844. The landowners were up in arms, the police were getting involved, and Middlewich knew that soon the game would be up. He had to pass on his evidence, his
journal, his “dark and mighty treasure”, to someone who could look after it and take it to the authorities if necessary.’

‘Josiah Flagg again,’ said Muddy.

‘Flagg had secretly been on Middlewich’s side all the time,’ I said. ‘The landowners didn’t suspect him. If Middlewich’s journal went to Josiah Flagg, it
would be safe. The last few days of Middlewich’s life are still a mystery, but obviously he felt that his hiding place, behind the panelling, was no longer safe enough. So in the back of his
journal he wrote out a treasure trail. He tore out the page, and put the page behind the panelling instead.’

‘And it fitted the secret compartment perfectly,’ said Izzy, ‘because it was torn from the same notebook that the compartment had been designed for in the first
place.’

‘Yes!’ I said. ‘He buried the journal in the cellar.’

‘And then?’ said Muddy.

‘And then, the story ends,’ I said sadly. ‘The journal was buried, and we have nothing to tell us what happened next. My guess is that the undercover Mrs Kenton, and the
mysterious Martha Humble, the woman who killed Middlewich, were one and the same.’

‘Mrs Kenton murdered him?’ said Jack.

‘Once we realise that Middlewich wasn’t cruel to the residents of this house, as the official history says, then it doesn’t make sense for one of them to have killed him.
They’d have no reason to hate him. But Mrs Kenton would. Izzy’s research showed us that Middlewich’s killer said he’d swindled her husband. Well, we now know what she
meant.’

‘But why didn’t Josiah Flagg get hold of the journal, as Middlewich intended?’ said Jack.

I shrugged. ‘I guess that’s something that will remain a mystery. Perhaps he didn’t get the chance to follow the trail. Perhaps the landowners found out about him. Perhaps
Middlewich died before he could tell Flagg about the secret compartment. Whatever the truth, time passed, and Silas Middlewich drifted away into history as a crook and a scoundrel. Well, until now.
Until Saxby Smart got on the case!’

‘But what if it’s the journal that’s the phoney?’ said Izzy. ‘What if Middlewich wrote it just to make people change their minds about him?’

‘It’s a question of character,’ I said. ‘Remember how I said that the historical accounts of Silas Middlewich didn’t match the facts we could deduce about him from
the treasure trail? The whole existence of the treasure trail only makes sense once we realise Middlewich was a good guy.’

‘You know,’ said Jack’s dad. ‘I bet that journal would be worth something to local historians. Hey, it might even pay for a few tins of paint!’

As it turned out, Jack’s dad was right and wrong. Right, because the journal certainly did turn out to be of interest to historians. Wrong, because the sale of the journal at auction a few
weeks later didn’t pay for a few tins of paint. It paid for the entire refurbishment of the house.

Once everything was sorted out, I returned to my garden shed to write up my notes and sit in my Thinking Chair. The journal is currently on display in a museum. It’s strange to think that
something that was once so secret is now gawped at every day by visiting parties of school kids. And it’s also strange to think that I was able to help a Victorian regain his proper place in
history.

Case closed.

C
ASE
F
ILE
S
IX
:

I
DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU
, but I always find it odd when I see my teachers out of school. It’s as if you don’t
expect them to have a life beyond the school gates. In your head they’re always glugging coffee in the staff room, never filling trolleys at SuperSave.

So I was surprised when, one weekend, Miss Bennett called at my garden shed. She teaches the year group below me and runs the book club I go to once a week after school.

As usual, the
Saxby Smart – Private Detective
sign fell off the door the moment she knocked, and as usual I found myself having to apologise for being unable to nail a simple piece
of wood to a door. I slung the sign into a corner, not sure whether to use a bigger nail next time or just to give up having a sign altogether. Paint it! I should paint it on! Of course! Why
didn’t I think of —

Anyway, I let Miss Bennett sit in my Thinking Chair, and I perched on my desk. It was the middle of summer term, and the assorted gardening stuff I’m forced to share my shed with was
giving off the aroma of cut grass. I could feel my hay fever coming on.

Miss Bennett was, as far as I could judge, the youngest teacher in the school. She was certainly one of the most popular. If the descriptive word ‘willowy’ hadn’t already
existed, you’d have had to invent it specially for her. She had eyes that looked like they’d been borrowed from a cartoon deer, and a mop of frizzy blond hair that was constantly
struggling to free itself from the little hair elastic holding it in a ponytail. She was the last person I’d have expected to present me with one of the oddest cases I’ve ever come
across.

‘How can I help you?’ I said. I had my arms in a sort of thinking pose, so as to look properly detective-y and on the ball, brain-wise.

‘I’m not sure where to begin,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘I mentioned this problem in the staff room, and several of the other teachers suggested I come and talk to
you.’

‘I see,’ I said. I wasn’t sure whether or not it was a good thing to be talked about in the staff room. ‘So, what kind of problem is this? Has a crime been
committed?’

‘Well,’ said Miss Bennett, pulling her face into a sort of err-umm-dunno expression, ‘more a sort of non-crime, really. In fact, a whole series of non-crimes.’

‘You’ve come to see a private eye about no crime being committed?’ I said.

‘It’s like this,’ she explained. ‘Six members of my class have had intruders in their homes over the past few weeks.’

‘Ah! So each house has been broken into?’

‘Nnnnnnno. There’s been no sign of forced entry.’

‘Ah! So stuff’s been stolen?’

‘Nnnnnnno. Well, some cash has gone. But there could be other explanations for that.’

‘Ah! So burglars have been caught in the act, before they could escape?’

‘Nnnnnnno. Nobody’s been seen.’

‘So,’ I said, my eyes narrowing. ‘Let’s recap. Six members of your class have not had break-ins, have had nothing stolen and have not spotted any shifty-looking blokes in
stripy jumpers and eye masks lurking in the bushes. Hmm, yes, I can see they’d be worried.’

‘I know it sounds barmy, Saxby, but each of these six is convinced that
someone
has been in their house.’

Now it was my turn to use the err-umm-dunno expression. ‘How?’

‘That’s half the trouble,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘There’s nothing they can be sure about. It’s a feeling. They’re certain that things have been moved, just
slightly. Objects looked at, wardrobes opened, desks picked through. Things like that.’

‘Couldn’t they just be being, I dunno, oversensitive, or something?’

‘I might think that too, but
six
of them? In the same class? Within a few weeks? That seems very odd. And none of them are the sort of kids who’d make things up.’

‘Hmm, yes, I see your point. But couldn’t it also be a case of one person saying something and the others picking up on it?’

‘No,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘This only came to light because we were having a PSHE lesson the other day. One of the girls, Sarah, happened to mention this peculiar feeling she and
her mum had recently experienced, and then the five others spoke up and said they’d experienced exactly the same thing. None of them had mentioned it before, because at the time they all
thought, as you would, that it was nothing more than an isolated oddity.’

‘You said cash has been taken?’ I said.

‘Yes, four of these six say that they, or their parents, have missed small amounts of money. A ten-pound note, or some loose change they thought they’d left in a particular place.
Again, nothing that’s really definite. With no break-ins, nothing else taken, they all thought they’d simply mislaid the money. But now, knowing this has happened six times, the missing
money suddenly looks like deliberate theft.’

‘It certainly does,’ I said. ‘But what kind of thief leaves no trace of breaking in, takes nothing but small amounts of cash, and only takes this cash in four instances out of
six?’

‘Quite,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘Do you see why I came to you now? My whole class is very worried about this, and so am I. We’re all wondering who’s going to be
next.’

‘Haven’t any of the six’s parents gone to the police?’

‘And tell them what?’ said Miss Bennett. ‘There’s still no actual evidence of any crime having been committed at all. What could the police do?’

‘Good point,’ I said. I hopped up off the desk and on to my feet. ‘Well, I can honestly say that’s the weirdest problem anyone has ever come to me with. Ever.’

‘So . . . you don’t think it can be investigated?’ said Miss Bennett.

‘On the contrary,’ I said. I tried to sound confident, but to be perfectly honest I didn’t feel the slightest bit confident at all. This problem seemed totally baffling even
before it had begun! However:

‘I’ve never turned down a genuine mystery yet,’ I said, ‘and I don’t intend to start now. Saxby Smart is on the case!’