‘Well no it’s—’
‘Shut it off, just shut it off NOW! MOVE!’ But as Roderick moved, he said: ‘Wait, don’t touch it. Do it myself, I’m not gonna trust a little bastard like you to do any more dam—’
‘Yeah but if you… no if you push that STOP button it doesn’t stop it, not in this mode, it—’
‘Shuttup you. There.’
‘Yeah but it just means you finished the command, now it’s gonna delete all—’
‘Shut. Up. And come with me. Buddy, you’re up shit creek and I got the lawnmower — think you can fuck around with my pay check do you?’
‘Your pay—?’ For the first time, Roderick began to understand that the ‘files’ were not just stuff in the machine. Fest was waving a blue piece of paper at him. He had forgotten the latest name until he saw it:
There were other teachers in Miss Borden’s office; they could hardly squeeze in the door. Fest hoisted him up and set him on the desk.
‘I wondered what in the world,’ said Ms Russo through her teeth. ‘When I went to call the roll, here were all these names, Pig Bottom and Horse Dork, but I mean they were printed right out on the magnetic cards so I — I just called them.’
Mrs Dorano said, ‘Well I certainly did not, and I’m keeping my cards as evidence! No child ever thought up all by himself such filth, such—’
Mr Goun shook his head hard, as though trying to straighten the drooping moustache. ‘Poor kid, he’s really twisted, I mean the isolationizing factor must’ve catalyzed something—’
Miss Borden took hold of Roderick’s claws and looked into his eyes. ‘How could you? How could you? The files, the files are — well I mean they’re the files!’ She threw a magnetic card on the desk. ‘How could you do a thing like that?’
Roderick looked down at it. There was his picture, with a smile added to the face and big muscles to the arms. ‘The Steel Spider Wood,’ it read. ‘Grade: 8. Med: No file. Assessmt: A nice kid. Teacher: Pesty Festy. Comment: A reel nice kid. IQ: 1,000,000.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was just — I didn’t know — heck — it was gonna go in print and all — I’m sorry.’
‘We’ll have to expel the boy of course,’ she said.
‘Expel him? I’d like to break every—’
‘That will do, Captain. The main thing is, we’ve got to keep this quiet. Dr Froid and the county board are already breathing down our necks, and wouldn’t the papers just love something like this? So we can’t even call the expelling expelling, we’ll have to recommend a transfer on account of his handicap, something like that. As for the files—’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Roderick. ‘They’re all fixed up now.’
‘Fixed—?’
‘Just now. Everything’s deleted. All the files.’
Miss Borden looked around her office at the stacks of forms, pink, green, pale green, buff, blue, yellow, gold, white, lavender — at lavender she began to grind her teeth.
Louie Honk-Honk was pouting. ‘It’s not so cold.’
‘Louie it is, it’s too cold. How can I be a detective and give you reports in weather like this? Let’s go to my house.’
‘Nope! Your folks would just get mad.’
‘No they wouldn’t, they—’
‘They would so! They would so!’
‘Okay then, your house?’
‘My folks would get mad. They told me never to talk to little kids. I told ’em I was only kidding about throwing some kid in Howdy Doody Lake, but they said—’
‘Yeah okay. But look, we’ll just have to call it off for the winter. When it’s warmer—’
Louie stamped his enormous foot. ‘But you — you didn’t even start telling me about that new book — what’s it called?’
Roderick held up the paperback. ‘Die Die Your Lordship. I guess it’s all about this guy named Your Lordship who gets murdered — look it’s too cold to go detectiving now.’
‘Just some of it, huh Roddy? Some of it?’
‘Okay here’s the title, now what’s this word?’
‘Dee. Eye. Eee. Die, is it?’
‘Good, you got that easy.’
‘Hey the next is die again. “Die die you—” no “your” — am I right?’
Louie managed to sound out the hard word lordship, and they went on to the first 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 Coué, 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 Coué, 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 Coué 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 Coué 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.’