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, son?’
‘I don’t know, but like I can’t pledge allegiance because I ain’t got no heart, any heart, and this Tin Woodman in Oz can’t marry this girl too because for the same reason. And in this other Oz story there’s this Tin Soldier without a heart too, and in this other story this Tin Soldier melts into a heart, I mean who wants to marry an old flag but all the same if I had a heart—’
‘Slow down, slow down. Been thinking myself about what you need. It’s not a heart, it’s legs. This is no good, you staying in every time it snows like this.’ Pa got his coat off and rolled up his sleeves carefully. ‘Anyway, I gotta try something, rig some—’
‘Pa were you ever in Oz?’
‘Nope. Why?’
‘Well because I worked out here, P is the letter after O, and A is the letter after Z, so I thought maybe somehow you changed it — and then you got this box I seen it somewhere it says Tin Soldier on it, so I just—’
‘Tin—? Tin solder, boy, not soldier. No i in it.’
‘Yeah but it melts down just like — anyway your name is Wood, you can’t… Wood, that must mean something.’
Pa stared at him and started to grin. ‘Well I’ll be God damned! Codes and secret — at your age! Well, doesn’t that just take me back, must be years since I dazzled my own brains with — Hah!’
‘Yeah well there’s more. See, I worked out where this Oz must be, because see at school I learned Pennsylvania is PA and New York is NY see Oz goes right in between,’ and he sketched it on the wooden work-bench:
‘See, there must be this place between New York and Pennsylvania this Oz-zone. I thought maybe I oughta go there because I’m the tin Wood boy because I could see this Wizard—’
‘But there isn’t any wizard.’
Roderick thought for a moment. ‘Okay, then I could see this Mr Baum that wrote the story, I looked up his name and it means Wood too, boy, you can’t tell me all that doesn’t mean nothing, anything!’
Pa made sure he was not holding a soldering iron before scratching his head. ‘Well, son you see if you look hard enough, you can prove just about anything. Now take this L. Frank Baum, okay his last name means tree, just about the same as Wood, so what? What about the rest of his name. Frank could mean French, does that mean your Oz is in France?’
‘Yeah but it could mean honest, then it has to be true.’
‘But stories are never honest, are they? That’s the point. Anyway the man’s first name is Lyman.’
‘Lie-man? Aw gee, no fooling? Then it’s just nothing!’
‘Wouldn’t say that, son, thinking is a good way to spend your time even if—’ But the little machine had already buzzed out of the room. Pa could hear the whine of its motors all through the house, rising above the sound of Ma’s voice on the telephone.
‘Well I just figured with all the money we paid on that policy there’d be more… Yes, I said we’d take it, yes just send the cheque straight to the Frobisher Custom Electronic Specialties Company of Omaha, yes all of it… No, Frobisher. Like the pirate, F-R-O…’