Edie Amelia and the Runcible River Fever (6 page)

‘Really?' said Edie.

‘But before we could discuss some . . . matters of a personal nature, I had to attend to an urgent call regarding a sick camel at the refuge. As a favour, I asked Adam to watch over the surgery for me until I returned. When I arrived at the refuge, Doctor Dogwatch informed me he hadn't called for backup at all. It seemed the whole thing had been a hoax.'

Edie jotted down the details in her notebook.

‘When I got back to the surgery I found Adam gone and some valuable items missing as well. Twelve rolls of catgut thread, one enormous canister of highly flammable
propane and two canisters of oxygen had just, poof, disappeared,' she said, pointing at the empty spaces on the shelves of the surgery. ‘And along with them a blowtorch, a key and one of my microscopes. They're expensive items, most of them dangerous, and when put together they can be lethal. Boom!' She mimicked an explosion.

‘Adam Halloween wouldn't steal from you!' cried Edie. ‘He'd never blow anything up, either. It's my dad who goes in for that sort of lark!'

‘But you can see why I'm suspicious. All I'm asking, in return for those eye drops and some follow-up consultations, is this: that you observe the goings-on next door. See if you can track down my missing items and then write a report for me. Think of it as your first paid detective job,' she said. Her expression turned serious. ‘It's really in the interests of everybody's safety. I can't bear to think of the police arresting Adam, but he'll leave me no choice if he has, in fact, committed a crime. Against me, of all people! Think about it,' said the vet, reaching into
a plastic bag under the table and handing Mister not one but three treats.

Edie finished writing down Doctor Stuart's missing items and studied the list carefully. She walked over to the shelf and inspected the area from which the items had gone missing. A strand of something auburn caught her eye and she carefully removed it with her tweezers and deposited it in an evidence bag. It looked familiar somehow. Edie looked back at the list. She was beginning to see a pattern, a riddle wanting to be solved.

‘I'll do it,' Edie said.

The vet reached forward and shook her hand with her long elegant fingers.

‘Goodness,' she said. ‘I'm neglecting the patient.' She put four drops in Mister's eye, covered it with a handsome black eye patch and lowered him to the floor.

As Edie pushed the heavy pram home she had a brainwave. She needed to see her father as soon as possible.

E
die left the pram at the front door and scrambled up the spiral staircase to her room. She needed to think fast. She now had two cases to solve and it was going to take every ounce of rational thought to juggle them both.

‘Why on earth is Mister wearing an eye
patch?' Cinnamon called from the bottom of the spiral staircase.

Edie tried thinking on her feet. ‘Um . . . I'm taking him to the Town Meeting dressed as a pirate and I wanted him to get used to his costume.'

Just then, she caught sight of the Blank Marauder from her bedroom window. If she wasn't mistaken he seemed to be pulling his shed to pieces looking for something. All Edie's tidying was being undone. Eventually he gave up, put his head in his hands and retreated into his house.

‘Is that sensible?' called her mother.

‘I thought it might promote more positive feelings towards dogs,' Edie called back, crossing her fingers behind her back. ‘Oh my goodness,' she whispered. Her jaw dropped open in disbelief. Hogmanay Chompster was running from the Sparkses' back porch. She watched him as he vaulted the side fence with superhuman energy and sprinted off down the street.

‘It's true this Fever Dog
has
turned
people off our four-legged friends,' Michaelmas chimed in from the kitchen.

Edie began hurriedly assembling the items she would need for the next part of her mission. Binoculars, check. Magnifying glass, check. Tweezers, check. Notebook and pen, check. Her hands trembled and she coughed. She felt her forehead but it seemed cool to the touch so she pushed her Worries down as far as they would go and smoothed the front of her red pleather jumpsuit. Finally, she grabbed the flan (now cold and a little squashed) and her butterfly net and bolted down the spiral staircase and into the kitchen.

Her mother looked up from a bowl of bean sprouts. ‘Won't you be cold, darling?'

‘I'm wearing a floral vest and warm woolly knickers underneath.' Edie raised her voice to compete with the radio broadcaster, who was delivering what sounded like regular updates on the Fever crisis. Edie noted that the Town Meeting was to be hosted by the Highland Fling Society at the
Highland Fling Centre in twenty minutes' time. Perhaps the Fever Dog had already been captured and the Mayor was going to present the reward? Remembering her brainwave, Edie looked for her father. Michaelmas Sparks seemed oblivious to the racket and was searching for something among his test tubes and a stack of obscure articles about textiles from the 1970s.

‘Er, Dad, could you give me a hand with all this stuff?' said Edie.

‘What, what? Oh . . . yes, of course,' said Michaelmas.

‘Dad, listen,' said Edie quietly, when they had closed the front door behind them, ‘do you still have the outboard motor you used on the tsunami surfboard?'

Michaelmas seemed lost in thought.

‘Dad? I need it for something very important,' she continued. ‘Are you even listening? What's wrong?'

‘I've lost something,' he said.

‘Again?' said Edie.

‘You don't understand. I'm
this close
to unlocking a cure for Runcible River Fever.'

He held up his thumb and index finger to demonstrate just how close.

‘But that's great!'

‘Well . . . my theory is not as
complex
as you might suppose: all it took, really, was a bit of lateral thinking,' he said. ‘Now, I
had
written all the details down . . .'

‘On scraps of purple paper? Dad! When will you learn to keep things organised?'

‘… but it seemed one moment Hogmanay Chompster was here to borrow a cup of organic sugar and the next, my theories had vanished. Well, the parts that concerned the “hypobaric treatment” anyway. Do you think Mister Pants could have eaten my lab notes again?'

‘No, definitely not.' Edie dismissed the idea with a flick of her hand, thinking of Mister's sore eye and lost appetite. ‘But that's funny about Mr Chompster. I could have sworn I just saw him leave.'

‘Really?' said Michaelmas.

‘Did you know that the Chompsters are returning to Glasgow?'

‘No. Nothing of the sort,' he replied.

‘Oh, well, I, er . . . promised I'd help Mrs Chompster give her unwanted clocks to charity. I said I'd ferry them back and forth to the Distressed Dromedaries Jumble Sale while she's getting on with her packing, and it would be so much
quicker
, if you could, er, motorise the pram for me,' said Edie, crossing her fingers behind her back for the second time that day.

‘What on earth would Hogmanay want with a cup of sugar if he's leaving town?'

‘I'm not sure but I'm
dying
to find out. Now about that motor . . .'

‘What? Oh yes. Now that I
can
find,' he said.

While Michaelmas went off to retrieve the outboard motor, Edie darted to the side fence and peered into the Marauder's shed. The Marauder seemed to be getting ready to go somewhere and was hurriedly stuffing things into his backpack. Hogmanay Chompster was nowhere to be seen. Edie ran back just as Michaelmas reappeared with the motor and his toolkit and began connecting the motor to the pram.

‘Distressed dromedaries, you say?' said Michaelmas. ‘It isn't as though my tsunami surfboard ever really took off. Tsunami waves, after all, should never be ridden.'

‘'Course not. Excuse me, Dad, what's woodworm repellent used for?' said Edie as casually as she could.

‘Woodworm repellent?' he said, fastening a final screw. ‘Mostly for the treatment of wickerwork, in the baskets of hot-air balloons, for instance. Okay, that should do it,' he said, wiping his hands on his trousers. ‘You turn it on and off like this, see?' He showed Edie the switch. ‘Steering is going to be rudimentary, I'm afraid, so please stay on the flat.'

‘Yes, Dad.'

‘It's very kind of you to offer to help Mrs Chompster with her clocks,' he added, polishing his glasses. Edie felt her cheeks flush. ‘Oh, I almost forgot,' he said, pulling an envelope from his pocket and handing it to her. ‘Someone slipped this under the door. It's addressed to you.'

From the corner of her eye Edie saw the Blank Marauder setting off down the street at high speed on his lawnmower. She opened the envelope and read a note in Cheesy's familiar handwriting which said:

HFC. ASAP.

C
.

‘Thanks, Dad. Gotta go,' said Edie. ‘I'll give this thing a trial run . . . on the flat, of course. Keep working on that cure.'

She gave Mister a hand into the pram, quietly fastened the blue bonnet around his head and, after loading the flan, butterfly net, detective kit and eye drops in the handy basket underneath, she jumped in herself.

‘HFC?' she said to Mister.

‘Snuffle,' he said.

‘Of course!' she said, turning on the ignition switch and pulling on the lever.