Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion (18 page)

'Oh no, I won't have time,' said Nanny Piggins. 'Today I'm going to fight crime.'

'But the doctors said you mustn't move!' protested Samantha.

'I won't have to!' said Nanny Piggins. 'In
The Case of the Naughty Maths Teacher
, girl-detective Tracey McWeldon was snowbound in her house, but she still solved the case simply by using deductive reasoning and tidbits of information she had picked up while gossiping with her friends on the telephone.'

'I thought you'd been put off crime fighting after that trouble with Neighbourhood Watch,' said Derrick.

'I'm willing to give it another go,' said Nanny Piggins.

'So do you want us to fetch the telephone?' asked Michael.

'Yes, please,' said Nanny Piggins. 'And the telescope from your father's study. I want to be able to invade the privacy of the people down the far end of the street as well.'

'But what if there isn't anybody in the street committing a crime?' asked Samantha.

'Ha!' laughed Nanny Piggins. 'I thought you'd read these books. There is always someone committing a terrible crime right under your nose. It's only because the police aren't as intelligent and observant as a fourteen-year-old girl that they never notice.'

So the children went off to school, just as worried about their nanny as they had been the day before, except now for different reasons.

'You don't think she's going to get into trouble, do you?' asked Samantha.

'How much trouble can she get into sitting in a chair in her room?' asked Derrick.

Samantha and Michael looked at Derrick. He blushed. They all realised the answer was – a lot.

At first there was no crime for Nanny Piggins to solve. But she kept busy by ringing Mrs Roncoli across the street and telling her the answers to her crossword (Nanny Piggins was using Mr Green's powerful telescope to read over Mrs Roncoli's shoulder as she sat at her kitchen table).

But at ten o'clock Nanny Piggins hit the jackpot. She spotted a dishevelled looking man breaking into the Lau residence across the street. Nanny Piggins was immediately on the phone to Mrs Lau, who she knew (thanks to the telescope) to be in the upstairs bathroom re-grouting the tiles. Nanny Piggins then called the police, sat back and watched as Mrs Lau snuck down the stairs, went into the kitchen, picked up a frying pan, crept into the lounge room and hit the burglar hard across the back of the head.

As Nanny Piggins later told the police in her official statement: 'How was I to know that Mr Lau had lost his key and he was climbing in through his own window so he could get a nap after a long night working the late shift?'

Mrs Lau did not mind. She was angry with Mr Lau about some overzealous pruning he had done on her loquat tree, so she was glad of the excuse to punish him. But the Police Sergeant gave Nanny Piggins a lecture about wasting police time and instigating violence. Nanny Piggins was, however, not deterred. In fact it encouraged her. Girl detectives were always told off for wasting police time, right before they uncovered the international ring of wicked thieves. So as soon as the Police Sergeant got back in his patrol car and drove off to the doughnut shop (even being around Nanny Piggins made people want sugary food), she went back to work, on the lookout for crime.

Now you have to understand, Mr Green had not chosen to live on this street because it was a high crime area. Most of the residents were every bit as boring as him. So even though she had a vivid imagination and a 20 × 30 power telescope, Nanny Piggins still struggled to find a crime over the next few hours.

She did consider ringing the newspaper to report an outbreak of plague when she saw a rat gnawing at one of Mr Pieterson's garbage bags. And Nanny Piggins consulted Mr Green's law books (the ones he forced her to get back after the bookstall) to see if she could have Mrs Merkel arrested for crimes against food when she saw what her neighbour was cooking for her husband's dinner (but it turns out you can't have someone arrested for bad cooking unless that cooking is so bad it causes injury. So Nanny Piggins would just have to wait until Mr Merkel got food poisoning the next day).

But then, just after lunch – a family-sized coffee cake and a dozen chocolate bars – Nanny Piggins saw a major crime in progress. She saw Mr Henderson chasing his wife around the kitchen, hitting her on the back. Nanny Piggins immediately called the police. She was actually on the line to them when she saw Mr Henderson grab his wife and shake her. Nanny Piggins was so outraged that, despite her doctor's orders, she got up, hopped over to her dressing table, picked up her blow gun, hopped back to the window and shot Mr Henderson in the neck with a paralysing dart (given to her years earlier by a generous South American pygmy who was impressed by her circus performance).

The police arrived moments later (the doughnut shop was just around the corner so the Police Sergeant had not gone far) only to find a distraught Mrs Henderson wanting to prosecute Nanny Piggins for killing her husband.

As Nanny Piggins was to say later in her official police statement: 'How was I to know that Mrs Henderson was choking on a hazelnut and that Mr Henderson was simply trying to administer the Heimlich manoeuvre?'

Once Nanny Piggins had assured Mrs Henderson that her husband was not dead, he would just be asleep for four or five days, the Police Sergeant banned Nanny Piggins from reporting any more crime for the rest of the day. He even took away her girl-detective novels and gave her a boring police manual titled
How to be a Good Citizen
to read instead.

Nanny Piggins was very glum as she sat in the big empty house. She still had two hours until the children came home from school, and goodness knows how long until Boris came home from teaching the bank tellers to dance (he had not returned home until 3 am the previous day because the tellers had such bad attitudes. They kept trying to charge him a transaction fee every time he spoke to them). So Nanny Piggins was sitting there eating chocolate and feeling sorry for herself when she heard the front door slam downstairs.

'That's odd,' thought Nanny Piggins.

Then she heard a muffled voice and, suddenly, the distinct sound of Mr Green yelling, 'That won't do! That just won't do! I won't stand for it! Do you hear me?!'

Nanny Piggins was intrigued. It was unusual for Mr Green to be home in the middle of the day, and it was unusual for him to be so assertive. Who could he be yelling at? But just then her thoughts were interrupted by a bloodcurdling feminine scream.

'Yaaaagggghhh!'

Nanny Piggins leapt to her feet. Then the shooting pain in her ankle reminded her that she could not stand and she fell back down.

'Take that! And that! And that!' yelled Mr Green, his words punctuated by dull thuds. When the yelling and thudding eventually stopped, Nanny Piggins could hear the sound of Mr Green breathing heavily. (He was not a man who took exercise, because he was rightly embarrassed by his appearance in shorts.)

'Oh no, what have I done?' wailed Mr Green. 'What am I going to do?'

Next Nanny Piggins heard the sound of something being moved about, a few thuds, a whack, a bang, something heavy being dragged along the floor, and then the sound of the front door opening.

Nanny Piggins hobbled to the window where she saw Mr Green drag the rolled-up living room rug over to his Rolls Royce and, with some effort, lift it into the boot of his car.

'Mr Green's killed someone!' exclaimed Nanny Piggins. Unfortunately, she had used her last paralysing dart on Mr Henderson only that morning, so she had no way of stopping him from getting away. What was she to do? What would Tracey McWeldon, girl detective, do?

When Derrick, Samantha and Michael returned home from school they were surprised to discover Nanny Piggins downstairs, sitting in the living room, wearing a smoking jacket and a deerstalker hat.

'Are you all right, Nanny Piggins?' asked Derrick. 'Is there any particular reason you are dressed up as Sherlock Holmes?'

'Oh,
I
have never been better,' said Nanny Piggins cryptically. 'But someone among us has been a victim of a foul crime.'

Crash! – Boris burst in through the back door, slammed through the kitchen and into the living room. 'What's going on?!' he demanded. 'I got a message down at the dance studio saying that a tanker full of honey had smashed into the house.'

'You will have to forgive me. That was merely a pretext to separate you from your students,' said Nanny Piggins.

'Nanny Piggins, are we going to have to ban you from reading detective novels?' asked Michael sternly.

Just then they heard the wail of a police siren and then the screech of tyres, as the Police Sergeant pulled up and leapt out of his car.

'Oh no,' said Samantha. 'You aren't going to be arrested, are you?'

'Don't worry, if you are, we'll come down to the prison and smuggle in cakes hidden inside cakes,' promised Derrick.

The Police Sergeant, followed by a young constable, rushed up the Green's front steps and let himself in. 'This had better be good, Nanny Piggins,' said the Police Sergeant, 'or I'm arresting you for wasting police time.'

'Ha,' laughed Nanny Piggins. 'You'll be pinning a medal on me for doing your job in a minute. Just you wait and see.'

'Constable, make a note,' grumbled the Police Sergeant. 'This afternoon we must talk to the man at the bookshop about not selling detective novels to anyone who lives in this house.'

'When all of you have gathered round I shall reveal the perpetrator,' said Nanny Piggins, twirling an imaginary moustache.

'Perhaps we should call a doctor?' suggested Samantha. 'Nanny Piggins is on pain medication for her ankle. They may need to lower the dose.'

But before they could ring the hospital, someone else burst in through the front door. It was Mr Green. (Boris immediately put a lampshade on his head to hide.) 'Where do I sign? Where do I sign?!' yelled Mr Green.

'Ah good, we're all here,' said Nanny Piggins. 'Derrick, bar the doors.'

'What's going on?' demanded Mr Green. 'I got a message saying my children had been accepted into a Wilderness Survival television show, and if I rushed home to sign the permission slips I wouldn't see them for eight months.'

'That was merely my cunning ruse to lure you into my trap,' announced Nanny Piggins.

'Oh no, Nanny Piggins, you're not going to be arrested
and
fired, are you?' said Michael resignedly.

'Au contraire, there is a wicked murderer among us and it is he who shall be arrested and lose his job!' declared Nanny Piggins.

'If you don't explain what you are talking about this second I am going to get very cross,' said the Police Sergeant.

'All right, I will begin. I have gathered you all here because at 1.57 pm this afternoon I heard Mr Green murder a woman with the carpet sweeper in this very room!' announced Nanny Piggins.

Mr Green sat down and dabbed his forehead. He was not accused of murder every day; at least not on any day in the last two and half years since his wife died. On that occasion he did have to answer some very sticky questions about how Mrs Green managed to go missing on a crowded boat under such mysterious circumstances. 'I did no such thing,' he whimpered.

'Ha!' accused Nanny Piggins. 'That's the excuse all murderers use.'

The Police Sergeant nodded. She was quite right.

'Do you have any evidence?' asked Derrick. Derrick was not as fond of his father as a son usually is, but that did not mean he wanted his father to rot in jail. Also, having lived in the same house as his father for eleven years, Derrick seriously doubted that Mr Green was capable of doing anything as interesting as committing murder.

'I heard it with my own ears,' explained Nanny Piggins. 'At 1.56 pm I was sitting quietly in my room, on the lookout for criminal activity in the street, when I distinctly heard Mr Green come home, yell at someone, then beat them repeatedly with a blunt instrument.'

Everyone turned to look at Mr Green. He whimpered again. 'There's no proof.'

'Ah, that is where you are wrong. You will note,' said Nanny Piggins, whipping a telescopic pointer out of her sleeve (her years in the circus had taught her to have props at the ready), 'that the red armchair is not where it usually is.'

'Gosh! She's right,' said Samantha. 'The red armchair isn't usually jammed up against the television screen. It's usually over on the other side of the room by the window.'

'Derrick, if you move the chair to one side, we will be able to observe more physical evidence,' said Nanny Piggins.

Derrick moved the chair, and there in the floorboards were several deep nasty dents. Everyone gasped.

'Tsk tsk tsk,' said the Police Sergeant.

'It's going to be a devil of a job to get them out with a disc sander,' said the Police Constable knowledgably. (He was very fond of doing woodwork in his spare time.)

'And Samantha, if you reach under the sofa, you will find another item of interest. Make sure you use your handkerchief to pick it up. You don't want to smudge the fingerprints,' instructed Nanny Piggins.

Samantha reached under the sofa and pulled out a very battered carpet sweeper.