Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion (19 page)

Everyone gasped again.

'That's going to be no good for cleaning floors anymore,' said Boris (even though he was still hidden under the lampshade).

'And finally I draw your attention to the spot on the floor where the Police Sergeant is standing,' said Nanny Piggins. 'What do you see?'

'Nothing,' said the Police Sergeant, looking at the floor beneath his feet.

'Exactly!' said Nanny Piggins triumphantly. 'Where is the brand new hearth rug?!'

Everyone gasped for a third time.

'She's right! Father brought home a new hearth rug last week and now it's missing!' exclaimed Michael.

'That is because
he
–' Nanny Piggins pointed her trotter dramatically at Mr Green – 'used it to roll up his victim and drag her to his car!'

'Constable, you'd better get out your handcuff s,' said the Police Sergeant.

Mr Green leapt to his feet. 'I can explain,' he wailed.

The constable crash-tackled him to the ground.

'What are you doing, Constable?' asked the Police Sergeant.

'I thought he was trying to escape,' explained the Constable.

'You were just trying to get in some rugby practice, weren't you?' chided the Police Sergeant. 'All right sir, if you can explain this damning litany of evidence against you then we'd better have it.'

'I didn't murder anyone, I swear. I did put the dents in the floor but only because I saw a cockroach and I used the carpet sweeper to kill it,' said Mr Green.

'Piffle!' said Nanny Piggins. 'Look at all the marks on the floor. Why would you beat a cockroach so many times?'

'Because I kept missing,' admitted Mr Green.

'Oh,' said Nanny Piggins. This actually made sense. They all knew Mr Green had terrible hand–eye coordination. 'But how do you explain the missing carpet? Why would you roll up the carpet and put it in your boot if there wasn't a dead body inside.'

'Because there was dead cockroach squashed into the fibres so I took it straight to the carpet store to get it cleaned,' shuddered Mr Green. 'It was yucky.'

'Oh,' said Nanny Piggins. 'But how do you explain the yelling and the high-pitched feminine scream.'

'That was me,' said Mr Green. 'I was yelling at my secretary on the telephone. She was trying to reschedule my haircut appointment from 2 pm to 2.15 pm. And I wouldn't stand for it. I don't see why I should have to rearrange my day just because my hairdresser has to go to a funeral.'

'But sir, the high-pitched feminine scream?' asked the Police Sergeant.

'I don't know what you're talking about. The pig must have been hearing things,' said Mr Green shiftily.

'Sir,' reproached the Police Sergeant.

'All right, all right,' burst out Mr Green. 'I admit it! The cockroach ran up my leg and I panicked – I took my trousers off. But at that very moment a woman collecting for the Salvation Army came to the door. And when she saw me through the window in my underwear, she screamed.'

'Preposterous! You'll never be able to prove that,' scoffed Nanny Piggins.

'Well, actually I can,' said Mr Green sheepishly, as he opened a drawer in the sideboard and took out a Salvation Army collection tin. 'She dropped this as she ran away.'

'You were going to hand that in, weren't you, sir?' said the Police Sergeant sternly.

'Oh yes,' lied Mr Green.

And so, while the abandoned collection tin proved that Mr Green was morally bankrupt, it also proved that he was innocent of the charge of murder.

'Oh dear,' said the Police Sergeant. 'I'm sorry, Nanny Piggins, I think I really will have to arrest you for wasting police time this time.'

But just then the doorbell rang, and the man from the carpet shop came in. 'We got all the cockroach goo out of your carpet, Mr Green,' he said as he unrolled the rug on the floor.

Now it was the Police Sergeant and the Constable's turn to gasp.

'Get out your handcuffs, Constable, it looks like we're going to arrest Mr Green after all,' announced the Police Sergeant.

'What? What for?' asked Mr Green. Desperately trying to guess which one of the many not-quite-legal things he did in his daily life as a tax lawyer that the Police Sergeant might be arresting him for.

'That is the famous Great Luxor Carpet from the Highcrest Mansion that was stolen last week. So either you are a cat burglar or you have received stolen property,' accused the Police Sergeant.

'It was a gift from a client,' protested Mr Green.

'Why would a client give you one of the most valuable handmade Persian rugs in the entire world?' asked the Police Sergeant.

'He was a friend?' suggested Mr Green.

'Sir,' chided the Police Sergeant.

'It was a reward for helping him set up an off shore Truffle Trading Scheme for funnelling money out of the country,' blurted Mr Green, 'which technically is not in any way illegal. I know because I had my clerk triple-check the law books.'

'Constable, get out your notepad. Okay, Mr Green, tell us, which client? What was his name?' ordered the Police Sergeant.

Mr Green gulped. But he did as he was told. Much as he hated losing a client to the prison system, he much preferred that to having to spend time in the prison system himself.

And so, just as she had predicted, Nanny Piggins managed to use her recuperation time to foil a gang of wicked international thieves, which just goes to show, if you set yourself goals, you can achieve anything. But Boris and the children were relieved a few days later when Nanny Piggins was able to start walking again, so she could return her energy to being the world's most glamorous flying pig/nanny, and leave the girl-detective work to the likes of Tracey McWeldon.

Nanny Piggins and the children were sitting around the dining table having breakfast when Mr Green came in carrying the mail.

'There's one for you,' he grumbled as he disrespect fully dumped an envelope in front of Nanny Piggins.

'I wonder what it could be?' said Nanny Piggins. 'I hope it isn't the government again. They are always begging me to become an international super-spy, and I just don't have the time. International intrigue doesn't stop once a day for
The Young and the Irritable
, and I do.'

Nanny Piggins tore open the envelope and she was immediately surprised. 'Leaping Lamingtons!!!' she exclaimed.

'What is it?' asked Derrick.

'If you're going to become a super-spy can we come too?' asked Michael.

'No, it's better than that,' explained Nanny Piggins. 'It's a letter from the mayor. They are giving away free chocolate at the Town Hall this morning between 8.46 and 8.52 am.'

'That's awfully specific,' said Samantha.

'Who are we to question free chocolate?' declared Nanny Piggins. 'We must go.'

'But we have to go to school,' said Derrick, while jerking his head meaningfully in the direction of his father to remind Nanny Piggins that Mr Green was still sitting at the table.

'Oh,' said Nanny Piggins. 'Perhaps your father will give you permission to take the morning off?' Nanny Piggins knew there was no chance of this, but she thought it was worth asking, just on the off -chance that Mr Green had a brain lapse and agreed.

'I certainly will not,' growled Mr Green, not even bothering to take the newspaper away from in front of his face.

'Never mind. You go, Nanny Piggins,' said Samantha. 'You can tell us all about it when we get back.'

'And take a suitcase!' suggested Michael. 'That way you can bring lots home.'

'Good thinking,' agreed Nanny Piggins. 'Now, what is the time?'

They all turned to look at the clock. It was 8.39.

'Oh dear,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I don't see how I can send you all off on the school bus and still make it to the Town Hall in time.'

'I'll see the children off,' said Mr Green.

Nanny Piggins and the children turned and stared at him in astonishment. Rather, they stared at the back of his newspaper because he still had not put it aside.

'You'll do wh –?' began Nanny Piggins.

But then Derrick grabbed her hand. 'Don't question it, Nanny Piggins. Just grab the opportunity. Find the biggest suitcase in the house and run like the wind!'

Nanny Piggins did not need to be told twice. In less than three seconds, she was out of the house and sprinting down the street with her circus trunk, a giant suitcase and the biggest tupperware container from the kitchen.

When she returned twenty minutes later, Nanny Piggins was a less than happy pig. Instead of sprinting, she trudged, and instead of carrying her containers, she dragged them. And not because they were heavy, but because she was heavy of heart. There had been no free chocolate at the Town Hall. The doors were not even open. Nanny Piggins had to kick them in with her trotter, which was not easy given that they were the type of heavy two-hundred-year-old antique doors especially designed to stop angry peasants kicking them down and demanding their taxes back.

Inside, Nanny Piggins had not discovered the mountains of free chocolate described in her letter. There was just a group of old ladies studying Ancient Greek as part of the council's Leisure Learning program. Even after Nanny Piggins had shaken the Ancient Greek instructor by the collar for a full five minutes, she had not been able to uncover the location of the free chocolate. So she came home a very sad pig.

But as she turned the corner into the Green's street she was soon jolted out of her dejection by the most shocking sight. There, on the footpath, stood Mr Green with a very large woman (who, if not for the dress, could easily have been mistaken for a rugby player) and three trunks. And alongside them was parked a school bus. But not the children's regular school bus. This bus was a regal purple and it had the words
Dampworthington's Boarding School
painted on the sides. But most significantly of all, Nanny Piggins could see, beating on the Plexiglas rear window, the fists of Derrick, Samantha and Michael as they called out to their beloved nanny, 'Nanny Piggins! Help us, please!'

Nanny Piggins dropped her trunk, suitcase and tupperware and ran towards them. 'What are you doing with the children?' demanded Nanny Piggins.

'Just sending them to school,' said Mr Green smugly.

'Yes, but which school?' asked Nanny Piggins.

'I have been fortunate enough to win three scholarships to an exclusive boarding school,' said Mr Green. (He was very proud of himself. Mr Green had won the BJ Silverman Scholarship. It was awarded to the employee at his law firm who used the least amount of stationery five years in a row. Mr Green had been trying to win this scholarship since Derrick was born, but it was only in the last five years that he had devised his brilliant strategy. At night, after all the normal people in the office went home, Mr Green went around taking stationery off other people's desks and putting it back in the cabinet. So the stationery tally actually had him in credit, having put back one thousand and eighty-six more packets of post-it notes than he took out.)

'Boarding school? How could you?' asked Nanny Piggins, bewildered that a father could be so heartless.

'At boarding school they will have all their needs taken care of,' said Mr Green, 'and by proper staff . Not pigs.'

Nanny Piggins gasped. 'That's the real reason, isn't it? You're sending your children away just because you don't want me – the world's most glamorous flying pig – living in your house!'

'I don't have to answer your questions anymore,' pouted Mr Green. 'You're fired.'

'What?' demanded Nanny Piggins. She had been fired out of a cannon many, many times. But she had never been fired from a job before.

'Fired!' said Mr Green with finality.

Fortunately the words Nanny Piggins now yelled at Mr Green were drowned out by the sound of Derrick, Samantha and Michael pummelling their fists on the bus window, so I will not have to repeat them here in print. Suffice to say that Nanny Piggins let Mr Green have a piece of her mind using the type of colourful language you can only pick up from years of working in a travelling circus.

'That's enough of that then,' said the large woman, clapping her hands for silence. 'As Headmistress of Dampworthington's Boarding School I won't stand for any shilly-shallying, dilly-dallying or fliberty-jibbeting. You are not the legal guardian of these children, Mr Green is, and he has signed them over to me. And I refuse to have any dealings with you. Bruno our bus driver has packed your belongings.'

Nanny Piggins looked across to see all her things strewn across the Green's front garden. Someone had obviously thrown them out of her bedroom window.

'I suggest you pick them up and go back to the sty you came from,' said the headmistress before she turned away and got on the bus herself.

Mr Green smirked a gloating smile. 'Did you enjoy your
free
chocolate?'

Nanny Piggins gasped. 'The mayor didn't write that letter at all! You did!' accused Nanny Piggins. 'It's bad enough to send your children away to endure years of certain misery. But forging a letter that falsely claims the presence of free chocolate! Can you sink any lower?!'

Nanny Piggins was now so angry that Mr Green became scared. He ran back into the house and locked the new locks (which he had had installed while she was down at the Town Hall).

The engine of the bus started up.

'Nanny Piggins?' pleaded the Green children, their faces and hands pressed against the bus window.

'Can't you do something?' asked Derrick, his voice pitifully muffled by the thick glass.

'I'm afraid your father is your legal guardian,' said Nanny Piggins, 'and unlike the time he tried to sell you as apprentice sumo wrestlers, sending you to boarding school is technically allowed under the law.'

Nanny Piggins reached up with her trotter (which was not easy because she was only four foot tall) and touched each of the children's faces (or rather the places on the bus window the children's faces were pressed against). Nanny Piggins was glad Boris was not there to see this pitiful sight. He would be distraught enough when he heard about it.

As the bus pulled away and she watched the children's faces disappear into the distance, Nanny Piggins wondered if she had Russian blood herself, because she was weeping harder than she had ever wept before. She could not believe it. After all they had been through together, it had come to this. She was never going to see the children again. And she had not even been allowed to give them a hug goodbye.

Dampworthington's Boarding School was ten times more awful than the children imagined it would be. And they imagined something pretty bad because they had read a lot of novels about poor orphans being sent to horrible cheap boarding schools and catching terrible respiratory illnesses.

The boarding school was miles and miles away from anything, out in the middle of the country, presumably to discourage anyone except children with advanced wilderness skills from running away. The building was cold and bleak. The founder of the school had specifically set down in the school's constitution that no heating system was ever to be installed because he believed a child's brain worked best at four degrees Centigrade. Unfortunately, while the brain may flourish at that temperature, the little fingers, toes and noses of small children do not. As a result, the entire student body spent nine months of the year huddling. The other three months of the year they sweltered because the founder also believed that fresh air was too much of a distraction so he had all the windows nailed shut.

The teachers were unspeakably horrible. We all know what teachers are like at an ordinary school. But imagine the type of teacher who can only get a job at an unheated boarding school in the middle of nowhere. They were not happy, well-adjusted souls. And as one selfish misery guts once famously said, 'a problem shared is a problem halved.' And the teachers at Dampworthington's believed in this theory wholeheartedly. They spent all day every day halving their own misery by inflicting the other half on the young charges in their care.