The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (8 page)

2. Selden, the Netting Hill murderer. This is a man who has escaped from a prison nearby and is being hunted down on the moors, which makes you think that he has something to do with the story, because he is a criminal, but he hasn't anything to do with the story at all.

3. The Man on the Tor. This is a silhouette of a man that Doctor Watson sees on the moor at night and doesn't recognize, which makes you think it is the murderer. But it is Sherlock Holmes who has come to Devon secretly.

I also like The Hound of the Baskervilles because I like Sherlock Holmes and I think that if I were a proper detective he is the kind of detective I would be. He is very intelligent and he solves the mystery and he says

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

But he notices them, like I do. Also it says in the book

Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will.

And this is like me, too, because if I get really interested in something, like practicing maths, or reading a book about the Apollo missions or great white sharks, I don't notice anything else and Father can be calling me to come and eat my supper and I won't hear him. And this is why I am very good at playing chess, because I detach my mind at will and concentrate on the board and after a while the person I am playing will stop concentrating and start scratching their nose, or staring out of the window, and then they will make a mistake and I will win.

Also Doctor Watson says about Sherlock Holmes

His mind... was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could befitted.

And that is what I am trying to do by writing this book.

Also Sherlock Holmes doesn't believe in the supernatural, which is God and fairy tales and Hounds of Hell and curses, which are stupid things.

And I am going to finish this chapter with two interesting facts about Sherlock Holmes

1. In the original Sherlock Holmes stories Sherlock Holmes is never described as wearing a deerstalker hat, which is what he is always wearing in pictures and cartoons. The deerstalker hat was invented by a man called Sidney Paget, who did the illustrations for the original books.

2. In the original Sherlock Holmes stories Sherlock Holmes never says "Elementary, my dear Watson." He only ever says this in films and on the television.

109. That night I wrote some more of my book, and the next morning I took it into school so that Siobhan could read it and tell me if I had made mistakes with the spelling and the grammar.

Siobhan read the book during morning break when she has a cup of coffee and sits at the edge of the playground with the other teachers. And after morning break she came and sat down next to me and said she had read the bit about my conversation with Mrs. Alexander and she said, "Have you told your father about this?"

And I replied, "No."

And she said, "Are you going to tell your father about this?"

And I replied, "No."

And she said, "Good. I think that's a good idea, Christopher." And then she said, "Did it make you sad to find this out?"

And I asked, "Find what out?"

And she said, "Did it make you upset to find out that your mother and Mr. Shears had an affair?"

And I said, "No."

And she said, "Are you telling the truth, Christopher?"

And then I said, "I always tell the truth."

And she said, "I know you do, Christopher. But sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes we are sad but we don't really know we are sad. So we say we aren't sad. But really we are."

And I said, "I'm not sad."

And she said, "If you do start to feel sad about this, I want you to know that you can come and talk to me about it. Because I think talking to me will help you feel less sad. And if you don't feel sad but you just want to talk to me about it, that would be OK, too. Do you understand?"

And I said, "I understand."

And she said, "Good."

And I replied, "But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid."

And then I practiced maths for the rest of the morning and at lunch I didn't have the quiche because it was yellow, but I did have the carrots and the peas and lots of tomato ketchup. And for afters I had some blackberry and apple crumble, but not the crumble bit because that was yellow, too, and I got Mrs. Davis to take the crumble bit off before she put it onto my plate because it doesn't matter if different sorts of food are touching before they are actually on your plate.

Then, after lunch, I spent the afternoon doing art with Mrs. Peters and I painted some pictures of aliens which looked like this

113. My memory is like a film. That is why I am really good at remembering things, like the conversations I have written down in this book, and what people were wearing, and what they smelled like, because my memory has a smelltrack which is like a soundtrack.

And when people ask me to remember something I can simply press Rewind and Fast Forward and Pause like on a video recorder, but more like a DVD player because I don't have to Rewind through everything in between to get to a memory of something a long time ago. And there are no buttons, either, because it is happening in my head.

If someone says to me, "Christopher, tell me what your mother was like," I can Rewind to lots of different scenes and say what she was like in those scenes.

For example, I could Rewind to 4 July 1992 when I was 9 years old, which was a Saturday, and we were on holiday in Cornwall and in the afternoon we were on the beach in a place

called Polperro. And Mother was wearing a pair of shorts made out of denim and a light blue bikini top and she was smoking cigarettes called Consulate which were mint flavor. And she wasn't swimming. Mother was sunbathing on a towel which had red and purple stripes and she was reading a book by Georgette Heyer called The Masqueraders. And then she finished sunbathing and went into the water to swim and she said, "Bloody Nora, it's cold." And she said I should come and swim, too, but I don't like swimming because I don't like taking my clothes off. And she said I should just roll up my trousers and walk into the water a little way, so I did. And I stood in the water. And Mother said, "Look. It's lovely." And she jumped backward and disappeared under the water and I thought a shark had eaten her and I screamed and she stood up out of the water again and came over to where I was standing and held up her right hand and spread her fingers out in a fan and said, "Come on, Christopher, touch my hand. Come on now. Stop screaming. Touch my hand. Listen to me, Christopher. You can do it." And after a while I stopped screaming and I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other and Mother said, "It's OK, Christopher. It's OK. There aren't any sharks in Cornwall," and then I felt better.

Except I can't remember anything before I was about 4 because I wasn't looking at things in the right way before then, so they didn't get recorded properly.

And this is how I recognize someone if I don't know who they are. I see what they are wearing, or if they have a walking stick, or funny hair, or a certain type of glasses, or they have a particular way of moving their arms, and I do a Search through my memories to see if I have met them before.

And this is also how I know how to act in difficult situations when I don't know what to do.

For example, if people say things which don't make sense, like, "See you later, alligator," or "You'll catch your death in that," I do a Search and see if I have ever heard someone say this before.

And if someone is lying on the floor at school, I do a Search through my memory to find a picture of someone having an epileptic fit and then I compare the picture with what is happening in front of me so I can decide whether they are just lying down and playing a game, or having a sleep, or whether they are having an epileptic fit. And if they are having an epileptic fit, I move any furniture out of the way to stop them from banging their head and I take my jumper off and I put it underneath their head and I go and find a teacher.

Other people have pictures in their heads, too. But they are different because the pictures in my head are all pictures of things which really happened. But other people have pictures in their heads of things which aren't real and didn't happen.

For example, sometimes Mother used to say, "If I hadn't married your father I think I'd be living in a little farmhouse in the south of France with someone called Jean. And he'd be, ooh, a local handyman. You know, doing painting and decorating for people, gardening, building fences. And we'd have a veranda with figs growing over it and there would be a field of sunflowers at the bottom of the garden and a little town on the hill in the distance and we'd sit outside in the evening and drink red wine and smoke Gauloises cigarettes and watch the sun go down."

And Siobhan once said that when she felt depressed or sad she would close her eyes and she would imagine that she was staying in a house on Cape Cod with her friend Elly, and they would take a trip on a boat from Provincetown and go out into the bay to watch the humpback whales and that made her feel calm and peaceful and happy.

And sometimes, when someone has died, like Mother died, people say, "What would you want to say to your mother if she was here now?" or "What would your mother think about that?" which is stupid because Mother is dead and you can't say anything to people who are dead and dead people can't think.

And Grandmother has pictures in her head, too, but her pictures are all confused, like someone has muddled the film up and she can't tell what happened in what order, so she thinks that dead people are still alive and she doesn't know whether something happened in real life or whether it happened on television.

127. When I got home from school Father was still out at work, so I unlocked the front door and went inside and took my coat off. I went into the kitchen and put my things on the table. And one of the things was this book which I had taken into school to show to Siobhan. I made myself a raspberry milk shake and heated it up in the microwave and then went through to the living room to watch one of my Blue Planet videos about life in the deepest parts of the ocean.

The video was about the sea creatures who live around sulfur chimneys, which are underwater volcanoes where gases are ejected from the earth's crust into the water. Scientists never expected there to be any living organisms there because it was so hot and so poisonous, but there are whole ecosystems there.

I like this bit because it shows you that there is always something new that science can discover, and all the facts that you take for granted can be completely wrong. And also I like the fact that they are filming in a place which is harder to get to than the top of Mount Everest but is only a few miles away from sea level. And it is one of the quietest and darkest and most secret places on the surface of the earth. And I like imagining that I am there sometimes, in a spherical metal submersible with windows that are 50 cm thick to stop them from imploding under the pressure. And I imagine that I am the only person inside it, and that it is not connected to a ship at all but can operate under its own power and I can control the motors and move anywhere I want to on the seabed and I can never be found.

Father came home at 5:48 p.m. I heard him come through the front door. Then he came into the living room. He was wearing a lime green and sky blue check shirt and there was a double knot on one of his shoes but not on the other. He was carrying an old advert for Fussell's Milk Powder which was made of metal and painted with blue and white enamel and covered with little circles of rust which were like bullet holes, but he didn't explain why he was carrying this.

He said, "Howdy, pardner," which is a joke he does.

And I said, "Hello."

I carried on watching the video and Father went into the kitchen.

I had forgotten that I had left my book lying on the kitchen table because I was too interested in the Blue Planet video. This is what is called Relaxing Your Guard, and it is what you must never do if you are a detective.

It was 5:54 p.m. when Father came back into the living room. He said, "What is this?" but he said it very quietly and I didn't realize that he was angry because he wasn't shouting.

He was holding the book in his right hand.

I said, "It's a book I'm writing."

And he said, "Is this true? Did you talk to Mrs. Alexander?" He said this very quietly as well, so I still didn't realize that he was angry.

And I said, "Yes."

Then he said, "Holy fucking Jesus, Christopher. How stupid are you?"

This is what Siobhan says is called a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer. It is difficult to spot a rhetorical question.