Wilma Tenderfoot: The Case of the Fatal Phantom
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Authors: Emma Kennedy
by
Emma Kennedy
Dial Books for Young Readers
AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.
DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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First published in the United States 2012 by Dial Books for Young Readers
Published in the United Kingdom 2010 by Macmillan Children’s Books
Copyright © 2010 by Emma Kennedy
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Designed by Jennifer Kelly
Text set in Perpetua
Printed in the U.S.A.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kennedy, Emma.
Wilma Tenderfoot and the case of the fatal phantom / by Emma Kennedy. p. cm.
Summary: When Wilma Tenderfoot, the feisty and determined assistant to the
world’s greatest living detective, and her beagle, Pickle, find a mummified body
buried on the grounds of the gothic mansion Blackheart Hoo, they seek to identify
the body and solve the mysteries of a key, some buried treasure, and a kidnapping.
ISBN: 978-1-101-57563-5
[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. England—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K3776Wh 2012
[Fic]—dc22
2011009375
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
F
OR
W
ILLIAM
C
HALMERS
,
A VERY FINE YOUNG GENTLEMAN
Know this. I am NOTHING without my amazing editor Ruth Alltimes, who is SO incredible she deserves all nations to bow before her. Similarly her assistant, the phenomenal Samantha Swinnerton, should have statues celebrating her forthwith. And heartfelt thanks go to the sensational Camilla Hornby, who served me well for many a year. She has galloped off to explore pastures new, where I hope she has adventures aplenty. A million thank-yous to you all.
1
S
omething ominous was on the wind. Wilma looked up, wayward braids billowing, and pulled her scarf tighter. The sky had turned a menacing yellow and had rolled over Cooper Island’s one small hill like a heavy pie crust so that everything felt hemmed in and swallowed up.
“Mrs. Speckle says there’ll be snow, Pickle,” said Wilma. “And lots of it.” Pickle, Wilma’s pet beagle and best friend, tried to look up, but Mrs. Speckle, the ever-stubborn and wool-obsessed housekeeper at Clarissa Cottage, had pulled an old tea cozy over his head to keep him warm,
which was all very well but meant he couldn’t see. He did his best to peer through the end of the narrow woolen spout, though. It was far from ideal.
“Now then,” said Wilma, making her way to the bottom of the garden. “We’ve got to get parsnip heads and sprout tops for Brackle Day. And the only place we’re going to find them is in the compost heap. And Pickle,” she added, turning and shooting her dog a serious stare, “you have to help me
find
them. Not
eat
them.” Pickle snorted. He loved compost. It was practically his favorite dinner. Maybe he could secretly snap up one parsnip head. Or maybe two. Or even
seven
.
The compost was contained in a series of large wooden crates at the rear of the garden. “Ooh pooh!” said Wilma, pinching her nose as they approached. “Compost stinks!” Pickle cocked his tatty ear, lifted his snout skyward, and sniffed the tangy stench. Yes, it did. Lovely! The crates were tall and raised off the ground on a platform of short stilts so that Wilma,
who was small but determined for a ten-year-old, needed to work out how she could peer into them. She pursed her lips in thought and reached for the apprentice detective’s notebook in her pinafore pocket.
Pickle scratched his ear. The tea cozy he was wearing was
really
itchy. “Hmm,” said Wilma, looking at a glued-in picture of one of the old cases of her mentor, Detective Goodman. “In the Case of the Battered Cod, Mr. Goodman had to use a pulley system to move a heavy object over a vat of frying oil. That’s it!”
Wilma tucked her notebook back into her pocket and looked around the garden. “There!” She pointed. “The clothesline! If we tie it in a loop, we can fix one end to the top of the fence post and attach the other end to the branch of the cherry tree. Then we can fix the ladder to the bottom line with garden twine, use two large spools to create the pulley, and it might just work!” She grinned down at Pickle. His tongue was sticking out of the end of the tea cozy.
After running back indoors to fetch two of
Mrs. Speckle’s large spools, Wilma had her makeshift winching system rigged up in no time. The idea was that she would balance on the ladder while Pickle tugged the extra length of clothesline. His pulling would cause the looped cord to rotate around the spools, which, in turn, would move Wilma and the ladder into position above the compost. From there, she could work out where the parsnip heads and sprout tops were, pick them out, and be winched back to safety. It was devilishly simple.
“Right, then, Pickle,” said Wilma as she hopped onto the bottom rung of the ladder swinging from the lower part of the clothesline. “Take that slack piece of cord in your mouth and pull it till I tell you to stop.”
Pickle, ears full of tea cozy, followed Wilma’s pointing finger to the loose end of clothesline. Taking the cord in his mouth, he stared as she gabbled further instructions. He couldn’t hear a word she was saying, of course, because of the wool, but from her gestures he thought he got the gist. So off he went. The cord he was carrying
became taut and as Pickle took up the tension, the looped clothesline gave a little jerk. “That’s it, Pickle!” shouted Wilma as she inched toward the compost. “Keep pulling!”
Pickle looked back over his shoulder and saw Wilma waving enthusiastically. She must want him to go a bit faster. Biting down on the cord, Pickle broke into a run, but the sudden wrench on the looped clothesline caused it to disconnect from the spools. Wilma, feeling the ladder lurch violently, looked up to see one of the makeshift pulleys ping upward into the air. “No, Pickle!” she yelled. “Stop! Oh no! STOP!” But Pickle couldn’t hear her and instead ran a bit faster. The clothesline snapped away from the fence post, flinging Wilma and the ladder downward toward the compost. Clutching the ladder, she ricocheted against the front edge of the central compost crate but was then pitched backward so that she hit the container to her right. As she slowly slid downward into the heap of stinking and rotting matter, there was a deep groan from beneath her. The force of the impact had buckled the stilts
below, and with a shuddering moan, the whole platform collapsed, sending the three compost crates and Wilma tumbling to the ground. Pickle stopped and turned around. Before him was a sea of compost, and sitting in the middle of it was Wilma.
“Well,” she said, spitting out a mouthful of old potato peels, “this is some mess. Oh, wait. There’s a parsnip head,” she added, pulling one out from the front of her pinafore. “Pickle! Pass me the basket! Mr. Goodman says you sometimes have to get your hands dirty to get a job done. Well, I’m dirty all over, so that must mean the job will get done even quicker. Nothing and nobody stops Wilma Tenderfoot!” And with that, she flicked a piece of moldy bacon from her knee and began gathering up the vegetable bits she needed. Pickle looked on jealously. He’d
love
to be that filthy.