PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA, 2013

The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean copyright © 1990 Alexander McCall Smith

Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats copyright © 1991 Alexander McCall Smith

The Cowgirl Aunt of Harriet Bean copyright © 1993 Alexander McCall Smith

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean was originally published in Canada in 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats was originally published in Canada in 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. The Cowgirl Aunt of Harriet Bean was originally published in Canada in 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Published in 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited.

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Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–, author

The Harriet Bean 3-book omnibus : The five lost aunts of Harriet Bean, Harriet Bean and the league of cheats, The cowgirl aunt of Harriet Bean / Alexander McCall Smith.

Contents: The five lost aunts of Harriet Bean—Harriet Bean and the league of cheats—The cowgirl aunt of Harriet Bean.

eISBN 978-0-345-80877-6

I. McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948– . Five lost aunts of Harriet Bean. II. McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948– . Harriet Bean and the league of cheats. III. McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948– . Cowgirl aunt of Harriet Bean. IV. Title. V. Title: Harriet Bean three book omnibus.

PR6063.C326H36 2013    j823′.914    C2013-905933-4

v3.1

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean

Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats

The Cowgirl Aunt of Harriet Bean

A Note on the Author

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Text copyright © 1990 Alexander McCall Smith

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, and simultaneously in the United States of America and in Great Britain by Bloomsbury. Originally published in 1990 in Great Britain by Blackie and Son, Ltd. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.

www.randomhouse.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948-

The five lost aunts of Harriet Bean / Alexander McCall Smith.

(Harriet Bean series; bk. 1)

ISBN 0-676-97776-6

I. Title. II. Series: McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948- Harriet Bean series; bk. 1.

PR6063.C326L68 2006    j823′.914    C2005-905429-8

For Sophie and Anna

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean

Copyright

Dedication

A Surprise Discovery

Family History

The Search Begins

A Trip to the Circus

Aunt Veronica’s Trailer

The Strangest Incident in the History of Opera

Calling All Children!

The Bossiest Teacher

To the Detectives’ Office

The Finished Painting

A Surprise Discovery

Did I ever tell you about my aunts? Well, if I didn’t, that’s what I’d like to tell you about now. Most people have aunts tucked away somewhere or other, and most of these aunts aren’t especially interesting. It’s not that I’d never want to hear about your aunts; it’s just that there’s something about my aunts that makes them very, very peculiar.

Strangely enough, I didn’t even know I had any aunts until I was nine. Then, quite out of the blue, my father said to me one day:

“Your aunts would like to hear about that!”

I forget what it was that my aunts would have liked to hear about—I was so astonished to hear that they even existed.

“Aunts?” I said in surprise. “What aunts?”

“Oh,” said my father rather vaguely, as if it weren’t at all important. “All those aunts of yours. You know—my sisters. All those aunts you have.”

I was almost too surprised to speak. It was just like my father, though. He had always been extremely absent-minded, and he was quite capable of forgetting all about his sisters. He was a very strange man, my father, in so many ways. I won’t tell you too much about him now, because it’s really my aunts I want to talk about. I will tell you about his job, though, because it was so very unusual.

My father, you see, was an inventor. He invented the most extraordinary things, but unfortunately, most of them were quite useless. He was the inventor of the automatic book, for example. When you were reading an automatic book, the pages turned automatically, every few minutes. This was meant to save you the effort of turning them yourself, but, as you can guess, different people reached the end of the page at different times. So it was always very irritating reading an automatic book, and not many of them were sold. In fact, none of his inventions was successful, and most of them came straight back from the factory with a little note saying: “Very interesting, but no, thank you” or “How remarkable—but do you think anybody really needs this?”

Most of the time, my father seemed to be in a bit of a daze, thinking about some strange thing he was planning to invent. Days could pass without him saying a word, and when this happened I knew that he was about to come up with an invention.

So it was not all that unusual for my father never to have mentioned his sisters, and if I did not say anything more about it, then that was all that I might have heard about the matter. But I was not going to leave it at that.

“I didn’t know I had any aunts,” I said, trying not to sound too annoyed. If I did then he would go out to his shed in the garden, which is what he always did when I got annoyed with him. He had an unusual invention there, which he never quite finished and which nobody was ever allowed to see.

“You didn’t know you had aunts?” he said, sounding rather bemused. “How very strange!”

Well! It’s hardly strange not to know you have aunts when nobody has ever said anything about them.

“Perhaps I should tell you about them,” my father went on, a little doubtfully. “You are their niece, after all. Mind you, there are so many of them, I hope I don’t get mixed up.”

I waited for him to begin. I was dying to hear about my aunts, and yet my father seemed to forget about them almost as soon as he had mentioned them. I knew, though, that if I asked him to tell me about them at once, he would only become quiet and start to read his newspaper. So I said nothing then and waited until the next day. After he had come back from work with another rejected invention, I made him a cup of tea and a buttered scone. I knew that there was nothing he liked more than that.

“About those aunts…,” I began.

He glanced at me, but his eyes were fixed on the scone. “Is that for me?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes,” I said. “If …”

My father frowned. “If what?” he asked.

“If you tell me about my aunts.”

My father stared at me, and then looked again at the thickly buttered scone.

“What would you like to know about them?” he asked. “There isn’t an awful lot to hear, you know.”

“I want to hear everything,” I said quickly. “Everything you can remember.”

My father sighed.

“May I have the scone first?” he asked.

And so my father told me about my aunts, although he did not tell me the whole story in one sitting. I had to coax it out of him, and it was only after several days—and a whole plate of buttered scones—that I heard all that he had to say about my newly discovered aunts.

My father had been the only boy in the family. They lived on a small farm in those days, and there was not much money. It would have been all right if there had been just one or two children, but there were six children altogether, and that meant there were eight mouths to feed. With so many children, too, there was never enough money to buy the clothes that were needed. My father told me that he had to wear girls’ shoes, handed down from his sisters. So while other boys wore proper boys’ shoes, he wore red shoes with bows on them, right up until he reached the age of eight. This embarrassed him horribly. Whenever anybody came to the farm, he would quickly take his shoes off and walk around barefoot.

The children did much of the work on the farm. They did have a tractor once—my father thought it must have been one of the first tractors ever made—but it was so old that eventually it couldn’t be patched up anymore. At harvest time, they used to cut the crops themselves, using scythes and sickles. And if things needed to be dragged around, they also had to do that themselves. As a result of this, he explained, most of my aunts grew up very, very strong.

Slowly, as I wrested the story out of him in dribs and drabs, I was able to build up a picture of my marvelous aunts. With a growing sense of excitement, I realized that every one of them had something rather special about her. Even to have one aunt like that would have been a treat—but to have five, well, that was very good luck indeed!

He told me first about Veronica. She was the oldest, and also the strongest. She could lift four bales of hay at once, he said, without feeling the strain. If the plow got stuck in a ditch, then they’d call Veronica. She’d walk around it for a moment or two and then, with a quick heave, she’d have it out of the ditch and back in its place.

My father told me that they were all proud of her strength. At the agricultural show each year there was a strong man competition. All the farmhands who thought they were stronger than everybody else thought this was the highlight of the show, and they would puff and go red in the face picking up all sorts of heavy objects.

My father wanted Veronica to enter, but there was one problem. They said that the competition was for strong men, not strong women, so girls couldn’t enter.

“Anyway,” said the man who was in charge, “whoever heard of a strong girl?”

This sort of thing seemed very unfair to my father, and so he made a plan with Veronica. They got a hold of some boys’ clothes and dressed her up in them. Then they tucked her hair up under a cap—the sort that all the farmhands wore—and there she was: a boy.

That year the strong men had to pick up pigs. There was an awfully fat pig in a pen, called Norman, and the contestants had to try to pick him up. So far, nobody had succeeded in lifting Norman. One man got two of Norman’s feet off the ground, but then Norman gave him a nip on the ankle and he dropped him.

When Veronica went forward, all the spectators had laughed.

“You’re just a boy,” one farmer called out. “Come back in ten years’ time!”

Veronica paid no attention to all this. She paid her entrance fee and stepped into the pigpen. Then she went up to Norman and put her arms around his fat body. He really was the most enormous pig, and he must have weighed hundreds of pounds. She bent her knees and with a sudden heave, up went Norman into the air.

The pig was so surprised that he forgot to try to nip her. One moment he was enjoying a good guzzle of turnip scrapings and the next he was in the air, his feet pointing up toward the sky. He let out an awful squealing noise at first and then went absolutely silent. All the breath had been squeezed out of him by Veronica’s mighty grip.

Veronica held Norman there for at least a minute. Then she gently lowered him back onto his feet. Norman gave a gasp, followed by a grunt, and finally he lurched away to a corner. He stood there, glaring at Veronica, every rasher of his bacon quivering in fear.

Veronica was very pleased. She stepped forward to receive her prize and gave Norman a friendly pat immediately afterward. He just squealed with fright, though, and my father said that he thought Norman would remember that day for the rest of his life.

Family History

I liked the sound of Aunt Veronica. I had always hated people saying that girls are weaker than boys, and the thought of Aunt Veronica proving that this was nonsense pleased me immensely. But what about the others?

“Get me another scone,” said my father, “and then I’ll tell you something about your other aunts.”

I buttered the largest scone I could find and set it in front of him. This seemed to put him in a very good mood, and over the next few minutes he told me all about Majolica. She was his bossy sister. She used to tell all the others what to do from the moment she got up in the morning until the time she went to bed.

“She was always shouting, ‘Do this! Do that! No! Not that way!’ ” said my father. “And so on.

“She had ideas about everything. If she thought somebody walked the wrong way, she’d say something about it. If she didn’t like the way somebody brushed her hair, she’d tell her to change it. There was nothing she wasn’t prepared to boss people over.

“Can you just imagine how bossy she was?” asked my father. “Well, I played a trick on her once, and although it didn’t stop her bossing people around, it certainly kept her quiet for a day or so. It was a very good trick, and I don’t have time to tell you about it now, but I will later on.”

My father laughed at the memory of the mysterious trick. So far, though, he had only spoken about Veronica and Majolica, and I was eager to hear all about the others too.

“There were three others,” he went on, counting the aunts on his fingers. “Veronica was the oldest. Then, after her came the twins, Japonica and Thessalonika. I can’t quite remember whether Harmonica was older than Majolica, although I do know that Japonica arrived two minutes before Thessalonika.”

Harmonica was the musical one, which suited her name, of course. They had no musical instruments then, but Harmonica had the most enchanting voice anybody could imagine. She sounded like a nightingale, and visitors to the farm would stand in wonder if they heard her singing.

And she could do something else too. She was a ventriloquist, which meant that she could throw her voice. She could throw her voice into a trunk and make it sound as if there were somebody inside. She could throw it behind a curtain and make you quite positive that there was somebody standing behind it. It was a marvelous gift.

Japonica and Thessalonika could do only one thing well. They could read minds. My father supposed that it came from being twins. He said that if you have a twin, you get used to thinking about what the other person is going to do. Eventually you become able to read your twin’s mind, and once you can do that, it’s not so hard to read other people’s minds.

They could do the most extraordinary things as a result of this ability. They could tell if somebody was lying. In fact, they could tell if somebody was going to lie even before that person opened his mouth. As my father told me about this, I thought: what a very great talent to have!

I listened to what my father had to say about my aunts. He had never talked to me about his family before and I had always assumed that there had only been him. Now I found myself with a whole set of new relatives, all of whom sounded exciting. Naturally I wanted to meet them, and so I asked him where they lived and when we could go to see them. At this, his smile disappeared.

“I have no idea where they live,” he confessed. “I’ve got old addresses for one or two of them of course, but those are bound to be out of date. So where they are today—heaven knows!”

“But what happened?” I pressed. “You can’t have lost my aunts just like that.”

He nodded sadly.

“I did, I’m afraid. They’re all lost, every single one of them.”

I asked him how it happened and he told me the story.

“The farm we lived on really wasn’t very good. The soil was thin there, and the potatoes we grew were always very hard and tiny. The animals were thin too, just as we were. The cows all showed their ribs and it was a great effort for the hens to lay any eggs.

“At last my poor parents—your grandparents—decided that we just could not go on. They called us all together and told us the bad news that they would have to sell the farm. If they got enough money from the sale, they might be able to buy a small shop in town, and we could live off that. I liked the idea at the time. For a boy who had spent all his life on a farm, the idea of living above a shop sounded very nice.

“But things did not work out that way. When the farm was put up for sale, quite a few people came out to see it, but nobody seemed prepared to buy it for the price my father set. One or two people actually laughed when they saw how thin the soil was and how hungry the animals looked. And so your grandparents were forced to sell it for next to nothing to a man who was going to use it for no other purpose than to ride his horses over it. Our house—the house in which we had all been born and had grown up—was to have a wider door fitted and was then to be used as a stable for the horses. Oh, the shame of it!

“What was worse, though, was that we could not afford to buy the shop after all. Your grandfather was now desperate. I saw him sitting in his chair near the kitchen stove, his head in his hands, thinking about the sad fate that had befallen us. I longed to be able to help my parents, but what could I do? I couldn’t get a job—I was too young for that—and nobody seemed willing to take on the girls.

“At last, when the day came to leave the farm, your grandfather broke more bad news to us.

“ ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘We are all going to have to split up. I just can’t afford to keep the family together anymore.’

“It was a terrible, terrible blow, and I was so shocked by it that I almost did not hear what he then had to say. It seemed he had arranged for us to go and stay with various people all over the country. Some of the girls were to go to cousins; others were to go to live in a children’s home in a city a long way off.

As the youngest, I was given the best choice. I was to live with my grandparents. Even this was a terrible fate. I did not want to leave Majolica, Veronica, and Harmonica, not to mention Thessalonika and Japonica. But I really had no choice, and that day I said good-bye to my sisters, fearing that I would never see them again. And I never have.”

It seemed to me to be one of the saddest stories I had ever heard. As my father spoke, I could picture the day when they all left the farm. I had no idea what it was to have a brother or a sister—I had none—but I imagined that a brother or a sister must be the very best of friends, and to see all your brothers and sisters going off to a new home must be like losing all your best friends at once.

My father ate the last crumb of his scone and sighed. I thought that he had come to the end of his story, but he suddenly looked up and went on.

“There’s something else I should tell you,” he said. “When they realized that the family would have to split up, your grandparents decided that they would have a portrait of all the children painted. They got in touch with a painter who lived nearby and asked him whether he would do it. The painter was a rather temperamental man, and nobody could ever tell when he was likely to be difficult, but he agreed, and we had the first sitting.

“We dressed in our best clothes—which were all a bit threadbare, I’m afraid to say—and then we all stood in two rows, with Majolica in the middle. The painter, who was an enormous man with a handlebar mustache, fussed and fiddled with his canvas and seemed to take an awfully long time to do anything. It was difficult for us—we had to try to keep a straight face and not to move, while all the time we could hardly keep our eyes off his mustache, which went up and down whenever he moved.

“Your grandparents had hoped that the painting would be finished within three or four days, but unfortunately the painter took much longer than that. At the end of a week, as the painter was packing up and cleaning his brushes after the day’s work, your grandfather explained to him that he could no longer afford to pay him.

“ ‘It’s taken so long,’ he said apologetically. ‘And as we have to pay you at the end of each day, I’m afraid we will have to stop today.’

“The painter was very upset and threw his arms up and down in the air to emphasize his displeasure. But there was no alternative. He was not prepared to work without payment, and we didn’t have the money to pay him any more. So he left us with an unfinished painting. All the bodies were painted, up to the shoulders. But he hadn’t gotten around to even starting the heads.”

I said nothing. I was trying to imagine what the painting must have been like. It must have looked very peculiar, with the six figures standing there, all with no heads.

“Would you like to see it?” my father asked.

“See what?”

“Why, the painting,” he said. “I have it upstairs, you see. It’s in the attic. It’ll be dusty after all these years, but it’s there all right.”

The Search Begins

Now this was exciting news indeed! Together with my father I made my way up into the attic, a dark and dusty place full of all sorts of bits and pieces that had been stored away over the years. In spite of the confusion, though, my father seemed to know exactly where to look. Muttering to himself, he gave a tug at a large square object and there, covered, as he had warned, with a thick layer of dust, was the painting.

We took it downstairs and rubbed it down with a cloth. Clouds of dust flew up and slowly the picture on the canvas began to show itself. I peered at it as the figures emerged. Yes! There they were, in two rows, surrounding the youthful figure of my father, my aunts! (Or, rather, parts of my aunts—up as far as their necks.)

I polished away at the painting until it was as clean as I could get it.

“Yes,” said my father. “There we are. And that’s one of the barns in the background. That’s me with the torn trousers. And that’s Veronica—can you see the strong arms? And that’s Thessalonika. She always wore that pink dress on Sundays although it had become very tattered.”

It made me sad to look at the picture. If only there had been enough money to pay the painter to finish it, then there would at least have been a good record of the family. There were the photographs, of course, but you can’t really put photographs on your wall, and when they’re tucked away in an album they’re rather out of mind.

“I wish it had been finished,” I said. “If only the painter had worked faster.”

My father nodded. “Now it will never be finished,” he mused. “And it’s no good as it is, with blanks where the heads should be.”

It was as he spoke that an idea occurred to me. Unfinished paintings can be finished, even if it’s years later. Perhaps I could trace my aunts. Perhaps I could get them all together again and we could have the painting finished at last. Although my grandfather was no longer alive, it would be a marvelous thing to finish off the one thing that he had wanted so much and that had not worked out for him.

I turned to my father.

“Couldn’t we get the painting finished?” I asked. “If we found my aunts again and got them together …”

My father thought for a moment. He looked doubtful.

“I’ve lost touch,” he said. “I’ve got one or two addresses somewhere, but it’s all so long ago.”

I was determined to persevere.

“Please, let’s try,” I said. “Please, let’s see if we can do it.”

“I’ll think about it,” my father said. “Maybe.”

Over the next few days, I thought about little else. My father, though, appeared to forget about it all and seemed rather surprised when I asked him for the addresses he had told me about.

“I want to write to my aunts,” I said to him. “Could you give me those addresses you had?”

He looked at me vaguely. “Aunts? Oh yes, of course, all those aunts.” He frowned. “I don’t think the addresses will be any use. They’re from about ten years ago.”

I insisted that I still wanted to try, and, grumbling under his breath about being disturbed, he went off to search in a drawer of his desk. His desk was always overflowing with bits of paper, and I was astonished that he ever managed to find anything there.

At last he came back with a scrap of paper.

“This is the only one I can find,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to the others.”

I took the piece of paper with trembling hands. The name Veronica was written at the top, and underneath there was the number of a house and a street in a town with a name I had never heard before. I fetched my diary and carefully transferred the information to a page at the back. The search had begun.

I did not write a long letter to Aunt Veronica. All I did was introduce myself and tell her that the only reason why I had not written before was that my father had never told me of her existence.

“You must have thought me very rude,” I wrote, “not even to send you a Christmas card. But it really is my father’s fault. Now I am writing to make up for it all.”

I sent the letter, dropping it into the mailbox with a silent wish that it would find its destination. Then, for the next ten days, I eagerly awaited the arrival of the mailman.

“Anything for me?” I asked as he made his way up the garden path.

The answer was always the same.

“Nothing today. Sorry.”

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And then…

When the mailman handed me the letter, I could hardly believe that it had really come. I examined the postmark and caught my breath as I saw that it was from the very town I had written. It was a letter from Aunt Veronica—that was all it could be.

There was a single page inside. “Dear Harriet Bean,” I read. “I opened the letter that you sent to your aunt because I now live in that house and it was delivered to me. If I knew where to send it, I could have forwarded it on to her unopened. But I’m afraid that I have no idea where she is. She went away from here years ago and did not leave a new address. All I can say is that I believe that she worked in a circus. This meant that she was away from home most of the time and never had the time to make many friends. So nobody knows where she is anymore. I’m very sorry, and I do hope that you find her.”

I put the letter down and closed my eyes. I was bitterly disappointed, but I knew that I was not going to give up. At least I now had a clue. Aunt Veronica worked in a circus. There were probably quite a number of circuses, and I might not find the right one, but I was sure to discover somebody in the circus world who had met her or who would know something about her.

I had not been told what she did in the circus, though, and that could make my search more difficult. Did she sell tickets in the box office? Did she work with horses, or even lions? Or was she one of those people who swing on the high trapeze? All of these were possible.

From then on, I studied the newspaper every day to see if there were any circuses performing nearby. There were all sorts of other events—concerts, races, motorcycle shows—but nothing about a circus. Then, at last, just when I was beginning to think that circuses had disappeared altogether, my eye fell on a small notice at the bottom of the page.

“Circus Romano,” it said simply. “A great treat for all! Don’t miss it!” This was followed by the dates and places, and one of the places was not far away.

I took the advertisement and showed it to my father.

“Please take me to the circus,” I begged. “I’ve never been to one before.”

My father looked at the notice and wrinkled up his nose.

“Nasty, noisy things,” he said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t enjoy yourself.”

“But I would,” I protested. “I really want to go.”

He could tell that I was very eager to do this, and because, in spite of all his faults (and he has a lot of them), he’s really very kind inside, he said that we could go. I was delighted. This was my first chance of finding Aunt Veronica, and I had a feeling that I was going to be lucky the first time.

A Trip to the Circus

The days of waiting for the Circus Romano dragged painfully. I began to have doubts about what would happen when I met Aunt Veronica. What would I say to her?

“How do you do? You’re my aunt.” That sounded rather abrupt. Perhaps I should say, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I think I’m your niece.”

And what would her reply be? Would she be pleased, or would she be annoyed? Perhaps she wouldn’t want a niece. Perhaps she’d think that I wanted something from her.

By the time we left for the circus, I felt very anxious indeed and the sight of the great tent and its glare of lights did nothing to calm my fears. I had made no plan about what to do at the circus, although I hoped that I would have the chance to ask some of the performers after the show whether they knew anything of Aunt Veronica.

We took our seats by the ringside. My father had bought good tickets—the best available, in fact—and so we were seated right at the very edge of the ring. He was still not at all interested in the whole thing, and he looked around with disapproval.

“Look at those trapezes,” he said, pointing to the silver swings suspended from the very top of the tent. “What a ridiculous place to put them. Why don’t they put them closer to the ground so we can all see what’s happening?”

I tried to explain to him that what made trapezes so exciting was the fact that they were so high, but he seemed to take no interest. So I sat back and waited for the show to begin.

With a fanfare from the circus band the first act began. This was horses—marvelous, jet-black animals bedecked in glittering harnesses, plumes rising proudly above their heads. As they cantered around the ring, a great cheer rose from the crowd.

The horses were followed by clowns. They fell down, squirted each other with water, and played the trombone as they tripped each other up. The audience loved them, or rather, most of the audience loved them. My father just sat and stared at them, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Silly people,” he muttered. “I don’t see what’s so funny about having a red nose and tripping over your feet.”

Then, when the clowns had left, a circle of stout iron bars was set up around the ring and a man in a red coat and top hat strutted proudly to the center. This was the lion tamer, and at the crack of his whip five great lions bounded in through a tunnel. Everyone gasped as the lions sprang onto stools and bared their vicious-looking teeth at the trainer. Everyone, that is, except my father. He took out a newspaper he had tucked into his jacket pocket, unfolded it, and began to read.

My father was still reading when the lions had disappeared and their cage had been dismantled. He was still buried in his newspaper when the next act started, and so he did not see the strong woman march into the ring, nor see her flex her bulging muscles for the admiration of the crowd. I saw her, though, and knew in my heart that this was my Aunt Veronica. I had found her.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” cried the ringmaster. “This strong lady, the strongest lady in the country, will now demonstrate her mighty strength. She will begin by tearing up three telephone directories all stuck together!”

“Impossible!” called a voice from the back of the tent, but Aunt Veronica did not bat an eyelid. She took the directories from the ringmaster, held them before her, and then, with one great rip, tore them in two.

There was a burst of applause and one or two jeers directed against the man who had shouted out that it was impossible. There was applause too, for her next feat, which was to bend a thick iron bar until its ends touched one another, and for the feat after that, in which she picked up a piece of railway line with her teeth.

“Now,” said the ringmaster, “the strong lady will take on the circus elephant in a tug-of-war!”

Laughter and clapping greeted the plodding arrival in the ring of the circus elephant. Coolly and calmly, Aunt Veronica tied one end of a thick rope to the elephant’s trunk and then braced herself against the other end. Then the two of them tugged away, but try as it might, the elephant could not move Aunt Veronica.

The applause almost brought the tent down around our ears. Aunt Veronica bowed, raised her hands in the air, and then led the elephant to the side of the ring to stand there while she performed her final and most difficult feat.

I watched in fascination as Aunt Veronica lay down on the ground. Then, on top of her stomach, three circus assistants laid heavy iron weights, each the size of a football. They were burying my aunt in iron weights! Only one of these weights would have crushed the breath out of an ordinary person, and Aunt Veronica now had at least fifteen piled on top of her.

Suddenly my father lowered his newspaper. I think it was the silence that made him wonder what was going on. He looked into the ring, opened his eyes wide with surprise at the strange sight of the weighted-down strong lady, and then gave a sudden jolt.

“Veronica!”

Aunt Veronica heard my father’s exclamation and turned to look in his direction. Their eyes met, and I think that she recognized him immediately.

My father was now on his feet.

“Veronica!” he called out again. “Surely it can’t be you?”

“Harold!” Aunt Veronica called out from under her weights. “Is it really you, Harold?”

Without further ado, my father leapt from his seat and vaulted into the ring.

“No,” shouted the ringmaster from the other side. “Keep out, sir!”

My father ignored the ringmaster’s cry and began to run across the ring to his long-lost sister. I watched, fascinated—proud to have found my aunt, but embarrassed by my father’s behavior. Why could he not have waited until the end of the act? There would have been plenty of time for reunions then.

The ringmaster called out another warning, but it was too late. The elephant had been disturbed by my father’s sudden arrival in the ring and had lumbered forward to meet him. Now, before my father could do anything about it, the elephant had grabbed him with his trunk and wound it around him.

“My father!” I cried. “He’s going to be squeezed to pieces!”

I watched in horror as my father turned a strange purple color. I was convinced that this was the end, and I was powerless to do anything about it.

When Aunt Veronica saw what was happening, she lost no time in throwing off the iron weights. With a great shrug and hurrumph she pushed the weights away and staggered to her feet. Then, with one or two bounds, she dashed across to the elephant.

The elephant had now unwound part of my father and had laid him on the ground. I thought that it was going to release him, but I soon realized that it had other plans. Slowly, but very deliberately, the elephant was beginning to sit on my father!

I closed my eyes in horror. Only a miracle could save him now … or Aunt Veronica. When I opened my eyes again, she was in between my father and the elephant, pushing the elephant up and away. The elephant looked very annoyed and gave a bellow of anger. Then, realizing that it had met its match, it ambled away and looked resentfully at my aunt.

As if it were one person, the crowd rose to its feet in applause.

“Bravo!” they shouted. “Well done!”

My father, looking a bit shaken, but otherwise none the worse for his experience, was led back to his seat by Aunt Veronica.

“You must be my niece,” she said, smiling at me in a very friendly way. “Just look after your father for the rest of the show and then we’ll meet in my trailer when it’s all over.”

She smiled again and then, with applause still thundering to the very top of the tent, she bounded out of the ring and was gone.

Aunt Veronica’s Trailer

The moment the show came to an end, I led my father out of the tent. He was eager to get out quickly, as he was well aware that everybody was looking at him.

“There’s the man who was nearly sat on by the elephant!” people said, pointing to my father.

Once outside, we went straight to the corner of the field where the trailers were parked. There were at least twenty of them—brightly colored vehicles with curtains in the windows and small chimneys poking out through the top of their roofs.

I asked a boy standing outside the door of one of the trailers to show me which one belonged to Aunt Veronica. He pointed to a small trailer near the edge of the field.

When I knocked, Aunt Veronica opened the door immediately and stood before us, her arms wide open in a gesture of welcome. She gave my father a hug, then turned her attention to me.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said enthusiastically. “I always wanted a niece, and now, presto, I find that I’ve had one all along!”

We went into the trailer and sat down at a table, which had just been laid for us. It was not a very large trailer, but it seemed very comfortable, with everything tidily stacked in its place. Aunt Veronica put a teakettle on a small gas stove in one corner and then took a large cake out of a cake tin.

Then, over a cup of steaming tea and a large slice of delicious fruitcake, we talked. My father had a lot to tell her, and she had a lot to tell him. Not all that much had happened in my life, so I just sat and listened to the two of them.

Finally, Aunt Veronica finished talking about herself and leaned back in her chair.

“What about the others?” she asked. “Have you heard from them?”

“The others?” asked my father.

“Majolica and Harmonica,” said Aunt Veronica. “And Japonica and Thessalonika.”

My father shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know where they are.” He paused. “Do you?”

Aunt Veronica sighed. “Only one of them,” she said. “Harmonica. I’m sure I know where she is.”

This was the signal for me to interrupt. “Oh, please, tell me,” I said. “I want to find them—all of them.”

Aunt Veronica looked at me thoughtfully. “Do you really want to find your aunts?” she said. “You’re not just saying that?”

“No,” I protested. “I mean, yes. I do want to find them.” I did not want to tell her about the painting, at least not yet.

She thought for a bit longer. Then, winking at me in a way which said, “I have a good idea,” she came up with her suggestion.

“Harold,” she said, turning to my father, “I think that you should leave Harriet with me for a few days. I’d like to find these sisters of mine myself, and I could do with a bit of help. I’m due a bit of vacation from the circus and now’s as good a time to take it as any.”

My father looked at me vaguely. “Would you like that?” he asked.

I could hardly contain my excitement. To stay with Aunt Veronica, in her trailer, and go in search of the other aunts sounded like the most magnificent idea.

“Of course I’d like that,” I said. “There’s nothing I’d like better.”

We waved good-bye to my father as he made his way out of the circus field. Then, closing the door behind us, Aunt Veronica showed me which bunk I could have. She pointed out a cupboard where I could keep my shoes and in another cupboard she found me a spare toothbrush and soap dish.

“I’ll get you some more clothes tomorrow,” she said. “One of the trapeze artists has a daughter just your size. She’ll lend us some clothes while you’re with me. Circus people always share.”

I looked around the trailer. It seemed to me the ideal place to live and travel. It had everything, or so I thought, until I noticed something strange. All the other trailers in the field were motorized, which meant that they had engines to drive them along. As far as I could make out, there was no space in this trailer for an engine. There was a driver’s seat, steering wheel, and something that looked like a brake. But that was all.

Aunt Veronica noticed me looking around and she must have guessed what was going through my mind.

“Come,” she said to me. “Let me show you a secret.”

She led me to the front of the trailer and opened a trapdoor immediately in front of the driver’s seat.

“There,” she said. “That’s how it works.”

I looked down. There, just below the level of the floor, was a large set of pedals, exactly like the pedals of a bicycle. I gasped with surprise.

“Do you mean to say this trailer is pedal-powered?” I asked disbelievingly.

“Yes,” said Aunt Veronica. “I find that it keeps my leg muscles in good shape, although sometimes it’s rather hard going on hills.”

I was completely astounded. Was there no end to the feats of strength of this utterly amazing aunt?

We got into our bunks, and Aunt Veronica turned the light out.

“Goodnight, Harriet,” she said into the darkness. “And thank you for finding me.”

I lay tucked warmly in my bunk, filled with happiness. For a while I listened to the sounds of the circus outside—the stamping of the horses’ feet in their pen as they settled for the night, the growl of a lion as it moved in its sleep. Then I drifted off to sleep myself, to dream that I was as strong as Aunt Veronica and could do everything, or almost everything, that she could do.

The next morning we sat and ate our breakfast on the steps of the trailer. The circus people got up very early and were bustling around, attending to the one-hundred-and-one morning tasks of a circus. From my seat on the steps, I watched the lion tamer, no longer wearing his splendid red lion-taming outfit but clad in a pair of scruffy pajamas. He took a large pail of meat to the edge of the lions’ cage and tossed their breakfast in to them.

Aunt Veronica ate a very large breakfast.

“I need it to keep my strength up,” she explained, as she dug into her fourteen-egg omelette. Then, when the eggs were finished, she ate seven or eight sausages, and followed them up with ten pieces of toast.

“We will set off this morning,” she said, wiping her lips on a red-checked napkin she had spread on her lap. “With any luck, we shall meet up with your Aunt Harmonica tonight.”

“But where is she?” I asked. “Do you know exactly where to find her?”

Aunt Veronica nodded. “I haven’t seen her for a year or two,” she said. “But I know where she works. There’s an opera house not all that far away. She has a job there.”

We got up and washed the breakfast dishes and stacked them away. Then Aunt Veronica left for a few minutes to tell the ringmaster that she was taking a vacation. I made my bunk in the trailer and swept the floor.

When Aunt Veronica came back, I watched in fascination as she settled herself in the driver’s seat of the trailer and opened the trapdoor that exposed the pedals.

“You sit in the back,” she said. “You’ll get a good view from the window.”

And with that, she lowered her feet through the trapdoor, took a deep breath, and began to pedal.

You would never have thought it possible. There we were in a trailer—not a big one, but a trailer nonetheless—and Aunt Veronica was making it move purely through her own effort. As we drove through the field, faces appeared at the windows of the other trailers. Word spreads quickly in the circus, and the other circus people already knew about Aunt Veronica’s vacation.

“Good luck!” somebody shouted. “Come back soon!”

Aunt Veronica tooted the trailer’s horn, a rubber bulb attached to a brass tube, and I waved from my window. Then we were out on the open road and the trailer began to pick up speed.

We had traveled for at least an hour before Aunt Veronica began to feel tired. During this time, we had moved at about the speed of a fast bicycle, which is not all that slow. We had overtaken one or two cars as well, and I had watched the expressions of surprise on the faces of the drivers as the trailer swept silently past them. I could imagine them saying to themselves, “I didn’t hear that behind me! What an amazingly quiet engine that trailer must have.”

As we neared a small roadside filling station. Aunt Veronica signaled that she was going to turn in. We stopped at the side of the station and went in to buy a bottle of lemonade and a large bar of chocolate for Aunt Veronica. After we had made our purchases, Aunt Veronica turned to me, winked, and spoke to the mechanic who ran the station.

“I think I have engine trouble in my trailer,” she said. “Could you take a look at it?”

The mechanic nodded, put on his greasy overalls, and walked with us back to the trailer. First he went to the front of the trailer, looked at it, and then went to the back. He opened the back door, looked at the floor, and scratched his head. Then he got down on his hands and knees and peered underneath.

“Excuse me,” he said after a while. “I can’t seem to find the engine. Do you know where it is?”

Aunt Veronica pretended to look puzzled. “It must be there somewhere,” she said. “But I’m afraid I don’t know where.”

The mechanic was now looking very mystified. He crouched down again and crawled underneath.

“It’s not here,” he called out. “There’s … there’s absolutely nothing!”

He scrambled out and looked at Aunt Veronica, his eyes wide with astonishment.

“Where do you put the gas in?” he demanded. “Maybe we can work it out from there.”

“Gas?” said Aunt Veronica, as if the word meant nothing to her. “Well, I don’t think I ever buy gas. Or at least I can’t actually remember ever putting any gas in.”

The mechanic’s jaw dropped. “You mean…,” he began to say. “You mean to say that you never put gas in?”

Aunt Veronica shook her head.

“In that case,” said the mechanic, “how did you get here? You tell me that!”

Aunt Veronica shrugged her shoulders.

“I get in and turn the engine on, and just drive,” she answered. “Look, I’ll show you.”

We both got back into the trailer and closed the door behind us. Trying not to laugh, I took up my place at the window while Aunt Veronica sat in the driver’s seat. Then, while the bemused mechanic stood back and watched, Aunt Veronica put her feet on the pedals and slowly we moved off.

“You see,” she called from her seat. “It works!”

“Good-bye!” I cried as we moved off.

The mechanic stood rooted to the spot. His face was a picture of puzzlement, and he looked just as if he had seen a flying saucer.

“He’ll never forget today,” joked Aunt Veronica. “He’ll tell all his friends about it. And do you know, I’m afraid that not one of them will ever believe him!”

The Strangest Incident in the History of Opera

The opera house stood on the top of a hill, on the outskirts of town. It was a beautiful building, as an opera house should be, with a sweep of stone steps leading up to the doors and a high roof of shining copper. We parked the trailer at the back and made our way to the stage door.

“Now, ladies,” said an attendant in a blue and gold uniform, barring our way. “This door is only for the singers and musicians.”

Aunt Veronica explained to him that we wished to see one of the singers.

“She’s my sister,” she went on. “And this is her niece.”

At the mention of Aunt Harmonica’s name, the attendant smiled.

“Well, well!” he said. “Now that you mention it, I can see the resemblance, although I must say you seem a bit … a bit more …”

“Muscular?” interrupted Aunt Veronica.

The attendant blushed. “Yes,” he said. “You see, she’s so much more … so much more …”

“Large?” suggested Aunt Veronica.

The attendant blushed even further.

“Er, yes,” he said feebly. “I suppose that’s true.”

He motioned us to follow him and we began down a dark corridor that seemed to bore into the very heart of the opera house. It was a lovely corridor, with doors opening off into brightly lit dressing rooms and dark, cluttered storerooms. At last the attendant pointed to a half-open door and nodded his head.

“That’s where she’ll be,” he said. “But make sure you don’t distract her too much. The performance starts in less than fifteen minutes.”

• • •

“You go in first,” whispered Aunt Veronica. “Let’s give her a surprise.”

I was reluctant to do this, but I was given a good shove by Aunt Veronica and soon found myself standing in a dressing room. There were several glittery dresses hanging on a wardrobe door and a bright mirror surrounded by bulbs. On a stool before the mirror, a comfortable-looking woman was applying lipstick to her fleshy red lips. I cleared my throat to attract her attention.

I think I must have given her a bit of a fright, as she spun around sharply and looked at me with complete surprise.

“What do you want?” she asked. Then, tossing the lipstick onto the dressing table, she asked me who I was.

I drew in my breath to give my answer, but suddenly she stopped.

“Don’t tell me,” she said, rising to her feet to peer more closely at me. “There’s something very familiar about your face.”

She bent down and stared into my face from a distance of no more than a few inches. Then she drew back and narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have a father called Harold, do you?” she asked.

It was at this point that Aunt Veronica popped her head round the door.

“Yes, she does,” she said.

When she saw Aunt Veronica, Aunt Harmonica burst out with a peal of triumphant laughter.

“I knew it!” she crowed. “I could tell that she was my niece.”

Then she hugged me, pressing me against her vast shape, making me feel as if I had been swallowed by a giant pudding. I struggled for breath and eventually broke away from her embrace. Aunt Harmonica was crying with emotion.

“Oh, what a marvelous day this is turning out to be!” she crooned. “First, the chance to sing a lovely part tonight, and then the visit from you!”

She sat down, weeping with excitement and emotion. Aunt Veronica helped her dry her eyes and then assisted her to squeeze into her dress. As Aunt Harmonica dressed, she told us about her job.

“I would have liked to be the leading lady in operas,” she said wistfully. “And I could sing well enough for that, couldn’t I, Veronica?”

Aunt Veronica nodded her agreement and Aunt Harmonica went on.

“But when they discovered I could throw my voice, they wanted me to do something else. They gave me a job as an understudy.”

She paused, looking at me. “You may not know what an understudy is, Harriet. An understudy is the person who’s ready to take over if a singer gets a sore throat and can’t sing. The show has to go on, as you know, and it’s the understudy who steps in and sings. Anyway, they realized that an understudy who could throw her voice was one in a million. This meant that the first singer could go on the stage as usual and just pretend to sing. She’d just open her mouth, though, and I would throw my voice from the wings. The singers loved this. They got all the cheers and flowers at the end, while I did all the work!”

I felt sorry for Aunt Harmonica as she told me her story. It must have been terrible to have to watch others getting all the praise for her singing.

She dabbed a handkerchief at the corner of her eyes.

“Still,” she went on, “there’s no point in complaining about our lot in life. It’s my job and … good heavens! Look at the time! I’m going to have to sing in five minutes. The leading lady has quite lost her voice and I’m to do her singing. So, come along, you can stand beside me and see how it’s done.”

I was thrilled to be able to stand beside Aunt Harmonica and watch the preparation on the stage. Everybody was in position now, including the opera star who had lost her voice. Down in the orchestra pit, the orchestra was playing the overture, and on the other side of the stage they were preparing to raise the curtain. Aunt Harmonica looked at me, smiled, and reached into her bag for a throat lozenge.

“I always suck one of these quickly before I sing,” she whispered. “It lubricates my vocal cords.”

The curtain began to rise and the chorus of opera singers standing at the back of the stage burst into song. Aunt Harmonica was following what was going on very carefully, ready to begin her part when her cue came.

Suddenly I noticed that there was something wrong with Aunt Harmonica. She had raised her hands to her throat and was clutching at it frantically. Her face was beginning to turn purple—more or less the color my father had turned when the elephant had coiled its trunk around him.

I realized almost immediately what had happened. The throat lozenge which Aunt Harmonica had been sucking must have stuck in her throat and now she was not only breathless but voiceless. I turned to Aunt Veronica and tugged at her arm.

“Oh my goodness!” muttered Aunt Veronica, slapping her sister on the back. “There’s something stuck in her throat.”

She gave her a few more slaps on the back, but it did not seem to do any good. Aunt Veronica then did something which seemed very strange at the time but which was obviously the right thing to do. Reaching down, she picked Aunt Harmonica up by her legs and held her upside down. There was a strange wheezing sound and then a gasp. The lozenge had moved.

Aunt Veronica placed Aunt Harmonica back on her feet, but unfortunately, this made the lozenge lodge again. Quickly she turned her upside down again, and the lozenge moved again.

“Keep me like this,” Aunt Harmonica said. “It’s the only way I’m going to be able to sing.”

And sing she did, all the time being held upside down by Aunt Veronica. It was a very strange thing to see—an aunt being held in such an unusual position, all the while throwing her voice over the stage to where the leading lady was merely opening her mouth and pretending to sing. I am sure it was the very strangest incident in the whole history of opera.

But there was something even stranger. If you have ever heard anybody sing upside down (and you probably haven’t), then you might realize that the words come out … upside down! Yes! And this is exactly what happened. Although Aunt Harmonica’s voice sounded very tuneful, the song she was singing was definitely upside down.

By craning my neck a little, I could just see the audience past the edge of the curtain. At first they appeared not to notice anything, but after a few moments I saw that some of them were looking a little bit puzzled. Then one or two of them began to twist their heads around, and soon most people were doing this. By getting their heads just about as close as they could to being upside down, they heard the words perfectly. It was all very strange indeed.

At the end of the act, the curtain came down and Aunt Veronica was able to carry the upside down Aunt Harmonica back to her dressing room. There, with the aid of a glass of water, which Aunt Harmonica managed to drink, the lozenge was dislodged from its place and Aunt Harmonica was able to stand on her feet again, the right way up.

“What a terrible thing to happen,” she gasped. “But what a stroke of luck that you were there to deal with it, Veronica.”

After the opera was finished, and the singer who hadn’t sung had gone out to receive her flowers from an admiring audience, Aunt Harmonica came with us to the trailer. Aunt Veronica put on the teakettle and brewed a pot of tea while I told my newfound aunt all about my life.

“I’m so glad you came to see me,” Aunt Harmonica said. “I know that you have no shortage of aunts, but you’re the only niece I have.”

I told her that so far I had only found two aunts out of the five and asked her whether she could help to discover the rest.

“I wish I could,” she said. “But I haven’t seen any of them for years and years. Veronica’s the only one I’ve come across.”

I felt a wave of disappointment overcome me. I had very much hoped that Aunt Harmonica would have some information about the others, but it looked as if she knew as little as my father did.

She scratched her head.

“Now wait,” she said. “Something’s coming back to me at last. Yes, I think I may be able to help.”

She turned to Aunt Veronica.

“Is there room for me in this trailer?” she asked, looking about her as she spoke.

Aunt Veronica glanced at the well-padded form of her sister and gulped.

“I’m sure there is,” she said.

“In that case,” said Aunt Harmonica, “I think I might be able to track down the others. Why don’t I stay here tonight, and we will all leave together first thing in the morning.”

Aunt Veronica prepared a bunk for Aunt Harmonica, and although it was a very tight squeeze, eventually Aunt Harmonica managed to settle under her blankets and the light was put out.

I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to overcome me. Suddenly, from under my bunk, I heard a small voice cry out, “Help! I’m trapped!”

I jumped out, switched on a light, and looked under the bunk. There was nothing there.

“What on earth are you doing?” asked Aunt Harmonica.

“There was somebody under my bunk,” I said. “I heard a voice.”

“I’m sure it was just your imagination,” said Aunt Veronica sleepily.

“But I heard it!” I protested. “I wasn’t dreaming.”

Then I looked at Aunt Harmonica and noticed that she was smiling. At once I realized what had happened. That’s exactly the sort of thing one must expect from a ventriloquist aunt.

I laughed, switched off the light, and got back into my bunk.

“Good night!” said a small voice in the darkness. It came from under my pillow, but I ignored it and soon there was silence.

Calling All Children!

I was fairly pleased with myself for having found two aunts so far, but I was certainly not prepared to leave it at that. The next morning, as the three of us sat in a small café and ate delicious apricot rolls for our breakfast, we discussed how we would find the others.

“I have no idea what happened to Thessalonika and Japonica,” said Aunt Harmonica.

“Nor do I,” said Aunt Veronica rather sadly.

“But I think I might know what Majolica did,” went on Aunt Harmonica. “Once, many years ago, I received a birthday card from her. I’m not sure how she found my address, but it was definitely from her. And on this card she told me that she had become a teacher. That’s all she said. And she forgot to put her address on it.”

“That’s not much of a clue,” reflected Aunt Veronica. “There are teachers all over the place. Every town has its teachers.”

“I know that,” said Aunt Harmonica, sounding rather irritated, but cheering up as she helped herself to another apricot roll. “But remember that there was something rather special about Majolica.”

“Her bossiness?” I asked, remembering what my father had told me.

My two aunts laughed.

“Exactly,” said Aunt Harmonica. “And I think that we might just be able to use that to lead us to her!”

I was puzzled by this, but as Aunt Harmonica explained her scheme, I began to understand how it might work. It was an ingenious plan, and it might be a complete failure, but it was better than nothing.

We needed a good place for the trailer, as Aunt Harmonica’s plan would take at least a week to put into effect. So we found a farmer who was happy to let us camp on his land, and we parked in a field by the side of a river.

It was a beautiful spot. In the evenings, as we waited for our dinner to be ready, we would sit and watch the cows amble back from their pasture. Then, as the shadows grew longer, Aunt Veronica would make a fire in a small ring of stones, and we would barbecue the juicy trout that we had caught in the river that afternoon.

In the mornings, while the two aunts talked, I would wander the fields and watch the rabbits darting in and out of their burrows. I would also pick wildflowers, which I brought back and arranged in vases in the trailer, or, sometimes, if I was feeling energetic, I would help the farmer’s wife weed her vegetable patch and feed her ducks.

But while all this was going on, our plan to find Aunt Majolica was in full swing, and it’s time for you to hear about it.

That first morning when Aunt Harmonica had explained her idea, we went to the office of the local newspaper and put in an advertisement. At the same time, Aunt Veronica paid for advertisements to be placed in ten other newspapers in nearby towns. Each of them said the same thing:

CALLING ALL CHILDREN!

Is there a bossy teacher in your school? And we don’t mean just an ordinarily bossy teacher, we mean a teacher who is really, really bossy! If there is, then write to us and tell us about her. (We only want to hear about the bossy lady teachers, I’m afraid.) The person who has the bossiest teacher will win an interesting prize!

Now, five days later, we were beginning to wonder when we would hear. Aunt Harmonica had told the post office where we were staying, and at last, at the end of the fifth day, a small van drew up at the edge of the field and a man called us over.

“I’ve got ten sacks of letters for you,” he said, looking quite hot and bothered about it. “It’s going to take me ages to carry them across to your trailer.”

Aunt Veronica shook her head.

“Give them to me,” she said firmly. “I’ll do it.”

The mailman laughed.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “They’re very heavy. I’ll have to carry them.”

Aunt Veronica was used to this sort of thing, and so she wasted no time arguing. Going to the back of the van, she reached in for the sacks and was soon carrying them all under one arm. The man stood in amazement, his mouth wide open.

“That’s amazing,” he said. “Those sacks weigh a ton. You should be in a circus if you can do things like that.”

“She is,” I said.

Then, thanking him for delivering the letters, we went back to the trailer and began the immense task of sorting them out.

The letters came from all over the place. There was no alternative but to open each one and read what it had to say. Then we could put them into one of three piles. One pile was called “Definitely not Majolica.” Another pile was called “Might just be Majolica.” And the third pile, the important pile, we called “Sounds just like Majolica!”

My task was to open the letters. Then I handed them on to Aunt Veronica or Aunt Harmonica, who would skim through them and decide which pile to put them in. Some of the letters were very funny, and we all laughed as we heard of the bossy exploits of the bossy teachers. There was one who even tried to boss the school hamster and was bitten on the finger when she shook it at him. Then there was one who always said exactly the same bossy things at exactly the same time of day. This bossy teacher found that her class was able to predict what she was going to say and said it for her even before she opened her mouth. She had to make up a whole new list of things about which to boss people after that.

We stopped for the night and continued the task the following day. Then, just before midday, I opened the last letter and handed it to Aunt Harmonica. This last letter did not count at all, as it was from someone who went to a school where there was a bossy dog. This dog barked at you if you did anything which it thought was wrong, and thus was very unpopular. The only thing that the children at that school liked about the school dog was that when visiting sports teams came to the school, the school dog would rush out and nip the ankles of the visitors while the game was being played. This meant that the visitors always lost, which made the school dog into something of a hero.

“Now,” said Aunt Harmonica, sounding very relieved, “let’s look at the third pile.”

There were only three letters in the third pile and my aunts looked at them very carefully. They read them and then re-read them. Then they held them up to the light in the hope that that would help. At last, after much discussion between themselves, they chose one.

“This girl must be talking about Majolica,” said Aunt Veronica. “Look, she says here that this teacher goes red in the face when she starts to boss people around.”

“That’s exactly what Majolica used to do,” agreed Aunt Harmonica. “And look, she says that they even found her being bossy when nobody was there to boss around.”

“Majolica often used to do that,” said Aunt Veronica. “Yes. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve found our sister!”

We made a large bonfire of all the other letters and then prepared to leave the campsite. The letter had come from some distance away, and Aunt Veronica said that we would need quite some time for the journey. If we set off at once, we could find a place to stop overnight and would reach the school the next morning.

So we said good-bye to the farmer and thanked him for his kindness. Then we set off, the farmer standing on his doorstep looking very puzzled as to how the trailer made no noise when it moved. I waved to him from my window, and he waved back, but when I looked again he was scratching his head in utter bewilderment.

The Bossiest Teacher

We found the school with little difficulty. It was midmorning by the time we arrived and so the children were all in their classrooms having lessons. I wondered what we were going to do next, but Aunt Veronica soon answered that question.

“We’ll stay right here,” she said. “When the children come out at lunchtime, we’ll see Majolica. I can guarantee that.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I knew that things always seemed to work out with Aunt Veronica so I did not worry.

When we heard the lunch bell, Aunt Veronica got out of the trailer and stood at the school gates. The gates were made of iron bars and over the years had become a bit twisted. They looked as if one or two cars had backed into them at times, and there were also places where bars had slipped out of their places and had not been put back.

Rolling up her sleeves, Aunt Veronica took out one of the misshapen bars and began to twist it back into shape. Some of the children noticed this, and came running to watch her. Soon others saw what was going on, and joined them. Within minutes, there was a large crowd cheering with delight as Aunt Veronica bent the gate back into proper shape.

There was the sound of a shrill voice from the other side of the playground. Out of the main door of the school, a large figure advanced purposefully.

“What are you doing, children?” the voice screeched. “Have you nothing better to do than hang around the gates? What about your lunch? How do you expect to grow properly if you don’t eat lunch? Well, come on, answer me!”

The figure paused, noticing what was attracting the children.

“And you!” the teacher shouted at Aunt Veronica. “Put the school gates down immediately! We simply won’t have people twisting the school gates like that! Did you hear me? Put those gates down at once! This instant!”

Aunt Veronica ignored the order and continued to twist the gates. She had almost finished, and the gates were beginning to look straight again.

“Did you not hear me?” barked the teacher, advancing toward Aunt Veronica. “Do I have to repeat everything several times? Is there something wrong with your ears, may I ask?”

Aunt Veronica gave a last great twist on the iron bars and then looked up. When the teacher saw her, she stopped in her tracks.

“Veronica!” she exclaimed.

Aunt Veronica’s face burst into a smile. “Majolica!”

Then Aunt Veronica rushed forward to hug her sister.

“She’s going to twist the teacher!” cried somebody in alarm. But when they saw the smile of delight on Aunt Majolica’s face, they knew that everything was all right.

I was a little bit frightened of Aunt Majolica to begin with, but after a few minutes I realized that underneath the bossiness she was really very kind. As we sat in the trailer and talked, she asked all about my father and myself and told me how happy she was that we had found her.

“Now there’s something we must ask you,” said Aunt Veronica when there was a short break in the conversation. “Do you, by any chance, know what happened to Thessalonika and Japonica?”

I waited with bated breath for an answer. I was prepared for a disappointment and for Aunt Majolica to deny all knowledge of them, but she said something quite different.

“Of course,” she said. “I see them for tea every Sunday at three o’clock.”

Aunt Veronica and Aunt Harmonica clapped their hands together with pleasure and I let out a whoop of delight.

“Then we can get in touch with them?” I said. “Can we call them this afternoon?”

Aunt Majolica looked at me in surprise.

“Oh no,” she said. “That won’t be necessary. Anyway, I don’t think they have a telephone in their house. Or at least, they’ve never mentioned one to me.”

“In that case,” said Aunt Veronica, “can we go and see them?”

“That won’t be necessary either,” said Aunt Majolica. “They’ll know to come.”

We all looked very puzzled.

“I don’t understand,” said Aunt Harmonica eventually. “How will they know that we want to see them?”

As she spoke the question, I began to realize what Aunt Majolica meant. My father had said that the twins had an extraordinary ability to read minds. Did this mean that they would know what we were thinking, even if they weren’t here?

Aunt Majolica answered my question before I even asked it.

“All I have to do is think really hard,” she explained. “If I stand still and think: ‘Thessalonika! Japonica! Please come and see me!’ they’ll come. You watch.”

While Aunt Majolica and Aunt Harmonica sat in the trailer and waited for the arrival of the last two aunts. Aunt Veronica and I went into the playground to find the girl who had sent in the winning letter. The advertisement had promised a prize for the winner, and we had not forgotten the promise.

“But what are we going to give her?” I asked Aunt Veronica. “We haven’t bought her anything.”

Aunt Veronica turned and whispered, “There are some things that can’t be bought. These things are by far the most valuable.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by this, but I didn’t have time to find out, as the girl whose name we had asked had been pointed out to us, and Aunt Veronica was making her way toward her.

The girl was very pleased to hear that she had been successful.

“We like our teacher,” she said. “We really do. But she is very bossy!”

Aunt Veronica nodded. “She’s always been like that,” she said. “Right from the time she learned to talk. Her first words were bossy ones. Can you believe that?” The girl laughed.

“Now,” Aunt Veronica continued, “I promised you a prize, and a prize you will get. I’m not going to give you anything you can touch, or keep, or eat. I’m going to show you something that you’ll be able to use for the rest of your life. It will need a little bit of work on your part before you can do it properly, but if you do the exercises as I tell you, I promise that you’ll be able to do it.”

The girl’s eyes lit up with excitement.

“I’ll do them!” she said enthusiastically.

“Good,” said Aunt Veronica. “Now listen to me. Do you like to eat nuts?”

“I do,” said the girl. “I love them.”

“Very well,” said Aunt Veronica. “And when you have a nut, can you usually find the nutcrackers?”

The girl shook her head. “Never,” she said.

“So I imagine that you would like to be able to crack nuts with your fingers?”

“I’d love that,” said the girl. “But it’s impossible. Nuts are far too hard for that.”

“You’re wrong,” said Aunt Veronica. “Look.”

Aunt Veronica reached into a pocket and took out a large walnut. Holding it between her thumb and forefinger, she gave it a quick flip and cracked it neatly into four pieces.

The girl was very impressed, and she watched closely as Aunt Veronica showed her how to do it.

“As I told you,” she said, “you’ll have to practice. But all you do is move this finger like this … and then this finger a little like that … and then you push down there, and turn the thumb around through there and …” Crunch! Another walnut had been cracked. The girl watched carefully and then Aunt Veronica gave her a few walnuts to use for practice. Then, thanking her again for helping us find Aunt Majolica, we returned to the trailer.

I opened the door and went in. There, sitting on a stool was a tall, rather thin lady. She looked at me carefully through the tiny pair of glasses that perched on the end of her nose, and I knew at once that I had found another aunt. It was Thessalonika or Japonica, but I had no idea which one.

To the Detectives’ Office

“Thessalonika,” said the new aunt, “I could tell that you were uncertain which one I was.”

I went forward and shook hands with Aunt Thessalonika. She had a kind face, and I knew at once that I was going to like her. The only problem, of course, was her mind reading. Could she really tell what people were thinking? And if she could, then I’d have to be very careful not to think about anything rude.

That’s very difficult, you know. Just you try it. Imagine that somebody else, maybe your best friend, could tell what was in your mind, and imagine that you knew it. The very first thing you’ll think about is something that you wouldn’t want her to know you were thinking about, and this happens even if you weren’t thinking about it before.

“Don’t worry,” said Aunt Thessalonika, as if she knew exactly what was on my mind. “I don’t read minds all the time. I find it a bit exhausting, you see, so I only use my powers at work.”

“Your aunt Thessalonika is a detective,” explained Aunt Majolica. “She and your aunt Japonica have a detective agency.”

“That’s right,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “And that’s why Aunt Japonica isn’t here at the moment. We’re in the middle of a very important investigation and I shall have to return to it in a very short time. In fact, I can tell that Japonica is becoming a bit annoyed, and so I’d better leave right now.”

She rose to her feet.

“There’s a good place to park your trailer in our backyard,” she explained. “Majolica will show you the way. We can all meet back there this evening.”

“May I come with you?” I asked, not wanting to lose my new aunt so soon after finding her.

Aunt Thessalonika looked at me and frowned.

“We have an awful lot of confidential matters in our office,” she said. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course,” I assured her.

She looked at Aunt Veronica, who nodded encouragingly.

“In that case,” she said, “you may come.”

The door of my aunts’ office had a bell and a small peephole. Aunt Thessalonika ushered me inside and led me along a narrow corridor to a further door at the end. This door was locked, and she fiddled with several keys for a moment or two before it opened.

Inside, I found myself in a large room with no windows at all, but it had a high skylight that let in the daylight. The room was lined with shelves and cupboards, and at the far end there were two desks. A tall man was sitting at one of the desks, and he looked up sharply when we came in. Aunt Thessalonika jerked her head in the direction of this man and told me to go and say hello to him.

“How do you do?” said the man, rising to his feet as I approached his desk. “So you’re Harriet.”

I was astonished to hear that he knew my name, and I assumed that Aunt Thessalonika must have called to say that we were coming.

We shook hands and he asked me to sit down. I did so and studied the man before me. He had a large mustache, gray hair, and a pair of heavy glasses. He was the sort of man you could walk past in the street without ever noticing. Looking at his mustache, which was rather bushy, I wondered how he cut it. Did he use…

“Scissors,” said the man. “Most people with mustaches use scissors.”

I gasped. Here was another mind reader! Were all private detectives mind readers, or was it just my two aunts and their friends?

“However,” the man went on, rising to his feet, “this mustache never needs to be cut at all. And why is that?” He paused, his eyes glinting through the thick lenses of his heavy glasses. “It’s because it is utterly and completely … false!”

And with that he ripped the mustache off his face with a quick flick of his wrist.

“Nor,” he continued, “do I have to spend too much time combing this hair, because it, you see, is … a wig!”

And with another flourish he ripped off the wig and I saw his real hair tumble out from beneath. And then I realized—he was a woman. In fact, he was my aunt. It was Aunt Japonica in disguise.

As I stared in astonishment, Aunt Japonica took off the rest of her disguise with a few deft movements. Off came the suit, to reveal a shiny green dress underneath. Off came the glasses and, with a wipe of a handkerchief, off came the makeup.

“Now you see me as I really am,” said Aunt Japonica with a sigh. “But I love disguises, and I’m so glad that our job requires us to dress up so much.”

“She’s very good at it,” chipped in Aunt Thessalonika. “You should see her disguised as a nun.”

“Or as a bus driver,” added Aunt Japonica.

“And what about the time you were a dog?” said Aunt Thessalonika. “Tell her about that.”

“Oh yes!” said Aunt Japonica, her face creased with pleasure. “That was a case where we had to try and trap somebody in a park. I managed to get hold of a dog’s outfit and I dressed up in it. Everybody thought I was a large dog, even the other dogs.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Thessalonika, “and everything would have gone very well if the dogcatcher hadn’t come and spoiled it all.”

“I’ll never forgive him,” said Aunt Japonica. “I felt so ashamed being dragged away like that in his awful dogcatcher’s van. But I got my own back in the end.”

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“I asked him the time when he opened the back of the van to get me out at the other end,” said Aunt Japonica, with a smile. “He got such a fright that he dropped his keys and ran. I drove his van back to the park, but by that time the person we were planning to trap had gone. It was a great shame.”

After Aunt Japonica had finished her story, I glanced at the room around me. It was full of very intriguing things, and I was on the point of asking to be shown around when Aunt Thessalonika suggested that we do just that.

“I can tell you’d like to see some of our things,” she said, mind reading again. “Is that all right with you, Japonica?”

“Of course,” said Aunt Japonica. “Let’s start with some of the disguises.”

I was led by Aunt Japonica to a large cupboard in a corner. She opened the doors with pride and I saw inside an array of extraordinary outfits. There was a uniform of the French Foreign Legion; there was the outfit of a Russian sailor. Then there was a doctor’s white coat and a ballet dancer’s tutu. There were many others.

Next, Aunt Japonica opened a drawer to the side of the cupboard. Inside were all sorts of devices to stick on your face. There were scars—straight and curved—there were pimples and spots (these were for use if you wanted to look like a teenager). Then there were false ears and false noses—all very realistic—and several kinds of false chins.

“I could make you look like anyone,” Aunt Japonica said proudly. “I could pass you off as the president of the United States himself, if I wanted to.”

“That’s enough of that,” said Aunt Thessalonika rather impatiently. “There are other things in the office, you know.”

I followed Aunt Thessalonika past a row of neatly stacked notebooks.

“Our old cases,” she said proudly. “We keep notes on everything we do.”

I stopped and looked at some of the titles. “The Case of the Double-cracked Mirror.” “The Case of the Vanishing Bus.” “The Case of the Poisonous Lettuce.” (“A very disturbing case,” said Aunt Thessalonika, shaking her head rather grimly.)

Next we came to a shelf that was full of magnifying glasses. I was wondering why the aunts needed so many of them, when Aunt Thessalonika took one of them off the shelf and showed it to me.

“These are no ordinary magnifying glasses,” she said, her voice lowered almost to a whisper. “Look through that.”

I held the glass over a section of the shelf and stared through it. All I saw were fingerprints.

“You see,” said Aunt Thessalonika, “that’s our fingerprint glass. If you look at anything with that magnifying glass, you’ll see any fingerprints that happen to be around. It’s a very great help, I can assure you.”

I picked up another magnifying glass and showed it to Aunt Thessalonika.

“What does this one do?” I asked.

Aunt Thessalonika took it from me and examined it for a moment.

“Ah!” she said. “That one’s very useful indeed. There aren’t many of these around.”

“But what does it do?” I pressed.

“Translates French into English,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “Look.”

She reached for a book off another shelf and opened it. I could see that the book was written in French.

“Now look at this page through the magnifying glass,” said Aunt Thessalonika.

I held the glass over the page and looked through it. At first the words seemed a little bit blurred, but when I moved the magnifying glass slightly they became clearer. What is more, they were in English!

“This one does German,” said Aunt Thessalonika, pointing to another, very heavy and serious-looking magnifying glass. “And this one,” she went on, pointing to a very elegant magnifying glass with swirls of silver around the handle, “does Italian.”

We moved around the room, examining all the bits and pieces that my aunts used in their unusual work. There were bags of coins, all neatly labeled; there were maps; there were pens that wrote in different colors. At one point I picked up a large white object and asked Aunt Thessalonika what it was. “That,” she said, “is very strange. It still puzzles us.”

“Yes,” agreed Aunt Japonica. “We haven’t heard the last of that.”

Aunt Thessalonika took the object from me and placed it under a light.

“This is a plaster cast,” she said. “I take it that you know what a plaster cast is?”

I nodded. I had made casts at school, pouring the plaster into shapes to make impressions.

“Well,” continued Aunt Thessalonika, “you’ll see that this plaster cast is of a footprint.”

I felt rather disappointed by this news. I was hoping that it would be something much more exciting than that.

“Look at the toes,” said Aunt Thessalonika grimly. “Count them.”

I counted out the number of dents in the plaster where the toes had been. Six!

“Precisely!” said Aunt Japonica. “Six. What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully.

“Neither do we,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “But we will certainly make it our business to find out!”

Suddenly Aunt Japonica looked at her watch.

“My goodness,” she said. “Time is flying past. We have work to do, I’m afraid. You can sit in that chair over there and read a book until it’s time for us to go to join the others.”

So I sat in the chair and read. Or rather, I tried to read, but my concentration kept slipping, and I sneaked glances at what my two aunts were doing. They were fussing over their desks, fiddling with microscopes and magnifying glasses, and whispering to one another. I tried hard to hear what they were saying, but it was impossible. So I gave up in the end and just waited until they were ready to go.

At last they packed up their work, locked the office behind them, and drove me off to their house. There in the backyard was the trailer, with the table set with tea, sandwiches, and cakes, and Majolica bossing all the others around, getting things ready on time. I felt tremendously proud of myself. It had taken a little time, but at last I had assembled all my aunts in one place.

There was only one thing left to do. Now that I had found my five aunts, it was time to take them all back to show my father. Then, if only I managed to find a painter, we could have the painting finished. Not only that, of course, but the family that had been so unhappily split up so many years ago would be together again.

We traveled back that day. It was very hard work for Aunt Veronica, pedaling the trailer with all those aunts in the back, but she managed. Every few miles I would pass her a chocolate bar, which she would swallow almost in one gulp. This seemed to keep her strength up.

At last we drew up to our house. I left the aunts in the trailer while I went in the front door. There was my father, sitting in his usual chair with his slippers on, doing a crossword puzzle.

“Hello,” he said. “I see you’re back.”

“I am,” I replied.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked, hardly raising his eyes from the puzzle.

“Yes,” I said. It was clear to me that he had forgotten all about my search for the aunts, so I slipped outside and signaled for the aunts to come in.

My father looked up from his puzzle and turned quite pale. For a moment I thought he was going to faint, but then, with a sound somewhere between a groan and a gasp, he rose to his feet.

“Harold!” said Aunt Majolica. “Look at the state of your slippers! When did you clean them last?”

Before my father had the opportunity to answer, all five aunts dashed across the room to give him a hug. Unfortunately, they knocked him back into his chair, and Aunts Thessalonika and Japonica ended up sprawled all over him.

When they untangled each other, the aunts all stood around him, kissing him on the cheek and patting his shoulders. They were talking so much that nobody could hear what anybody else was saying. My father, however, seemed to be happy to see all his sisters, so I left them together and went up to my room.

I had left the painting behind my wardrobe, safely covered with an old sheet. Now I took it out and carried it downstairs, still draped in its sheet. My aunts were all so busy talking when I entered the room that at first nobody paid much attention to me. Then, one by one, they began to notice the large covered object that I was holding, and they fell silent.

“What on earth is that?” asked Aunt Majolica.

“It’s something I very much want to show you all,” I began. “In fact, it’s the reason why I started to look for you in the first place.”

“What can she mean?” asked Aunt Veronica, looking puzzled.

“I have no idea,” replied Aunt Japonica, who was too tired and too excited to do any mind reading.

I waited until they were silent again and then, with a dramatic pull at the sheet, I exposed the painting. As the picture came into view, there were gasps from several of the aunts.

“Oh my goodness!” exclaimed Aunt Thessalonika. “It’s that picture … the one that was never finished.” Aunt Majolica took several steps forward and examined the painting more closely.

“I believe you’re right,” she said. “Yes, look at the barn! And look, I’m wearing my favorite bracelet—the one I got for my tenth birthday.”

The other aunts crowded around to examine the picture and all of them seemed quite delighted.

“I never thought I’d see it again,” said Aunt Majolica, reaching for a handkerchief she had tucked into her sleeve. “Oh dear! This is just all too much for me.”

And at that, she burst into tears of emotion, closely followed by her sisters. I let them weep for a moment, and then I made my announcement.

“I think we should have this picture completed,” I said. “We can find the painter, or if we can’t find him, we can find another. Then we’ll at last have the family portrait that grandfather and grandmother always wanted.”

The aunts were silent for a moment as they considered my suggestion. Then, almost with one voice, they shouted their agreement.

“A brilliant idea!” crooned Aunt Veronica. “Let’s contact the painter this very moment!”

Of course, it was not quite that easy. Although Aunt Japonica remembered the painter’s name, he had long since left the house he was living in at the time when he had started the picture. Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika, however, pointed out that if anybody could find him it would be them, and that the rest of us should give them two hours to do so. So they dashed off and only an hour and a half later they came back, looking flushed with excitement.

“We’ve found him,” they announced proudly. “It wasn’t easy, but we found him.” They paused before continuing, “And what’s more, he has agreed to come to finish the painting first thing tomorrow morning.”

There was general jubilation at this news, and the aunts all began to talk again. I left the room, leaving the painting propped against a wall. I was delighted to have found all my aunts, but I felt that it would be best to leave them to themselves for a little while.

I could hardly wait, though, for the picture to be finished. I could already imagine it above the fireplace in our living room. I would show all my friends and announce: “My aunts!” Nobody would have as many aunts as that and I knew that everybody was bound to be very impressed. I must admit that this thought rather pleased me.

The aunts talked late into the night, until well after I had gone to bed. Then, taking themselves off to the sofas and piles of cushions, which they had set up in various odd corners of the house, they went to bed. In the silence of the darkened house, Aunt Harmonica threw her voice once or twice, but she was told by Aunt Majolica that everybody wanted to get to sleep. So she stopped, and the quiet returned.

The Finished Painting

The painter arrived early the next morning, exactly as promised. He was just as I had imagined him, although his mustache now drooped a little at the edges. When he saw the painting, his eyes lit up and he clapped his hands together.

“So there it is at last!” he exclaimed. “And it’s exactly as I remember it. I’ve always wanted to finish it, and now I have the chance.”

Without further ado, he hoisted the painting onto an easel and opened his large case of paints. Then, when he had struggled into a billowing white painting smock, which made him look just a little like a blimp, he arranged my father and all the aunts into two rows.

“Don’t move,” he said. “It’s very important that you keep absolutely still.”

I watched as he began to paint. His brush moved quickly, and every now and then he leaned forward and peered at one of the aunts.

“I hope that he doesn’t make my nose look too big,” I heard Aunt Majolica whisper to Aunt Japonica.

“And I shall be very disappointed if he notices that my left ear is bigger than my right,” whispered back Aunt Japonica.

The painter painted for several hours. By the end of that time, I could see that my father and the aunts were beginning to feel tired of standing still, and they were relieved when the painter told them that they could have a break. They went off to sit down, but a few minutes later he had them all back again, and he painted for the rest of that day without stopping.

At the end of the day, he stood back, inspected the painting, and then closed his paint case with a snap.

“It’s finished,” he said. “That’s it.”

This announcement caused a buzz of excitement among the aunts.

“I can’t wait to see it,” announced Aunt Veronica.

The painter shook his head.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to see it until the last of the paint is dry.” He looked at his watch. “And that should be at about three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“Then we will have an unveiling ceremony,” Aunt Majolica said. “We’ll all gather in the living room and the picture can be officially unveiled by …”

She looked around. Every one of the other aunts was looking expectant, hoping that she would be chosen for this important task.

“By Harriet!” concluded Aunt Majolica.

I was very excited to have been chosen to unveil the picture, and every minute between then and three o’clock the next afternoon seemed to drag interminably.

When the time for the ceremony came at last, we all gathered in the living room. The painter had arrived as well, and he had moved the painting, still covered, into a prominent place in front of the fireplace. The aunts had been busy in the kitchen the previous evening, and the tables were laden with cakes and sandwiches. Even my father, who had looked rather strained since all his sisters had arrived, was smiling and rubbing his hands with pleasure at the thought of seeing the finished picture at last.

When everything was prepared, I was ushered up to the front of the picture. The painter stood beside me, and when everybody was silent he nodded in my direction. My heart thumping with excitement, I reached out and took the edge of the cloth in my right hand. Then, with a firm tug, I pulled, and the cloth fell away to reveal the finished picture below.

Nobody said a word. My father and all the aunts peered at the picture, their eyes narrowed, their mouths open, as they took in the details. Then, with a wail, Aunt Majolica broke the silence.

“Oh no!” she wailed. “You’ve … You’ve put the heads on the wrong bodies!”

What followed was very upsetting. The aunts all crowded around the painting and looked at it more closely. When they were satisfied that a mistake had indeed been made, they turned on the painter and began to scold him severely.

“You’ve painted Thessalonika’s head on my shoulders!” protested Aunt Japonica. “Look. That’s definitely my body and that’s undoubtedly her head!”

The painter’s jaw dropped and his mustache seemed to wiggle like the tail of a rabbit caught in a trap. There was really very little he could say to excuse himself, and he just had to stand there and accept his scolding.

“Well!” said Aunt Majolica at the end of it all. “That’s that, then. The painting is ruined. I will never be able to look at it again.”

“Nor will I,” agreed Aunt Veronica. “It’s totally spoiled.”

The painter, still looking very miserable, at last was able to summon up the courage to say something.

“Please forgive me,” he began. “I understand how you must feel. But I think I may be able to do something about it.”

“And what would that be?” demanded Aunt Majolica in her bossiest voice. “I don’t see how you can fix it now. You can’t rub out oil paint, you know.”

The painter held up his hand. “Please just give me two hours,” he said. “That’s all it will take.”

Still grumbling, the aunts agreed that he could take the painting into the kitchen and do whatever he had to do with it. None of them thought that he would be able to do much, though, and they continued to complain among themselves well after he had left the room. I felt sorry for the painter. I had often enough made mistakes with pictures to know just how upsetting it is to work for hours on something and then realize that your efforts were to no avail.

Barely two hours later, the painter returned. He had covered the painting in a cloth again, but this time he didn’t dare say that everybody should wait until the paint was dry before they saw it. He beckoned to me and told me that I should unveil it again. So once again I stood beside the painting and gave the cloth a tug.

As the cloth fell away there was a gasp from all the aunts. Then, after a dreadful moment of suspense, Aunt Majolica gave a cheer.

“Brilliant!” she said. “What a brilliant idea!”

“I agree,” called out Aunt Thessalonika. “Really, that was the only thing to do.”

I looked at the painting and caught my breath. The bodies of my father and the aunts had all disappeared—painted over with blue waves of the sea. Only their heads showed now, bobbing above the waves. And of course this meant that nobody could tell that the heads were on the wrong bodies, as everything below was covered with thick blue paint. And the barn, which had been the background, was now a ship.

Everybody was pleased. The cakes, which had not been touched since the terrible mistake had been discovered, were now passed around, as were the sandwiches and the glasses of homemade lemonade. The painter, relieved at having solved the problem so neatly, beamed with pleasure, and his mustache was soon covered with cream and icing. I was happy to see all my aunts so happy and was also proud that what my poor grandparents had wanted so long ago was now done.

That evening, after the painter had gone home, we continued with the party. Aunt Harmonica, who was a very good cook, prepared a special meal, and we sat at the table with paper hats on, just as if it were Christmas.

“It’s been so very, very long,” said Aunt Veronica. “We must never allow ourselves to drift apart again.”

“We will visit you every week,” said Aunt Japonica.

“Without fail,” chimed in Aunt Thessalonika.

“Oh, the fun we’ll have!” added Aunt Majolica.

I said very little. They were so busy talking about the old days and what they had done as children that nobody had much time to listen to me. But that didn’t matter. What was important to me was that I had found my aunts and had made my grandparents’ wish come true.

And what amazing aunts they were! I could see that we were going to have extraordinary adventures together, and in fact that is just what happened. Perhaps I will be able to tell you about some of those adventures one day. And I will also tell you about the trick my father played on Aunt Majolica. I don’t have time to do that now. But I can tell you that it was very funny—very funny indeed…

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Text copyright © 1991 Alexander McCall Smith

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, and simultaneously in the United States of America and in Great Britain by Bloomsbury. Originally published in 1991 in Great Britain by Blackie and Son, Ltd. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.

www.randomhouse.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948-

Harriet Bean and the league of cheats / Alexander McCall Smith.

(Harriet Bean series; bk. 2)

ISBN 0-676-97777-4

I. Title. II. Series: McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948- Harriet Bean series; bk. 2.

PR6063.C326H37 2006    j823′.914    C2005-905430-1

For Angus, Fiona, Alexandra,

Hamish, and Fergus

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats

Copyright

Dedication

A Call for Help

Disguised!

Black Lightning’s Stall

At the Races

A Cheat Exposed

The Water Jump

Charlie Heat

A Call for Help

Do you remember who I am? My name is Harriet Bean, and I was the person who had five lost aunts. Yes! It sounds ridiculous—perhaps even a bit careless—to have five lost aunts, but my father had never told me about them, and I had to find them all by myself. It was very hard, but I finally found every last one of them.

There was Aunt Veronica, who was a strong lady in a circus. There was Aunt Majolica, who was a very bossy teacher but really quite nice in spite of it. There was Aunt Harmonica, who was an opera singer who could also throw her voice into all kinds of places. And last of all, hidden away in their detective agency, there were Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika. They were very curious aunts with extraordinary tricks up their sleeves, and they could also read what was going on in other people’s minds. What a marvelous collection of aunts!

When I said good-bye to my aunts after a wonderful reunion party, I knew that I was going to have adventures with them. It was a funny feeling—the kind of feeling that you have in your bones that something is going to happen. I had it the day they left, and the day afterward, and the day after that too. Then it happened, and because I had been expecting it, I was not in the least surprised.

The telephone rang early that morning. I think it was a Wednesday, because that was the day my father’s favorite magazine arrived. He read Inventors’ Weekly, which was all about the latest inventions, with tips for inventors, which is what he was. He wouldn’t speak to me for hours after Inventors’ Weekly arrived; he’d just sit in his chair, his nose buried in the magazine, giving the occasional snort. Sometimes I heard him say something like, “That would never work!” or “The screw’s in the wrong place there!” or, very rarely he might say, “What a splendid idea! I wish I had thought of that first!”

I knew that my father would never answer the telephone while he was reading his magazine, so I did so myself. And at the other end of the line was Aunt Japonica.

“Harriet?” she said in her high, squeaky voice.

“Aunt Japonica,” I said. “I’m glad it’s you.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Japonica, in a businesslike way. “You may be. And I certainly am glad it’s you. We need your help.”

My heart gave a leap of excitement. So this is what the thing was—the thing that I had known was going to happen.

Aunt Japonica did not talk for long. She asked me to come to the detective agency (where they also lived), if possible, within the hour. I put my hand over the receiver and shouted out to my father, to ask him whether I could go.

“Hmm!” he said from behind Inventors’ Weekly. “Another no-tears onion peeler! I invented that years ago!”

“Can I go see Aunt Japonica?” I shouted.

“Japanese?” he snorted. “Did you say Japanese? Yes, of course. Very good at inventing things, the Japanese.”

“I think he said yes,” I explained to Aunt Japonica.

“Good,” she said. “We shall see you very soon. And do hurry. There is something very, very odd going on.”

Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika lived in a large studio at the top of a long flight of stairs. On the door there was a sign that simply said PRIVATE DETECTIVES, and underneath that was a bell. I pressed the button and heard, a long way off, a bell ringing.

Several minutes passed. Then the door opened slowly, and I saw an old man peering out at me. He seemed very ancient and very bent, and he had a walking stick in each hand.

“I’m so sorry,” he said in a very old, cracked voice. “No, there’s nobody in today. They’ve all gone away. All of them.”

My mouth dropped open.

“B-b-but,” I stuttered, “they knew I was coming. I spoke to them …”

The old man peered at me and shook his head. Then, with a sudden cackle of laughter, he jumped up in the air and clicked his heels together. For a moment or so I was too surprised to think, but then I realized what was happening.

“Aunt Thessalonika!” I exclaimed. “I had no idea it was you.”

“Of course you didn’t, my dear,” said Aunt Thessalonika, taking my arm in hers and leading me down the corridor. “Sometimes I even fool myself. Do you know, the other day I was heavily disguised and I saw myself in the mirror. And I said to myself, ‘Who are you, and what are you doing here?’ Of course, the person in the mirror said exactly the same thing, and so I replied, ‘But I’m Thessalonika and I live here!’ And it’s only when I heard the person in the mirror saying that she was Thessalonika that I realized what was happening.”

As she spoke, Aunt Thessalonika removed layer after layer of disguise. Off came the gray beard. Off came the lines and the wrinkles, wiped quite clean, and there, underneath it all, was my aunt.

Aunt Japonica now appeared. At least she looked the same as she had the last time I saw her.

“Thank you for coming, Harriet,” she said immediately. “And I see that you have been writing in your diary.”

Once again, my mouth fell wide open with astonishment. She was right—I had been writing in my diary when she telephoned to invite me over. But how did she know?

Aunt Japonica gave a little laugh. “If you look at your right hand,” she said, “you will see that there is an ink stain on the forefinger. Now that shows you have been writing. And what are you likely to have been writing? It’s school vacation, is it not, so you will not be doing school work. You could be writing letters, but then when I called, you answered the telephone immediately. People who are writing letters never like to leave what they’re saying until they’ve finished the sentence. Why is that? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? People feel it’s rude to cut off halfway through a sentence when you’re writing to somebody. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the way it is. Diaries are different. It’s not rude to stop talking to yourself halfway through, is it?”

“No,” I said, still astonished at how my detective aunts managed to work things out. That’s what made them good detectives, I imagined.

We sat down for tea, and while Aunt Thessalonika cut the cake, Aunt Japonica explained why they wanted to see me.

“We could tell that you were interested in detective work,” she explained.

“We could tell that from the moment we met you,” chipped in Aunt Thessalonika.

“Yes,” said Aunt Japonica, and then, from the side of her mouth, “please concentrate on what you’re doing, Thessalonika. Cutting cake is not an easy task.”

Aunt Japonica turned back to me and fixed me with her gaze. “You see,” she went on. “A case has cropped up that we thought you might help us solve. After all, you are not as old as Aunt Thessalonika and I are. And you are somewhat smaller too. You can go where we can’t go. You can, I imagine, run faster than we can, and your eyes might be a little better when it comes to detecting very fast movements.”

“In other words,” interrupted Aunt Thessalonika, “you might be able to catch these wicked cheats!”

Disguised!

Wicked cheats?

I sat back and listened as Aunt Japonica talked. Every so often, Aunt Thessalonika interrupted her to correct some detail or add a scrap of information. But for the most part, it was Aunt Japonica’s story.

“We first heard about it only two weeks ago,” she said. “We received a visit from a very famous trainer of racehorses. Now, do you know anything about horse racing?”

“No, she doesn’t,” interjected Aunt Thessalonika, fixing me with a piercing look. She was right, of course.

“Well, anyway,” went on Aunt Japonica. “Racehorses have to be trained, and the people who do it are racehorse trainers. They take the horses for long gallops in the fields and teach them to go faster and faster. Then, when the horse goes into a race, it knows to gallop as fast as it possibly can. And that’s all there is to it.”

“Oh,” I said. It did not sound very interesting to me, but I suppose that the horses enjoyed it.

Aunt Japonica took another sip of tea. Then she went on to explain that the trainer, Mr. Fetlock, had not won a race for over three months. All of his horses, which were normally very fast, had become very slow. One of them had even sat down in the middle of a race. Another had thrown its rider off even before the race had begun. Mr. Fetlock had no idea what the trouble was, but it was obvious that somebody was interfering with the horses in some way.

It sounded very simple to me. If somebody was interfering with the horses—perhaps by putting thorns under their saddles or sleeping pills in their oats—surely the answer was to watch and see who was doing it. I could not see how I could possibly help. Then Aunt Japonica answered my question.

“I see that you’re wondering how you can help,” she said, glancing at Aunt Thessalonika as she spoke.

Aunt Japonica looked at me closely.

“Have you ever seen the people who ride racehorses?” she asked. “Have you ever seen a jockey?”

I scratched my head. I thought that I had seen pictures of them in the newspapers. They wore riding helmets and very colorful shirts.

My aunts did not give me time to reply.

“They’re smaller than most adults,” Aunt Japonica said, her eyes glinting with enthusiasm. “Small people are lighter, and this allows the horses to go faster. So jockeys are usually not tall and certainly never fat.”

“Yes,” agreed Aunt Thessalonika. “They’re really all … well, just about your size!”

Immediately, I knew why my aunts wanted me to help them on this case. But what exactly would I be asked to do, and would it be dangerous? Would I have to ride a horse? Worse still, would I have to enter a horse race?

That very afternoon I traveled with my two aunts out to Mr. Fetlock’s racing stables. Mr. Fetlock himself met us at the gate and walked us up the long driveway to the group of buildings where the horses lived. He was a tall man, wearing brown jodhpurs, a smart checked coat, and riding boots.

“It’s very good of you to come out here,” he said. “I lost another race yesterday. It was my very best horse, Black Lightning. Not only did he come in last, but the horses in front of him overtook him on their second time around the racetrack. I was so embarrassed, I went and sat in my stall so that nobody would see me.”

“Somebody’s cheating,” said Aunt Japonica through pursed lips. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a cheat.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Fetlock sadly. “But who can it be? The only people who have been anywhere near that horse over the last week are the stable boys and the jockeys themselves.”

“I see,” said Aunt Japonica thoughtfully. “Well, it must be one of them.”

Mr. Fetlock looked astonished. “But that’s impossible!” he snorted. “They wouldn’t cheat me!”

Aunt Japonica shook her head. “We’ll see about that,” she said. “But first, would you please show us the place where you keep all the riding clothes? You know, jodhpurs, boots, jackets—things like that.”

Mr. Fetlock looked puzzled, but, shaking his head, he led us to a small building near the stables. Unlocking the door, he pointed to a large cupboard against the wall.

“There’s an awful lot of stuff in there,” he said. “You could dress ten jockeys with that.”

“We need to dress only one,” said Aunt Japonica, opening the cupboard. She raked around inside, extracted some clothes, and passed them to me.

“If you’ll wait outside, Mr. Fetlock,” she said, “we will join you in a moment.”

I looked at the clothes. Then I looked at my aunts, who smiled and nodded. With their help, and with a lot of pinning and tucking from Aunt Thessalonika, I was soon ready. Then, with a flourish, Aunt Japonica opened the door and we went out to join Mr. Fetlock. He looked at me in astonishment, and then his face burst into a wide grin.

“Harriet!” he cried out. “Or should I call you Harry? You look like a perfect jockey! Well done, my boy!”

Black Lightning’s Stall

“Don’t worry,” said Aunt Japonica in a soothing voice. “You won’t have to ride a racehorse. Will she, Mr. Fetlock?”

I swallowed hard. It was all very well dressing up as a jockey, and I think I looked like one, but what if somebody asked me to get up on a horse? It’s not that I hadn’t ridden once or twice before; it’s just that there was every difference in the world between the small pony I had been on and the big racehorses I could see watching us from their stalls in Mr. Fetlock’s stables.

Aunt Japonica drew me aside.

“We’re going to leave you now,” she whispered. “Then, when the others come back from their afternoon ride, Mr. Fetlock will tell them that you’re a new jockey who’s come to work here.”

I nodded. That part of the plan seemed simple enough, but what would happen after that?

“But what do I have to do?” I asked my aunt, wondering whether it was too late to say that I had changed my mind and that I wanted to go home.

“Really, Harriet!” said Aunt Japonica impatiently. “If you want to be a detective, you’ll have to use your imagination. Just do what all the other jockeys do and see who’s up to no good. Then you let us know. We’ll be staying with Mr. Fetlock in his house over there.”

“Will I be staying there too?” I asked.

Mr. Fetlock had overheard my question, and he laughed.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I’m afraid all the jockeys have little rooms next to the horses. You can have the room next to Black Lightning’s stall. Very comfortable. A bit smelly, perhaps, but jockeys don’t mind!”

“So you see,” said Aunt Japonica, “it’s all worked out. Now off you go to your room and wait for the others to come back. They’ll be here in no time!”

For the first time since I had found all my aunts, I felt really miserable. As I sat on the edge of my bed in the little room next to Black Lightning’s stall, I could hear my companion next door, scraping at his trough, his hooves tapping on the stone floor. I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. If only I had told my aunts that I was too busy to help them, or if only I had refused to get into the jockey’s clothes, then I would not be sitting in this dark little room, waiting for something to happen.

There was a knock at the door. I looked up and saw a small person peering through my doorway.

“Are you Harry?” he said cheerfully. “Mr. Fetlock just told us there’s a new jockey.”

I stood up and walked over to the doorway, making sure that my hair was still tucked safely into my riding helmet.

“Er … yes,” I said hesitantly. I would have to be careful to remember my new name, or I could easily give myself away.

“I’m Ted,” said the jockey. “And that’s Fred over there, and Ed’s just getting a bucket of water.”

I looked in the direction he was pointing. Fred waved to me, and Ed nodded in my direction as he came around the corner with his bucket.

“Well,” said Ted, wiping at his brow with a rather dirty old cloth, “it’s time to groom the horses. Are you ready?”

“Of course,” I said, trying to make my voice sound as deep as I could.

“You’ll need these,” he said, tossing me a large brush and a strong metal comb. “You look after Black Lightning, and I’ll do the one next door.”

I stood outside Black Lightning’s stall. The large racehorse, shiny black and curious, stared out at me. His nostrils were flared, and his breath came in deep heaves, as if two big bellows were pumping away within his chest.

I edged the door open and began to go into the stall.

“Now don’t be frightened, Black Lightning,” I said, holding out my hand to him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

This was ridiculous, of course. I couldn’t possibly hurt Black Lightning, who was ten times my size; but he could hurt me—very easily. The horse watched me nervously, his large yellow eyes fixed on every movement I made. Slowly I lifted up the brush and pushed it toward him.

It was this movement that disturbed him. With a sudden whinnying noise, he rose up on his hind legs, his forelegs raised to strike at me. I fell back, trying to escape the heavy hooves that seemed to be falling all around me. Just behind me, set against one of the walls, was his trough, and I scrambled my way to safety under it. Black Lightning struck the ground a few more times, then stopped.

I was perfectly safe in my hiding place, as Black Lightning’s hooves would never be able to reach me there. But I was also trapped, and as long as the racehorse was in his stall, it would be impossible for me to get out. I could try to crawl, I supposed, but the horse would easily be able to crush me if I did that.

I lay very still, wondering what to do. If I called for help, I was sure that Ted, Fred, or Ed would hear me, but what would they think if they found me hiding under a trough? They would realize at once that I was not a real jockey, and that would be the end of that.

The minutes ticked past slowly. Black Lightning moved a little, but I felt that he was still watching me, and I did not dare attempt to escape. Then, quite suddenly, I heard footsteps outside. I froze. If only it were Mr. Fetlock, or, even better, if only it were one of my aunts!

Slowly the door of the stall was pushed open.

“Hello in there,” said a voice. “Anybody there?”

I said absolutely nothing. It sounded a bit like Ted’s voice, but then again it sounded a little different. Could it be Fred, or even Ed?

I now saw boots coming into the stall. From where I was hiding, that was all I could see. I looked at the boots. They were ordinary riding boots, badly scratched at the back, just above the heels.

“Keep calm, boy,” said the voice as the boots moved toward Black Lightning. “This isn’t going to hurt you.”

I wriggled as close as I could to the edge of the trough. Now I could see a little bit more—boots and a pair of legs mostly, but there was something else. There was a hand, and it was holding something that glinted. For a moment I could not make it out. Then I realized that it was a pot of something, with a brush sticking out of the top.

I held my breath as I watched what was happening. The person—whoever he was—had now run his hand down one of Black Lightning’s legs and lifted up the hoof, as you see people doing when they put on a new horseshoe or pick out a stone. Taking the brush out of the pot, he slapped paste of some sort on the hoof and put it down on the ground. Then he moved to the other side of the horse and did the same thing again. Within a few minutes he had put the paste on all of Black Lightning’s four hooves.

“That’ll fix you for a while,” he muttered, and then, with a chuckle, the boots walked out of the stall, and the door was quietly closed.

I lay there for a while, wondering what I had seen. Somebody had certainly done something unpleasant to Black Lightning, but what was it? The horse seemed to be standing quite still and was certainly making no noise, so it could not have been anything painful. I slid forward again and peered out.

When Black Lightning saw my face peeking out from under his trough, he gave a start. Once again, his nostrils flared and his eyes shone with anger. I drew back slightly, expecting him to rear up and strike out at me again, but—to my astonishment—all he did was shake. For some reason, it seemed as if he was stuck to the spot.

I moved again. This time I stuck a leg out. Black Lightning watched it and shook his head from side to side. But once again, although all his muscles seemed to ripple and quiver with effort, his feet stayed exactly where they were.

Suddenly I realized what had happened. I had thought that Black Lightning was stuck to the spot. Well, he was! Black Lightning could not lift his hooves because the paste that had been put on them by the mysterious person in the riding boots was a powerful glue!

I now knew that it was safe for me to crawl out, and I did this. Black Lightning watched every move I made, but he was powerless to do anything about it. I left the stall quickly and went back into my room. There I lay down on my uncomfortable bed and thought about what I had seen. Why would anybody stick Black Lightning’s hooves to the floor? And, even more importantly, who had done this peculiar thing? Was it Ted, Fred, or Ed? And how could I possibly find out?

At the Races

I was woken the next morning by the sound of Mr. Fetlock’s voice outside my door.

“Time to get up,” he called. “We’ll be leaving for the races in half an hour. No time to waste.”

I leapt out of bed and climbed into my jockey clothes. It was hard work putting on the riding boots, as boots like that are always tight, but at last I succeeded and made my way out into the yard. I wanted very much to talk to Mr. Fetlock—to tell him what had happened and to warn him that Black Lightning’s hooves were stuck to the floor of his stable—but the trainer was busy talking to Ed and Fred.

I picked up a bucket of oats that looked as if it needed to be carried somewhere, but at just that moment, Ted came around the corner, and to my absolute astonishment I saw that he was leading Black Lightning! So the hooves had become unstuck overnight, or even been unstuck by somebody while I lay sleeping next door. It was all very mysterious.

“Hey!” shouted Ted. “Leave those oats, please. They’re for Black Lightning. He’s got a big race ahead of him today.”

Mr. Fetlock looked over in my direction.

“Get into the truck with the other jockeys, Harry,” he called out. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

So I would not have the chance to warn Mr. Fetlock about what had happened. Still, I thought, I might be able to speak to him about it later, if I managed to get him by himself. Or I could tell my aunts. But where were they? There was no sign of them in the truck.

I climbed into the cab of the truck with Mr. Fetlock and the other jockeys. The horses had already been loaded into the back, and now that Black Lightning was also on board, we were free to leave.

“We’ve got three runners today,” Mr. Fetlock said as he started the engine. “Fred, I want you to ride Silver Streak. Ted, you ride Nifty Dancer, and, Ed, you’re on Black Lightning again. Harry, you just watch today.”

“Right-oh, boss,” said Fred. “That suits me. Silver Streak’s due for a win.”

“All my horses are due for a win,” sighed Mr. Fetlock. “I can’t understand why they’ve been losing so badly. Can any of you?”

I glanced from under my helmet at the faces of the three jockeys, wondering whether one of them would give himself away as the cheat. People often go red in the face if they’re trying to hide something, but not one of them moved a muscle.

It could have been any of them, I thought. Ted looked honest, though. He had a cheerful grin on his face, and he smiled nicely whenever I looked at him. I wasn’t so sure about Ed, and when it came to Fred, well, there was something about him that I just did not trust. He looked a little bit like a rat, I’m afraid to say, with sharp teeth at the front of his mouth and little whiskers growing out of his ears.

I tried to look down at the boots that everybody was wearing. Perhaps if I saw the pair of boots again more closely, I might recognize the scratches, which I had noticed above the heel. Just as I was thinking this, an idea came to me. If I dropped something, a coin perhaps, I would be able to have a better look at everybody’s boots.

“Excuse me,” I said suddenly. “I think I dropped some money on the floor of the cab.”

“Then pick it up,” said Mr. Fetlock jovially. “There’s nothing down there to bite you.”

I leaned forward and began to scramble around on the floor of the cab. As I did so, I looked closely at the boots. Whose were those? Ted’s. But were they at all scratched? No. He had just polished them, as had Ed and Fred. So everybody was going to the races in freshly polished boots. There was no possibility, then, of working out whose legs I had watched in Black Lightning’s stall.

The journey seemed to pass very quickly. In no time at all, Mr. Fetlock was swinging the large horse truck into the racing grounds. As the truck came to a halt, Ted and Fred jumped out and opened the back door. Then, while Ed held the door, the two jockeys led the horses out and tied them securely to a nearby railing.

I stayed near Mr. Fetlock, hoping to have the opportunity to talk to him, but one of the other jockeys always seemed to be at his side. Eventually I gave up. Perhaps it wasn’t so important after all. I glanced down at Black Lightning’s hooves; there was nothing wrong with them, as far as I could make out. Perhaps gluing them to the floor of the stable was just some sort of practical joke among the jockeys.

The time came for the first race. This was the race in which Silver Streak was entered, and in good time Fred was up in the saddle, ready to make his way to the starting gate. I walked across to the railings with Mr. Fetlock and Ed, and together we watched the horses line up for the start.

The starter’s pistol took me by surprise and made me jump. Ed looked at me sideways.

“You should be used to that by now,” he said suspiciously.

“Oh, he is, aren’t you, Harry?” Mr. Fetlock blurted out jovially, trying to cover up for my mistake. “It’s just that he had a little accident with a starter’s pistol once, didn’t you, Harry?”

“Oh?” said Ed. “What happened?”

I looked up at Mr. Fetlock. I had no idea what to say.

“I … er … I … er …” I tried desperately to think of a likely story, but my mind was a blank.

“He sat on one,” said Mr. Fetlock quickly. “I mean, he, er, sort of stepped on it and … Actually he doesn’t like to talk about it, do you, Harry?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I don’t.”

Ed was still looking at me, and although he said nothing further, I could tell that he was very suspicious. But fortunately, or rather, unfortunately, his attention was distracted by what was happening on the racetrack. Several of the horses had collided with one another and fallen in a tangled heap. And at the bottom of the heap, struggling to get back on his feet, was Silver Streak.

“Oh, no!” wailed Mr. Fetlock. “That’s another race lost! Where will it all end?”

Well, it certainly did not end that day. In the next race, in which Nifty Dancer was being ridden by Ted, everything went very well until the horses were going around for the second time. Then, just as Nifty Dancer was coming up into second place, he reared and threw Ted to the ground. The jockey was unhurt, but that was the end of the race for Nifty Dancer.

“I’ll be a ruined man at this rate,” said Mr. Fetlock, holding his brow. “It just isn’t fair!”

Then came the final race, and with my heart in my mouth I watched Black Lightning being ridden out to the starting line. Ed gave us a friendly wave from the saddle, and I waved back, hoping against hope that the incident with the glue would have no ill effects on Black Lightning’s performance. But just as I thought this, I saw something that shattered any hopes I might have had. Standing at the starting line, Black Lightning put up his head and gave an unmistakable yawn!

In a flash the mystery was solved. With his hooves glued to the stable floor, the poor horse had been unable to sleep all night. So now, just when he should have been at his most energetic, he was absolutely exhausted, and even I knew that absolutely exhausted horses never won races.

And that is exactly what happened. Black Lightning could hardly bring himself to gallop, and when he did so, it was the slowest gallop I have ever seen. The crowd around the railings began to laugh.

“Wake up!” they shouted. “It’s only one o’clock!”

Mr. Fetlock turned red with embarrassment.

“I’m going back to the truck,” he said. “This is all too terrible.”

I walked back with him, but I was unable to say anything. Later, when Ed joined us again, I noticed that he was still looking at me very suspiciously.

A Cheat Exposed

We were to go to more races first thing the following day, and so I went to bed early. Thinking about the day’s events kept me awake for a while, but at last I drifted off to sleep. I had bad dreams, though—dreams in which horses were running around in circles, falling over one another, whinnying in alarm. But it was not the dreams that woke me up. It was a noise.

I sat up in bed. Somewhere in the stables, somebody had dropped something, and it had fallen with a clang. I reached out in the darkness for the flashlight that stood on my bedside table and switched it on. Then, putting on my bathrobe and slippers, I crept as quietly as I could to my door.

There was a moon in the sky, a great silver ball that bathed the yard and the stables in a soft half-light. The shadows, though, were dark and seemed as if they could be concealing all kinds of dangers. I looked around me, and just as I did so I heard a noise again. This time it was softer, as though somebody was moving something around.

I turned off my flashlight and tiptoed quietly in the direction from which the noise was coming. There was a saddle room next to one of the horse stalls, and it seemed to me that whoever was making the noise was in there.

Slowly, I inched my way toward the door of the saddle room. It was closed, but through the cracks in the wood I could just make out the glow of a flashlight inside. I was sure of it now: whoever was inside was preparing to sabotage tomorrow’s races. He was doing something to one of the saddles, perhaps, so that it would fall off in the middle of the race. The thought of it made me seethe with anger, and I was more determined than ever to see who it was and expose him to Mr. Fetlock. How proud Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika would be that I had solved my first mystery so quickly!

Then I sneezed. It was not one of those sneezes that you know are coming and that you can stop by pressing your finger against your nose. It was one of those loud ones that come out in a rush before you know where you are.

I stood stock still. The sneeze had been so loud that it couldn’t have been missed by the person in the saddle room. I listened hard. Everything was quiet, but I saw the flashlight beam move inside the room, and I knew that I had to hide quickly.

I looked around me. My own room was too far away for me to run to, but there was a storeroom close by, and I could see that its door was open. Dashing across the yard, I flung myself through the storeroom door and crouched down in a far corner, hidden in the shadows.

There was the sound of a door opening outside. Then a voice came drifting across the yard. It was not much louder than a whisper, but it carried very well in the stillness of the night.

“I know you’re there! And I’m going to find you!”

I shivered with fear. With its open door, the storeroom was an obvious place to hide, and the person out there, whether it was Ted, Fred, or Ed, was bound to find me.

I looked around. If only there had been a trapdoor or a large box I could crawl into. But there was nothing. The only thing I could make out properly in the moonlight coming through the window was a large pot with a brush sticking out of it.

That was it! That was the way to save myself!

The footsteps outside grew louder. Now they were right outside the storeroom door. Then the beam of the flashlight appeared and flashed across the room. At first it missed me, but when it came back for its second swing, there I was, crouched down, caught square in the beam of light.

“So!” said the voice. “It’s you! I knew there was something funny about you from the beginning. You’re not a jockey, but a spy!”

I was too terrified to say anything.

“Well, well!” said the person at the door. Slowly he began to walk toward me.

He stopped.

“What … what?” came a puzzled voice. And then, squelch, squelch, squelch, and silence.

“What’s going on?” said the voice angrily. “What have you done?”

I knew that it was safe for me to get up, so I leapt to my feet and ran across to the light switch. As the light came on, all was revealed. There was a pair of boots firmly stuck in the thick layer of glue I had spread on the floor in front of the doorway. And there, in the boots, looking trapped and flustered, was … Ted!

“So you’re the cheat,” I said, my voice sounding very disappointed. I had expected it to be Ed, or maybe even Fred; instead, it was the pleasant, smiling Ted.

Ted looked down at his boots.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” I said sharply. “Poor Mr. Fetlock doesn’t deserve what you’ve been doing to him.”

Ted still hung his head.

“I know,” he said. “It’s been very bad of me. But they forced me to do it.”

“They?” I asked. “Who are they?”

“The League of Cheats,” said Ted sadly. “They found me cheating just a tiny bit once. I normally never cheat, and I don’t know why I did that time. Anyway, they told me if I didn’t join them, they’d tell everybody about my cheating, and I’d be ruined.”

I looked at the jockey. A tear was running down his right cheek, and I felt very sorry for him.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll explain it to Mr. Fetlock and ask him not to be too severe with you.”

Ted lifted his face and beamed with pleasure.

“Oh, thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

“But in return,” I went on, “you must tell me all about the League of Cheats and help us to put a stop to their cheating. Will you do that?”

Ted looked a bit worried, but he knew that he had to agree.

“I could try,” he said.

I moved over to him and began to help him out of the boots, which were firmly stuck to the floor.

“Good,” I said. “Now you tell me everything you know, and we can work out a plan.”

Ted told me everything he knew about the League of Cheats. It was run, he said, by a man he had never seen, a man called Charlie Heat. He was the Chief Cheat, and he arranged cheating all over the place. But it was impossible to find him by yourself. What you had to do was to be seen by one of his men to be a good cheat, and then they would ask you to join. If you cheated very well, you might be taken to meet Charlie Heat.

“So,” said Ted, smiling as the idea came to him, “why don’t we arrange for you to cheat at the races tomorrow and see what happens?”

It was a good idea, but there was something that worried me. Ted’s plan meant that I would have to ride a racehorse, and not only that, it involved a very, very uncomfortable end. But I had no alternative. I was determined to put an end to the League of Cheats, and if this meant that I had to take risks, then I would be happy to do just that.

The Water Jump

The racetrack was already crowded by the time we arrived. I looked at the faces of the crowd, hoping to see my aunts, but there was still no sign of them. I was longing to be able to tell them of the plan that Ted and I had hatched, and to find out what they thought of it.

We saddled the horses and led them to the pen where the jockeys were preparing to mount. Mr. Fetlock stayed behind at the rail, where he was talking to a friend. From time to time, he glanced nervously at Black Lightning, wondering whether his favorite racehorse would let him down again.

“Are you ready?” Ted whispered to me. “Are you sure you still want to go ahead with it?”

“Yes,” I replied under my breath, trying not to sound too nervous. I was ready, and I did want to go ahead with it, but part of me was wishing that I had never agreed to the plan.

“All right,” said Ted. “I’ll give you a leg up.”

And with that I found myself being hoisted up and onto Black Lightning’s back. It all happened very quickly, and before I knew where I was, I had the reins in my hand and Black Lightning had joined the cluster of horses making their way toward the starting gate.

“Good luck!” Ted called out. “Remember to hold on tight!”

I gritted my teeth and concentrated on staying in the saddle. Although Black Lightning was only walking, there was a spring in his step that worried me. Would I be able to hold on for more than a few moments once the race started? I doubted it.

We reached the starting gate, where the starters led each horse into the squashed little boxes that allowed everybody to charge off at the same time. I could tell that Black Lightning was excited by the way he pawed at the ground, and I wished that he was as tired as he had been the previous day.

“Are you ready?” called out one of the starters. Then the starting pistol rang out, the doors of the starting gates fell open, and there in front of us stretched the racetrack with its jumps.

Black Lightning gave a leap, which took me completely by surprise. For a moment it seemed as if we were both in the air, but then I felt the thud of his galloping hooves against the turf. I shot up and down in the saddle, holding onto the reins with one hand and desperately trying to keep myself on Black Lightning with the other.

I had little chance to look around me, but I’m sure that I saw Mr. Fetlock’s face flashing past me at the rail. His mouth was open with surprise, and I think he shouted out something, but I was soon past him.

I looked ahead. It was a miracle that I was still on Black Lightning at all, and now we were coming up to the first jump. It seemed very high—far too high to get over—but Black Lightning’s ears were flattened against his head, and he seemed determined to clear it.

With a great leap, the racehorse launched himself into the air. I saw the top of the jump passing below me, and I felt the air rushing past in a cool torrent. And then, having gone as high as he could go, Black Lightning began to sink back to the earth beneath him.

I didn’t. As the horse went down, I stayed up, and when I next looked, the saddle was no longer below me. There was nothing but the wide pond of water that always comes after the water jump.

I closed my eyes. Down I tumbled, down toward the waiting water, and then, with a splash, I was in it. The water broke my fall, of course, and I was unhurt, but there I was, sitting in the middle of the pond, covered in muddy water with the other horses and jockeys flying over my head. I felt very foolish, but at the same time I was very pleased indeed that the race was over as far as I was concerned.

“Well done!” said Ted as he came out to collect me and to lead me back to the saddling pen. “Everybody thinks you fell off deliberately.”

“I didn’t!” I said. “I was going to fall off a bit later, on some nice, soft grass.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Ted went on. “They think you meant to fall off, so that Black Lightning would not win. In fact, here comes one of them now.”

I looked behind me. There was a rather dishonest-looking man coming over. He smiled at me and passed me a clean white handkerchief.

“Mop your face with that,” he said. “That was a very clever fall.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It took a lot of practice to get it just right.”

He nodded. “We like to see cheating as good as that.” He glanced over his shoulder. Ted had melted away and there was nobody else around. “In fact, would you be interested in meeting somebody who could help you with your cheating?”

My heart gave a leap. This was it! This was the invitation that would enable me to expose the League of Cheats.

“I would,” I said eagerly.

“Then come with me,” the man said, nodding in the direction of the other end of the racetrack. “I’ll take you to the boss.”

Charlie Heat

We struggled through the crowd of racegoers, the dishonest-looking man leading the way. Some of the people recognized me as the jockey who had ridden Black Lightning and fallen off so quickly. One or two of them muttered something under their breath, and another hissed “Cheat” as I walked past.

There were several cars and trucks parked at the end of the racetrack. Here and there, groups of men were standing around, talking to one another or unsaddling horses. My companion approached one of these groups, telling me to wait until he called me over. I stood where I was, watching while he spoke briefly to a rather fat figure in a white suit. As he did so, this man looked over in my direction and then nodded. With a wave of the hand I was beckoned over.

I walked toward them slowly, my heart beating like a hammer within me. I had succeeded in getting right to the heart of the League of Cheats, but what now? Ted had promised that he would arrive with Mr. Fetlock, but where were they? Did he expect me to challenge Charlie Heat myself?

The fat man was looking hard at me.

“I saw your fall,” he said. “It was a good piece of cheating, very good.”

I looked at his eyes. They were like the eyes of a snake, small and bright, and very, very sly. Even if I did not know who he was, I would have distrusted him immediately. There was something about him that was frightening. He was the sort of person you met in nightmares, the sort of person who made you wake up with the sharp taste of fear in your mouth.

“I could use your help,” he went on, his eyes still boring into me. “I could find work for you.”

I pretended not to understand. “What sort of work?” I asked. “Would it be with horses?”

Charlie Heat smiled. “Horses could come into it,” he said. “But there’d be other things too. There are all kinds of things to cheat in, you know: running competitions, jumping competitions, quiz shows, dog shows, cat shows. In fact, anything at all.”

I listened to him in astonishment. What possible reason could there be for cheating on such a scale? Was he crazy? Perhaps that was the answer: perhaps Charlie Heat was a madman after all.

I decided to find out directly.

“But how do you manage to cheat in all those things?” I asked.

As I asked my question, Charlie Heat’s eyes began to glow, and he started to shake as he gave his answer.

“It’s because of them!” he said. “All those so-called honest people! Oh, I could tell you a thing or two! I could tell you about the time I sabotaged a dog show by slipping in a cat disguised as a dog. The dogs went wild! You’ve never seen such a scene. It totally ruined the show!”

He laughed out loud, a horrible, sneering laugh. Then he went on, “And then there was the time my buddy Billy entered a swimming contest and I had my people secretly sew lead weights into the swimsuits of the other competitors. Oh, that was a treat! It was all they could do to keep afloat, let alone swim fast. My friend won by six lengths, he did! Six lengths!”

“But why do you like cheating so much?” The question slipped out without my thinking.

He looked at me as if he was puzzled that anybody could ask such a silly thing.

“Why do I like cheating?” he asked. “As I told you, it’s because of them—those snivelling, sneaky, ‘Aren’t I better than you?’ honest people. They accused me of cheating when I was a little boy, and I shall never forgive them for it. I vowed to make them pay for it, and I certainly have!”

“And did you cheat when you were a boy?” I asked.

“Of course I did,” snapped Charlie Heat. “Who wouldn’t?”

For a moment I said nothing. Then I could contain myself no longer.

“I wouldn’t!” I shouted. “I think cheating’s a terrible thing to do. And I would never, never work for you and your League of Cheats!”

There! I had said it. But what would happen now?

His eyes opened wide, and I could tell that I had surprised him.

“Who told you about the League of Cheats?” he asked icily.

I took a deep breath. It was no use waiting for Ted and Mr. Fetlock now. I would have to be brave.

“I know all about you,” I said. “You’re Charlie Heat, president of the League of Cheats. You’ve been cheating Mr. Fetlock and lots of other people too. And we’re going to show you up for what you are!”

Charlie Heat’s eyes narrowed again, and he took a quick step forward. Then, in a sudden swoop, he grabbed the lapels of my jacket and lifted me up in the air.

“Oh, yes?” he said menacingly. “And who’s going to believe you?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but no sound came out. I was so frightened that my tongue seemed to have stuck to the top of my mouth. I tried to wriggle free, but Charlie Heat’s grip was too tight, and I only found myself more firmly trapped. Then, just when I thought that all was lost, I heard a voice from behind us.

“I’ll believe her!” the voice cried.

Charlie Heat spun around, still holding me in midair. There was nobody there—nobody, that is, apart from a strange-looking black-and-white horse.

“What was that?” shouted Charlie Heat.

“I said, I’ll believe her, Mr. Heat! Your cheating days are over!” the voice said again.

I could hardly believe it, but there was only one explanation. The horse was talking.

Charlie was so astonished that he let me drop with a thump.

“I … I…,” he stuttered.

The horse took a few steps forward, and as it did so I realized that I knew its voice. It was Aunt Japonica in another of her brilliant disguises.

Charlie Heat, though, did not know this, and he turned pale with fear. Then, turning on his heels, he shot off down the racetrack, squealing with fright.

“Quick!” said Aunt Japonica from within her horse costume. “Jump on.”

I looked at the horse’s back. It looked rather bumpy and uncomfortable, but I did as I was told.

“Ow!” came Aunt Thessalonika’s voice from behind me. “Careful where you put your feet.”

“Off we go,” called Aunt Japonica from the front, and off we went, with Aunt Japonica as the front legs and Aunt Thessalonika as the back. It was not a smooth ride, but it was certainly safer than Black Lightning.

Charlie Heat could not run very fast, and we were gaining on him. Ahead of us, though, was a large jump, and I wondered how he would deal with this. Surely that would stop him long enough for us to catch up with him.

“We’ve got him now,” panted Aunt Japonica. “He’ll never be able to get over that jump.”

I thought so too, but just at that moment, the running figure of Charlie Heat swerved to one side and went around the jump!

“Look at that!” shouted Aunt Japonica in indignation. “What a cheat!”

We galloped, or rather my aunts galloped, all the quicker, so angry were they with Charlie Heat’s behavior. We were now approaching the jump ourselves, and at any moment I expected my aunts to swerve and follow Charlie Heat around the side of the jump. But no. My aunts would never cheat, and with a great leap, the aunt-filled horse, with me on its back, sailed into the air and over the jump. For a terrible moment I thought I would fall again, just as I had done when Black Lightning launched himself over the jump, but somehow I managed to hang on. Then, with a thump, we landed and galloped away after the now very tired Charlie Heat.

Within minutes we had caught up with him. He was so tired and frightened, he could run no more.

“I give up! I give up!” he squealed as he collapsed to the ground, his white suit covered with mud.

I climbed down, and Aunt Japonica soon appeared from the front of the horse outfit. With a little struggling and pushing, both aunts had soon worked themselves free, and the outfit lay limp on the ground. There was shouting in the distance, and to my relief I saw Mr. Fetlock, together with Ed, Ted, and Fred, running over the grass to join us.

“Here’s the cheat,” said Aunt Japonica, pointing at the wretched Charlie Heat.

“Well done!” cried Mr. Fetlock, beaming with pleasure.

“Don’t congratulate us,” said Aunt Thessalonika modestly. “It’s Harriet Bean who deserves the praise.”

Mr. Fetlock warmly shook my hand, as did the jockeys. Then, while the men led Charlie Heat off for a little talk with the racetrack police, I helped my two detective aunts roll up their horse outfit and carry it back to Mr. Fetlock’s truck.

“That was a very clever plan,” said Aunt Japonica. “We had suspected Charlie Heat for some time, and this proved that our suspicions were right.”

I was puzzled. “But why did you suspect him?” I asked.

Aunt Japonica laughed. “It was simple,” she said. “Look at his name. There’s a strong clue there.”

I thought of his name. Charlie Heat. Mr. Heat. Mr. C. Heat. C. Heat. Cheat!

“I see,” I said, laughing. “That was a very good clue.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Japonica. “Sometimes names tell us a great deal. Did I ever tell you about how we caught a famous thief purely because I thought there was something funny about his name?”

“Oh, yes,” chipped in Aunt Thessalonika. “The case of Mr. R. O’Ber. That was a very interesting case.”

But there was no time for my aunts to tell me about it that day, as we had now arrived back at the truck and we could see that Mr. Fetlock had set up some sort of party to celebrate the end of the League of Cheats. There were delicious-looking cakes set out on a folding table and all sorts of wonderful sandwiches.

We had a very good feast. Even Black Lightning enjoyed himself and ate six cucumber sandwiches in one mouthful.

“A good mystery is always best when it’s over,” said Aunt Japonica as she licked the cream off her fingers.

“I agree,” said Aunt Thessalonika, her mouth full of sandwich.

“And so do I,” I said.

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Text copyright © 1993 Alexander McCall Smith

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, and simultaneously in the United States of America and in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing. Originally published in 1993 in Great Britain by Blackie’s Children’s Books/Penguin Books Ltd. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.

www.randomhouse.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948-

The cowgirl aunt of Harriet Bean / Alexander McCall Smith; Laura Rankin, illustrator.

(Harriet Bean series; bk. 3)

ISBN-13: 978-0-676-97778-3

ISBN-10: 0-676-97778-2

I. Rankin, Laura II. Title. III. Series: McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948-

Harriet Bean series; bk. 3.

PR6063.C326C69 2006    j823′.914    C2006-902589-4

For Alison Lyburn

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

The Cowgirl Aunt of Harriet Bean

Copyright

Dedication

An Invitation Arrives

A Very Peculiar Trip

A Very Surprising Story

Home on the Range…

Rustlers at Work

Anything Happens

The Rustlers’ Camp

How Cowgirls Fix Rustlers

An Invitation Arrives

I like getting letters from my aunts. Every morning, while my father is still having his breakfast, I go into the hall and check to see what the mailman brought. Often it’s dull, very dull—bills in brown envelopes or letters to my father about one of his inventions—but sometimes I see an envelope that lifts my spirits instantly. These are the letters from my aunts.

I have five aunts, you see. You may have read all about them before and, if you have, you’ll know all about how they were lost (which was my father’s fault) and then found again. And what marvelous aunts they turned out to be! There is Aunt Veronica, the strong lady at the circus; Aunt Harmonica, the ventriloquist; Aunt Majolica, the bossy one (who really isn’t so bad after all); and finally Aunts Thessalonika and Japonica, the private detectives and mind readers. Is that all of them? Let me see: Veronica, Harmonica, Majolica, Thessalonika, and Japonica. Yes, that makes five.

Just about every week one of my aunts writes to me. Sometimes it’s Aunt Veronica, who tells me where her circus is and what’s been happening there. These letters are very exciting. A few weeks ago, she wrote that one of the trapeze artists had fallen off the trapeze while swinging to and fro at the very top of the tent. Fortunately for him, he landed right in the middle of a trampoline that had been set up for the next act, and he bounced right back up to the trapeze again, the right way up. So it all had a happy ending.

Sometimes I get a letter from Aunt Harmonica, who gives me all the news from the opera house, where she is the official voice-thrower. Her last letter was very funny.

“We’ve just had a terrible emergency,” she said. “Halfway through a piece of music, the man who plays the tuba in the orchestra got a terrible attack of hiccups. You can imagine what it sounds like if you hiccup while you’re trying to play a great big instrument like the tuba. He couldn’t go on. So I had to crawl down into the orchestra pit in front of the stage and make a sound like a tuba for the rest of the piece. It wasn’t easy, but I did it, and I don’t think anybody in the audience realized what was going on!”

But the letters I most like getting are from my Aunt Thessalonika and Aunt Japonica. They write their letters together, and you never know which words have been written by which aunt! The only time you can tell is when they use different colored pens. It’s very easy then.

Their letters are full of the details of their latest case and can make quite scary reading. They often get into all kinds of trouble, but they always seem to get out of it at the end. Last week they had to hide under the bed of a very dangerous criminal when he suddenly returned home while they were searching his house for jewels he had stolen.

“When we heard him at the door,” wrote Aunt Thessalonika, “we had to find somewhere to hide. And the only place was right under his bed! So we slid under it and lay there, hoping that he’d go out again soon.

“Unfortunately, he did not go out. Instead, he came straight into the bedroom, changed into his pajamas, and went to bed! You can imagine how we felt. He was quite heavy, and the bed sagged, squashing us. At one point, your Aunt Japonica wanted to sneeze, and was only prevented from doing this by your Aunt Thessalonika holding firmly onto her nose.

“At last we heard snoring from above, and we started to crawl out. I’m sorry to say, though, that we found ourselves stuck, and the only way we could get out of the house was to make our way out with the bed still on top of us. So we did that, on our hands and knees, with the bed on our backs. And that is how we were when we met the policeman in the street outside.

“At first he accused us of stealing the bed, but when he saw who was tucked up inside it, still fast asleep, he changed his mind.

“ ‘We’ve been looking for him for a long time!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thank you very much!’

“So we carried the bed all the way down to the police station—with a little bit of help from the policeman, of course—and set it down there.

“You can imagine the surprise the jewel thief had when he woke up and saw where he was. He was not pleased!”

There had been many other letters like that, and I could hardly wait to see my two detective aunts again. We had had so much fun solving the mystery of the League of Cheats together, and I hoped they would soon invite me to help them out with another one of their cases.

I had a long wait, but at last it came. It arrived one Saturday morning, a letter from Aunt Thessalonika and Aunt Japonica, inviting me to come with them on what they called a “little trip.”

“We are going to America,” they wrote. “Would you like to come? That is, of course, if you are free and have nothing better to do.”

I could hardly contain my excitement, and I showed the letter to my father. As usual, he hardly paid it any attention, as his mind was on one of his ridiculous inventions. He was trying to invent a portable bath for people who go camping. It was a very strange invention. You got into something that looked like a large waterproof sack. Then you zipped it all the way up to your neck, connected it to a tap with a hose, and turned the water on. After that, you jumped up and down and the water went all over you. There was a plug down at the bottom.

When I showed him the letter, he was testing the plug, which did not seem to be working very well.

“A letter from those aunts of yours?” he said absentmindedly. “Asking you to go on a little trip? How nice. Well, of course you must go.”

“It’s all the way to America,” I explained, worried that he would object to my going so far.

“America?” he said. “Would you be able to get something for me there? You see, I need a special kind of plug. It’s bigger than this one, and it has an odd, slidy bit right here. They make them only in America. Could you pick one up for me?”

I was delighted, and I promised to get the plug. I wrote back to my aunts immediately and said that I would love to go with them to America and that my father had agreed to take me to the airport the following Saturday, which just happened to be the beginning of school vacation.

My aunts wrote back the next day.

“We’ll see you at the airport,” they said. “But you may not see us. Don’t worry, though. We’ll send you your ticket and you can just get on the plane. We’ll see you sooner or later.”

“Sounds very odd,” said my father when he read the letter. “But those two aunts of yours have always been a bit strange, if you ask me. I’m not so sure if going off to America is such a good idea after all.”

“But what about the plug?” I said quickly.

“Ah yes,” he said. “The plug. Well, perhaps it’s not such a bad idea after all, but please be careful. Those two aunts get into all kinds of trouble, so keep a close eye on them.”

“I will,” I promised. “Don’t you worry about that!”

A Very Peculiar Trip

I found myself counting the days until it was time to leave for America. Time dragged by slowly, but at last the day of departure came and there I was, my suitcase in my hand, standing in front of the airline desk. My father said good-bye and left me with one of the airline staff. She took my ticket and showed me where I could wait until it was time for the plane to leave.

I looked around the waiting room. There seemed to be hundreds of people milling around, all waiting to get on the plane. I expected to see my aunts, but there was no sign of them. Perhaps they would be the last to arrive and would board the plane just before the doors were closed.

After an hour or so, I still had not seen my aunts, and by now it was time for everybody to get on board. I was starting to get nervous, but I remembered what they had said in the letter and decided that I should do as they told me.

We all got on the plane and found our seats. It was a very full flight, and every seat seemed to be taken. Yet still there was no sign of my aunts. By now I was beginning to think that they had missed the plane after all. Perhaps their bus had broken down on the way to the airport, or perhaps they had even gotten on the wrong plane. I had heard of that happening before. People got on the wrong plane and ended up in the wrong corner of the world. Then a terrible thought came to me: perhaps I was on the wrong plane myself! Perhaps I would find myself in Bombay or Buenos Aires, or even Bulawayo! What would I do then?

It was too late. The doors of the plane had been slammed shut and the big engines started. Slowly we taxied out onto the runway, and then with a throaty roar the plane set off on its journey. Within seconds, we were in the air and headed up into the clouds. We were on our way.

Once we were airborne, I decided that I should stop worrying and enjoy the trip. I sat back in my seat and looked out the window. I was admiring the view, thinking how nice it would be to bounce up and down on top of the clouds below us, when there was a tap on my shoulder.

I looked around to see one of the stewardesses smiling at me.

“Would you like some orange juice?” she asked. “Or perhaps something to eat?”

I asked for orange juice, and the stewardess smiled and went off to get it. As she did so, a very strange feeling came over me. I had seen that stewardess before somewhere; I was sure of it. But I had never been on a plane before, and so I wondered how I could possibly know her.

I was thinking about this, feeling very puzzled, when the stewardess came back and handed me a large cup of orange juice.

“I hope you enjoy that, Harriet,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sure I will …”

I stopped. She had called me Harriet. Yet how could she possibly know who I was?

I was about to ask, but she had already turned her back to me and was busy taking care of another passenger. I would have to wait and ask her when she walked past me again. I could find out her name and ask her where we had met before.

A few minutes later she came by.

“Excuse me,” I said, reaching out to touch the sleeve of her jacket. “Could you tell me—”

I did not have time to finish my question. The stewardess had turned to me and bent down to whisper in my ear.

“Can’t you see?” she whispered. “I’m your aunt Thessalonika!”

I was speechless. I looked at her closely and realized that it was true. Aunt Thessalonika was very well disguised, but it was clearly her. No wonder I had thought we had seen each other before! Of course I was relieved that I was not alone on the plane after all, but at the same time I wondered what on earth she was doing disguised as a stewardess. And where was Aunt Japonica? Was she disguised as one of the other passengers? Was that fat man sitting in the row in front of me really an aunt with a pillow stuffed into her pants? Nothing would surprise me with these aunts.

My question was soon answered—or almost answered. Several minutes later, walking down the aisle of the plane in a smart blue uniform, his cap under his arm, greeting the passengers, came the captain of the plane. Or was it? As he walked past my row of seats, he paused and smiled in my direction.

I looked up, unsure what to do. There was something familiar about him, although I couldn’t decide what it was. Was it something in his eyes? Or something in the way he walked? It was difficult to tell, but I had a very strong suspicion that the captain was none other than my aunt Japonica, heavily disguised of course, but nonetheless my aunt!

I must admit that I felt a little bit worried for the rest of the flight. I knew that my aunts were extraordinarily good at disguises, and I knew that there was nobody better at mind reading than they were. But flying a plane was a very special job, and even Aunt Japonica might find it a bit difficult.

I did not have the chance to ask. Aunt Thessalonika was far too busy looking after the passengers to talk to me, and I never saw the captain again. But we landed safely, I’m happy to say, and soon I found myself getting off the plane in New York and stepping for the first time onto American soil.

I collected my suitcase and waited at the exit. I did not have long to wait, as down the corridor came my two aunts, dressed as themselves and chatting excitedly.

“Were you…,” I began to ask Aunt Japonica. “I mean, did you really fly the plane?”

Aunt Japonica looked surprised.

“Fly a plane? My goodness me, Harriet! I don’t think I could do that!”

“But where were you?” I asked.

My aunts looked at each other and smiled.

“Later on, Harriet,” they said. “We’ll discuss all that later on. The important thing is that we’ve arrived in America and there are lots and lots of exciting things for us to do!”

A Very Surprising Story

I was very excited by America. Everything around me seemed so big and bright, and everybody, everywhere, seemed to be in such a rush. We rushed too, driving in a long yellow taxi to a hotel that my aunts had chosen in advance. Then, in the hotel, we stepped into an elevator and went shooting up to the thirty-ninth floor.

There was a marvelous view from the window of our room. In every direction, as far as the eye could see, there stretched the great city. Tall buildings stuck up like giant pencils, and way down below us in the street, we could make out tiny cars and minute, antlike people.

I was very tired from the long flight and so I went to bed almost right away But just before I did, a waiter brought up a tray with a hamburger, a bowl of banana ice cream, and a large tub of popcorn.

“Junk food!” he called out cheerfully. “A whole delicious trayful!”

I eagerly ate my first meal in America and then, feeling perfectly contented, drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika took me down to breakfast on the fifteenth floor.

“We must move on today,” said Aunt Japonica. “We’ve got a lot to do in America.”

“You’re right,” agreed Aunt Thessalonika. “There’s no time to lose.”

I was not sure what it was that we were supposed to be doing. My aunts had told me nothing about why they had come to America. The reason was bound to be exciting, though. Nothing in their lives was the slightest bit dull.

“Where are we going?” I asked. I really liked New York—what I had seen of it—and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to move on.

“West,” Aunt Japonica said simply. “We’re going west.”

That sounded intriguing, but I still wasn’t sure what we were going to do.

“Why are we going west?” I asked. “Do you have a case out there?”

Both aunts looked at me in a very surprised way.

“But surely you know why we’re here, Harriet?” Aunt Japonica said. “Didn’t we tell you about your aunt Formica?”

For a moment I was too astonished to say anything at all. Aunt Formica? Did I have yet another aunt? I thought that I had found them all by now, but here we were going off to see somebody called Aunt Formica. It was all very puzzling.

Aunt Japonica stared at me a few seconds longer and then shook her head.

“It’s all your father’s fault,” she said with a sigh. “He never seems to tell you anything.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “To think that poor Harriet never heard of Formica. It really is too bad!”

“Then please tell me,” I urged. “I’d really like to hear all about her.”

Aunt Japonica looked at her watch.

“Not now,” she said. “We have a train to catch. But once we’re on the train there’ll be plenty of time for us to tell you all about your aunt Formica.”

And there was. As our train made its way across the wide plains of America, Aunt Japonica told me all about my sixth lost aunt, and what had happened to her.

“You’ll remember,” she said, “how the family had to split up after the farm was sold all those years ago? Well, after we had all gone to our different homes, our father and mother had another baby. But because the family had split up by then, we never heard about her. So for a long time we didn’t even know that we had a younger sister.”

“That’s right,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “And so it came as a great surprise to all of us when one Christmas we received a card signed, quite simply, ‘Your sister Formica.’ ”

Aunt Japonica nodded. “Of course we were very excited about it, and we all wrote letters to her to find out who she was and where she lived. I wrote first, I think, and I had a long letter back. She told me that shortly after she was born, our parents became poorer and found it difficult to buy food even for their new baby. Fortunately, there was a cousin in America, and she offered to take in the baby and look after her there. And that is how Formica got here.”

It all seemed very strange and exciting to me, but by now I was becoming used to the extraordinary lives that all my aunts had led.

“She traveled all the way to America by herself,” Aunt Japonica went on. “Can you imagine that? She was only two at the time, but she was very, very brave, and people on the ship were very kind to her.

“Then, when she reached the other side of the Atlantic, she was taken all the way to the west and brought up on a ranch. She learned to ride horses, lasso cattle with a long rope, and cook beans over a campfire out on the range. In other words—”

“She became a cowgirl,” interjected Aunt Thessalonika. “Just like a cowboy, but a girl.”

I sat with my mouth wide open in astonishment. The story of Aunt Formica was far more exciting than I ever could have imagined, and I was thrilled at the thought that I had a cowgirl aunt. I imagined her riding up to meet us on her horse, throwing her hat into the air, and firing pistol shots through it. It was all very exciting.

“She was very good at being a cowgirl,” said Aunt Japonica. “When her cousin became too old to run the ranch, she gave it to Formica, and Formica has looked after it since then. She went to rodeos and won all the prizes for breaking in horses and riding on the backs of great fierce bulls.”

“But then it all went wrong,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “Something happened to spoil it.”

“What was that?” I blurted out.

My aunts shrugged. “We don’t know,” said Aunt Japonica. “All we know is that she wrote to us and asked us to come out as soon as we possibly could. Something was going dreadfully wrong, but she didn’t say what it was.”

“So we’re going to help her,” I said. “And that’s why we’re heading west.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Japonica, adding glumly, “I only hope it’s not too late. I’ve got a terrible feeling that it might be.”

I felt very worried. Whatever was happening did sound very bad, and I hoped that our train would hurry up and complete its journey so that we could see what we could do to help.

Home on the Range…

The train journey seemed to take forever. We had bunks to sleep in, and everything was very comfortable, but I was itching to arrive. At last, though, just when I thought that we would never get there, my aunts consulted their map and told me to get my things ready to get off the train.

“That last stop was Cactus Point,” said Aunt Japonica. “According to this map, the next stop is ours.”

I asked what it was called and Aunt Japonica looked at her map again.

“Skeleton Gulch,” she said in a slightly disapproving tone. “Towns can have very strange names in America.” She looked at the map again and shook her head. “I see that there’s a place here called Poison. Can you imagine that?”

Poison sounded pretty bad, I had to admit, but what about Skeleton Gulch? That was almost as unwelcoming.

I looked out the window of the train. The wheat fields through which we had been traveling had given way to hills and valleys, and everything was a bit drier. It was hotter, too, with a great burning sun overhead and no clouds in the wide blue sky. So this was the West!

Skeleton Gulch was not much of a place. We saw it all as the train drew into the station. There was the station building, which was not much more than a low shack, a water tower, and a street of rickety-looking wooden buildings. If you’ve ever seen a cowgirl film, you’ll know just what it looked like.

We were the only people to get off the train. The conductor, who had been very friendly to us on the journey, helped us unload our luggage.

“I don’t know what you’re doing getting off in a place like this,” he said, frowning. “I can’t remember when anybody last got off here.”

I looked around. There was nobody around, as far as I could see. Skeleton Gulch seemed to be utterly deserted. Perhaps it’s a ghost town, I thought. I had read about these places. They were towns where nobody lived at all. Everybody had gone away, and nobody else had come in their place. So all the houses were left exactly where they were, with nobody to live in them except the rats and the snakes.

My thoughts were interrupted by Aunt Japonica.

“This way, Harriet,” she said sharply “It’s far too hot to stand around thinking about ghost towns.”

It’s strange having aunts who are mind readers. They can tell what you’re thinking almost all the time. You have to be careful what you think, too. You can’t think thoughts like, I wish my aunt wouldn’t wear that terrible hat; or, I’m bored and I wish my aunt would stop talking. They can tell when you’re thinking things like that and they look at you in a very disapproving way.

I picked up my suitcase and followed my aunts. Since there was nobody in the station, we had nobody to take our tickets. So we just walked out onto the street and looked around.

“We’ll have to ask the way,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “I hope it’s not too far.”

But how could we ask the way, I wondered, when there was nobody around to ask? I was beginning to feel frightened. Why was Skeleton Gulch called Skeleton Gulch?

Just as I was thinking this, we heard a loud creaking noise. It made me jump, and I spun around to see the door in one of the wooden buildings open and a man step out. He looked at us, rubbed his eyes, and then gave a friendly wave.

“Did you folks get off the train?” he called out.

“We did,” said Aunt Japonica.

“Well, well,” said the man, coming over to meet us. “That’s the most unusual thing that’s happened ‘round these parts for well on … six months. Yes, that’s right. Nobody’s gotten off that train for six months. Normally that old train just whistles right through here.”

“We’re looking for our sister,” explained Aunt Thessalonika. “She’s called Formica, and we believe she lives around here.”

The man smiled. “She certainly does,” he said. “She lives up Rattlesnake Creek way. And I’ll take you there in my truck if you like, because I’m the local taxi driver and that’s my job!”

We were very pleased to have met the taxi driver, and when he came back a few minutes later with his old brown truck, we loaded in our luggage and set off with him. It was a bumpy ride. The roads were full of holes and here and there we had to swerve to avoid a branch that had fallen from a tree. But before too long we were bouncing along a farm road and there, set between two small hills, with a wide plain behind it, was Aunt Formica’s ranch house.

“This is it,” said the taxi driver as we drew to a halt in a cloud of dust. “This is Formica’s place.”

We thanked him, lifted out our suitcases, and waved as he drove away. Then we turned around and looked at the house. The front door was open, but there was no sign of anybody around. So we sat down on the porch in front of the house and waited for something to happen.

Suddenly it did. From behind the house there came a great whooping noise and the sound of galloping hooves. Then, before we even had time to stand up and see what it was, there was a cloud of dust, and a shout, and a horse came to a stop right in front of the porch.

“Whoa!” shouted the rider as she jumped off the horse, landing perfectly on the high heels of her tall cowgirl boots.

“Formica!” shouted Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika in unison.

“Japonica!” shouted the rider. “Thessalonika!”

My two aunts tumbled down the steps to hug their sister. Then they turned around and pointed at me. Aunt Formica walked toward me and shook me by the hand. Her hand felt strong and rough, and I liked her the moment I saw her. So this was my sixth aunt! I could hardly believe my luck. This wonderful rider, with her wide-brimmed hat and her silver jingling spurs, was my aunt. It was almost too good to be true.

Aunt Formica took us into the house and showed us to our rooms. Then we all went into the kitchen and sat on stools while she prepared supper. We had beans, of course, which is what cowgirls always eat, and they tasted marvelous, cooked on her small wood-burning stove. Then we drank coffee out of tin mugs. I don’t normally like coffee, but the way Aunt Formica made it was just right, and it went very well with the beans.

As we ate, Aunt Formica explained why she had asked her two sisters to come out and help her.

“I knew that you two were just the people to sort all of this out,” she said. “And with Harriet to help you, I’m sure that we’ll get to the bottom of it in no time at all.”

“But what is it?” pressed Aunt Japonica. “None of us has the slightest idea what your problem really is.”

It was just beginning to get dark outside, and Aunt Formica lowered her voice, as if there were people out in the darkness who might hear.

“Rustling,” she said. “I’ve got rustlers!”

I wasn’t at all sure what rustling was, but what Aunt Formica said next made it all clear.

“Rustlers are the worst thing that can happen to a rancher,” she went on to say. “They come at night and take your cattle. They drive them away from under your very nose, and the next morning they’re gone. Several of the ranchers near here have been driven out of business by them. They’ve had to leave their ranches and go live in Skeleton Gulch—and that’s no fun, as you can imagine.”

Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika bristled with anger.

“But surely you can get them stopped,” said Aunt Thessalonika. “What about the sheriff? Surely you have a sheriff to look out for you?”

Aunt Formica let out a snort of laughter. “Sheriff? Yes, we’ve got a sheriff, all right. But he’s a real clod-hopping, coyote-baiting … he’s as much use as a hole in the head. He hasn’t arrested anybody for at least ten years, and most of the time he sits in front of his office fast asleep. He’s hopeless. He’s worse than hopeless!”

My aunts were silent for a few moments.

“These rustlers are just thieves, aren’t they?” said Aunt Japonica. “They’re nothing but cowardly thieves who steal other people’s cattle by night. If only I could get my hands on them!”

“That’s just what I feel too,” said Aunt Formica. “But the trouble is that nobody ever sees them. They come by night and they leave no tracks. Nobody knows who they are or where they live. All we know is that we’re losing our cattle.”

I felt just as angry as my aunts. But at the same time, I knew that if there was anybody who could solve the mystery and deal with the rustlers, it would be my two detective aunts.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Aunt Formica. “Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika can deal with this for you. If I were a rustler now, I’d be very, very worried.”

Aunt Formica looked doubtful. “I hope you’re right, Harriet,” she said. “But these people must be very clever and very dangerous. I’m afraid it won’t be easy.”

Aunt Japonica rubbed her hands. “Harriet’s right, Formica,” she said. “We’ve dealt with people like this before. We’ll find them for you and then you can teach them a lesson or two. But we’ll have to start tomorrow, because we’re all feeling tired after the journey and I think it’s time for bed.”

I lay awake that night, watching from my bed as the moon moved slowly across the night sky outside. From time to time I heard a coyote howl, a long wail that echoed up to the stars and back. Were there cattle rustlers out tonight, riding quietly through the darkness, wearing black handkerchiefs over their faces? I was sure that there were, and I felt that tomorrow, when we went to look at the cattle with Aunt Formica, we would find that the thieves had struck again. I shivered at the thought, and snuggled down into my bed until at last I fell asleep.

Rustlers at Work

Aunt Formica woke me early in the morning. “I’ve brought you some new clothes,” she said, laying them out on the end of the bed. “These are some of the things that I used to wear when I was a girl. They’re still in good condition though, and you can try them on. If you’re going to be a cowgirl, you must wear the right things.”

I tried on the new clothes eagerly. They fit me exactly, and they were very nice as well. There was a pair of riding pants with leather trim, a jacket with fringe around the top, and a plaid shirt with lots of pockets. What I liked most, though, were the boots. These were made of beautiful leather, with a picture of a horse engraved on each of them, and with splendid silver buckles at the ankles.

I felt very proud of my new outfit, and when I went to join my aunts for breakfast, I was delighted to see that both Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika were now dressed in exactly the same style as I was.

We ate our beans and drank our coffee and then went out to saddle our horses. My horse had white and brown patches and was called Tex. He seemed pleased to see me and was very happy when I gave him a sugar lump before I put on his saddle.

Once we were all mounted, Aunt Formica tossed her hat in the air, caught it deftly, and gave a loud whoop. Then off we rode, with Aunt Formica leading the way. I am not a very good rider, but Tex was a very easy horse to ride. He was also very kind. If I bumped up into the air, he would give a glance up to ensure that he was exactly below me when I came down again. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to fall off a horse like that.

We rode for half an hour or so, out onto the range. The land was vast—stretching out in every direction were fields of dry brown grass, hills with rocky outcrops, and the occasional cactus.

Suddenly Aunt Formica gave a shout and signaled for us to stop.

“There they are,” she said. “That’s the cattle over there.”

She pointed to a cluster of small brown shapes in the distance and turned her horse in their direction. We galloped over, the horses jumping over ditches and cactuses, and we soon reached where the cattle were grazing.

Aunt Formica got off her horse and started to count.

“Twenty-four, twenty-five—no, I’ve already counted that one—twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven!”

When she reached twenty-seven, she took off her hat and wiped her brow. I could see that she was upset.

“They’ve been here,” she said simply.

“Rustlers?” I asked.

“Yes,” she sighed. “They’ve taken ten away. There were thirty-seven cattle here yesterday and now there are only twenty-seven.”

As Aunt Formica spoke, Aunt Japonica dismounted and tied the reins of her horse to a nearby cactus. Then she bent down and began to examine the ground very closely. Aunt Thessalonika joined her, and Aunt Formica and I watched as the two famous detectives got down on their hands and knees and searched for signs of what had happened.

After a while, they got up and brushed the sand from their pant legs.

“These people are cunning,” said Aunt Japonica. “They’ve been careful to leave no tracks.”

“But how do they do that?” I asked. “Surely their horses would leave some hoofprints in the ground?”

Aunt Japonica shook her head. “Not if you’re as clever as they are,” she said. “Not if you put special hoof covers on your horse, and not if those hoof covers are the same shape as the cattle hooves!”

I drew in my breath. If the rustlers were as cunning as this, then they would be very difficult to catch, even by people as clever as my aunts.

“So what do we do now?” asked Aunt Formica. “The ground is covered with cattle tracks here. We can’t possibly work out which ones really belong to the rustlers.”

Aunt Japonica nodded. “Yes, it will be difficult …” She paused, staring down at the ground as if she had seen something particularly important. Then she knelt down again and peered at something in the sand.

“Very interesting,” she said. “Formica, do any of your cattle have only three legs?”

Aunt Formica laughed. “What a ridiculous question, Japonica,” she said. “No cow has three legs.”

“In that case,” said Aunt Japonica, “One of the rustlers has been very careless. He has forgotten to put on one of his horse’s hoof covers. Look at these odd tracks. Three cattle prints and one horse’s hoofprint!”

We all looked down and saw that what Aunt Japonica said was true. Now at last we had a trail, and if we followed it, we would be able to find out the direction from which the rustlers had come. That at least would be a start.

We got back on our horses, and with Aunt Japonica in the lead this time, staring hard at the ground, we set off. The trail led straight across the plain, toward some hills in the distance, and we followed it for at least an hour. Then we hit some rocky ground, and no matter how hard we searched, the trail had disappeared.

“That’s it, I’m afraid,” said Aunt Japonica. “I can’t follow this any further.”

It was disappointing, but at least we knew now that the rustlers had come down from the hills.

“We will have to go back to the ranch now,” said Aunt Formica. “If we’re going to go up into the hills, we’re going to need tents and other supplies. It’s not going to be easy going up there.”

I was thrilled at the thought of what lay ahead. This was the Wild West exactly as it should be. We were going up into the hills. We were going to take tents with us. Anything could happen up there, I thought—anything.

Anything Happens

We packed quickly. Aunt Formica divided what we had to carry into four, and we stuffed it all into our saddlebags. Then we were all given hats. Aunt Japonica got a rather tattered old hat, with a tear in the brim—but it looked good on her and she seemed very pleased. Aunt Thessalonika’s hat was newer but had a few bullet holes in it, which made her feel a little worried. I was luckiest—my hat was just like Aunt Formica’s, a large white one, with the widest brim of all. It was exactly the sort of hat a cowgirl should have, and I felt very brave in it as I walked out to my horse.

Aunt Formica rode in front, and we were soon well on our way to the hills. It was a long ride, though, and we had to rest the horses several times on our way there. But at last, just before lunchtime, we arrived at the first of the rocky outcrops that marked the end of the plain.

We ate our lunch sitting beneath some trees. Afterward, while the horses were still tied up and my aunts were drinking the coffee Aunt Formica had brewed over a small fire, I decided to explore my surroundings a little.

“Don’t be long,” warned Aunt Formica. “We’ll have to get along in half an hour or so. And make sure you’re careful of the—”

Just at that moment, one of the horses neighed, and I didn’t hear what Aunt Formica said. But I would be careful anyway, I thought. It was probably the sun she wanted me to watch out for, as it was very strong. Well, I had my wide-brimmed hat and that was as good as a sun umbrella, I thought.

I clambered over some rocks that lay behind us. There was a small hillock nearby, and I thought that if I climbed it I would be able to get a good view of our surroundings and also wave to my aunts down below.

I began to climb. Everything was very dusty, and I had to be careful of the prickly cactuses that grew between the rocks, but soon I was almost at the top.

I sat down to get my breath back, and looked down below. There were my three aunts, sitting under their tree, chatting away, while the horses dozed in the background.

Suddenly I heard a noise. It was a peculiar noise, like the sound of something being dragged over a rough surface. It was a sort of scratchy sound, I suppose, and at first I didn’t pay much attention to it. Instead I looked up into the sky, which was blue and empty, and seemed to stretch out forever and ever.

Then the noise came back. It was louder now, and closer, and in an awful moment I realized what it was. It was a rattling sound, as if dice had been put in a cup and shaken very hard. It was an angry noise, as if something were trying to warn me.

I looked around and immediately saw what it was. There, in front of me, in a little space between two rocks was a large, thick snake, its tail raised behind it, shaking rapidly to and fro. It was a rattlesnake, a big one, and it was staring straight at me, its little eyes burning with anger.

When I saw it, my heart gave a great thump and turned right over. The snake seemed to sense this, and its tail shook even faster, making the rattle sound all the more threatening.

I forced myself to stay still, remembering what I had once read about being faced with a snake. Any sudden movement might disturb it, and force it to strike. You had to remain calm. Now I knew what Aunt Formica had been warning me about. I was supposed to be careful of rattlesnakes. If only I had heard her, I probably wouldn’t have climbed up there in the first place. If there’s one thing I’m frightened of, it’s snakes. And now here I was with an angry rattlesnake at my feet and no idea at all what to do next.

The snake was still watching me intently. I suppose it was thinking what to do too, wondering whether to bite me now, from a distance, or to get a little closer and get a better bite. I moved my foot a little, hoping to see whether I would be able to stand up and run, but this just made the snake shake its rattle even more loudly, as if to warn me not to try anything so foolish.

I tried closing my eyes. Perhaps it was just a dream, or even a mirage. I knew that in very hot places there are things called mirages, which are caused by the shimmering of the hot air. If you see a mirage, you think you see something which isn’t really there. But the snake was there when I opened my eyes again. It was still as large as life, shaking its tail, its tiny black tongue darting in and out of its mouth.

I decided that I would have to do something. If the snake was going to bite me anyway, I might as well try to get away first. It just might work.

I looked around, trying hard not to move my head too sharply. There were a few stones near my right hand, some of them very large. If I picked one of them up, I thought, I could throw it at the snake and drive it away. But what if I missed? That would just make the snake angrier than ever and it would be sure to lunge forward and bite me. If it did that, I knew I would be in serious trouble. Rattlesnakes are deadly poisonous, and even a small bite can make you very ill.

Then I thought again. If only I could attract my aunts’ attention, they would be able to help me. I was sure that Aunt Formica knew how to deal with rattlesnakes. Would they hear me if I shouted out? Would the wind carry my voice down to the trees below? I thought it was way too far, but at least I could try. Snakes were deaf, weren’t they? Hadn’t I read somewhere that snakes relied on vibrations in the ground, rather than sound, to warn them of danger?

I called out, softly at first, but then louder.

“Aunt Formica!” I yelled. “There’s a rattlesnake! Help!”

The snake took no notice, but neither did Aunt Formica. All that happened was that my voice, which sounded so small anyway, bounced back at me from the rocks all around. Nobody would ever hear.

Then I had another idea. Aunt Thessalonika and Aunt Japonica! They may not know much about rattlesnakes, but they were, after all, famous mind readers. If I could get a message to them just by thinking it, then they could alert Aunt Formica to my problem.

I looked down in the direction of my aunts. Then I began to think, very clearly: “Help!” I thought. “Help! Help! Help!”

I frowned with the effort, sending my thoughts down to my aunts below, but it seemed to make no difference. All three aunts were still seated underneath the tree, their backs to me.

I thought again.

“Snake!” I thought. Nothing. Then, a brilliant idea: “Rattle! Rattle!” I thought, making a rattling sound in my mind. “Rattle!”

As I did so, I suddenly saw Aunt Japonica stand up in the distance. She turned around, looked up in my direction, and gestured to the other two. They stood up too.

“Rattle!” I thought again. “Rattle!”

It was working! From where I was sitting, I could now see the aunts begin to run up toward me. They’re coming to my rescue, I thought, my heart giving a leap of joy. I’ll be saved after all!

The snake was watching me closely. It must have been getting a little bit bored, because it started to move toward me, ever so slowly, stopping from time to time to give its rattle a good shake. “Please hurry!” I thought to my aunts. “Please hurry!”

Suddenly, I heard a shout.

“Stay where you are, everybody! Stay very still!”

It was Aunt Formica’s voice, and I looked down and saw Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika freeze where they were. Everybody had seen the snake now, and I could see the expression of horror on Aunt Japonica’s face.

Aunt Formica moved forward slowly. The snake had not seen her yet, although she was now close to it, approaching from behind.

Suddenly the snake whipped around, its tail shaking like the pendulum of a clock that had gone out of control.

It was now facing Aunt Formica, who stood only a short distance away from it. I looked on in horror. Surely it would bite her now—it was well within striking distance.

What happened next occurred so quickly that I almost didn’t see it. Aunt Formica seemed to jump forward, as if she were going to pounce on the snake, but twisted as she did so. At the same time, her hand shot out and there was a little cloud of dust.

For a moment Aunt Formica and the snake seemed to be a twisting, rattling bundle. Then everything settled down and to my utter surprise, Aunt Formica straightened up. There, on the ground below her, was a bundle of writhing snake, neatly tied in a knot! The rattle was still shaking, but the snake was so confused that the sound was only halfhearted.

“That’ll keep him busy for a few hours,” laughed Aunt Formica. “He’ll be able to untie himself eventually, but it won’t be before suppertime!”

I got to my feet, feeling rather shaky.

“We heard you rattling,” said Aunt Japonica as she stepped forward to check that I was all right.

“I knew you would,” I said. “And thank you very much.”

As I spoke, I thought how lucky I was to have such aunts. Would any other girl, without aunts like that, have gotten out of such trouble in one piece? There was only one answer. She would not have.

The Rustlers’ Camp

Feeling very pleased at my escape from danger, I said good-bye to the wriggling snake. It was still trying to work out what had happened, staring at its own rattle and wondering whether to bite it or try to untie it. The effort of all this thinking made the rattle shake in irritation, which made the snake more confused and more cross.

We began to make our way down the hillside, back to where the horses were tethered. Or rather, back to where they had been tethered.

“The horses!” shouted Aunt Thessalonika. “Look, they’re gone.”

“They must have run away,” said Aunt Japonica. “Formica, do your horses run away?”

Aunt Formica shook her head grimly. “No,” she said. “Never. They’re far too loyal for that.”

It was left to me to say what everyone else was thinking.

“They’ve been stolen,” I said. “Rustled.”

Aunt Formica nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right, Harriet,” she said. “We’ve been made fools of. Absolute fools!”

We stood under the trees where we had tied the horses and looked around. There was no sign of what had happened. There was no evidence that the horses had put up a struggle; they must simply have been led off by the rustlers while we were up the hill. It must have been the easiest theft the rustlers had been able to carry out for a long time—even easier than stealing cattle.

I looked down at the ground. There were plenty of tracks this time, and I thought it would be easy for us to follow them.

“They went that way,” I said, pointing in the direction of the tracks. “If we hurry, we should be able to catch up with them.”

Aunt Japonica shook her head.

“No, Harriet,” she said. “You’re quite wrong. When you’ve been a detective as long as I have, then you’ll know that there’s one golden rule: nothing is what it seems to be—ever.”

“But that’s the way the tracks are pointing,” I protested. “They must have gone that way.”

“No,” said Aunt Japonica firmly. “That’s what they want us to think. The tracks will go that way for a while and then, when they reach stony ground where the hoofprints won’t show, they’ll turn around and go in the opposite direction. They think they can fool us that easily!”

Aunt Formica looked a little doubtful, but Aunt Thessalonika quickly supported her sister.

“Japonica’s right,” she said. “They must have gone that way!”

And with that she pointed in the opposite direction.

I was unsure, but I knew that my detective aunts were famous for always being right about these things, so I bit my tongue and didn’t argue anymore. Off we went, trudging through the heat, thinking how much easier it was to ride rather than walk.

“Just wait until I catch those rustlers,” said Aunt Formica grimly. “I’ll really fix them!”

I remembered what Aunt Formica had done to the rattlesnake, and thought that I would not like to be in the rustlers’ shoes. But at the same time, part of me was a little frightened. After all, rustlers are large, tough men with stubbly beards and big muscles. It might not be as easy to tie them up in knots!

We walked for an hour or so before Aunt Formica suddenly gave out a cry of triumph.

“There!” she shouted. “Look! Tracks!”

We all peered down at the ground. Yes, sure enough, there were hoofprints right in front of us, and they were going in exactly the direction predicted by Aunt Japonica.

“Now all we have to do is follow these,” said Aunt Japonica. “We can’t go wrong.”

Aunt Formica was not so sure. “We’ll have to be careful,” she said. “I think we should go on only a little bit farther and then wait. It will be getting dark before too long, and that will give us our chance.”

I shivered. Our chance for what? What would we be doing once it got dark? Nobody had discussed what we would do once we caught up with the rustlers. And what if the rustlers were actually following us? Nobody had thought of that yet.

I looked over my shoulder nervously. But all I saw were the dry rocky sides of the valley we had been following and a few scraps of tumbleweed being blown by the wind. And yet somewhere, perhaps hidden up in the rocks, I felt that there were eyes watching—watching our every move.

We stopped just before nightfall. The hoofprints were very clear now, which Aunt Japonica explained meant that the rustlers were only a short ways away I was happy to stop, as I was tired, and a little bit scared.

“We’ll sit here until it’s completely dark,” said Aunt Formica. “Then we can see what’s what.”

I sat down next to Aunt Thessalonika and snuggled up to her for comfort.

“Don’t worry, Harriet,” she said. “We’ve never come off second best, you know.”

I nodded.

“And you’ve seen what Aunt Formica can do,” she went on.

I nodded again. I felt a little bit safer, I suppose, but now that it was dark all the rocks seemed to be menacing dark shapes and everything looked so big and so empty. I looked up at the sky. High above me, field upon field of stars hung in the clear air, tiny dots of white light.

Aunt Formica stood up and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Time to move on,” she said. “If we go on just a bit, we should see their campfire.”

I rose to my feet and followed Aunt Thessalonika. Aunt Formica led the way, with Aunt Japonica behind her, and the two of us bringing up the rear.

We crept through the darkness, taking care not to bump into rocks or cactuses as we went. I tried not to imagine all the things that we could tread on. I tried especially hard to avoid thinking of rattlesnakes. It would be easy to step on one, I thought. Even Aunt Formica could be outsmarted by a rattlesnake in the pitch dark.

Suddenly Aunt Formica stopped. “Look!” she whispered. “There it is!”

I peered through the darkness. At first I saw nothing, but then I saw it in the distance, a tiny point of flickering yellow light.

“That’s their campfire,” said Aunt Formica in a low voice. “Cowboys are often afraid of the dark. Campfires make them feel safer.”

I was astonished to hear this. “And cowgirls?” I asked. “Do they make campfires too?”

“Hush,” said Aunt Formica. “No, they don’t. Cowgirls aren’t afraid of the dark, you see.”

I felt much better when I heard this. I could imagine the rustlers huddling together around the campfire, glancing over their shoulders, trying not to think what the shadows were.

“Now,” went on Aunt Formica, “we can get a good deal closer. But once we get really close, then we’ll have to get down on our hands and knees and crawl the last little way. And whatever you do, don’t make any noise.”

We approached the rustlers’ camp very slowly, but at last we were close enough to make them out—all five of them—sitting around the fire, eating their beans. They looked pretty frightening to me. They were all tall, strong men, wearing red plaid shirts and high boots. One of them, who had finished his beans before the others, was strumming on a guitar.

We knelt down behind a bush and looked at the rustlers.

“Galloping gophers!” exclaimed Aunt Formica. “What nerve they’ve got! Look! There are our horses.”

The rustlers had tied our horses to a nearby tree, along with their own horses. And in the background somewhere, we could hear the cattle moving around in the darkness. We had caught them red-handed with stolen cattle and stolen horses!

How Cowgirls Fix Rustlers

I was still not sure what we were going to do. We were miles and miles away from anywhere, and you couldn’t just run off and call the sheriff. Besides, as Aunt Formica had pointed out, the sheriff was worse than useless, and I was sure that he would never get out of his bed at night, even to arrest a group of rustlers.

“What now?” I whispered.

Aunt Formica turned to me and smiled. I could see the smile because the flickering light from the fire reflected on her face. She looked as if she were about to have some fun.

“Can you crawl quietly?” she asked me.

I nodded. “I think so.”

“Then will you crawl over to my horse and get the rope from its saddlebag?” asked Aunt Formica. “You’re smaller than we are, and you’re bound to make less noise.”

I gulped. The thought of getting that close to the rustlers was scary, and yet I could not refuse to play my part in the plan, whatever the plan was.

“Off you go then,” said Aunt Formica. “And good luck!”

I crawled as quietly as I could. But even being as careful as possible, I couldn’t help but make some noise. At one point I even knelt on a twig, which broke with a loud snapping sound.

The rustler who was strumming his guitar stopped in the middle of a line of song.

“Those ghost riders in the sk—”

I froze, my heart thumping within me like a giant hammer. But after a moment, he must have decided that it was one of the cows, as he started to sing again.

I continued with my task and eventually reached the horse. Once there, I felt in the saddlebag and took out a large coil of rope. Then I crawled back, greatly relieved, to where my brave and exciting aunts were waiting for me.

“Well done, Harriet,” whispered Aunt Formica as she took the rope from me. “Now for some fun!”

Aunt Formica signaled to Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika to join us in a huddle.

“Can you howl?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon?” asked Aunt Japonica in a low voice. “I thought you said, ‘Can you howl?’ ”

“I did,” said Aunt Formica impatiently. “Well, can you?”

“I can,” I said. “I think.”

“Good,” said Aunt Formica. “Now, I’ll count to three. When I reach three, we will all howl like coyotes who had something unpleasant to eat and all have a stomachache. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. I had heard coyotes howl in a cowgirl film once, and I knew roughly what they sounded like.

“One,” began Aunt Formica. “Two. Three!”

When she reached three, we all lifted our chins, fixed our eyes on the moon, and howled like sick coyotes. It was a terrible, frightening noise.

As the ghostly sound rang out through the darkness, I glanced toward the rustlers. The one who was singing had dropped his guitar, and all the others had dropped their spoons and plates. One was so frightened that he had swallowed his beans the wrong way and one was stuck in his nose. They were clearly terrified.

“Carry on,” encouraged Aunt Formica as we paused to get our breath back. “It’s working just as I thought it would.”

When the second howl came, which was much longer and much more frightening than the first, all five rustlers sprang to their feet and hugged one another for safety, their knees knocking with fright in their blue jeans.

Aunt Formica now stood up. Picking up her rope, she knotted the end into a noose and began to swing it around her head. Wider and wider it went, a perfect lasso, and then, with a final flick of her arm, she sent it snaking out toward the terrified rustlers.

I could hardly believe what I saw, but it really happened. Gently and gracefully, the noose of the lasso settled down around the five huddled rustlers, to be pulled tight by Aunt Formica with one or two deft twists of her wrists. The rustlers were absolutely trapped, their arms pinned to their sides by the lasso.

They could go nowhere and do nothing. They were completely at Aunt Formica’s mercy.

We all got up and walked over toward the campfire. As we did so, Aunt Formica gave a sudden tug on the rope, and all the rustlers fell to the ground in a helpless heap. Then, when she reached them and was standing over them, she gave the rope a few further twists to make absolutely sure that they were secured.

Of course, they hardly had time to realize what had happened to them.

“Let us go!” said the biggest of them. “You’ve got no right to lasso us like that.”

Aunt Formica just laughed. “Oh really?” she said. “And did you have any right to steal all my cattle and my horses?”

Of course, the rustlers had no answer to that, and so they stayed exactly where they were, tied up on the ground, while my aunts and I retrieved our tents from the saddlebags of our horses and pitched them next to the fire.

“Goodnight,” called out Aunt Formica to the rustlers. “I hope you won’t be too uncomfortable sleeping out there on the hard ground, but then you should have thought of that before you took up rustling!”

And with that remark ringing in everybody’s ears, we all went to sleep. I was afraid that I might dream of rattlesnakes, but I didn’t. Instead, I had very pleasant, funny dreams about helpful coyotes, and aunts, and other subjects like that.

The next morning, the rustlers all looked very uncomfortable and angry. We mounted our horses, rounded up the cattle, and then came back to the camp to pick up the rustlers. They tried to run away, of course, but they couldn’t really get anywhere and just made fools of themselves, stumbling and falling over their feet.

We rode home in comfort, with the poor old rustlers walking tamely behind us. It took a long time to reach the ranch, but at last we got there and dismounted. The rustlers were even more tired than we were and I felt sorry for them. I fetched them some cold water from the house and gave each of them a good drink, which seemed to make them a little bit happier.

“I’m sorry,” said the head rustler. “I realize that what we’ve been doing was very, very wrong.”

Aunt Formica looked at him sharply. “It’s one thing for you to say that now,” she said. “But how can we believe you?”

“I promise,” said the rustler. “I cross my heart. Boy Scout’s honor.”

“Were you ever a Boy Scout?” asked Aunt Formica sternly.

The head rustler hung his head in shame.

“Yes,” he mumbled. “I was. That was before I started rustling.”

“You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself,” said Aunt Formica. “A Boy Scout becoming a rustler! It’s shocking!”

The head rustler looked so embarrassed that I thought he was going to cry.

“I should hand you over to the sheriff,” went on Aunt Formica. “But I know that he’s not much good. I don’t think he’s ever dealt with a rustler.”

She paused. “What do you think, Harriet?” she asked me. “Do you think we should give them a chance?”

I did not hesitate with my reply. You should always be generous to people once they’ve learned their lesson, and I was sure that these rustlers had learned theirs.

“Yes,” I said. “I think they should get one last chance.”

Aunt Formica nodded.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll let you go. But you’ll have to clean the house first. It’s been years since it’s had a good spring cleaning, and that’s your punishment. Do you understand?”

The rustlers all said yes together. So Aunt Formica untied them and they all trooped off into the house, where they were given brooms and aprons and buckets of water.

They scrubbed and polished and swept. Then they polished again and rubbed and checked to see that every surface was free of dust (and tumbleweed). Then, when they said they had finished, Aunt Formica checked their work and made them do it all over again. They did not complain, though. They had learned their lesson, and they had all decided that they actually liked honest work.

• • •

We stayed with Aunt Formica for five more days. During that time we had so much fun. Aunt Formica taught me all about being a cowgirl. She showed me how to use a lasso and how to shoot a bottle cap off a bottle with my eyes half closed. I also learned to ride well, and by the last day I could stand up in the saddle and jump up and down twice, all at a gallop.

At last we had to leave. I was very sorry to go, as I had enjoyed myself immensely in America and I looked forward to coming back one day. We all rode into Skeleton Gulch, with our suitcases on the backs of the horses. We were a little early for the train, so Aunt Formica suggested that we stop in at the local store where she had things to buy.

The store was a wonderful place, smelling of flour, molasses, and things that horses like to eat. I stood there and looked around, marveling at all the things it sold—wrenches, wire, coffee, beans, plugs … plugs! I suddenly remembered my promise to my father. But would they have the special sort of plug he needed? Probably not.

I was wrong. The shopkeeper, an old man in a white apron, had no difficulty finding what I wanted.

“Good plugs, those,” he said. “They’re mighty useful for those special camping baths somebody’s just invented!”

Our shopping done, we went to the station and watched the distant white smoke of the train draw nearer.

“You must come back, Harriet,” said Aunt Formica as she waved good-bye. “Once a cowgirl, always a cowgirl!”

As the train pulled out of the station and began its long journey back, I waved and waved from the window until all I could see of Aunt Formica was the top of her large white hat. Then I went back to my seat. A few minutes later, the conductor came around. I gave him my ticket, and he punched it.

That’s funny, I thought. I’m sure I’ve seen that conductor before. Surely he looks a little bit like … Yes, you’ve guessed right. My aunts had enjoyed their vacation, but it was now time for them to get back to their old tricks!

A Note on the Author

Alexander McCall Smith has written more than fifty books, including the New York Times bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency mysteries and The Sunday Philosophy Club series. A professor of medical law at Edinburgh University, he was born in what is now Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Visit him at www.alexandermccallsmith.com.