Читать книгу The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage - Enid blyton - Страница 5

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At two o’clock sharp the Five Find-Outers and Dog met together in Pip’s big garden. Pip was waiting for them, and he led them to the old summer-house.

“This had better be our headquarters,” he said. “We shall keep wanting to meet and discuss things, I expect. It’s a good place for that because it’s at the bottom of the garden, and nobody can overhear us.”

They all sat down on the wooden bench that ran round the old summer-house. Buster jumped up on to Larry’s knees. Larry liked that. Fatty didn’t seem to mind.

“Now,” said Larry, “as I’m the head of us I’d better start things going. I’ll just go over what we all know, and then we’ll discuss what we should do.”

“I do think this is exciting,” said Bets, who was very much enjoying being one of the Big Ones.

“Don’t interrupt, Bets,” said Pip. Bets made her face solemn and sat still and straight.

“Well, we all know that Mr. Hick’s cottage workroom, which stands at the end of his garden, was burnt down last night,” said Larry. “Mr. Hick was not there till the end, because his chauffeur had gone to meet him off the London train. The insurance people say that petrol was used to start the fire, so some one must have done it on purpose. The Find-Outers have made up their minds that they will find out who has done this crime. Is that right?”

“Quite right, and very well put,” said Pip, at once. Buster wagged his tail hard. Fatty opened his mouth and began to speak in his high, affected voice.

“Well, I suggest that the first thing we do is to ...” But Larry interrupted him at once.

“I’m doing the talking, Fatty, not you,” he said. “Shut up!”

Fatty shut up but he didn’t look at all pleased about it. He put on a bored expression and rattled the money in his pocket.

“Now what we must do to find out who did the crime, is to discover who, if anyone, was near the workroom or in the garden that evening,” said Larry. “Fatty tells us he saw a tramp. Well, we must find that tramp and somehow try to discover if he had anything to do with the fire. There’s Mrs. Minns, the cook, too. We must find out about her.”

“Oughtn’t we to find out if anyone had a spite against Mr. Hick?” put in Daisy. “People don’t go burning down cottages just for fun. It must have been done to pay Mr. Hick out for something, don’t you think?”

“That’s a very good point, Daisy,” said Larry. “That’s one of the things we will have to discover—who had a spite against Mr. Hick.”

“I should think about a hundred people had,” said Pip. “Our gardener said that he’s got a very bad temper and nobody likes him.”

“Well, if we could find out if anyone with a spite was in the garden yesterday evening, we’ve as good as got the man!” said Larry.

“Also we must find clues,” put in Fatty who could not be quiet any longer.

“Glues,” said Bets joyfully. She loved the sound of that word. “What are glues?”

“Bets, you really are a baby,” said Pip. “It’s not glues, it’s clues.”

“Well, what are clues?” asked Bets.

“Clues are things that help us to find out what we want to know,” said Larry. “For instance, in a detective story I was reading the other day, a thief dropped a cigarette end in the shop he was burgling, and when the police picked it up, they found it was an unusual kind of cigarette. They went round trying to find out who smoked that kind, and when at last they found out, they had got the thief! So the cigarette end was a clue.”

“I see,” said Bets. “I shall find heaps of glues—I mean clues. I shall love that.”

“We must all keep our eyes and ears open for clues of any sort,” said Larry. “Now, for instance, we might find footprint clues. You know—footprints leading to the cottage made by the criminal.”

Fatty laughed scornfully. The others looked at him. “What’s the joke?” asked Larry coldly.

“Oh, nothing,” said Fatty. “It just made me laugh a bit when I thought of you hunting for footprints in Mr. Hick’s garden. There can’t be less than about a million, I should think—with all the people who were there watching the fire last night.”

Larry went red. He glared at Fatty’s round face, and Fatty grinned back.

“The man who started the fire might have been hiding in the hedge or somewhere, waiting for his chance,” said Larry. “Nobody went into the hedge last night. We might find footprints there, mightn’t we? In the ditch, where it’s muddy?”

“Yes, we might,” said Fatty. “But it’s no good looking for footprints leading to the cottage! Mine are there, and yours, and old Clear-Orf’s, and a hundred others.”

“I vote we don’t let Clear-Orf know we are solving the mystery,” said Pip.

“It’s his mystery!” said Daisy. “He’s as pleased as a dog with two tails because he’s got a real crime to solve.”

“Well, we’ll keep out of Clear-Orf’s way,” said Larry. “Won’t he look silly when we tell him who really did do it! Because I’m sure we shall find out, you know, if we all work together and try hard.”

“What shall we do for a beginning?” asked Pip, who was longing to do something.

“We must look for clues. We must find out more about the tramp in the torn mackintosh and old hat that Fatty saw,” said Larry. “We must find out if anyone has a spite against Mr. Hick. We must find out if anyone had the chance of getting into the workroom that day, to fire it.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to talk to Mrs. Minns, the cook,” said Daisy. “She would know if anyone had been about that day. And hasn’t Mr. Hick got another man-servant besides his chauffeur?”

“Yes, he’s got a valet, but I don’t know his name,” said Larry. “We’ll find out about him too. Golly, we’ve got a lot to do.”

“Let’s all go and look for glues first,” said Bets, who quite thought she would find all kinds of things round and about the burnt cottage, which would tell at once who the wrong-doer might be.

“Right,” said Larry, who rather wanted to hunt for clues himself. “Now, listen—we may be turned off if anyone sees us poking about at the bottom of Mr. Hick’s garden. So I shall drop a shilling somewhere, and if we are questioned I shall say I’ve dropped a shilling, and then they’ll think we are looking for it. It’ll be quite true—I shall drop a shilling!”

“All right,” said Pip, getting up. “Come on. Let’s go now—and after that I should think the next thing to do is for one of us to go and have a talk with Mrs. Minns. I bet she’ll be glad enough to jabber about everything. We might learn a lot of useful things from her.”

Buster leapt down from Larry’s knee, his tail wagging. “I believe he understood every word!” said Bets. “He’s just as keen to look for glues as we are!”

“You and your glues!” said Larry, laughing. “Come on, Find-Outers! This is going to be exciting!”