Casper Candlewacks in the Claws of Crime!

Dedication

For Zanzibar, my bell-ringing cat.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1 - Thief in the Night

Chapter 2 - Heaven-Scent

Chapter 3 - A Potted History of Sir Gossamer’s Sword

Chapter 4 - The Hunt Begins

Chapter 5 - Buns and Biscuits

Chapter 6 - First Encounter

Chapter 7 - Dawn of the Detectives

Chapter 8 - Babynapped!

Chapter 9 - House Calls

Chapter 10 - Tea at the Blossoms’

Chapter 11 - Grounded

Chapter 12 - The Funky Chicken

Chapter 13 - Blight Manor

Chapter 14 - The Cat

Chapter 15 - The Cat’s Tale

Chapter 17 - The Important Bit

Aftermath

More adventures with CASPER CANDLEWACKS

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Copyright

About the Publisher

Deep in the English countryside, in the peaceful valley of the river Kobb, lies a little village called Corne-on-the-Kobb. At first sight its pretty thatched cottages, winding lanes and quaint little cobbled square are no different from any other. But there’s something different about Corne-on-the-Kobb; something so wonderfully, uniquely different that someone should write a book about it. You see, Corne-on-the-Kobb is packed full of idiots.

The residents of Corne-on-the-Kobb would lose out in an IQ test against a mouldy peanut. They struggle to count to two, they howl at the moon, some of them have their names and addresses tattooed on their foreheads in case they wander off and need driving home. There are idiots in every home, idiots roaming the streets and an idiot pulling pints at the local pub. Corne-on-the-Kobb is so full of idiots that the government has declared it an area of outstanding natural stupidity and stopped sending it money or biscuits.

However, this story isn’t just about idiots. It’s also about bejewelled swords and cat burglars and boiled eggs and a boy who lives among the idiots, but forgot to be an idiot himself. But we’ll get to him. He’s in bed at the moment.

Midnight. Time for lunch. In a dusty candlelit room with a sagging ceiling, a wrinkled old woman reached into her plastic bag and pulled out something squidgy wrapped in newspaper. She wore a duffel coat with a woolly tea cosy on her head and thick red lipstick plastered all round her mouth. There she sat, alone in her wheelchair in the centre of the room, smacking her withered lips at the package in her hands. The old woman clawed the newspaper open, feasting her eyes on the oozing corned beef and jellybean sandwich within. One gleeful chomp with her toothless gums sent the meaty gunk splurging all over her trembling fingers and down the front of her duffel coat.

Torn shreds of newspaper drifted, forgotten, to the floor. ‘LE CHAT STRIKES AGA—’ said half of the ripped headline. More half-words and phrases settled on top: ‘—nother robbery…’ ‘…cat burgl—’ ‘—ver the head with a cricket b—’ ‘—ed by a single cat’s whisker…’ But the old woman couldn’t give a monkey’s armband. She only used the paper to wrap up her sandwiches.

Betty Woons was old. Really, really old. She was so old that barnacles lived between her toes and her wrinkles were protected by the National Trust. She was old enough to be your grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s… well, you get the point.

But Old Father Time had a bit of a job catching up with Betty. She spent her years zipping around the village on her turbo-powered electric wheelchair, knocking over unsuspecting villagers and doing flips off street corners.

Tonight Betty was on guard duty. Behind her, propped up in a smudgy glass cabinet, was the reason she was there: an ancient iron sword dripping from tip to hilt with dazzling rubies and sapphires. The priceless sword had once belonged to the statue of village founder Sir Gossamer D’Glaze in the Corne-on-the-Kobb village square. But two months ago, during what is now referred to in trembling tones as ‘The Donkey Disaster’, the statue was destroyed. Ever since that day the villagers of Corne-on-the-Kobb had been taking it in turns to watch over Sir Gossamer’s bejewelled sword, give it a daily jewel massage and read it a bedtime story.

Betty yawned and slurped the final chunks of jellybean from her gums. She hadn’t a clue why the old sword needed guarding anyway. Granted it had been a glorious trophy hundreds of years ago, but now half the rubies had fallen off and the end was chipped. Betty had been using it as a back scratcher for the past two months when nobody was looking.

There was a rapid knock at the vault door. Betty’s wrinkles wrinkled in wonder. Who could it be at this time of night? Nobody came knocking in Corne-on-the-Kobb in the middle of the night unless they were sleepwalking or they’d lost their house. Perplexed, Betty squeaked her wheelchair over to the door and pulled it open.

“Oh,” she croaked, “Hello, dear. What brings you out at this time of night?”

There was no answer, just a swift flash of white wood as the cricket bat swung down and spanked Betty on the top of her head. With a pitiful whimper she crumpled to the stone floor like a soggy bag of spuds.

The alarm didn’t wake Mayor Rattsbulge at first; he just wiped the dribble off his chin, grunted and rolled over. He was having a cracking dream about hog roasts, and really didn’t want to wake up before he’d reached the apple sauce. But then the noise seeped through the non-food part of his brain (a tiny section squeezed away behind the locum hamburgarium) and he leapt out of bed as if he was covered in bees. He threw on his extra-large dressing gown and blundered out of his extra-large bedroom on to the pitch-black landing, tripping over the banister and tumbling down the stairs. He bounced at the bottom (thanks to his six bowls of jelly for pudding) and landed rather gracefully on his blubbery feet. Mayor Rattsbulge rushed out of the front door, stopping only to grab a Cumberland sausage from the jar on the hall table. It took him a good three minutes to heave himself to the other side of the lamplit village square, where a small crowd of villagers in their pyjamas had gathered by the door to the village vault.

Audrey Snugglepuss, loud-mouthed village gossip and baker of cakes, strode forward angrily and flicked her nightcap out of her face. “For crying out loud, Mayor Rattsbulge, I’m trying to sleep,” she warbled.

“Here here,” sang Clemmie Answorth, a slightly younger, nervous-looking woman, completely peppered with bruises and still clutching her teddy. “What with all that racket, I fell out of my bed.” She did that a lot.

Mayor Rattsbulge wheezed and clutched his chest. “Ladies, please.” He leant on a lamp-post, but it buckled under his weight. “I’ve only just got here. Now, what’s the alarm?”

Mitch McMassive, the tiny landlord of the village pub The Horse and Horse, stuck his little hand in the air and squeaked, “Look, mayor.” He trotted forward to the heavy wooden door and gave its brass handle an almighty shove. It groaned open groggily on its rusty hinges.

The bolder villagers bundled through the door into the blackness, and tripped straight over an empty wheelchair. Clemmie Answorth screeched and tinkled through a glass cabinet, while all around dull thuds told stories of foreheads meeting walls and coming off the worse.

Audrey Snugglepuss fumbled for a light switch in the dark. Her first attempt found Mitch McMassive’s button nose, which snicked smartly out of joint and failed to make the room any lighter. She finally found the switch and the vault was plunged into dazzling amber light.

“My nose!” honked Mitch McMassive, through a crimson torrent running down his face. “I can smell blood!”

Betty Woons blinked awake and chuckled at all of the bodies rolling around her. “Oh, hello, dears,” she warbled. “What are we all doing on the floor? Sleepover, is it?”

Mayor Rattsbulge was the first to notice. “Oh, my sweet Lord…” he whispered, prodding a trembling finger towards the cabinet. “It’s… gone…”

Clemmie Answorth spluttered. “The sword’s gone?”

“Who used it last?”

“Well, I didn’t take it,” said Audrey Snugglepuss.

“What about my nose?” squeaked Mitch McMassive.

“SHUT UP!” bellowed the mayor. “Shut up and find it. Find my sword!”

The pyjama-clad crowd screamed and ran out into the moonlit square, searching under doormats and tipping over flowerpots. Meanwhile, back in the vault, village gardener Sandy Landscape (who’d watched three whole detective shows on telly so he knew what he was talking about) edged closer to the cabinet. “’Ere… mayor…”

“What is it?” sobbed Mayor Rattsbulge from behind his gravy-stained hanky.

“I found me summink. Look yer eyes on that.” Sandy’s grubby fingers reached into the cabinet and pulled out something black and wiry. He held it to the light, and gasped.

It was a single cat’s whisker.

“What is your name?”

“Casper Candlewacks.”

“How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“What is your favourite flavour of ice cream?”

Casper gritted his teeth and winced. “Mushroom ripple?”

KABOOM.

Clods of scorched yolk exploded over the garage, covering Casper, Lamp and every exposed garage surface in a stinking slimy film of egg.

“It worked!” cried Lamp.

Casper smeared the eggy grot from his face and grimaced. “Sort of…”

“Too powerful?”

“Too powerful.”

Lamp Flannigan scratched his chimney-brush hair, pulled a spanner from his boiler suit and set to work adjusting a nut deep inside the contraption.

As his friend tinkered away, Casper Candlewacks sat down on the floor and grinned to himself. Out of all the things to do on a baking hot August afternoon, he could think of nothing better than sitting in his best friend’s grimy garage, working on their latest invention and blasting a few dozen eggs to a few dozen smithereens. Casper had spent most of his summer in Lamp’s garage. It’s not that he didn’t like his own house, but things had got a little hectic recently.

Casper was a blonde-haired, keen-eyed scruffbag of an eleven-year-old. He didn’t have any superpowers, he hadn’t been to space and he’d not even slain a single vampire. In fact, until two months ago, Casper’s life was about as exciting as a six-hour guided tour of the Kobb Valley carrier bag factory and shop (where you can buy all the carrier bags you want, but they never have anything to put them in). But then he poisoned a magician, got his village cursed, got attacked by a flock of man-pecking pigeons, survived a high-speed road accident, swam through a sea of bubbles, destroyed a coriander festival and rode home on the back of a Shetland pony just in time to save his dad from certain death. (Apparently there’s a really good book about it too, but I haven’t read it.) You’d think that such heroic actions from such an ordinary boy would be rewarded with a medal, a national holiday or at least a pat on the back and a flapjack, but no, no, and one for luck – no. The idiots of Corne-on-the-Kobb ignored Casper Candlewacks like a bad smell in a lift. He could do brainy things like reading and writing; he could tie his own shoelaces and walk in straight lines. These things were beyond Corne-on-the-Kobb’s villagers, so they resented Casper and pretended he didn’t exist.

“Any more eggs?” asked Lamp.

“Loads.”

The latest additions to Lamp’s garage were Mavis and Bessie, two prize egg-laying hens. They had arrived unannounced at the front door two weeks ago, carrying little suitcases and claiming to be distant relatives. Lamp’s mum let them stay. All day long they strutted around eating grain, pecking visitors and laying dozens upon dozens of eggs. In fact, they laid so many eggs that every one of Lamp’s inventions over the last fortnight had involved the blasted things – be it the remote-controlled bacon detector or the hover-omelette.

If you hadn’t guessed, Lamp Flannigan was an inventor. He was also a short, podgy boy with a scrub of soot-black hair and a dongle of a nose that would be a fantastic door knocker, if it wasn’t made of skin and currently attached to a face. Lamp was an idiot too, but he wasn’t like any other idiot you’ll ever meet. His idiocy went off the scale, went all the way round and came out on the other end. Lamp thought in ways that normal people couldn’t (Casper suspected Lamp’s brain was made out of a substance not unlike fizzy mashed potato), so he spent his time building things: amazing, inexplicable things that you’d probably call impossible. Two months ago he’d driven Casper to Upper Crustenbury on a buggy that ran on washing-up liquid. Today, he was inventing a lie detector that used the power of dishonesty to boil an egg. It turns out, Casper had discovered, that inventing egg-boiling lie detectors is a messy old process.

KABOOM! Another egg-splosion rocked the garage, exuding a cloud of stinking yellow smoke that insulted Casper’s nostrils and sent Mavis and Bessie squawking back into their coop and slamming the door.

“Hello,” a mystery voice said.

Casper shrieked and whisked round, but the egg smog was thick and he couldn’t see a thing. “Who’s that?”

“My name’s Daisy,” the voice said. “Pleased to meet you.”

As the fug settled, Casper began to make out the shape of a girl, about his height, standing at the entrance to the garage. She had brown curly hair, big green eyes and the most beautiful smile Casper had ever seen. She wore a flowery green frock with a ribbon in the middle.

Mavis and Bessie poked their beaks out of the coop and clucked jealously at the intruder.

“What on earth are you doing?” The girl called Daisy looked round at the eggy mess of a garage and then pulled a face at Casper.

“We… uh…”

Lamp’s mouth was hanging open. He wiped the egg from his eyes and blinked. Then he shook his head and wiped his eyes again, but that just spread the egg back on. “Casper,” he whispered, “is she real?”

Casper jabbed an elbow into Lamp’s side. “I’m Casper,” he said to the visitor, “and he’s Lamp.”

“Did we make her?” Lamp eyed the lie detector with a face of complete bemusement and twiddled a knob on the side. “It’s not s’posed to do that,” he mumbled.

Daisy chuckled. “We only moved in a couple of weeks ago. I live down the road.” She trotted into the garage and picked up a clipboard, upon which Lamp had drawn a diagram of an egg, with labels pointing to its brain, spleen and vocal cords. Then she spotted the lie detector. Inside a large steel saucepan sat the engine from a leaf-blower, grumbling busily, turning oily cogs and rusty axles, all set round a small china dish in the middle to hold the egg. A trigger had been welded to the handle, and an antenna with a green golf visor poked out above the pan, rotating and beeping mechanically. “What’s that?”

“Do you like it?” asked Lamp, blushing.

“Well, I…”

“You can have it if you want.” He picked it up and handed it to Daisy.

“I don’t really…”

“Come on, Lamp,” said Casper. “Put it down.”

Lamp sniffed and plonked the pan back on the table.

By now the hens had emerged and were pecking at Daisy’s ankles.

“It’s a lie detector,” said Casper. “Lamp’s an inventor.”

Lamp grinned at Daisy. “An inventor means you invent things.” He pointed at his watch, which was made of chocolate. (It tells you when it’s time to eat it.)

“Does it work?” asked Daisy, motioning to the lie detector.

“Sort of,” said Casper. He remembered that he was covered in egg and blushed.

A female voice floated in from outside. “Daisy, darling?”

“That’s my mum,” said Daisy. Then she called, “Mum, in here. I’ve made some friends.”

Round the corner swept a tall, glamorous woman with the same curly brown hair and bright green eyes, wearing a flowing blue dress and a floral brooch. She flashed a ravishing smile, the sort of smile that would melt the heart of even the frostiest snowman.

Lamp fell over.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was cool and refreshing. “I’m Lavender. Lavender Blossom.” She reached out her hand, which Casper shook despite the egginess of his own. “You’ve met my daughter Daisy.”

“H-hello,” Casper stammered. They’d never allowed females in the garage, let alone beautiful ones, and this was exactly why. What were you supposed to do with them? He thought about offering his guests a seat or a cup of tea, but the garage didn’t have either. Lamp, crimson-cheeked and breathless, took one more look at the visitors and then scrabbled away on all fours to the back of the garage to tinker about with a driveshaft.

“Do you want some help?” asked Daisy. “I’m good at—”

“Now, now, Daisy,” Lavender interrupted. “We don’t want to interfere.” She placed her hand on Daisy’s shoulder and smiled gently at Casper.

“So… um… what brings you to Corne-on-the-Kobb?” said Casper, relieved to have thought of something to say.

“We own the flower shop,” Daisy chirped.

“Flower shop?” Casper laughed.

“Yeah.”

Lavender looked ruffled. “We opened two weeks ago.”

“Really? In Corne-on-the-Kobb?”

Lavender reached into her dress pocket, pulled out a little flowery business card and handed it to Casper. It read:

Blossom’s Bloomers

‘They’re Heaven-Scent.’

Visit us on the corner of the village square, next to the sweet shop.

Casper nodded and stuffed the business card into his pocket. “Sorry, I hadn’t heard of you. We spend a lot of time in this garage, don’t we, Lamp?”

Lamp squeaked.

“That’s OK,” said Lavender. “Drop in if you’re passing. We’ve got a summer sale on.”

“If you buy a full bunch, you’ll save a whole bunch!” sang Daisy.

“Sounds good. I’ll… um… definitely buy a full bunch then.”

“Will you? That’s brilliant!” Daisy skipped forward and planted a kiss on Casper’s cheek.

“Right then, darling, plenty more of those cards to hand out before tea time.” Lavender wrinkled her nose cheekily at the boys and sauntered out of the garage.

Daisy skipped into the sunshine in pursuit of her mother, stopping to chirp, “Nice to meet you,” before disappearing round the corner.

The garage was quiet again. Lamp shuffled towards Casper with a worried sort of face on. “Casper?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t feel my feet and my heart’s gone thumpy. What’s wrong with me?”

“I think you’re in love, Lamp.”

“Oh…” Lamp mouthed the word ‘love’ to himself a few times, and then wrote it down on his clipboard. “Is that bad?”

“I don’t really know,” said Casper. “I hope not.”

The boys worked in silence for about an hour and a half, disturbed only by the occasional clink of cogs or the whirr and crackle of Lamp’s hamster running furiously on its electric wheel. But gradually another noise swelled in the distance, a mix of yelling and clanging and stamping of feet. As the sound grew louder, Casper could make out the frantic ringing of a bell and the screams of a lady who must have been either very upset about something or a terrible singer. The boys scurried outside and were presented with the sight of that nervous wreck Clemmie Answorth tearing down the road at full speed, swinging a bell precariously round her head.

“HEAR YE,” she screamed. “HEAR YE!”

Casper and Lamp leapt back as Clemmie thundered straight past them, clanging her bell in their faces as she passed. She reached the end of the street, tripped over, sprang to her feet and raced back again. More villagers had appeared at their front doors now.

“I SAID, HEAR YE!” There was a rip in Clemmie’s skirt and she was missing a shoe. “MAYOR RATTSBULGE…” – she was quite out of breath – “REQUIRES YOUR PRESENCE… Oh, dear.” Sandy Landscape gave her a full watering can and she drank gratefully. “Thank you. IN THE VILLAGE SQUARE, AT ONCE!”

She dropped the bell, chased it down again and clanged off in the direction she’d come from.

“Ooh, are we getting presents?” Lamp’s face perked up.

“No, she said ‘presence’. We’re meant to go to the village square.”

“Not even one little present?”

“Perhaps something even better, Lamp.” Casper felt a surge of excitement like he’d not felt for exactly two months. “Let’s go and have a look,” he said. And so they did.

However, their peace was disturbed when the band of villains returned, demanding a refund for their horse, since it had broken down and they didn’t carry a spare. But the young knight muttered those famous words, “Hast thou a receipt?” and slew the leader with his gigantic iron sword. Then with the help of his eighteen fishy children he rounded up the rest of the band, wrapped them all up in a brown paper parcel and posted them to Norway. They were never seen or heard of again. Then, to celebrate, the young knight popped down to the shops and spent his pocket money on some priceless rubies and emeralds and a pot of glue, and stuck them all on to his sword.