 . 30       .  B1B2
 


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 . 30       .  B1B2



THE ASHCOMBE

MYSTERIES

 

30    

    

 B1B2




Contents  


How to Read This Book       

PART ONE  B1

Case 1  The Vanishing Victoria Sponge     

Case 2  The Book That Kept Coming Back    ,   

Case 3  Postcards from Sydney      

Case 4  The Dog Who Didn't Bark    ,   

Case 5  The 10:15 from Bristol     10:15  

Case 6  The Travelling Gnomes    -

Case 7  Flour on the Stairs      

Case 8  The Letters with No Name      

Case 9  Room 12     

Case 10  The Locked Shed     

Case 11  The Clock in the Painting      

Case 12  The Dog Who Went Home    ϸ,   

Case 13  The Ring at Ashcombe Hall      -

Case 14  Footprints in the Snow      

Case 15  The Fortune Teller    

PART TWO  B2

Case 16  The Colonel's Crossword     

Case 17  The Return Ticket     

Case 18  The Ghost of Ashcombe Hall     -

Case 19  The Professor Who Disappeared    ,  

Case 20  The Scone Secret     

Case 21  Murder Mystery Weekend     

Case 22  The Missing Hall Fund      

Case 23  Fog on the Ferry      

Case 24  Letters in the Wall      

Case 25  Tom in Trouble      

Case 26  The Parrot Who Knew Too Much    ,    

Case 27  The Lost Letter of Jane Austen       

Case 28  The Night Train to Inverness       

Case 29  The Return of Mr Grey      

Case 30  The Last Page     




How to Read This Book


   

This is a collection of thirty short detective stories, one for every evening of the month, written for people who are learning English at levels B1 and B2. Every story is told twice: once in English, and once in a natural, literary Russian translation. It is not a word-for-word translation, but a text that reads as if a Russian author had written it from the start.

             ,    ,      B1  B2.    :   -         .   :   ,          .

All thirty cases are solved by the same person: Ruth Calloway, thirty-five, who used to write crosswords for a London newspaper and now runs a second-hand bookshop in Ashcombe, a small, quiet town in the south-west of England. She notices small things  a wrong date, a missing postmark, a word that doesn't belong  and she is helped, and sometimes hindered, by her old school friend, Detective Sergeant Tom Okafor, and by a black cat called Comma.

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The stories become more difficult as the book goes on. Cases 115 are written for level B1: the sentences are shorter, the vocabulary is everyday, and the plots are simple. Cases 1630 are written for level B2: they are longer, the language is richer, and the mysteries are more complicated. Every case is a fair puzzle  all the clues are in the text before Ruth explains them, so you can try to solve it yourself.

  .  115    B1:  ,  ,  .  1630    B2:  ,  ,  .     :      ,    ,       .

The book is made of short alternating blocks: a paragraph in English, and immediately after it the same paragraph in Russian, in italics. This means you never have to turn to the back of the book or look for a separate section to check something  the translation is always right under the original.

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There is no single right way to read this book, but here is a way that works for many readers. First read the whole English paragraph, even if a word or a sentence is not clear  try to guess the meaning from the context before you look down. Then read the Russian paragraph underneath, not to translate word for word, but simply to check that you understood, or to clear up one or two things you missed. Move on to the next block and repeat.

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If you feel more confident, try reading the whole case in English first, from beginning to end, without looking down  and see whether you can find the answer before Ruth does. Then go through the Russian and check the places where you were unsure. In any case, don't expect to understand everything the first time. At levels B1 and B2 it is quite enough to follow the story and enjoy the mystery. That is exactly what these stories were written for.

   ,      -    ,   ,   ,      .         ,   .          .   B1  B2          .       .



PART ONE  B1

    115



CASE 1




The Vanishing Victoria Sponge


 

Ruth Calloway had grown up in Ashcombe, left it at eighteen for London, and come back at thirty-three, when her Aunt Edie left her a bookshop. In the two years since then, nothing very exciting had happened in the town. That was exactly why she liked it.

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Ashcombe was a small market town in the south-west of England, with one high street, two pubs, a church with a clock that was always four minutes slow, and a second-hand bookshop with a green door. The bookshop was now hers. Above the door, in gold letters, it said CALLOWAY'S BOOKS, and inside it smelled of old paper, coffee and cat.

      - :   ,  ,   ,      ,      .    .       CALLOWAY'S BOOKS,     ,   .

The cat had come with the shop. His name was Comma. He was black, with one white spot under his chin, and he spent most of the day asleep in the window between the poetry and the travel books.

     .     - .   ,     ,           .

Before the bookshop, Ruth had written crosswords for a national newspaper for ten years, and she still sent them one a week. She was thirty-five now, with dark curly hair that never stayed tidy, and she could not read a sign, a menu or a shopping list without noticing the small mistakes in it. "It's a professional illness," she liked to say. "Once you start looking for clues, you never stop."

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On the second Saturday of July, the whole town went to the Ashcombe Summer Show in the village hall. There were prizes for the biggest vegetables, the prettiest flowers and the best jam, but the most important prize of all was for the Victoria sponge.

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For five years, the winner had always been the same person: Mrs Margaret Hale from Church Lane. Her cake was famous. It was tall and light, with raspberry jam and fresh cream in the middle and a dusting of sugar on top.

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Ruth met Margaret that morning at the Copper Kettle, the caf opposite her shop. Margaret put on her reading glasses, which hung on a thin gold chain around her neck, studied the menu for a long time and then ordered what she always ordered: a coffee to take away. As usual, she talked a little too fast. "I was up at five," she said. "And everything in my kitchen is new! My daughter gave me a set of jars for my birthday  all white, all exactly the same. Very modern. I still can't find anything."

             .     ,          ,   ,     ,   ,    .  ,  ,  ,  .    ,   .         !          ,   .  .       .

At half past ten, the cakes stood on a long table at the back of the hall, next to the door that led out to the car park. Each one sat on a white plate with a numbered card beside it. Margaret's was number seven. The judging was at twelve o'clock.

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Ruth walked slowly around the hall with a cup of tea. She admired the carrots, which were enormous, and the roses, which were beautiful. Near the cake table she noticed a small boy of about eight. He had red hair and a very unhappy face, and he was drinking orange juice as fast as he could, one glass after another.

      .      .           ,    .      ,   ,   .

At twenty to twelve, there was a scream.

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Margaret Hale was standing by the cake table with both hands on her face. Plate number seven was empty. There was nothing on it, not even a crumb. "My cake!" she cried. "Someone has stolen my cake!"

      ,    .        ,   .   !   .  -   !

Everyone in the hall turned round, and people started talking all at once. Some of them looked at Mrs Dorothy Finch, who had come second every year for five years. Mrs Finch went very red. "Don't look at me," she said. "I've been at the jam table all morning. Ask anyone."

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A tall man of about her age, with a kind face, came through the crowd. It was Tom Okafor, a detective sergeant with the local police; Ruth had known him since primary school. He was not working today  he was at the show with his mother, who had entered her tomatoes  but when there was trouble in Ashcombe, people always looked for Tom.

         .    ,   ,        .            ,      ,       ,       .

"When did you last see the cake, Mrs Hale?" he asked. "At half past eleven. It was perfect. Then I went out to the car to get my reading glasses, and when I came back  it was gone!"

       ,  ?   .    .   .         ,        !

Tom wrote this down in a small black notebook. Ruth, meanwhile, was looking at Margaret: at her red face, at her shaking hands, and at the reading glasses that hung, as always, on the thin gold chain around her neck.

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Then she went to look for the red-haired boy. He was sitting on the steps outside the hall, still holding a glass of juice. "Hello," said Ruth, and sat down next to him. "I'm Ruth. I have the bookshop with the cat in the window." "I know," said the boy. "I'm Oliver. I like your cat."

     .      ,       .  ,      .   .   ,    .  ,   .   .    .

"Oliver, you look like someone who has eaten something terrible." Oliver looked down at his shoes. "I only took a very small piece," he said quietly. "From the corner. Of number seven. Everyone says it's the best cake in the world." He made a face. "It tasted like the sea."

 ,    ,   - .     .     -,    .   .   .  ,      .   .        .

"Did anyone see you?" "The cake lady did. I said sorry. I told her it was salty. She tried a bit too, and then her face went all white." Oliver drank some more juice. "Am I going to prison?" "Not today," said Ruth. "Thank you, Oliver. You've been very helpful."

  - ?  Ҹ,   .  .  ,   .    ,       .     .     ?    ,   .  , .    .

Ruth walked round to the car park. Margaret's little blue car was standing under a tree. Ruth did not open it, of course. She did not need to: through the back window she could see a large round cake tin on the seat.

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She went back inside and found Margaret alone in the little kitchen behind the stage, sitting on a plastic chair with a cup of tea that she was not drinking. "Margaret," Ruth said gently, "all your new jars are white, and they all look the same. Which one did you use for the sugar this morning?"

            :        ,      .  ,    ,         .       ?

For a long moment, Margaret said nothing. Then she put her face in her hands, and this time she was not acting. "The one on the left," she said. "I always keep the sugar on the left. But my daughter put the salt there. Oh, Ruth  six eggs, two hundred grams of salt, and the whole town was going to eat it!"

  .            .   ,   .      .     . , ,  ,          !

"So you hid it in your car and told everyone it was stolen." "I couldn't tell them I'd made a salt cake! Five years I've won. Five years!" She looked up. "How did you know?"

      ,   ,   .      ,    !    .  !    .    ?

"Three things," said Ruth. "First, your new jars  you told me about them this morning. Second, a boy who says your cake tastes like the sea. And third, your glasses." She pointed at the gold chain. "You've worn them round your neck for as long as I can remember. You didn't need to go to the car for your glasses, Margaret. You needed to go to the car for something else."

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Margaret laughed  a small, wet laugh. "You and your clues." "Professional illness," said Ruth.

   ,  .     .   ,   .

In the end, Margaret told the judges the truth herself. A few people laughed, but most of them were kind. Mrs Dorothy Finch won the prize for the first time in her life and was so happy that she cried. Tom closed his notebook and said it was the shortest case of his career.

       . - ,      -.            ,  .      ,         .

That evening, as Ruth was locking the green door of her shop, she found a small paper bag on the step. Inside was a slice of cake  tall and light, with jam and cream in the middle  and a note: "With sugar this time. Thank you. M."

,    ,       .       , ,        :     . . ..

Ruth took the cake inside, gave Comma a little of the cream, and thought that perhaps Ashcombe was a little more exciting than she had believed.

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