Dead Funny (9 page)

Turning the corner was the difficult bit. When the door reached the end of the first flight of stairs it hit the wall with a sickening thud and Len crumpled like a concertina. I leapt down after him, thanking my lucky stars that I’d put him on the door feet first because otherwise it would have been his head that had hit the wall. Heaving the door around the corner I launched him once again, and waited for him to hit the wall below. Hoping desperately that the violent bumping and crunching wasn’t going to kill him, I sped down.

We’d done three bone-shaking, exhausting flights of stairs when other tenants started appearing, fleeing for their lives with their most precious possessions clasped in their arms. I was so glad to see other living, breathing people that I could have wept. And when two of them dropped what they were carrying and picked Len up as if he was on a stretcher, tears of gratitude flowed down my sooty face. As we ran down the stairs there came the miraculous sound of sirens. Flashing blue lights bounced off the walls, and several burly firemen appeared through the smoke. Hoisting him over a shoulder, one took Len to safety. And then there was Graham – running
into
a burning building to find me – shouting, “I told the police! I saw Toby coming out and I phoned them. Are you OK?”

I managed to give Graham a reassuring smile as, just before I fell into unconsciousness, I was hoisted off the ground and carried from 1171 Orangeblossom Boulevard in the arms of the biggest fireman I’d ever seen.

The
first thing I thought when I came round was “Ouch!” closely followed by, “Where’s Graham?” and “Where’s Len?” and then, frantically, “Where’s Toby?”

I was on a bed, and my back was screaming with pain. I knew from the antiseptic smell and the faint beeping of medical machinery that I was in a hospital. When I opened my eyes, the blotchy face of my weeping mother slowly came into focus.

“Don’t cry, I’m fine,” I said, my voice sounding scratchy and dry.

“Thank God!” said Mum furiously. “How could you? What were you thinking, trying to get yourself killed like that?”

“Where’s Toby?”

It was Graham that answered. “At the police station. Lieutenant Weinburger has taken him in for questioning.”

I nodded. “Good.”

“The lieutenant wants to talk to you,” Mum told me. “As soon as you wake up, he said. There are things he needs to double-check.”

“Fine,” I replied. “Send him in. But first… Is Mr Radstock all right?”

“He’s still out cold, but he’ll pull through, apparently. I wish I understood what on earth’s been going on.”

When he came in to see me, Lieutenant Weinburger got straight to the point.

“OK, kid,” he said. “Give me the full story.”

I told him what had happened in the apartment, filling in the bits that Graham hadn’t been able to tell him. “Who benefits? That’s what we wondered,” I finished. “And we had the answer all along. I just feel so stupid for not seeing it before.”

“But you had it all worked out,” said Mum, mystified. “The clues… The Punch and Judy show… I don’t get it.”

“It was a trick,” I said. “I should have realized. I mean, Baby Sugarcandy wasn’t scared of Len Radstock like Toby said. She loved Punch and Judy – she had those red-and-white curtains; she was wearing that red-and-white sash on her dress. She called her daughter Judy, for heaven’s sake! And her son Toby – that’s the name of the Punch and Judy dog. You wouldn’t do that if you wanted to wipe out the past. She must have told Toby about the show when he was little – that’s why he knew so much about it.” I heaved a deep sigh of regret. “There was always something wrong about those murders. I wish I’d spotted it earlier. If you really wanted to kill someone, why would you advertise it like that? You might as well wear a big flashing badge saying
ARREST ME
. The drowning in the toilet, the throwing down the stairs, the sausages and everything… It was all pointing a great big arrow at the murderer, only it was pointing in the wrong direction. And that’s my fault. If I’d spotted it sooner, maybe Sylvia wouldn’t have died.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that, kid,” said Lieutenant Weinburger.

“But I do,” I said. “I should have seen that they didn’t quite add up. I mean, it’s Punch’s
baby
that goes down the toilet, not an old woman. And Judy is Punch’s
wife
and she doesn’t get strangled with sausages. She never even
meets
the crocodile! As for that policeman’s helmet – well, Sylvia wasn’t a policeman, was she? It just didn’t fit with the proper show. A
real
Punch and Judy man wouldn’t make those sorts of mistakes!”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Lieutenant Weinburger.

“But it was,” I protested. “The whole plan wouldn’t have worked without me.”

“Don’t be silly, Poppy,” said Mum. “How could you possibly be part of it?”

“Do you remember that photograph? The one at the Chelsea Flower Show?” I asked. Mum nodded. “Sylvia had drawn a circle around my head, hadn’t she? Not yours. And she made sure I invited a friend along too. Toby wanted us over here, but it wasn’t anything to do with the garden. For all we know Baby Sugarcandy didn’t even know we were coming – it was Sylvia who made the arrangements, wasn’t it?”

Mum nodded but didn’t speak.

“The important thing as far as Toby was concerned was to get a couple of English kids over here – ones who would make the link between the weirdness of the murders and the Punch and Judy show. Graham and I were fed big obvious clues until it fell into place. They used us to frame Len Radstock. And then Toby planned to kill him before anyone could find out he was innocent. He triggered that great big explosion so it would look as though Len had topped himself as the grand finale to his murder spree.”

“Can you convict Toby?” Mum demanded. “I mean, will you be able to find enough evidence?”

“Sure we will,” the lieutenant said. “Arson. Attempted murder. That’s not a bad beginning. We’ve got witnesses to that. As for the other murders, he’ll have left a paper trail – receipts, letters, phone records. We’ll do the ninety-nine per cent, kid.” Suddenly, unexpectedly, he winked at me and grinned. “And my guess is that Sylvia would have told someone she was planning to marry him – her mother, perhaps, a sister, a friend. There’ll be someone who can testify that they had a relationship. Some way, somehow, we’ll get what we need to put him away for a very long time.”

The next day I was well enough to get up, and Graham and I went to visit Len Radstock in his hospital bed. He was sitting bolt upright, wearing a pair of red-and-white striped pyjamas and reading
The Times
. As soon as he saw us, he folded his newspaper and extended an arm.

“I believe I owe you my life,” he said, shaking my hand.

“I believe I owe you mine, too.” I smiled back at him. “Thank you for untying me. I’m sorry I had to shove you down the stairs like that. Did it give you a very bad headache?”

“It was a bit of a bone-shaker, but don’t you worry. I’m just glad to be alive.” He looked down for a moment and then said quietly, “I only wish Biddy was too.”

There was a long pause, and then Len said, “I followed her career, you know, watched all her films, bought all her records. I was so thrilled when she wrote back to me saying she wanted to see me. Of course I don’t know now if it was really she who wrote the letter or if it was forged by that secretary of hers. It was Sylvia who arranged our meeting. I got myself spruced up, red buttonhole and everything just like I’d worn at our wedding. Sylvia had sent me a key so that I could let myself in. But when I got there I saw…” His voice dwindled to nothing. When he started speaking again it was in no more than a faint whisper. “I could see how she’d been killed. Wet hair … that smell of toilet cleaner. That dear, delicate creature destroyed! I knew then that I’d been set up. I just ran. Cowardly of me, I suppose, but I was terribly shocked. I’d been so desperate to see her once more, and then to lose her all over again! I came straight back to the apartment and wept. And when I saw that her daughter had been killed I knew I would be blamed for that too. ‘The Punch and Judy murderer!’ I knew whoever was doing it would eventually come for me. Frankly I was beyond caring.”

“You know,” I said carefully, “if it’s any consolation I don’t think Sylvia did forge that letter. I think Biddy did want to see you.”

The hope in Len Radstock’s face was heartbreaking. “Do you? It would mean so much to think she still cared.”

“Yes,” I continued. “She was wearing that red-and-white sash, wasn’t she? She was all dressed up – like she was seeing someone really important. As if she was excited about it, and wanted to impress whoever it was. I thought she looked like she was about to step on to a red carpet.”

“She did. She was so beautiful.”

“Well, she did that for you. That bit was real.”

“It would be a great comfort to know she thought fondly of me. I do hope you’re right.”

“I know I am.” I handed him a crumpled photograph. “The police found this tucked beneath her pillow. She must have looked at it every night before she fell asleep.”

Len Radstock didn’t answer. He took the photograph, in which a youthful version of himself was standing on a sandy beach with his arm around a woman who was as pretty as a china doll. A radiant smile lit up Len’s face like sunshine after a storm.

Graham and I crept quietly away. We could see that Len Radstock was lost in happy memories, and we didn’t want to disturb him.

There’s not much to add, really. We were allowed home on the next plane much to Mum’s relief. We had to go back to the States when Toby’s trial started and by then the police had managed to unearth a whole load of bad stuff about him. They discovered he hadn’t been saving the South American rainforests at all – he’d been dealing in drugs and was involved in all kinds of organized crime. So what with my evidence, and Graham’s and Len’s and everything else they found out, they banged him up and practically threw away the key. And it seemed that all his scheming and plotting had been a total waste of time in any case. When they read Baby Sugarcandy’s will they discovered that she’d changed it a couple of months before she’d died. It turned out that she’d left all her worldly goods to The Last Slapstick – a luxurious rest home for retired puppeteers.

Tanya Landman is the author of many books for children including
Waking Merlin
and
Merlin’s Apprentice, The World’s Bellybutton
and
The Kraken Snores
, and three stories featuring the characters Flotsam and Jetsam. Of
Dead Funny
Tanya writes, “I’ve always found Hollywood fascinating. How can you know who’s telling the truth and who’s acting? Who’s real and who’s fake? It occurred to me that Beverly Hills would make a great backdrop for a murder mystery.”

Tanya is the author of two novels for teenagers:
Apache
, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize, and
The Goldsmith’s Daughter
, which was nominated for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Since 1992, she has also been part of Storybox Theatre. She lives with her family in Devon.

You can find out more about Tanya Landman and her books by visiting her website at
www.tanyalandman.com