Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy (10 page)

BOOK: Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy
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Being on time had never been Percy Late’s big talent (plate spinning wasn’t Percy Late’s big talent either, but let’s not be mean). Fizz was hoping he’d be late today (Late, that is, not Fizz), but Late wasn’t late, he was on time for once, which meant, as fast as Fizz ran, he got to Late too late to save Late from his fate. If only Late had been late today, Fizz thought, he would’ve been on time.

He skidded to a stop to find Percy Late surrounded by Lord Barboozul and a pair of clowns. (They were the last two clowns in the circus who still had their good health and full use of costume, nose and custard: Bongo Bongoton, the mime who taught Fizz English, and Unnecessary Sid, who nobody noticed very much. Normally Sid just stood at the back in the clown routines holding a spare bucket of whitewash, looking at his feet (which took quite a while since, like the feet of most clowns, they were enormous).)

Percy Late was sitting on the floor in the middle of a circle of broken crockery.

 

 

Lord Barboozul bent down beside Percy and held out his hand.

‘So sorry, old chap,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t see you there. I hope you’re not hurt. No bones broken?’

‘No bones, only bone china,’ said Unnecessary Sid from over his shoulder.

Fizz tugged Bongo Bongoton’s sleeve and asked the silent clown what had happened.

Bongo made a spinning motion in the air with one finger, leant back and looked up at where an imaginary plate was twirling majestically above him. Then he held one hand in front of his chin, with the fingers dangling down and fidgeting like seaweed in the swell of the sea, and pretended to walk along. He made the motion of opening a big newspaper and kept walking on the spot while pretending to read it, and then finally he brought his hands together in a banging clap and fell over, folding his arms over his head to protect him from falling imaginary crockery.

‘Thanks,’ Fizz said, ‘that was all I needed to know.’

Percy Late was up on his feet now, dusting down his jacket.

‘I’m so sorry about your plate, Mr Late,’ whispered Lord Barboozul.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Percy answered, ‘I’ve got dozens of them in there.’ He threw his thumb over his shoulder to indicate his caravan. ‘I’m always breaking them.’

Fizz watched Lord Barboozul’s face very carefully as this information was given, and he was sure he saw a tiny twitch of the cheek. Or he thought he was sure. But then he
wasn’t
sure, because the bearded man smiled and slapped Percy Late on the back, saying, ‘Well, that’s jolly good luck for you, isn’t it? Jolly good luck indeed. I’ll make a note to remind me to tell my wife. She’ll be delighted to know that. She’s a big fan of yours.’

‘Really?’ said Percy, cheering up. ‘Lady Barboozul likes
my
act? You mean
your
Lady Barboozul? With the . . . ? Wow!’

And then the stupid man blushed.

‘Keep up the good work, and the plates,’ Lord Barboozul said, and he patted Percy on the back again and trotted off, whistling into his beard.

Well, Fizz clearly wasn’t going to get any evidence here, so he wandered back to Dr Surprise’s caravan to talk over what he had found with the mind reader.

 

‘I don’t believe it,’ Dr Surprise said when Fizz told him his theory. ‘She’s such a nice woman.’

‘No,’ said Fizz. ‘She’s so not! She stole my mum’s nose, and tickled my dad so his back went. And how do you explain the fur ball?’

‘Well, it was probably an accident,’ Dr Surprise said. ‘Flopples probably swallowed it by mistake. She’ll nibble anything she can find. See, that’s your mystery solved.’

Fizz folded his arms. ‘I don’t believe that, and neither do you,’ he said.

‘But, think about it Fizz. Supposing you’re right, tell me,
why
is she doing this? Why upset poor Flopples? Why steal Gloria’s nose?’

By now Flopples had regained some of her own colour (the vet had given her some large pointy orange pills) and had nibbled the corner of a piece of lettuce fudge. She was going to be alright, but she wasn’t up to performing yet. Dr Surprise was still out of the show.

‘I don’t know, Dr Surprise, but I will find out. That’s why I came to see you. I thought you’d help. You’re the mind-reader. If we get close to her, can you read her mind and find out? Could you see what she’s thinking?’

‘Oh Fizz, would that I could, but it doesn’t work like that.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not a very good mind reader, not when it comes to actually looking
inside
. I’m just a showman. I do tricks. What you need to do is to get her to talk. That’s the easiest way of seeing inside someone’s mind. You just ask them.’

‘But she’ll never say,’ said Fizz. ‘She’s not stupid, is she?’

‘I don’t think so. I mean you’ve seen their act. That’s not the act of a stupid person, Fizz. You’ll need the brain of a Sherlock Holmes to catch her out. Not that I think she’s done anything wrong.’

‘Dr Surprise,’ Fizz said after a moment. ‘You know you said you couldn’t see inside her head? Well, that’s given me an idea. If we can’t get in her head, I think there’s somewhere else I
can
get in.’

Fizz looked around, as if to make sure they weren’t overheard and leant in closer to tell Dr Surprise the idea that had just appeared in his brain.

 

I won’t tell you what it is, because that wouldn’t be good storytelling. Knowing me, I’ll probably explain it all in the next chapter anyway. But right now, I’m going to have a cup of tea and a biscuit. The kind with chocolate on the top (biscuit, not tea, that is). Or if I can’t find one of those, then maybe a pink wafer, or possibly a ginger nut, but almost certainly not a cat biscuit, unless I make a terrible mistake in my use of the biscuit barrel. But I’ve got quite a lot of biscuit barrel experience under my belt and very, very rarely make such mistakes, so don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. (Unless the next chapter begins with a ‘Meow’, in which case, please send for the vet.)

Chapter Nine

In which a caravan is searched and in which a conversation is overheard

Fizzlebert Stump was creeping. On tiptoe. With his shoulders down as low as they could go and with his hands held up like little paws. (No one knows why tiptoeing people hold their hands up like little paws, but it always seems to work better that way.)

He was edging round the corner of the Barboozuls’ caravan.

Dr Surprise’s quavering voice was coming from the other side.

‘Um,’ it said. ‘Lady Barboozul? Your Lordship? I’ve got a note for you.’

‘A note?’

That was Lady Barboozul’s voice.

‘Er, yes, Your Ladyship,’ Dr Surprise said before quickly walking off.

Fizz listened closely as one of the Barboozuls opened the envelope the Doctor had delivered.

‘What is it?’ said Lord Barboozul.

‘The Ringmaster,’ said his wife. ‘He wants to speak to us in his office.’

‘What about?’

‘The silly man doesn’t say. Still, we’d better go see what this is all about.’

Fizz heard the two Barboozuls walk off into the maze of tents and caravans. The Ringmaster’s office was right over the other side of the circus. With any luck he’d have at least ten minutes before they came back.

He crept round to the front, went up the steps, looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, and tried the door.

It was unlocked and he slipped inside.

The Barboozuls’ caravan was bigger than the one he lived in with his parents. It was neater too.

The front door opened into a little passage. On one side was the kitchen and dining room, on the other side were a pair of bedrooms. Opposite him another door opened into a little toilet and shower room.

He left the bedrooms for later and crept mouse-like into the kitchen.

Plates were neatly stacked on the draining board and there were flowers in a vase on the table. He had been hoping to see a pile of clowns’ noses and a pair of large false teeth, with a note attached saying, ‘
We done it, guv. It’s a fair cop!
’ but he wasn’t so lucky.

The first thing he did was open the kitchen drawers and rummage through them. He had to be as neat as he could, but still be quick about it, while all the time keeping an ear open for the Barboozuls coming back, and an eye open for clues. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

In the bottom drawer were tea towels. In the top drawer were, as is normal, the knives and forks, but in the middle one was a whole stack of letters and bits of paperwork.

After a quick glance out the window to make sure no one was coming (they had net curtains up, which made it easier to not be noticed inside, but also made it harder to notice what was going on outside, since you had to either squint to see through one of the lacy holes, or lift up the corner and have a look), Fizz heaved the pile of papers onto the kitchen table.

They were bills and letters and boring bits and bobs that didn’t interest him.

As far as he could see none of them said, ‘
This is why we’ve got it in for the circus, signed Lord & Lady Barboozul
’. It was getting annoying. He’d wasted a good few minutes rooting through that heap.

He put the letters back as neatly as he could and continued looking round the room.

The cupboards were filled with saucepans and tins cans and crockery and all the usual stuff you find in a kitchen, none of which was of any use to him. That was more time wasted. He looked at the clock above the sink. The hands had moved round faster than he expected. He’d have to be even quicker now, searching the rest of the caravan.

The last place to look, in the kitchen, was a big old trunk pushed up against the far wall. When Fizz managed to get the heavy lid up he found it empty except for some old black rag rugs.

Or at least that’s what Fizz thought they were at first.

When he looked closer and lifted one of the ‘rugs’ up it seemed to be made of long black thick hairs, like a wig.

Growing up in the circus he had seen plenty of wigs, but never one quite like this.

For one thing it was long and pretty raggedy, but odder than that was the fact that there didn’t seem to be any way to put it on your head. Normally the top of a wig is a bit like an elastic shower cap: it goes on your head like a hat and the hair hangs down. But this wig didn’t have anything like that. Instead all the hair was threaded onto a sort of semi-circle of thin material, which had a hole in it. How was that supposed to stay on? he thought.

 

 

And then slowly his brain caught up. The semi-circle was a little tacky to the touch. Not sticky
now
, but it gave him the idea that it had been sticky
before
, and then it all fell into place. This wasn’t a wig of
head
hair, or not the head hair you normally found on a wig. It was a beard. A fake beard that someone stuck on their chin. The hole was obviously for the mouth.

Of all the things Fizz had thought about them, he’d never suspected that the Barboozuls weren’t
actual
bearded people. Never mind all the robbing and breaking and poisoning he reckoned they’d done, which was bad enough, of course, but pretending to have beards . . . Why, that really was the last straw. (No wonder Wystan insisted they eat on their own, if their beards might fall off at any moment.)

BOOK: Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy
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