Edie Amelia and the Runcible River Fever (2 page)

W
hen Edie noticed her next-door neighbour, the Blank Marauder, calling to her father from the side fence, she pulled her satchel over her shoulder and scrambled down the rough steps nailed to the side of the tree. ‘The Blank Marauder' was a curious nickname her father had
come up with, and which Edie supposed had something to do with her neighbour's unnerving stare and his impressive collection of junk. The Blank Marauder used to be rather hostile, but his cold heart had melted since Edie had both tidied his shed for him and invited him to attend her ninth birthday party two weeks previously. Edie crouched out of sight but within earshot behind her mother's juniper bush, curious to hear his news.

‘Genuine pleather,' the Blank Marauder was saying as he held up an all-in-one leather pants suit much like the ones everyone in Runcible seemed to be wearing.

‘What's pleather?' Edie couldn't help but ask in spite of her efforts at covert surveillance.

‘Ah,' said her dad, who was apparently not in the least bit startled by his daughter's head suddenly emerging from behind juniper bushes. ‘Well, it's a leather substitute that was developed over forty years ago. No plants or animals were harmed in its manufacture so it was a great favourite with
the vegans and animal lovers of those times. It fell out of usage for a while there—I can't remember why . . .'

‘This garment may be forty years old,' the Blank Marauder said, ‘but it's in
mint condition
. Here, Michaelmas, feel the quality.'

‘Interesting,' said Michaelmas, running his hand over the material.

‘I'll let you in on a little secret,' said the Marauder. ‘I happened to come by a whole container of these at Runcible Dock. Can you believe I've offloaded nine boxes already? You've probably noticed a lot of people wearing pleather jumpsuits around Runcible.' Michaelmas nodded. ‘Now there's only one box left and I may already have a buyer, but I really wanted to give one to Edie, as thanks for her help tidying my shed.'

‘I'm not sure,' said Michaelmas. ‘Cinnamon is not a fan of substitute fabrics.'

‘Please,' said the Blank Marauder. ‘I've had a terrible morning, and this would help cheer me up.'

‘Please, Dad?' said Edie.

‘Well, alright. Thank you, dear boy, very kind,' said Michaelmas.

‘Hold on,' said the Blank Marauder, and dashed off towards his shed.

When he returned, wheeling an enormous box on a trolley, Edie saw that the pleather jumpsuits came in all the colours of the rainbow.

‘Which one appeals to you, madam?' he said.

Edie sifted through the multitude of suits before settling on a bright red one, size nine. It would match her monkey shoes.

‘What are those, dear boy?' said Michaelmas, pointing at a jumble of fabric snippets in a plastic sack inside the box.

‘These? Pleather off-cuts,' said the Marauder.

‘May I take just one specimen?' said Michaelmas. ‘It's an extraordinary textile.'

‘Of course,' said the Marauder, handing him a swatch of black pleather.

‘What are you going to do with it, Dad?' asked Edie.

‘Indulge my natural curiosity,' he said, smiling.

The Blank Marauder stuffed the rest of the jumpsuits and the fabric snippets back into the box and sealed the top with tape. ‘In case we get another buyer,' he said with a cough. ‘They'll never know there's one missing. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine others! Goodbye now.' The Blank Marauder, who was a tall and wiry man, doffed his cap, displaying his kelp-like hair, and disappeared back into his shed.

‘Fascinating,' said Michaelmas, staring intently at the fabric. He sniffed, coughed, then checked his watch. ‘I need to get back to my work. I'm trying to prove a theory. With little success, I might add.'

‘Another theory, Dad?' said Edie.

But Michaelmas seemed too engrossed in the pleather off-cut to hear Edie as he wandered back into the house.

Edie bolted inside, up the spiral staircase and into her room, changed into her jumpsuit and popped on her monkey shoes for good luck. The sensation of
synthetic fabric next to her skin was a new one to Edie. What a relief it was not to be wearing a smock fashioned from recycled hessian, even if pleather was a little hot. She gathered up her detective kit and bounded back downstairs, sending the crimson tassels on the toes of her shoes flying, out the back door and down to the gully at the bottom of the garden. When she reached the foot of the big tree she pulled out her copy of the
Bugle
and reread the article about the Runcible River Fever. As she reached the last paragraph, she noticed something she'd missed before. ‘Aha,' she said, reading aloud. ‘A reward! For any persons who capture the Fever Dog alive!'

‘You know they say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, Sparks,' said a girl with long black plaits who was wearing a kilt.

Edie spun around and came face to face with Charisma Chompster. Cheesy, as Edie preferred to call her because of her healthy appetite for cauliflower cheese, was an opinionated Glaswegian girl (that is, she came from Glasgow and didn't like people disagreeing with her). She also had a firecracker temper, disliked sport and was allergic to more than half a dozen things ranging from mock cream to Bandaids.

‘I'm on a new case,' said Edie, ‘just going over the facts.'

‘Ridiculous,' Cheesy spluttered through a mouthful of crumbs whose origin must have been the adzuki-bean flan Cinnamon had been perfecting that morning. Edie's mother's pastry, being devoid of butter, made for cleggy mouthfuls. Cheesy was always
keen to sample Cinnamon's world-renowned macrobiotic cooking, since it was so utterly different from the food served in her own home, which was more likely to be bread fried in lard or silverside with white sauce than juniper cutlets or mung-bean casserole. But it seemed on this occasion that even Cinnamon's cooking was incapable of putting Cheesy in a more agreeable mood.

‘What's the matter?' Edie asked.

‘Absolutely nothing,' said Cheesy testily. ‘Except that my dad has officially gone bonkers.'

I
n general, Edie had respect for her elders, so at first she said nothing. Cheesy's father, Hogmanay Chompster, was an unusual man who hummed when he chewed, had a large auburn beard and who wore orange overalls. These overalls were the company uniform for Runcible Flights of Fancy, the hot-air
balloon enterprise that Hogmanay part-owned.

‘What do you mean when you say “bonkers”?' Edie asked.

‘Dad has hardly stopped crying since his balloon was wrecked when he crash-landed in Chinatown,' blurted Cheesy. ‘He keeps going on and on about this being the year he was
supposed
to fly solo, raise money for charity
and
break a world record, but now the balloon's shredded, his reputation's in tatters and life's not worth living.'

‘Oh dear,' said Edie.

‘Anyway, he says that there's no way he can afford a proper polyurethane replacement that would be accredited by a balloon inspector. He's gone at odd times every day, or if he's at home he disappears into the basement for hours with only Mum's old sewing machine to keep him company, and he won't let us in. He says he's working on a pet project and he's not to be disturbed. Then he comes back up and says it's no use, we may as well move back to Glasgow.'

This really did sound serious. Edie shook her head. The girls' friendship had got off to a rocky start, but since the events surrounding Edie's mysteriously disappearing monkey shoe, Edie couldn't imagine life in Runcible without Cheesy. She listened carefully.

According to Cheesy, her mother, Beltane, was in a pitiful state and had made Runcible River Fever the focus of her anxiety. Beltane had been complaining that of all the places to move they had chosen one imperilled by a pandemic, and not only that but now her husband had gone and
got himself involved in solving the town's problems, as if they didn't have enough of their own. It was her belief they should leave town as soon as possible.

Edie's thoughts returned to the perplexing Fever outbreak and her Worries started multiplying. If grown-ups were thinking of leaving town because of the Fever then the situation really was serious. What if her family caught it? What if it made some of them very sick . . . or worse? And what if Mister Pants came into contact with the disease-spreading dog and couldn't match it in a fight?

‘I think your dad will see sense . . .' Edie began half-heartedly.

‘You don't get it, Sparks. He's a very determined person. Want one?' Cheesy pulled a packet of salted caramels out from under her kilt. She often pocketed snacks high in saturated fats for emergency occasions such as this, when a gluten-free lima-bean muffin just would not do.

‘Please,' said Edie, sinking down onto the grass. Her jumpsuit creaked as she
crossed her legs and popped a salted caramel onto her tongue. The combination of salt and sweetness was altogether out of this world, even though her mother forbade her to eat such things.

‘Where did you get that jumpsuit? My dad has something similar—his is orange.'

‘Really? It's made of this stuff called pleather,' said Edie, ‘a gift from the Blank Marauder. A sort of thank-you present for tidying the shed.' She leaned forward and cupped her hand over her mouth in a secretive gesture. ‘I've wanted one for ages. Trudy Truelove has one. She writes for the
Bugle
, you know.'

‘She always looks fashionable,' agreed Cheesy. ‘Although I'm not sure I could say the same of my dad.'

Mister Pants appeared at the top of the gully and began a stiff downhill canter towards them. With his two enormous ears and tiny snout, he looked unusual to say the least. He made a wide variety of noises from both ends of his body, as French bulldogs are known to do. He snuffled and harrumphed;
he sneezed, snorted and hiccuped. Edie knew him to be gifted with detective-like intuition after he had helped her in several emergencies. All things considered, he was a very special dog.