Nanny Piggins and the Rival Ringmaster (16 page)

‘They are going to murder someone for fun to liven up a dinner party!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘They’re even more cold-blooded than I imagined.’

‘No, it’s just pretend,’ Samantha assured her. ‘No-one will really get murdered. Someone will just scream and lie in a pool of ketchup on the ground.’

‘But that’s worse,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Ketchup will ruin their clothes. I’d rather be murdered than get a ketchup stain on my dress.’

‘Hang on,’ said Derrick, and he continued to read the papers from the envelope. ‘We’ve all been given characters and we have to wear certain costumes.’

‘These murderers are diabolical!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘They kill people at their dinner parties, they put ketchup stains on their clothes, and then, on top of it all, they have the audacity to tell you what to wear?!!’

‘Nanny Piggins, you are Brianna the Basher – the world’s greatest female professional wrestling star,’ said Derrick, reading off the character summaries.

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ said Nanny Piggins. If she was going to get to wear her hot pink lycra wrestling suit, she would not complain. It made her look even more fabulous than normal.

‘And we have to go dressed as the Singh triplets,’ read Samantha. ‘Three child chemistry prodigies.’

‘What do child chemistry prodigies wear?’ asked Michael.

‘Tuxedos and a cocktail dress, I should think,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If you’re smart enough to be
a prodigy, you’d be smart enough to buy wonderful clothes.’

‘Oh, look at this!’ said Derrick. ‘They’ve invited Father too.’

‘No!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins, peering round to read the invitation herself. ‘Surely one of the other neighbours warned them about him.’

‘It says he has to go dressed as Ronaldo, a Spanish flamenco dancer,’ said Derrick.

At this point Nanny Piggins and the children burst out laughing.

‘That settles it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Even though it is obviously incredibly dangerous to go to a party hosted by murderers so brazen they publicise their crimes on written invitations, we still must go, because we have to see your father in a Spanish flamenco costume.’

‘He won’t want to do it,’ predicted Samantha.

‘Then we will have to leave him with no choice,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘But you do understand that they aren’t really murderers?’ asked Derrick. ‘And that this is just a make-believe whodunnit game?’

‘Hah!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s just what they want you to think, isn’t it? Which is why hosting a pretend murder is such a perfect cover for committing a real one.’

At this point the children gave up. They realised that the idea of a real and fake murder mystery had become so blended in their nanny’s head, it was beyond their powers of reasoned argument to separate them. And they did not want to say anymore in case they discouraged Nanny Piggins from attending at all, when they so desperately wanted to see their father dressed as a flamenco dancer. (They had no idea what flamenco dancers wore, but they felt sure it would be something much more spectacular than the boring three-piece woollen suits that were his usual uniform.)

Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children spent all week working on their costumes for the party. (Boris had received an invitation too. He was to go as Rupert Danieri, a brilliant but bad-tempered orchestra conductor.)

Nanny Piggins painstakingly sewed three thousand sequins onto her wrestling leotard, because she wanted to look wonderful and she found that being shiny was always a good first step. And the children bought a chemistry set and practised blowing things up in the backyard, just to get in character.

The biggest obstacle was persuading Mr Green to go. Nanny Piggins informed him at breakfast one morning that he had been invited, she had hired him a costume and that she was giving him no choice in the matter. But Mr Green ranted for a full half hour about how ‘this was his house and he was in charge,’ and ‘he had no intention dressing up like a circus clown’. Nanny Piggins just kept calmly eating her breakfast. When Mr Green finally ran out of energy she simply responded, ‘We’ll see.’

When the night of the party came Nanny Piggins and the children got ready (Boris was meeting them there because of course Mr Green had still not realised that there was a ten-foot-tall dancing bear living in his garden shed). Meanwhile Mr Green hid in his study.

It said very explicitly on their invitation that guests must not be late or they might miss the murder entirely and neither Nanny Piggins nor the children wanted to do that. So the children began to worry when at ten to eight Nanny Piggins had not emerged from her bedroom. And their father was still locked in his study (he had bought a bicycle lock and strapped it round the door handle to protect himself from his nanny on this particularly evening).

The children were standing in the hallway starting to get seriously anxious when they heard a cough above them. They looked up to see the most breathtaking sight. After shielding their eyes from the glare coming off their nanny’s outfit, they could not deny she looked amazing. A hot pink lycra wrestling suit suited her, but a hot pink lycra wrestling suit with sequins suited her even better. Not only did she look spectacular, there was no way she would ever be hit by a car crossing the street when she was giving off more reflected light than a mirror ball.

‘Wow!’ marvelled Derrick.

‘You look amazing,’ said Michael.

‘Thank you,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I just hope my outfit is gorgeous enough to make the murderer fall in love with me at first sight and forget about murdering people altogether.’

‘But what about Father?’ asked Samantha. ‘Are we going to leave him at home?’

‘Of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘But we’re supposed to be at the party in six minutes,’ worried Samantha.

‘That’s plenty of time,’ said Nanny Piggins, taking Mr Green’s flamenco costume from the hall closet. ‘Stand back,’ she advised the children,
before screaming her loudest ‘Hiiiiyyyyaaaahhh!’ and smashing down Mr Green’s study door with one swift kick. ‘Wait here, I’ll be back in a moment,’ said Nanny Piggins. She disappeared into the study, propping the door back up against the doorway.

The children were not entirely sure what happened next. They could hear the sound of running, then wrestling, then screaming and begging for mercy (which, although high-pitched, was definitely not the voice of their nanny). Then some sniffing and sobbing, along with the sound of clothes being taken off hangers. Three minutes later (and with two minutes to spare) Nanny Piggins and Mr Green emerged. She was smiling happily. And Mr Green had that red-eyed look of someone who had been crying.

But the children were not looking at their father’s face. They were looking at his amazing outfit. The tight black pants and the even tighter black waistcoat were obviously embarrassing for a man of his girth. But it was the shirt he wore that was the highlight. It was even more colourful and certainly more gaudy than Nanny Piggins’ wrestling suit. The sleeves were frill-on-frill of the brightest colours, and they wiggled every time he moved.

Now the children started crying, but theirs were tears of laughter. They rolled around the floor guffawing for a full minute, which left them exactly one minute to walk up the road and arrive at the party on time.

Nanny Piggins and the children were not the only ones who had taken trouble over their costumes. The retired army colonel was there dressed as a bull fighter. Mrs Simpson, their lovely next door neighbour, was dressed as a dancer from the Moulin Rouge. Mrs McGill, their nasty next door neighbour, was dressed as a beekeeper. Mr and Mrs Pidgeon were dressed up as a 1920s gangster and his moll. And of course Boris was there, looking very handsome in his black tail coat. (Boris liked wearing black because it was slimming. He only looked 690 kilos with his suit on.)

‘Watch your backs, children,’ advised Nanny Piggins as they entered the drawing room. ‘A murder mystery party is not nearly as much fun if you are the one carted out in a body bag in the first five minutes.’

‘We’re just having drinks and canapés and getting to know each other,’ said Mr Pidgeon.

Nanny Piggins helped herself to a plate of cheese puffs. ‘Very well,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But I want you all to know that I’m watching you. And if any of you murder me I shall be very cross.’

‘Aaaaagggghhh!!!’ The party was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream.

‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Pidgeon conspiratorially. ‘That sounds like Mrs Pidgeon up in the attic.’

Nanny Piggins flew in the direction of the scream. ‘Don’t worry! If the murderer is still there, I’ll wrestle them to the ground.’

When everyone else arrived in the attic a few moments later, they found Nanny Piggins sitting on top of Mrs Pidgeon, who was being restrained in a very uncomfortable looking leg lock.

‘I’ve caught her,’ said Nanny Piggins proudly.

‘But I didn’t do the murder,’ protested Mrs Pidgeon. ‘I just found the body.’

‘A likely story,’ scoffed Nanny Piggins.

Derrick hurried to the body and turned it over. It was just a mannequin dressed up in a suit.

‘That’s not a person, that’s just a big doll,’ protested Nanny Piggins. ‘What sort of sick murderer are we dealing with here?’

‘Nanny Piggins, you do understand this is just a game, don’t you?’ asked Mr Pidgeon.

‘She doesn’t,’ said Samantha.

‘You’re supposed to notice that he is holding two tickets from Paris,’ said Mr Pidgeon.

‘How terrible!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Being murdered right after a lovely holiday in France. It’s a good job he is just a mannequin or he’d be really upset.’

‘Now we have to go downstairs and while we’re enjoying the salad course, we can ask each other questions, trying to find clues about who did it,’ said Mrs Pidgeon.

‘Shouldn’t we call the Police Sergeant,’ asked Nanny Piggins, ‘so he can take everyone down to the station for cross-examination?’

‘You just want to get out of eating the salad course,’ guessed Michael accurately.

So they all gathered around the Pidgeon’s large mahogany dining table. The salad was, in Nanny Piggins’ opinion, not too revolting because it was covered in cheese and mayonnaise and when she sprinkled some chocolate cake over it (from her handbag) it was really very nice, so she cheered up.

‘Now it’s time to uncover more clues,’ said Mr Pidgeon.

‘All right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll start.’ She promptly leapt up on the table, ran over to where
Mr Green was sitting, grabbed him by the lapels of his flamenco costume and began shaking him vigorously, yelling, ‘You did it, didn’t you? We all know it was you!! You’re the murderer!!!’

It took the retired army colonel and Boris several minutes to wrestle Nanny Piggins away from him. (Which were some of the happiest minutes of the retired army colonel’s life.) Eventually they all returned, panting, to their seats.

‘Nanny Piggins, you’re just meant to ask questions,’ said Mr Pidgeon. ‘For example, I could ask, “Weren’t you in Paris last week, taking part in a wrestling match with an Angolan crocodile at the Champs Élysées?”’

‘I was doing no such thing!’ protested Nanny Piggins. ‘I didn’t go anywhere last week. I was too busy working on my fudge recipe.’

‘Mr Pidgeon is asking your character, not you,’ whispered Derrick. ‘Remember the character booklet that came with your invitation?’

‘Ooooh,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Brianna
was
in Paris last week.’

‘You see, there’s a clue,’ said Mr Pidgeon. ‘You crossed paths with the victim last week.’

‘Are you accusing me of being a murderer?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘How dare you! I’m a child-care professional!’

‘No no no,’ said Mr Pidgeon. ‘We’re just searching for clues. Does anybody else have an alibi?’

‘I’m going to powder my nose,’ said Nanny Piggins, getting up from the table.

The children all knew ‘I need to powder my nose’ was Nanny Piggins’ ladylike code for – ‘I’m tired of this and I’m going upstairs to rifle through the cupboards and drawers to entertain myself.’

The questioning went on.

After they had finished eating, the guests were invited to go out in the garden and look for the murder weapon. The children thought about fetching Nanny Piggins but they were glad they did not because the murder weapon was nothing exciting like a samurai sword or a South American throwing bola. It was just a boring old steam iron. And they knew Nanny Piggins would not be impressed by such a mundane household item.