Selby Speaks (12 page)

“I’m sure it is,” Mrs Trifle said, lifting Selby onto the chair next to the fortune-teller.

“Now, let’s see what the future holds for your little dog. Hmmmmmmmm,” Madame Mascara said, puzzling over the cracks and lines on Selby’s paw. “Dog feet aren’t quite like
people feet, are they? I’d better gaze into my crystal ball instead.”

Selby watched as Madame Mascara waved her hand back and forth in front of the crystal ball like a window-washer in a hurry. Inside the glass he saw her reflection: an upside down Madame Mascara waving back.

Suddenly a strange look came over the fortune-teller’s face. “Oh, no!” she screamed and accidentally knocked the crystal ball off the table and onto Selby’s foot. There was a
gurgle gurgle
sound from her throat and then a
burble burble
and she fell to the ground in a faint.

“Madame Mascara! Madame Mascara!” Mrs Trifle yelled as she fanned the woman’s face with a pack of fortune-telling cards. “Are you all right?”

Selby watched as the fortune-teller’s eyes flickered open and she raised her head.

“I’m okay, Mrs Trifle,” she said finally. “It’s just that I saw something dreadful in the crystal ball. I’m afraid I can’t say anything. It wouldn’t be polite.”

Selby stood stock-still for a second, sweating like a sprinter.

“Oh, no! It can’t be!” he thought suddenly as he tore from the tent. “She’s seen something terrible about me and she won’t say anything. The jig is up! It’s curtains! I’ve had it! I’m history! I’m going to snuff it tomorrow and she’s worried about being polite! Oh, woe woe woe.”

Selby ran across the fields picking four-leaf clovers and touching wood as he went and keeping an eye out for black cats that might cross his path and ladders that he might accidentally go under and mirrors that might break.

“Why am I worrying about broken mirrors? They give you seven years’ bad luck. I’d give anything right now for seven years’ bad luck!” Selby said as he climbed under the fence at The Friendly Duffer Riding Stables and searched the rubbish barrels for worn-out horseshoes that might give him good luck. “I was a happy dog till I met that ring-covered crystal-gazing soothsayer.”

When Selby finally came home that evening, dragging a bag full of good luck charms which he hid in the garage, he slipped into the lounge
room where Dr Trifle was reading a book called
The Beginner’s Book of Future Predicting.

“I might as well talk to the Trifles,” he thought. “It’s going to be all over for me (
sniff)
tomorrow. I might as well tell Dr Trifle that I can speak. I so want to thank him and Mrs Trifle for being so good to me (
sniff)
all these years.”

Selby put his paws up on the doctor’s knee and cleared his throat, ready to speak. Dr Trifle lowered his book and looked at Selby.

“Had a hard day have you, old pooch?” Dr Trifle said, suddenly finding a bit of peanut butter still stuck to the roof of his mouth and trying to get it loose with his tongue. “Hish snot eashy been a yog, ish it? I mean,” he said, and then he gave up with his tongue and scraped the peanut butter off on his finger, “it’s not easy being a dog, is it?”

“Not when you’re about to snuff it tomorrow,” Selby thought.

Just then Mrs Trifle burst into the room.

“Oh, there’s Selby! Thank goodness he’s okay,” she said, stroking Selby’s ears. “He got a terrible fright at the fair. Madame Mascara fainted and knocked her crystal ball on his foot, poor baby. It
must have hurt him terribly. He went running off and I never thought I’d see him again.”

“What happened to her?” Dr Trifle asked.

“She was too polite to say anything at first and pretended she’d been upset by something she saw in the crystal ball, but it seems she’s allergic to peanut butter. She didn’t know that bananabutter sandwiches have peanut butter in them. One chomp and she dropped like a rock. We can thank our lucky stars that she was okay again in a minute.”

“And what did she say about Selby’s future?” Dr Trifle asked.

“She says he’ll live a long and happy life and that his children will look after him when he’s old,” Mrs Trifle said.

“But he doesn’t have any children,” Dr Trifle said, licking the peanut butter glob from his finger and swallowing it.

“She probably means us, dear. I’ve always thought he looked on us as his human children. Oh, if only Selby could talk I’m sure he’d have some tales to tell,” Mrs Trifle said and she saw a faint doggy smile spread across Selby’s lips.

“The portrait of me is missing from the council chambers!” Mrs Trifle exclaimed to Sergeant Short and Constable Long as she burst into the police station with Selby at her side. “I just came back from a weekend away and … and … and it’s gone!”

“Your portrait?” Sergeant Short said, jumping to his feet. “Is that the one your husband painted, the one of you with your eyes crossed?”

“Yes. I know it’s not a great painting,” Mrs Trifle said, “but Dr Trifle painted it for me as a gift so it means a lot to me.”

“There’s no need to panic, Mrs Mayor,” said Sergeant Short, who had just watched the latest
episode of
Inspector Quigley’s Casebook
on TV about a butler who stole a valuable painting. “I’ll have the culprit behind bars before long or my name’s not Short.”

“And I’ll help,” Constable Long, who loved solving mysteries, said, “or my name’s not Long.”

“Do whatever you can,” Mrs Trifle, who had just watched the same episode of
Inspector Quigley’s Casebook
, said as Selby thought for a moment about long and short names. “But whatever we do we have to keep the theft a secret from Dr Trifle. If he knows that someone’s stolen his painting he’ll be most upset.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs Mayor,” Sergeant Short assured her. “We’re almost as good at keeping secrets as we are at solving mysteries.”

That evening, Sergeant Short rang Mrs Trifle at her home.

“I have rounded up three suspects,” he whispered into the telephone, “and I’ve asked them to come to the scene of the crime, the council chambers, tonight, so that I can expose the culprit. Can you come too?”

“Why, yes,” Mrs Trifle whispered back, remembering that Inspector Quigley liked to gather all the suspects together at the scene of the crime when he exposed a culprit. “Dr Trifle is working away quietly in his workshop. I’ll just pretend that I’m taking my dog Selby for a walk. He’ll never know I’m at the council chambers.”

When Mrs Trifle and Selby arrived at the scene of the crime Sergeant Short was pacing up and down in front of the suspects — Postie Paterson, Melanie Mildew and Phil Philpot — smoking a pipe and wearing a quilted dressing-gown just like Inspector Quigley.

“But just a minute, Sergeant,” Mrs Trifle said, “there must be some mistake. I’m sure none of these good people has done anything wrong.”

“In the business of criminal investigation,” Sergeant Short said, quoting Inspector Quigley, “you can never be sure of anything. Often it’s the least likely people who turn to a life of crime.”

“Oh boy, this is exciting!” Selby thought, suddenly wondering if all three suspects were international portrait thieves.

“After careful investigation I’ve established that the painting was removed yesterday at exactly midday while you were out of town,” Sergeant Short said, blowing a puff of smoke in the air, “by a man wearing an overcoat with the collar turned up, a hat pulled down over his eyes and a false moustache.”

“What a great piece of detective work!” Selby, who had also watched the latest episode of
Inspector Quigley’s Casebook
, thought. “I wonder how he worked it out.”

“How did you work that out?” Mrs Trifle, who was also curious, asked.

“I worked it out from information supplied to me by Constable Long,” he said, pointing his pipe stem at Constable Long. “After some discussion he revealed to me a bit of information that cracked the case, a vital clue.”

“Cracked the case! A vital clue!” Selby thought. “This is great! Inspector Quigley is always cracking cases and finding vital clues.”

“And what clue was that?” Mrs Trifle asked.

“Constable Long informed me that he had seen a man wearing an overcoat with the collar turned up, a hat pulled down over his eyes and a
false moustache sneaking suspiciously out of the council chambers with the painting in question under his arm. Unfortunately he didn’t think anything of it at the time. Now!” Sergeant Short said, suddenly doing a Quigley-like spin and pointing his pipe at his first suspect. “Postie Paterson, where were you at the time of the crime?”

“At the time of the crime,” Postie said, trying not to giggle. “That’s a good rhyme.”

“Please be serious and answer the question, Postie,” Sergeant Short said sharply.

“Sorry, Sergeant. At the time of the crime I was in the post office sorting mail,” Postie said. “I can prove it. About twenty people came in to buy stamps at midday. They’ll all be witnesses that I was there and not out stealing paintings.”

“Ahah! But is it not true that you once lived in the city and that you were a
butler?”
asked Sergeant Short, who knew from
Inspector Quigley’s Casebook
that butlers were the ones who usually did it.

“No! No! No!” yelled Postie, who was also an Inspector Quigley fan. “You can’t pin that rap on me! I’m innocent! I was never a butler.”

“This is getting more exciting than TV!” Selby thought, wondering where the questioning was leading.

“And you?” Sergeant Short said, turning to his second suspect, Melanie Mildew. “Were you ever a butler?”

“I was a maid once,” Melanie said with a yawn.

“That’s not good enough!” Sergeant Short said, coughing on some smoke and spinning around to his third suspect. “How about you, Phil Philpot? Were you ever a butler?”

“No. I was a
bugler
in the army,” said Phil, “but I was never a butler. If you change the
g
in bugler for a
t
then you have
butler.”

“Then you expect me to believe that you didn’t steal the portrait of the cross-eyed mayor — I mean the cross-eyed portrait of the mayor?” Sergeant Short said, wagging his finger in Phil Philpot’s face the way Inspector Quigley always did when he was trying to get his suspects to blush and give themselves away.

“I can prove I was in my restaurant, The Spicy Onion, at the time of the crime,” Phil said, blushing, as he always did when people
wagged fingers in his face. “I have thirty witnesses — they were all having lunch in my restaurant at the time. They’ll tell you I was peeling carrots at exactly midday and not stealing paintings.”

“I’m not sure this questioning is getting us anywhere,” Selby thought.

Just then Selby noticed a mysterious figure wearing an overcoat with a turned-up collar, a hat pulled down over his eyes and a fake moustache, slip into the back of the chambers and hang the stolen painting on the wall.

“Crikey, it’s him! It’s the butler, returning the painting!” Selby thought. “Everyone’s too busy trying to crack the crime. If they’d only turn around, they’d see him!”

Selby watched as the shadowy figure tiptoed towards the door.

“What can I do to get their attention?”

Selby thought. “I could scream out,
‘It’s him! It’s the thief!’
but I’d give away my secret. Besides, they’d probably all stare at me and he’d get away. I’ve got to do something!”

Selby gave a growl and then a lot of barks as he tore past Sergeant Short, spinning him
around and knocking his pipe out of his hand. The thief broke into a run but Selby jumped into the air and grabbed him by the coat.

“The thief!” Constable Long exclaimed as he grabbed the thief and knocked him to the floor. “I’ve got him! Help me get his disguise off.”

Sergeant Short, the three suspects and Mrs Trifle gathered around the fallen man and the sergeant pulled off his hat and his false moustache.

“Dr Trifle!” Sergeant Short exclaimed. “So you’re the butler — I mean, the culprit!”

“I — I — I —” Dr Trifle said, not knowing quite what to say.

“Darling, why did you do it?” Mrs Trifle cried. “Why did you turn to a life of crime? And why did you steal your own painting?”