Casper Candlewacks in the Claws of Crime!. Ivan Brett
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Casper Candlewacks in the Claws of Crime! - Ivan Brett страница 4
Название: Casper Candlewacks in the Claws of Crime!
Автор: Ivan Brett
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Детская проза
isbn: 9780007411580
isbn:
“Oh…” Lamp mouthed the word ‘love’ to himself a few times, and then wrote it down on his clipboard. “Is that bad?”
“I don’t really know,” said Casper. “I hope not.”
The boys worked in silence for about an hour and a half, disturbed only by the occasional clink of cogs or the whirr and crackle of Lamp’s hamster running furiously on its electric wheel. But gradually another noise swelled in the distance, a mix of yelling and clanging and stamping of feet. As the sound grew louder, Casper could make out the frantic ringing of a bell and the screams of a lady who must have been either very upset about something or a terrible singer. The boys scurried outside and were presented with the sight of that nervous wreck Clemmie Answorth tearing down the road at full speed, swinging a bell precariously round her head.
“HEAR YE,” she screamed. “HEAR YE!”
Casper and Lamp leapt back as Clemmie thundered straight past them, clanging her bell in their faces as she passed. She reached the end of the street, tripped over, sprang to her feet and raced back again. More villagers had appeared at their front doors now.
“I SAID, HEAR YE!” There was a rip in Clemmie’s skirt and she was missing a shoe. “MAYOR RATTSBULGE…” – she was quite out of breath – “REQUIRES YOUR PRESENCE… Oh, dear.” Sandy Landscape gave her a full watering can and she drank gratefully. “Thank you. IN THE VILLAGE SQUARE, AT ONCE!”
She dropped the bell, chased it down again and clanged off in the direction she’d come from.
“Ooh, are we getting presents?” Lamp’s face perked up.
“No, she said ‘presence’. We’re meant to go to the village square.”
“Not even one little present?”
“Perhaps something even better, Lamp.” Casper felt a surge of excitement like he’d not felt for exactly two months. “Let’s go and have a look,” he said. And so they did.
However, their peace was disturbed when the band of villains returned, demanding a refund for their horse, since it had broken down and they didn’t carry a spare. But the young knight muttered those famous words, “Hast thou a receipt?” and slew the leader with his gigantic iron sword. Then with the help of his eighteen fishy children he rounded up the rest of the band, wrapped them all up in a brown paper parcel and posted them to Norway. They were never seen or heard of again. Then, to celebrate, the young knight popped down to the shops and spent his pocket money on some priceless rubies and emeralds and a pot of glue, and stuck them all on to his sword.
That young knight was called Sir Gossamer D’Glaze, the river was the Kobb and his house by the river came to be known as Corne. Sir Gossamer had many adventures, but when he died he bequeathed his sword to the village, and there it has remained to this day (apart from one time when it was sold in a car-boot sale to a dentist with a limp, but that doesn’t count, for obvious reasons).
So now it is clear why Corne-on-the-Kobb is so proud of its sword. If, say, somebody were to come and steal it, who knows what hysteria would follow…
The long hot summer had toasted Corne-on-the-Kobb like a slice of granary bread on a beach holiday. The grass was parched and brown, the flow of the River Kobb had ebbed to a thirsty trickle and several pigeons had a serious case of sunburn. This was the worst drought that the Kobb Valley had seen since 1915, when the whole place became a savannah and some lions moved in and ate everybody. But that’s another story and the lions have politely asked me not to mention it.
Casper and Lamp crunched through the sun-baked park towards the village square. Lamp was dawdling behind, staring into space and smiling vacantly.
“What are you doing?” said Casper.
“I’m going to call it Daisy.”
“Call what Daisy?”
“My lie detector. It’s a lovely name.”
Casper sighed. “That might get confusing. Someone’s already got that name.”
“Who?”
“Daisy.”
Lamp scratched his head. “Oh yeah.”
“How about The Bluff Boiler?”
“That’s nice too.” He galumphed forward and giggled. “I’m in love.”
As the boys approached the square, the first thing they saw was ‘Blossom’s Bloomers’, a little terraced shop where ‘Murray’s Doorknob and Salami Emporium’ used to stand. Now it was fronted with a dark green awning and walls covered in flowering clematis. Outside the entrance were displayed hundreds of little plant pots holding geraniums, tulips and pansies of every colour, in front of muscular sunflowers and luscious lilacs. There was a queue of villagers trailing out of the door and halfway round the square, and more leaving the shop already loaded with bouquets of roses or baskets of wild grasses. The square itself was adorned with beautiful flowering wreaths on every door, window boxes filled with delicate petunias and vases stuffed full on every porch, beside every bench and lining the steps to the village hall. Finally, flapping at the top of the flagpole on the village-hall roof was not the normal tattered flag, but the most gigantic bouquet of multicoloured hydrangeas the world had ever seen since the world’s biggest hydrangea bouquet competition last year, which, admittedly, had some pretty massive bouquets of hydrangeas.
“Wow,” cooed Casper. “They must make a killing.”
“I’m going to buy some flowers for Daisy,” said Lamp.
“She’s probably got enough already.”
Through the window Casper could see Daisy wrapping up a large bunch of peonies while Lavender snipped some sweet peas from their stems and presented them to a blushing gentleman. Casper dragged Lamp away from the shop and into the square where Mayor Rattsbulge was trying to gather a crowd. So far he’d only managed to attract the attention of Clemmie Answorth (still clanging her bell), old Mrs Trimble and the flock of pigeons.
“Oi!” СКАЧАТЬ