Dedication

For Zanzibar, my bell-ringing cat.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1 - Thief in the Night

Chapter 2 - Heaven-Scent

Chapter 3 - A Potted History of Sir Gossamer’s Sword

Chapter 4 - The Hunt Begins

Chapter 5 - Buns and Biscuits

Chapter 6 - First Encounter

Chapter 7 - Dawn of the Detectives

Chapter 8 - Babynapped!

Chapter 9 - House Calls

Chapter 10 - Tea at the Blossoms’

Chapter 11 - Grounded

Chapter 12 - The Funky Chicken

Chapter 13 - Blight Manor

Chapter 14 - The Cat

Chapter 15 - The Cat’s Tale

Chapter 17 - The Important Bit

Aftermath

More adventures with CASPER CANDLEWACKS

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Copyright

About the Publisher

Deep in the English countryside, in the peaceful valley of the river Kobb, lies a little village called Corne-on-the-Kobb. At first sight its pretty thatched cottages, winding lanes and quaint little cobbled square are no different from any other. But there’s something different about Corne-on-the-Kobb; something so wonderfully, uniquely different that someone should write a book about it. You see, Corne-on-the-Kobb is packed full of idiots.

The residents of Corne-on-the-Kobb would lose out in an IQ test against a mouldy peanut. They struggle to count to two, they howl at the moon, some of them have their names and addresses tattooed on their foreheads in case they wander off and need driving home. There are idiots in every home, idiots roaming the streets and an idiot pulling pints at the local pub. Corne-on-the-Kobb is so full of idiots that the government has declared it an area of outstanding natural stupidity and stopped sending it money or biscuits.

However, this story isn’t just about idiots. It’s also about bejewelled swords and cat burglars and boiled eggs and a boy who lives among the idiots, but forgot to be an idiot himself. But we’ll get to him. He’s in bed at the moment.

Midnight. Time for lunch. In a dusty candlelit room with a sagging ceiling, a wrinkled old woman reached into her plastic bag and pulled out something squidgy wrapped in newspaper. She wore a duffel coat with a woolly tea cosy on her head and thick red lipstick plastered all round her mouth. There she sat, alone in her wheelchair in the centre of the room, smacking her withered lips at the package in her hands. The old woman clawed the newspaper open, feasting her eyes on the oozing corned beef and jellybean sandwich within. One gleeful chomp with her toothless gums sent the meaty gunk splurging all over her trembling fingers and down the front of her duffel coat.

Torn shreds of newspaper drifted, forgotten, to the floor. ‘LE CHAT STRIKES AGA—’ said half of the ripped headline. More half-words and phrases settled on top: ‘—nother robbery…’ ‘…cat burgl—’ ‘—ver the head with a cricket b—’ ‘—ed by a single cat’s whisker…’ But the old woman couldn’t give a monkey’s armband. She only used the paper to wrap up her sandwiches.

Betty Woons was old. Really, really old. She was so old that barnacles lived between her toes and her wrinkles were protected by the National Trust. She was old enough to be your grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s… well, you get the point.

But Old Father Time had a bit of a job catching up with Betty. She spent her years zipping around the village on her turbo-powered electric wheelchair, knocking over unsuspecting villagers and doing flips off street corners.

Tonight Betty was on guard duty. Behind her, propped up in a smudgy glass cabinet, was the reason she was there: an ancient iron sword dripping from tip to hilt with dazzling rubies and sapphires. The priceless sword had once belonged to the statue of village founder Sir Gossamer D’Glaze in the Corne-on-the-Kobb village square. But two months ago, during what is now referred to in trembling tones as ‘The Donkey Disaster’, the statue was destroyed. Ever since that day the villagers of Corne-on-the-Kobb had been taking it in turns to watch over Sir Gossamer’s bejewelled sword, give it a daily jewel massage and read it a bedtime story.

Betty yawned and slurped the final chunks of jellybean from her gums. She hadn’t a clue why the old sword needed guarding anyway. Granted it had been a glorious trophy hundreds of years ago, but now half the rubies had fallen off and the end was chipped. Betty had been using it as a back scratcher for the past two months when nobody was looking.

There was a rapid knock at the vault door. Betty’s wrinkles wrinkled in wonder. Who could it be at this time of night? Nobody came knocking in Corne-on-the-Kobb in the middle of the night unless they were sleepwalking or they’d lost their house. Perplexed, Betty squeaked her wheelchair over to the door and pulled it open.

“Oh,” she croaked, “Hello, dear. What brings you out at this time of night?”

There was no answer, just a swift flash of white wood as the cricket bat swung down and spanked Betty on the top of her head. With a pitiful whimper she crumpled to the stone floor like a soggy bag of spuds.

The alarm didn’t wake Mayor Rattsbulge at first; he just wiped the dribble off his chin, grunted and rolled over. He was having a cracking dream about hog roasts, and really didn’t want to wake up before he’d reached the apple sauce. But then the noise seeped through the non-food part of his brain (a tiny section squeezed away behind the locum hamburgarium) and he leapt out of bed as if he was covered in bees. He threw on his extra-large dressing gown and blundered out of his extra-large bedroom on to the pitch-black landing, tripping over the banister and tumbling down the stairs. He bounced at the bottom (thanks to his six bowls of jelly for pudding) and landed rather gracefully on his blubbery feet. Mayor Rattsbulge rushed out of the front door, stopping only to grab a Cumberland sausage from the jar on the hall table. It took him a good three minutes to heave himself to the other side of the lamplit village square, where a small crowd of villagers in their pyjamas had gathered by the door to the village vault.

Audrey Snugglepuss, loud-mouthed village gossip and baker of cakes, strode forward angrily and flicked her nightcap out of her face. “For crying out loud, Mayor Rattsbulge, I’m trying to sleep,” she warbled.

“Here here,” sang Clemmie Answorth, a slightly younger, nervous-looking woman, completely peppered with bruises and still clutching her teddy. “What with all that racket, I fell out of my bed.” She did that a lot.

Mayor Rattsbulge wheezed and clutched his chest. “Ladies, please.” He leant on a lamp-post, but it buckled under his weight. “I’ve only just got here. Now, what’s the alarm?”

Mitch McMassive, the tiny landlord of the village pub The Horse and Horse, stuck his little hand in the air and squeaked, “Look, mayor.” He trotted forward to the heavy wooden door and gave its brass handle an almighty shove. It groaned open groggily on its rusty hinges.

The bolder villagers bundled through the door into the blackness, and tripped straight over an empty wheelchair. Clemmie Answorth screeched and tinkled through a glass cabinet, while all around dull thuds told stories of foreheads meeting walls and coming off the worse.

Audrey Snugglepuss fumbled for a light switch in the dark. Her first attempt found Mitch McMassive’s button nose, which snicked smartly out of joint and failed to make the room any lighter. She finally found the switch and the vault was plunged into dazzling amber light.

“My nose!” honked Mitch McMassive, through a crimson torrent running down his face. “I can smell blood!”

Betty Woons blinked awake and chuckled at all of the bodies rolling around her. “Oh, hello, dears,” she warbled. “What are we all doing on the floor? Sleepover, is it?”

Mayor Rattsbulge was the first to notice. “Oh, my sweet Lord…” he whispered, prodding a trembling finger towards the cabinet. “It’s… gone…”

Clemmie Answorth spluttered. “The sword’s gone?”

“Who used it last?”

“Well, I didn’t take it,” said Audrey Snugglepuss.

“What about my nose?” squeaked Mitch McMassive.

“SHUT UP!” bellowed the mayor. “Shut up and find it. Find my sword!”

The pyjama-clad crowd screamed and ran out into the moonlit square, searching under doormats and tipping over flowerpots. Meanwhile, back in the vault, village gardener Sandy Landscape (who’d watched three whole detective shows on telly so he knew what he was talking about) edged closer to the cabinet. “’Ere… mayor…”

“What is it?” sobbed Mayor Rattsbulge from behind his gravy-stained hanky.

“I found me summink. Look yer eyes on that.” Sandy’s grubby fingers reached into the cabinet and pulled out something black and wiry. He held it to the light, and gasped.

It was a single cat’s whisker.

“What is your name?”

“Casper Candlewacks.”

“How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“What is your favourite flavour of ice cream?”

Casper gritted his teeth and winced. “Mushroom ripple?”

KABOOM.

Clods of scorched yolk exploded over the garage, covering Casper, Lamp and every exposed garage surface in a stinking slimy film of egg.

“It worked!” cried Lamp.

Casper smeared the eggy grot from his face and grimaced. “Sort of…”

“Too powerful?”

“Too powerful.”

Lamp Flannigan scratched his chimney-brush hair, pulled a spanner from his boiler suit and set to work adjusting a nut deep inside the contraption.

As his friend tinkered away, Casper Candlewacks sat down on the floor and grinned to himself. Out of all the things to do on a baking hot August afternoon, he could think of nothing better than sitting in his best friend’s grimy garage, working on their latest invention and blasting a few dozen eggs to a few dozen smithereens. Casper had spent most of his summer in Lamp’s garage. It’s not that he didn’t like his own house, but things had got a little hectic recently.

Casper was a blonde-haired, keen-eyed scruffbag of an eleven-year-old. He didn’t have any superpowers, he hadn’t been to space and he’d not even slain a single vampire. In fact, until two months ago, Casper’s life was about as exciting as a six-hour guided tour of the Kobb Valley carrier bag factory and shop (where you can buy all the carrier bags you want, but they never have anything to put them in). But then he poisoned a magician, got his village cursed, got attacked by a flock of man-pecking pigeons, survived a high-speed road accident, swam through a sea of bubbles, destroyed a coriander festival and rode home on the back of a Shetland pony just in time to save his dad from certain death. (Apparently there’s a really good book about it too, but I haven’t read it.) You’d think that such heroic actions from such an ordinary boy would be rewarded with a medal, a national holiday or at least a pat on the back and a flapjack, but no, no, and one for luck – no. The idiots of Corne-on-the-Kobb ignored Casper Candlewacks like a bad smell in a lift. He could do brainy things like reading and writing; he could tie his own shoelaces and walk in straight lines. These things were beyond Corne-on-the-Kobb’s villagers, so they resented Casper and pretended he didn’t exist.

“Any more eggs?” asked Lamp.

“Loads.”

The latest additions to Lamp’s garage were Mavis and Bessie, two prize egg-laying hens. They had arrived unannounced at the front door two weeks ago, carrying little suitcases and claiming to be distant relatives. Lamp’s mum let them stay. All day long they strutted around eating grain, pecking visitors and laying dozens upon dozens of eggs. In fact, they laid so many eggs that every one of Lamp’s inventions over the last fortnight had involved the blasted things – be it the remote-controlled bacon detector or the hover-omelette.

If you hadn’t guessed, Lamp Flannigan was an inventor. He was also a short, podgy boy with a scrub of soot-black hair and a dongle of a nose that would be a fantastic door knocker, if it wasn’t made of skin and currently attached to a face. Lamp was an idiot too, but he wasn’t like any other idiot you’ll ever meet. His idiocy went off the scale, went all the way round and came out on the other end. Lamp thought in ways that normal people couldn’t (Casper suspected Lamp’s brain was made out of a substance not unlike fizzy mashed potato), so he spent his time building things: amazing, inexplicable things that you’d probably call impossible. Two months ago he’d driven Casper to Upper Crustenbury on a buggy that ran on washing-up liquid. Today, he was inventing a lie detector that used the power of dishonesty to boil an egg. It turns out, Casper had discovered, that inventing egg-boiling lie detectors is a messy old process.

KABOOM! Another egg-splosion rocked the garage, exuding a cloud of stinking yellow smoke that insulted Casper’s nostrils and sent Mavis and Bessie squawking back into their coop and slamming the door.

“Hello,” a mystery voice said.

Casper shrieked and whisked round, but the egg smog was thick and he couldn’t see a thing. “Who’s that?”

“My name’s Daisy,” the voice said. “Pleased to meet you.”

As the fug settled, Casper began to make out the shape of a girl, about his height, standing at the entrance to the garage. She had brown curly hair, big green eyes and the most beautiful smile Casper had ever seen. She wore a flowery green frock with a ribbon in the middle.

Mavis and Bessie poked their beaks out of the coop and clucked jealously at the intruder.

“What on earth are you doing?” The girl called Daisy looked round at the eggy mess of a garage and then pulled a face at Casper.

“We… uh…”

Lamp’s mouth was hanging open. He wiped the egg from his eyes and blinked. Then he shook his head and wiped his eyes again, but that just spread the egg back on. “Casper,” he whispered, “is she real?”

Casper jabbed an elbow into Lamp’s side. “I’m Casper,” he said to the visitor, “and he’s Lamp.”

“Did we make her?” Lamp eyed the lie detector with a face of complete bemusement and twiddled a knob on the side. “It’s not s’posed to do that,” he mumbled.

Daisy chuckled. “We only moved in a couple of weeks ago. I live down the road.” She trotted into the garage and picked up a clipboard, upon which Lamp had drawn a diagram of an egg, with labels pointing to its brain, spleen and vocal cords. Then she spotted the lie detector. Inside a large steel saucepan sat the engine from a leaf-blower, grumbling busily, turning oily cogs and rusty axles, all set round a small china dish in the middle to hold the egg. A trigger had been welded to the handle, and an antenna with a green golf visor poked out above the pan, rotating and beeping mechanically. “What’s that?”

“Do you like it?” asked Lamp, blushing.

“Well, I…”

“You can have it if you want.” He picked it up and handed it to Daisy.

“I don’t really…”

“Come on, Lamp,” said Casper. “Put it down.”

Lamp sniffed and plonked the pan back on the table.

By now the hens had emerged and were pecking at Daisy’s ankles.

“It’s a lie detector,” said Casper. “Lamp’s an inventor.”

Lamp grinned at Daisy. “An inventor means you invent things.” He pointed at his watch, which was made of chocolate. (It tells you when it’s time to eat it.)

“Does it work?” asked Daisy, motioning to the lie detector.

“Sort of,” said Casper. He remembered that he was covered in egg and blushed.

A female voice floated in from outside. “Daisy, darling?”

“That’s my mum,” said Daisy. Then she called, “Mum, in here. I’ve made some friends.”

Round the corner swept a tall, glamorous woman with the same curly brown hair and bright green eyes, wearing a flowing blue dress and a floral brooch. She flashed a ravishing smile, the sort of smile that would melt the heart of even the frostiest snowman.

Lamp fell over.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was cool and refreshing. “I’m Lavender. Lavender Blossom.” She reached out her hand, which Casper shook despite the egginess of his own. “You’ve met my daughter Daisy.”

“H-hello,” Casper stammered. They’d never allowed females in the garage, let alone beautiful ones, and this was exactly why. What were you supposed to do with them? He thought about offering his guests a seat or a cup of tea, but the garage didn’t have either. Lamp, crimson-cheeked and breathless, took one more look at the visitors and then scrabbled away on all fours to the back of the garage to tinker about with a driveshaft.

“Do you want some help?” asked Daisy. “I’m good at—”

“Now, now, Daisy,” Lavender interrupted. “We don’t want to interfere.” She placed her hand on Daisy’s shoulder and smiled gently at Casper.

“So… um… what brings you to Corne-on-the-Kobb?” said Casper, relieved to have thought of something to say.

“We own the flower shop,” Daisy chirped.

“Flower shop?” Casper laughed.

“Yeah.”

Lavender looked ruffled. “We opened two weeks ago.”

“Really? In Corne-on-the-Kobb?”

Lavender reached into her dress pocket, pulled out a little flowery business card and handed it to Casper. It read:

Blossom’s Bloomers

‘They’re Heaven-Scent.’

Visit us on the corner of the village square, next to the sweet shop.

Casper nodded and stuffed the business card into his pocket. “Sorry, I hadn’t heard of you. We spend a lot of time in this garage, don’t we, Lamp?”

Lamp squeaked.

“That’s OK,” said Lavender. “Drop in if you’re passing. We’ve got a summer sale on.”

“If you buy a full bunch, you’ll save a whole bunch!” sang Daisy.

“Sounds good. I’ll… um… definitely buy a full bunch then.”

“Will you? That’s brilliant!” Daisy skipped forward and planted a kiss on Casper’s cheek.

“Right then, darling, plenty more of those cards to hand out before tea time.” Lavender wrinkled her nose cheekily at the boys and sauntered out of the garage.

Daisy skipped into the sunshine in pursuit of her mother, stopping to chirp, “Nice to meet you,” before disappearing round the corner.

The garage was quiet again. Lamp shuffled towards Casper with a worried sort of face on. “Casper?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t feel my feet and my heart’s gone thumpy. What’s wrong with me?”

“I think you’re in love, Lamp.”

“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.

was the summer of 1374, and a young knight rode out into the countryside to hunt weasels. Suddenly, he was ambushed by a band of villains. They nicked his horse and pushed him down a hill. Down he tumbled, over rocks and under cows and through prickly thistles, until he landed face down in a river running with the clearest and sweetest water he’d ever drowned in. Fortunately, he was rescued by a passing river nymph with long wavy hair and scaly skin. They fell in love, built a house by the river and had eighteen beautiful children with thirty-six beautiful gills (which is two each, if you share them out nice and fairly).

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!” he shouted to the enormous flower shop queue, spraying greasy flecks of spit all over Mrs Trimble. “We’ve got an emergency here.”

The queue members just grunted and shuffled forward a bit. More people joined the back, sighing longingly with flowery business cards clutched to their chests.

The mayor bellowed, “Come here, you scoundrels! This is no time for flowers.”

“Ooh, are they selling flowers?” said Mrs Trimble, who owned twenty-six cats (all called Tiddles). She put on her spectacles and trotted off to join the queue.

Mayor Rattsbulge had had enough. “Fine,” he barked. “Nobody’s getting the cash reward…”

At the words ‘cash reward’, the villagers’ idiotic ears pricked up. They dropped whatever they were holding (such as babies, packed lunches or priceless Ming vases) and bounded towards the mayor like squirrels to a nut buffet, barging Casper and Lamp to the back of the crowd with well-placed elbows or teeth. Instantly the square was packed with penniless, greedy idiots, and the flower shop was empty.

“That’s better,” said Mayor Rattsbulge, taking a chomp of the Scotch egg that he’d put in his top pocket for emergencies.

“Oh, no, she’s here,” groaned Lamp, pointing to Casper’s right where a skinny little girl with long brown hair and a hawk nose approached them, hand in hand with her pointy mother.

Casper winced. “Anemonie Blight.”

In a recent poll, Anemonie Blight was voted the most evil girl in the cosmos (pushing the previous winner, Empress Vandraga ‘Slayer of Children’ into second place). Made from a pint of pure hate and a sprinkling of malice, then oven-baked in the furnaces of hell, Anemonie was only happy once she’d made somebody cry. Two weeks ago she’d burst Teresa Louncher’s eardrum in a game of Rock, Paper, Nuclear Explosion. Last time Anemonie had seen Casper, she punched him so hard that even Lamp got a nosebleed.

“She’s coming this way,” quavered Lamp, visibly shaking.

Casper crossed his fingers and closed his eyes. Anemonie was close – not more than five metres away now. He held his breath, prepared for the pain and waited, and waited, and… oddly, nothing happened. Casper dared to open an eye. Anemonie had walked straight past them, head down, hands deep in the pockets of her sickly pink jumpsuit.

Casper nudged Lamp, who had been cowering behind his hands. “She’s gone,” he said.

Lamp chewed his lip. “Why didn’t she hit me?”

“I know. That’s not like her at all.”

Casper watched as Anemonie stopped next to her pointy mother at a spot right at the back of the square and observed the scene from afar.

“Now, now,” drawled Mayor Rattsbulge, “give me your attention or I’ll raise taxes.”

The villagers hung on to the mayor’s every word like nits on a hippie’s beard.

“Somebody…” Mayor Rattsbulge’s bottom lip quivered, so he hid it behind a mouthful of Scotch egg. “Somebody…” – Scotch egg now swallowed – “has assaulted Betty Woons and stolen the bejewelled sword of Sir Gossamer de Glaze.”

Those who hadn’t already heard the news shrieked. Those who had already heard the news nodded knowingly, saying, “Haven’t you heard?” and, “Horrible news,” and made shrugging gestures.

“Now Betty doesn’t remember a thing because the thief hit her quite hard on the head…”

Betty Woons grinned at the crowd and then slapped the top of her head with her withered hand, tutting loudly.

“…and nobody else witnessed the crime at all. In fact, the only clue we have is this.” He felt around in his Scotch egg pocket and plucked out a wiry black cat’s whisker.

The crowd gasped.

“Yes, we worried this day would come, and I fear it has. He’s here. This whisker is the calling card of none other than the French cat burglar Le Chat!”

As those terrible words of Le Chat spread through the crowd like a snotty cold, jaws dropped in horror, eyes sprang with tears and mothers clutched on to their children like wriggly teddy bears. They’d all heard about him, they’d all been warned about him, but not once did they think he’d actually strike in Corne-on-the-Kobb.

“Now, few people have seen him in the flesh, but we believe him to look something like this.” Mayor Rattsbulge held aloft a large poster featuring a photograph of a regular black cat, with the words WANTED – dead or alive (preferably dead) hastily scribbled along the top in big black letters, and *Artist’s impression at the bottom.

Audrey Snugglepuss gasped. “I’ve seen him.”

Mrs Trimble went very pale. “But that’s… that’s Tiddles.”

The crowd screamed and pointed at Mrs Trimble. One person threw a shoe.

“Calm down,” bellowed Mayor Rattsbulge. “Nobody’s blaming Tiddles.”

The crowd stopped screaming.

Mrs Trimble sobbed, reached into her bag and dried her eyes on a newborn kitten.

The mayor straightened his mayoral gown (which he’d made himself by stapling together three rolls of red carpet material) and continued. “Now, the roads out of the village were guarded last night, and they have been ever since. This has given me valuable time to think about how to catch this scoundrel, and you’ll be pleased to know I’ve got a plan!”

Casper, who had been watching Anemonie Blight and her mother, noticed them become distinctly twitchier as the meeting progressed. Anemonie kept rubbing her wrists, and her mother couldn’t stand still.

“It’s a foolproof plan if I may say so myself, both original and unpredictable. It’s taken me nearly all day and three whole pies to think of it, but here it is…” He did a drum roll on Mitch McMassive’s bald head. “You find Le Chat for me!”

“Hurray!” cheered the villagers, applauding their mayor’s genius plan most wholeheartedly.

“Whoever can catch Le Chat and retrieve the sword will be rewarded with…” Mayor Rattsbulge pulled a wad of crumpled banknotes out of his pocket and hastily counted them. “One… two… two… five…” Losing count, he shrugged and shouted, “Twenty-thousand pounds.”

The crowd went, “Ooooooh!”

“And…” The mayor rooted around in another pocket, producing something brown and sticky. “…The rest of this pie.”

The crowd went, “Aaaaaah!”

Sandy Landscape rolled up his sleeves. “Cor, imagine that – twenty grand. I’m gonner gold-plate my wellies.”

“I’m going to gold-plate my house,” said Audrey Snugglepuss.

“I’m going to gold-plate my cats,” said Mrs Trimble.

“’Ere, can I have half o’ that money now if I promise to find the sword?” shouted Sandy.

“No chance.” Audrey yanked him back by his belt loop. “It’s mine.”

“You’ll have to get past me first,” squeaked Mitch McMassive, launching himself at Audrey’s legs and bundling her to the ground, knocking over Clemmie Answorth in the process. Sandy Landscape dived on top, launching punches into the crowd. Then, with a left hook, he felled old Mrs Trimble, who shrieked and dropped her bag of cats. The cats tumbled out into the melee, ripping and nipping with furry fury.

“SILENCE!” bellowed Mayor Rattsbulge.

Cats and villagers alike froze and stared at their mayor. Sandy Landscape let go of Mitch McMassive’s head and put his teeth back in.

“One more thing. There’s a dangerous criminal on the loose, and I don’t want any more of my villagers hurt than is necessary. So I’m imposing a curfew: everybody must stay in their houses after dark. Understood?”

“Yes, Mayor Rattsbulge,” chorused the villagers.

“What about the Summer Ball?” came the shrill tones of Audrey Snugglepuss from somewhere beneath Sandy Landscape’s foot. “That’s tomorrow, and the cake’s all ready.” The Corne-on-the-Kobb Carrot Cake Appreciation Society, of which Audrey was the president, baked a giant cake every year for the occasion. “Will all those carrots have died for nothing, mister mayor?”

Audrey’s question got a roar of agreement from the villagers. The Summer Ball was a much-loved event in Corne-on-the-Kobb – you got free wine and sausage rolls all night, and the best-dressed villager won a pig.

“Of course the ball will still take place.” Mayor Rattsbulge wouldn’t dream of cancelling it, not while there were free sausage rolls and a massive cake, anyway. “But no loitering outside. We’ll lock the doors once you’re all in. Now clear off, and find my sword.”

The crowd cheered as the mayor waddled down from his perch, then they promptly got back to beating chunks out of each other with handbags, wooden legs, or whatever else was to hand.

“Come on, Lamp,” said Casper, just as Mitch McMassive flew straight past them and crashed into a bin. “Let’s go home before things get any uglier.”

As they left the square, Casper could feel the gaze of the little pointy-nosed girl burn the back of his neck. “I don’t trust Anemonie,” he said. “Did you see how shifty she’s acting?”

“Not as shifty as him.” Lamp nodded towards an olive-skinned little man with a black beret, whom Casper swore he’d never noticed before. He sat on a low wooden stool by the steps to the village hall, his pursed white lips sucking on a needle-thin cigarette. He watched the mass brawl with a smirk.

“Who’s that?”

“He looks weird.”

“He looks French, Lamp.”

“Like Le Splat.”

“Yeah, like—” Casper gasped. “Do you think he’s part of it?”

But Lamp wasn’t listening. He was too busy waving through the window at Daisy. She grinned and waved back, giving Lamp a minor heart attack.

Families are odd things. They come in all shapes and sizes, colours and smells. Some families grow on trees, some families come by post and some families arrive off the train with a bulging suitcase and a head full of dreams. The biggest family in the world contains two fathers, three mothers, twelve grandmothers, twenty-six brothers and a poodle. The smallest family in the world is so minute that it can only be seen through a special microscope. The Wriggle family of Essex makes a living by travelling the world and juggling ducks. There is a rumour of a new sort of family that exists only on the Internet, which can be downloaded in bite-size chunks for a weekly fee. All of these are examples of the wonderful, remarkable or downright laughable sorts of families that you can get these days. But none of these even come close to the insanity of the Candlewacks family of Corne-on-the-Kobb.

“I’m home,” called Casper as he slammed the sticky front door behind him.

“Casper, that you? Come on through, supper’s looking delicious!” Casper’s mum’s shout from the kitchen was accompanied by the clattering of knives and a rubbery thud.

On the doormat lay five red letters all with different shouty words on the front like Urgent: Final Payment Request and Fines overdue – we will release the hounds, along with one of those Wanted posters with that picture of Tiddles on it. Casper picked them all up and traipsed down the dark corridor to the back of the house. At the kitchen table sat Casper’s dad, Julius Candlewacks, surrounded by mountains of cookery books and furiously scribbling on a roll of toilet paper. Casper’s mum, Amanda Candlewacks, stood proudly in the middle of the cluttered kitchen floor, her blouse inside out, little pink rollers littering her straggled blonde hair, with a whole raw chicken clutched to her chest like a slippery hot water bottle.

“I’m making chicken!” she announced.

“Oh,” said Casper, worried. “It looks very dirty. What have you been doing with it?”

“I might have dropped it once or twice, but it’s fine. We always clean the floor, right?”

“I’ve never cleaned the floor.”

“It doesn’t matter, Casper. Floor bits are tasty.” Amanda flung open the oven door, threw in the chicken, slammed it shut and grinned. “Simple as that. I’m a natural!”

The door swung back open and broke right off its hinges, tipping the oven forward so that the grubby chicken tumbled out on to the floor and rolled under a cupboard.

“Oh…” muttered Amanda. “Is that meant to happen?”

Casper sighed. “Forget the chicken, Mum. Let’s try beans on toast.”

“Beans on toast! That’s easy.” She perked up at once and bounded back over to the stove, grabbing the nearest saucepan and thumping it down on a ring. Into the pan she threw two slices of stale bread and a tin of baked beans (unopened), then she stepped back with hands on hips, chest puffed up proudly. “There. I’m not completely useless.”

“Um…”

You see, being a mum is a difficult job. It’s much easier, on balance, to sit in front of the telly and munch biscuits. Amanda Candlewacks made this discovery eleven and a half years ago, shortly after the birth of her bubbly blonde-haired son called Casper. She’d only get up from the sofa during advert breaks or weather reports, and that would only be to fetch biscuits, use the toilet or have another baby (which only happened once, and Amanda was furious about it because she missed the latest episode of Granny’s Skin Complaints).

But two months ago the telly broke and, left alone in the house with Cuddles, her screaming baby, Amanda was faced with a problem. You see, televisions have ‘mute’ buttons and you can change the channel when you get bored, but even the most up-to-date babies can’t boast those features. So she was forced to be a mother for the very first time in eleven and a half years. Strangely, she quite liked it. Not so strangely (for someone who’d been sitting in front of a telly for over a decade), she wasn’t very good at it.

“Dad, can’t you help?” pleaded Casper. “You’re a chef, for goodness’ sake.”

Julius didn’t look up from his toilet paper. “Was a chef, Casp. Was.”

“Whatever. Couldn’t you cook our dinner?”

“I’m busy, can’t you see?”

Casper sighed. Two months ago Julius Candlewacks’s restaurant had closed down due to bad press and a small explosion, and suddenly he’d found himself without a job. Never one to give up, he jumped on the next bus to High Kobb, took out every single book from the food section of Kobb Central Library, staggered home and announced to his family, “I’m writing a celebrity cookbook!”

“Which celebrity?” Casper had asked.

“Me, of course. I’ve been a chef for twenty years; now it’s time to pass on my knowledge.”

“What knowledge?” Casper had asked.

But Julius wouldn’t hear a word of it. From that moment on he spent every waking second poring over exotic ingredient lists, copying down useful pages and growing steadily more angry about younger chefs’ successes.

Today was no different. “Look at this potato gratin, Casp, just look at it.” He waggled a loose page from Vinnie’s Veg across the room. “It isn’t even properly seasoned! That’s it. I’m taking this one. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Dad, you can’t just steal other people’s recipes.”

“I’m not! Mine’ll have more seasoning.”

Casper rubbed his eyes. “Never mind. Where’s Cuddles?” Normally he would’ve heard screaming by now, or at least felt that characteristic stabbing pain as his feral baby sister bit him on the ankle.

“She’s hanging on the line,” said Amanda. “I gave her a wash today.”

“Hanging on the…?”

“I couldn’t very well put her in the tumble dryer, could I?” Amanda burst into trills of uproarious laughter.

Eleven and a half straight years of telly would do funny things to anyone, but Casper hoped his mother might have learnt how to be a bit less bonkers by now. This morning he’d caught Amanda drying her hair with a Hoover. Last night she’d plugged a dummy up each of Cuddles’ nostrils. “These things take time,” he told himself.

Casper shoved open the back door and dashed into the garden, where the ten-month-old bundle of teeth and snot called Cuddles Candlewacks bounced up and down inside a pair of Julius’s boxer shorts that were hanging on the washing line. At the sight of Casper she screeched like a wounded eagle and swung her arms about, gnashing at the air with her tiny razor-sharp fangs.

“Come on, let’s get you inside.” Casper unhooked Cuddles and carried her at arm’s length back to the kitchen.

“There she is!” Amanda grabbed the baby from Casper’s arms and gave her a loving squeeze. “Ooh, ‘WANTED’. What’s this about?” She reached for the poster.

Instantly forgotten, Cuddles slithered gently down her mother’s legs. She landed on all fours and scuttled off under the cupboard to hunt the raw chicken.

“Haven’t you heard?” said Casper. “Someone’s stolen Sir Gossamer D’Glaze’s sword. A jewel thief going by the name of Le Chat.”

“Is this him?” asked Amanda. “Poor feller. He does look so much like a cat.”

Cuddles’ head popped out from under the cupboard. She stared at Amanda with wild eyes.

“What’s she doing?” Casper frowned at his sister, her ears pricked up attentively.

“Oh, it’s her new thing. She saw a cat in the garden and went berserk. Started bonking her head against the windows.”

“TAT!” screeched Cuddles. “TAT!”

“Ooh!” Amanda frowned. “She’s not done that before.”

“She’s saying ‘cat’!” Casper couldn’t believe his ears.

“Don’t be silly,” giggled Amanda. “Babies can’t talk.”

“TATATA! TATATA!”

“No, she is, she definitely is!”

Cuddles scrabbled out from under the cupboard and set off on a circuit of the kitchen, her nose frantically sniffing the air.

“Is it the cat?” Casper waved the poster at Cuddles. “Do you want the cat?”

Cuddles’ whole body tensed. Then she launched at Casper, scaling his trousers, yapping with all her lungs, drool dangling off her sticky chin. She leapt vertically, snatching the poster from Casper’s hands and then dropping to the floor.

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