Table of Contents
FOR MELANIE AND ALSO SUSAN
THANK YOU
As always, heartfelt thanks need to be
thrown overarm into the face of Camilla Hornby,
my ever brilliant agent, but thanks of a deeper kind
need to be dropped from a height in the direction
of my editor, Ruth Alltimesa woman so
brilliant she makes my head explode.
Its been a joy.
Wilma Tenderfoot wasnt quite sure how shed managed it, but somehow she was hanging upside down from a meat hook in the pantry. In her hand was an empty toilet paper roll, which, although not quite as effective as a proper telescope, concentrated the mind whenever peered through with one eye. As she hung, gently swaying, Wilma was forced to conclude that maybe she didnt have this detective lark pinned down quite yet and made a mental note to remember in the future not to try to climb up a rack of hams in order to investigate a theft of Madams sausages without first taking the appropriate precautions.
Her hero, Theodore P. Goodman, the islands greatest living detective, wouldnt have got himself into this predicament, thought Wilma, taking a bite out of a particularly delicious joint of beef as she swung toward it. No. He would have done things properly and wouldnt have slipped on a slab of greasy bacon, flown through the air, and ended up suspended from a hook by the back of his pants.
One day, dreamed Wilma as she rocked from side to side, she would be a great detective too and get to solve all manner of mysteries and conundrums, but for now she had an urgent problem to solve: how to get down from the rack of hams without being caught by Madam Skratch. Being an orphan at the Cooper Island Lowside Institute for Woeful Children was bad enough without being found upside down among the cold meats by the meanest matron who had ever lived.
Wilma could hear Madam Skratchs voice barking orders beyond the door. She didnt have a moment to lose. Straightening her dress and unbuttoning her pinafore pocket, Wilma pulled out a tatty heap of squashed and torn bits of paper attached by their corners to a large metal ring. Frantically thumbing through the scraps, Wilma found what she was looking for: an old folded newspaper clipping that had the words Theodore P. Goodmans Escape from Giant Clock scrawled on its exterior. Opening it out as fast as she could, she examined the diagram that showed her favorite detective tied to the bottom of a massive pendulum.
Thats it! she whispered, tapping at the picture. He used the pendulum to swing himself onto a ledge! If I can swing a bit harder on this ham hook, then maybe I can reach that can of peaches in syrup and then use the syrup to loosen up the hook and then ... But before Wilma had reached the end of her brilliant plan, events had taken a turn. The fabric of her pinafore had given way, and with one ripping tear she landed headfirst in a basket of onions. The door to the pantry swung open.
Wilma Tenderfoot! yelled Madam Skratch, who looked like a vulture and smelled like cabbage. My office! Now!
Wilma looked up and spat a shallot out of her mouth. She was in trouble. Again.
Somewhere between England and France is an island with only one small hill that no one has ever bothered to discover. If you go and look at a map right now, youll be able to see it. Its just there, above that bit. It should come as no surprise that the small and ordinary-looking Cooper Island has never been discovered. Exploring is, after all, no longer taught in schools, and curiosity, the mainstay of any discoverer, has been discouraged since the unfortunate news that it can kill cats.
Hundreds of years ago the island was almost discovered by an explorer called Marco Polo. You might have heard of him. He had a beard and discovered impressive things like China and First-Class Mail, so an island with one small hill somewhere between England and France was not at the top of his To Do list. It was a Tuesday, and Marco Polo had been hard at it. Ive been discovering nonstop for sixteen years, he said, standing on his poop deck, and in all that time I havent had one day off. Not one.
It was at this point that a small man named Angelo Pizza, whose daughter would invent the snack of the same name, shouted down from the ships crows nest. Ahoy! he called. I can see an island with one small hill on it!
Marco Polo had sighed at this news and thought about how his job as a discoverer of new lands and efficient postal systems was interfering with his enjoyment of life. If you know many adults, I expect youve heard them moaning about their jobs. Well, Marco Polo was just the same. Marco Polo didnt want to go to work that day. He wanted to lie in a hammock, eat a fresh, crisp apple, and have his face painted to look like a tiger. I cant be bothered! he shouted up to Angelo Pizza. Do me a favor and just pretend you didnt see it.
All right! shouted down Angelo Pizza, who carried on looking out, though he was careful not to look out again in the direction of the island with the one small hill.
It might seem strange that no one has tried to discover Cooper Island since. But most discoverers are only interested in impressive things like the tallest mountain or the longest river. So Cooper Island, which didnt have anything that was tallest or longest or deepest, was overlooked and forgotten about, and the people who lived there were left to get on with things and mind their own business. You would think that a place ignored by the world would be a haven of calm and happiness, but youd be wrong. Even small, insignificant islands can be hotbeds of trouble and bother, and this story is about one trouble so terrible that if you have a nervous disposition I would advise you to put this book down immediately.
Wilma had been packing for five minutes. She had been ordered to do so by Madam Skratch after being dragged from the pantry by one ear and then yelled at for thirty-seven minutes, at the end of which the screaming matron had pulled a crumpled letter from her pocket, waved it under Wilmas nose, and spluttered, Thats it! I give up! Your tomfoolery and nonsense have tested me for the last time! Youre leaving! Today! Wilma had been surprised but quietly thrilled, an emotion that was to prove woefully misplaced. The letter was from a dried-up misery of a woman named Mrs. Waldock, who had written in requesting a servant, one not too hungry nor too quarrelsome. The unlucky wretch would go to live on the Farside of the island, where he or she would be expected to do chores like grating the dead skin off the bottom of Mrs. Waldocks feet and climbing down drains to clear blockages. It would not only be Wilmas first job, but it would be the first time in ten years that she had stepped outside the Lowside Institute for Woeful Childrens front gates to go anywhere other than the obligatory Tuesday-afternoon school classes, where, as well as the usual reading and writing, Wilma and the other unfortunates learned essential woeful life skills like Scraping and Scrubbing.
Wilma, who was the smallest and scrawniest of the Institutes ten-year-olds, had lived at the orphanage all her life. She didnt know much about where she had come from, only that she had been left in a shabby cardboard box at the Institutes gates during a storm so fierce that the orphanages only tree had been split clean in two. She had been wrapped in muslin and abandoned with no further clues as to her background other than one small luggage tag tied around her neck that had three words written on it:
