Johnny Swanson Read online

  A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Eleanor Updale

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of the Random House Group Ltd., London, in 2010.

  David Fickling Books and the colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Updale, Eleanor.

  Johnny Swanson / Eleanor Updale.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1929 England, eleven-year-old Johnny Swanson helps his

  widowed mother by starting a newspaper advertising scam, which leads

  him to a real-life murder mystery that places his mother in mortal danger.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89688-0

  1. Moneymaking projects—Fiction. 2. Honesty—Fiction. 3. Mothers and

  sons—Fiction. 4. Single-parent families—Fiction. 5. Murder—Fiction.

  6. Great Britain—History—George V, 1910–1936—Fiction. 7. Mystery and

  detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.U4447Joh 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010011762

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1 - Athletics, Autumn 1929

  Chapter 2 - The Peace Mug

  Chapter 3 - Sending Off

  Chapter 4 - The Medical

  Chapter 5 - Letters

  Chapter 6 - Clearing Up

  Chapter 7 - The Landlord

  Chapter 8 - The Sanatorium

  Chapter 9 - The Advertiser

  Chapter 10 - In Business

  Chapter 11 - Umckaloabo

  Chapter 12 - The Private Box

  Chapter 13 - Raking It In

  Chapter 14 - Remembrance Day

  Chapter 15 - Missing

  Chapter 16 - The Clong

  Chapter 17 - The Row

  Chapter 18 - Winnie’s Walk

  Chapter 19 - News

  Chapter 20 - Questioning

  Chapter 21 - The Suspect

  Chapter 22 - Guilty

  Chapter 23 - High-Class Information

  Chapter 24 - The Hearing

  Chapter 25 - Alone

  Chapter 26 - The Farmer

  Chapter 27 - Outcasts

  Chapter 28 - Taking Charge

  Chapter 29 - The Prison Visit

  Chapter 30 - At Home with Hutch

  Chapter 31 - Looking for Mrs Langford

  Chapter 32 - The Dark Rock

  Chapter 33 - Johnny’s Journey

  Chapter 34 - At Craig-Y-Nos

  Chapter 35 - The Theatre

  Chapter 36 - In the Toilets

  Chapter 37 - The Office

  Chapter 38 - Deathwatch

  Chapter 39 - A Matter of Principle

  Chapter 40 - Conspirators

  Chapter 41 - Cover-Up

  Chapter 42 - Arrests

  Chapter 43 - Another Place, Another Fight

  Chapter 44 - Transport

  Chapter 45 - Coming Home

  Chapter 46 - Release

  Chapter 47 - A New World

  A Note About Money

  Author’s Note

  Some things in this book really existed, even if they sound made up.

  For example:

  Bacille Calmette-Guérin (the BCG vaccine) was approved by the League of Nations in 1928. It was not widely used in Britain until well after the Second World War.

  Craig-y-Nos Castle is still there, though it ceased to be a sanatorium in 1959, and is now a hotel.

  Vivatone Radio Active Hair Restorer was on sale in the shops.

  And ‘Maud Dawson’s Love Answers’, ‘For the Chicks’, and the advertisement for Umckaloabo really did appear in Reynolds’s Illustrated News in 1929.

  But nevertheless, this is a work of fiction.

  Chapter 1

  ATHLETICS, AUTUMN 1929

  The teacher was smiling, but he wasn’t smiling at Johnny. He was looking over Johnny’s head at the other boys, lined up behind him to take their turn at the High Jump. And it wasn’t a nice smile. It couldn’t be. The scar running from Mr Murray’s eye to his chin pulled the skin of his lips to one side and gave him a permanent sneer, even when he was in a good mood. But now he really was sniggering – inviting the rest of the class to laugh at the smallest, thinnest boy as he struggled with the run-up and brought down the pole.

  Johnny could feel his second-hand shorts flapping against his spindly legs. He knew he looked ridiculous, and that his only hope was to pretend that he thought it was funny too. Of course he would fail. He breathed in, clenched his fists and started his run.

  Mr Murray called out to him, catching the moment to put Johnny off his stride. ‘Right then, Squirt,’ he shouted. ‘Show us what you’re made of!’

  The boys gave a mock cheer. Johnny forced a smile and clattered into the bar.

  After the fall he brushed the mud from his knees and swaggered to the back of the line, grinning, even though he wanted to cry. Mr Murray blew his whistle and put a stop to the laughter, swiping at Johnny’s head as he passed. ‘It’s nothing to smirk about, Swanson. This country needs men, not insects like you. You wouldn’t have got far in the war.’

  The boys groaned. They were expecting another tale about Mr Murray’s bravery in France, where his face had been torn apart at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 – two years before any of them were born. But the teacher blew his whistle again and turned to the next boy in line: the muscular captain of the football team. ‘Now then, Taylor. Show Swanson how it’s done.’

  Everyone cheered as Albert Taylor cleared the bar with room to spare; and at the end of the afternoon Albert was the winner and the class hero. No one wanted to know Johnny, however much he tried to turn his humiliation into a joke.

  Mr Murray put Taylor in charge of clearing the hurdles from the games field and set off for the warmth of the staff room.

  Taylor delegated the job straight away. ‘You need building up, Quacky,’ he said, using the nickname he knew Johnny hated. ‘The extra exercise might make you grow a bit.’ He threw Johnny the key to the shed and turned to the others. ‘Who’s coming for a game of marbles?’

  The rest of the boys were happy to leave Johnny to lug the equipment away while they ran off to celebrate Albert’s triumph, and to laugh about Johnny’s shame.

  Johnny had almost finished tidying the hut when he was startled by a snuffling noise outside. Had the boys come back to taunt him? Were they waiting to jump on him as he left the shed? He couldn’t make out any voices, but he thought he could hear sticks of wood bashing against each other. Maybe they were going to barricade the door so he couldn’t get out. They all knew he’d just started a job after school. They’d love to get him into trouble by making him late for his paper round. He pushed hard at the door, hoping to knock away whatever barrier they had already built.

  The door swung open easily. There was no one there – just a big wooden hoop rolling away across the field. Then he heard a whimper and looked round.
A girl was lying on her back on the grass behind the door. She had half a dozen hoops around her neck, and more looped over each outstretched arm. Like a beetle flipped upside-down, she was wriggling but couldn’t get up.

  ‘You knocked me over,’ she sniffled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Johnny. ‘I didn’t know you were there.’ Although the girl was wearing glasses, he could see that she was crying, and had been weeping even before the door hit her. He lifted the hoops off her and helped her to her feet.

  ‘They made me carry everything,’ she said, brushing the earth off her gymslip. ‘It’s just because I’m new.’ Her voice had an unfamiliar sing-song lilt.

  ‘I thought I hadn’t seen you before,’ said Johnny.

  ‘I only started here on Monday. I’m in Mrs Palmer’s class. They all hate me already. It’s because of my accent.’

  ‘Accent?’ said Johnny, pretending he hadn’t noticed it.

  ‘I’m Welsh,’ said the girl. ‘And I’ve got a Welsh name: Olwen. For some reason, all the other girls seem to think that’s funny. And they call me “The Owl” because of my glasses. My specs kept falling off when we were exercising with the hoops. They all laughed at me.’

  ‘Everyone gets picked on for something,’ said Johnny, acutely aware that Olwen was taller than him, even though she was in the year below. ‘They get at me for being so small. That’s how I ended up having to put away all our gear. I’ll help you stack those hoops in the shed. My name’s Johnny, by the way. Johnny Swanson.’

  As Olwen passed him the hoops, she told him about her new home. ‘We had to move here from Wales,’ she said. ‘My dad lost his job in Swansea, and we had no money at all. So he wrote to an old army friend from the war to see if he could help us out. Lucky for us, he said yes. I don’t know what would have happened to us without him. Anyway, now we’re living at Newgate Farm.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s just outside town. Dad’s supposed to be working there, but he and Mum are both ill. They were sick even before we moved, and the journey just seems to have done them in.’

  ‘Have you got any brothers and sisters? Are they at this school too? If you’ve got a brother he should defend you against those horrible girls.’

  ‘Just a sister. She’s a baby. She’s too young for school. And she’s ill too, now. Mum was worried about her this morning. It’s her breathing, see. Maybe the country air doesn’t agree with her. I really should go home and see if she’s any better. It’s a long walk.’

  Johnny remembered his job at the shop. ‘I must be getting along too,’ he said.

  They ran to the school gate together. ‘Don’t worry about those other girls,’ said Johnny as they split up. ‘They’ll soon get used to you. But if you have any more trouble with them, just come and see me.’ He wasn’t really sure what he was offering to do on her behalf, but Olwen seemed pleased to have found a friend at last.

  ‘Thank you, Johnny,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll look out for you in the playground before school.’

  The boys were still playing marbles in the street. Albert Taylor made a kissing noise on the back of his hand and nudged one of the others. ‘Little Quacky’s got a pet owl,’ he said in a voice just loud enough for Johnny and Olwen to hear.

  Johnny made his way towards Hutchinson’s General Store and Post Office, just down the road from school. Joseph ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson limped out. He wasn’t an old man, not yet thirty-five, and he still had a full head of chestnut hair; but his injured leg slowed him down, and he was getting plump through lack of exercise. His brown overall strained over his belly as he busied himself rearranging a display of apples. Before Johnny even reached the shop, he could tell that Hutch was angry.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Hutch. ‘I had the papers ready ten minutes ago.’

  ‘It was PE day. We were up at the sports field.’

  ‘And I suppose you broke all the records?’ Hutch scoffed, lifting the strap of a large canvas bag across Johnny’s shoulders. He squeezed Johnny’s skinny arm. ‘There’s nothing to you. If it wasn’t for your hair, I wouldn’t believe you were Harry Swanson’s son at all. He was a fine strong man, your dad.’

  ‘I know,’ said Johnny. ‘I’ve seen a picture of him in his uniform.’

  ‘Yes, but that would have been taken after the army cut off his golden curls.’ Hutch ran his fingers roughly through Johnny’s springy hair. ‘You’re his boy, all right, even if you are a bit of a shrimp. Now be off with you. There’s folk out there waiting for the racing results.’

  Johnny preferred the evening paper round. Not many people took two papers a day, and the bag was lighter than in the morning, when he visited almost all the houses nearby. He ran from one to another, trying to get his job done as quickly as he could. At the last house, Miss Dangerfield’s, he pushed the paper through the letter box, and in his haste he let it clang shut.

  ‘Can’t you do anything quietly?’ Miss Dangerfield shouted.

  Johnny stood on tiptoe and opened the letter box to apologize. A musty, ‘old lady’ smell wafted from inside. He could see Miss Dangerfield advancing along the hallway to pick up the paper: muttering, dressed all in black as ever, and leaning on her walking stick. As she approached the door, Johnny could see how her hair had thinned almost to baldness on the top of her head. She straightened up and caught him looking at her. She was furious.

  ‘Get out of it,’ she yelled. ‘You’ve no business spying on me!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Johnny meekly.

  Miss Dangerfield lifted her stick and shook it at the letter box.

  Johnny pulled away, and let the flap snap shut again. ‘Sorry,’ he cried once more. ‘It’s just that your letter box is so high up …’

  But his voice was drowned out by her shouts. ‘Blooming children. Nothing but a menace. And I suppose you’ll leave the gate open as usual.’

  He shut it carefully behind him, just as he always did, and ran down the hill.

  Back at the shop, Hutch was closing up. ‘I’m chucking out these old biscuits,’ he mumbled, without looking up. ‘They’re stale.’ He scooped a handful of soggy custard creams onto a piece of old newspaper. ‘Interested?’

  Johnny sensed from his awkward manner that Hutch felt bad about teasing him earlier. ‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘I really am sorry I was late.’

  Hutch waved Johnny off without another word.

  Johnny took his time going home. He would have to go past Miss Dangerfield’s, and he wanted to give her a chance to calm down. He stopped and sat on the low wall of the graveyard to eat the biscuits. He couldn’t help reading the paper they’d been wrapped in. It was last Wednesday’s Stambleton Echo; a boring page, full of advertisements. People were selling old gardening tools, baby clothes, prams and books. Then one advert caught his eye. It was set apart from the others, in a little frame, and said:

  Johnny read and re-read the advertisement. The Secret of Instant Height. It was just what he needed. But where would he find two shillings and sixpence? He didn’t even have enough money for the stamped addressed envelope. Still, he tore the advert out of the paper and put it in his pocket. By the time he got home he had made up his mind to do anything to get the money, and to send away to Box 23 for the answer to all his problems.

  Chapter 2

  THE PEACE MUG

  Johnny’s mother, Winnie, was already at home. The front door led straight into the kitchen – the only downstairs room – and as soon as Johnny opened it he could see that she was ironing. She was pressing sheets: crisp white sheets quite unlike the ones they had on their own beds.

  ‘They’re Dr Langford’s,’ Winnie explained apologetically. ‘They weren’t dry enough to iron while I was there cleaning. Mrs Langford let me bring them home to finish them off. I’d hoped to get them all done before you got here. Tea will be a bit late, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I thought the Langfords sent all their stuff to the laundry,’ said
Johnny. ‘I’ve seen the van outside their house.’

  ‘If you ask me, they’re having to cut down on that sort of thing since Dr Langford retired,’ said Winnie. ‘Mrs Langford asked me if I would do the bed-linen, and I couldn’t really say no. We don’t want them getting rid of me too. There’s plenty of people looking for cleaning jobs these days. They wouldn’t have any trouble finding a replacement.’

  Johnny took one end of a sheet and helped his mother stretch it out, ready for folding. They had to kick the furniture to the edges of their tiny kitchen to make enough space to pull it tight. ‘Are they paying you extra for this?’ asked Johnny, walking forward to hand over his end and pick up the fold at the bottom.

  ‘Well, I tried hinting,’ said Winnie, ‘but Mrs Langford didn’t seem to want to get the point. I didn’t want to embarrass her – or myself. It must be hard for her. She’s used to better things. She’s from a posh French family, you know.’

  They passed the sheet to and fro between them, giggling as one or the other dropped a corner, or wrongly guessed which way to turn next. Johnny thought his mother worked quite hard enough cleaning the Langfords’ house every day without doing their ironing too. But he liked the smell of the clean linen hanging to air in front of the hearth. And it was good to have an excuse for the fire to be lit.

  ‘How was your day?’ asked Winnie, patting the neat rectangle of folded cloth. ‘It must have been nice to be out of the classroom and up on the field for a change?’

  Johnny didn’t tell her about how he had been laughed at, nor about Olwen, Miss Dangerfield, or the biscuits; nor about the advertisement for the Secret of Instant Height – which was really all that was on his mind now. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was good to be outside. But it was a bit cold.’

  ‘Well, come and sit in the warm,’ said his mother, shifting the clothes horse to make room by the fire. She caught her arm on the hot face of the iron, and stifled a curse. ‘Oh, how stupid of me to have left that there,’ she snapped, licking at a red mark on her skin. ‘Get me down the ointment. It’s on the top shelf.’

  Johnny climbed on the arm of a chair and reached up to where his mother had kept all the dangerous and delicate things since he was a toddler. There were a couple of dusty jars of pills; a fine china mug decorated with flags and the word PEACE, which had been given out at the end of the war; and a flat round tin with elaborate writing on the top: Dr Sampson’s Patent Ointment for Cuts, Burns and Stings. A Soothing Solution in All Situations. The lid was going a bit rusty at the edges, but he managed to prise it off, revealing a block of pungent brown cream, with a trace of the last finger that had scooped out a little, months before. His mother dipped in again, and started rubbing the oily mixture onto her burn.