Back to Enid Blyton, and a very old favourite, though I was upset to find that I had not really remembered much about the book. This was The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat, the second in the Five Find-Outer series, and like its predecessor it had a subtle twist in the tale. And in the tail, for it was about the theft of a precious Siamese Cat, which was distinguished by having a few light coloured hairs in its tail.
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The main plot I remembered, for once read it was unforgettable: the wicked gardener took the cat early and then painted the tail of another cat so that those who looked at the cage vouched for Dark Queen being there at a much later time. Then he arrived with a witness and swiftly removed the creamy paint with turpentine, so that the disappearance was deemed to have happened between this time and when the painted cat was last seen. And he had arranged for his assistant to be near during this period, so that suspicion would fall on him, and to strengthen this he dropped in the cage on both occasions the wooden whistles the boy used to make.
But I had completely forgotten the boy, whose persecution is central to the tale, and how the Five Find Outers concealed the whistle on the first occasion and replaced it with ridiculous clues which completely fooled the village policeman, their long-standing enemy Mr Goon. And since the absurdity of those clues was established before the next disappearance, though the whistle was discovered, Mr Goon belittled the two real clues the Five Find Outers registered, a smell of turpentine and a little stone with a spot of cream coloured paint.
When the children got into the cage and traced the smell to the tail of another cat, and then found that the turpentine that used to be kept in a garden shed was missing, the case was complete. Their dog Buster was set on the trail, and found the bottle buried in a rabbit hole together with the wicked gardener’s handkerchief, whereupon he fell to pieces. So young Luke was saved, and the Five Find Outers once again won plaudits from Chief Inspector Jenks, their great friend, who had persuaded Luke to go back to work when he ran away. Naturally this was to a circus, and the children traced him there, and got him away before Goon found him.
Class consciousness permeates the book, with the Find Outers on the side of empathy, though given the time at which Enid Blyton wrote there is more than a hint of patronage in their approach. Goon gets no sympathy, but since he uses his position to abuse those less fortunate than himself, that the children patronize him even more blatantly seems acceptable. And while Lady Candling who owns the cat is graciousness personified, Mrs Hilton, the mother of the two youngest children, is presented as a hide-bound representative of gentility.
These elements were not of course apparent to me in the early sixties, but now they make it clear that Enid Blyton was not the prisoner of her class as is alleged in the reaction to her work that set in while I was growing up.