The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Page A
Authors: Mark Haddon
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wondered whether someone else had written the letter and pretended to be Mother.
And then I looked at the front of the envelope and I saw that there was a postmark and there was a date on the postmark and it was quite difficult to read, but it said
Which meant that the letter was posted on 16 October 1997, which was 18 months after Mother had died.
And then the door of my bedroom opened and Father said, “What are you doing?”
I said, “I'm reading a letter.”
And he said, “I've finished the drilling. That David Attenborough nature program's on telly if you're interested.”
I said, “OK.”
Then he went downstairs again.
I looked at the letter and thought really hard. It was a mystery and I couldn't work it out. Perhaps the letter was in the wrong envelope and it had been written before Mother had died. But why was she writing from London? The longest she had been away was a week when she went to visit her cousin Ruth, who had cancer, but Ruth lived in Manchester.
And then I thought that perhaps it wasn't a letter from Mother. Perhaps it was a letter to another person called Christopher, from that Christopher's mother.
I was excited. When I started writing my book there was only one mystery I had to solve. Now there were two.
I decided that I would not think about it anymore that night because I didn't have enough information and could easily
Leap to the Wrong Conclusions
like Mr. Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard, which is a dangerous thing to do because you should make sure you have all the available clues before you start deducing things. That way you are much less likely to make a mistake.
I decided that I would wait until Father was out of the house. Then I would go into the cupboard in his bedroom and look at the other letters and see who they were from and what they said.
I folded the letter and hid it under my mattress in case Father found it and got cross. Then I went downstairs and watched the television.
151. Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.
For example, some people believe in the ghosts of people who have come back from the dead. And Uncle Terry said that he saw a ghost in a shoe shop in a shopping center in Northampton because he was going down into the basement when he saw someone dressed in gray walk across the bottom of the stairs. But when he got to the bottom of the stairs the basement was empty and there were no doors.
When he told the lady on the till upstairs, they said it was called Tuck and he was a ghost of a Franciscan friar who used to live in the monastery which was on the same site hundreds of years ago, which was why the shopping center was called Greyfriars Shopping Center, and they were used to him and not frightened at all.
Eventually scientists will discover something that explains ghosts, just like they discovered electricity, which explained lightning, and it might be something about people's brains, or something about the earth's magnetic field, or it might be some new force altogether. And then ghosts won't be mysteries. They will be like electricity and rainbows and nonstick frying pans.
But sometimes a mystery isn't a mystery. And this is an example of a mystery which isn't a mystery.
We have a pond at the school, with frogs in it, which are there so we can learn how to treat animals with kindness and respect, because some of the children at school are horrible to animals and think it's funny to crush worms or throw stones at cats.
And some years there are lots of frogs in the pond, and some years there are very few. And if you drew a graph of how many frogs there were in the pond, it would look like this (but this graph is what's called
hypothetical,
which means that the numbers aren't the real numbers, it is just an
illustration
)
And if you looked at the graph you might think that there was a really cold winter in 1987 and 1988 and 1989 and 1997, or
And then I looked at the front of the envelope and I saw that there was a postmark and there was a date on the postmark and it was quite difficult to read, but it said
Which meant that the letter was posted on 16 October 1997, which was 18 months after Mother had died.
And then the door of my bedroom opened and Father said, “What are you doing?”
I said, “I'm reading a letter.”
And he said, “I've finished the drilling. That David Attenborough nature program's on telly if you're interested.”
I said, “OK.”
Then he went downstairs again.
I looked at the letter and thought really hard. It was a mystery and I couldn't work it out. Perhaps the letter was in the wrong envelope and it had been written before Mother had died. But why was she writing from London? The longest she had been away was a week when she went to visit her cousin Ruth, who had cancer, but Ruth lived in Manchester.
And then I thought that perhaps it wasn't a letter from Mother. Perhaps it was a letter to another person called Christopher, from that Christopher's mother.
I was excited. When I started writing my book there was only one mystery I had to solve. Now there were two.
I decided that I would not think about it anymore that night because I didn't have enough information and could easily
Leap to the Wrong Conclusions
like Mr. Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard, which is a dangerous thing to do because you should make sure you have all the available clues before you start deducing things. That way you are much less likely to make a mistake.
I decided that I would wait until Father was out of the house. Then I would go into the cupboard in his bedroom and look at the other letters and see who they were from and what they said.
I folded the letter and hid it under my mattress in case Father found it and got cross. Then I went downstairs and watched the television.
151. Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.
For example, some people believe in the ghosts of people who have come back from the dead. And Uncle Terry said that he saw a ghost in a shoe shop in a shopping center in Northampton because he was going down into the basement when he saw someone dressed in gray walk across the bottom of the stairs. But when he got to the bottom of the stairs the basement was empty and there were no doors.
When he told the lady on the till upstairs, they said it was called Tuck and he was a ghost of a Franciscan friar who used to live in the monastery which was on the same site hundreds of years ago, which was why the shopping center was called Greyfriars Shopping Center, and they were used to him and not frightened at all.
Eventually scientists will discover something that explains ghosts, just like they discovered electricity, which explained lightning, and it might be something about people's brains, or something about the earth's magnetic field, or it might be some new force altogether. And then ghosts won't be mysteries. They will be like electricity and rainbows and nonstick frying pans.
But sometimes a mystery isn't a mystery. And this is an example of a mystery which isn't a mystery.
We have a pond at the school, with frogs in it, which are there so we can learn how to treat animals with kindness and respect, because some of the children at school are horrible to animals and think it's funny to crush worms or throw stones at cats.
And some years there are lots of frogs in the pond, and some years there are very few. And if you drew a graph of how many frogs there were in the pond, it would look like this (but this graph is what's called
hypothetical,
which means that the numbers aren't the real numbers, it is just an
illustration
)
And if you looked at the graph you might think that there was a really cold winter in 1987 and 1988 and 1989 and 1997, or
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