The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage

There is a vanished couple, a missing picture and a very pleased-with-himself policeman in The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage, Enid Blyton's detective story for 9 year olds.

What happens

It opens with four children and a Scottie dog waiting at Peterswood station for Fatty to get back from Switzerland. Buster is tied to a bench because nobody wants him wandering. Then a white poodle called Poppet arrives in the arms of a woman in a fur coat.

You can guess how that goes. A train whistles, the poodle bolts, the woman ends up on the platform, and Mr Goon the village policeman turns up with his notebook and his bicycle clips, absolutely delighted.

In all the fuss, nobody notices Fatty getting off the train.

The couple with the poodle catch their own train and leave. They hand the dog over to Larkin, who lives in their grounds, limps, and has a scarf over most of his face. A few days later the police want that couple rather badly, and there is a picture missing from the house they were renting.

The fun of a Find-Outers book is that the grown-ups keep telling Fatty to keep out of it. The Superintendent says the case has left Peterswood altogether. Fatty accepts this for roughly a page. Then Bets points out that the woman adored that poodle, so if the poodle ever disappears, somebody has come for her.

Fatty is the draw. He does voices. He owns a set of frightful false teeth and a wig, and he once impersonated a French master at his own school so convincingly that the real one got a very odd reception. He tells the others all about it at length, because he cannot help himself, and they let him.

Something to get ahead of. The hero is called Fatty and the book says fat and plump about him constantly, cheerfully, as an affectionate nickname from his friends. Nobody in the story means any harm by it and he is clearly the cleverest person in it. But a child reading this now may need that explaining, and it is easier done before than after.

This one also sits late in the run. The children mention cases they have already cracked as though you had been there with them.

What to read next

For another theft the grown-ups get completely wrong, The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow puts a shop girl and a porter's boy on the trail of a stolen clockwork bird in a brand new London department store.