Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [0]
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.
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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