Class 8 English Chapter 7: The Case of the Fifth Word

A detective in Class 8

Leroy Brown lives in Idaville, where his father is the Chief of Police. People think the Chief must be the smartest police chief in the country, and he is quick and sharp. What nobody is told is that when a case defeats him he goes home to dinner, and his son solves it before the meal ends.

Why he says nothing

Chief Brown would have liked to tell people about his only child. His problem is that nobody would believe him, because nobody believes the best detective alive is an eighth grader. So he says nothing, and the arrangement stays inside the family.

Why Leroy says nothing either

His reason is different and more ordinary. He never speaks of the help he gives his father because he does not want to seem different from other boys. The one thing he cannot control is his nickname, and he is stuck with it.

How he got the name

An encyclopedia is a book, or a set of books, filled with facts from A to Z, and so is his head. He has read more books than anybody in Idaville and he never forgets a fact. His friends say he is a library and a computer rolled into one, and more user-friendly. Only his parents and teachers call him Leroy.

The soup signal

At dinner on Tuesday night his father stares at his cream-of-mushroom soup. Encyclopedia and his mother both know what that means: a mystery the Chief cannot solve. The detail is a small piece of family comedy and a useful piece of storytelling, because it starts the case without a word.

The news at the table

Tim Nolan died yesterday, the Chief announces, in a matter-of-fact manner. Mrs Brown knows the name at once and asks whether he was mixed up in a jewellery robbery some years earlier. Five years ago, her husband says, and the old case opens up over the soup.

The Diamond Mart robbery

Two masked men held up the Diamond Mart on Sixth Avenue and got away with a million dollars worth of jewellery. Nolan was questioned, and the Chief corrects his wife carefully on that point: questioned, not arrested. He always believed Nolan and a man named Daniel Davenport had pulled the hold-ups, and there was no proof.

Two men who met in prison

The Chief fills in the background. The pair had met while both were in prison in South Carolina, and became friendly because of shared interests. Nolan was let out first, settled in Idaville, and started a small palm-tree nursery that barely yielded him a living. Davenport came to live with him a week before the hold-up.

The clerk who was not sure

During the robbery one gunman’s mask slipped, and a clerk thought she recognised Nolan. She was not absolutely sure, and she refused to testify against him. That single hesitation is why a case that everybody believed was never brought, and no trace of the stolen jewellery ever turned up.

The hunch

Davenport has not been seen since the hold-up. The Chief’s hunch is that the two men decided to hide the loot until things cooled down. Notice the word hunch. The story keeps the line between what the police know and what they merely believe, which is the line the whole case turns on.

The search

Mrs Brown asks whether the house was searched. It was. The Chief got a court order that morning, and Officers Lewis and Maloney just about took the house apart. They did not find one piece of the stolen jewellery, which tells us the hiding place is somewhere a search of the rooms would miss.

How Nolan died

There is a yes and a no to the mystery of the death itself. Nolan had suffered from a bad heart for years, and yesterday morning he had a stroke. Nothing suspicious there. He must have realised he was dying, because he spent what strength he had left on getting the will onto the kitchen table.

What the will says

It leaves everything he owns, including the palm-tree nursery, to Davenport. For a man in hiding for five years that is a message as well as a gift. An heir has to be found before he can inherit, and the police will do the finding.

The sheet clipped to the will

Nothing about the will is suspicious. What is odd is a sheet from his desk calendar, clipped to it. The Chief copied what was written there into his notebook: Davenport’s name, his address, and four words that nobody at the table can explain. Nom. Utes. Sweden. Hurts.

Scenario:

A set of house keys went missing from a school changing room. The games teacher searched every locker in the room twice and found nothing. A week later a Class 8 student noticed a note taped inside the lid of the lost-property box, in the owner’s handwriting, listing four classroom numbers and nothing else. She did not open any locker. She asked one question instead: which of those four rooms has a cupboard that the cleaners cannot reach? The keys were in that cupboard, where their owner had put them for safety and then forgotten them.

Analysis:

This is the structure of the Nolan case with keys instead of jewellery. Two things settle it, and neither is a search. The first is what the failed search tells you: if every locker has been looked through twice, the keys are not in a locker, so the question moves outside the room. The second is the note. A list that means nothing to a reader may mean a great deal to the person who wrote it, which is why the student treated it as directions rather than rubbish. Notice that she asked a question before announcing an answer, exactly as Encyclopedia does.

Activity:

Write down four words that would tell a friend where something of yours is kept, without naming the place.

Title:

Known, or suspected?

Safety:

No safety concerns. Use the story only, not guesswork about real crimes.

What You Notice:

The Known column is shorter than it feels while you are reading, which is why the case stayed open for five years.

Encyclopedia Brown appeared in dozens of stories by Donald J Sobol, and each one ends by asking the reader to solve the case before turning the page.

A police officer in most countries does need a court order, often called a warrant, before searching a private house. That is why the Chief waited a day.

A nursery in this story is not a school. It is a place where young plants and trees are grown for sale, and Nolan’s grew palms.

Who is who — Leroy, Chief, Nolan, Davenport — Leroy is Encyclopedia; the Chief is his father; Nolan is the man who has just died; Davenport is the partner nobody has seen.

What was on the table — A will, and a calendar sheet — The will names Davenport as heir. The sheet carries his address and four words.

Four words, read the obvious way

Mrs Brown takes the words one at a time and does rather well. Nom, she says, is a shortening of nominative, a grammatical term. Utes are an American Indian tribe. Sweden lies in northern Europe. Hurts is hurts. Every explanation is correct, and together they mean nothing at all.

Why her reading fails

She is treating the four words as four separate puzzles. A code works the other way: the words belong to one system, and you have to find the system before the words make sense. Her knowledge is not the problem. Her unit of attention is.

The paper is the clue

Encyclopedia notices what nobody else does, and he says so plainly later: the code is simple, especially as it is written on a sheet from a calendar. A calendar sheet carries days of the week. Once that is in your head, four odd words stop being words and start being days.

Taking out three letters

Nolan dropped the letters d, a and y from each day and used what was left. Monday without them leaves N, o, m. Tuesday leaves U, t, e, s. Wednesday leaves S, w, e, d, e, n. Thursday leaves H, u, r, t, s. Nom, Utes, Sweden, Hurts.

Why the words look like real words

Because Nolan rearranged nothing. He simply kept the leftover letters in order, and the four days he chose happen to leave real English words behind. That is what makes the code good: it reads like a strange list rather than like a cipher.

The word that is missing

Four words, and a week has seven days. The list runs Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then stops. The next day is Friday, and Friday without d, a and y leaves F, i, r. Fir. The most important word in the message was never written down.

What Fir means on a nursery

A fir is an evergreen tree, and Nolan’s nursery grew palms. One young fir tree among them is an oddity, and an oddity is a landmark. The code does not give an address; it gives the one thing on the property that cannot be mistaken for anything else.

The question

Before he explains anything, Encyclopedia leans back and closes his eyes, which is what he does for his hardest thinking. Then he asks one question. Was there a young fir tree in the palm-tree nursery? His father thinks, and answers: yes, there is one, on the south side of the house.

Why that question is the whole method

He already had a guess. What he needed was a fact that would prove him wrong if the guess were wrong, and the fir tree is exactly that. If there had been no fir, the code would have meant something else. Guess, then ask one question that could sink the guess: that is detection rather than cleverness.

How he explains it

He does not announce the solution. He tells his father to see for himself, and when his mother asks where the jewellery is, he answers with four words of his own: why, under the fifth word. The story then turns to the reader and asks what the fifth word was.

Where the jewellery was

Inside a twenty-gallon jug of earth, with the young fir tree growing out of it, in Nolan’s nursery. A jug of earth on a nursery is invisible, because the whole place is full of pots and soil, and the officers who took the house apart had no reason to empty a tub.

Why Nolan wrote it at all

The reconstruction comes from Encyclopedia. Davenport disappeared after the hold-up, so the two must have hidden the jewellery together. Then, probably a week or so before, Nolan moved it. He tried to tell his partner and failed, and when he knew he was dying he left the message where the law would carry it to the one man who could read it.

Four traits, with evidence

The exercise asks for Leroy’s character traits, and each one has a line behind it. Knowledgeable: he read more than anybody in Idaville and never forgot a fact. Humble: he kept quiet about the help he gave his father. A keen listener: he sat quietly, knowing his parents were discussing the case for his benefit. Cleverness: one question usually settled a case before dessert.

What the story says about thinking

The adults in it are not foolish. The Chief is quick and sharp, his officers are thorough, and his wife knows more words than either of them. What the boy adds is a habit: look at the thing the message is written on, not only at the message. Most puzzles are solved by noticing what everybody else treats as background.

Scenario:

A library found a bookmark left inside a returned atlas. It carried a borrower’s name and five numbers: 14, 28, 42, 56 and nothing after them. The librarian read the numbers as page numbers and found nothing on those pages. A Class 8 volunteer turned the bookmark over and saw that it had been cut from a bus timetable. She asked one question. Does map seventy exist in this atlas? It did, and a pressed flower and a note were tucked into that map.

Analysis:

The volunteer is using Encyclopedia’s two habits together. First, look at what the message is written on. A bus timetable suggests numbers that go up in steps, and fourteen, twenty-eight, forty-two and fifty-six go up in fourteens, so the next one is seventy. Second, do not announce the answer: ask one question that could prove it wrong. If the atlas had no map seventy, the pattern would have been a coincidence and the hunt would have had to start again. The librarian was not careless; she simply read the numbers without reading the paper.

Activity:

Make a four-item code for a hiding place in your own home, where the paper you write it on is part of the key.

Title:

Write a code with a missing word

Safety:

Hide something harmless, such as a note or a bookmark.

What You Notice:

Partners who look at the paper first solve it quickly, and the others stay stuck on the words.

A code that depends on where it is written is called a contextual code. The calendar sheet is doing half the work, which is why Nolan could keep the words so short.

Fir trees grow in cold places and palms in warm ones, so a young fir in a palm nursery in a warm American state really would stand out.

Donald J Sobol wrote these stories so that the clue is always fair: every fact a reader needs is printed before the question is asked.

How the code works — Take out d, a and y — Monday minus d, a, y leaves Nom. Tuesday leaves Utes. Wednesday leaves Sweden. Thursday leaves Hurts. Friday leaves Fir.

The order of a deduction — Guess, test, then tell — Encyclopedia works out the fifth word, asks one question that could prove him wrong, and only then gives the answer.

One word, four jobs

The chapter opens by asking what kind of case the title means, and the exercise gives four senses. A case can be a situation, as in Lalit said he could not sing but that was not the case. It can be a matter for a court, as in a lawyer waiting for a case to be taken up. It can be a container, as in a pencil case. And it can be a style of writing, as in title case.

Which one the title uses

The story is about a crime, so the title means the court sense: a matter under investigation. The other senses are not wasted, though. A reader who has just sorted all four is in exactly the frame of mind the story wants, because the whole mystery turns on words that mean more than one thing.

What a phrasal verb is

A phrasal verb is a verb with a small word added, and the pair carries a meaning of its own. The parts do not predict the whole. To turn up does not involve turning, and to get away with something is not about going anywhere. Six of them come from this story.

Put on, turned up, cooled down

To put on is to wear something, which is what Chief Brown does with his hat before going home. To turn up is to appear or be discovered, which is what no piece of the stolen jewellery ever did. To cool down is to become calm or normal again, which is what the two men were waiting for.

Make of, figure out, got away with

To make of something is to have an idea or understanding of it, which is why Mrs Brown asks what Leroy makes of the four words. To figure out is to solve a problem, which is what the Chief cannot do. And to get away with something is to escape without being punished, which the robbers did for five years.

Using them in the exercise

Some important evidence has turned up. After I cooled down, I understood that I had made a mistake. I could not figure out why he was angry with me. He put on his special coat for the party. Ravi got away with forgetting his homework. And I do not know what to make of his behaviour.

Words that sound the same

A homophone sounds like another word and is spelt differently. After running fifty kilometres last week, I felt weak for two days. The committee brought four local cases to the fore. Rina used too much force on the brake, causing the car to break down.

Two more pairs

He has composed a beautiful piece of music in order to bring peace to thousands of people. She was busy dyeing her hair, not caring about the dying flowers in her garden. Dyeing is colouring something, and dying is coming to an end.

Why homophones are a spelling problem

Because the ear gives you no help at all. Peace and piece are the same sound, so the only way to choose is to know what each one means. That is why these pairs have to be learnt in sentences rather than in lists.

Anagrams

An anagram is a word or phrase made by rearranging all the letters of another. The crossword at the start of the chapter works this way: declare, tucks, heart, felt, sword and evil are all anagrams of other words. Neat, as the note says, is an anagram of a net.

Anagrams and the story

Nolan’s code is not quite an anagram, and the difference is worth noticing. An anagram keeps every letter and changes the order; Nolan kept the order and dropped three letters. Both tricks hide a word inside another, which is why the chapter teaches them together.

Rebus puzzles

A rebus carries meaning in the layout rather than in the words. The word I printed above the word stand reads as I understand. The word million with the figure 1 inside it reads as one in a million. The word sense printed six times reads as sixth sense.

How to solve a rebus

Read the position out loud as if it were a word. Over, under, in, out, before, after, and the number of times something appears are all part of the message. A reader who only looks at the letters will stay stuck, which is the same lesson the code taught.

Spoonerisms

A spoonerism is a slip where the first sounds of two words change places, and the result is usually funny. A long road becomes a wrong load. A mound of rice becomes a round of mice. To undo one, swap the opening sounds back: sewing knits gives knowing sits, and a master plan gives a plaster man.

What to carry out of this topic

Four meanings of case, with the court sense in the title. Six phrasal verbs, learnt whole. Five homophone pairs, learnt in sentences. And three kinds of wordplay: letters rearranged, layout read aloud, and opening sounds swapped.

Scenario:

A school sports notice went up before the annual meet. It read: All runners must put on their numbers before the race. Any runner who has not collected a number should turn up at the office. Runners are asked not to break the queue. Last week two runners felt week after the heats, so please drink water. A Class 8 student read it and laughed, then borrowed a red pen from the office. Three of the four sentences were fine, and one had the wrong spelling of a word everybody says aloud every day.

Analysis:

The error is week for weak in the last sentence, and it is the clearest kind of homophone mistake. Nobody hearing the notice read out would notice anything wrong, because the two words sound identical. On paper the sentence says that two runners felt like a period of seven days, which is nonsense. Notice what else the notice gets right. It uses two phrasal verbs correctly: put on, meaning wear, and turn up, meaning appear. The same writer who handles those well still trips on a spelling, because phrasal verbs are learnt by use and homophones have to be chosen by meaning.

Activity:

Write a four-line notice for your class that uses two phrasal verbs and one homophone pair correctly.

Title:

Three puzzles of your own

Safety:

No safety concerns. Keep the phrases friendly.

What You Notice:

Most people find the rebus hardest, because it is the only one that needs you to look rather than to listen.

The spoonerism is named after William Spooner, an Oxford teacher who was famous for making them, so the mistake is named after the man who kept making it.

English has thousands of homophones, partly because the spelling was fixed in print while the pronunciation went on changing.

A phrasal verb often has a one-word equivalent from Latin: figure out and deduce, turn up and appear. The phrasal verb usually sounds more natural in speech.

The four meanings of case — Situation, matter, container, format — That was not the case; a case in court; a pencil case; title case.

The three kinds of wordplay — Letters, layout, lips — An anagram rearranges letters. A rebus uses the layout. A spoonerism swaps sounds on the lips.