Chapter 4 Chapter Eight and Nine

I made this with Mrs. Pi at school, who is our art teacher.It's a linoleum relief print where you have to first draw a design on a piece of linoleum that Mrs Pie cuts out with a box knife and then you put the ink on the linoleum and print it on the paper .I only made one car, but it was reprinted nine times on paper so they all looked exactly the same.It was Mrs. Pi's idea to print several cars at once, and I like it very much.I painted them all with red paint for my mother's auspicious day. Her father said she died of a sudden heart attack, which no one expected. I said, "What kind of heart attack?" I was surprised.

My mother is only 38 years old, and sudden heart disease is usually a disease of the elderly. My mother is not only active, but also rides a bicycle. She eats healthy foods high in fiber and low in saturated fat, such as chicken, vegetables and mixed fruits wheat. My father said he didn't know what kind of heart attack she had, and now was not the time to ask that kind of question. I said maybe it was an aneurysm. Sudden heart disease is when a part of the heart muscle loses its function due to lack of blood nourishment.Sudden heart attacks are mainly divided into two types. One is embolism, which is a blood clot that blocks the blood vessel from delivering blood to the heart muscle. You can prevent it by taking aspirin and eating more fish.That's why Eskimos don't get heart attacks, because they eat fish, which keeps their blood from clotting, but if they're wounded and bleed profusely, they'll bleed to death anyway.

The other type is an aneurysm, which is a rupture of a blood vessel that prevents blood from reaching the muscles of the heart.Some people get aneurysms because there is a weak spot in their blood vessels, like Mrs. Ha who lives at No. 72 on our street. She has a weak spot in the blood vessels in her neck. He died violently in the parking lot when he turned to back up. Another possibility is an embolism, where prolonged bed rest, such as being in a hospital, makes the blood more likely to form clots.Dad said, "I'm sorry, Christopher, I'm really sorry." But it's not his fault.

Later Mrs. Xi came to cook us dinner, wearing slip-on jeans and a T-shirt with “Windsurf” and “Corfu” printed on it, with a sail on it. Her father sat in the chair, and she stood beside him, putting her arms around his head against her chest and saying, "Well, Edward, we'll get you through this." Then she made us pasta with tomato sauce. After dinner she played Scrabble with me, and I beat her 134 with 247. 53 I decided that even though my father told me to mind other people's business, I would still investigate who killed Wellington. This is because I am not a person who obeys every time.

And whenever someone asks you to do something, his words are usually slurred and unreasonable. For example, people often say "quiet" but they don't tell you how long to be quiet, or you see a sign that says "Keep off the grass" when in fact it should say "Keep off the grass near this sign", or "Don't trample on all the grass in the park" because there are many grass areas that are allowed. Besides, people break the rules all the time.For example, my father regularly drives 30 mph over the 30 mph zone, and he sometimes drives under the influence of alcohol, and often drives his minivan without a seat belt on.The Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill," but the Crusades, the two world wars, and the Persian Gulf War all had Christians killing people.

Also, I don't understand what my father means when he says "don't meddle in other people's business" because I don't understand what he means by "other people's business".I do a lot of things with other people, whether it's school, the store, or the school bus.What's more, his job is to go to other people's homes to repair their boilers and radiators, which are other people's affairs. Sharon knew what to do.When she tells me not to do something, she tells me exactly what not to do.I like this. For example, she once said, "You are not allowed to hit Sarah under any circumstances, Christopher, not even if she hits you first. If she hits you again, go away, stand still, and count from one to Fifty, then come and tell me what she did, or tell the other teachers what she did."

For another example, she once said: "If you want to play on a swing, but there are already people sitting on it, you must never push them off, you must ask them if they can let you play, and then you Be sure to wait by the side until they come down before you can play." But when people tell you not to do this or that, they don't say so, so I decided to decide for myself what to do or what not to do. That night I went to Mrs. Xi's house and knocked on the door, and waited for her to open the door. When she came to the door, she was drinking tea with a mug in her hand, she had on a pair of sheepskin slippers, and she was watching a trivia show on TV, and because the TV was on, I heard a voice saying: "Venezuela 1. Malagas. 2. Caracas. 3. Bogota. 4. Georgetown.” I knew the correct answer was Caracas.

She said, "Christopher, I don't want to see you right now." I said, "I didn't kill Wellington." She replied, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I'm here to tell you I didn't kill Wellington, and I'm going to find out who did it." A little of the tea in her hand spilled onto the carpet. I said, "Do you know who killed Wellington?" She didn't answer my question, just said, "Goodbye, Christopher," and closed the door. I decided to start investigating. I knew she was watching me, waiting for me to leave, because I could see from the frosted glass of her front door that she was still standing in the porch, so I walked down the walk and out of the garden.After a while I turned my head to look and found that she was no longer standing in the corridor of her house.After making sure that no one was looking, I climbed over the fence and walked quietly from the side of her house into her back garden to the small warehouse where she kept her gardening tools.

The warehouse door was locked with a padlock, and I couldn't get in, so I went around to the side window.As luck would have it, I looked in through the window and saw a fork identical to the one that had pierced Wellington's body, lying on the bench by the window, having been cleaned as there was no blood on it.I also saw some other tools, a shovel, a rake, and a pair of big iron shears that people use to trim tall branches, all of which have the same green plastic handle as the fork, which means iron Either the fork belonged to Mrs. Xi, or it was irrelevant. In other words, it was a clue that could lead to misjudgment or mislead the real one.

I wondered if Mrs. Sheen had killed Wellington herself, but if she had killed Wellington herself, why would she run out of her house and shout, "Damn, what have you done to my dog?" I think Mrs. Xi probably didn't kill Wellington, but whoever killed it used Mrs. Xi's iron fork, but the warehouse was locked, which means that the murderer had the key to the warehouse of Mrs. Xi's house, or at that time The warehouse was unlocked, or her fork had just been abandoned in the garden. I heard a noise and turned my head to see Mrs. Xi standing on the grass looking at me.I said, "I'll see if the fork is still in the warehouse."

She said, "If you don't leave, I will call the police again." So I went home. When I got home, I greeted my dad and went upstairs to feed my pet mouse, Toby.I was very happy because I started to be a detective and made some progress. Raleigh was at home when I got home.Raleigh was the one who helped my father with heating maintenance and boiler repairs.He sometimes comes to the house to drink beer, watch TV and chat with his father at night. Rowley was wearing stained white denim overalls, a gold ring on his left middle finger, and he smelled indescribably, the same way my father always smelled when he came home from get off work. I put the long strips of fruit candy and milk candy in the food box in the drawer, which is my personal food box, and even my father can't touch it casually. Father said, "What have you been doing, young man?" I said, "I'll go to the store and buy fruit and milk candies." He said, "You have been away for a long time." I said, "I was talking to Mrs. Asia's dog outside the store, and I petted him, and he smelled my pants." Another white lie. Raleigh said, "Jesus, you're really in the third category, aren't you?" I don't understand what the third category means. He said, "How are you lately, Captain?" I said, "I'm fine, thank you." It was a polite reply. He said, "What is two hundred and fifty-one times eight hundred and sixty-four?" I thought about it and said, "Two hundred and sixteen thousand and eight hundred and sixty-four." Then you divide by four, which is two hundred and sixteen thousand, which is the result of multiplying two hundred and fifty times eight hundred and sixty-four, and then you add eight hundred and sixty-four, which is equal to two hundred and fifty-one Multiplied by eight hundred and sixty-four, the result is two hundred and sixteen thousand eight hundred and sixty-four. I said, "Is the answer right?" "I don't know," said Raleigh, laughing. I don't like it when Raleigh laughs at me. Raleigh laughs at me a lot, and my father says it's a friendly laugh. Dad then said, "Can I put a mixed vegetable stew in the oven for you?" I love Indian food because it has a strong flavor, but the mixed vegetable stew is yellow, so I mix in a little red food coloring before eating.I have a small plastic bottle of this red food coloring in my personal pantry. I said: "OK." Rowley said, "Well, it looks like Pucky patched them up?" That was to my father, not me. "Those circuit boards looked like they were taken out of Noah's Ark," the father said. Raleigh said, "Are you going to tell them?" Father said, "What's the use? They won't sue him, what do you think?" "Sooner or later," Rowley said. My father said, "I think it's best to leave it alone." Then I went into the garden. When you're writing a book, Sharon says, you have to describe things in detail.I said I could take pictures and put them in the book.But she said the purpose of writing a book is to describe things in words, so that people can leave an impression on their minds after they finish reading. It's best to describe something interesting or out of the ordinary, she said. She also said that I should describe the characters in the story in detail, so that people can picture them in their minds, which is why I wrote that there are many small holes in Mr. Jia's shoes, and the police's nostrils seem to hide Two little mice, and the reason for Raleigh's unexplainable smell. So I decided to describe the garden as well.But the garden wasn't very interesting or different, it was just a normal garden with grass and a shed and a clothesline.However, the sky is interesting and varied, because usually the sky is very ordinary, either blue or gray, or just shapeless clouds, and it doesn't look like it's hundreds of miles high. It looks like it is painted on a big roof.But the sky is very different today, with clouds of different shapes at different heights, and you can see how huge it is, which makes the sky even more vast. There are many small white clouds in the farther horizon, layers of sand dunes that look like fish scales or very regular patterns. Looking to the west, there are still some large light orange clouds, because it is close to dusk at this time, and the sun is gradually setting. The place closest to the ground is a large gray cloud. It is a cloud that can rain. It has two pointed ends. It looks like this. Alien spaceships, like the alien spaceships in Dune or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.It's just that those spacecraft are solid, but this cloud is made up of small water droplets formed by condensed water vapor. But it's possible that it's an alien spaceship. Most people think that the alien spaceship is solid, made of metal, with bright lights on the hull, and slowly passing the sky.That's because if we could build a spaceship that huge, we would certainly build it in this image.But aliens, if there are aliens, are likely to be very different from us.They may look like a large slug, or flat like a reflection.It is also possible that they are larger than the planet, or have no form at all.They could be just information, like computers, and their spaceships could of course be like clouds, or made of something as irrelevant as dust or leaves. I listened to the sounds in the garden, I could hear the birds singing, I could hear the traffic that sounded like breaking waves, people playing music and children crying.Besides these sounds, if I stand still and listen carefully, I can hear small buzzing in my ears, and the sound of air passing in and out of my nostrils. I sniffed the air, tried to smell the air in the garden, but couldn't smell anything.It has no taste, which is also a funny thing. Then I went inside to feed Toby. The next day is Saturday.There was usually nothing to do on Saturdays, unless my father took me for a boat ride on the lake, or to the garden center.But this Saturday the England football team is playing Romania, which means we won't be out for a picnic because my father will be at home watching TV, so I decided to do some detective work myself. I decided to ask the other residents on our street if they had seen anyone kill Wellington, or if they saw anything out of the ordinary in the street on Thursday night. I usually don't talk to strangers, I don't like talking to strangers.It's not because schools often remind us to be wary of dangerous strangers who give you candy or ask you to ride in his car because he wants to have sex with you.I don't worry about that, because whenever a stranger touches me, I'm bound to hit him, hard.For example, Sarah was pulling my hair so I beat her and knocked her out and she had a concussion and they had to take her to the emergency room at the hospital.Plus I have a Swiss Army knife in my pocket with a saw blade attached to it to cut off a person's fingers. I don't like strangers because I don't like people I haven't met.It's hard for them to understand, like in France, where we sometimes went on vacation when my mother was alive, and went camping.I don't like it because it's scary if you go into a store or restaurant, or at the beach, and you can't understand what they're saying. It takes me a long time to get used to people I don't know.For example, if a new staff member arrives at the school, I have to wait for weeks before speaking to them.I'll keep watching them until I'm sure they're not dangerous.Afterwards I would ask them questions about themselves, like if they had any pets, what their favorite color was, how much did they know about the Apollo space missions, and then I would ask them to draw a floor plan of their home and ask them to open it. What car, to learn more about them.This way I don't care about being in the same room with them, and I don't have to keep an eye on them all the time. So, it takes courage to talk to your neighbor who lives on the same street, but you have to be brave if you want to be a detective, so I had no choice. First, I drew a floor plan of all the residents on our street, which is called Randolph Street. This picture is like this: Then I checked whether my Swiss army knife was lying safely in my pocket, Then I went out and knocked on the door of No. 40 directly opposite Mrs. Xi, because they were most likely to see something strange.The neighbor who lives at No. 40 is surnamed Tang. Mr. Tang came out to answer the door. He was wearing a T-shirt with the following words on it: Beer Helps Ugly People Be Sexually Happy Mr. Tang said, "What's the matter?" I said, "Do you know who killed Wellington?" I didn't look at his face, I don't like to look at people's faces, especially strangers.He didn't answer for a while. Then he said, "Who are you?" I said, "My name is Christopher Boone. I live at No. 36. I know you. You are Mr. Tong." He said, "I am Mr. Tang's older brother." I said, "Do you know who killed Wellington?" He said, "What the hell is Wellington?" I said, "Mrs. Xi's dog, Mrs. Xi lives at No. 41." He said, "Someone killed her dog?" I said, "Use an iron fork." He said, "Jesus." "An iron fork for gardening," I said, lest he think I meant a fork for eating.Then I said, "Do you know who killed it?" "I have absolutely no idea," he said. I said, "Did you see anything unusual on Thursday night?" He said, "Son, are you sure you want to go around asking questions like this?" I said, "Yes, because I'm going to find out who killed Wellington, and I'm writing a book about it." "I was in Colchester on Thursday so you're asking the wrong person," he said. I said, "Thank you." And I left. No one answered the door on the 42nd. I've seen people who live at number 44, but I don't know their surnames.They were a black family, a gentleman and a lady with two small children, a boy and a girl.The lady came to answer the door, and she was wearing a pair of boots that looked like army boots.Five silver metal bracelets jingled around her wrists.She said, "You're Christopher, aren't you?" I said yes, and I asked her if she knew who killed Wellington.She knew who Wellington was, so I didn't need to explain, and she'd heard about it being killed. I asked her if she had seen anything suspicious on Thursday night that might have been a good clue. She said, "Like what?" I said, "Such as strangers, or the sound of someone arguing." But she said no. Then I decided to take what I called a "roundabout tactic" and asked her if she knew anyone who might upset Mrs. Xie. "Maybe you should ask your father," she said. I said I couldn't ask my father, because it was a secret investigation, and my father told me not to take care of other people's affairs. She said, "Maybe he's right, Christopher." I said, "So you don't know any possible leads?" She said, "I don't know." Then she said, "You've got to be careful, young man." I said I would be careful, then I thanked her for answering my question, and then I turned to No. 43 next door to Mrs. Xi's house. It was Mr. Wei and his mother who lived at No. 43. She was in a wheelchair, so he lived with her so that he could take her to the store and drive her for rides. It was Mr. Wei who answered the door.He smelled of body, plus expired cookies and popcorn, the way you smell when you haven't showered in a long time, like Jason at school because he was poor. I asked Mr Wei if he knew who killed Wellington on Thursday night. He said: "My God, the police are getting younger and younger these days, aren't they?" He laughed as he spoke.I don't like people laughing at me, so I turned and walked away. I didn't knock on the door of No. 38. No. 38 is next to my house. The whole family takes drugs. My father said I could never talk to them, so I didn't look for them.They used to turn the music up really loud at night, and sometimes I met them on the road, and they always terrified me.Besides, it wasn't actually their house either. At this time, I noticed that the old lady who lived in No. 39, who is the neighbor on the other side of Mrs. Xi, was in the garden in front of the house at the moment, trimming the hedge of her house with a pair of electric shears.She has a dog, a dachshund, so she's probably a good person because she loves dogs.But the dog was not in the garden, but in the house. The Asia-Pacific lady was wearing jeans and sneakers, which is quite rare for the elderly.My jeans are muddy and my sneakers are New Balance with red laces. I went up to Mrs. Asia and said, "Do you know about Wellington being killed?" She turned off the clippers and said, "Please repeat, I'm a little hard of hearing." So I said, "Do you know about Wellington being killed?" "I heard about it yesterday, it's horrific, it's horrific," she said. I said, "Do you know who killed it?" She said, "No, I don't know." I said, "Someone must know, because the man who killed Wellington knew he killed Wellington, unless he was crazy and didn't know what he did, or he had amnesia." "I think you have a point," she said. I said, "Thank you for assisting me with my investigation." She said, "Your name is Christopher, isn't it?" I said, "Yes, I live at number thirty-six." "We haven't talked before, have we?" she said. I said, "No, I don't like talking to strangers, but I'm doing detective work." "I see you every day, you go to school," she said. I didn't answer. "It's nice of you to come over and say hello," she said. I didn't answer either, because Mrs. Asia Pacific's words were actually greetings, which are irrelevant topics that neither ask nor answer when ordinary people talk to each other. Then she said, "Even if you're just doing research." I said again, "Thank you." I was about to turn and leave, but she said, "I have a grandson the same age as you." I tried to say in a chat way: "I am fifteen years old, three months and three days old." "That's about as old as you," she said. We were silent for a while, and she said again, "You don't have a dog, do you?" I said, "No." She said, "You seem to like dogs, don't you?" I said, "I have a mouse." She said, "A mouse?" I said, "It's called Toby." She said, "Oh." I said, "Most people don't like rats because they think it brings diseases like bubonic plague, but that's because they live in the sewers and are later brought on board from foreign countries where strange diseases are endemic." Entry. The fact that the mouse is very clean, Toby often takes a bath, and you don't have to take it out for a walk, I just let it run around my room so that it can get some exercise. And he sometimes sits on me on my shoulders, or hide in my sleeves and use the cuffs as burrows, but rats are not born to live in burrows." Mrs. Asia Pacific said, "Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?" I said, "I don't go into other people's houses." She said, "Well, how about I serve them out, do you like lemonade?" I replied, "I only drink orange juice." She said, "Fortunately, I have some orange juice too. Would you like a Baden-Powell cake?" I said, "I don't know, I don't know what a Baden-Powell cake is." "It's a cake that has four little pink and yellow squares in the center and a ring of almond icing," she said. I said, "Is it a long cake with a square pattern divided into quarters in the middle, and the colors are spaced apart from each other?" She said, "Yes, I think you're right about that." I said, "I like the pink squares, but not the yellow ones, because I don't like yellow. I don't know what marzipan is, so I don't know if I'd like it." She said, "I'm afraid the marzipan is yellow too, or I'll get some biscuits out. Do you like biscuits?" I said, "Yes, certain types of biscuits." She said, "I'll take it out for you to choose." With that, she turned and entered the house.She walked very slowly because she was an old lady and she was in there for at least six minutes, so I started to get nervous because I didn't know what she was doing in the house.I don't know her very well, so I don't know if she's telling the truth about the orange juice and the Baden-Powell cake.I figured she might call the police, and I'd be in big trouble because I'd already been warned. So I leave. As I was crossing the street, I had a sudden idea of ​​who might have killed Wellington.I do this "serial inference" in my head: 1. Why did you kill the dog? (a) because you hate dogs (b) because you're crazy (c) because you're going to upset Mrs. Sean 2. I don't know anyone who hates Wellington, so if the answer is (a), it's probably a stranger. 3. I don't know any lunatics, so if the answer is (b), it's probably a stranger. 4. Most murderers know their victims. In fact, the people most likely to kill you on Christmas Day are your own family members.This is a fact.Therefore, Wellington was most likely murdered by someone he knew well. 5. If the answer is (c), the only person I know who doesn't like Mrs. Shear is Mr. Shear, who is also very close to Wellington. So, Mr. Xi is my "prime suspect". Mr. Xi and Mrs. Xi were married before, and they lived together until two years ago before breaking up.Later, Mr. Xi left and never came back.That's why Mrs. Xi often came to my house to cook for us after my mother died, because she no longer had to cook for Mr. Xi, and she didn't have to stay at home to be his wife.What's more, her father said that she also needs company, and she doesn't want to be alone. Sometimes Mrs. Xi will stay overnight at our house, I like it, because she will tidy up the house, and she will also arrange the pots and pans in an orderly manner in the kitchen cupboard that is within reach of her height, And she always keeps the labels facing outwards, and puts the knives, forks and spoons in the correct compartments inside the drawer.But she likes to smoke, and she says things I don't understand, like: "I'm going to sleep" and "Monkey outside", and "Let's fill up first".I don't like her saying that because I can't understand it. And I don't understand why Mr. Xi left Mrs. Xi. No one ever told me.But I think that once a man and a woman get married, they want to live together and have children, and if they get married in a church, they must swear to live together forever, until death.If they don't want to live together, they have to divorce because one of them has had sex with someone else, or the two have quarreled, so they hate each other and don't want to live under the same roof anymore and have children.Mr. Xi didn't want to live in the same room with Mrs. Xi, so he must have hated her, and maybe he came back and killed her dog because of it, just to make her sad. I decided to find a way to investigate more clues about Mr. Xi.