When they get up the next morning, the only thing they can think about is the ashtray. They have to get it back, so they decide to go around to Jimmy�s place and, ah� What�s the word? They can�t think of a word to describe it. It�s not stealing anyway.

Even though it�s not stealing, they still need disguises, but they can�t agree on what disguise to use. There�s a box full of Spock ears in the attic (a minibus full of people on their way to a Star Trek convention broke down in front of the house once and they stayed the night, but they gave up on Star Trek in the morning after Tessie said she thought they�d look better without the fake ears � she changed her mind about a few of them after they took the ears off, but she didn�t say anything). Some of the sisters want to go as Spock, but the rest of them want to go as Kojack because they think that all they have to do is suck a lollipop and say, �Who?� Alan comes up with the compromise that they can go as both.

Annabel has always had a problem with her balance because of her ears. The ears themselves need to be kept in balance. If her east ear gets more bored than her west ear, she�ll slowly fall over. The problem is that the two ears have different thresholds of boredom, and they get bored by different things. She has to do something for the east ear if the west ear is interested in something else. Her hearing isn�t great, and with the Spock ears on she can hardly hear anything. June can�t hear at all.

They go into Mizzenwood and knock on the front door of Jimmy�s house. His wife says he�s in the workshop around the back, so they go to the workshop and knock at the door. Jimmy opens the door and sees the sisters and Alan with the Spock ears and the lollipops (there are a few strands of selotape around Alan�s head to keep the ears in place, and he continually taps the lollipop on the part of his head where his mouth would be, if he had one).

Jimmy just looks at them for a few seconds and then says �hello�, but it�s a very tentative �hello�.

They take the tone of his voice to mean that he doesn�t recognise them (as they were expecting), so Cicely introduces the group. �We�re Mr. Spock.�

�No, we�re Kojack.�

�We�re both,� Alan says. �Our name is Spojack.�

�Ye�re both Spock and Kojack?�

�Yes.�

�What, all of ye?�

�Yes, that�s right.�

�We�re not the Shelf sisters,� Ellen says. �Who?�

Annabel�s west ear has become bored before the east ear and she slowly falls over.

�Right,� Jimmy says. �Well how can I help ye?�

They didn�t think this far ahead. They look at the ground or at the sky and say �ahh� for a few seconds before Alan comes up with something. �We just wanted to, y� know, maybe have a look around? If you wouldn�t mind?�

�Oh. Right. Yeah, that�s fine. Look around all ye want. I was just on my way out, but my brother is here. He�ll look after ye.�

Jimmy leaves. The sisters and Alan go into the workshop and meet Dan. He talks about the weather � how it was nicer today than it was yesterday but this morning was about the same as yesterday evening on a scale of one to ten, but there was a minute when he fell in the bathroom that was nicer than anything in last Tuesday. Hilda sees the ashtray on a workbench. She casually walks around the workshop and slips the ashtray into her handbag as she walks past the workbench.

They leave Dan, but not before a few cups of tea and a few more hours talking about what the weather was like when his appendix was removed (he showed them a letter from the meteorological service telling him what the weather was like at the time) and the effect on the weather of his tendency to talk to flowers in his sleep (apparently it has no effect on the weather, but he still talks for hours about it). The sky is completely dark by the time they get home. They leave the car in the driveway for the gardener to park it in the stables at the back. As they walk towards the house, they notice that one of the servants, William, is waiting for them at the door.

�There�s been a robbery,� he says. �The money has been stolen from the sideboard in the drawing room.�

They go inside and the cupboard in the sideboard is empty. One of the windows in the room is broken.

�I heard the glass breaking,� William says, �but when I came into the room, it was empty and the money was gone.�

�It�s all gone!� Ellen says. �What are we going to do?�

�Ye�r uncle Hugh called,� William says. �He said that he vaguely remembered that ye mentioned something about money and cigars when ye visited him recently. I told him about the robbery and about money being stolen. He told me he knew someone who could help, and he�d send him over as soon as possible. He said this man is a detective.�

The sisters forget about the money fairly quickly when they remember the ashtray. They take it out and spend the rest of the evening just smiling at it.

The following morning, as they�re having breakfast in the dining room, one of the servants comes in and says, �A Mr. Gramargan wishes to see you. Dotter Gramargan.�

�Send him in,� Alan says.

Dotter Gramargan walks in and stands at the end of the table. He explains to them that he�s a detective, and an old friend of their uncle. He�s a busy man, but he came here as a favour to Hugh.

After breakfast, Alan shows him around the drawing room where the robbery took place. He looks at everything in the room; he goes through every drawer and cupboard. He sees the photos of Tessie, and Alan tells him the story of how they hired her as a nanny and she stayed on when she fell in love with the gardener.

After lunch, they look around the gardens. Dotter wants to see the route the thief would have taken to get away. The gardens are huge, and escaping from the grounds isn�t as easy as Dotter was expecting. As well as the countless hedges, trees and bushes, there are also trenches to contend with. When Dotter asks about these, Alan says he�ll show him the reason for the trenches tonight.

When they get to the glasshouse, Alan introduces Dotter to the gardener, Dresscoat Summertime, and to Tessie. He asks her all sorts of questions about the crime, but she didn�t see anything. She was nowhere near the house at the time but he still asks her if she saw anyone near the drawing room window, or heard any noises in the house, but as she keeps saying, she was nowhere near the house at the time. He spends nearly an hour questioning her, and he hardly takes any notice of Dresscoat.

That night, Alan takes Dotter up to the attic. There�s a bay window up there that leads out onto a balcony. They look down on a lawn surrounded by hedges at the side of the house, near the back, and Dotter can see why Alan waited until night to show him this. The lawn glows in the dark. It�s a beautiful sight, and this is the reason for the trenches. �All of the hedges near this lawn want to be surrounding it,� Alan says, �to be able to look down on its glow at night. A war has been going on for decades between the different hedges. Decades of painfully slow advances and retreats and tactical manoeuvres. It developed into trench warfare about twenty years ago. The hedges hired people to dig trenches during the day, to block the advance of other hedges. And the other hedges pay people to fill in the trenches. There have been numerous cease fires and peace agreements over the years, but none have lasted. It�s impossible to keep up with the political situation. The borders of the lawn are constantly being redrawn. As far as I know, that little hedge below us was annexed by the one running along the side of the lawn, and this one here has formed an alliance��

Dotter tells Alan to be quiet. He points to some bushes in the middle of a flowerbed to the left of the lawn, and he whispers, �Something is moving in there.�

A few seconds later, a man in black comes out from the bushes and runs across the lawn. He goes through a gap in the hedges at the opposite corner and disappears into the night, and possibly disappears into a trench too, judging by a sound that comes a few seconds later.

�That�s nothing to worry about,� Alan says. �He�s been here for years.�

Alan tells Dotter the story of the man in black who arrived at the house about ten years ago. As far as Alan remembers, he was a travelling salesman who tried to sell them the idea of Wednesday. He loves Wednesday, and he always tried to convince everyone that today is Wednesday � no matter what day it is � through hypnosis. He�d move his fingers around in front of their eyes and say, �This is Wednesday� Wednesday!� People would just stare blankly at him, and he�d think that the hypnosis is working, but they were really just transfixed by such a blatantly obvious attempt to hypnotise them. Nobody ever thought of asking him his name, because every time they met him they�d always stare blankly at him. He�s known as the Wednesday man.

Ella Bree has been working as a maid in the house for nearly twenty years now. She grew up in a house where fires were never in the right place � she says even the ice in the fridge once caught fire (Alan has no trouble believing that, but then he has a different idea of what the fridge is). When they first got Soots and he started living in the chimneys, she�d always associate him with fire, because he came from the chimneys and he moved a lot like the fire in her old house, and you could sometimes see his flame coloured hair under the coat of soot. Whenever she saw him in a room or outside, she�d always try to throw water over him. It was a constant battle between the two. He was always trying to avoid her and she was always trying to track him down. But then Soots hired the Wednesday man to hypnotise her into thinking that the sundial in the garden is fire (Soots is just a dog and he really believed that the Wednesday man could hypnotise people).

The Wednesday man had convinced people that he�d given up smoking through self-hypnosis, but it hadn�t really worked, so he always tried to smoke in private. He was smoking at the side of the house one day, just after Soots asked him to hypnotise Ella, when Ella came around the corner. He put the cigarette behind his back, and he moved his other hand around in front of her eyes, saying, �The sundial is fire. From now on, fire is the sundial.� She just stared blankly at him, until his coat caught fire, but luckily for him, she had a bucket of water with her because she was looking for Soots, so she threw the water over him. But now she always associates him with fire and she leaves Soots alone. He thinks he�s hypnotised her into thinking that he�s fire, but he never gets a chance to undo this because every time he meets her she tries to throw a bucket of water over him. So now it�s a constant battle between the Wednesday man and Ella. She�s always trying to track him down and he�s always trying to hide. A few minutes after Dotter and Alan saw him run across the lawn, they see Ella looking around the garden, with a bucket of water in her hand.

They next day, Dotter looks around the house on his own. He questions everyone, and he spends a long time with Tessie again. The following day is just the same, but in the evening, just before dinner, he gathers everyone in the drawing room, or nearly everyone. Soots is somewhere in the chimneys and the Wednesday man�s whereabouts are unknown. Ella last saw him up a tree.

Dotter lets them wait in silence for about a minute as he looks out the window, then he turns around and says, �You�ll be glad to know that my investigations have proved fruitful. I�ve found the culprit, and it�s someone in this room.�

�Who?� Alan says.

�The ladder did it,� Dotter says, and then turns to Thomas. �It was you.�

Thomas doesn�t say a word.

�But it couldn�t be,� Ellen says. �Thomas would never do anything like that. He�s been working for our family for decades.�

�I have proof.� Dotter takes some photos from inside his jacket and puts them on the desk. The first photo shows Thomas leaning against the sideboard. The next one is of Thomas with a bag full of money attached to one of his rungs, and then there�s one of the window � you can see the end of Thomas through the broken windowpane. The final photo is of Thomas dancing with women at a nightclub.

�Where did you get these?� Alan says.

�I suspected the butler might have been involved, so I followed him to this nightclub last night and photographed him spending the rewards of his crime. The other photos were taken by the cat. She has a Polaroid camera under her bed. I bought the photos off her with jam.�

They all look towards the cat in the fireplace, who�s asleep on her bed, or maybe she�s pretending to be asleep to avoid having to face Thomas.

Abigail goes over to him and says, �Thomas, surely it�s not true.�

The ladder just stares at her.

�Maybe he was sleep-walking,� Cicely says. She often sleep-walks herself. �Thomas, were you sleep-walking?�

The guilty silence from Thomas says it all.

Hilda says to him, �I�m terribly sorry it�s come to this, Thomas. I�m afraid we�re going to have to fire you.�

Thomas just stares blankly back, seemingly unable to comprehend the situation.

�He�s probably spent all the money now,� Dotter says, �if these photos are anything to go by.�

The sisters and Alan are very grateful to Dotter for catching the thief, but they can�t pay him because they have no money. They ask if he�d take something else instead, and all he asks is that he can stay on in the house for a few days � he says he needs a holiday. The sisters tell him he can stay for as long as he wants.

They sit through dinner in silence. Everyone is depressed after what happened with Thomas. He�s been working in the family for as long as they can remember.

After dinner they have a few drinks in the drawing room, and Alan does his ventriloquism act. This always cheers up the sisters. He puts on a set of fake lips, a moustache and a hat, and he sits with a dummy on his lap. The dummy is much more life-like than Alan. The trick is that Alan makes the fake lips move very slightly, as if he�s talking through them but trying to make it look as if he isn�t. The sisters have no idea how he does this.

Alan�s act and a few drinks were just what they needed to take their minds off Thomas. By eleven o� clock they�ve forgotten about what happened earlier. Ellen laughs at Alan and says, �Do that act again. That one that you do. The one where you say the word �nix�.�

Ellen loves saying the word �nix� because she thinks the word �nix� is saying �hi Ellen� to her mind every time her mind hears it (she could never understand why some people don�t like Richard Nixon). She hates saying the word �ips� because �ips� says �you�re not wearing those shoes, are you?� every time her mind hears it. Thankfully, she rarely has to say the word �ips�, and people hardly ever say it to her. There�s not much call for the word �nix� either, but she always finds a use for it.

But after a few drinks she sometimes mixes them up. As they�re laughing at the end of Alan�s act (the one where he said �nix�), Ellen says �ips� for no apparent reason. There�s a troubled look on her face for a while, and everyone looks at her, but Alan starts talking with the dummy and she forgets about it after a few minutes. But then she says, �I love it when you do that thing with the thing. Ips.�

After she says �ips� for the fifth time she says, �I hate these things. These drinks that mix my ipses with my mind-hi-nixes and ips�� There�s silence as everyone looks at her. She looks worried. She eventually says, �I�ve got to change my shoes.� She stands up and walks towards the door, but she walks into the wall next to the door � that�s something else the drink makes her mix up.