Chocolate

I finished The House of a Thousand Candles today. It was neither as exciting nor as mad as The Blue Wall. At least, it wasn't as mad as The Blue Wall until the very end. It started off with Jack, the chap whose grandfather left him a house in his will, as long as he lived in it alone for a year. It ended with an all-in siege, with Jack, his best friend Larry, the neighbouring school's chaplain and his MYSTERIOUS manservant Bates having a pitched battle with the grandfather's lawyer, the caretaker, the school's groundskeeper, a detective from Scotland Yard who had tracked Larry all the way to Indiana, and the local sheriff shooting at each other while trying to find the treasure hidden in the house.

Suddenly, the door opens and in walks (dun dun DUN)… the dead grandfather. Not dead, obviously. He faked his death to find out if his grandson was a worthy person to inherit the house, then went to Egypt. So there's something to do next time you're at a loose end: fake your own death, make your family jump through a set of flaming hoops to inherit your estate, have a bit of a holiday, then turn up and say, 'Ha-HAH! Sucked in.' Anyway, that was why Bates was so MYSTERIOUS: because he knew about the grandfather all along.

Mad as he was, I liked the grandfather. On his return, he explained to Jack why he came up with this stupid plan: 'I've had my misgivings about you; I used to think you were a born tramp; and you disappointed me in turning your back on architecture--the noblest of all professions.' Take that, Jack.

In other exciting news, my mother has apparently tracked down one of these 'mandel' fruits and is going to bring it to show me tomorrow. So there's something for us all to look forward to.