Stephen´s hypotheses on what is going on in chapters 4 and 5

         All along the novel, Keith and Stephen create different hypotheses about the adult world and all the events they can´t understand. Sometimes, these hypotheses can be illogical and childish, but they can also help us construct our own theories of what is going on. As in a real investigation, the children gradually gather new pieces of information, which make their hypotheses transform. The evolution of these changes can be clearly seen in chapters 4 and 5.

          In chapter 4, Stephen is convinced that Mrs Hayward is a German spy and he works on different hypotheses to explain her strange behavior. Every time he notices something odd he thinks about it and draws some conclusions. He tries to analyze everything about her, even her thoughts; ¨What thoughts was she thinking? I believe that they were sad ones. Betraying your country must involve a certain moral anguish¨.  

       He also starts suspecting Auntie Dee of being her accomplice: ¨Why does Keith have an aunt living three doors away? Aunts don't live in the same street as you. They live in remote places to which one goes once or twice a year". In the previous statement, we can notice how he even asks himself why Keith´s aunt lives so near. Obviously some ideas he has are due to the fact he is just a kid and has many wrong preconceptions about the world around him.

     However, his main suspect is still Keith's mother. Keith and Stephen hide in Braemar and take note of everything she does. From their hideout, they see how often Mrs Hayward goes to the Avenue. As they suspect these trips may be related somehow to her spying activities, the kids try to follow her but every time they get round the corner, Keith`s mother seems to have disappeared. While they are looking for her on the left side of the Avenue, where the shops are, the mother reappears on the right corner of the Close, at the door of Auntie Dee´s house: "It´s not possible! She jumped to the shops before we could get to the end of the Close and jumped almost instantly back again" In this quotation, we can notice how disoriented Stephen is about these disappearances. Due to this, Stephen and Keith imagine different reasons to account for the mystery. The first one is that there must be an underground tunnel connecting the Avenue and Auntie Dee´s house: ¨That manhole. It could be the entrance to some secret passageways with which the district is riddled¨. When they had to discard this first hypothesis because the manhole is not big or clean enough, Stephen comes up with less sensible ideas: ¨She could have some kind of rocket thing. Or a kind of time machine¨ These ideas sound far- fetched even to his friend, Keith.

           However, at the end of the chapter, Stephen discovers a new detail that solves the mystery: as Mrs Hayward emerges from the Hardiments´ house (the house on the right corner, next to Auntie Dee´s), Stephen notices she is slapping at his hair and clothes to get some slime off them. This detail makes him realize where she has been, but the place is not revealed to us-readers- up to the following chapter: “ She is turning not left at the end of the Close, towards the letterbox and the shops, but right towards the tunnel”. This idea is much more logical and it is an answer to the mystery of the disappearances, but it brings lots of others questions. The tunnel is damp and slimy and beyond it, there is a desolate place, so... What is she doing there? A number of new hypotheses arise: ¨There may be some kind of secret research laboratory that she is spying on”,  “She is spying on the trains.” “She could be gradually assembling something. Bit by bit. A bomb. She is waiting for a particular train. With something special on it. A new kind of plane” However, these hypotheses have to be discarded again when they open the Gamages croquet set box and discover that it is neither bobby trapped or contains the stuff for a bomb: it just holds a packet of cigarettes and a piece of paper with the familiar letter X.

Barbara Berrill suggests new ideas to explain the mystery posed by the contents of the croquet set box. She explains Mrs Hayward goes to the shops at a time when they are closed, so this may mean she is getting some goods on the black market. Stephen, influenced by Barbara´s words, considers a new hypothesis: “ Going to Coppards for the occasional allotment of the cigarettes that she and Keith´s father never smoke, and exchanging them for handfuls of blackmarket groceries? It suddenly seems only too likely. My heart sinks.” However, when Barbara suggests Auntie Dee might have a secret boyfriend and Keith´s mother might be delivering secret letters to him, Stephen does not believe her. ¨The silver framed photograph of Auntie Dee and Uncle Peter with the wings on his breast pocket comes into my mind. As soon as it touches the solidity of that silver frame, Barbara Berrill´s story burst like a bubble.¨  Barbara Berrill mocks his prudishness: “Didn´t you know about people having boyfriends and girlfriends?” and this makes Stephen consider Barbara´s suggestion: “An X is a kiss. On the other side of the tunnel Keith´s mother is putting a kiss into a hidden box for Auntie Dee´s boyfriend to find…” However, he finds it really hard to accept anything that can spoil the reputation of the family he has idealized so much so he continues resisting the idea of Auntie Dee´s alleged unfaithfulness: “I think of her friendly, open smile. No one could smile like that and have any secrets from the world. i think of the trusting way that Uncle Peter smiles back at her from her silver frame on the mantelpiece”

             To conclude, chapters 4 and 5 provide a clear example of how Stephen´s hypotheses on what is going on change and develop with every new discovery.  Little by little, his hypotheses become more coherent and closer to the actual events. We, readers, follow this development attentively, trying at the same time to work out our own hypotheses and to see beyond the narrator´s limited point of view.