The children's discoveries

As in a murder mystery,  the gradual release of information and the careful placing of clues play a crucial role in “Spies”.There's one big mystery to be solved and something new is discovered by Keith and Stephen in each chapter. In this post, I am going to summarise the children's discoveries from chapters 4 to 7.

In chapter 4, while in school, the boys find it hard to spy on Mrs. Hayward but when the weekend comes they can start their investigation. After some time spying on the neighbourhood with Keith’s binoculars, they see Keith’s mother. They  try to follow her, but when they turn round the corner, she has disappeared. They look in every shop but she is gone. Later Stephen sees her and tries to follow her again on his own, but she disappears once more at the corner of the road. Therefore, what they discover in this chapter is that she is somehow disappearing once she gets to the end of the Close. Towards the end of the chapter, Stephen realises that when she reappears again, her hands, her hair and her shoulders are covered with a slimy substance. This is a new clue, but its meaning is not revealed to us until the following chapter.

In chapter 5, the clue of the slimy substance leads the children to find out that Mrs. Hayward is going through the dark slimy tunnel in the embankment. Therefore, the kids decide to go through it and  hide while spying on her moves. From their hiding place, they discover that Keith’s mother kneels down for some reason. When she leaves, the kids find out that there is a croquet box lying in the place where Mrs Hayward was crouching and  that it contains a packet of cigarettes and a paper with a familiar letter written on it: “X”. Later that day, in Braemar, Keith’s mother tells Stephen to stop spying on her and not to tell this to Keith. We find out that there is some big secret that she doesn’t want anybody to know about.

In chapter 6, Stephen wakes up in the middle of the night with the idea of going to the tunnel. So, after gathering enough courage, he goes to investigate. He finds that inside the box, there are just clothes. While Stephen was inspecting the contents of the box, there was a man watching him from behind so as soon as the man leaves,  Stephen grabs a sock as proof and runs back to the Close. Afterwards, Stephen returns with Keith to the other side of the tunnel and they discover that the croquet box has disappeared. As they don't have any other clue, they go to the Barns and start throwing stones out of boredom. This useless pastime leads them to a new discovery:  under some  pieces of corrugated iron, there are some steps and they can hear suppressed coughing. They think they have found a tramp´s hideout and they  hit the corrugated iron until there is no more coughing. They then get scared and run to the Haywards’.  Keith’s mother is delayed.When she returns home, she lies to her husband and seems to acknowledge her presence in the Barns by asking the children: “Was it you two?”

In chapter 7, Stephen goes to Keith’s house where he finds himself in a strange situation. Mr. Hayward is  accusing Keith of having stolen a thermos flask, which he hasn’t. Keith is caned  for this and is threatened to be caned again if he doesn’t give the flask back by bedtime. Stephen, in the attempt to save his friend, runs to the tunnel and bumps into Keith’s mother who gets mad at him. Stephen then manages to explain her the situation and she seems to instantly understand. She then thanks him and goes back to the Barnes to solve the problem. We discover that she was doing something suspicious and that she’s keeping secrets from her husband.

Little by little, Stephen gathers information about what is going on and we confirm that there is a hidden secret. However, the clues gathered seem to point more to a family problem or to  a romantic affair than to a secret of state related to the war as Stephen thought at the beginning.