A Very Small Suspect
It was a mouse.
A small grey mouse with very alert ears. He was sitting under the bookshelf, looking quite at home.
Pim sat back on his heels. He thought about it.
A mouse cannot open a window. Mice are not strong enough. So the mouse was not the culprit.
But the mouse was a clue. A mouse meant: there was something a mouse wanted. There was something the mouse was eating, or trying to eat, in the classroom.
Pim wrote in his notebook:
*Mouse under bookshelf. Mouse eating something? What?*
He went to the bookshelf and looked behind it. There was a small bag of birdseed. Mr Halpern fed the birds outside the window in winter. He had left the bag at the back of the bookshelf.
The bag had a tiny hole in one corner.
Aha. Aha aha.
Pim went and got Mr Halpern.
"Come and see," said Pim.
Mr Halpern came. He looked under the bookshelf. He looked at the birdseed bag. He looked at the small high window with the broken latch.
He thought.
"So," said Mr Halpern, "the mouse came in through the window — it can squeeze through the gap — and ate the birdseed. But then he had to leave. So he... pushed the window open?"
"No," said Pim. "Mice can't push a window. The window opens by itself sometimes, because the latch is broken. The mouse just waits for it. Then he goes out."
"So the question," said Mr Halpern slowly, "is not WHO opens the window."
"Right," said Pim. "The window opens