“Brrrrring, brrrrring”: the telephone rang. Inspector Winston, the dachshund, was lying on his blanket by the front door. He looked curiously down the hallway. There, the telephone sat on an old dresser made of dark cherry wood.
His owner picked up the receiver. “Aunt Simone! How lovely to hear from you! Of course we’ll come… thank you so much for the invitation!” Now Winston really was curious. “Did I hear that right? An invitation? Lovely! A little change of pace certainly wouldn’t hurt a dachshund’s daily routine.”
Winston knew Aunt Simone from a birthday party or two his owner had once hosted. On those occasions, the whole family had gathered in the garden for a barbecue, followed by coffee and cake.
Thinking about it more, Winston actually had quite fond memories of Aunt Simone. She would slip him a bit of sausage from her plate now and then, and had even once set aside a little cream cake just for him.
Then Winston heard his owner say, “Oh, don’t worry about Winston, Simone. I’ll ask Mrs. Robertson if she has time. He gets seasick so easily, you know.” His owner hung up and walked back into the living room.
“Oh, wonderful,” thought Winston. “Always these mysterious phone calls, and I only ever catch half of them. And this one seems to be mostly about me — and Mrs. Robertson too, apparently?”
The next day, the two of them were just coming back from a walk in the woods when they happened to run into Mrs. Robertson in her front yard. “Oh, how convenient!” Winston heard his owner call out over the hedge.
“We were actually planning to stop by today anyway. Winston and I have been invited to the seaside. My aunt owns an old sailing ship — still seaworthy, mind you — and she’d like to invite the family to celebrate her seventieth birthday with her.”
Mrs. Robertson nodded approvingly while trimming her splendid hydrangea. Winston’s owner went on, “The trouble is, I really can’t put Winston through a boat trip like that. He doesn’t care for water at all, and all that rocking about on an old ship would surely make him ill again. So, to make a long story short — we wanted to ask whether Winston might move in with you again for a few days.”
“Water? A sailing ship? Oh dear, I’m no sailor’s dog. I do hope Mrs. Robertson has time.” Winston put on his friendliest and, at the same time, most soulful dachshund look, gazing straight into his kind neighbor’s grey-blue eyes. “Surely she can’t say no now,” he hoped.
“I’d love to, neighbor. You know how fond I’ve grown of your dachshund. And ever since he solved the mystery of my attic, I actually owe him one. But my study trip to the south of France starts next week…” “Oh dear,” Winston heard his owner say. “Then I suppose he really will have to come along to the sea after all.”
A few days later, the time had come. Winston’s owner packed all sorts of luggage into the car. “You never know what might come in handy. After all, the weather at the seaside can change so quickly.” Then he locked the front door.
Winston hurried to check that his most important belongings had made the trip too, and was relieved to find the essentials wedged safely between all the bags and boxes in the trunk.
When they finally arrived at the seaside, Winston noticed the air smelled not of sausages, but of smoked fish. “Not bad at all,” he thought, his mood brightening at once. From the parking lot, he could already spot several vacationers happily munching on fish sandwiches.
Soon after, they set off to find Aunt Simone. “The party will start here, and in the afternoon we’ll head out onto the water,” Winston’s owner explained, full of anticipation. “Seems he’s forgotten that I, for one, am not looking forward to that at all,” Winston thought a little grimly.
After the family welcomed them into a wonderfully beautiful garden, Aunt Simone came by carrying a huge tray piled with treats. “Here you go, Winston — a delicious mackerel. I saved this one especially for you.”
The dachshund was clearly delighted and ate it up with great relish. But before he knew it, the whole birthday party started moving. “Now where is everyone off to?” Winston wondered.
Then he saw it. The garden backed right onto a dock with a mooring, and tied up there was a big old sailing ship. A few balloons hung along the railing, and a string of colorful lights was wound around the cabin.
“That must be the birthday boat,” Winston muttered. Suddenly, just looking at it made him feel queasy.
Just ahead of him walked Aunt Simone, deep in conversation with Winston’s owner. “Are you quite sure Winston should come out on the water? He looks a bit pale to me today, and his walk seems rather wobbly — what do you think?”
She suggested, “He could just as well stay here on land with a fisherman friend of mine. He sells the best smoked fish along the whole coast, right there on the dock.” Winston’s owner looked at his glum-faced dachshund, who suddenly seemed to be in a very sorry state indeed.
“You’re right, Simone! I’ll go have a word with the fisherman and see if Winston can stay here.” A little while later, Winston’s owner came back to the dock and told him he could stay on land after all. “If you behave yourself, you can make yourself nice and comfortable right here.”
Winston took a look around the lovely spot. A few benches and tables stood on a patch of sand, with soft dune grass rustling all around.
Then the dachshund noticed a small green shed with smoke billowing thickly out of it. “So that’s where those tasty mackerels get smoked,” he thought. His mouth began to water all over again.
Right next to it, he spotted a path down to the beach. The sea lapped gently at the shore, and countless white beach chairs stood neatly lined up in their spots. Suddenly, the idea of staying behind on land didn’t seem so bad after all.
“Once the birthday crowd has sailed off, I’ll take a proper look around,” Winston decided. He said goodbye to his owner, relieved to feel solid ground beneath his paws.
Suddenly, Winston was startled by loud shouting. “Now what’s going on over there? Sounds like a job for a good nose.” Winston followed the shouting and, through the tall dune grass, spotted a couple gesturing wildly. They were loudly complaining to their neighbors that their fish sandwich had just vanished without a trace.
No sooner had Inspector Winston set out to look for the missing sandwich than he heard more shouting a few yards away. “I don’t believe it! My pizza’s been stolen! There’s a thief on the loose!”
Winston crept carefully over to the beach chair the shouting had come from. Peering around the corner, he saw an empty pizza box and a flustered woman who seemed to be accusing her husband of being the pizza thief. “Oh dear, there’s trouble in paradise here,” Winston thought.
He sniffed through the sand and had just picked up a faint trail when he heard a shrill wail coming from a colorful beach tent. He hurried to the scene and found an upset toddler, tearfully explaining to his mother that an entire bag of cookies had gone missing.
“Now that’s quite enough. I’m going to catch this thief!” Inspector Winston settled in to watch and wait, keeping a close eye on every single person on the beach.
First, he kept watch on an older boy who kept moving suspiciously from one beach chair to the next, poking his head deep inside each one. A little while later, though, it turned out he was simply looking for his little sister.
Next, he noticed an elderly woman who kept asking other tourists for directions and was carrying a suspiciously large backpack. As she walked, she scattered crumbs behind her. But when she sat down on a bench along the promenade and opened her backpack, Winston saw a baguette poking out — no cookies or pizza in sight. “Hmm… with all this hustle and bustle, spotting a thief isn’t so easy after all.”
Inspector Winston needed time to think. He hopped up onto a sun-warmed stone wall, which gave him a fine view over the whole beach. Suddenly, a strong gust of wind tore him from his thoughts.
He turned around to see a huge seagull, its wing brushing right past his nose. “Hey! Watch where you’re going!” Winston yapped at the gull. But it didn’t seem the least bit interested in the barking dachshund. It swooped over the beach at top speed, dove sharply, vanished briefly from Winston’s view, and then soared back up toward the sky in grand fashion.
But what was that clutched in its claws? Winston couldn’t quite make it out. He strained his eyes — and then flinched. Someone shouted again: “My bratwurst is gone! Who dares steal my bratwurst?”
Now Winston had a hunch. He hopped down from the wall and ran back to the fisherman’s little restaurant to have a proper look around. He peered around the corner and found the way to the back yard.
“I thought as much!” he murmured. There, among a row of trash cans, stood the seagull — the thief he’d been searching for. It was surrounded by a whole flock of little sparrows. “Aha, so these are your little accomplices!”
Winston was just about to start barking to expose the whole gang, but then he saw the seagull sharing the missing fish sandwich, a slice of pizza, and the cookies with the little sparrows.
“Well, it really was quite an amusing little show, and I suppose a bit of a stir belongs to a proper day at the beach. And it wasn’t really a crime worth solving, after all.”
Without drawing any attention to himself, Winston slipped out of the back yard and trotted back to the dock. In the distance, he could already make out the old sailing ship. “Now I’ll just enjoy a bit of peace and quiet,” he decided, and was delighted to find the fisherman had set out a little plate of tasty fish cakes just for him. “A trip to the seaside really isn’t so bad, after all.”
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