The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

His father helps Christopher bathe, dry off, and put on clean clothes. Then, his father takes the dirty clothes and bedsheets downstairs to the washing machine. Christopher sits on his bed and calms himself by doing arithmetic in his head.

His father returns, sits next to Christopher, and says that, from now on, he will always tell him the truth. He confesses that he killed Wellington. He and Mrs. Shears got along well and became close, but she seemed to care more for Wellington than for him, even though the dog went back and forth between being sweet and biting him. One day, he and Mrs. Shears had a big argument, and she kicked him out of her house. Wellington attacked him, and he was so mad about everything that, instead of just kicking the dog away, he killed it.

He tells Christopher that everyone makes big mistakes, but that everything will be all right now. He raises his hand to do the finger-touch, but Christopher screams. His father gets up, says it’ll all be better in the morning, and leaves his son’s room.

Christopher is scared. His father is a murderer: “That meant he could murder me, because I couldn’t trust him, even though he had said ‘Trust me,’ because he had told a lie about a big thing” (122). Christopher decides to escape. He waits until his father is asleep, then retrieves Toby, sneaks out the back door, and hides behind the garden shed. 

Christopher looks up past the roof of the shed and sees the constellation Orion, which looks like a hunter with a bow and arrow and a club but also could look like a lady with an umbrella, or a dinosaur. It’s just a collection of stars. 

Christopher sleeps fitfully until dawn, then stays where he is for another two and a half hours. His father calls for him, so he hides under a fertilizer sack, and his father searches the garden but doesn’t see him. Christopher waits another half-hour until his father’s van starts up and drives away.

Christopher crosses the street and knocks on Mrs. Shears’s door, hoping he can live with her—she’s a friend, so she’s ok, and when Christopher explains who killed Wellington, she’ll know Christopher is a friend—but she doesn’t come to the door. Some drug addicts who live nearby walk past, and Christopher hides in the passage on the side of Mrs. Shears’s house. He thinks about other possible living arrangements: Mrs. Alexander isn’t a friend; Siobhan is his teacher but not a friend; Uncle Terry is family, but he always strokes Christopher’s hair, which Christopher doesn’t like.

His mother lives in London, where he’s never been—he’s hardly been anywhere, and never alone except to the nearby store—but he can’t live with his father. He makes a flow chart in his head and crosses off all the impossible choices until all that’s left is going to his mother’s house. From playing with his train set, Christopher knows about timetables and tickets and loading platforms, but he needs money and food and somewhere to put Toby, so he forms a “Plan.”

First, he goes to Mrs. Alexander’s house and asks her if she’ll take care of Toby. He explains that he’s going to London; she doesn’t think any of this is a good idea. Christopher runs back to his house, where he breaks the back-door window, unlatches the door, and gets in. He packs his school bag with clothes, math books, and food for himself and Toby. He finds his father’s wallet and phone in the kitchen and fears he has returned, but the van is still gone. He takes a bank card from the wallet—his father once told him the PIN number because Christopher never forgets anything—puts Toby in a coat pocket, and heads for school, where he’ll ask Siobhan to tell him where the train station is.

Christopher has never walked by himself to school and becomes more afraid the farther he walks, but he’s also less afraid the farther he gets from his father. He works out an equation to quantify this “inverse proportion”. At school, he sees his father’s van and throws up, though this time not on his clothes. He calms himself with deep breathing and arithmetic, then crosses the street and asks a lady where he can get a map to the train station. The lady points to a building and tells him that’s the station, so he heads there through crowds of shoppers, which disorients him “because it was too much information in my head and it made it hard to think, like there was shouting in my head” (139).

In his confusion, Christopher loses track of where the train station is, so he walks in a circle through several blocks, then moves over one block and walks through a new circle of streets, making a map of the area in his head, until he sees the station. 

Christopher doesn’t like new places because they contain too much new information. Where other people glance at their surroundings, Christopher notices all the details. Once, on vacation with his parents, Christopher stood at the edge of a field and noticed 38 things about the place, including the number of cows grazing and their colors, the shape of the nearby church steeple, the slight incline of the field, the types of grass growing there, and so forth. Crowds of people make him want to curl up and reboot his mind like an overloaded computer. 

He draws a map of the train station, saying it’s an “approximation” because he felt “giddy and sick” from all the noise and people (145), and he wasn’t very observant. He finds an empty table at the café and sits, trying to calm down by working a complicated problem involving chessboard squares. When he looks up, two hours later, a policeman is trying to talk to him. He tells the policeman that he’s going to live with his mother. The policeman helps him find a cash machine, where he uses the bank card to get money for a ticket; then the policeman guides him to the ticket counter, where he buys a ticket to London.

The train leaves in five minutes from Platform 1, which is through the tunnel and up some stairs. Christopher tries to make the walk seem like a computer game, but it’s so crowded and noisy that it’s all he can do to find his way to the platform. He manages to find the train and gets on. 

When he lived with his father, Christopher made timetables for his life, with every activity set into a schedule: “7:20 a.m. Wake up 7:25 a.m. Clean teeth and wash face 7:30 a.m. Give Toby food and water 7:40 a.m. Have breakfast,” and so forth (155). Maps help keep him from being lost in space, and timetables keep him from being lost in time.

The train is crowded, and Christopher stands very still and tries not to panic. The policeman who helped him with the cash machine arrives and tells Christopher that his father is waiting for him at the police station. He tries to grab Christopher, but Christopher screams, and then the train starts to move. The policeman calls on his walkie-talkie for a pick-up at the next station and sits across from Christopher.

Christopher looks out at the passing landscape. This scares him, and he shuts his eyes, but it also feels a bit like flying, so he looks again, seeing fields and houses and roads and cars. He realizes there must be scenes like this everywhere along train tracks, which hurts his head, so he closes his eyes and works some quadratic equations.

Then, he has to pee. He tries to hold it but can’t, and he leaks on his pants. The policeman sees this and tells him to use the toilet, and he points, and Christopher realizes that trains have toilets. He uses one—it’s a mess and he’s revolted—then, he notices another toilet cross the aisle that has shelves with suitcases on them. He climbs onto a shelf and pulls a case in front of him and feels much calmer.

The policeman comes looking for him but doesn’t find him. The train comes to a stop, but Christopher stays where he is. The train starts up again. 

Christopher believes that life happens, not because God creates it, but because rare things happen occasionally. And when life happens, it survives if it has, for example, at least half an eye to see predators. People think God made them the best animal, but in the future there’ll be better animals that will put humans in cages, or maybe humans will pollute themselves to death or be killed by a disease, “and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal” (165). 

He begins to wonder if he’s gone past London. After several stops, a lady retrieves the suitcase he’s hiding behind, so he gets off the train into a huge terrifying station. A man tells him that a policeman is looking for him, and Christopher replies, “I know.” All around him are dozens of signs; he notes each of them, but they blend together, and he shuts his eyes. A man walks up and asks if he needs help, but Christopher pulls out his Swiss Army knife, blade extended, and the man backs away.

Christopher heads toward a sign that says “Information.” He asks a lady behind the window if he’s in London. She says yes, so he asks how to get to the address where his mother lives in Willesden. She tells him to take the subway to the Willesden station; she points to a stairway.

He walks downstairs, telling himself “The people are like cows in a field” (171), finds a photo booth, hides in it, and peeks out the curtain to do some “detecting.” He watches 47 people buy gray tickets from a machine, put them into gates, and pass through. He memorizes their behavior, goes to the wall map, finds the price for a ticket to Willesden, buys a ticket, gets through the gates, follows the signs to the train headed for Willesden, and sits on a bench, waiting.

The room fills with people, and he begins to moan; then a strong wind and a roaring, clattering sound rise up and Christopher groans loudly, fearing the building will collapse and he will die. The crowd moves away from him and he sees a train. Shortly, the train starts up and makes the same noises and wind. This happens several times. Like when he has the flu, all Christopher can do is wait and endure the pain. 

Christopher focuses on a sign on the wall advertising vacations in Malaysia, with pictures of orangutans and palaces and a beach. 

The trains come and go in a rhythm. Christopher closes his eyes and recites their motion mechanically to soothe himself: “Train coming. Train stopped. Train going. Silence. Train coming. Train stopped. Train going…” (179) After a while, fewer and fewer people go through the room. Christopher looks at his watch and realizes he’s been sitting on the bench for five hours. He’s tired and hungry, and Toby is missing from his coat pocket. He looks up and notices an electric sign that warns that the train for Willesden will arrive in four minutes. He realizes that a computer controls the signs and the schedule and feels reassured.

He searches for Toby and finally sees him down on the tracks. He jumps down and chases after him, finally catches him, but Toby bites him. A train enters the station, and Christopher thinks he’ll be killed, so he tries to reach up to the platform, but it’s too high. A man, shouting, pulls Christopher up—Christopher screams from being grabbed—and they roll onto the platform out of the train’s path. Christopher takes Toby and sits on the ground next to the bench. The man asks Christopher what he thought he was doing, and Christopher explains that he was retrieving his pet rat. The man curses. A woman offers to help him, but he warns her away.

After several more trains, Christopher resolves to get on the next one, and he does. He gets off at Willesden station and asks directions at a kiosk, where the clerk sells him a map book. Christopher figures out how the book works, locates his mother’s address, traces a route, and begins walking.

He arrives at her house, but she’s not home. He waits in the garden, getting wet in a rain squall. Finally, she arrives with Roger Shears. He stands up, shivering, and says, “You weren’t in, so I waited for you” (190). She sees him and hugs him, saying, “Christopher, Christopher,” but he pushes her away hard and falls over. She apologizes and asks him how he got there, and he explains, including how his father killed Wellington.

They bring him upstairs into their flat, run him a hot bath, and Christopher climbs in and enjoys the warmth. His mother asks why he never wrote, and he explains that his father hid her letters and said she had died. His mother howls in frustration. Christopher puts on a t-shirt and shorts from his mother’s clothes. A policeman arrives and questions them both; satisfied that both are happy to be together, he leaves. Christopher enjoys some tomato soup—it’s red—and goes to sleep on a floor mattress in the spare room.

At 2:30 in the morning, he’s awakened by shouting. His father is there, and he and his mother and Mr. Shears are shouting about Christopher. His father goes upstairs to see Christopher, who holds his Swiss Army knife ready in one hand. His father, tears in his eyes, makes the finger-touch gesture, but Christopher refuses to answer. A policeman arrives and escorts Christopher’s father from the flat. 

Christopher dreams that people catch a virus from a facial expression that makes them lethargic, and they become immobile and die. He does what he wishes, goes where he wants, takes what he needs from stores, and hears nothing but birdsong, wind, and the occasional building falling over; “And then the dream is finished and I am happy” (200).

In the morning, he has breakfast while Roger Shears argues with his mother that the flat isn’t big enough to include him. Roger leaves for work, and he and his mother take a bus to a shopping area to buy him some clothes, but the crowds disorient him, and he curls up and screams. His mother takes him back home and goes out alone to buy him clothes.

She returns and makes him a milk shake, and he tells her he must return to Swindon to take his A-level math exam. She’s doubtful. That night, he can’t sleep, so he goes for a walk. He hears two people approach, so he hides between two parked cars and stays there for a long time until he hears his mother calling for him. She takes him back to the flat and makes him promise he won’t do that again because London is dangerous.

The next day, she brings him some Star Trek videos to watch, but when Roger returns, he goes to the spare room because he’s afraid of the man. The day after that, his mother loses her temporary job because she’s been absent taking care of Christopher. He reminds her about the A-levels. The following day, she takes him to a park to watch airplanes near the airport, and she tells him she has called the school and postponed his A-levels. He screams and screams.

He eats very little and spends a lot of time in the spare room, listening to white noise on a portable radio so he can’t hear his mother and Roger arguing or feel the pain in his chest about the A-levels.

Monday night, Roger comes to Christopher’s room and scolds him, but his mother pulls him away. Christopher can’t sleep. The next morning, his mother packs suitcases and they drive to Swindon. Christopher doesn’t want to go back to his father, but she says if they stay at the flat, someone will get hurt, and in Swindon everything will be all right. On the way, there’s a traffic jam, and Christopher tries to figure out a formula for predicting how drivers slowing down cause traffic jams.

At their Swindon home, his mother and father argue, and Christopher hides in his room. His mother tells him they’ll find another house to live in. Christopher still can’t sleep. The next day, they drive to Christopher’s school and learn that he can still take the test, but he’s exhausted from lack of sleep, and his mind isn’t doing math very well. Still, he takes the first part of the test, but he has trouble thinking, and by the time his mind gets organized, there’s not much time left, so he has to rush through the questions.

He sleeps that night and the next day takes more of the test. That evening, Roger arrives with a box of his mother’s things and throws it on the front lawn. Christopher gets more sleep, and the next day, he takes the third part of the exam. He especially enjoys one problem, a complex proof involving right triangles. He wants to write out the solution in his book; Siobhan suggests he include it as an Appendix, which he does.

He feels nervous because he doesn’t know if he did well on the test or whether the exam board will accept it after his mother had canceled it. That evening, his father comes to visit and tells Christopher he’s very proud of him for taking the exam.

His mother gets a job, and they move to a cramped room in an old house with a shared bathroom that Christopher hates. On school days, he must stay at his father’s house, where he hides in his room and refuses to speak to him. Toby, who is a very old rat, dies, and Christopher buries it in a pot of earth.

His father goes to him while his mother watches, and he tells Christopher he needs him to listen, just for a few minutes each day, and he wants Christopher to trust him again. As a token of this, he gives Christopher a sandy-colored golden retriever puppy. The little dog sits on his lap, and he pets it. His father says, “Christopher, I would never, ever do anything to hurt you” (219). The dog will stay with Christopher’s father, and Christopher can visit and take the dog for walks and choose its name.

Christopher learns that he got an A on the math exam, and this makes him very happy. He names his dog Sandy. He plays with the dog and takes him for walks down to the corner store. When his mother becomes ill, Christopher spends three days at his father’s; Sandy sleeps with him on his bed to protect him. In the daytime, Christopher helps his father make a vegetable patch in the backyard.

He gets a study book for his next A-level math exam. Then, he’ll take the physics exam, go to college, “live in a flat with a garden and a proper toilet” (221), bring Sandy, and become a scientist. He knows he will because he solved the dog mystery, was brave and found his mother, and wrote a book, “and that means I can do anything” (221).