The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The day after the dog died, Christopher takes the bus to school and passes four red cars in a row. To him, this means it’ll be a “Good Day.” Four yellow cars in a row make for a “Black Day,” when Christopher avoids people, doesn’t eat lunch, and takes no risks.

School psychologist Mr. Jeavons once asked Christopher why he used that system, which seemed somewhat arbitrary and differs from Christopher’s usual rational thinking, but Christopher responded that he likes things in a “nice order” and that rational systems are only one way of doing so.

Commenting on Christopher’s skills of observation, Mr. Jeavons called him “clever,” but Christopher replied that simply noticing things isn’t cleaver, while figuring something out, like the expanding universe or the killer in a murder case, is clever. Mr. Jeavons asked if Christopher liked having things stay the same, and Christopher says yes, unless he can become an astronaut, which is a big change but one he wants. Christopher knows the odds are against it, though.

One boy, Terry, once told Christopher he was a “spazzer” and would never be an astronaut and would only get low-level jobs. Christopher’s father said Terry was jealous of Christopher’s intelligence, and that, in any case, Terry was likely to end up in prison.

On the “Good Day,” Christopher decides to begin his quest to find the killer of the dog. Siobhan suggests he start by writing about finding the dog—she’ll help with spelling and footnotes—and that’s how this book gets started. 

When his mother was in the hospital, Christopher made a get-well card consisting of nine identical red cars stamped on the card using linotype. This would make it a “Super Super Good Day” for his mom (27). She loved the card.

After two weeks in the hospital, at age 38, his mother died of a heart attack. This surprised Christopher, since young people, especially those who eat healthy and get lots of exercise like his mother, usually don’t have heart attacks. Mrs. Shears visited and cooked dinner for Christopher and his father; then she went to his father “and held his head against her bosoms and said, ‘Come on, Ed. We’re going to get you through this’” (28). 

Christopher will search for Wellington’s killer despite his father’s warning. He doesn’t always do what he’s told: People often issue commands that don’t make sense, like “Be quiet” without saying for how long. Besides, other people break rules, like Christians who kill during war despite the Bible’s prohibition against killing. Siobhan understands, and she gives much better directions that are very specific.

Christopher goes to Mrs. Shears’s house and tells her he is going to find out who killed her dog. She closes the door in his face. Christopher sneaks into her backyard and peers through the window of her garden shed. He sees the garden fork, the blood cleaned off, alongside other sharp tools. He decides she probably didn’t kill her own dog, but someone else had used her garden fork to murder Wellington.

Mrs. Shears finds him in her backyard and threatens to call the police again, so Christopher goes home. Still, he feels happy “because I was being a detective and finding things out” (32). 

At school, Mrs. Forbes says Christopher’s mom went to heaven. Mrs. Peter’s husband is a vicar who comes to the school to talk about religion. Christopher asked him where heaven is, and the vicar said it was outside the universe. Christopher doesn’t believe there is anything outside the universe, unless a black hole made an opening to somewhere else. But since nobody sends people to black holes, that’s not where heaven is.

When creatures die, Christopher believes their bodies simply rot away and become part of the earth and its flowers and trees. When his mother died, Christopher realized that many of her molecules, lofted into the air by the smoke of her cremation, may have traveled to faraway continents. 

Strangers make Christopher feel uncomfortable—he doesn’t know anything about them, which scares him—but if he wants to solve the mystery of Wellington’s death, he must interview the neighbors to see if they witnessed anything, so he must be brave.

First, Christopher draws a detailed diagram of the houses on his street, which he includes in the text. Then, he visits the house across from Mrs. Shears, where Mr. Thompson lives, and asks the man who answers if he knows who killed Wellington or if he saw anything suspicious on the night of the murder. The man is Mr. Thompson’s brother, and he was in another city that night. He’s surprised to learn about the dog’s death.

Next door, he talks to a woman who knows about Wellington; he asks “whether she knew of anyone who might want to make Mrs. Shears sad” (37), but the woman is skeptical about Christopher going around asking questions. She tells him to be careful.

Across the street, at a house next to Mrs. Shears’s, Christopher asks Mr. Wise—who smells to Christopher like he hasn’t washed in days—if he knows the identity of Wellington’s killer. Mr. Wise jokes that police investigators are getting a lot younger. Christopher doesn’t like being laughed at, so he leaves.

He avoids the house next door to his own because its occupants use drugs, and he’s afraid of them.

Mrs. Alexander, who lives on the other side of Mrs. Shears’s house, is outside working in her front yard with hedge trimmers. She owns a dog, but it’s inside. Christopher asks if she knows anything about the dog murder. She doesn’t, but she chats with him about her grandson, who’s roughly his age. She suggests that Christopher probably would like a dog of his own; Christopher replies that he has a rat, and rats keep themselves very clean.

Mrs. Alexander offers to bring out some tea and biscuits to share. She goes inside for several minutes, and Christopher becomes nervous and walks away. As he walks, he has an insight. The dog’s killer either (a) hated Wellington, (b) was crazy, or (c) wanted to upset Mrs. Shears. Suddenly, the prime suspect is Mr. Shears, who left his wife two years ago. People who get divorced, as Christopher understands it, either had sex with someone else or have grown to hate their spouse.

This was when Mrs. Shears began to visit Christopher and his father a lot. Sometimes she would spend the night, which Christopher liked because she tidied up the house. On the other hand, Mrs. Shears says strange things like “It’s brass monkeys out there” (43), which Christopher doesn’t understand. 

Christopher goes to a special-needs school, and he thinks the other kids are stupid. He also believes everyone has special needs of one kind or another, and that it’s not fair to make fun of someone just because they go to a special school. Still, he believes the other students are stupid, and he plans to prove he’s not by taking the math A-level test and getting an A in it.

His father argued with the headmistress, Mrs. Gascoyne, who didn’t want to allow Christopher to take the exam because it would cost the school money, and then a lot of the students would want to take the exams. His father told her he’d pay for Christopher’s test auditor, and she relented.

After he aces his exams, Christopher plans to go to university, which means he and his father will move to a bigger town. With his degree, Christopher will get a good job, make a lot of money, and hire someone to look after him, or maybe he’ll get married, “and she can look after me so I can have company and not be on my own” (45). 

Because his parents had lots of arguments over his “Behavior Problems,” Christopher once thought they might get divorced. He does better lately, but he still has issues, and he lists them, points A through R, including not talking to people, screaming or breaking things or hitting people when upset, not eating—especially if different foods touch each other—refusing to deal with yellow or brown objects, saying true things that are considered rude, and hating France. Sometimes, his parents would get angry with each other or with him and threaten to put him in a home or beat him. 

When he gets back from school, Christopher’s father has dinner ready. He asks where Christopher has been; Christopher replies that he has been out, which is true but doesn’t tell much, so it’s a white lie. His father says he has heard from Mrs. Shears and wants to know what Christopher was doing in her garden. Christopher explains that he’s trying to learn who murdered the dog, and that his “Prime Suspect” is Mr. Shears.

His father bangs on the table—which shakes the plates, and the ham touches the broccoli, so Christopher can no longer eat it—and says “that man” mustn’t be mentioned because he’s evil. Christopher explains that he wants to help Mrs. Shears because she is their friend. His father makes him promise not to work on the dog mystery anymore. Breaking a promise makes it a lie. Christopher promises. 

Christopher likes being alone in very small spaces. This, he believes, would make him a good astronaut, along with his intelligence and ability with machines. Sometimes, he closes himself up in the closet with the boiler for hours and just thinks. He also likes space, and sometimes he lies back on the lawn and cups his eyes so that all he can see are stars, and he pretends he’s alone in space. 

At school, Christopher tells Siobhan the book is finished because his father won’t let him continue detecting. Siobhan says the book is fine even if short, but Christopher doesn’t like that the dog’s murderer is still “At Large.” Siobhan says life can be like that.

On the way to school the next day, Christopher sees four yellow cars in a row, which makes it a “Black Day,” so he avoids others, doesn’t have lunch, and sits in a corner reading math books. The next day, he sees four yellow cars again, so he sits all day in a corner, groaning (which makes him feel better). On the third day, he keeps his eyes closed during the entire bus ride to school. 

Five days later, Christopher sees five red cars in a row, which makes it a “Super Good Day” when “something special was going to happen” (53). After school, Christopher goes to the local store to buy candy and meets Mrs. Alexander, who asks him where he’d gone after she went to get him tea and biscuits. Christopher replies that he thought she might be calling the police, and he’d been warned not to get into trouble again.

Outside, Christopher finds Mrs. Alexander’s dog, a dachshund, tied to a water pipe. The dog licks his hand. Mrs. Alexander says the dog’s name is Ivor. She also says Christopher seems shy, but he says he isn’t permitted to talk to her. She assures him that they’re only chatting. They chat briefly about Christopher’s love of computers, maths, Toby the rat, and outer space.

Christopher quickly rethinks his promise to his dad and realizes that asking Mrs. Alexander about Mr. Shears doesn’t violate the promise. Also, it’s a Super Good Day, a good day for risk-taking. He asks her if she knows Mr. Shears, but she only knew him in passing. He asks if Mr. Shears is an evil man. She realizes he’s investigating Wellington’s murder, and she suggests, “Perhaps it would be best not to talk about these things, Christopher,” adding that Mr. Shears might find it “quite upsetting” (57).

He explains what happened to his mother and asks if Mr. Shears killed her. Surprised and saddened about Christopher’s mother, Mrs. Alexander says his father is mad at Mr. Shears for other reasons. Christopher presses her to explain—that’s what detectives do—and she suggests they go for a walk in the park, and she’ll explain. Nervously, he agrees.

First, she makes Christopher promise not to tell his father what she’s about to tell him. Then she explains that his mother and Mr. Shears were “Very, very good friends” (60). Christopher asks if they were having sex, and she says yes. Christopher suddenly wants to go home. As he leaves, Mrs. Alexander tells him he can talk to her anytime. 

Mr. Jeavons says Christopher likes math because, though hard, it always has a definite answer at the end, whereas life has no clear answers. Christopher thinks Mr. Jeavons just doesn’t understand math.

For example, in the Monty Hall problem, contestants trying to win a car must choose between three doors, guessing which one hides the prize. When they choose, Monty Hall shows them what’s behind one of the remaining doors—it’s always a goat—and offers them a chance to trade their door for the remaining unopened one. The odds are two in three that the car is behind the remaining door, but everyone, even scientists, believe the odds are fifty-fifty. When Marilyn vos Savant, who has the highest IQ in the Guinness Book of World Records, tried to explain that contestants should switch doors, she got lots of letters from scientists condemning her.

Christopher lists several of the quotes, some of them downright insulting; then, he shows a mathematical proof and a flowchart that show the odds are, indeed, 2/3 that the car is behind the remaining door. Thus, intuition can be wrong, while logic can lead to a correct answer. Sometimes numbers are “very complicated and not very straightforward at all” (65). 

Rhodri, the assistant to Christopher’s father, visits that evening. His dirty overalls smell of a strange odor that Christopher’s father sometimes smells of after work. Rhodri asks Christopher to multiply 251 by 864, and Christopher answers, “216,864.” He finds the problem easy because he can multiply 864 by 1,000 and divide it by four to get the product of 250 and 864, or 216,000. Then, he simply adds one more 864, and it’s solved.

While awaiting dinner, Christopher walks out back. He remembers Siobhan advising him to add details, especially about people, so readers can form pictures of them in their minds. Already he has described the perforations in Mr. Jeavons’s shoes and other odd details about individuals in the story. He wants to describe the garden, but it’s uninteresting. Instead, he looks up at the late-afternoon sky and describes in detail the three types of clouds, floating at different elevations, that decorate the air above him.

One cloud in particular, low and threatening with rain, moves very slowly across the sky like an alien spaceship. Though most people assume aliens would arrive in big, metal, blinking ships, Christopher thinks the visitors might be flat, or bigger than the planet, or bodiless, and their ships might look like clouds or dust or leaves. 

Christopher’s favorite book is The Hound of the Baskervilles, a Sherlock Holmes adventure where the detective and his friend Watson solve the mystery of the giant, terrifying dog that roams the moors of the Baskerville estate. Sherlock figures out that a distant relative is trying to kill off the estate’s heirs so he can inherit; to do so, he has imported a large, famished hound, painted glowing phosphorus on his fur, and set him loose to scare the heirs to death.

Christopher doesn’t like that the dog gets killed, since it isn’t the dog’s fault. He also doesn’t understand some of the wording. He does like all the clues, and he describes three of them, along with three misleading “Red Herring” clues. Christopher admires Sherlock, and, like the detective, “I detach my mind at will” (73), which helps him succeed at math, reading, and chess. He also admires Sherlock for not believing in gods or the supernatural. 

Siobhan reads the next part of Christopher’s book and asks if he feels sad about his mother’s affair with Mr. Shears. Christopher says no, that it’s in the past and doesn’t exist any longer. Siobhan says if he ever does feel sad about it, or just wants to talk about it, he is always welcome to talk to her. 

Christopher can remember almost everything that has happened to him since he was four years old. His mind is like a recording device, and he can “Rewind” to any day and remember everything about it. This helps him socially: He remembers who people are by their clothes or quirks, and when someone uses a common saying that he doesn’t understand, like “See you later, alligator” (78), he scrolls through his memories to find a previous incident when he heard that phrase so he can remember how to respond.

Other people have memories of things that aren’t true, like where they’d like to live or vacations they’d like to take. Grandmother’s memories are all mixed up: She can’t tell whether they really happened, or she just saw them on TV. 

Home from school, Christopher sets down his things and goes to the living room to watch a Living Planet video. His father comes home; after a while, he comes into the living room holding Christopher’s book manuscript. He has read the whole thing, and he’s angry and shouts at Christopher. He grabs his son by both arms and lifts him up. Christopher hates this, and he hits his father twice. Suddenly, Christopher finds himself sitting on the floor against the wall: “It was like someone had switched me off and then switched me on again” (83). His father glares down at him, then takes the manuscript outside and throws it in the dustbin. Then, he goes to the kitchen for a beer.