SIMON EDY was attacked by JACK HORNER

THE STAGE was sabotaged by JACK HORNER

THE FLOUR was poisoned by JACK HORNER

JACK HORNER was attacked by JILL GILSON

SYNOPSIS: The attack on Simon Edy was carried out by The Pie Man, Jack Horner. Although Horner was an inspiration to the young Edy, he became jealous of Simon’s excellent culinary skills and could not stand to have him open his own bakery in the same locality.

The stage was sabotaged by Horner to discredit Pat-a-Cake Bakery on its opening day. With the same intention, he poisoned the flour sold to Jill Gilson.

Although working for Edy, Jill had previously worked at Pie Man Bakeries and so had a contact in Horner as a supplier of flour. She also stood in for Johnny Green as a delivery driver for Weasel Grocery and so unknowingly delivered the poisoned food to Top Farm. Realising all this made her look guilty she fled.

Eventually realising what must have happened, she returned to confront Horner and force a confession. In the altercation he fell down the stairs. Jill left a hand-written note to mock Horner in the style he had used in the newspapers.

An alternate way to determine the antagonist was to take each number clue from each page in order. This gave the sequence

4 8 9 2 7 8 4 3 7 4 3 6 2 6

Assuming this is a code, the fact that no number is above 9 indicates the use of an alpha-numeric telephone dial, rather than a straight number/letter equivalence. This interchange of letters and numbers had been referenced throughout the calendar in the cuttings from The Daily Bunting showing telephone numbers in advertisements. It is then just a case of navigating through the possible letters to find the following statement:

I T W A S T H E P I E M A N

Poison, flour and traces of his silicone prosthetic gloves tied Horner to the stage collapse. Poison was also found in the contaminated flour. The flour left on Simon Edy would not be enough to connect Horner to the attack, but a fault in his typewriter also incriminated him: both the note left with Simon Edy and the delivery note from Pie Man Bakeries showed a displacement of the capital letter ‘O’.

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