On the floor of Beatrice’s bedroom, among the maps and the diaries and the newspapers, there is a copy of the Daily Warrior. The front page carries a photograph of a cat and two words: WANTED ALIVE.
The cat is Pepe. He wears sunglasses. He carries a sombrero. He has never offered an account of himself, and the series has never asked for one.
Why the mystery stays a mystery
Children are far better at holding unexplained things than adults give them credit for. A cat who is wanted alive, in a book where the newspapers cannot report anything without making it more exciting than it was, is a joke about journalism that lands on two levels at once — and it is funnier for never being resolved.
Ask a class of seven-year-olds what Pepe did. You will get twenty theories, all of them better than any answer the book could have given.
