The Case of the Fifth Word — Key Points
Leroy Brown is an eighth grader in Idaville who is popularly known by his nickname, Encyclopedia.
Encyclopedia Brown possesses immense knowledge and remembers every fact from the large number of books he reads.
Chief Brown secretly relies on his young son to solve difficult criminal cases during family dinner discussions.
Encyclopedia keeps his detective work private because he wants to fit in and be like other normal boys.
Five years ago, two masked robbers stole one million dollars worth of jewellery from the Diamond Mart.
Tim Nolan and Daniel Davenport first met and became friends while serving time in a South Carolina prison.
After his release from prison, Tim Nolan settled in Idaville and operated a small palm-tree nursery.
The police suspected Nolan of the robbery, but a clerk refused to testify and no loot was found.
Daniel Davenport disappeared immediately after the robbery to allow time for the crime investigation to cool down.
Police officers thoroughly searched Nolan's house under a court order but failed to find any stolen jewellery.
Tim Nolan suffered a sudden fatal stroke and left his palm-tree nursery to Davenport in his will.
A desk calendar sheet clipped to Nolan's will contained Davenport's address and a strange four-word coded message.
The four puzzling words written on the calendar sheet were Nom, Utes, Sweden, and Hurts.
Mrs. Brown tried to explain the literal definitions of the four words but could not decipher the code.
Encyclopedia realized that the calendar sheet provided the key clue needed to solve the hidden code.
Nolan created the code by removing the letters d-a-y from the names of weekdays.
The four written words were anagrams representing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
The unwritten fifth word in the sequence was Friday, which formed the anagram word fir.
Encyclopedia correctly deduced that the stolen jewellery was hidden beneath the only fir tree in the nursery.
The missing jewellery was discovered inside a twenty-gallon jug of earth beneath the young fir tree.