The Eyre Affair

  None of the bodies came home. It was a policy decision. But many had private memorials. Anton’s was near the end of the row, underneath the protective bough of an old yew and sandwiched between two other Crimean memorials. It was well kept up, obviously weeded regularly, and fresh flowers had recently been placed there. I stood by the unsophisticated gray limestone tablet and read the inscription. Simple and neat. His name, rank and the date of the charge. There was another stone not unlike this one sixteen hundred miles away marking his grave on the peninsula. Others hadn’t fared so well. Fourteen of my colleagues on the charge that day were still “unaccounted for.” It was military jargon for “not enough bits to identify.”

  Quite suddenly I felt someone slap me on the back of my head. It wasn’t hard but enough to make me jump. I turned to find the GSD priest looking at me with a silly grin on his face.

  “Wotcha, Doofus!” he bellowed.

  “Hello, Joffy,” I replied, only slightly bemused. “Want me to break your nose again?”

  “I’m cloth now, Sis!” he exclaimed. “You can’t go around bashing the clergy!”

  I stared at him for a moment.

  “Well, if I can’t bash you,” I told him, “what can I do?”

  “We at the GSD are very big on hugs, Sis.”

  So we hugged, there in front of Anton’s memorial, me and my loopy brother Joffy, whom I had never hugged in my life.

  “Any news on Brainbox and the Fatarse?” he asked.

  “If you mean Mycroft and Polly, no.”

  “Loosen up, Sis. Mycroft is a Brainbox and Polly, well, she does have a fat arse.”

  “The answer’s still no. Mind you, she and Mum have put on a bit of weight, haven’t they?”

  “A bit? I should say. Tesco’s should open a superstore just for the pair of them.”

  “Does the GSD encourage such blatant personal attacks?” I asked.

  Joffy shrugged.

  “Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t,” he answered. “That’s the beauty of the Global Standard Deity—it’s whatever you want it to be. And besides, you’re family so it doesn’t count.”

  I looked around at the well-kept building and graveyard.

  “How’s it all going?”

  “Pretty well, thanks. Good cross section of religions and even a few Neanderthals, which is quite a coup. Mind you, attendances have almost tripled since I converted the vestry into a casino and introduced naked greasy-pole dancing on Tuesdays.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “Yes, of course I am, Doofus.”

  “You little shit!” I laughed. “I am going to break your nose again!”

  “Before you do, do you want a cup of tea?”

  I thanked him and we walked toward the vicarage.

  “How’s your arm?” he asked.

  “It’s okay,” I replied. Then, since I was eager to try to keep up with his irreverence, I added: “I played this joke on the doctor in London. I said to him when he rebuilt the muscles in my arm, ‘Do you think I’ll be able to play the violin?’ and he said: ‘Of course!’ and then I said: ‘That’s good, I couldn’t before!’ ”

  Joffy stared at me blank-faced.

  “SpecOps Christmas parties must be a riot, Sis. You should get out more. That’s probably the worst joke I’ve ever heard.”

  Joffy could be infuriating at times, but he probably had a point—although I wasn’t going to let him know it. So I said instead:

  “Bollocks to you, then.”

  That did make him laugh.

  “You were always so serious, Sis. Ever since you were a little girl. I remember you sitting in the living room staring at the News at Ten, soaking in every fact and asking Dad and the Brainbox a million questions—Hello, Mrs. Higgins!”

  We had just met an old lady coming through the lichgate carrying a bunch of flowers.

  “Hello, Irreverend!” she replied jovially, then looked at me and said in a hoarse whisper: “Is this your girlfriend?”

  “No, Gladys—this is my sister, Thursday. She’s SpecOps and consequently doesn’t have a sense of humor, a boyfriend or a life.”

  “That’s nice, dear,” said Mrs. Higgins, who was clearly quite deaf, despite her large ears.

  “Hello, Gladys,” I said, shaking her by the hand. “Joffy here used to bash the bishop so much when he was a boy we all thought he would go blind.”

  “Good, good,” she muttered.

  Joffy, not to be outdone, added: “And little Thursday here made so much noise during sex that we had to put her in the garden shed whenever her boyfriends stayed the night.”

  I elbowed him in the ribs but Mrs. Higgins didn’t notice; she smiled benignly, wished us both a pleasant day, and teetered off into the churchyard. We watched her go.

  “A hundred and four next March,” murmured Joffy. “ Amazing, isn’t she? When she goes I’m thinking of having her stuffed and placed in the porch as a hat stand.”

  “Now I know you’re joking.”

  He smiled.

  “I don’t have a serious bone in my body, Sis. Come on, I’ll make you that tea.”

  The vicarage was huge. Legend had it that the church’s spire would have been ten feet taller had the incumbent vicar not taken a liking to the stone and diverted it to his own residence. An unholy row broke out with the bishop and the vicar was relieved of his duties. The larger-than-usual vicarage, however, remained.

  Joffy poured some strong tea out of a Clarice Cliff teapot into a matching cup and saucer. He wasn’t trying to impress; the GSD had almost no money and he couldn’t afford to use anything other than what came with the vicarage.

  “So,” said Joffy, placing a teacup in front of me and sitting down on the sofa, “do you think Dad’s boffing Emma Hamilton?”

  “He never mentioned it. Mind you, if you were having an affair with someone who died over a hundred years ago, would you tell your wife?”

  “How about me?”

  “How about you what?”

  “Does he ever mention me?”

  I shook my head and Joffy was silent in thought for a moment, which is unusual for him.

  “I think he wanted me to be in that charge in Ant’s place, Sis. Ant was always the favored son.”

  “That’s stupid, Joffy. And even if it were true—which it isn’t—there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Ant is gone, finished, dead. Even if you had stayed out there, let’s face it, army chaplains don’t exactly dictate military policy.”

  “Then why doesn’t Dad ever come and see me?”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a ChronoGuard thing. He rarely visits me unless on business—and never for more than a couple of minutes.”

  Joffy nodded then asked:

  “Have you been attending church in London, Sis?”

  “I don’t really have the time, Joff.”

  “We make time, Sis.”

  I sighed. He was right.

  “After the charge I kind of lost my faith. SpecOps have chaplains of their own but I just never felt the same about anything.”

  “The Crimea took a lot away from all of us,” said Joffy quietly. “Perhaps that is why we have to work twice as hard to hang onto what we have left. Even I was not immune to the passion of the battle. When I first went to the peninsula I was excited by the war—I could feel the insidious hand of nationalism holding me upright and smothering my reason. When I was out there I wanted us to win, to kill the foe. I reveled in the glory of battle and the camaraderie that only conflict can create. No bond is stronger than that welded in conflict; no greater friend is there than the one who stood next to you as you fought.”

  Joffy suddenly seemed that much more human; I presumed this was the side of him his parishioners saw.

  “It was only afterward that I realized the error of what we were doing. Pretty soon I could see no difference between Russian and English, French or Turk. I spoke out and was banned from the frontline in case I sowed disharmony.
My bishop told me that it was not my place to judge the errors of the conflict, but to look after the spiritual well-being of the men and women.”

  “So that’s why you returned to England?”

  “That’s why I returned to England.”

  “You’re wrong, you know,” I told him.

  “About what?”

  “About not having a serious bone in your body. Did you know Colonel Phelps was in town?”

  “I did. What an arse. Someone should poison him. I’m speaking opposite him as ‘the voice of moderation.’ Will you join me at the podium?”

  “I don’t know, Joff, really I don’t.”

  I stared at my tea and refused a chocolate biscuit that he offered me.

  “Mum keeps the memorial well, doesn’t she?” I said, desperate to change the subject.

  “Oh, it’s not her, Doofus. She couldn’t bear to even walk past the stone—even if she did slim down enough to get through the lich-gate.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Why, Landen, of course. Did he not tell you?”

  I sat up.

  “No. No, he didn’t.”

  “He might write crap books and be a bit of a dork, but he was a good friend to Anton.”

  “But his testimony damned him forever!—”

  Joffy put his tea down and leaned forward, lowered his voice to a whisper and placed his hand on mine.

  “Sister dearest, I know this is an old cliché but it’s true: The first casualty of war is always truth. Landen was trying to redress that. Don’t think that he didn’t agonize long and hard over it— it would have been easier to lie and clear Ant’s name. But a small lie always breeds a bigger one. The military can ill afford more than it has already. Landen knew that and so too, I think, did our Anton.”

  I looked up at him thoughtfully. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to Landen but I hoped I would think of something. He had asked me to marry him ten years ago, just before his evidence at the tribunal. I had accused him of attempting to gain my hand by stealth, knowing what my reaction would be following the hearing. I had left for London within the week.

  “I think I’d better call him.”

  Joffy smiled.

  “Yes, perhaps you’d better—Doofus.”

  20.

  Dr. Runcible Spoon

  . . . Several people have asked me where I find the large quantity of prepositions that I need to keep my Bookworms fit and well. The answer is, of course, that I use omitted prepositions, of which, when mixed with dropped definite articles, make a nourishing food. There are a superabundance of these in the English language. Journey’s end, for instance, has one omitted preposition and two definite articles: theendof thejourney. There are many other examples, too, such as bedside (thesideof thebed) and streetcorner (thecornerof thestreet), and so forth. If I run short I head to my local newspapers, where omitted prepositions can be found in The Toad’s headlines every day. As for the worm’s waste products, these are chiefly composed of apostrophes—something that is becoming a problem—I saw a notice yesterday that read: Cauliflower’s, three shilling’s each . . .

  MYCROFT NEXT,

  writing in the “Any Questions?”

  page of New Splicer magazine

  BOWDEN AND Victor were out when I arrived at the office; I poured myself some coffee and sat down at my desk. I called Landen’s number but it was engaged; I tried a few minutes later but without any luck. Sergeant Ross called from the front desk and said that he was sending someone up who wanted to see a Litera Tec. I twiddled my thumbs for a bit, and had failed to reach Landen a third time when a small, academic-looking man with an overpowering aura of untidiness shambled into the office. He wore a small bowler hat and a herringbone-pattern shooting jacket pulled hastily over what looked like his pajama top. His briefcase had papers protruding from where he had caught them in the lid and the laces of both his shoes were tied in reef knots. He stared up at me. It was a two-minute walk from the front desk and he was still fumbling with his visitor’s pass.

  “Allow me,” I said.

  The academic stood impassively as I clipped his pass on and then thanked me absently, looking around as he tried to determine where he was.

  “You’re looking for me and you’re on the right floor,” I said, glad that I had had plenty of experience of academics in the past.

  “I am?” he said with great surprise, as though he had long ago accepted that he would always end up in the wrong place.

  “Special Operative Thursday Next,” I said, holding out a hand for him to shake. He shook it weakly and tried to raise his hat with the hand that was holding the briefcase. He gave up and tipped his head instead.

  “Er . .. thank you, Miss Next. My name is Dr. Runcible Spoon, Professor of English Literature at Swindon University. I expect you’ve heard of me?”

  “I’m sure it was only a matter of time, Dr. Spoon. Would you care to sit down?”

  Dr. Spoon thanked me and followed me across to my desk, pausing every now and then as a rare book caught his eye. I had to stop and wait a number of times before I had him safely ensconced in Bowden’s chair. I fetched him a cup of coffee.

  “So, how can I be of assistance, Dr. Spoon?”

  “Perhaps I should show you, Miss Next.”

  Spoon rummaged through his case for a minute, taking out some unmarked students’ work and a paisley-patterned sock before finally finding and handing me a heavy blue-bound volume.

  “Martin Chuzzlewit,” explained Dr. Spoon, pushing all the papers back into his case and wondering why they had expanded since he took them out.

  “Chapter nine, page one eighty-seven. It is marked.”

  I turned to where Spoon had left his bus pass and scanned the page.

  “See what I mean?”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Spoon. I haven’t read Chuzzlewit since I was in my teens. You’re going to have to enlighten me.”

  Spoon looked at me suspiciously, wondering if I was, perhaps, an impostor.

  “A student pointed it out to me early this morning. I came out as quickly as I could. On the bottom of page one eighty-seven there was a short paragraph outlining one of the curious characters who frequent Todger’s, the boarding house. A certain Mr. Quaverley by name. He is an amusing character who only converses on subjects that he knows nothing about. If you scan the lines I think you will agree with me that he has vanished.”

  I read the page with growing consternation. The name of Quaverley did ring a bell, but of his short paragraph there appeared to be no sign.

  “He doesn’t appear later?”

  “No, Officer. My student and I have been through it several times. There is no doubt about it. Mr. Quaverley has inexplicably been excised from the book. It is as if he had never been written.”

  “Could it be a printing error?” I asked with a growing sense of unease.

  “On the contrary. I have checked seven different copies and they all read exactly the same. Mr. Quaverley is no longer with us.”

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” I murmured.

  “I agree.”

  I felt uneasy about the whole thing, and several links between Hades, Jack Schitt and the Chuzzlewit manuscript started to form in unpleasant ways in my mind.

  The phone rang. It was Victor. He was at the morgue and requested me to come over straight away; they had discovered a body.

  “What’s this to do with me?” I asked him.

  As Victor spoke I looked over at Dr. Spoon, who was staring at a food stain he had discovered on his tie.

  “No, on the contrary,” I replied slowly, “considering what has just happened here I don’t think that sounds odd at all.”

  The morgue was an old Victorian building that was badly in need of refurbishment. The interior was musty and smelled of formaldehyde and damp. The employees looked unhealthy and shuffled around the confines of the small building in a funereal manner. The standard joke about Swindon’s morgue was that the corpses were the ones with all the
charisma. This rule was especially correct when it came to Mr. Rumplunkett, the head pathologist. He was a lugubrious-looking man with heavy jowls and eyebrows like thatch. I found him and Victor in the pathology lab.

  Mr. Rumplunkett didn’t acknowledge my entrance, but just continued to speak into a microphone hanging from the ceiling, his monotonous voice sounding like a low hum in the tiled room. He had been known to send his transcribers to sleep on quite a few occasions; he even had difficulty staying awake himself when practicing speeches to the forensic pathologists’ annual dinner dance.

  “I have in front of me a male European aged about forty with gray hair and poor dentition. He is approximately five foot eight inches tall and dressed in an outfit that I would describe as Victorian . . .”

  As well as Bowden and Victor there were two homicide detectives present, the ones who had interviewed us the night before. They looked surly and bored and glared at the LiteraTec contingent suspiciously.

  “Morning, Thursday,” said Victor cheerfully. “Remember the Studebaker belonging to Archer’s killer?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, our friends in Homicide found this body in the trunk.”

  “Do we have an ID?”

  “Not so far. Have a look at this.”

  He pointed to a stainless-steel tray containing the corpse’s possessions. I sorted through the small collection. There was half a pencil, an unpaid bill for starching collars and a letter from his mother dated June 5, 1843.

  “Can we speak in private?” I said.

  Victor led me into the corridor.

  “It’s Mr. Quaverley,” I explained.

  “Who?”

  I repeated what Dr. Spoon had told me. Victor did not seem surprised in the least.

  “I thought he looked like a book person,” he said at length.

  “You mean this has happened before?”

  “Did you ever read The Taming of the Shrew?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you know the drunken tinker in the introduction who is made to think he is a lord, and whom they put the play on for?”