A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (38 page)

I pointed to my temple to demonstrate. Cordelia took a step backwards, her look turning to one of consternation.

“Are you okay, Thursday? Can I call someone?”

“Oh. No no, I'm fine. I just realized I—ah—left a receiver in my ear. It must be my partner; there's a 12-14 or a 10-30 or . . .
something
numerological in progress. Tell your competition winners another time. Goodbye!”

I dashed off down the corridor toward the Literary Detectives offices. There wasn't a receiver, of course, but I wasn't having Flakk tell the quacks I was hearing voices.
³
I stopped and looked around. The corridor was empty.

“I can
hear
you,” I said, “but where are you?”
⁴

“Her name's Flakk. Works over at SpecOps PR.”
⁵

“What is this? SpecOps Blind Date?
What's going on?
”
⁶

“Case? What case? I haven't done anything!”
⁷

My indignation was real. For someone who had spent her life enforcing law and order, it seemed a grave injustice that I should be accused of something—especially something I knew nothing about.

“For God's sake, Snell, what
is
the charge?”

“Are you okay, Next?”

It was Commander Braxton Hicks. He had just turned the corner and was staring at me with curiosity.

“Nothing, sir,” I said, thinking fast. “The SpecOps tensionologist said I should vocalize any stress regarding past experiences. Listen:
‘Get away from me, Hades, go!'
See? I feel better already.”

“Oh!” said Hicks doubtfully. “Well, the quacks know best, I suppose. That Lush fellow's interview was a cracker, don't you think?”

Thankfully he didn't give me time to answer and carried on talking.

“Listen here, Next, did you sign that picture for my godson Max?”

“On your desk, sir.”

“Really? Jolly good. What else? Oh yes. That PR girlie—”

“Miss Flakk?”

“That's the chap. She ran a competition or something. Would you liaise with her over it?”

“I'll make it my top priority, sir.”

“Good. Well, carry on vocalizing then.”

“Thank you, sir.”

But he didn't leave. He just stood there, watching me.

“Sir?”

“Don't mind me,” replied Hicks, “I just want to see how this stress vocalizing works.
My
tensionologist told me to arrange pebbles as a hobby—or count blue cars.”

So I vocalized my stress there in the corridor for five minutes, reciting every Shakespearean insult I could think of while my boss watched me. I felt a complete twit but rather that than the quacks, I suppose.

“Jolly good,” he said finally and walked off.

After checking I was alone in the corridor I spoke out loud:

“Snell!”

Silence.

“Mr. Snell, can you hear me?”

More silence.

I sat down on a convenient bench and put my head between my knees. I felt sick and hot; both the SpecOps resident tensionologist and stresspert had said I might have some sort of traumatic aftershock from tackling Acheron Hades, but I hadn't expected anything so vivid as voices in my head. I waited until my head cleared and then made my way not towards Flakk and her competition winners but towards Bowden and the Litera Tec's office.
⁸

I stopped.

“Prepared for what? I haven't done anything!”
⁹

“No, no!” I exclaimed. “I
really
don't know what I've done.
Where are you!?!
”
¹⁰

“Wait! Shouldn't I see you
before
the hearing?”

There was no answer. I was about to yell again, but several people came out of the elevator, so I kept quiet. I waited for a moment but Mr. Snell didn't seem to have anything more to add, so I made my way into the Litera Tec office, which closely resembled a large library in a country home somewhere. There weren't many books we
didn't
have—the result of bootleg seizures of literary works collected over the years. My partner, Bowden Cable, was already at his desk, which was as fastidiously neat as ever. He was dressed conservatively and was a few years younger than me although he had been in SpecOps a lot longer. Officially he was a higher rank, but we never let it get in the way—we worked as equals but in different ways: Bowden's quiet and studious approach contrasted strongly with my own directness. It seemed to work well.

“Morning, Bowden.”

“Hello Thursday. Saw you on the telly last night.”

I took off my coat, sat down and started to rummage through telephone messages.

“How did I look?”

“Fine. They didn't let you talk about
Jane Eyre
much, did they?”

“Press freedom was on holiday that day.”

He understood and smiled softly.

“Never fear—someday the full story will be told. Are you okay? You look a little flushed.”

“I'm okay,” I told him, giving up on the telephone messages. “Actually, I'm not. I've been hearing voices.”

“Stress, Thursday. It's not unusual. Anyone specific?”

I got up to fetch some coffee, and Bowden followed me.

“A lawyer named Akrid Snell. Said he was representing me. Refill?”

“No, thanks. On what charge?”

“He wouldn't say.”

I poured myself a large coffee as Bowden thought for a moment.

“Sounds like an inner guilt conflict, Thursday. In policing we have to sometimes—”

He stopped as two other LiteraTec agents walked close by, discussing the merits of a recently discovered seventy-eight-word palindrome
that made sense.
We waited until they were out of earshot before continuing:

“—we have to sometimes close off our emotions. Could you have killed Hades if you were thinking clearly?”

“I don't think I would have been able to kill him if I
wasn't,
” I replied, sniffing at the milk. “I've not lost a single night's sleep over Hades, but poor Bertha Rochester bothers me a bit.”

We went and sat down at our desks.

“Maybe that's it,” replied Bowden, idly filling in the
Owl
crossword. “Perhaps you secretly
want
to be held accountable for her death. I heard Crometty talking to me for weeks after his murder—I thought I should have been there to back him up— but I wasn't.”

“How are you getting along with the crossword?”

He passed it over and I scanned the answers.

“What's a ‘RILK'?” I asked him.

“It's a—”

“Ah, there you are!” said a booming voice. We turned to see Victor Analogy striding across from his office. Head of the Swindon Litera Tecs since who knows when, he was a sprightly seventy-something with a receding hairline and a figure that
guaranteed
the part of Santa Claus at the SpecOps Christmas
party. Despite his jocular nature he could be as hard as nails on occasion and was a good buffer between SO-27 and Braxton Hicks, who was strictly a company man. Analogy guarded our independence closely and regarded all his staff as family, and we thought the world of him. We all said our good mornings and Victor sat on my desk.

“How's the PR stuff going, Thursday?”

“More tedious than Spenser, sir.”

“That bad, eh? Saw you on the telly last night. Rigged, was it?”

“Just a little.”

“I hate to be a bore, but it's all important stuff. Have a look at this fax.”

He handed me a sheet of paper, and Bowden read over my shoulder.

“Ludicrous,” I said, handing the fax back. “What possible benefit could the Toast Marketing Board get from sponsoring us?”

Victor shrugged.

“Not a clue. But if they have cash to give away we could certainly do with some of it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Braxton's speaking to them this afternoon. He's very big on the idea.”

“I bet he is.”

Braxton Hicks's life revolved around his precious SpecOps budget. If any of us even
thought
of doing any sort of overtime, you could bet that Braxton would have something to say about it—and something in his case meant “no.” Rumor had it that he had spoken to the canteen about giving out smaller helpings for dinner. He had been known as “Small Portions” in the office ever since—but never to his face.

“Did you find out who's been forging and trying to sell the missing ending to Byron's
Don Juan
?” asked Victor.

Bowden showed him a black-and-white photo of a dashing figure climbing into a parked car somewhere near the airship field. He was extravagantly dressed according to “the Byron Look”—it was quite popular, even amongst non-Byrons.

“Our prime suspect is a fellow named Byron
₂
.”

Victor looked at the picture carefully, first through his spectacles, then over the top of them.

“Byron number two, eh? How many Byrons are there now?”

“Byron
₂₆₂₀
was registered last week,” I told him. “We've been following Byron
₂
for a month, but he's smart. None of the forged scraps of
Heaven and Earth
can be traced back to him.”

“Wiretap?”

“We tried, but the judge said that even though Byron
₂
's surgery to
make
his foot clubbed in an attempt to emulate his hero was undeniably strange, and then getting his half sister pregnant was plainly disgusting, those acts only showed a fevered Byronic mind, and not
necessarily
one of intent to forge. We have to catch him inky-fingered, but at the moment he's off on a tour of the Mediterranean. We're going to attempt to get a search warrant while he's away.”

“So you're not that busy, then?”

“What had you in mind?”

“Well,” began Victor, “it seems there have been a couple more attempts to forge
Cardenio.
I know it's small beer for you two but it helps Braxton with his damnable statistics. Would you go and have a look?”

“Sure,” replied Bowden, knowing full well I would concur. “Got the addresses?”

He handed over a sheet of paper and bade us luck. We rose to leave, Bowden studying the list carefully.

“We'll go to Roseberry Street first,” he muttered. “It's closer.”

Cardenio
was performed at court in 1613. It was entered in the stationer's register in 1653 as “by Mr. Fletcher and Shakespeare” and in 1728 Theobald Lewis published his play
Double Falsehood
, which he claimed to have written using an old prompt copy of
Cardenio
. Given the uneven Shakespearean value of his play and his refusal to produce the original manuscript, this claim seems doubtful. Cardenio was the name of the Ragged Knight in Cervantes'
Don Quixote
who falls in love with Lucinda, and it is assumed Shakespeare's play followed the same story. But we will never know. Not one single scrap of the play has survived.

MILLON DE FLOSS
,
“Cardenio”: Easy Come, Easy Go

A
FEW MINUTES LATER
we were turning into a street of terraced houses close by the new thirty-thousand-seat croquet stadium.
Cardenio
scams were the three-card trick of the literary world; the bread and butter for literary lowlife. Since there were only five signatures, three pages of revisions to
Sir Thomas More
and a fragment of
King Lear,
anything that might conceivably have been near Shakespeare in his lifetime had big money attached to it. The rediscovery of
Cardenio
was the Holy Grail of the small-time antiquarians, the greatest lottery win there might ever be.

We rang on the doorbell of number 216. After a few moments a large middle-aged woman of ruddy complexion opened the door. Her hair looked newly coiffured and she was dressed in a lurid Prospero-patterned dress that might have been
her
Sunday best, but not anyone else's.

“Mrs. Hathaway
₃₄
?”

“Yes?”

We held up our badges.

“Cable and Next, Swindon Literary Detectives. You called the office this morning?”

Mrs. Hathaway
₃₄
beamed and ushered us in enthusiastically. As we stepped in we noticed that on every available wall space were hung pictures of Shakespeare, framed playbills, engravings and commemorative plates. The bookshelves were packed with numerous Shakespeare studies and volumes, the coffee table was carefully arrayed with rare back issues of the Shakespeare Federation's weekly magazine,
We Love Willy,
and in the corner of the room was a beautifully restored Will-Speak machine from the thirties. It was clear she was a serious fan. Not quite rabid enough to speak only in lines from the plays, but close enough.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” asked Hathaway
₃₄
, proudly putting on an ancient 78 of Sir Henry Irving playing
Hamlet
that was so bad it sounded as if he had recited it with a sock in his mouth.

“No, thank you, ma'am. You said you had a copy of
Cardenio
?”

“Of course!” she enthused, then added with a wink: “Will's lost play popping up like a jack-in-a-box must come as quite a surprise to you, I imagine?”

I didn't tell her that a
Cardenio
scam was almost a weekly event.

“We spend our days surprised, Mrs. Hathaway
₃₄
.”

“Call me Anne
₃₄
!” she said as she opened a desk and gently withdrew a book wrapped in pink tissue paper. She placed it in front of us with great reverence.

“I bought it in a garage sale last week,” she confided. “I don't think the owner knew that he had a copy of a long-lost Shakespeare play in amongst unread Daphne Farquitt novels and back issues of
Vintage Toaster Monthly.
”

She leaned forward.

“I bought it for a song, you know.”

And she giggled.

“I think this is the most important find since the
King Lear
fragment,” she went on happily, clasping her hands to her bosom and staring adoringly at the engraving of the Bard above the mantelpiece. “
That
fragment was in Will's hand and covers only two lines of dialogue between Lear and Cordelia. It sold at auction for one point eight million! Just think how much
Cardenio
would be worth!”

“A genuine
Cardenio
would be almost priceless, ma'am,” said Bowden politely, emphasizing the “genuine.”

I closed the cover. I had read enough.

“I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Hathaway
₃₄
—”

“Anne
₃₄
. Call me Anne
₃₄
.”

“—Anne
₃₄
. I'm afraid to say I believe this to be a forgery.”

She didn't seem very put out.

“Are you sure, my dear? You didn't read very much of it.”

“I'm afraid so. The rhyme, meter and grammar don't really match any of Shakespeare's known works.”

There was silence for a moment as Hathaway
₃₄
digested my words, frowned to herself and bit her lip. I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does, and she retorted belligerently:

“Will was adaptable to the nth degree, Miss Next—I hardly think that any
slight
deviation from the norm is of any great relevance!”

“You misunderstand me,” I replied, trying to be as tactful as possible. “It's not even a
good
forgery.”

“Well!” said Anne, putting on an air of aggrieved indignation and switching off Henry Irving as though to somehow punish us. “Such authentication is notoriously difficult. I may have to seek a second opinion!”

“You are more than welcome to do that, ma'am,” I replied slowly, “but they will say the same as I. It's not just the text. You see, Shakespeare never wrote on lined paper with a ballpoint, and even if he did, I doubt he would have had Cardenio seeking Lucinda in the Sierra Morena mountains driving an open-top Range Rover whilst playing ‘It's the Same Old Song' by the Four Tops.”

“Goodness!” said Bowden, amazed by the effrontery of the forger. “Is that what it says?”

I passed him the manuscript to have a look at, and he chuckled to himself. But Hathaway
₃₄
was having none of it.

“And what of that?” returned Hathaway
₃₄
angrily. “In
Julius Caesar
there are plenty of clocks striking the hour, yet they weren't invented until much later. I think Shakespeare introduced the Range Rover in much the same way; a literary anachronism, that's all!”

I smiled agreeably and backed towards the door.

“We'd like you to come in and file a report. Let you look at some mug shots; see if we can find out who pulled this.”

“Nonsense!” said the woman loftily. “I will seek a second opinion, and if necessary, a third and a fourth—or as many as it takes. Good day, officers!”

And she opened the door, shooed us out and slammed it behind us.

“One born every minute,” muttered Bowden as we walked to the car.

“I'd say. Well—that's
interesting.
”

“What?”

“Don't look now, but up the road there is a black Pontiac. It was parked outside the SpecOps building when we left.”

Bowden had a quick glance in their direction as we got into the car.

“What do you think?” I asked when we were inside.

“Goliath?”

“Could be. They're probably still pissed off about losing Jack Schitt into ‘The Raven.' ”

“I refuse to lose any sleep over him,” replied Bowden, pulling into the main road.

“Me too.”

I looked in the vanity mirror at the black automobile four vehicles behind.

“Still with us?” asked Bowden.

“Yup. Let's find out what they want. Take a left here, then left again and drop me off. Carry on for a hundred yards and then pull up.”

Bowden turned off the main road and into another narrow residential road, dropped me off as instructed, sped on past the next corner and stopped, blocking the street. I ducked behind a parked car, and sure enough, the large black Pontiac swept past me. It drove round the next corner and stopped abruptly when it saw Bowden and started to reverse. I tapped on the smoked glass window and waved my badge. The driver stopped and wound down the window.

“Thursday Next, SO-27. Why are you following us?” I demanded.

The driver and passenger were both dressed in dark suits and were clean-shaven. Only Goliath looked like this. Goliath—
or SpecOps. The driver looked blankly at me for a moment and then launched into a well-practiced excuse.

“We seem to have taken a wrong turning, miss. Can you tell us the way to Pete and Dave's Dodo Emporium?”

I was unimpressed by their drab cover story, but I smiled anyway. They were SpecOps as much as I was.

“Why don't you just tell me who you are? We'll all get along a lot better, believe me.”

The two men looked at one another, sighed resignedly and then held up their badges for me to see. They were SO-5, the same search & containment that hunted down Hades.

“SO-5?” I queried. “Tamworth's old outfit?”

“I'm Phodder,” said the driver. “My associate here is Kannon. SpecOps-5 has been reassigned.”

“Reassigned? Does that mean Acheron Hades is officially dead?”

“No SO-5 case is ever
completely
closed. Acheron was only the
third
most evil criminal mind on the planet, Miss Next.”

“Then who—or
what
—are you after this time?”

It seemed that they preferred asking questions to answering them.

“Your name came up in preliminary inquiries. Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently?”

“What do you mean, odd?”

“Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented
weird.
”

I thought for a moment.

“No.”

“Well,” announced Phodder with an air of finality, “if it does, would you call me at this number?”

I took the card, bade them goodbye and returned to Bowden.

We were soon heading north on the Cirencester road, the Pontiac nowhere in sight. I explained who they were to Bowden, who raised his eyebrows and said:

“Sounds ominous. Someone worse than Hades? That'll take some doing.”

“Hard to believe, isn't it? Where are we heading now?”

“Vole Towers.”

“Really?” I replied in some surprise. “Why would someone as eminent and respectable as Lord Volescamper get embroiled in a
Cardenio
scam?”

“Search me. He's a golfing buddy of Braxton's, so this could be political. Better not dismiss it out of hand and make him look an idiot—we'll only be clobbered by the chief.”

We swung in through the battered and rusty gates of Vole Towers and motored up the long drive, which was more weed than gravel. We pulled up outside the imposing Gothic Revival house that was clearly in need of repair, and Lord Volescamper came out to meet us. Volescamper was a tall thin man with gray hair and a ponderous air. He was wearing an old pair of herringbone tweeds and brandished a pair of secateurs like a cavalry saber.

“Blasted brambles!” he muttered as he shook our hands. “Look here, they can grow two inches a day, you know; inexorable little blighters that threaten to engulf all that we know and love—a bit like anarchists, really. You're that Next girl, aren't you? I think we met at my niece Gloria's wedding—who did she marry again?”

“My cousin Wilbur.”

“Now I remember. Who was that sad old fart who made a nuisance of himself on the dance floor?”

“I think that was you, sir.”

Lord Volescamper thought for a moment and stared at his feet.

“Goodness. It was, wasn't it? Saw you on the telly last night. Look here, it was a rum business about that Brontë book, eh?”

“
Very
rum,” I assured him. “This is Bowden Cable, my partner.”

“How do you do, Mr. Cable? Bought one of the new Griffin Sportinas, I see. How do you find it?”

“Usually where I left it, sir.”

“Indeed? You must come inside. Victor sent you, yes?”

We followed Volescamper as he shambled into the decrepit mansion. We passed into the main hall, which was heavily decorated with the heads of various antelope, stuffed and placed on wooden shields.

“In years gone by the family were prodigious hunters,” explained Volescamper. “But look here, I don't carry on that way myself. Father was heavily into killing and stuffing things. When he died he insisted on being stuffed himself. That's him over there.”

We stopped on the landing and Bowden and I looked at the deceased earl with interest. With his favorite gun in the crook of his arm and his faithful dog at his feet, he stared blankly out of the glass case. I thought perhaps his head and shoulders should also be mounted on a wooden shield but I didn't think it would be polite to say so. Instead I said: