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From Simon; a story of Mr. Beecher.

 

The picture of innocence

 

“Have you taken your pill, Mr. Beecher?”

It was nice of Bwephulp to check in on me to make sure I was keeping up my allergy medication, but it was sometimes lonely in my disease-free zone to only have that as a daily contact from another sentient being. My junior, Dexter, was on holiday, which meant I got more work done, and I had done it all. Besides, I had specified ‘sentient.’

It was, consequently, a quiet time in the office. Bwephulp and Sshphilb were enjoying some together time, and had shyly admitted to producing a pair of eggs.

I couldn’t have children of my own, without risking dying of allergy to any woman I slept with, so perhaps I might be a sort of uncle to the Tsshst infants.  And as I had no problems with allergies to Tsshst, I might even sit them on my knee and tell them stories.  So long as I sat in a bath to do so, so as not to hurt them.

In any case, I was able to let my mind drift a little, since nobody was on my back. Always a welcome relief in some respects, but dead boring in others. There are only so many games of solitaire one can play before trying to catch oneself out at cheating.

On the rare occasions this happens, I turn my mind to cross-correlating all news items to see what comes out of it, which is usually amusing conspiracy theories, of dubious use to the imperium but vital for my sanity to construct huge and unlikely conspiracies.

Well, be serious! Is it likely that domestic felines, secretly uplifted, have taken over the fashion world as well as demanding new flavours of cat food?  The correlation of new flavours of cat food and some particularly stylish new fashions could simply be traced to the growth of Kelso Industries, which has fingers in both. It just amused me to write a memo which was never for sending. [I shall be in trouble if Bwephulp ever finds that file and sends any of them; note to self, keep them thoroughly well pass-protected. I can only imagine the mayhem that might ensue if anyone took seriously the idea of a Wiłanu plot to decimate Solcentric humans using a confection which caused them to drown.  Seriously, check out the statistics of the incidence of eating ice-cream with the incidence of drowning. There’s a close statistical correlation. This is because people rush on holiday to places of sun and swimming, stuff themselves rigid with ice-cream, and take the sort of risks when swimming they would never take outside of a vacation. Does the chill of ice-cream contribute to cramps? Sure it does, but the fact of swimming plus ice-cream equals vacation idiocy is a truer cause.  But Wiłanu do not eat ice-cream; they were separated from the human population before the mutation permitting the ingestion of non-human milk took place. Hence, as no Wiłanu eat ice-cream, and tend to view the Solcentric concept of swimming for pleasure with amused contempt, it is possible to skew the facts and come up with a conspiracy. Which is entirely wrong.  And yes, I use these to remind me not to get carried away with theory.]

Sometimes correlations of facts and statistics are merely coincidence; and sometimes correlation is not causation, but both have a common root.

 

However, what was a bit odd was that a famed digital artist produced a picture which was followed rapidly by a significant, and well organised, burglary.

The most unhinged psychologist cannot say that an artwork could cause dishonesty; but it was a close enough correlation to get me interested.

I sent for expanded copies of all the artwork, on hard copy, and museum quality.  It was anomalous enough to justify it under expenses, and if I used them to brighten the office later, well, that was neither here nor there. Fortunately, stuck out in the back of beyond as I was, I had access to top grade replicators. Which are no such thing, of course, but the trade name had stuck when Kelso Industries – they get their fingers in a lot of pies – had combined 3D printing with nanite buildup of other materials than resins, permitting me a genuine oil painting with impasto on real canvas from a work which otherwise existed only as a bunch of computer data.

I wonder what the old masters would have made of that.

Probably they’d have had collective fits, as a few minutes could produce what took them weeks to paint, and years to learn how. And yet, without them, we would not be able to produce such works.

The ones who would be most put out, I thought, were those who appreciated the feminine pulchritude they painted in more... personal... ways during the sittings.

Or whatever position they explored between painting sessions.

The pictures were what I would call Medical Waiting Room work; pretty, soothing, uncontroversial, inoffensive.

Well, apart from my proctologist [I tend to suffer lower gut problems] who has a surreal painting of a massive pair of buttocks with an eye between them, and the legend ‘If you looked after your arse, I wouldn’t have to look up it.’ I like my proctologist, who tells it like it is. And who also makes the most awful puns, and laughed when I said that at least I hadn’t been given the bum’s rush. We’re discussing new technology involving a cyber-rectum with allergen filtration, allied with an all-new regrown liver.

It might make me able to live a near normal life.  And yes, worrying about that was one reason I was undertaking hobby correlations.

So; my eight innocuous paintings, and seven big robberies.

Picture one; still life with roses, still the empire’s most popular flower, pink, white and red with bicolour variations still the most popular colours despite gene-splicing to make genuinely black roses, blue roses, green roses [why have green roses? Just buy a cabbage] and roses with patterns on them. This was an arrangement of nine roses in pink and creamy yellow, with eleven pink shaggy-petalled things around them. [The encyclopedia told me they were carnations, another Terran flower.]

The store hit was Peace and Son, on the eleventh of September. Yes, I know using Terran months is inappropriate for somewhere like Deneb, but the military needs to know when things are in ways the tiny brains of flag officers can think their way around.

Next picture was of a couple of girls in long dresses, in the sort of idyllic countryside which probably only exists on art these days, one of them carrying a bunch of a dozen or so flowers, and the robbery was on the second of December, when Victoria’s Secrets was knocked over.

Third was a painting of half a dozen Arcturan swibble chicks, in a nest, There were a number of blossoms on the branches bearing the nest.

The company stolen from was Pugasi AG, an Arcturan company... well, that was interesting. The theft was on the sixth of December, right on top of the previous.

Fourth was a painting of a heroic looking archaeologist, the archetypal female with more on display than a self-respecting archaeologist would manage, carrying an artefact. The attempt had been made on Kelso Industries on the first of January. It was unsuccessful. Indira employs Babari as security guards, and anyone who wants to tangle with better than seven foot tall, muscular, furry individuals whose body weaponry contravenes the laws on places where carrying knives is banned, well, you are totally insane. A miscalculation.

It was a bit nasty, actually. One of the sec guards had a mouth lock on the ankle of a fleeing thief, and the man’s fellows fried him with a laser hot enough to melt his features and burn off any fingerprints and disrupt his DNA. The sec guard copped it as well; so Indira would not be pleased. She had probably cuddled him when he was a cub.

There was a bounty on the thieves. Why was I not surprised?

The next theft was not until the fourteenth of February; and the picture was of sweethearts holding hands, surrounded by little birds. It was quite noisomely twee.  The man was in military uniform.

The payroll of the local militia was hit.

Sixth, another still life, three Morivian orchids, with as many Morivian fern blossoms. This theft was slightly different, hitting a courier carrying cred-sticks from a firm to the bank on March the third. With the speed of travel being the speed of communication, this hampers such things as bank transfers, so downloads onto cred-sticks makes them negotiable currency.

I checked.

The company was Morivian.

Seventh, three ladies drinking tea around a table, with a selection of biscuits; the twentieth of March, New Pradesh Famous Tea And Groceries was the victim.

I went back to do some counting before I looked at picture eight.

Today was April the second.

The picture was of four kittywings, the winged feline-like pet species bred by Anulgu AG, chasing fourteen butterflies. Or moths. If they weren’t Wiłanu ragwings.

I wondered if  Indira Kelso was still around Deneb, and put through a call.

She answered.

“Hello, Jim,” she said.  “I’m trying to find some murderous thieves.”

“I know,” I said. “I might have some information for you, and where they are going to strike next and when.”  I paused. “You aren’t on Deneb, you answered too quickly.”

“I was on my way to see you,” she said. “I’ll be with you in an hour or so.”

“Cheers, I’ll see you, then,” I said.  “I can get my notes written up.”

 

 

Indira sauntered into my office, rather more pink than her usual coffee-colour, having been through a scout-level decontamination for my convenience.  You can say what you like about ‘Mad’ Indira Kelso, but she’s always ready to go the extra mile for a friend, and I knew she was smarting with decontaminants to help keep me healthy.

“Indira, good to see you,” I said.

“Jim, always good to see you,” she replied. “You have me itching with impatience.”

“Shall I sound omniscient and tell you that the thieves will strike on the fourteenth of this month at Anulgu AG?” I said.

“In the darker days of Terran history, you’d be burned at the stake,” said Indira. “I see you’ve taken up art criticism.”

“There’s an art forum, and Collin Matabele publishes a piece of art typically four to ten days before a big, well-organised theft,” I said. “I don’t get all the links yet, but the month and the day is indicated by the number of main and secondary subjects in the painting.”

Indira was regarding the paintings, hung on my walls with the thefts underneath them.

“Peace roses, for Peace and son,” she said.

“There’s a rose called ‘Peace’?” I said.

“Victorian dress – it’s the generic name for that type of long dress – and Victoria’s Secrets,” said Indira.

“And now you are filling in the blanks of the things I didn’t know,” I said. “Pugasi are Arcturan, obviously the heroic archaeologist represents you – don’t pull faces – and then the military, from the uniform.”

“The date is the Terran love-fest day,” said Indira. “Once known as Valentine’s day.”

“The hell!” I said. “The Colonel in Chief of the militia is Festulo Valentine.”

“Well, that says which military pay,” said Indira. “And yes, once knowing the code, the inference is clear.  Segellamu Angulu won’t listen to a warning, you know.”

“I have to send one, you know,” I said.

“Of course,” said Indira. “He won’t even tighten security, so it won’t interfere with any trap I set.”

“I rather assumed you would be interested to set one,” I said.

“You’ve got the bounty, anyway,” said Indira. “Ch’autuli’it was a good man. And he has kits.”

“I can’t accept bounties, you know that,” I said, regretfully.

I could pay for all the treatments my proctologist had suggested if I could. Civil Service rules are strict. The Scout Service had done all they could, with what they had at the time, but I entered the Civil Service with this condition, and it paid my medical insurance, but it would not cover off the wall treatments for ongoing conditions. I had Bwephulp look up all the regulations, and bless her, she worked her little amphibian guts out to try to find a loophole, but according to medical rules section 6, subsection 42, paragraph 17, pre-existing conditions may be maintained under the medical care protocol [see medical rules section 1, subsection 4, paragraph 3] but no further treatment may be expected without a worsening of the condition demonstrably caused by the workplace [see medical rules section 9, subsection 33, paragraph 1] as certified by a Civil Service approved doctor.  I knew the bloody rule by heart. She had apologised that she could not swim against the tide, bless her.

“Well, now, supposing someone happened to need particular treatment, and a donor offered to pay for that treatment of the first person needing it so long as they signed an agreement for their data to be used for medical science?” said Indira.

“You know about it?” I gasped.

“I know what’s recently come on the market for medicine and what it would mean for you,” she said. “A cyber-trachea would help as well.  And you can get those which also act essentially as gills if anyone wanted to spend more time underwater with friends,” she added. “Think about it.”

“I thought about it. The answer is yes,” I said. “But where does the artist fit in?”

“That’s what I’d like to know, Jim,” said Indira. “I’ll send you all I can find out; I have an ambush to arrange, but I’ll get my people on it right away. Give my love to Bwephulp and Sshphilb, won’t you?”

“What, are you off again?” I protested.

She stayed long enough for coffee and biscuits, but that’s Indira... she only stayed to indulge me with a bit of human company on my own level of intellect. Dexter, my junior, can be trusted with quite complex tasks, but not... well, let’s just say, it would never occur to him to look for correlations he wasn’t being roasted over by some irascible admiral.

I bid her fare well, and sent the message to Segellamu Angulu, a stiff-necked Wiłanu nobleman with a need for a ferruleproctectomy, or in other words, enough of a stick up his arse to need my proctologist’s best work.

I called her, too.

“Jill?” I said, “You’re going to get an offer to experiment on me. Schedule the surgery with the best there is and liaise with the upper respiratory tract people.”

As proctologists go, Jill is the sort who plainly have cyber-buttocks; she makes any man who sees her want to screw her arse off.

I wonder if she knew my own too intimately to ask on a date if the treatment was successful?

 

I had a reply from Angulu first.

Well, to be strictly accurate, I had a message from his automated ‘fuck you and the horse you rode in on’ service.

I wasn’t even going to get a sentient being to overlook it, being placed in the autobin.

His loss.

Indira could claim up to half of anything she saved for him as bounty for good citizenship.

That’s how the Imperium works.

 

The next thing I had through was a dossier on Collin Matabele from Indira.

I wondered if Indira was a bit paranoid not to even ask the Artists’ Forum for information, telling them that one of their artists was a crook.  But then, Indira is still alive because she’s a bit paranoid.

As it turned out, it looked as though she was wise to be paranoid. There was a private chat-room where all the fine planning was done, run by the four people who had set up the forum, and who were known collectively as Collin Matabele. Their minions who did the dirty work were signed up as artists, and did the odd desultory nod to making AI images, or in the case of one, made a personal portfolio of what looked like very young women in suggestive positions and wearing very little but the odd pixel. The four who ran the forum, however, were anonymous online and in the chatroom.

It was when the money trail was followed – they actually made money from the legitimate artists – but they also had to pay their own dues or the algorithm would notice. I had names now. Martin Dissel, Mordred Dissel, Sally Dissel, and Collin Matabele.

I set Bwephulp on them.

Martin Dissel and Collin Matabele had both been fired by Angulu; the first, as far as I could see, for being lazy, and the second for failing to produce the sort of visual content in advertising Angulu wanted.  Mordred Dissel was Martin’s brother, a supply sergeant in the militia, and with a warning on his docket for being on the take. Sally was their sister, and seemed to have trouble with honesty on her income tax returns.

She was dating Collin Matabele; keeping it all in the family, as you might say.

I posted the lot back to Indira, and left it to her when to dump it in the lap of the authorities.

Knowing Indira, it would send the moment she sprang her trap.

 

I was right; there was a spread in the news about it, relegated to a couple of pages back, and even further back the closing of the artist’s forum.

Pity, there were one or two good pieces.

Doubtless Indira would put in a bid to take it over, however, and would arrange for the artists to be able to make money from their efforts.

And then it was back to business as usual with a peremptory yapping from some supply-cretin about where his supplies were going missing.

And that one was easy.

He was indenting over and over for part 37/17/4121B44.  His staff had a sufficiency of toilet rolls to build a papier maché fortress, but he was still failing to get enough lenses for the re-usable laser rifles, which burned out after a few uses.

That was part 57/17/4121B44.

As anyone should know.

 

 

 

 

 

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a glimpse into a new world

 

a tempter...

Tales from the Unknown, a Halloween anthology

 Now available as paperback or kindle on Amazon - an anthology of short stories about fae, ghosts, dragons and the like. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJV7CJHY ↗️ or https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DJV7CJHY ↗️ or your nearest Amazon.

Ritual and Runes, a tale from the Green Man

 

Ritual and Runes

 

Godwin was a convivial sort of fellow; he even liked humans, which was more than could be said of many of the fae, even the most upright of the Seelie Court. But he had his limits.

He had concocted a potion with deep ritual and he was writing on his right palm sigils which no scholar of runes could have read, since they were old long before the first primitive marks made with meaning by those humans with the vision to translate thought and word into visible representation.

Even if anyone could read such glyphs, they would still have trouble, since Godwin was laying them on his palm in a precise mirror image. As he worked, he muttered in his own tongue, a rhyme of his own devising, which might be rendered approximately into English as follows.

“By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn

May you wish you were not born,

By Heath, by Moor, by Sedge

May you wander to the edge,

May you pass the twilight veil

May your senses start to fail

As the trees on you prevail

By the beating of your heart

By panic I bid you depart.”

 

Whistling to himself an air which anyone in the village may have recognised as ‘Teddy-Bear’s Picnic,’ Godwin strolled down towards the village guild hall, where the meeting protesting against the sale of Pharisee Woods was being held. To anyone who heard him whistle, it was a reminder, perhaps, of a long gone youth, when such tunes were popular. To anyone who knew Godwin, and knew that he was fae through and through, with the lack of ruth of his kind, it was a horrifying reminder that Godwin had a rather individualistic sense of humour; and the words, ‘If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise’ did not refer to anything so benign as a teddy-bear’s picnic.

One of the very few who did know was Peter, seventh son of a seventh son, who appeared to be about the same age as Godwin; but being mortal, Peter’s appearance was genuine. He felt his blood run cold.

Godwin smiled at him, and Peter nodded.

“You don’t want him awaking those powers best left torpid,” said Godwin.

“No, I know,” said Peter. “I just see the implacable ages of the trees in your eyes. But you don’t flinch to look into mine as... she does.”

“I don’t have to fear what she does,” said Godwin. “I can even enter the church; I have no fear of your God, and He has no enmity to me, as I do not see Him as an enemy. Sometimes, perhaps, I even regret that I have no soul; but my descendents can choose to go on where humans go, or remain as unchanging spirits until the death of the universe.”

“What happens then?”

“I have no idea,” said Godwin. “We are close to nature; we live very much in the now. It is how we handle such long lives.”

“I see,” said Peter. “Thank you for explaining. But I would not have said I was especially devout; what can she see in me?”

“Seven souls whose choice is to remain as your protectors. Your father and his brothers summoned to the aid of the seventh son of the seventh son; their wild magic that wreaths around you like a storm.”

They went into the guild hall together, and Godwin approached Theodore Morecroft, holding out his hand.

“We may be on different sides, but you will not, of course, refuse to shake my hand in the expectation of gentlemanly proceedings,” said Godwin.

Morecroft sneered.

“I suppose I can make that concession,” he said, holding out his hand. Godwin slapped his palm to the other’s flesh, transferring the runes.

How the meeting went was now immaterial, though he nodded to a nervous and unhappy Rupert, who wanted to sit with the villagers, but had compromised with being neither on the dais with his father, nor amongst the protestors, but hovered betwixt the two.

His mother sat with the villagers.

Morecroft scowled. If he only dared to beat her into submission, but the nightmares he had suffered last time he had beaten her still made him sweat.

He little realised that they were nothing compared to what was to come.

 

The meeting was, as expected, of no help whatsoever. Godwin would not make the same mistake again of letting the land pass in ownership to the heirs of his body; Amelia, Rupert’s mother, had been the only child of a father too obsessed with his researches, and at seventeen, orphaned, and vulnerable had been easy prey to the floridly handsome and utterly unscrupulous Morecroft when he bought the manor, land, and a lovely bride, after she was left destitute, at a time when Godwin had been away on other business, and was unable to stop her making such a disastrous decision.

The villagers went home feeling bereft and deeply dissatisfied.

 

Two days later, Rupert appealed for aid to find his father.

On the whole, he was considered a pleasant youth since he had separated himself somewhat from his father, and was making amends to the girl he had got with child, so despite feelings towards the youth’s father, the villagers made up a search party.

They brought back the man’s body on a hurdle. Dead of a heart attack, the autopsy concluded, and the look of terror on his face an artefact of the rigor mortis.

Godwin knew better.

He had some idea what Theodore Morecroft had seen.

 

The contractors wanted to get on; respect for a son’s feelings for his dead father was not on their agenda. They could hardly believe their ears when Rupert told them where they could put their proposals.  He started out politely enough, saying, ‘No, the land is no longer for sale,’ progressed to suggestions that they could take their proposals and fulfil them where the sun did not shine, and finally fell into outright scatology. He had every right to refuse to sell, after all; the contracts  to do work had been signed personally by Theodore, and with his death, Rupert declared them null and void.  Now he knew a bit more, he knew why the love of the woods was in his blood. And with his support of the woods, he became very popular.

 

Rupert knocked at the door of Godwin’s cottage next to the Green Man pub. Having once been inside, he could see the door at which to knock.

Godwin let him in, and drew him a tankard of mead.

Rupert sipped, straightened, and sipped again.

“Is this some fae drink?” he asked, awed.

“No, just mead; though we invented it,” said Godwin. “That was a good settlement you made on Jane, the cottage for her lifetime, to pass to your child with her and the heirs of her body in perpetuity, and a stipend.”

“I owe you a lot for opening my eyes,” said Rupert.  “I asked my mother what the ritual was, that father was so dead against; the passing of a child’s body through the hole in a tree, or natural cleft where two trees have grown into one... or whatever it was.”

“There was a glacial erratic around which a coppice grew, and merged into one tree, and the fae mined the rare mineral from which it was made. A magical mineral, which imbued the tree with its essence,” said Godwin. “I expect you  have researched how sick children are also passed through it, who subsequently thrive?”

“Yes, and that it is said that there is a geas upon the tongues of all that they cannot speak of this to outsiders so that we are not inundated by visitors like some Fae Lourdes,” said Rupert.

“It would kill the magic,” said Godwin.

“What I have not discovered is what happens if a healthy adult goes through it of his own will,” said Rupert.

“Ah! Well, if he or she is purely mortal, what happens is nothing; though the immune system may be boosted. If he or she is of fae blood... do you know what happened to your grandsire?”

“No; mother will not talk about him.”

“He went through the tree. It enhances the fae and suppresses some of the human. He came back to the village, but he could not settle; and he squandered all his wealth on fool ideas about the fae, encouraging charlatans and witch doctors, modern druids, and mediums, when he could have got all the answers if he had just asked me.” Godwin snorted his disgust. “And then, he set off deliberately for the veil between the worlds, whence you have been, and chose to stay.”

“That sounds decidedly cowardly.”

“To hide in the revels of court, and the pleasant harmony of the now, untroubled by planning, thinking, worrying, or making decisions, provided for by magic? It is the Fae way, which I rejected for the love of this place and my descendents. Some have made the decision to go there, usually those who are unhappy for some reason. It is their choice. If you go through the tree, it will be your choice.”

“Untroubled by planning, thinking, worrying, or making decisions, and provided for, each one according to his needs, from each one according to his abilities; a perfect picture of communism. Which doesn’t work,” said Rupert. “At least, not for humans.”

“It doesn’t work that well for the fae, either, but it’s an illusion of contentment which pleases most,” said Godwin. “And to maintain the power for providing for all, the Unseelie court take humans as a teind, not for hell as the folklore says, though it might as well be for those taken; but, as you might say, as batteries to power up the magic.”

“And the seelie?”

“Oh, the odd affaire with a mortal gives some power; and those of us who have left our seed have offspring whose hybrid vigour adds to both the gene pool of the fae, and the general power of the Tir, the land.”

“I want to go through the hole; but I want to stay,” said Rupert. “Knowing that you know what is there and what is here should help. You will help me adapt?”

“I will,” said Godwin.

“I want to call you ‘Grandpapa,’” blurted out Rupert.

“Make it ‘Great Grandpapa,’ or your mother may be upset,” said Godwin.

“Thank you, Great Grandpapa,” said Rupert.

“The best time will be at Samhain, when the walls between worlds are thin,” said Godwin. “Naked and with runes of protection drawn on your skin.”

“Very well,” said Rupert, trying not to shudder at the idea of being naked in the forest on the last day of October.

 

oOoOo

 

The villagers were not surprised that Rupert was a little withdrawn after the horrific death of his father, though they toasted his health for stopping the bulldozers.   Including the one of the contractor who said that a contract was a contract; Rupert had shot out all the wheels of the JCB, and when the contractor came back next day with new tyres, the JCB was visible only in part where a grove of trees had grown around it and enclosed it. The sort of grove which normally takes one hundred years of growth. Rupert shrugged when taxed with stripping it down and reassembling it inside the treeline, and declined knowledge of how it had got there. A robin fresh hatched that spring took up residence in the cab, and raised a single late brood with his lady love; and the scoop was angled most conveniently to make a shelter, rapidly provided with a bench for the convenience of canoodling humans.

The contractors went away.

Rupert was, meanwhile, learning with Godwin; and went out with him to the mystic tree. Stripping naked, he let Godwin paint runes of power on his body, and as midnight struck, he went through the hole.

Godwin waited.

One o’clock struck, a mile away as the crow flies, on the village church clock.

Rupert stumbled back, bemused.

“I met Rosamund,” he said. “She introduced me to a beautiful girl... not fully grown... she said she is part human.”

“Elaine had leukaemia,” said Godwin. “She was passed through the tree, but Rosamund took her to rear because the tree was not enough. She will make a very good lady of the manor in the future; and you will both live long, and prosper.” He had heard the phrase somewhere in the village and thought it sounded suitable.  He had no idea why Rupert grinned and held up both hands with  a v-shape made in the middle of his fingers, the two each side pressed together.

 

The villagers were glad that the young squire had overcome the problems that beset him taking over from his father. Indeed, they said, he had grown fairer in all ways, being even more handsome than before.

But Rupert did not exploit this with the village girls anymore.

 

 

 

 

The purloined parure 19, final chapter weekend bonus

 

Chapter 19

 

Alexander firmly discharged himself next morning, over the protests of the medical staff, and in particular a starchy matron.

“I have no intention of spending my Christmas in hospital,” he said.

“Mr. Armitage, I cannot guarantee that you will not suffer considerable pain if you are not under the eyes of trained medical staff,” said the matron, frowning at him.

“I shall be; my mother ran a hospital during the war,” said Alexander. “She’s more than capable of checking my ribs and taking out stitches.”

“Well, I can’t say that I think it a good idea to leave your bed,” said the starchy matron. “We advocate three weeks minimum of bed-rest after an appendectomy.”

“Yes, but I didn’t actually have appendicitis, the surgeon only took it out while he was in there because it had been nicked by a knife. No festering detritus poisoning my system, unlike poor old Winnie Churchill, who had a nasty bout in October, I understand.”

“That’s neither here nor there! You are my patient....”

“Sorry, matron, I’m betrothed to a wonderful girl, so you don’t get to tie me down and give me an incentive to stay there,” said Alexander.

“Well, really!” said the matron, outraged. Alexander winked, kissed her on the cheek, patted her on the backside and swept out as she gobbled incoherently at a liberty which had not been taken with her for many years.

“Victory,” said Alexander, to a waiting Campbell. “Took the wind out of her sails nicely.”

“You didn’t ought to flirt,” said Campbell.

“I wasn’t; I went on the offensive purely to take the mickey. Women like that scare me far too much to flirt with them. But a bold move outflanks the scariest enemy.”

“I took Freddy home to be with his fambly for Christmas,” said Campbell. “Not sure he wanted to go, but he and Mr. Henderson was not on good terms.”

“I can’t see my brother-in-law-elect having much time for Freddy,” said Alexander. “Thanks; I can’t say I was looking forward to having him for Christmas.”

“Naow, goose or turkey tastes better,” said Campbell, with a straight face. “Gwine to go load up Miss Ida and Gladdie, then ’ome.”

“I look forward to it.”

Alexander was not ready to admit that the journey across London to pick up the women had already tried him sorely; but Gladys got in the front with Campbell, and Ida in the back, and having taken one look at his white face, Ida pulled his head down onto her lap.

“Put your feet up, do, and doze,” she said.

It was with a sigh of relief that Alexander did so, with his sorest ribs uppermost.

 

Having slept all the way back to Essex, Alexander was amazed how pulled he was by the journey, and fell asleep again, as soon as he was installed in bed, Ida fending off her brother’s complaints about Frederick Beauchamp.  A good rest did wonders, and Alexander enjoyed his family Christmas in a very sedentary way, on a sofa with quilts, and with enough extended family about to mean that he did not have to see much of David Henderson.

 

“I put Mr. Blakecastle onto purchasing a house in Sussex Gardens, and several adjacent mews in Bathhurst Mews behind it,” said Ida. “The mews is accessed by the old coaching inn entrance under the inn, so it’s easy to have it watched for strangers, but if we keep the basement of the Sussex Square house, we can let the floors above if we want, and use the service tunnel to the mews. I am sure you can find some decent old lags who will unblock it for you with a consideration to forget it.”

“Possibly,” said Alexander. “And what, three mews buildings will be our house in London?”

“One for Gladys and Campbell,” said Ida. “But with doors through. And the house is a couple of doors down from a hotel where you might permanently hold a room.”

“Oh, very clever.” Alexander kissed Ida.

“I also purchased a residence being built in Gidea Park for Cosher,” said Ida. “128 Balgores Lane, it’s a semi-detatched[1] house in the modern style, very nice, three bedrooms, nice garden at back, small garden at front.  Not too large and intimidating, a new start for him, and five minutes’ walk from the train if he wants to go up to London, which should be about fifteen minutes.”

“You’re a dear,” said Alexander.

 

 

The fly in the ointment was the arrival of several reporters who camped outside and refused to go without a story on whether the parure was real or not, and whether it was true that the inspector had undergone torture rather than give it up to those not entitled to it.

“They won’t go until we give them a story,” said Alexander. “Tell them I will give them a statement and answer three questions. Total, that is, not each. Unless it breeches anything sub judice.”

Simon and his butler and Campbell made an intimidating set of guards when the reporters were brought to see Alexander.

“Gentlemen... and lady,” said Alexander. “The parure is real. It’s a monstrosity of a piece in rubies and pearls,  quite hideous, but fabulously expensive, I’m sure. There is a necklace, a brooch which can depend from it, a tiara, bracelets, earrings, and rings. One of those who could have been entitled to it was tortured to death by others who believed he had found it; and because I took it into my protection for a third party who is none of your business, yes, they decided to torture me, which is why this session will be short as they managed to perforate my guts and, like Mr. Churchill, I feel rather the worse for wear for that and other wounds.”

“We want to see the parure,” said one truculent-looking reporter. “Have someone bring it in here.”

“That’s question one,” said Alexander. “I can’t just send someone to the bank to get something out of my deposit box; they won’t give it up to anyone they don’t know. What, did you think I keep it lying around in my bedroom?  You must think me insane.”

And it would be going into a safety-deposit box at Child’s as soon as he was mobile enough to set it up. It had been brought here by Campbell as a stopgap measure.

This, apparently, had not been one of the three questions the other reporters had agreed upon, and the truculent one was the subject of less than charitable mutterings from the others.

“Is it true that the old woman was poisoned by the same people who tortured Marty Beauchamp?” asked the woman reporter.

“Yes, it is true. They made lead acetate in her own house, adding insult to injury,” said Alexander.

“Can you name those who have been taken into custody for being caught in the act of torture?” asked another man.

“Stanley Brightman, you know very well I am not allowed to name minors, and nor are you,” said Alexander.

“Only two of the Beauchamp grandchildren are minors,” blurted out Brightman.

“What you are suggesting is conjecture,” said Alexander.

They would find a way of doing a story on the old woman, her scandalous past, the parure, the identity of the whole family and would mention in passing that the culprits could not be mentioned because of their age, and leave it to the readership.

Ida had slipped out and returned.

“I made a sketch of the parure when Alex had it in his keeping,” she said. “You may photograph that.”

“And who are you, miss?”

“I am Ida Henderson, I am betrothed to Alex,” said Ida. “And yes, sister of the artist, Basil Henderson, who was a friend of my fiancé. I will be nursing Alex on a cruise, with a chaperone, of course. And that’s all you’ll be getting out of me.”

This was more than anyone had expected, so the vultures were happy, and snapped away at Ida’s drawing, and Ida holding it, and one of them at least planned a scoop on ‘a new Henderson artist.’

“You’ve asked your three questions, and got more than you might have expected,” said Alexander. “And if I pass out on you, my mother will get involved, and you will none of you like that. She’s a formidable grande dame.”

“He isn’t joking,” said Stanley Brightman, who had followed Alexander’s career. “He got shot once, and she made me feel as if I was in the kindergarden, sent for by the sternest headmistress ever. Thanks, Mr. Armitage; and may you enjoy your cruise.”

“I shan’t, but thanks,” said Alexander.

It was a relief to get rid of them, but better than having them loitering at the end of the drive, camped out in various cars, waylaying servants, and dropping discarded fish and chip papers and empty beer bottles in the road whilst they waited. Their dedication was admirable, even if their lack of tidiness was to be deplored. 

“And they’ve been peeing in the hydrangeas, too,” grumbled Margaret Armitage, Alexander’s mother. “All that alkali, it will turn the blue ones pink.”

“Depend upon it, Mamargaret, it will all have washed away through our sandy soil by the time they come to flower,” said Ida.

“I hope so,” said Margaret.

Alexander went back to sleep, angry with himself that such a little thing as an interview with the press had so exhausted him.

 

 

 

Alexander had strict orders not to come in to the office, though he had to hold himself in readiness to give evidence at a trial. In which case, Barrett wrote, he would be collected by ambulance and would be wheeled into the courtroom in a wheelchair.

Alexander rolled his eyes.

And then reflected that, at that, he might just find standing to give evidence rather trying.

 

Barrett visited in the New Year.

“Good news,” he grunted. “Joseph started boasting, and both those lads will be going to Broadmoor at His Majesty’s Pleasure; neither one of them is fit to plead, and their mother likely to be joining them there as well, for assaulting sundry officers of the court to release her precious innocent babies.”

“I didn’t think she was terribly stable,” said Alexander. “I confess, I am glad it isn’t going to come to a big wearisome court case with some flash barrister trying to make out that I’m the villain of the piece, entrapping two sweet little boys from school and pushing them beyond endurance, not to mention breaking Joseph’s nose.”

“I think it’s what sent him over the top,” said Barrett. “Their testimony was terrifying, to be honest; they hold the most awful views, I don’t know where they came from, but they were going on about some German bloke called Neitzsche.”

“Oh, the existentialist,” said Alexander. “I think his work is dangerously easy to misinterpret in dangerous ways.”

“Well, the Beauchamp boys certainly did,” said Barrett, grimly. “Their life-view is that you are old and should be enslaved until you reach forty-five when you should be euthanized. It looks likely that their father is also suffering lead poisoning, but at least he can be treated with chelating drugs.”

“Castor oil for lead, if I recall correctly, and I have very little sympathy for the side effects,” said Alexander. “The young, beautiful, right cult, eh?”

“Pretty much. With an admix of the Bolshevist religion-is-the-opium-of-the-masses, and willingness to share everything everyone else owns,” said Barrett, cynically. “Living in luxury isn’t enough for them, they should be shown deference and given power because they are greater than normal men.”

“Ah, the Űbermenschen to which Nietzsche says mankind should strive; overmen, as one might translate it,” said Alexander.  “I was brought up that man is sinful and fallible, but that in striving to do well, one day we will be lifted above ourselves in Heaven.”

“Yes, I was reared much the same, but with less eloquence,” said Barrett.

“They’ve been failed by their parents, but I wager they were born with a seed of insanity,” said Alexander. “There’s evidence to suppose they’ve been killing, and possibly torturing, animals for a while. Their school record says that Charley has never been caught bullying, but that there was an unhealthy level of acquiescence towards him, and that one of Joseph’s class mates committed suicide. He left a note, ‘Never again, Joe’ and the autopsy revealed various wounds, and evidence of rape and other sexual abuse. But Joseph is a common enough name, and of course that little turd is good at turning on the charm and the big, innocent eyes.”

“Until bested,” said Barrett. “A lot of what he said was a rambling condemnation of you for daring to kick him, and being able to do so when tied up, as you should have accepted your position as victim and let him do whatever he wanted.”

“Clear-cut, anyway,” said Alexander. “I reckon I could come back to work next week if I stuck to desk duties....”

“Your duties are as escort to Alma and Miss Henderson, and to get well,” said Barrett. “They removed your appendix, for goodness sake![2] And your ribs are broken!”

“They’ll heal,” said Alexander.  

“And that’s why you’re such a rotten colour just from talking to me,” said Barrett. “I want you well; you’re one of my best men. And as you can afford to pamper yourself on a cruise, it’s very fortuitous.”

“Yes, sir,” said Alexander.

He was looking forward to it, in a way, and planned to make a detailed itinerary.

Getting into the warmth of the Mediterranean was also an incentive.

---

[1] Duplex in American

[2] In the 1920s, several weeks of bedrest was advocated after an appendectomy. Alex has not had appendicitis, so has not had any poisoning to his system, but it’s still debilitating, allied with the other torture. Taking several weeks on a cruise to recover is not unreasonable.