The Educated Ape & other Wonders of the Worlds (29 page)

‘Ah,’
said Mr Bell. ‘You would like us to work on the project with you.’

‘In a
manner of speaking,’ said Mr Rutherford. ‘You see, the work can sometimes be
very tedious and it would be wonderful to lighten it in some fashion.’

‘Go
on,’ said Mr Bell.

‘Well,’
said Ernest Rutherford, ‘the solution is obvious. The two of you could acquire
a barrel organ and play outside my window.’

‘Now
that
was
uncalled for,’ said Mr Bell as he and Darwin strolled along the Strand.
‘Attacking poor Mr Rutherford like that. Pulling his ears in such a frightful
fashion.’

‘It
was
not
uncalled for,’ said Darwin, sniffing away at the London air and
finding the sniffing pleasant. ‘And it made you laugh, so do not pretend
otherwise.’

Cameron
Bell did sighings and scratched at his beard. ‘I suppose I should shave this
off,’ said he. ‘I look more like a sailor than my usual handsome self’

Darwin
raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘I expect that was the point,’ he said. ‘That
Lavinia Dharkstorrm thinks of everything. Without the beard, friends of Lord
Brentford for whom you had solved cases in the past would have recognised you,
even dressed like a chef as you are.

It
was a fine hot summer’s day but thoughts of the evil witch made Cameron shiver.
‘I have sufficient money for us to dine in a chop-house,’ he said. ‘Dressed as
I am, the Ritz is out, I regret.’

‘You
could apply for a job as a chef,’ said Darwin.

Cameron
Bell hunched his shoulders as he and the ape strolled on.

They dined in a
chop-house down on the Charing Cross Road. They sat by a window and gazed at
London beyond. Costermongers hauled carts that were burdened with bread and
beef and biscuits while newsboys recommended the midday editions in loud and
piping voices. Electric cars purred unheard amidst the clatter of horses’
hooves as hansoms, drays, pantechnicons and landaus moved this way and that in
steady streams. Overhead, one of the new electric flyers drifted steadily, a
sleek platform with wealthy patrons leaning over the guard-rails sipping
cocktails and smoking blue cigarettes.

Mr
Bell drained the last of a pint of porter. ‘This is the end, my only friend,’
said he of a sudden.

Darwin,
dining on roasted potatoes, looked up at Cameron Bell.

‘I
regret,’ said the detective, ‘that it is time for us to dissolve our
partnership.’

‘You
don’t want me any more?’ said Darwin.

‘It
is not that I do not want you. It is simply that I do not wish you to come to
any more harm. You might well have died upon Mars and it would have been all my
fault.’

‘But
you rescued me. I am well.’ Darwin made the jolliest of faces and waved his
little hands about with vigour.

‘It
is the end,’ said Cameron, shaking his head. ‘There is no more Banana and Bell.
In fact, there is no more Cameron Bell, the world’s greatest consulting
detective. I failed, Darwin. Lavinia Dharkstorrm won.’

‘Technically,
perhaps,’ said Darwin, ‘but you cannot give up your calling. You
are
the
world’s greatest detective and the Case of the Stolen Reliquary has yet to be
brought to a successful conclusion.’

‘I am
tired,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘and I will not put you in any more danger.’

‘I
thrive upon danger,’ said Darwin. ‘I am an ape of courageous disposition.’

‘My
mind is made up,’ said Mr Bell.

‘But
what about
me?’

‘Remember,’
said Cameron Bell, ‘you are unique — the world’s one and only speaking monkey.
Find a manager and exhibit yourself at the Egyptian Hall and you will soon be
wealthy once more.’

‘Would
you manage me?’ asked Darwin.

‘No,’
said Cameron Bell, ‘because for one thing I rather like the Egyptian Hall, and
I am sure that somehow or other if I managed you there, it would inevitably get
blown up or burned down.’

‘I am
very upset about this,’ said Darwin. ‘I really liked being a detective.’

‘No
you did
not,’
said Cameron Bell. ‘You liked the money but you hated the
job. I recall the fuss you made.’

‘Yes
yes yes,’ said Darwin. ‘But I can change. I will work hard. I have worked hard
before and I will work hard again.’

‘I
will tell you what,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘I
will
return to my true
calling as detective if
you
agree to return to yours.’

‘And
what is
my
true calling?’ asked Darwin.

‘You
know perfectly well what it is. The job you loved the best.’

‘Ah,’
said Darwin, and, taking up his half-pint of porter between his little hands,
he drained it to the dregs. ‘Return to Lord Brentford,’ he said and he smiled,
‘and serve as his monkey butler.’

Outside the
chop-house, Mr Bell and Darwin said farewell. Both of them had a tear in the
eye and neither tried to hide it. It started with a polite handshake but ended
with a cuddle.

‘When
you have an office once more,’ said Darwin, ‘you write to me at Syon House and
I will come to visit.’

‘And
we will take tea at Fortnum and Mason,’ said Mr Cameron Bell. ‘And when Lord
Brentford. has another social soirée, perhaps you could see to it that my name
appears upon the guest list.’

‘Nothing
would bring me more pleasure,’ said Darwin. And after shaking once more his
ex-partner’s hand, he turned and scampered away.

Mr
Bell watched as the ape vanished into the crowd.

‘Fare
thee well, my one and only friend,’ said Cameron Bell.

28

he
Lord of the Isles will see you now,’ said the broadly grinning policeman,
pressing open the storeroom door and pushing Mr Bell into the dismal room that
lay beyond.

A
raddled soul looked up from a miniature desk. He wore a tam-o‘-shanter of
Boleskine plaid topped by an eagle’s feather, a ginger beard that was not his
own and yards and yards of tartan. In his left sock, unseen behind his tiny
desk, there lurked a dinky dirk, and upon this desk there lay a mighty
claymore.

‘Oh
dear me,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Dear oh dear oh me.’

‘A
chef!’ cried the ersatz highlander. ‘Who let a chef in here?’

‘I am
not a chef,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘and you are not a Scotsman.’

‘I am
Donald Ferguson, the Laird of Lasmacrae, and I’ll fight any Sassenach who dares
to say I’m not.’

Cameron
Bell released a sigh that came from his very soul.

The
Lord of the Isles stared hard at the bearded chef.

‘I
know that sigh,’ said the Lord of the Isles. ‘I’d know it anywhere.’

‘I am
Cameron Bell,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘and you are the pride of Scotland Yard — the
famous feted Chief Inspector Case.’

‘Bell?’
cried
the famous feted one. ‘Is that really you?’

‘It
is,’ said the sleuth in chefs clothing.

‘But
I have been on your case for nearly a year.’ Chief Inspector Case tore off his
beard. ‘Missing, presumed dead. No trace of you. We thought you had perished in
the fire.’

‘What
fire?’ asked Cameron Bell.

‘At
the offices of Banana and Bell,’ said the chief inspector. ‘They burned to the
ground on the day you went missing.’

Cameron
Bell chewed on his lower lip. Miss Lavinia Dharkstorrm, he presumed.

‘So
where
have
you been?’ asked the chief inspector. ‘And why the beard and
chefs get-up? Have you gone stark raving mad?’

The
irony of this remark was not lost on the detective. ‘A secret undercover
mission,’ he said, recalling now what a pleasure it always was to lie to the
chief inspector. ‘For Queen and Empire. I wish I could tell you more.

Chief
Inspector Case nodded enthusiastically. ‘I suspected that was the case,’ he
said.

Cameron
Bell rolled his eyes.

‘I’d
shave off that beard, though,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Between you and me,
what with your baldness and everything, it looks as if you are wearing your
head upside down.’ And the chief inspector laughed, a shrill and most alarming
laugh that set Mr Bell’s teeth all upon edge and caused his ears to ring.

‘I
must ask you for the twenty-five guineas in advance,’ said Cameron Bell.

Chief
Inspector Case expressed surprise.

‘I
feel,’ said Mr Bell, ‘that as an old and greatly valued friend, you should take
the credit for solving the mystery of my disappearance.’

‘Ah,’
said Chief Inspector Case. ‘And in return for me taking all the credit, I will
be expected to secretly sign over to you twenty-five guineas from the
petty-cash box.’

‘A
trifling sum,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘But if you feel that more is in order—’

‘I do
not,’
said the chief inspector, coldly sober now and removing his
tam-o’-shanter. ‘But in truth, it
is
good to see you once more. London
is a duller place without you around, setting it on fire.’

Mr
Bell smiled. ‘I said twenty-five guineas
in advance,’
said he, ‘because
for the present the fact of my reappearance must remain a secret. I have a most
important and uncompleted case that needs my attention and it will be far
easier for me to go about my business if the villain in question does not know
that I am going about it.’

‘She’s
a bad ‘un, for sure,’ said Chief Inspector Case.

‘She?’
said
Cameron Bell. ‘You know of whom I speak?’

‘If
you are speaking of this vigilante strumpet Lady Ray-gun, then yes, I do,’ said
Chief Inspector Case.

‘Ah,’
said Mr Bell. ‘There have been more of her comings and goings while I have been
away?’

‘Do
you recall the Kray Triplets?’ asked Chief Inspector Case.

‘Ronald,
Reginald and Dorothy,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Dorothy is the most dangerous of the
three, I surely recall.’

‘Done
to death most horribly,’ said Chief Inspector Case, ‘with the words LADY RAYGUN
WAS HERE scrawled in their blood across the paving stones.’

‘Nasty,’
said Cameron Bell. ‘But no great loss to the world, if truth be told.’

‘Do
you remember Professor Moriarty?’ the chief inspector asked.

‘The
Napoleon of Crime,’ said Cameron Bell.
‘I
gave him that title, you
know.’

‘I
did
know,’ said the chief inspector. ‘You
have
mentioned it before,
many
times.’

‘He
retired, did he not?’ said Cameron Bell. ‘I heard he makes a living now by
signing photographs of himself for enthusiasts of the Sherlock Holmes stories.’

‘Dead,’
said Chief Inspector Case. ‘She stuck his head on the railings of Buckingham
Palace.’

‘She
appears to be a rather angry woman,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘The
file on her grows daily.’ The chief inspector mimed a growing file. ‘Crime
rates
are
dropping, however.’

‘Ah,’
said Cameron Bell. ‘Well, it is the matter of crime rates that has brought me
here today.’

And
indeed it was, because Mr Bell needed to know whether there had been a growing
number of evil deeds committed during the time he had been all boxed up in
suspended animation. Evil deeds precipitated as a result of the four
reliquaries being brought together in an ‘unhallowed place’, as sacred texts
predicted. Mr Bell just
had
to know.

‘It
is only really
her,’
said the chief inspector. ‘She has had a sobering
effect on the criminal population — they rarely venture out after dark
nowadays. I cannot recall the last time anyone was brutally slain in a
Whitechapel alley. Sometimes I miss the good old days, don’t you?’

Cameron
Bell agreed that sometimes he did. ‘I am very glad to hear this,’ he said.
‘Very glad indeed.’