The well of lost plots (32 page)

“That’s terrible! What shall we do?”

“Do?” replied Fnorp. “We aren’t going to do anything — Lola has turned out admirably — so much so that we’ve got her a leading role in
Girls Make All the Moves
, a thirty-something romantic comedy novel. No, I’m really here because I’m worried about Randolph.”

“I . . . see. What’s the problem?”

“Well, he’s just not taking his studies very seriously. He’s not stupid; I could make him an A-4 if only he’d pay a little more attention. Those good looks of his are probably his downfall. Aged fifty-something and what we call a ‘distinguished gray’ archetype, I think he feels he doesn’t need any depth — that he can get away with a good descriptive passage at introduction and then do very little.”

“And this is a problem because . . . ?”

“I just want something a bit better for him,” sighed Dr. Fnorp, who clearly had the best interests of his students at heart. “He’s failed his B-grade exams twice; once more and he’ll be nothing but an incidental character with a line or two — if he’s lucky.”

“Perhaps that’s what he wants. There isn’t enough room for all characters to be A-grade.”

“That’s what’s wrong with the system,” said Fnorp bitterly. “If incidental characters had more depth, the whole of fiction would be a lot richer — I want my students to enliven even the C-grade parts.”

I got the point. Even from my relative ignorance I could see the importance of fully rounded characters — trouble was, for budgetary reasons, the Council of Genres had pursued a policy of minimum characterization requirements for Generics for more than thirty years.

“They fear rebellion,” he said quietly. “The C of G want Generics to stay stupid; an unsophisticated population is a compliant one — but it’s at the cost of the BookWorld.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Well,” sighed Fnorp, finishing his coffee, “have a word with Randolph and see what you can do — try to find out why he is being so intransigent.”

I told him I would and saw him out the door.

I found Randolph asleep back in his own bed. He was clutching his pillow. Lola had gone out early to meet some friends. A photo of her was on the bedside table next to him and he snored quietly to himself. I crept back to the door and banged on it.

“Wshenifyduh,” said a sleepy voice.

“I need to run one of the engines,” I told him, “can you give me a hand?”

There was a thump as he fell out of bed. I smiled to myself and took my coffee up to the flight deck.

Mary had told me to run the number three engine periodically and left instructions on how to do so in the form of a checklist. I didn’t know how to fly but did know a thing or two about engines — and needed an excuse to talk to Randolph. I sat in the pilot’s seat and looked along the wing to the engine. The cowlings were off and the large radial was streaked with oil and grime. It never rained here, which was just as well, although things didn’t actually age either, so it didn’t matter if it did. I consulted the checklist in front of me. The engine would have to be turned by hand to begin with and I didn’t really fancy this, so got a slightly annoyed Randolph out on the wing.

“How many times?” he asked, turning the engine by way of a crank inserted through the cowling.

“Twice should do,” I called back, and ten minutes later he returned, hot and sweaty with the exertion.

“What do we do now?” he asked, suddenly a lot more interested. Starting big radial engines was quite a boy thing, after all.

“You read it out,” I said, handing him the checklist.

“ ‘Master fuel on, ignition switches off,’ ” he read.

“Done.”

“ ‘Prop controls fully up and throttle one inch open.’ ”

I wrestled with the appropriate levers from a small nest that sprouted from the center console.

“Done. I had Dr. Fnorp round this morning.”

“ ‘Gills set to open and mixture at idle cutoff.’ What did that old fart have to say for himself?”

I set the gills and pulled back the mixture lever. “He said he thought you could do a lot better than you had been. What’s next?”

“ ‘Switch on the fuel booster pump until the warning light goes out.’ ”

“Where do you think that is?”

We found the fuel controls in an awkward position above our heads and to the rear of the flight deck. Randolph switched on the booster pumps.

“I don’t want to be a featured character,” he said. “I’ll be quite happy working as a mature elder-male mentor figure or something; there is call for one in
Girls Make All the Moves
.”

“Isn’t that the novel Lola will be working in?”

“Is it?” he said, feigning ignorance badly. “I had no idea.”

“Okay,” I said as the fuel pressure warning light went out, “now what?”

“ ‘Set the selector switch to the required engine and operate the priming pump until the delivery pipes are full.’ ”

I pumped slowly, the faint smell of aviation spirit filling the air.

“What’s this love/hate thing between you and Lola?”

“Oh, that’s all well over,” he said dismissively. “She’s seeing some guy over at the Heroes Advanced Classes.”

I stopped pumping as the handle met with some resistance. “We have fuel pressure. What’s next?”

“ ‘Ignition and booster coil both on.’ ”

“Check.”

“ ‘Press starter and when engine is turning, operate the primer.’ Does that make sense?”

“Let’s see.”

I pressed the starter button and the prop slowly started to move. Randolph pumped the primer, and there was a cough as the engine fired; then another, this time accompanied by a large puff of black smoke from the exhaust. A few waders who were poking around in the shallows took flight as the engine appeared to die, then caught again and started to fire more regularly, the loud detonations transmitting through the airframe as a series of rumbles, growls and squeaks. I released the start button and Randolph stopped priming. The engine smoothed out, I switched to
Auto-Rich
and the oil pressure started to rise. I throttled back and smiled at Randolph, who grinned at me.

“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked him.

“No.”

He looked at me with his large eyes. When we had first met, he had been an empty husk, a blank face with no personality or features to call his own. Now he was a man of fifty but with the emotional insecurity of a fifteen-year-old.

“I can’t imagine life without her, Thursday!” he suddenly burst out. “I think about her every second of every minute of every day!”

“So tell her.”

“And make myself look an idiot? She’d tell everyone at Tabularasa’s — I’d be the laughingstock of them all!”

“Who cares? Dr. Fnorp tells me it’s affecting your work; do you want to end up as a walk-on part somewhere?”

“I really don’t care,” he said sadly. “Without Lola there
isn’t
much of a future.”

“There’ll be other Generics!”

“Not like her. Always laughing and joking. When she’s around, the sun shines and the birds sing.” He stopped and coughed, embarrassed at his admission. “You won’t tell anyone I said all that stuff, will you?”

He was smitten good and proper.

“Randolph,” I said slowly, “you have to tell her your feelings, even for your own sake. This will prey on your mind for years!”

“What if she laughs at me?”

“What if she doesn’t? There’s a good chance she actually quite likes you!”

Randolph’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll speak to her as soon as she gets back.”

“Good.” I looked at my watch. “I’ve got roll call in twenty minutes. Let the engine run for ten minutes and then shut her down. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Who are we waiting for?” asked the Bellman.

“Godot,” replied Benedict.

“Absent
again
. Anybody know where he is?”

There was a mass shaking of heads.

The Bellman made a note in his book, tingled his bell and cleared his throat.

“Jurisfiction session number 40320 is now in session,” he said in a voice tinged with emotion.

“Item one. Perkins and Snell. Fine operatives who made the ultimate sacrifice for duty. Their names will be carved into the Boojumorial to live forever as inspiration for those who come after us. I call now for two minutes silence. Perkins and Snell!”

“Perkins and Snell,” we all repeated, and stood in silent memory of those lost.

“Thank you,” said the Bellman after two minutes had ticked by. “Commander Bradshaw will be taking over the bestiary. Mathias’s mare has been contacted and asked me to say thank you to all those who sent tributes. The Perkins and Snell detective series will be taken over by B-2 clones from the tribute book, and I know you will join me in wishing them the very best on their new venture.”

He paused and took a deep breath.

“These losses are a great shock to us all, and the lessons to be learned must not be ignored. We can
never
be too careful. Okay, item two.

He turned over a page on his clipboard.

“Investigation of Perkins’s death. Commander Bradshaw, doesn’t this come under your remit?”

“Investigations are proceeding,” replied Bradshaw slowly. “There is no reason to suppose that their deaths were anything other than an accident.”

“So what stops you closing the case?”

“Because,” replied Bradshaw, trying to think up an excuse quickly, “because, um, we still want to speak to Vernham Deane.”

“Deane is somehow involved?” asked the Bellman.

“Yes — perhaps.”

“Interesting turn of events,” said the Bellman, “which brings us neatly on to item three. I’m sorry to announce that Vernham Deane has been placed on the PageRunner’s list.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. Classed as a PageRunner meant only one thing: illegal activities.

“We’ve known Vern since he was written, guys, and hard as it might be, we think he’s done something pretty bad. Tweed, haven’t you got something to say about this?”

Harris Tweed stood up and cleared his throat. “Vernham Deane is familiar to all of us. As the resident cad in
The Squire of High Potternews
, he was well-known for his cruelty towards the maidservant, who he ravages and then casts from the house. The maid returns ten chapters later, but three days ago — the morning following Perkins’s death, I might add — she didn’t.”

He placed a picture of an attractive dark-haired woman on the board.

“She’s a C-3 Generic by the name of Mimi. Twenty years old, identification code CDT/2511922.”

“What did Deane say about her disappearance?”

“That’s just it,” replied Tweed grimly, “he vanished at the same time.
The Squire of High Potternews
has been suspended pending further inquiries. It’s been removed to the Well and will stay there until Deane returns.
If
he returns.”

“Aren’t you leaping to conclusions just a little bit early?” asked Havisham, obviously concerned by the lack of objectivity in Tweed’s report. “Do we even have a motive?”

“We all liked Vern,” said Tweed, “me included. Despite being a villain in
Potternews
, he never gave us any cause for alarm. I was surprised by what I found, and you might be, too.”

He pulled a piece of paper from his top pocket and unfolded it.

“This is a copy of a refusal by the Council of Genres narrative realignment subcommittee to agree to Deane’s application for an Internal Plot Adjustment.”

He pinned it on the board next to the picture of the maidservant.

“In it he requests for the maidservant to die in childbirth, thus saving his character from the traumatic scene at the end of chapter twenty-eight when the maidservant turns up with the infant, now aged six, to his wedding to Ellen O’Shaugnessy, the wealthy mill owner’s daughter. With the maidservant out of the way he can marry O’Shaugnessy and not suffer the degrading slide into alcoholism and death that awaits him in chapter thirty-two. I’m sorry to say that he had motive, Miss Havisham. He also had the opportunity — and the Jurisfiction skills to cover his tracks.”

There was silence as everyone took in the awful possibility of a Jurisfiction agent gone bad. The only time it had happened before was when David Copperfield murdered Dora Spenlow so he could marry Agnes Wickfield.

“Did you search his book?” asked Falstaff.

“Yes. We subjected
The Squire of High Potternews
to a word-by-word search and we only found one person who was not meant to be there — a stowaway from Farquitt’s previous book,
Canon of Love
, hiding in a cupboard in Potternews Hall. She was evicted back to her book.”

“Have you tried the bookhounds?” inquired the Red Queen, running a cleaner through the barrel of her pistol. “Once they get onto a scent, there’s no stopping them.”

“We lost them at the fence-painting sequence in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
.”

“Tell them about the Perkins connection, Harris.”

“I think that
is
assumption, Bellman, if you please,” answered Tweed.

“Tell them,” repeated the Bellman, his shoulders sagging. “I think everyone needs to know the full facts if we are to hunt Deane down.”

“Very well.” Tweed upended a box and deposited a huge quantity of full stops, commas and semicolons onto the table.

“We found these hidden at the back of Deane’s locker. We had them analyzed and found traces of Guinness.”

“
Ulysses
!” gasped Benedict.

“So it would appear,” replied Tweed gravely. “Perkins mentioned something about a
surprising discovery
in a report filed the day before he died. We’re working on the theory that Deane was involved in stealing or handling stolen punctuation. Perkins finds out, so Deane releases the Minotaur and vyrus to cover his tracks. Flushed with success and knowing he will have to vanish, he kills the maidservant, something he has been wanting to do since first publication.”

“Isn’t Perkins my investigation?” asked Bradshaw.

“My apologies,” replied Tweed, “I will give you a full copy of my report.”

He stopped and sat down.

“I hate to say this,” began the Bellman sadly, “but it seems as though we have underestimated Deane. Until I am shown otherwise, I have no choice but to declare him a PageRunner. He is to be arrested on sight — and exercise extreme caution. If he has killed twice, he will not hesitate to kill again.”