Agatha & the Scarlet Scarab

by Karl Fish

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ the Professor exclaimed. ‘What on earth is that dreadful stink?’

  There was an ungodly smell that emanated from deep within his laboratory. It was a foul stench reminiscent of rotting meat. Whatever it was, both Erket and Malcolm held their hands over their faces trying not to gag. Occasionally, the Professor would squat and retrieve a half-intact exhibit, a presentation glass of moths or butterflies, the occasional rock of natural amber and it’s preserved fly inside. It was difficult in the darkness for him to orientate. The distraction of the smell did not help either. As complex an environment as this now was to the Professor, to his subjects, the darkness and decay were paradise.

  ‘It’s funny,’ he chortled. ‘While outside a human war of devastating impact continues to rage, in here, an epic battle of indigenous species would have fought and likely succumbed to foreign invaders.’

  Sabine Erket smirked and inquisitively cast her glance towards him. He couldn’t see the look upon her face but she wondered if he knew more than he was letting on.

  ‘Here we are,’ Malcolm said, stopping at a large piece of furniture. He ran his fingers across the top of the desk. The green velvet baize that had decorated the top, was torn and his once immaculate set of tools, magnifying glasses, and embalming flasks were now scattered and shattered around it. He reached inside his trouser pocket and pulled out a small set of keys. He then fumbled away at the drawers beneath until he found the lock. Presenting the key and turning clockwise he was able to open his drawers and sift through until he found what he was looking for.

  ‘Do you mind holding this for me, Ms Erket?’ he asked. The Professor handed her the chrome tubular torch, stood up and removed his white linen blazer. As he was doing so, he turned it inside out so his outstretched arms now held the blazer in front of him like a large white flag.

  ‘Shine the light directly at the blazer,’ he proffered to the now accommodating Ms Erket.

  As she turned the torch on and directed it, under his guidance, the devastation of the department became more apparent as the light-filled beam caught the desolated remains of the world-renowned facility. Sabine focused the torch on the white blazer but after a minute of pure silence, she grew impatient.

  ‘What are we doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Shush!’ the Professor curtly replied.

  After another minute or so, a slight droning noise could be heard. Not as loud or as terrifying as a Thunder Machine but definitely something circling in the air. She could sense excitement from ‘Meticulous’ Meredith Malcolm. First, there was a single drone-like noise and the gentle sound of tapping against objects as if a wasp trapped within a shop window that infinitely exhausted itself was trying to exit through the glass. First, there was one, then maybe two, but before long a small army of drones hovered overhead until the first of many tiny thumps hit the blazer. Ms Erket looked on as insect upon insect began to land on the Professor and his perfect linen suit.

  ‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ he giggled. ‘I expected the moths first, but just look, look at the beetles and look there, upon my moustache,’ he concluded with a cross-eyed glance.

  Sabine looked to see a large green insect with an inverted triangular head, sitting upright on the end of his moustache preening its spindly arms.

  ‘A female praying mantis!’ he exclaimed. ‘They are known to devour their mates you know, post-coitus.’ The Professor chuckled.

  ‘Fascinating,’ Sabine sarcastically responded.

  Juggling the torch, she took another cigarette from her scorpion-embellished case, inhaled deeply, approached the Professor, and purposely blew the smoke towards his nose.

  ‘So, Professor you are going to help me – YES!’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied and lowered the blazer while squinting directly towards the beam.

  Sabine Erket then switched off the torch. As the darkness descended once again, the wing cases opened and with a swift flap and flutter, the bugs disappeared once more into the pitch black.

  A moment of silence fell. Then, taking the Professor by surprise, Sabine Erket produced another torch from within one of her deep coat pockets. On illumination, this was not the white light they had just used. It was a violet colour. Its beam did not attract the common insects towards them. Instead, it caught the ethereal movement of her cigarette smoke as it danced and tumbled as soft as a cloud on the slightest of breezes. As she scoured the room, the Professor suddenly shouted out.

  ‘There!’ He pointed. ‘Over there!’ His index finger directed the path to follow. A throb of glowing green, luminously exposing their owner against the dark camouflage, lit up just several yards away.

  ‘If I’m not mistaken, that’s bio-luminescence?’ the Professor announced with authority.

  ‘Part of the Wolf Pack!’ Sabine Erket laughed.

  Moving discreetly towards the illuminating little monsters, several minutes later, several more venomous arachnids shone through the darkness. The closer they moved towards them, the wretched stench of rotting meat grew ever stronger. The Death-stalkers were not the only creatures to light their own way. An occasional metallic beetle with blue-hued antennae would pass, or even the showcasing of yellow leg joints from an Orb spider, which adorned the arachnid-like exotic nylons, would make themselves visible via the torchlight.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ the Professor asked.

  ‘Scarabidae,’ Erket responded.

  ‘I wasn’t aware the humble dung beetle offered up any luminosity?’ the Professor questioned.

  ‘There are over 30,000 scarab species, Professor. Did you know that? I’m sure you did,’ Sabine Erket advised him.

  For once, ‘Meticulous’ Meredith Malcolm was impressed with someone else’s knowledge.

  ‘The Hercules Beetle, The Goliath Beetle, The Rhinoceros beetle…’ she reeled off. ‘Of course, they’re the supreme specimens; the gladiators of their world. I don’t know all 30,000 by name. Most of them we classify as dung beetles; those that feed on carrion and waste,’ she continued. ‘But there is one special lady I do know of and, unlike yourself, sir, I know she offers up a polarising display of colour!’

  The professor racked his brain. Had he ever heard of such a creature? To the best of his formidable knowledge, he had not heard of scarab beetles beyond that of nature’s rubbish collectors and processors of waste. So why now would this strange lady be searching for one?

  Sabine Erket paused for a while as a broad smile came across her face. She crouched down and directed the light towards the concentration of the scorpions that had gathered to feast. The reek of rotting flesh had now reached its pinnacle. Professor Malcolm was half-excited and half-trying not to wretch at the deathly stench engulfing them. Sabine momentarily turned the torch off.

  ‘Listen, Professor,’ she urged him.

  From below them came the tiniest macerating sounds of hundreds of tiny insects gorging themselves on the rotting carcass that had been presented to them just two weeks previously. It would not be long until they stripped the flesh and muscle down to bone. Switching the light on again, illuminating the scorpions and their fellow luminous counterparts, many more undetected insects scurried and scrambled to dine at the top table. Sabine scanned her torch up and down. What had been unclear to the Professor minutes before was now a ghastly reality. The feasted upon-carcass was that of a human torso. No one would have been in his laboratory the night the bombing raid came and Collingdale’s security would have never allowed anyone to enter without express orders from Meticulous himself. So, who was this poor soul?

  As Ms Erket ran the torch across the cadaver’s chest, the emaciated face bore luminous blue symbols where flesh was still intact. The rest of it was a collection of roaches and scarabs devouring what remained. As she followed the top of the shoulders, with the torch, the victim’s outstretched arm led to a skeletal hand that grasped a spherical object. Ms Erket peeled the fingers back one by one. One cracked and broke off as she did so, sending shivers down the Pro
fessor’s spine. Once she had retrieved the object, she then firmly fixed the torch beam into its centre.

  There, from within the frosted tomb of the stone, where it had been embedded for several millennia, was a fossilised beetle. A large Scarabidae. It was much larger than any other beetle specimen of that genus. Entombed for centuries it may have been, but as the torch’s emissions were absorbed through the crystal surroundings, a small red ember emitted itself from its thorax.

  ‘That’s a fossil that’s as dead as the ancient civilisation itself. How is that possible?’ the Professor remarked.

  ‘Ha! Call yourself a professor?’ Ms Erket let out a loud laugh.

  As the light beam focused on the Scarab, the red embers began to throb and grow, as if a filament was suddenly receiving a huge surge of energy. Sabine Erket switched the power off of the torch. In the darkness, there was no visible sign of the beetle or the radiant glow. When the torch was again switched on, the Scarab again began to emit its vivid red glow.

  ‘May I introduce you to our most distinguished guest, Professor?’

  Meredith gazed on in awe, confused between the light sources and what he had just witnessed.

  ‘Professor Malcolm, this is the beetle Queen. Her Royal Highness, The Scarlet Scarab!’

  Meticulous Meredith Malcolm was rarely impressed with a fellow human being but on this occasion, he succumbed to Sabine Erket’s superior wisdom on this very specific matter. How was it possible that a beetle, fossilised for millennia, could emit such a splendorous display of colour and then only when exposed to very specific light conditions? How on earth had Ms Erket come to have known about this, and how on earth was she aware that he had such a prized exhibit? Until only moments ago, it had been a complete mystery to himself and, as far as he was aware, any prior or current contemporary of entomology had been oblivious to the beetle’s hidden ability.

  Sabine Erket placed the ball-size fossil into her pocket and then fumbled softly for her cigarette case as she held her violet torch and cigarette holder in the other hand. Meanwhile, Meticulous retraced his footwork and opened his desk drawer.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked bluntly as the darkness obscured her view.

  ‘Re-homing my torch,’ he responded quickly. ‘I prefer your torch, and I prefer my belongings just so, as I believe you already know.’

  Sabine Erket raised her eyebrows and pointed the ultraviolet beam towards the fastidious man. His moustache was twitching as he squinted into the desk drawer.

  ‘Oh dear, where on earth are my spectacles?’ he fussed. ‘I’m quite blind without them.’

  Ms Erket allowed him a few moments as she spiralled the torch beam across the room scanning for clues to their exit. It hit the occasional luminous emission from an unsuspecting bug or two, which ignited them like minor diodes across the laboratory. The Entomology department had been badly bombed, and within the darkness the fallen exhibit cases, books and rubble made for an awkward environment, but after several spins of her torch, she spotted what she was looking for. There, sketched roughly on the wall was a blue eye, unnoticeable until the beam struck it and lit it up. Its shape and the positioning of the pupil were an obvious sign to the mysterious blonde woman.

  ‘This way!’ she exclaimed.

  The Professor was still hurriedly scrabbling around in his top drawer. She spun the beam towards him and in a direct and uncompromising tone shouted at the poor Professor.

  ‘On the desk! Your spectacles are there, on the desk.’

  ‘So they are.’ He squinted, picked them up, and curled them behind his ears.

  As Ms Erket led them through the department, following a steady flow of the eyes daubed on the walls. She failed to spot Meticulous Meredith Malcolm drop a single white envelope onto the desktop. The envelope sat there, in the dark, but would soon be sitting atop his dirty desk in plain sight. At least that was if anyone came to his rescue. Major Boyd Collingdale was certainly no guarantee. For now, the Professor was at the mercy of the mysterious Ms Erket.

  Chapter 8

  The Department

  The rain had not been kind to the city that evening and lashed down mini torrents that washed water against the kerbs, scooping up the remaining autumn leaves until they found a suitable drain to block. An air-raid, hours earlier, had seen the streets evacuated and now the majority of the city huddled within frozen underground stations, and waited nervously for the signs that the bombs were no longer coming. The night was edging towards dawn. If you listened carefully choruses of birds began their cross-city correspondence.

  Where Piccadilly and Leicester Square meet, Eros looks south towards Shaftesbury and that is where the Royal houses’ preferred purveyors of tea and fine foods go about their business. Fortnum’s, as it is known in such parts, has been supplying high-end produce and exotic blends of leaf to the well-heeled and aristocracy for generations. During wartime, you could still obtain such grand pleasures if you knew who and where to ask. ‘Num’s the word’ as they would say in these parts, with a wink.

  The exterior of the building maintained its pomp even if inside and behind the secretive passageways, the supplies of ever-decreasing rations resembled Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard rather than such a renowned name of retailing. There was still a buzz and lots of comings and goings in the huge department store. Front of house was always spic and span, demonstrating its impeccable turquoise and gold livery, while behind the staff doors existed a labyrinth; corridors of concrete block, electrical wiring, and copper pipework. For all intents and purposes, this was the hidden world of the worker. Who would notice if additional pipework, soundproofing, or more than enough electrical cables were harboured here? No one would know. So, while on the surface this immaculate building maintained its appearance, behind closed doors it was a very different story.

  To the rear of the building, where several tired signs pointed delivery drivers to the unloading bay, the alleyways were dingy, rat-infested, and smelt like a public convenience. That evening, the alleyways behind Fortnum and Mason lay dormant, albeit for a lone shadow, that made its way cautiously towards the goods entrance. Occasionally, the screech of a tomcat or the shattering of a misplaced bottle would break the monotonous deluge as the creatures of the night went about their business. This particular creature was being overly cautious indeed. The rain helped, drowning out any echo of his soft steps, as he limped several repetitive looping routes until finally arriving under one of the worn-out delivery signs. He stood subtly cloaked within a disused doorway and waited. Ten minutes passed without so much of a gust of wind for company as the rains petered out. He listened carefully, ensuring he had not been followed. He headed towards the clandestine entrance, passing several large steel refuse bins. A fleeting glimpse of a rat shot across his pathway. As he moved towards the final bin, an inebriated tramp lay against it, empty booze-bottle barely in hand.

  ‘Oo ah you?’ the vagrant asked as he staggered to his feet and began to square up to the cautious man.

  ‘The Milkman,’ he wheezed in response.

  ‘Haa, ha, ha!’ spluttered the tramp, laughing. ‘In that case, a pint of your finest mother’s ruin, sir!’ simultaneously coughing and laughing at the second phrase.

  For a brief moment the two men just stared at each other before the tramp stopped swaying, dusted himself down a little and stood to subtle attention with a smirk across his face.

  ‘Good evening, sir,’ the vagrant now replied, in a cut-glass accent.

  The cautious man did not engage in an extended conversation, as often he did not, he just nodded. The young man with the now-impeccable accent let his shoulders relax and pulled the final bin so it swivelled forty-five degrees outwards. Beneath it sat two large oak doors, with impressive iron hinges cast into the ground. A previous cellar to an old alehouse, long forgotten. Initiating a singular large thump on the doors followed by two lighter knocks, signalling the Morse code for D, the men waited until a large wheel turned, unhinging the lock from below. T
he doors then opened slowly and a dimly lit subterranean walkway was revealed. The vagrant nodded to the cautious man as he then descended inside. Within moments, the doors were locked again and the bin wheeled on top as the vagrant took his position once more, into the sodden autumn’s night, his booze-bottle cover just about in hand.

  Only the faintest flicker from the candlewick offered light in the cellar passageway as the cautious man was guided through. They reached a studded steel doorway and after the same long thump, followed by two muted knocks, a viewing window slid open. The weasel face of a bespectacled man in half-moon bifocals stared outwards and then the window slid shut. Momentarily the limping man waited to be let in and then the hulking reinforced door swayed open.

  The brightness inside blinded him. He held up his left arm shielding his scarred side from the fluorescent tubing that dominated the ceiling above them. Whereas the rest of the city was plunged into darkness, this place was lit up like Piccadilly Circus, before the war. The long corridors were partitioned with wood panelling and glass down each side, then sub-divided into smaller rooms that were all buzzing with activity.

  The first looked more like a typing pool. Each person at a single desk, audio-set upon their heads. The clacking of typewriters was furious as bells rang here and there to advise a new line of cypher was required. As the typists deciphered and articulated their transcripts, the blinds were drawn shut as the cautious man was ushered along behind the man in the half-moons.

  The next room was another telephony exchange; again, it was a hive of activity and again, the blinds were drawn as he walked past. As they continued so the same pattern continued, a brief glimpse of activity in the rooms and then shut out as to not discover too much. A map room, with replica battleships being manoeuvred with a large croupier’s rake. As they approached the end of the long corridor a large oak door with a frosted window dominated by a large gold embossed letter D greeted them. The man in the half-moons turned the brass handle and marched straight in.