The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise

by Julia Stuart

“Just a bit of old bandage,” he replied. “The mummy must have got out at an earlier stop.”

  After noting it down in the ledgers, Hebe Jones helped him carry it down the aisle to the Egyptology section, a troublesome journey due to their vastly differing heights.

  Back at her desk, she picked up the phone and called the Society of Woodworkers, having been assured by Thanos Grammatikos when he returned with the urn that morning that it was made from pomegranate wood. She spoke to the chairman, hoping he could put her in touch with someone who specialised in it. But he didn’t know of anyone, and promised to send her a list of members who took on commissions to help her in her search. After hanging up, she glanced at her colleague to make sure she wasn’t looking, and opened the gigolo’s diary.

  “The treachery of the Swedes,” Valerie Jennings suddenly announced.

  “Pardon?” asked Hebe Jones, who had been engrossed in an encounter with an ice cube.

  “The treachery of the Swedes,” her colleague repeated, closing the Latin dictionary she had borrowed from one of the bookshelves. “That’s what perfidia Suecorum means. It’s one of the few things I can make out on this manuscript. Terrible handwriting.”

  Hebe Jones stopped to peer at it over her colleague’s shoulder on her way to answer the Swiss cowbell. As she rounded the corner, she saw Tom Cotton in his blue uniform standing at the counter. She raised a hand to her mouth and asked: “You haven’t lost something else, have you?”

  “I was just wondering whether you fancied a coffee,” he said.

  WHILE TOM COTTON STOOD in the queue, Hebe Jones chose the same table at the back of the café where they had sat the previous time. As she waited she looked at him, trim in his uniform, talking to the girl behind the counter, and wondered why his wife had let him slip through her fingers. She lowered her eyes as he approached with a tray.

  “So,” he said, sitting down and putting a cup and plate in front of her. “Anything interesting been handed in recently?”

  Hebe Jones thought for a moment. “A tuba, which my colleague plays during moments of despair, and a sarcophagus,” she said.

  She took a bite of her flapjack. “Saved any lives recently?” she asked.

  “It’s the donors and doctors who save lives. I just fetch and carry,” he insisted, raising his cup to his lips.

  Hebe Jones looked at the table. “We didn’t donate any of Milo’s organs,” she said, eventually raising her eyes. “They took his heart to be examined by a specialist. It was weeks before we got it back. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being without it.”

  There was silence. Eventually Tom Cotton spoke: “You haven’t lost Milo completely, you know. I lost my sister when we were both very young. We always carry a part of those we loved tucked inside us.”

  After she had dried her cheeks on the soft, white handkerchief that was offered to her, she looked at him through a shimmering kaleidoscope of tears. “Thank you,” she whispered, placing her tiny hand on his.

  BALTHAZAR JONES HADN’T INTENDED to go out once he had finished work for the day. But the top floor of the Salt Tower no longer felt like the sanctuary it once was, and after sitting slumped on the sofa in the darkness for an hour, he left to walk the battlements. As he strode, his hands sheltering in his pockets from the cold, he found that his problems had followed him. He stopped for a moment and gazed at Tower Bridge, lit up like a fairground attraction in the darkness, but his troubles rose around him like a fog, and he was forced to move on. No matter how fast he walked, he was unable to shake them off.

  Eventually, he sought refuge in the Rack & Ruin. Pushing open the great oak door, he stood for a moment on the worn flagstones wondering whether he could bear the company of so many people. Spotting an empty table next to a cabinet of Beefeater souvenirs, he ordered a drink, hoping that no one would notice him. But as he waited to be served, one of the Beefeaters standing at the bar turned to him and said: “Sorry to hear about your wife.”

  He took his pint to the table, where he sat, head slumped in his hand, drawing lines in the condensation on his glass. The sound of the chair opposite him scraping against the flagstones suddenly interrupted his rumination. He looked up to see Rev. Septimus Drew sitting down, and placing his glass of red wine on the table. With the wild enthusiasm of a man who had just unearthed the Holy Grail, the clergyman started telling him about his amazing discovery. It had taken him many months of endeavour, he explained, but finally he had managed to prise the archives from the covetous fingers of the Keeper of Tower History. He had spent night after night bent over the age-stained pages looking for a hint of an explanation, and had been about to give up, when suddenly he found what he was looking for: the scandalous story behind the bullet hole in the bar.

  Balthazar Jones’s eyes dropped to the table in disinterest, but the clergyman continued. One night in 1869, two Beefeaters got so drunk in the Rack & Ruin that the landlord was unable to rouse them after calling time. Leaving them to sleep with their heads collapsed on the tables, he retired upstairs. During the night, one shook the other awake, convinced that he had seen the ghost of a Jesuit priest. The Beefeater told his terrified colleague that he must have been dreaming, returned his head to the table, and went back to sleep. But the man went to the bar to retrieve the landlord’s pistol and sat with his back against the wall, waiting for the apparition to return. The Tower chaplain, who was always armed at night in case one of the Beefeaters attempted to steal his bells, crept into the tavern to help himself to the gin. At the same time, the landlord appeared on the bottom step brandishing his wife’s pistol, roused by the noise downstairs.

  “Suddenly a shot was fired!” Rev. Septimus Drew cried, gripping the Beefeater’s arm as he worked himself up to his explosive denouement. But before the clergyman could reveal who shot whom, the door to the Rack & Ruin burst open, and the Yeoman Gaoler stormed in.

  “Where’s Yeoman Warder Jones?” he demanded.

  The Beefeater stood up.

  “I’ve just seen the Komodo dragon running past the White Tower!” the Yeoman Gaoler shouted.

  The Keeper of the Royal Menagerie was followed out of the door by the rest of the drinkers, who immediately abandoned their pints in order to see the spectacle. As soon as they reached the White Tower, they discovered that the giant lizard wasn’t the only creature to have escaped. Two howler monkeys were running across Tower Green, and judging by the stench that flooded the air, the zorilla was also on the loose. As he started after the monkeys, Balthazar Jones noticed that the door to the Brick Tower was wide open. Charging up the spiral steps, he reached the aviary and found that it was also open. All the birds had vanished, apart from the wide-eyed albatross sitting alone in the middle of the enclosure, its white head sunk into its body. The Beefeater ran down the stairs and searched the night sky. But all he saw was the sugar glider’s pale stomach as it sailed over his head like a tiny furry kite. Spotting the Duchess of York in the distance, he immediately headed after her. But sprinting towards him on their hind legs as he turned into Water Lane were the Jesus Christ lizards. He stopped for a moment, resting his hands on his knees as he caught his breath, watching the golden snub-nosed monkey turn into Mint Lane. As he shot clouds of panic-fumed breath into the night, the Komodo dragon lumbered past him, flicking its forked tongue. Turning to see where it had come from, he spotted the reclusive ringtail possums lying motionless on the cobbles. He ran over and knelt down beside them, taking each one in his arms. But no matter how often he ran a trembling hand across their silken heads, not one of them could be roused.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT WASN’T UNTIL THE WATERY GLOW of a new morning appeared that Balthazar Jones finally scuffed his way up the Salt Tower’s spiral steps. Despite not having eaten since the previous lunchtime, he fetched just a glass of water from the kitchen before making his way upstairs. Too defeated for a bath, he lay on his side of the bed still in his uniform and closed his eyes. But he was kept from his dreams by images of the last
frightful few hours he had spent trying to get the animals safely back into their enclosures.

  He had gone after the howler monkeys first, unable to stand their demonic shrieks that pinned the Beefeaters’ wives to their beds in terror. He cornered the first one with the help of a sentry, whom the beast was attempting to scale, lured by his bearskin hat. The other three ran to Rev. Septimus Drew’s house, which he had forgotten to lock when he rushed back to fetch a torch. The Beefeater was relieved that the chaplain hadn’t been there to witness the destruction. The teapot for one was smashed, four dining-room chairs upended, and neat piles of documents in his study took to the air in a paper blizzard that momentarily suspended pursuit until vision was finally restored. After a diversion involving a freshly laundered cassock, the monkeys finally sprinted out of the front door, only to be corralled outside the Rack & Ruin by a number of Beefeaters who had joined the chase. The creatures were eventually coaxed back to the Devereux Tower with the help of cheese-and-pickle rolls scavenged from the pub.

  Balthazar Jones then went to the aid of one of his colleagues who was in a standoff with the Jesus Christ lizards on Tower Green. Sensing a crisis as he approached, the creatures suddenly stood up on their hind legs and ran past the two men, their hands stretched out either side of them as they sought to maintain their balance during their ungainly green sprint. The pair chased them past Waterloo Barracks. They were eventually caught by two Beefeaters coming in the opposite direction in pursuit of the female lovebird, which had just hunted down its mate and savaged it, sending clouds of peach and green feathers drifting into the night. As ladders were erected to bring the sugar glider down from one of the White Tower’s window ledges, Balthazar Jones went in search of the zorilla, which, judging from the smell, was somewhere nearby. He found it asleep outside the Tower Café, its rank odour mingling with the stench of the discarded food in the bin outside. He then watched the Geoffroy’s marmosets, which had gathered on top of a cannon, declare a state of emergency as a group of Beefeaters smelling fiercely of beer slowly approached them with outstretched arms. The monkeys continued exposing themselves long after the men had fled, crimson beneath their beards.

  As far as the birds had been concerned, it was a game of patience. After considerable effort, Balthazar Jones persuaded the Yeoman Gaoler to surrender his drippings. The man returned from his house with pieces of bread covered with mean scrapings, which Balthazar Jones scattered on the ground underneath the trees. The first to give in was one of the toucans, which he swiftly captured with a fishing net. And after one final lap of victory around the White Tower, even the female lovebird succumbed to the fatty temptation.

  But the hanging parrot, lit up by the moon, refused to abandon its position on one of the plane trees, where it swung upside down with the nonchalance of a trapeze artist. As the rest of the Tower residents headed to their beds in defeat, Balthazar Jones tried a succession of succulent titbits in an attempt to coax it to the ground. When they failed to work, he finally reached into his pocket and sacrificed the Fig Roll he had taken from a packet in the Yeoman Gaoler’s kitchen when visiting the Etruscan shrew. But not even a biscuit made from sun-ripened Turkish figs could make the tiny bird surrender its illicit perch.

  Eventually, he gave up on gastronomic entrapment and rested a ladder against the trunk of the tree. The bird watched him with one eye as he made his way up the rungs with the surefootedness of a rum-soaked sailor climbing a mast. Just as he came within arm’s reach of the bird, the creature performed a spectacular double somersault and dropped to the branch below. The Beefeater descended several rungs and stretched out his slender fingers. But the bird shut both eyes and plunged to the floor with the weight of a corpse. Just before hitting the ground, it snatched the Fig Roll and flew up to the White Tower roof, where it sat on a gold weathervane, swinging in the breeze as it showered Balthazar Jones with crumbs.

  THE BEEFEATER DIDN’T REMEMBER turning off the alarm clock when it rang several hours after he finally got to bed. The first thing he was aware of was the phone ringing on the bedside table next to him. He ignored it at first, pulling the covers over his head. Eventually it stopped, but started up again seconds later. He stuck out a hand from underneath the shabby blanket and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?” he croaked.

  “Good morning, it’s Oswin Fielding. I’m at the Rack & Ruin. It’s already twenty past. You were meant to be here at nine.”

  Assuring the equerry he was on his way, the Beefeater flung back the bedclothes and found his way to the bathroom. As he battled against the might of constipation, he remembered the forlorn bodies of the reclusive ringtail possums, and he wondered how he was going to explain their deaths to the equerry.

  He had no doubt who was responsible for letting the animals loose: the same person whose white vest was hanging in his airing cupboard. His anger rose as he remembered the Ravenmaster pinning him up against the White Tower. He hadn’t trusted the man since their confrontation over the loss of Mrs. Cook’s tail when the family first arrived at the Tower eight years ago. Neither did he like the way the man treated his wife, a woman as thin as parchment who was so rarely seen in the Rack & Ruin that Hebe Jones once declared: “He shuts her up in a walnut.”

  On his way out, Balthazar Jones looked at his creased uniform in the bedroom mirror, and regretted not having taken it off before going to sleep. He pulled on his hat over his tumultuous hair and headed down the stairs, apprehension turning his empty insides.

  Shielding his eyes from the glare of the alabaster clouds on his way to the Rack & Ruin, he opened the tavern door and found relief in the beer-scented gloom. He ordered a cup of tea from the landlady, who refused to serve alcohol before ten o’clock, a custom started by one of her ancestors to ensure that all Tower residents were in charge of their faculties when emptying their piss-pots. Muttering his thanks to her for rounding up the fancy rats, he carried his tea past the empty tables to Oswin Fielding, who was peering at a file.

  “There you are,” said the equerry, looking up. “I hear there was an incident last night.”

  The Beefeater sat down opposite him in silence.

  “When I came in this morning I spotted the possums sitting in one of the trees. The Chief Yeoman Warder told me all about last night’s mayhem. The only saving grace seems to be that none of the animals in the moat escaped, so the public should be none the wiser.”

  Balthazar Jones thought of the pile of bodies on the cobbles of Water Lane. “I thought the Komodo dragon had killed the possums,” he found himself saying.

  “They must have been playing dead. They’re fit as a fiddle now,” Oswin Fielding replied. He took off his spectacles and started cleaning them on a blue handkerchief.

  “The Chief Yeoman Warder wondered whether you’d forgotten to lock the enclosures, but I told him that a man who hadn’t lost his tortoise in all these years wouldn’t be that careless.”

  Balthazar Jones looked at the table.

  “Any idea who let the animals loose?” the equerry continued, returning his glasses to his nose. “I don’t for a minute think that they managed to escape by themselves.”

  The Beefeater sat back. “I’ve got my suspicions,” he said.

  “Care to tell me who?” he asked.

  “I haven’t got any proof.”

  “Well, we’ll conduct a thorough enquiry to flush out the culprit,” said the equerry, turning a page in his file. “At least all the animals have been recaptured.”

  The Beefeater’s thoughts immediately turned to the occupant of the White Tower weathervane, and he raised his cup to his lips.

  “Now,” continued Oswin Fielding. “The reason why I called this meeting is to let you know that the Prime Minister of Guyana has just dispatched some giant otters to the Queen, which is rather annoying, I must say.”

  Balthazar Jones stared at the courtier. “But we haven’t got any room for giant otters,” he protested.

  “No one is happy about it, I
can tell you. We’ll just have to put them in the penguin enclosure for the time being. Make sure you look after them. They’re an endangered species, like that Komodo dragon. How is it, by the way?”

  “It’s fine. Just a little plump, that’s all.”

  The equerry looked down at his file. “As long as it hasn’t eaten a small child, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  The Beefeater gazed out of the window wondering when he had last seen the Chief Yeoman Warder’s dog.

  “Now, there’s one other thing I wanted to mention,” Oswin Fielding said.

  Balthazar Jones started fiddling with a beer mat.

  “There’s a story in the Swedish papers this morning about the giraffes being a gift from the King of Sweden,” the equerry continued. “What I can’t understand is that the Press Office said they got that information from you.”

  The Beefeater looked away. “I happened to be carrying a swede at the time,” the Beefeater muttered.

  “A Swede? Anyone in particular?” asked the equerry.

  “The vegetable, not a Scandinavian.”

  The man from the Palace squinted at Balthazar Jones. “Couldn’t you have just picked a country in Africa?” he asked. “We’ve already had a call from the King of Sweden’s office. I told them that the Press Office had got their wires crossed, so I’d avoid those ladies for a while if I were you. They’re not very happy.”

  The courtier closed his file and sat back with a sigh. “How’s Mrs. Jones?” he asked.

  There was no reply.

  “Still hasn’t come back?”

  Balthazar Jones looked out of the window. “No,” he replied eventually.

  “Shame. My wife never did either.”

  ONCE THE TWO MEN HAD LEFT, Ruby Dore cleared the table of their empty cups and gathered up the pieces of shredded beer mat. She vowed to go to bed early that night, having been up long past midnight finding the last of the fancy rats. She had almost given up hope when Rev. Septimus Drew ran up to her as she was looking in the bin outside the Tower Café, saying he had just seen two running past the Fusiliers’ Museum. More than an hour later, they had chased them through the doors of the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula, left open by one of the Beefeaters during the mayhem. The rodents immediately darted underneath the organ, and the pair sat down on the front row of seats in despair. When the vermin reappeared in front of them and proceeded to shamelessly sink their teeth into the white linen altar cloth, the chaplain went to fetch that most unholy of lures: peanut butter.