by Alan Beechey
“Your Uncle Tim’s Bottom?” Geoffrey butted in, grinning. “I never get tired of that one.”
“To see Effie,” Oliver stated emphatically. “So I sincerely doubt I’m going to thank you for anything right now, unless you spontaneously combust. Now, I’m going to get cleaned up as quickly as possible. And if I find that you’ve cut the buttons off all my shirts and put that kind of soap in the bathroom that blackens your face, you are a deader man than you are already.”
“Just listen to my idea,” Geoffrey pleaded, trotting after Oliver. “We need to find spin-off ideas for Finsbury the Ferret, right? Hence my concept: Finsbury the Ferret’s Guide to Being Absolutely Beastly. One hundred and one original and innovative ways to annoy your friends. I’ve just given you one, and I have lots of other suggestions.”
Oliver, who also had lots of suggestions at that moment, paused on the stairs up to the bathroom he shared with Geoffrey and Susie.
“Just a minute,” he said, turning angrily on his friend. “Now I see it all. It was you who turned off my computer screen yesterday. And you were the one who smeared shoe polish on the hallway telephone.”
Geoffrey smirked. “Good one, huh?”
“Good one?” Oliver exploded. “I’ve a good mind to—” He checked his watch and himself. “Geoffrey,” he continued firmly, “forget it. The answer is no. No, no, no! I’m sick of that bloody ferret. I only write the Railway Mice books because I’m contractually obligated. And I’m certainly not interested in thinking of ways to be absolutely beastly. Although if I were, trust me, you’d be the first to know about it.”
He disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door in Geoffrey’s face.
“I’ll take that as a ‘maybe,’ then,” said Geoffrey, as he slunk down the stairs again to short-sheet Oliver’s bed.
***
One of the advantages of having Effie Strongitharm as his girlfriend, Oliver reflected, is that she is instantly recognizable, even from the back and in a dim light. He had finally reached the Theydon Bois Underground station just one minute before curtain time for the opening night of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but finding no minicabs in the station car park, he had to make a five-minute sprint across the frosty Green to the Theydon Bois Thespians’ theater. The theater was one-quarter full for the opening night, which was a groundbreaking turn-out by the company’s standards, but Oliver’s Aunt Phoebe had elected to go to a later performance—assuming there would be one—since her aikido class was on Friday evening. This meant Effie would be sitting alone, and Oliver had no trouble making out her distinctive, bushy mass of curly hair, silhouetted against the stage lights in the front row. He had always been an enthusiastic ten minutes early for every meeting so far, and so he didn’t know how she responded to being kept waiting. Knowing her reputation for imperiousness among her colleagues at Scotland Yard, he feared the worst. Perhaps, since the play had already started, she would have to hold her tongue until the interval. If he was unlucky, she’d hold his.
He waited until the stage cleared of goose-stepping fairies in storm-trooper uniforms, performing an unscripted entr’acte to a recording of Wagner, before he scurried down the aisle.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, sliding into the seat beside Effie.
“Are you all right?” she replied, her blue eyes showing concern. “I was just starting to get anxious.”
“Not cross?”
“Of course not.” She leaned over and kissed him beneath his ear. “Ollie, I know you wouldn’t be late if you could help it. I was worried that something might have happened to you.”
Oliver sighed with relief. “That’s what I love about you, Effie. You don’t see this relationship as an opportunity to score points.”
“That’s what you love about me?”
“Well, there’s the hair, too.”
“I should think so.”
She patted down the springy coils while Oliver started to explain why he had been held up, but he broke off when the stage lights came up again and the Athenian mechanicals made their way onto the stage. They were all dressed in contemporary clothes, including Mallard as Bottom in a corduroy jacket with patched elbows, jeans, Reeboks, and, incongruously, a paisley ascot tucked into a gray silk shirt. He had removed his glasses, and makeup made him look younger. The actors pulled chairs into a semicircle at the front of the stage.
“Is all our company here?” began the actor playing Peter Quince. Mallard/Bottom lay back casually in his chair and flicked a disdainful finger at Quince.
“You were best to call them generally, man by man,” he said languidly, stifling a yawn, “according to the scrip.” Then he began to examine his fingernails.
Oliver was puzzled, and his puzzlement grew as the scene progressed. He was all prepared for a traditional bombastic Bottom, the coarse amateur actor who tried to grab every role for himself with little subtlety, pompously overacting his heart out. But Mallard was avoiding the humor, treating the lines as if they were perfectly serious, in contrast to the other performers, whose antics seemed merely to exasperate him. Bottom did not interrupt Quince because he wanted to play every part in “Pyramus and Thisbe.” His comments were the machinations of a world-weary, somewhat pretentious actor who really wanted to direct.
And yet, it was funny. At first the audience seemed as baffled as Oliver. But gradually they accepted the interpretation, starting with Bottom’s demonstration of tyrannical acting, which was not emoted with the full force of Mallard’s lungs but mumbled like a latter-day Marlon Brando. Titters were heard, followed by more sustained laughter. At the end of the scene, with Bottom’s exhortation to “hold, or cut bowstrings,” followed by hugs all around, the audience was roaring. They clapped loudly as the scene ended, and by the interval, they were applauding Mallard’s every entrance.
“So how’s the Plumley Plod Squad?” Oliver asked Effie, while they drank stale, overpriced coffee from an urn at the back of the theater. “Did they welcome you with open arms and an honor guard of raised truncheons?”
Effie sniggered. “Something like that,” she said. “Detective Inspector Welkin now reminds me of Ozzy Osbourne.”
“Talking of resemblances, don’t you think Uncle Tim’s Bottom seems vaguely familiar?”
“It’s a good job I know what you’re talking about,” she remarked wryly. “However, while we have a moment, I’d actually like to pick your brains on a case.”
Oliver glowed inwardly. Six months earlier, she would have been eaten with resentment if Mallard had approached him for help. It’s amazing how love can alter your perspective.
“Pick anything you like,” he caroled, instantly regretting the phrase. “What is it, a nice juicy murder?”
“No, it’s a missing persons case. A thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.”
“Not guilty.”
“Nobody’s guilty. Everything points to her being a runaway, not an abductee. But I think you may know her. When you were in Plumley last weekend, did you encounter a couple called the Quarterboys? They said they went to your friend’s church, so I put two and two together.”
“Sam and Joan. Yes, I met them. Why?”
“It’s their daughter, Christina, who’s done a bunk. Did you meet her, too?”
“Yes…look, are you sure Tina’s run away?”
“Well, her parents were convinced at first that she’d been kidnapped by Mormons, but it’s clear she went off of her own free will. A bag is missing, some of her clothes, some food items from the kitchen. And she left a note to her mother, saying not to worry, although Joan was positive that it was written at gunpoint. But why were you doubtful?”
Oliver brushed his hair out of his eyes and tried to revisit his time with the Quarterboys the previous Sunday.
“Sam and Joan seemed to be remarkably strict in controlling what Tina could and couldn’t do, Sam especially,” he told her. “
I think young Tina has been brought up to believe that her number-one priority in life is to please her parents, never mind what she wants for herself.”
“Sounds like the perfect recipe for creating a runaway daughter.”
“I agree, but I didn’t think Tina was quite mature enough for a teenage rebellion. Of course, all this is based on seeing her only for an hour or so. What have you been doing to find her?”
“I’ve been steeped in gore so long, thanks to Tim, that I’m a bit rusty on the standard procedure. Fortunately, my new partner, Tish Belfry, is fresh out of Police College and knows the drill. We’ve circulated the girl’s description around the manor, checked the hospitals and shelters and bus stations, that sort of thing. I spent the day at her school, talking to teachers and school friends. Just in time—they broke up today for the Christmas holiday. The evening shift’s taken over now, but I have to be back early tomorrow, so I’m afraid I’ll have to drop you off at your flat tonight and then go home to Richmond. I may need to work the whole weekend. Sorry.”
Oliver nodded glumly. At least the Christmas break was nearly here. He would have to go to his parents’ home in the country for the day itself, but surely he’d be able to snatch some time with Effie?
“Tell me a bit more about the church,” Effie said quickly.
Oliver briefed her on his two evenings with the Plumley Diaconalists, including the tension over Nigel Tapster’s arrival. “And tonight is their big night,” he concluded. “The church meeting. Will the Exorcist of Plumley get a seat on the diaconate?”
“Do you think Tina might have run away to join Tapster’s fledgling cult?”
“I doubt it. I recall her mother saying she’d been to a couple of the meetings, but Daddy Quarterboy put an end to those excursions when he heard about the weirder stuff. Tina seemed to have accepted her father’s authority.”
“What about your friend, the eligible Reverend Paul Piltdown? Could he be eloping with the Lolitas of the parish?”
“Hardly. Officially, he’s celibate, although it’s not a job requirement. Between you and me, he’s gay. He had to learn something at Cambridge. But I think Tina’s very fond of him. Perhaps he may have some insight into what she’s going through, if it’s not betraying the confidence of the confessional or whatever they have in the Diaconalist Church. But didn’t you meet him?”
“No. Why?”
Oliver scratched his head. “I’d have thought Sam and Joan would have called in spiritual reinforcements in this time of trial.”
“Once they accepted that Tina had run away, they were adamant that they wanted to keep it in the family. Sam insisted that we didn’t do a local house-to-house because of what the neighbors might think. I told them that once we started making our inquiries at Tina’s school, it wouldn’t be a secret much longer.” She shrugged. “So there’s nothing else I should know about the United Diaconalist Church? No human sacrifices or ritual cannibalism?”
Oliver smiled. “That might have made last Sunday evening a bit more interesting.”
“You’d probably find any church service dull.”
“Not at all,” he protested. “I used to love going to evensong in my parents’ village, all Stanford and stained glass. Especially on a snowy winter evening, with a brisk trot home through the moonlight afterwards, and the promise of mulled wine and warm flannel sheets. And I can vividly recall a summer evening on the promenade in Folkestone, listening to a Salvation Army brass band play ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ in the gathering twilight, with the waves breaking endlessly on the shore behind them. A magical moment.”
“Oh, Oliver,” Effie sighed, brushing his fringe aside with her fingertips, “you’re really quite spiritual. If you only worked out, you’d be perfect.”
He ignored the sly joke about his thin body, since he knew she equated muscularity with male narcissism. But religion had never come up before. It would be depressing, at this stage, to find out she was a Moonie. “So do I take it you’re not much of a believer yourself?” he asked her casually.
Effie frowned. “That’s rather a deep question for this stage of our relationship,” she answered coldly. “Are you already planning our children’s religious education?”
“Good heavens, no,” he stammered, aware that his face must be reddening. “Nothing could be further from my thoughts. Well, not further, just not yet. I mean it’s all too soon isn’t it? Or don’t you think it’s too soon? Not that there’s anything wrong in thinking about those things, and as far as that goes, I’d love to have your children, Effie. Sorry, I mean I’d love to get you pregnant. No I don’t. Well, I do, but not without your knowing. Of course, you’d know eventually, but I was hoping we could practice a few more times first.”
He broke off, convinced that he could say nothing further to extricate himself, and wilted under Effie’s icy stare. Suddenly, she let out in a peal of laughter.
“Oh, Ollie, you’re so easy sometimes,” she chuckled. “This is going to be fun.”
The lights in the hall flashed, and the playgoers started to wander back to their seats. There seemed to be more of them, as if word of Mallard’s popularity had spread around the village during the interval.
“There is one thing I’ve remembered,” Oliver whispered as the play began. “Tina’s a thin thing, but she was complaining about gaining weight and feeling nauseous.”
“So?”
“Well, I was wondering if she had the beginnings of some kind of adolescent eating disorder. Bulimia or anorexia nervosa. Maybe that’s how her frustrations with her parents are emerging?”
The reappearance of the actors ended the conversation. They settled back to watch the second half of the play.
Once again, Mallard’s performance was the triumph of the production. His Nick Bottom, portrayed as a pretentious director wannabe, more than compensated for the disturbing concept of the fairy world as a bunch of pre-war Nazi sympathizers and the antics of the cross-dressing Victorian male lovers. The problem with four naked middle-aged men leaping gracefully into an orchestra pit was that they had to clamber back onto the stage afterwards, which they accomplished with considerably less elegance. “I’ve just remembered, we have to buy some Christmas tree ornaments,” Effie murmured idly. Oliver preferred not to watch.
The audience brightened as the “Pyramus and Thisbe” play-within-a-play approached, and erupted into spontaneous applause when the Athenians strutted out for the dumb show, dressed in RSC hand-me-downs. They assumed Mallard’s discomfort in the skin-tight leather breeches was part of the act, and this comical counterpoint meant that his perfectly straight, almost moving delivery of Pyramus’ ludicrous lines, as well as his exasperated asides to the heckling noblemen, continued to evoke gales of laughter. Finally, the moment came for Mallard as Bottom as Pyramus to stab himself with his sword. The deed done, Mallard stood facing the audience and an expectant hush fell throughout the theater. He let the weapon slip noisily from his hand.
“Now am I dead,” he stated hoarsely. “Now am I fled. My soul is in the sky.”
He tried to lift a hand to gesture toward heaven, but the weight of encroaching death was too much, and his arm dropped abruptly. The playgoers watched, enthralled.
“Tongue, lose thy light. Moon take thy flight.”
This was the cue for the actor portraying Moonshine to reverse off the platform with a much-rehearsed silly walk, but nobody noticed. All eyes were on Mallard.
“Now die,” he whispered, his head drooping almost imperceptibly. “Die,” he breathed again. His knees began to buckle, and he let the momentum turn his body until he was facing upstage. He cried “die” twice more, once quizzically and then as if all the answers to the human condition had flooded into his wasting mind in the intervening microseconds. He collapsed onto his knees, still with his back to the audience, who by now were holding their breaths.
With a f
inal “die” that was no more than the last intake of air leaving a tortured body, Mallard fell forward onto his outstretched arms, about to subside into a lifeless heap.
And then, releasing a small puff of talcum powder, the seat of his trousers split open.
“Well, Ollie,” Effie shouted, barely audible over the cheers and rapturous ovation of a delighted audience, “now you really can say you’ve seen it.”
Chapter Four
With the Poor and Mean and Lowly
Saturday, December 20
Tish Belfry was already at her desk when Effie arrived at the Plumley OCU on Saturday morning.
“Did Tina turn up?” Effie asked immediately.
Tish shook her head. “I called in on the Quarterboys on the way here,” she reported glumly. “They haven’t heard a thing. I hate this part of the job. I only had to appear on the doorstop to create a disturbance. Mr. Q thought I had the girl in the car, so he was pissed off at me, Mrs. Q was convinced I was there to tell them she’d been fished out of the river, so she was relieved.”
“A fifty percent success rate, anyway,” said Effie, hanging up her heavy wool coat and ripping down the mistletoe that somebody had taped above the CID room’s coat-stand. “Do you really hate your job?”
Tish sighed. “No, I love police work. But it seems we women always get stuck with the soft stuff. Missing children, battered wives.”
“Those are pretty important cases.”
“Oh, I know, I know, Sarge. That’s the point. The men don’t think they’re important, which is why they fob them off on us. They only want to work on incidents that give them a chance to show how tough they are.”
“Call me Effie. Okay, let’s remind ourselves of what we know.”
Tish checked a page of notes, neatly written out in her small handwriting. “Tina went to school as usual on Thursday. She left at about four o’clock, but didn’t get home till nearly six. Her mother doesn’t know where she was during these two hours, but she wasn’t unduly worried because Tina takes part in after-school activities one or two nights a week, and Mrs. Q assumed this was one of those nights.”