by Simon Brett
She waited. Blotto looked puzzled. Then, slowly a wide beam irradiated his impossibly handsome face. ‘The Plague of Flies!’ he announced triumphantly.
‘Splendissimo! You’re bong on the nose there, Blotto me old grandfather clock! Corky Froggett is being visited by the Plagues of Egypt!’
‘Poor old thimble,’ said Blotto. ‘What a murdy thing for him to have to go through.’
‘He hasn’t said anything about there being a sequence, has he?’
‘Sorry, not on the same page?’
‘Does Corky realise that he’s being visited by the Plagues of Egypt?’
‘No, I’m sure he doesn’t. I can’t imagine that he’s ever read the Bible. Do you think we should tell him?’
‘Not yet.’
‘But I’d have thought the poor old pineapple would be relieved to hear that it’s all over.’
‘It’s not all over!’ Twinks announced dramatically.
‘Sorry? What do you mean? Have I got the wrong end of the sink plunger?’
‘You certainly have, Blotters. There were more Plagues of Egypt.’
‘How many more?’
‘Ten in all. Corky isn’t even halfway through.’
‘Poor old thimble. What else is on the bill of fare for him?’
‘After the Plague of Flies comes the Plague of Murrain . . .’
‘And what’s a Murrain when it’s got its jim-jams on?’
‘It’s a pestilence.’
‘Oh?’
‘Like a plague.’
‘The Plague of Plague then?’
‘Sort of. It came upon the Egyptians’ cattle, horses, asses, camels, oxen and sheep.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole! Bit beyond the barbed wire to take it out on the animals. What came next?’
‘The Plague of Boils.’
‘Yuk.’
‘Then the Plague of Hail, the Plague of Locusts, the Plague of Darkness . . .’
‘Darkness as in night?’
‘Yes, Blotters, except it happened during the daytime. For three days.’
‘Well, I’ll be jugged like a hare!’
‘And finally,’ concluded Twinks in awestruck tones, ‘came the Plague of the Death of the Firstborn.’
‘Firstborn what?’ asked Blotto anxiously.
‘Firstborn child.’
His expression cleared. ‘Oh well, that’ll all be tickey-tockey then.’
‘Why?’
‘Corky doesn’t have any children. So none of them can die, can they?’
Twinks didn’t look convinced. ‘I’m not sure how Plagues work exactly. Maybe for people who don’t have children something else has to die or be destroyed instead.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, is there anything in Corky Froggett’s life that he loves as much as another person might love a child?’
Blotto thought for a moment. Then his hand shot up to his mouth, as all the colour drained out of his face. ‘Great Wilberforce!’ he said. ‘The Lagonda!’
Brother and sister went together down to the garages to see Corky Froggett. Despite his customary bluff military manner, it was clear that recent happenings had unsettled him.
Blotto immediately went across to his precious Lagonda, inspecting it for damage. He even got in the driving seat and pressed the self-starter. The engine emitted its normal powerful purr, the contented sound of a lion who has just dined on a couple of tasty Thomson’s gazelles. To Blotto’s relief, all was fine. The Plague of the Death of the Firstborn had yet to strike the Lagonda.
He turned anxiously to Corky Froggett. ‘Has there been anything else? Any more murdy doings?’
‘Well, milord, there has been one odd thing.’ The chauffeur led them to the back of the garage. There, at the foot of the wall in neat rows, lay the tiny corpses of rats and mice.
‘The Plague of Murrain,’ Twinks whispered to Blotto.
‘Plague of what?’ Blotto whispered back.
‘Murrain.’
‘Ah,’ said Blotto, as if he knew what it meant.
‘Corky,’ asked Twinks, ‘have you any idea what’s causing all these nasty events to happen?’
‘No, milady.’
‘Well, in fact,’ said Blotto, ‘it’s the Pl—’ He saw the deterrent look in his sister’s eye. Clearly she wanted to keep the chauffeur in ignorance of the pattern of afflictions – at least for the time being. ‘It’s the Pl . . . it’s the Pl . . . It’s the Plughole! Yes, it’s the absolute Plughole of bad luck for you to be stuck in.’ He was rather pleased with the dexterous way he’d improvised his way out of trouble.
‘Don’t you worry, milord,’ said Corky Froggett doughtily. ‘My only aim in life is to serve you and your family. And if discharging that duty involves a little suffering . . . well, it’s suffering that I welcome, milord.’
‘You’re a grade A foundation stone, Corky.’
‘Thank you, milord. Anyway, the way I look at this latest affliction is this. These garages have been riddled with vermin for a long time, and whatever’s happening, it seems to have sorted them out.’
‘Yes.’ Twinks looked at him appraisingly. ‘And you’re feeling all right, are you?’
‘Never better, milady. Once I’d got the lice out of my uniform, everything was back in fine working order.’
‘Hm.’ She was thoughtful. ‘Of course in the Bible there’s no mention of rats and mice . . .’
‘I beg your pardon, milady?’
‘The Murrain.’ Corky Froggett didn’t look any less puzzled as she went on, ‘It affected the Egyptians’ cattle, horses, asses, camels, oxen and sheep.’
There was a long silence while Blotto took in her words. Then alarm flashed across his perfect visage. ‘Horses?’ he cried. ‘Great spangled spiders! Mephistopheles!’ And he rushed like a madman towards the stables to check on what – given that, in common with the chauffeur, he didn’t have any children – might be regarded as his firstborn.
Corky Froggett looked shyly at Twinks. He was rarely alone with the young mistress and he never felt quite at ease with her. Part of the reason for this was that, like every man whom she encountered – whatever their age – he was more than a little in love with her. Also, as a person of infinite practical skills but few intellectual accomplishments, he was in awe of her mighty brain.
‘Do you have any idea, milady,’ he asked humbly, ‘what the hell’s going on?’
‘Something pretty fumacious,’ said Twinks. There was no point in sugaring the pill for Corky. ‘I think you’re being possessed.’
‘But I always have been, milady.’
‘Sorry? Not on the same page?’
‘I mean, milady, I have always been a mere possession of the Lyminster family, a good, a chattel. I have never asked for more. It is a great honour for me to serve all of you, milady.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid you’ve rather got the wrong end of the oily dipstick, Corky. I meant that you have been possessed by an evil force.’
‘Not the Lyminster family?’ asked a rather confused chauffeur.
‘No, not the Lyminster family.’
‘Then by who?’ he demanded ungrammatically.
But before Twinks could tell him, Blotto returned, his whole body expressing huge relief. ‘All tickey-tockey in the stables,’ he announced. ‘Mephistopheles in zing-zing condition. Same goes for all the other nags too.’
‘Good ticket,’ said Twinks.
‘And by chance I met that boddo who runs the Home Farm and he said there were no problems with the cattle, asses, camels, oxen and sheep. Though he did give me a rather funny look when I asked about them.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, he said we hadn’t got any camels.’
‘No, Blotters, we haven’t.’
‘Right. Best to be sure, though. That’s why I asked. So, anyway, Twinks, it looks as if it’s only the rats and mice who’ve been affected by the Moron.’
‘Murrain.’
‘Right.’
‘Excu
se me, milady,’ the chauffeur interposed diffidently. ‘You were about to tell me what I’ve been possessed by.’
‘You’re bong on the nose there, Corky. So I was.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But I think it’s information that’ll keep.’
‘Very good, milady,’ said Corky Froggett, though he couldn’t quite exclude a note of disappointment from his voice.
As brother and sister walked away from the stables, Blotto asked urgently, ‘Do you mean you’ve got a batsqueak of an idea what’s going on?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid I have. And it’s the explanation, Blotto me old sock suspender, for what’s been happening to Corky.’
‘Right. So what is it? Come on, uncage the ferrets, Twinks me old Swiss bun.’
‘I think,’ she announced dramatically, ‘that Corky has brought upon himself the Curse of Pharaoh Sinus Nefertop!’
‘Broken biscuits!’ said Blotto.
‘And if we don’t find a way of stopping this sequence of events, he’s going to have to go through the Plagues of Boils, Hail, Locusts, Darkness and . . .’ She paused for effect.
‘The Death of the spoffing Firstborn,’ her brother supplied. And he looked back with deep fretfulness towards his Lagonda.
‘Exactly, Blotto me old butter knife.’
11
A Visit to St Raphael’s
In the hope that no further unpleasantnesses would happen to Corky Froggett that day, Twinks announced to her brother that they needed to take a trip to Oxford.
‘Oxford? Why Oxford?’
‘Because there resides the one person who can possibly get us out of our current treacle tin.’
‘Tickey-tockey,’ said Blotto, equable as ever.
It was nearly six o’clock by the time the Lagonda drew up outside the gates of St Raphael’s College. The porter in his lodge looked very sniffily at them. Twinks knew it wasn’t her brother the man objected to. St Raphael’s was an all-male enclave. The sight of a woman on its premises was almost unprecedented. And though her beauty and winsome charms could melt most masculine hearts, that organ inside the porter was made of particularly durable stuff.
Unswayed by his look of unwelcome, Twinks announced, ‘We have come to see Professor Erasmus Holofernes.’
‘I think not, madam,’ said the porter.
‘I think so.’
‘Professor Holofernes does not have visitors.’ The porter looked up at the clock on the wall of the lodge. ‘Particularly not at this time of the evening. It is the Professor’s invariable practice, having worked in his rooms all day, to go to the Senior Common Room for drinks on the dot of six o’clock, prior to dining in Hall.’
‘Well, this evening,’ said Twinks, ‘he is going to change his invariable practice and see us instead.’
‘I think not, madam.’
‘It’s “milady”,’ said Twinks frostily.
‘Then I think not, milady.’
‘Very well.’ In a gesture reminiscent of the Dowager Duchess, she gathered her silver mink coat around her. ‘Come along, Blotto. We’re going to find the Senior Common Room.’
‘Tickey-tockey.’
‘I’m sorry, milady . . . sir . . .’
‘He’s “milord” too,’ said Twinks.
‘I’m afraid I cannot possibly allow you to . . .’
But the porter’s words fell only on to the night air. By the time he had extricated himself from behind his counter and emerged from the lodge, Twinks, with Blotto in her wake, was already halfway across the quadrangle, following the trickle of begowned academics making their way to the S.C.R.
The gown in front of her passed through a heavy oak door. Gesturing to her brother to hold it open for her, Twinks strode into the room.
The conversation – mostly about such idle topics as abelian and tauberian mathematical theorems, Ricardian economics and etymological cruces in Thucydides – was stopped as if by the pressing of a switch. Speechless dons gazed open-mouthed at the almost unprecedented phenomenon of a woman in the Senior Common Room of St Raphael’s College, Oxford.
(The ‘almost’ was added to the word ‘unprecedented’ because in fact on two occasions women had breached the ramparts of that male institution. It had not been visited by its Catholic founder Queen Mary, but her sister Queen Elizabeth I had attended a Protestant service at St Raphael’s when she was in Oxford to found Jesus College. The other occasion was in the early nineteenth century when a dissolute undergraduate smuggled a local washerwoman into his room for the purposes of fornication. Following the customs of the time, his fate was rustication and hers was mastication by wild dogs.)
So the appearance of Twinks that evening in the Senior Common Room was little short of sensational. Amongst the assembled academics bushy eyebrows rose, jaws dropped revealing yellowed teeth, nervous tics danced across wrinkled features, and not a few pairs of glasses steamed up.
Apparently unaware of the reactions she was causing, Twinks looked coolly round the open-mouthed dons until she saw the one she was looking for. ‘Ah, Razzy,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Of course,’ replied the delighted academic. ‘Come up to my room.’
And under the still-gaping stare of his colleagues, Professor Erasmus Holofernes led his visitors out of the Senior Common Room.
Blotto supposed that there must be furniture somewhere in the Professor’s room, but he couldn’t see any of it. Every surface was so crammed with books, letters, folders, files and loose extraneous papers that it was hard to know what lay underneath. Also amidst the strata of documentation lay plates of half-eaten meals and cups full of congealed coffee, whose antiquity could only be guessed at.
But Twinks seemed to know her way around and could locate furniture under the chaos. She sat down atop a teetering pile of dossiers, which somehow bore her thistledown weight. Her brother, being very considerably bulkier, was gingerly in his approach to securing a solid support, but found a perch that didn’t wobble too threateningly. Erasmus Holofernes, most of whose adult life had been spent in that space, had homed in instinctively to what must have been a chair behind what must have been a desk.
Blotto didn’t know – and Twinks hadn’t told him – much detail about the Professor’s work. From his room in St Raphael’s Holofernes ran a massive information network. His own knowledge was extensive, but he was also in touch with academics all around the world. So, when a question arose beyond the range of his own expertise, the Professor knew exactly the right person to contact for the answer. He occasionally used the telephone – and he was the only don in the college to have a personal instrument in his room – but more frequently he made his enquiries by letter. The extent of his correspondence was so voluminous that the St Raphael’s porter employed a boy whose only task was carrying the outgoing and incoming mail between the lodge and Holofernes’s room. And his filing system for all this paper was, to put it at its mildest, idiosyncratic (though he could always within seconds lay his hand on any document he required).
In spite of the disorder he inhabited, the Professor proved to be the soul of hospitality. Before leaving the Senior Common Room, he had given instructions to the St Raphael’s college butler to supply him and his guests with the same menu that was being served in Hall downstairs. With the same wines, which were of an excellence that one would have expected from the cellar of an Oxford college.
So, after the Professor had reiterated how pleased he was to see Twinks and toasted her pulchritude in pre-prandial champagne, he turned his attention to her brother.
‘Very pleased to meet you at last,’ he announced in his dry, rather excitable voice.
‘Beezer to meet you too,’ said Blotto.
‘It is a great pleasure to add your name to my list.’
‘Sorry, not on the same page. List of what?’
‘Great intellects, Blotto.’
‘Oh?’ He had never before heard those three words used in the same sentence.
But before Blotto could remonstrate, P
rofessor Erasmus Holofernes was already continuing, ‘Most of the great intellects of the world I have met only through correspondence, but there are still many who have been in this very room and sat on the very chair on which you are now sitting.’
‘Oh, so it is a chair?’ said Blotto with considerable relief. ‘Hoopee-doopee.’
‘And I must confess that I am a little jealous of you.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole, Prof! Why should you be jealous of me?’
‘Because, Blotto, I have often prided myself on having the most remarkable intellect in the known world . . .’
‘Well, I’m sure if you say you have then you must have, me old pineapple.’
‘No. I fear when it comes to direct competition I must bow down and acknowledge you my superior.’
‘Don’t talk such toffee,’ said Blotto, always embarrassed by compliments and rather confused by this particular one.
‘But it must be so,’ the Professor insisted.
‘Well, erm . . .’
‘Why, if it is not so, does your beautiful and brilliant sister work with you?’
This was the obvious cue for another ‘Well, erm . . .’, so Blotto supplied it.
‘Not only work with you, but prefer to work with you than with me?’
‘Now that’s not quite fair, Razzy,’ Twinks interposed.
‘It may not be fair, but it is true. Stop me if you know any of this, Blotto, but your sister and I were first brought together by Scotland Yard.’
‘Well, I didn’t know that bit, but you just keep on uncaging a few more ferrets and when I hear something that does tickle the old memory glands I’ll let you know.’
‘Very well. Now Scotland Yard contact me when they are baffled about a case. Which is most of the time. Scotland Yard live in a perpetual state of bafflement. And normally I can help them out from my research.’ He gestured to the mountains, valleys, glaciers and foothills of paper that lay around him. ‘Anyway, there was a case a few years back – a minor royal’s illegitimate son had disappeared and for once my research resources proved inadequate.’
‘A very rare occurrence, Blotto,’ his sister pointed out, ‘as you will discover when you get to know Razzy better.’