by Brian Hughes
The water made contact with its huge yellow stomach.
There was a creak.
One second later the startled dragon’s torso shrank to an impossible size. Unable to support itself it tried to keep purchase on the steep copper slopes. Talons scratched and sparked.
The sudden downsizing of its intestines produced a sound similar to breaking wind, only back to front.
With a scream the dragon toppled, its lumbering shadow fluttering down the walls.
Eric Wattle’s aim caught the rest of its limbs as it fell.
By the time it hit the cobblestones it was no more threatening than a tadpole.
Jack stumbled forward and grabbed the tail. It writhed defiantly but his grip, after many years of cuffing Constable Parkins round the head, was incredibly solid.
Lifting the newt to his eyes, he dropped it into the bucket marked “FIRE”. There was the tiniest of hisses.
“There y’ go! Like y’ said Mrs Duvall...” He turned amicably to his satisfied cohort and presented her with his catch. “Prevention is better than cure. I don’t reckon there’ll be any more fires around Greyminster t’night.”
Unfortunately Jack Partridge was wrong.
There was one other fire. It was highlighting the bellies of the clouds right at that moment.
It wasn’t much of a fire, it must be said. Just the occasional frond of flame painting rainbows on the overflow pipe as it expanded and contracted beneath the changes in temperature.
“Clewes? Are you alright?”
Nesbit blinked through the fog filling Mrs Wainthrop’s privy. It swamped his vision, flattening against his features. Surprisingly, for such a pea-souper, it wasn’t clogging his lungs.
“Do you reckon we’re dead, Sir?” Malcolm’s voice appeared from somewhere close to the airing cupboard. “Is this heaven?”
“I bloody ’ope not.” Nesbit cautiously prodded the strange miasma with one finger. Moments later he’d drawn a rabbit with big front teeth across its surface. “It stinks in ’ere. I wouldn’t want t’ spend eternity livin’ in somethin’ that reminds me of one of ’Odges’ farts!”
A cube appeared in the smog before him. It slid backwards, creating an oblong tunnel through which Malcolm’s sooted freckles peered.
“What d’ y’ reckon ’appened, Sir?” Digging his fingers into the sides of the opening Malcolm continued to claw a wider trench. “Bit of a funny sort of explosion this!”
“I can’t stop laughin’,” muttered Nesbit, blowing cotton wool pom-poms from his unlit pipe. “It’s some kind of optical illusion or somethin’! Designed t’ give the impression of devastation without any of the impact.”
“It’s scorched the walls though...”
With a wrench Malcolm dragged a large chunk of smoke from the hole he’d created and set it down behind him. Across the wall brown and yellow blast marks had burnt the woodchip.
“And it blew that chicken right out of the window.”
“Yes...unfortunately the ’ole bloomin’ lot of ’em escaped!” An expanding football of fumes bounced up and down on Nesbit’s knee. He booted it dextrously out of the window. “There’s not a single one o’ the buggers left in ’ere now.”
Crack!
Fulfilling the laws of irony, something hit him round the back of his head.
Nesbit keeled forward, bounced back off the mattress of fog and rubbed his neck painfully.
“Perverts! W’at are you doin’ in me powder room?” came a voice from the recondite depths.
Nesbit squinted.
The head of the toilet brush appeared. It swung dramatically in an arc and connected hollowly with his nose. Then it continued its erratic route creating a semi-circular slot through which Mrs Wainthrop gurned.
“We’re ’ere to ’elp, y’ daft old bessum!”
Clonk!
Another strike! This time it lifted a pilaster of hair from Nesbit’s scalp.
“Rape! Murder!” Mrs Wainthrop hollered, now wielding the loo brush as though it were a mace. “Get out of my boudoir y’ filthy beasts or I’ll ’ave the law onto y’!”
“Just another ordinary night.” Sergeant Partridge tugged his leather gloves tightly about his fingers. Then he turned his overcoat collar against the chill. “I bet Bill ’ull be cheesed off that ’ee missed it though. Any chance of a lift ’ome, Milford?”
“No problem, Jack.”
The fire chief had already climbed back into the cab. Now he was tucking heartily into a cheese and pickle sandwich. Carefully lifting the water-filled bucket across his knee, he strapped it down onto the seat beside him and fed the tiniest titbit of crust to the serpent wriggling about inside.
“I reckon we might keep this ’un as a mascot.”
“Actually, Spotty Dribblesthwaite would be better off examining it properly for the record.” Jack thought about that, before adding, “On second thoughts, keep it at the fire station until some proper scientists turn up from London.”
There was a splutter from close at hand. Jack turned to be confronted by Miss Duvall, her wrists raised once more in compliance. Pip was shadowing her closely.
“I suppose you’ll have to do the honourable thing and arrest me again now, Sergeant?”
“By rights I ought to lock up Miss Morgan ’ere as well!”
Pip shrank from the words, not entirely sure if he was joking or not.
“But seein’ as you’ve got more chance of solvin’ this lot between the two of you than the great Inspector Nesbit ’as of puttin’ his boxers on the right way round...” Jack grinned knowingly. “Then, as far as the official report stands, I didn’t see you ’ere tonight.”
Miss Duvall smiled appreciatively, her huge mouth almost dissecting her head in two. “Most kind, I’m sure.”
She lowered her wrists again as the fire-engine door slammed shut. With a judder the vehicle jerked into life.
“Just do your best t’ sort this lot out,” called Jack as it pulled away towards Lancaster Gate. “And make sure y’ keep that zombie o’ yours under control.”
Millicent sheepishly watched the rear of the truck as it rounded the morgue. Eric Wattle was chasing behind it shouting loudly, a half-coiled hose pipe still in his hands.
A few moments later the three women found thmeselves alone on the steps. It was all very reminiscent of the opening scene from Macbeth.
“Well...” Miss Duvall turned to Pip. “Best go home and get some rest. We’ve still got our increasingly difficult puzzle to solve, dear.”
It’s hard to say whether irony kicked into play again at this point, or whether some other hand was involved. Whatever the case, as the words left her lips, Pip noticed a piece of card fluttering down towards the cobbles.
It landed with a squelch in the puddle by her boots. She stooped to pick it up.
This is what the note read:
“Two: A stick. Second Journey: Head North up Dilbury Avenue. After ten yards pass Dunstable Close on the right. Continue North for another ten yards then turn East onto Punt Close. Ten yards more. One, three, five, ? , eleven.”
“Looks as though we’ve found another one, Miss Duvall.” She handed the clue to the pensioner, wearing an expression of resignation.
Miss Duvall held it up beneath the lamp above the town hall porch.
“Ahha...the last one this time, Phillipa.” She brought the card down again, pushed it beneath Pip’s nose and pointed to some of the letters. “Look...Number two! By my calculations we’ve collected the whole ensemble now.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I’m not sure yet, Pip. But we’ll worry about that in the morning shall we, dear?”
The card was forced with her usual indecorum down Miss Duvall’s cleavage.
Taking Millicent by her cadaverous hand she set off at a pace across the deserted market square.
“It’s been a bit of a busy evening and I reckon we’d all be much clearer headed to solve this conundrum tomorrow.”
Pip jo
gged along behind in attempt to keep up.
“I’ve got a feeling we’ve nearly cracked it, Phillipa. But I reckon we’re in for a few surprises yet!
Chapter Seventeen: Of Seagulls and Solutions
‘Terrorist Seagull Attacks Mrs Beaumont!
Deeds of a most heinous nature have been perpetrated recently down Ormond Street where, on Tuesday morning, Rose Beaumont (53 and two thirds) instigator of “The Ormond Street Pensioners Ornithology Trust” (T.O.S.P.O.T.) was savaged by one of her own flock.
Gerald, a fledgling she had been nurturing back to health following a nasty tumble from her chimney, “...deliberately tore off his splint and bit me on the bridge of the nose.”
“The ungrateful little b*stard! Don’t use that in your dreadful paper!” commented Mrs Boothroyde (69). (Editor’s note: Strike that last bit, Jayne. Make her 68 instead otherwise we’ll have complaints!)
Since the incident, Gerald has been nesting on Mrs Beaumont’s chimneystack. He now regularly swoops down on the other residents of the street.
“Mr Farthing (76) from number three got his bobble hat nicked,” admitted Mrs Tulip (102) when pressed. “But I didn’t see it happen myself. He might just have left it at home.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures! Rodney Fowler (29), head warden of the Greyminster Wildfowl Trust and bird impersonator, has been called in to deal with the problem.
“It’s a simple case of mimicking the cry of a golden eagle,” Mr Fowler told us. “See? You put your hands together and blow, thus: Ee-Arak! That way it ’ull think there’s a mortal enemy in the district and evacuate!”
Mr Fowler is now recovering in Greyminster Hospital.
Elsewhere in today’s Chronicle:
Botanical Problems? Read our latest handy hints for growing tropical plants on the rooftop on page 19.
Perky the Gerbil, why our younger readers never tire of seeing him. Pages 12 to 18 inclusive.’
Extract from the Morning Edition of the Greyminster Chronicle
Somewhere, in that exclusive half-light between dreams and waking, fantasies often over-ride reality.
Flinders Peterson awoke from what appeared to be an archaeological dig. An excavation in which he’d changed the face of history by uncovering a woolly mammoth engaged in fearsome battle with a Roman gladiator.
As the gloomy daylight permeated the curtains he allowed the dream to break into clumps and fade into morning. The noise of the mammoth’s flatulence, however, continued to rattle the windows. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, shunted his collection of musket balls to one side, inched the curtain back and peered out into the street.
Clambering down from the convulsing Triumph was an upside-down turnip of a woman. She was wearing a bomber jacket, tweed skirt and flying goggles.
Two smaller figures squeezed themselves from the sidecar. One was a stunted Goth with more lace about her than a Merchant Ivory film. The other looked as though she’d just been dug out of the ground.
“Bloody ’ell!” Flinders shook the last remnants of the night from his head as the engine stalled. “Mrs Duvall!”
“Morning Flinders!”
Pip sauntered past as Flinders struggled to hold the door ajar. She was carrying a box. The sort that files would be kept in. It was fastened securely by a metal hasp.
Miss Duvall appeared on the step behind her, her features darkened by sump except for the two ovals where her goggles had been. She was keeping a tight grip on Millicent’s hand. The stench of rotting flesh followed them into the living room.
“You missed out on some fun last night, Mr Peterson.” Miss Duvall parked her ward on a suitable mound of National Geographics and proceeded to remove her gloves one finger at a time. “But I suspect you wouldn’t have been interested in that sort of stuff anyhow.”
She turned to face him as he squealed through the door, his hair coaxed into twists.
“It had nothing to do with ruins and skeletons, I’m afraid.”
Flinders stared at the corpse flaking silently onto his carpet. Millicent looked as though autumn had arrived early this year. “Somebody belongs in a burial pit though.”
“Now, now...there’s no need to be rude.” Miss Duvall donned her spectacles and peered over their rims with as much authority as she could, whilst Pip cleared the coffee table. “Millicent Broadhurst, don’t you go rotting on anything! The grease stains’ll be impossible to remove afterwards. Right, Flinders, we’ve brought you a puzzle.”
Unpacking the hand-written clues Pip arranged them in numerical order between the mugs.
“Archaeology...puzzle-solving. It’s all very similar.” Miss Duvall threw Flinders a broad smile. “So, if you’d kindly dig out the map that you stole from Greyminster Museum, perhaps we could clear this problem up once and for all?”
There was a buzz from Hodges’ office. Nesbit made a mental note of it as he stepped through the boarded-up door at the rear of the station and proceeded to disentangle himself from his mackintosh. Either the superintendent had patched up his differences with Prunella and was now attempting some hitherto untried marital aid, or a very fat bee was trapped in his filing cabinet.
As it turned out, both guesses were wrong.
“Reg?”
Hanging up his overcoat with the customary grunt, Nesbit wrapped his scarf around the hat peg and obediently made his way into Hodges’ office.
“Had an accident, Cuthbert?”
Hodges switched off the electric razor, its foils trapping several whiskers and refusing to let go. If his chin was blue this morning then it was nothing compared to the dark Yorkshire pudding occupying the area where his eye should have been.
“I...er...banged it on the gear lever...w’en I was gettin’ up.”
There was a great deal of jowl movement to accompany this dubious admission. Hodges probed the Savlon-coated mound and winced.
“Oddly enough I found a sizeable lamb chop on me bonnet. It was all cooked an’ still smouldering, so at least me breakfast was sorted out. Some of it came in ’andy for coolin’ me eye off an’ all.”
“Gear lever, Sir?” Even with Nesbit’s remedial detective skills it was patently obvious what had happened overnight.
Hodges noted his colleague’s smug expression and his remaining eye narrowed.
“W’at’s ’appenin’ with this bomb, Inspector?” he snapped. “I take it we’ve sorted everythin’ out now?”
“Well, I can’t speak for you...” Nesbit watched as Hodges opened a drawer, removed an orange toothbrush with Bart Simpson’s head on the handle, pulled a face that said, ‘It was the best I could do at short notice’ and then continued to hunt for his toothpaste. “But Clewes and meself ’ave got everything under control.”
“That’d be a first.” A slug of Colgate was squeezed onto the bristles.
“It was just an ’oax, Sir.” Removing the oxford from his waistcoat Nesbit jammed it confidently between his teeth. “Much like everything else goin’ on around Greyminster, I suspect. We just need t’ catch the prankster, that’s all.”
At this point it might be a good idea to pause for a moment. I’d like to raise a toast to the “Unique Laws of Irony.” Without such laws writers would generally fall flat on their faces about halfway through first chapters. Classic novels such as ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ would never have been completed. Not wanting to place the Greyminster books in such luminary company of course, at precisely that moment Constable Jaye rapped on the door and poked her head around the jamb.
“Sorry to interrupt, Sirs,” she interrupted with no apparent regrets whatsoever. “The phone’s going wild out here. Apparently the whole of Hell’s broken loose!”
Let’s rewind the clocks. In order to understand Jaye’s alarm, we must first uncover its causes. Crank those temporal hands back to half an hour earlier, just as dawn was choreographing itself across the Greyminster rooftops.
Duck egg greens illuminated the fells, fracturing shards
of newborn sunlight from spires and chimneypots. The first of the townsfolk out and about this morning were wrapped up in their coats and scarves, the atmosphere at ground level still blue and chilled.
The harbour was particularly cold.
In the Ice House phlegm cracked in throats as the residues of the long night were removed from lungs.
Ethyl strode between her troops, her wings behind her back and her beak in the air demanding respect. At length she clambered onto her podium, tapped the rim of the crate with her pumice-stone gavel and called the unhealthy assembly to order.
“Fellow aliens,” she began, a dejected expression across her feathered features. “Our plans for recognition have been thwarted. The Hoomans will not give us any more credence than they’d give to a BBC weather forecast. It therefore falls on our heads to take matters into our own hands.”
“Oh Arh!” Gingerbeard raised one hirsute finger, then lowered it again uncertain about the mixed metaphor himself.
Ethyl continued regardless. “We shall have to live by foraging! By thieving! By murder and subterfuge!”
An excited squelch from the blancmange signified that it, for one, was appreciative of such a concept. There was a shrill note of confirmation from the pickled gherkin to accompany the blancmange’s bowel problem.
“This morning...” Ethyl went on, unfurling a map around which the impossible creatures gathered for closer inspection. “We shall start our campaign of terror. And might I remind you that if we’re to survive, then it’s every duck, boggart and child’s toy for themselves!”
That was approximately thirty minutes ago.
A lot can happen in thirty minutes. Especially where rats-wearing-sailor-outfits, Martians-wielding-ray-guns and animated-vegetables are concerned.
Fortunately, Miss Duvall’s own sentient vegetable, otherwise known to the reader as Millicent Broadhurst, wasn’t involved in the ensuing riot. In fact the only crime she was committing was filling Flinders’ living room with an offensive bowel gas and losing sundry extremities beneath the furniture.