Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  ‘Thank you, my habibi.’ Minette gave her a dazzling smile and sprang up to take the call.

  Phyllis leant back against the old, comfortable, over-stuffed sofa and waited. She looked up at the bright green and crimson silk drapes and the long ostrich plumes arranged across the curtain rail above the windows. They reminded her of the Khan el-Khalili and her trip with W.W., and she smiled secretively.

  After a minute or so, Minette put the phone down and came back to join Phyllis and Daisy. ‘I am so sorry about this, Phyllis, my habibi,’ she said. ‘Tonight our arrangement has to be altered a little.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Phyllis.

  Daisy stopped her licking and cocked her head, listening.

  ‘Well,’ explained the glamorous woman, ‘a last-minute spanner is in the works. My friend Nina was filling in for me at the Baubles of Baalbek, but she has come down with the most awful case of knobbliness—’

  ‘Knobbliness?’

  ‘Yes, my sweet. It is a little affliction that artistes such as Nina and myself sometimes get. Little red knobs of puffiness come up all over our skin sometimes. I haven’t had it happen for a long time, but poor Nina . . .’ She heaved her shoulders and sighed loudly, fluttering her dark and heavy eyelashes. ‘She is allergic to the new feathers she got for her big number “Take Me or Leave Me but Please Spare the Custard”. They have made her erupt in horrid red knobs all over her shoulders and arms . . . she looks like one of those little rubber knobbly things that the people who work in post offices sometimes put on their thumbs when they are doing things with their thumbs that they need the little rubber knobbly things on for . . . ah, but I am wafting around like a butterfly in the breeze, aren’t I?’

  Phyllis smiled. ‘So how are things altered for us?’

  ‘Ah.’ Minette patted Daisy’s head. ‘Well, tonight I will have to go and do Nina’s spots at the nightclub. It means I will be gone from about seven-thirty to eleven-thirty.’

  ‘Great!’ Phyllis exclaimed. ‘So I get to see the Baubles of Baalbek?’

  ‘Erm . . . no.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Phyllis, my darling, it is no place for a girl of your age. They do not let people under the age of eighteen in there. I would love to take you with me, but rules are rules.’

  ‘But rules can be broken.’ Phyllis gave Minette a challenging look. ‘If we didn’t bend the rules or break ’em, why, nothing new or exciting might ever happen!’

  ‘Ah, you are wise and perceptive and very, very correct. But I am afraid that in this case, these rules cannot be distorted. I am sorry, Phyllis, but you won’t be able to come with me.’

  Phyllis frowned. ‘Dad goes to Hong Kong, you go to the nightclub. It seems I can’t go anywhere at the moment . . .’ She stopped and thought. Then she gave a barely noticeable smile as she realised that that was the furthest thing from the truth she could have said.

  ‘Don’t fret, pet,’ said Minette. ‘It will only be for a few hours.’ She stood and went to the phone. ‘I will call our friend Barry Inglis and arrange for him to take charge of you during my performance. He is very obliging.’

  While Minette dialled Barry’s number, Phyllis picked up her cards in their box. She held the box in her hand and watched as a single card emerged slowly up out of the deck. One card separating itself from all the rest. She observed it rising higher and higher; then she took it away from the deck and let her smile appear fully.

  ‘Tonight?’ repeated Chief Inspector Barry Inglis of the Fine Arts and Antiques Squad of the Metropolitan Police Force.

  ‘Only for a few hours, while I’m working,’ came Minette’s voice over the phone.

  ‘Oh, good lord, Minette. Ordinarily I’d say yes—Miss Wong is never a bother, of course—but . . . well, tonight’s a bit tricky.’

  ‘Ha! I am sure Phyllis will have no problem with trickiness.’

  The Chief Inspector sighed, and looked out his office window across City Park, towards the Wallace Wong Building. ‘That’s not the sort of trickiness I meant. No, I mean I have to go to an auction tonight.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ asked Minette, interested. She was always trying to find out more about Barry Inglis’s private life.

  ‘For work,’ Barry told her. ‘There’s an item being auctioned we’ve had our eye on for some time. I need to be present.’

  ‘I see. Well, you can still be present, and you can have a friend to keep you company.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can take Phyllis. Then bring her back here afterwards and I should be home around the time you return. Or maybe a little later, but she will be safe with you.’

  ‘Of course she will be, but . . . an auction? She’ll be bored out of her brain.’

  He heard Minette laugh—it was like a light tinkling down the line. ‘She is very intelligent, Chief Inspector. She will not be bored. She always finds things to see, and an auction is always exciting.’

  Barry put his feet up on his desk, accidentally knocking over a small mountain of files and papers. ‘I know very well how intelligent she is,’ he said gruffly. ‘But—’

  ‘So, she’ll be brilliant company tonight. Thank you, Barry, you’ve helped me beautifully. You are the best neighbour.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Are you coming home before the auction, or going straight from the office?’

  ‘Going straight from . . . but—’

  ‘Then I shall bring Phyllis to you there, shall we say six p.m.?’

  Barry ran a hand through his sandy-coloured hair. ‘But the auction doesn’t start until eight . . .’

  ‘Then you shall both have time for a splendid dinner out somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, heavens above, I—’

  ‘Thank you, Barry, you are a dear, dear man!’

  And Barry heard the phone go dead.

  He looked at the receiver in his hand, as though he wanted to say something to it that a Chief Inspector with the Fine Arts and Antiques Squad probably shouldn’t say while he was in the office. But he said nothing, replacing the receiver on the phone instead and wondering at how things always seem to go hiccupy when you least expect it.

  Bard times

  ‘A First Folio?’ said Phyllis.

  ‘A First Folio,’ said Barry Inglis.

  He had brought her to one of his regular eating establishments—a small, inexpensive diner, conveniently located near to Police Headquarters, by City Park—and he and the young prestidigitator were sitting in one of the big oak booths that were padded with slippery red vinyl cushions as they waited for their dinner to be served.

  ‘What’s a First Folio?’ Phyllis asked.

  Next to Phyllis, Daisy appeared out of Phyllis’s shoulder bag on the seat. She put her front paws on the table, poked her snout this way and that on the tabletop and had a hurried sniff for crumbs of any sort. Phyllis pulled her down and gently pushed her into the shoulder bag again.

  ‘She shouldn’t be near the table,’ Barry Inglis said.

  ‘So arrest me.’ Phyllis smiled at him and he gave a sort of this is going to be one of those evenings grimace. ‘So . . . what is a First Folio?’

  Barry thrummed the fingers of his right hand on the table. ‘It’s a book. A very old and valuable book. It was printed in 1623, and it’s an almost complete volume of the works of William Shakespeare.’ He stopped thrumming and said to Phyllis, ‘Have you studied any of William Shakespeare’s plays or poetry at school yet, Miss Wong?’

  ‘No, not yet. But I’ve heard of him. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, right?’

  ‘Right. Just four of the thirty-six or so plays he wrote, yes. And all of those thirty-six plays are contained in the First Folio, which is being auctioned a little after eight o’clock tonight at The House of Wendlebury’s auction rooms. Which is where we’re headed.’

  ‘Are you going to bid on it, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Me? Good heavens, no. Not on my salary. No, this is far and away beyond my price
range. We are attending purely out of professional interest.’

  ‘How much do you reckon it’ll go for?’ Phyllis asked.

  ‘Hard to say. Millions to be sure, but just how many millions . . . well, it all depends on how fierce the bidding will be. I imagine there’ll be bidders from all over the world, from private individuals to libraries and all sorts of places. There aren’t that many First Folios around any more.’ He stopped and looked down at his hands, frowning.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Phyllis asked.

  He looked up at her. ‘Ah. It’s what I just said. I should have said, there aren’t that many First Folios around any more, or so we thought. Recently things seem to have changed.’

  ‘How?’

  He looked over towards the kitchen, trying to see if their order was on its way and also sussing out the joint (as he liked to think of it); he didn’t want anyone overhearing what he was saying to Phyllis. When he saw that their meals weren’t yet coming and that there were no eavesdroppers nearby, he told her: ‘It used to be that a First Folio hardly ever came onto the market. I’ve been going back through the records, and I discovered that last century there were only four sales or auctions of First Folios worldwide. And two of those transactions were of the same copy. But lately—in the last six months or so—we’ve become aware that there have been no fewer than eleven First Folios going up for auction.’

  ‘Eleven?’

  ‘That is correct. And all of them have been genuine, and all of them have been complete, in their original leather bindings.’

  Phyllis interlocked her left-hand thumb with her right-hand pinkie and clasped her hands together on the table. ‘How many copies of it were printed in 16 . . . what was it?’

  ‘Sixteen twenty-three. We believe only seven hundred and fifty copies were published. But not many have survived over the centuries. At the last count, it’s thought that only two hundred and twenty-eight copies still exist. At least that’s how many are accounted for, in libraries and in private collections. But that was before these last eleven copies turned up so quickly. Eleven First Folios in six months! And there’s the wonder of the thing, Miss Wong. And it’s a wonder that smells a little fishy . . .’

  ‘Do you think someone’s making forgeries of them?’

  Barry Inglis nodded at her. ‘That would seem to be the most likely reason behind the fishiness. But the problem with that theory is that each of these eleven Folios has been tested by experts from the art world and from The House of Wendlebury’s Auctioneers. And every copy has been printed on authentic paper—high quality rag paper that was brought to England from France, which was what they did in the early seventeenth century. What’s more, the experts have tested the ink as well, and it’s definitely ink that was made at the time the paper was made. So we have to discount the forgery angle.’

  ‘Maybe someone just found a box of them?’ suggested Phyllis. ‘And they’re selling them off one at a time?’

  ‘That would be highly unlikely,’ said Barry, frowning. ‘I thought of that myself, but the chances of eleven First Folios surviving somewhere in a box, with the right climate conditions, and without being exposed to rats or dampness and mould or fires or whatever, is very small. Incredibly small. No, there’s something not right about all of it, and I need to try to—ah-ha, here we are!’

  He sat back as a gum-chewing waitress placed their meals before them: a hamburger for Phyllis and an enormous steak with fries, coleslaw, pickles and fried onions for Barry.

  ‘Thank you,’ Barry said to the waitress, who gave a quick chew and hurried off. ‘Enjoy, Miss Wong. I’ve been eating here for years and I’ve never once had food poisoning or the collywobbles. Now that’s high praise indeed, if you ask me—which of course you didn’t, but I wanted to share it with you anyway.’

  And Phyllis giggled as she watched him tucking heartily into his steak and onions.

  Chief Inspector Barry Inglis had been often enough to the auction rooms at The House of Wendlebury’s, the largest and most prestigious sales room in the city for rare and valuable antiques, artworks, books and manuscripts. It was all part of his job and, while he didn’t actually look forward to going there, he did find that he enjoyed the thrill and the sudden rush of excitement that usually came when each auction was in full swing, especially when the bidding seemed to be going crazy.

  For Phyllis, though, it was her first visit to the place. Barry led her (and Daisy in her shoulder bag) up the stairs of the regal-looking building. He flashed his ID card at the doorman and the door was opened immediately. Phyllis noticed the doorman smiling at Barry as they entered; she also noticed how his smile instantly disappeared, like a flash-vanish effect she sometimes used in some of her tricks, when he saw her.

  Great, she thought. Another place that doesn’t like kids. Nevertheless, in she went, unchallenged, with Barry.

  ‘Through here, Miss Wong.’ The Chief Inspector ushered her into a big room which had many rows of red and gold chairs laid out, like in a theatre auditorium. All around the walls of this room, arranged on tall gold-painted wooden easels, were about twenty paintings—large, gilt-framed, dark canvases of country scenes and women and men wearing clothing that was fashionable at least three hundred years ago or earlier.

  ‘Tonight they’re also auctioning those artworks,’ Barry told her. ‘This place always auctions the biggies . . . I’ve seen Rembrandts, Van Goghs, Turners, Ploegs and Picassos go under the hammer in here.’ He gave a mild shudder at the thought of the last Picasso painting he had been involved with, and Phyllis saw this.

  ‘Like the Weeping Walrus?’ she asked.

  ‘Now, that is a case that I prefer not to dwell on,’ Barry said. ‘I still get squirly when I think about it. Here, let’s sit up near the back. That way we can see what’s happening.’

  They found a couple of seats close to the aisle and sat, Phyllis putting her bag on an empty chair between her and Barry. Daisy poked her snout out of the bag and blinked her dark brown eyes at all the bright lights in the room.

  ‘No, Daisy girl,’ Phyllis whispered, pushing her back into the bag. ‘You have to stay invisible while we’re here.’

  Daisy gave a soft purring sort of sound (for a dog, she had quite a few qualities normally found in cats) and ducked her head back into the dark warmth of the bag.

  ‘Yes,’ said Barry. ‘Best that she remains undetected. Wendlebury’s is a bit stuffy when it comes to—’

  All at once a man was in the aisle next to Phyllis’s seat. He was tall and youngish and had a shiny flop of blond hair carefully arranged to fall across his forehead and almost conceal one of his eyes. On the lapel of his black coat he wore an enamel badge that said Wendlebury’s, and underneath that, Siiimon. ‘Excuse me, little girl,’ he said in a voice that was dripping with sneeringness. ‘Do you have an animal in that bag?’

  Phyllis shot the floppy-haired man a glare—she hated being called a little girl.

  Barry saw the look she gave him, and he pulled the sort of face he would have pulled if someone had just cracked an egg on the top of his head and let the yolk run down his face.

  ‘An animal?’ Phyllis said to Floppy Hair.

  ‘Yes. I saw something. A squirrel or something. Or a rabbit.’

  ‘A what?’ asked Phyllis loudly.

  Barry spoke up in his best policeman’s voice. ‘I can assure you that my friend has no squirrel or rabbit anywhere in the vicinity of this location.’

  The man’s lips turned down. ‘I distinctly saw something partially emerge from the top of her bag. Animals are strictly forbidden here at The House of Wendlebury’s.’

  Barry looked at Phyllis. She was giving Floppy Hair a steely stare.

  Barry shifted in his seat. This could get tricky, he thought. If Miss Wong is asked to leave, then I’ll have to go with her, and I’ll miss out on the auction.

  Phyllis looked at Barry, and he thought he detected a very tiny twinkle in her eye. She turned back to Floppy Hair and said, in a swe
et voice that Barry had never heard her use: ‘If you’re so sure, would you like to look inside my bag?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I plan to do,’ the man said, leaning over.

  Phyllis pulled the bag up from the seat next to her and put it onto her lap. Smiling, she opened the top of the bag and held it wide.

  The man peered down into the dark recesses of the shoulder bag. He stood there, looking for a few seconds, and his face clouded with annoyance. All he could see inside the bag was a pack of playing cards, a small coin purse, a half-eaten candy bar in its wrapper, a cell phone, some yellow rubber bands and a couple of red sponge balls.

  And that was it.

  Barry, intrigued by the expression on the man’s face, also leant over and looked inside. His eyebrows shot up, but he quickly lowered them and remembered to remain composed, as a Chief Inspector should always appear.

  He leant back and said to the floppy-haired man, ‘So, where’s the furry suspect then?’

  Siiimon straightened and looked down his nose at them. He opened his mouth and was about to utter something—from his expression Phyllis thought he was going to squeak at them—but he thought better of it. He closed his mouth, gave a tight-lipped smile, and said, ‘Do pardon me. I hope you enjoy tonight’s auction.’

  ‘Thank you, Siiimon,’ said Barry, reading his name badge. ‘I’m sure we will.’

  ‘Good evening.’ Siiimon turned on the heel of his expensive shoe and wafted away to the front of the room.

  ‘So where is she?’ Barry asked Phyllis out of the side of his mouth as he watched Siiimon chatting to someone near the auctioneer’s desk.

  Phyllis gave Barry her inscrutable smile. ‘Watch this.’ She shut the bag again and re-opened it. Out popped Daisy’s snout, and Phyllis quickly pushed her back inside.

  Barry gave her a now how on Earth did you do that but I shouldn’t even ask because I know you’re not going to tell me look.

  ‘It’s an old trick,’ Phyllis confided. ‘I adapted my bag so it works like a change bag.’

  ‘It changes things, all right. It changed little Daisy into nothing!’