The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair

by Marco Ocram

Lola: What does age matter, Herbert? Age is just a measure of the time that has passed since one’s birth. The great scientist, Einstein, building upon the ideas of Lorenz and others, has proved time is relative, that there is no absolute time, that only the spacetime metric dS is invariant across reference frames, whether inertial or non-inertial. Experiments with atomic clocks on jumbo jets have proved that if you could be accelerated to 99.999% of the speed of light for two minutes, I would have aged two years and be no longer a minor. Why should we suffer just because technology hasn’t yet advanced to the stage at which travel at near-light-speed is possible?

  Herbert: Yes, but what will people think if they find I have a relationship with a fifteen-year-old girl?

  Lola: Why do we care what they think? The taboo of age is simply that—a taboo. There are many cultures, Herbert, in which no such taboos exist. Your concerns are an accident of your birth. You find yourself in a blinkered conservative prudish western civilization. Had we been born in an enlightened community in Batar Praveesh, our love would now have been celebrated through a Chalankar marriage ceremony.

  Herbert: But think of the effect on my reputation and book sales.

  Lola: Oh Herbert, are your book sales more important than I in your life?

  Herbert: No, my beautiful Lola. I am sorry I said that and upset you. Let us go and dance on the beach in the rain.

  I fast forwarded to the next speech on the tape…

  Herbert: Chief McGee! What are you doing here?

  Man’s voice, presumably Chief McGee’s: Sorry to disturb you and all, Mister Quarry Sir, but Clarkesville County Police has launched a new crime prevention initiative, and we’re offering a free service, particularly to our more prominent citizens, to survey their houses and check for weak spots that could be exploited by felons looking to commit a crime in your house. So, if it’s alright by you, Mister Quarry Sir, I’ll just take a look around for points of entry and such like.

  Herbert: By all means, Chief McGee. It is reassuring to know our law enforcement service is working so proactively to protect us from evil felons.

  Chief McGee: By the way, was that young Lola Kellogg I saw running from your house?

  Herbert: Yes, she takes things down for me. When I am dictating, that is.

  I fast forwarded.

  There is the sound of a telephone ringing, and a receiver being picked up.

  Herbert: Herbert Quarry speaking, the bestselling author. How can I help you? I see...yes…yes…Pregnant?....Are you sure?...But how does Chief McGee come into it?...I certainly will not. I will go to the police. Your threats don’t scare me, buster.

  I fast forwarded some more…

  Herbert: Is that Clarkesville County Police? I’ve got something odd to report. Someone seems to have dumped a manikin in my garage……yes that’s right… the sort of figure you might see in a shop window…. No, I haven’t seen anyone strange hanging around, although I have seen a black Lancia Monte Carlo parked on the coast road at odd times recently…no I didn’t see the number… Thanks.

  Lola: Who was it, Herbert?

  Herbert: Just the police, my darling. I was ringing them about the manikin you found in the garage. I’ve been thinking…

  Lola: What about, my darling?

  Herbert: Perhaps I should go and see your father and ask him whether it is really right that he and certain members of his congregation should subject you to exorcistic rituals. I know it is strange that stigmata appear on your back when you are upset, and that you speak in unknown tongues in your sleep, but I am sure modern science can provide an explanation for such phenomena. Besides, it must play havoc with your revision for your exams.

  Lola: No, please, Herbert. Please don’t approach my father. I don’t think he will be a problem for much longer anyway.

  I fast forwarded to almost the end of the tape.

  Sound of telephone ringing and being picked up.

  Herbert: Oh, darling Lola, lovely to hear from you. What was that? You want me to wait at the beach for you instead of in the house? Yes….yes.. And what else was that? You might be a couple of hours late and I should return to the house and look for you if you have not arrived at the beach by 3pm? OK. See you soon, my darling.

  I had reached the end of the tape.

  LESSON THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘What are povs, Herbert?’

  ‘Povs? I don’t understand, Marco—in what context?’

  ‘In connection with writing, Herbert. I keep seeing writers tweet about how many povs they have in their books.’

  ‘POV is shorthand for point of view, Marco. Inexperienced writers are often overly concerned about determining which points of view to consider in their work. You look confused, Marco.’

  ‘Why would writers tweet about how many opinions they have in their books, Herbert? What does it matter?’

  ‘You misunderstand, Marco; in the context we are discussing, a point of view is not an opinion, but the position of a narrator in relation to the story being narrated. Many books are written from varying points of view.’

  ‘Do the best books have the most povs, Herbert?’

  ‘No, Marco—there is no correlation between the literary worth of a book and the point or points of view from which it is written. As I said, only the inexperienced and misguided writer believes that experimenting with point of view will set their work apart somehow.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  In which Marco experiments with a pov.

  Extract from the diary of Lieutenant Como Sven Galahad.

  Spent most of the morning with my psychotherapist. She says the Quarry case is probably the cause of my depression. She says I should continue to let Ocram think he’s helping my investigations, as his comical contributions, brainless gaffes, and hilarious incompetence might help lift my spirits, like watching a Laurel and Hardy movie. I half agreed, but said his narcissistic self-importance made me puke. She gave me Varmazepam for the depression, and Coltenolol for the puking.

  Ocram’s in all the papers saying Quarry killed Kellogg. It must be just to keep Chief McGee sweet, though it’s hard to believe the clown would do anything so logical. McGee says Ocram’s a hero and I can spend as much time as I like helping him—that’s the last thing I want, but at least it’s an excuse for nosing around.

  Flora cancelled dinner, so I stayed in to watch TV. Police Squad! was on. After all the nonsense with Ocram, it was good to watch a more serious and realistic detective show to help me get back to normality.

  LESSON THIRTY-EIGHT

  ‘Do you prefer coffee or tea, Herbert?’

  ‘I take neither, Marco: they are insipid stimulants for the masses.’

  ‘What is your normal brew, Herbert?’

  ‘I have a blend of rare exotic superfood infusions flown from the Lesser Antilles twice a day. You should try them.’

  ‘Will it help my writing, Herbert?’

  ‘Who knows, Marco? But when you are desperate, anything is worth a try.’

  ‘I meant to ask, Herbert, what is an adverb? I heard someone say that writers shouldn’t use too many of them.’

  ‘Broadly, Marco, an adverb is a word that qualifies a word other than a noun.’

  ‘A noun?’

  ‘I suggest, Marco, you forget the technicalities, and just write.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  In which Marco continues to use too many adverbs and his labor bears astonishing fruit.

  I woke in Herbert’s guest room, feeling refreshed after a good knight’s sleep of the sort Sir Galahad himself might have experienced. I made myself a superfood infusion and planned my day. I was convinced that the key to the mystery was to find Bow’s second child. The records at the registry office had been destroyed for a purpose, and that purpose could only have been to thwart my investigations, which meant I must be on the right track.

  I decided to visit the local hospital to see if they held records of births. Luckily the insu
rance company had just delivered a replacement black Range Rover with tinted windows, so I was able to drive rather than begging a lift from Como, who had been behaving rather oddly.

  At the hospital, I told the receptionist I would like to see the Chief Executive immediately. She immediately agreed and I was immediately shown to the Chief Executive’s office, where the Chief Executive immediately greeted me effusively.

  “Mister Ocram, it is an incredible pleasure to meet you. My name is Angela. My time and organization are at your service. How can we help you?”

  She had warmly held both my hand and gaze throughout her introductory remarks, so I could tell she was a stock character who could be relied upon to conform to the hackneyed conventions of unimaginative genre fiction. I therefore wrote a passage of suitably wooden and unconvincing dialogue…

  “As you will know from the local and national media, I am helping the police investigate the Herbert Quarry affair. A key to the mystery may be in your hands.”

  “Please tell me more. I will help in any way I can.”

  “I need to identify other children who were born here around the same time as Lola Kellogg. I assume your records cover that period.”

  “Certainly. We have had a computer system upgrade since then, so the information you require will be in our data archive, but it will be a simple matter to retrieve it. Please come along with me, and we can do it now.”

  Angela Newman led me through the corridors of her hospital complex, proudly pointing out the new wings and equipment which had been gifted by various wealthy benefactors, presumably hoping I might take the hint and make my own generous contribution in return for her help. I noticed the ‘Sushing Maternity Wing’ and asked about its provenance.

  “Oh,” said Angela. “You must surely have heard of the world-renowned Professor Sushing. He provided a most generous grant, allowing us to completely rebuild the wing after the fire fifteen years ago.”

  “A fire? Fifteen years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a coincidence, since it was then Lola Kellogg was born.”

  Just as we turned a corner, we bumped into a clerk carrying a sheaf of records, knocking her papers over the polished floor. I helped her pick them up, noticing as I bent down that her toenails were exquisitely varnished in an enchanting opalescent shade I had last seen several chapters ago.

  When I stood to hand the records to the clerk, I saw who she was.

  “Jacqueline!” I said. “I thought you worked in the coffee shop on Tuesdays.”

  She blushed. “It’s Marcia, Mister Ocram, Jacqueline’s twin sister,” she added, just in case the readers had forgotten.

  Marcia—the scorned mad woman who had painted 3,285 pictures of a framed Herbert! What could she be doing here?

  “Yes. Anyway, here we are,” said Angela Newman.

  We had arrived at a door bearing a sign which read Data Archives from Old Computer System. Angela rifled through a massive bunch of keys attached by a lanyard to her belt, until she found the one to unlock the door.

  “It’s already unlocked!” she said after she had inserted the key, the alarm in her voice instantly putting me on my alert.

  We went in and switched on the lights. I had no idea what a computer data archive would look like, but I was getting the hang of the Jackson Pollock method, so I typed some technical mumbo jumbo at random. The archive room was a state-of-the-art installation, equipped with the latest uninterruptible power supply—which looked remarkably like a battery—a king-size fire blanket, twin extractor fans (from a John Deere 6080) and a huge modem in fetching beige. Decorated throughout in flame-retardant flock wallpaper, the tape storage area contained bank after bank of shelving constructed from two-by-two cross-sawn Hemlock with exquisite figuring in the grain. Each shelf bore reel after reel of top-quality ferric-magnate tape, the reels kept immaculately clean by a robotic arm equipped with a duster of the finest ostrich feathers.

  “They should be in chronological order,” said Angela as we worked our way back through the banks of shelving. “So, fifteen years ago should just be about… here.” There was a gap in the reels of tape just where she pointed. My mind raced as I realized the implication of what I had just typed—someone had taken the records.

  “But that’s…. impossible,” garbled the self-deluding chief exec.

  “Clearly not,” I corrected, restoring some much-needed sense of logic to the conversation. “Who else has a key to this room?”

  “Only our data archive technician, Alana McGee.”

  “Alana McGee? Is she related to Chief McGee?”

  “Yes, she’s his niece. Why do you ask?”

  My mind hyperactive, I ignored the question and looked around. A CCTV camera in the corridor pointed directly at the door to the archive room. “Get me the last six months’ footage from that camera and get it now!” I thumped my fist on a table to underline my in-patients, sorry, impatience with the hospital’s slapdash administration.

  I paced up and down the corridor while the frantic chief exec made a series of hurried calls. At last she came to me, a look of complete despair on her tearful face. “The camera. It’s been out of action for the last six months. They hadn’t noticed until I asked for the recordings.”

  My face was set in an iron mask of disapproval. I asked the obvious question. “Who is in charge of those cameras?”

  An hour later I was driving my new black Range Rover with tinted windows to the nearby town of Assumption Springs. Angela Newman had confirmed that the hospital’s head of security was Simpson McGee, another member of Chief McGee’s clan. After a hasty staff conference, we established there was no other copy of the computer archive tapes, and the only chance of discovering which other babies had been born at the same time as Lola was to visit the old head midwife, Marge Downberry, who had retired six months ago.

  Angela had phoned ahead while I was driving, so when I arrived at Marge Downberry’s she was waiting for me.

  “Can I get you a coffee, Mister Ocram?”

  “You don’t happen to have any superfood infusions from the Lesser Antilles?”

  “No, only coffee.”

  “Coffee’s fine then, thanks.” That was a shame—no chance of the writing getting any better. Speaking of which…

  “Did that man Quarry really cut up a fifteen-year-old girl like you said he did in all the newspapers?” asked Marge while she poured us coffees.

  “No, he definitely didn’t.”

  I explained how the press had twisted my words to give an entirely misleading impression of my beliefs about the case.

  “They’re always doing that,” said Marge, knowingly. “If I can help clear his name, I’d be glad to. I’ve no time for the press or the police.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “The reason I retired early is that I used to take photographs of all the new-born babies. You can’t believe how useful it is to have pictures. So often, babies get mixed up and mothers can’t remember which is which. If you have photographs you can always sort things out. But the crazy PC crowd was going on about it being a violation of the babies’ right to privacy. I sent a paper through to the National Congress of the American College of Midwifery condemning the PC brigade as idiots. I put my paper on the internet, with a couple of samples of the photographs. Anyway, turns out some pedophile creep downloaded the pictures, and before I knew it there were headlines in all the papers saying the chief midwife of Clarkesville County Hospital was at the center of a pedophile ring.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I resigned. What else could I do?”

  “And presumably the experience has left you with an abiding hatred of the press, and a desire to help anyone falsely accused by them?”

  “Yes.”

  That was lucky. I wondered if my luck was going to be even better… “Tell me, Marge, what happened to your unofficial birth records?”

  “I kept them.
I figured if they weren’t official no one could stop me taking them. I’ve got them laid out on the table next door.”

  “Yes!” I punched the air. Here at last would be the answer. Once again, my mighty intellect and detecting prowess had outshone the cream of the Clarkesville County Police.

  We walked to Marge’s lounge where photograph album after photograph album stacked on her table showed she had prepared for my visit.

  “Here they are,” said Marge, “memories of happier days. This is the album for the year Lola was born.”

  We had a look at some of the pictures. There were lots of ‘ah isn’t he lovely’, and ‘hasn’t she got her mother’s eyes?’, and ‘yes, it’s sad, but he had a lovely personality’ and such like, before Marge said:

  “I understand you’re particularly interested in other babies born the same time as Lola.”

  “Yes. For reasons that would bore the readers to death if we went into them all over again, I am trying to establish whether there was another child born around the same time as Lola who might have shared the same biological father.”

  “Well for goodness sakes why didn’t you say?” said Marge, starting to sound like my Bronx mom. “Look at this. Here’s Lola—see the birthmark on the sole of her foot? And just a week later, another baby…” Marge turned over a couple of pages. “See?”

  Marge showed me the later baby’s picture. It had exactly the same birthmark as Lola.

  “Are birthmarks like that genetic?” I asked.

  “Mostly,” said Marge. “I remember joking with the baby’s mom and dad about it. I said we’d had a baby in a week earlier with exactly the same birthmark, and wouldn’t it be funny if they had the same father. Of course, the husband wasn’t too happy, but I laughed it off. That’s the trouble with policemen—they’ve absolutely no sense of humor.”

  “Policemen?”

  “Yes, didn’t I tell you? The little girl with the same birthmark as Lola was Scoobie McGee’s daughter.”