The soup was good; the Rojoes Cominho even better.
‘Victor told me you worked on Shakespeare up in London,’ said Bowden.
It was the most prestigious area in which to work in the LiteraTec office. Lake poetry was a close second and Restoration comedy after that. Even in the most egalitarian of offices, a pecking order always established itself.
‘There was very little room for promotion in the London office so after a couple of years I was given the Shakespeare work,’ I replied, tearing at a piece of bread. ‘We get a lot of trouble from Baconians in London.’
Bowden looked up.
‘How do you rate the Baconian theory?’
‘Not much. Like many people I’m pretty sure there is more to Shakespeare than just Shakespeare. But Sir Francis Bacon using a little-known actor as a front? I just don’t buy it.’
‘He was a trained lawyer,’ asserted Bowden. ‘Many of the plays have legal parlance to them.’
‘It means nothing,’ I replied, ‘Greene, Nashe and especially Ben Jonson use legal phraseology; none of them had legal training. And don’t even get me started on the so-called codes. ‘
‘No need to worry about that,’ replied Bowden. ‘I won’t. I’m no Baconian either. He didn’t write them.’
‘And what would make you so sure?’
‘If you read his De Augmentis Sdentarium you’ll find Bacon actually criticising popular drama. Furthermore, when the troupe Shakespeare belonged to applied to the King to form a theatre, they were referred to the commissioner for suits. Guess who was on that panel and most vociferously opposed the application?’
‘Francis Bacon?’ I asked.
‘Exactly. Whoever wrote the plays, it wasn’t Bacon. I’ve formulated a few theories of my own over the years. Have you ever heard of Edward De Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘There is some proof that, unlike Bacon, he could actually write and write quite well—hang on.’
Lottie had brought a phone to the table. It was for Bowden. He wiped his mouth with a napkin.
‘Yes?’
He looked up at me.
‘Yes, she is. We’ll be right over. Thanks.’
‘Problems?’
‘It’s your aunt and uncle. I don’t know how to say this but… they’ve been kidnapped!’
There were several police and SpecOps cars clustered around the entrance to my mother’s house when we pulled up. A small crowd had assembled and was peering over the fence. The dodos had gathered on the other side and were staring back, wondering what the fuss was all about. I showed my badge to the officer on duty.
‘LiteraTec?’ he said scornfully. ‘Can’t let you in, ma’am. Police and SpecOps 9 only.’
‘He’s my uncle—!’ I said angrily, and the officer reluctantly let me through. Swindon was the same as London: a LiteraTec’s badge held about as much authority as a bus pass. I found my mother in the living room surrounded by damp Kleenex. I sat beside her and asked her what had happened.
She blew her nose noisily.
‘I called them in for dinner at one. It was snorkers, Mycroft’s favourite. There was no answer so I went down to his workshop. They were both gone and the double doors wide open. Mycroft wouldn’t have gone out without saying anything.’
This was true. Mycroft never left the house unless it was absolutely necessary; since Owens had been meringued Polly did all his running around.
‘Anything stolen?’ I asked a SpecOps 9 operative who stared at me coldly. He didn’t relish being asked questions by a LiteraTec.
‘Who knows?’ he replied with little emotion. ‘I understand you’d been in his workshop recently?’
‘Yesterday evening.’
‘Then perhaps you can have a look around and tell us if there is anything missing?’
I was escorted to Mycroft’s workshop. The rear doors had been forced and I looked around carefully. The table where Mycroft had kept all his bookworms had been cleared; all I could see was the massive two-pronged power lead that would have slotted into the back of the Prose Portal.
‘There was something right here. Several goldfish bowls full up with small worms and a large book a bit like a mediaeval church Bible—‘
‘Can you draw it?’ asked a familiar voice. I turned to see Jack Schitt lurking in the shadows, smoking a small cigarette and overseeing a Goliath technician who was passing a humming sensor over the ground.
‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘If it isn’t Jack Schitt. What’s Goliath’s interest in my uncle?’
‘Can you draw it?’ he repeated.
I nodded, and one of the Goliath men gave me a pencil and paper. I sketched out what I had seen, the intricate combination of dials and knobs on the front of the book and the heavy brass straps. Jack Schitt took it from me and studied it with great interest as another Goliath technician walked in from outside.
‘Well?’ asked Schitt.
The agent saluted neatly and showed Schitt a pair of large and slightly molten G-clamps.
‘Professor Next had jury-rigged his own set of cables to the electrical sub-station just next door. I spoke to the electricity board. They said they had three unexplained power drains of about 1.8 megawatts each late last night.’
Jack Schitt turned to me.
‘You better leave this to us, Next,’ he said. ‘Kidnapping and theft are not part of the LiteraTec’s responsibility.’
‘Who did this?’ I demanded, but Schitt didn’t take crap from anyone—least of all me. He wagged a finger in my direction.
‘This investigation is nothing to do with you; we’ll keep you informed of any developments. Or not. As I see fit.’
He turned and walked away.
‘It was Acheron, wasn’t it?’ I said, slowly and deliberately. Schitt stopped in mid-stride, and turned to face me.
‘Acheron is dead, Next. Burned to a crisp at Junction twelve. Don’t spread your theories around town, girl. It might make you seem more unstable than you actually are.’
He smiled without the least vestige of kindness and walked out of the workshop to his waiting car.
15. Hello & Goodbye, Mr Quaverley
‘Few people remember Mr Quaverley any more. If you had read Martin Chuzzlewit prior to 1985 you would have come across a minor character who lived in Mrs Todger’s boarding house. He discoursed freely with the Pecksniffs on the subject of butterflies, of which he knew almost nothing. Sadly, he is no longer there. His hat is hanging on the hatrack at the bottom of page 235, but that is all that remains…’
‘Astounding!’ said Acheron quietly as he surveyed Mycroft’s Prose Portal. ‘Truly astounding!’
Mycroft said nothing. He had been too busy wondering whether Polly was still alive and well since the poem closed on her. Against his protestations they had pulled the plug before the portal had reopened; he didn’t know if any human could survive in such an environment. They had blindfolded him during the journey and he was now standing in the smoking lounge of what had once been a large and luxurious hotel. Although still grand, the decor was tatty and worn. The pearl-inlaid grand piano didn’t look as though it had been tuned for years, and the mirror-backed bar was sadly devoid of any refreshment. Mycroft looked out of the window for a clue as to where he was being held. It wasn’t hard to guess. The large quantity of drab-coloured Griffin motor-cars and the absence of any advertising hoardings told Mycroft all he needed to know; he was in the People’s Republic of Wales, somewhere well out of reach of the conventional law enforcement agencies. The possibility of escape was slim, and if he could get away, “what then? Even if there was a chance he could make it back across the border, he would never be able to leave without Polly—she was still imprisoned in the poem, itself now little more than printed words on a scrap of paper that Hades had placed in his breast pocket. There seemed to be little chance of regaining the poem without a fearsome struggle, and besides, without the bookworms and the Prose Portal, Polly would stay in her Wordsworthian prison forever. Mycroft bit his lip nervously and turned his attention to the other people in the room. Besides himself and Hades there were four others—and two of them held guns.