“I don’t know,” Harold said. “I really don’t know.”
“He was a nice boy,” Molly said. “I wish you hadn’t cut off his hand.”
Harold didn’t look at her. “He shouldn’t have killed that sheep. I can’t afford to have sheep killed for nothin’.”
“Oh, I think you know very well it wasn’t for nothin’.”
Harold looked at her. “In some countries they cut off your hand if you steal something, you know. He killed a sheep. I don’t see what the difference is.”
Molly gave him a scornful look. “In some countries. But we’re not in those countries. We don’t have to do things those ways.”
“The real problem,” Harold said, “is that daughter of yours. That makes three we’ve had to get rid of because of her. This can’t go on forever. We’re gonna have to talk to her again.”
And then he walked back inside the kitchen.
BRYANT AND MAY’S MYSTERY TOUR by Christopher Fowler
“Mr Bryant is so old that most of his lifetime subscriptions have run out.” Leslie Faraday, the Home Office crime liaison officer, poked about on his biscuit tray looking for a Custard Cream. “He’s far beyond the statutory working age limit, but no one has the heart to broach the matter with him.”
“Sentimentality can’t be allowed to stand in the way of modern policing procedures,” replied Oskar Kasavian, peering from the window into the tiled Whitehall courtyard. Faraday took a quick peek to see if the new supervisor in charge of Internal Security cast a shadow, as his cadaverous pale form created office rumours of supernatural lineage. “We’re not here to provide the inefficient with a living.”
This last remark confused Faraday, who believed that this was precisely the purpose for which Whitehall had been created. “Quite,” he replied, “but surely we must take into account his long and illustrious career working with the Peculiar Crimes Unit. He and his partner pioneered research in the field. One doesn’t force admirals into retirement simply because they no longer go to sea. We benefit from their experience.”
“Old generals are the cause of military disasters,” said Kasavian, drumming long fingers on the window pane. “The elderly are weak precisely because they live in the past.” He released a long, desperate sigh. “However, in this situation I see no other recourse than to put them on the case.”
So it was that the Home Office called Arthur Bryant of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, and Bryant visited a crime scene in King’s Cross, and then called his partner, John May, with instructions to meet him at 10:15 a.m. beside a bus stop in Marble Arch. It was a muggy wet morning, and May resented being summoned from his bed.
“Ah, there you are.” The elderly detective hailed his partner with a wild whip of his walking stick, and nearly pruned a passing tourist. Bryant had misbuttoned his shapeless brown cardigan and dragged his moth-eaten Harris tweed coat over the top of it. He looked more like a tramp than a detective. “I got here early and had a potter through Hyde Park.”
“You had your mobile with you?” asked May, surprised. Arthur was three years his senior, but two decades behind the rest of the world when it came to technology.
“I did have, yes,” Bryant admitted, tugging his battered brown trilby further onto his head. “Here’s our bus.” He indicated the open-topped Routemaster that was just pulling up.
May was suspicious. “Then where is it now?”
“I think I dropped it in the Princess Diana Memorial Drain. Don’t worry, it’ll just keep going round. I’ll get it when I come back. You’re probably wondering what this is all about.”
“And why we’re boarding a sightseeing bus, yes,” said May, helping his partner inside the idling vehicle. The portly driver stared at them through his windscreen.
“There was a rather sad little murder in King’s Cross during the night. A 54-year-old cleaning lady named Joan March was strangled to death in her third floor flat in Hastings Street. The HO felt the case warranted our involvement.”
“But this bus doesn’t go anywhere near King’s Cross.” May checked the route, noting that it tacked through central London in a loop.
“Oh, we’re not going to the murder site. I’ve already been there.” Bryant seated himself on the arrow-patterned seat at the front of the bus, next to a gingery young man who was standing in the aisle with a microphone. His badge read; Hi! I’m Martin! “I wanted you here so that we could apprehend the murderer.”
The Routemaster pulled away from the stop at Speaker’s Corner, heading into Oxford Street. “My Uncle Jack used to get up on his soapbox over there, just after the war,” said Bryant, tapping the rain-spattered window. “Less passion, less protein, ban licentious theatre, shoot the Welsh; he’d rant about anything so long as it involved getting rid of something. I suppose the preachers of Speaker’s Corner still do.”
“Now, does anyone know the name of the bi-i-i-g department store on our right?” Martin the tour guide was as wide-eyed as a first-time father, and as patronizing. There were no takers. “Anyone?”
Bryant raised his hand. “Selfridges, opened in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge. He coined the phrase ‘The customer is always right’, and was the first salesman to put products out on display.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Martin.
“But I do,” Bryant countered.
“We’re catching a murderer on a bus?” asked May in disbelief.
“We are now heading toward Oxford Circus, which was once described by Noel Coward as the Hub of the Universe,” announced the tour guide.
“This boy’s a dunderhead.” Bryant jerked a wrinkled thumb at Martin, who overheard him. “That was John Wyndham’s reference to Piccadilly Circus.” Bryant had recently given up working as a London guide in his spare time, after picking too many arguments with the tourists. He forgot most things, but never the facts he had painstakingly gathered about his city.
“I don’t understand,” May persisted. “Why did we get the case?” Bryant and May’s division, the Peculiar Crimes Unit, only handled investigations the Home Office found detrimental to government policy. Arthur loved working with his partner John May, and revelled in the fact that they performed a service no one else in the city could offer. No one had their arcane depth of knowledge, or was able to use it in the cause of crime prevention. Across the decades they had closed the cases few could understand, let alone solve.
“There are three oddities.” Bryant ticked his fingers. “One, after strangling Mrs March, the murderer ordered two pizzas, calmly eating both of them. B, he slept overnight in the apartment. And three, his victim killed someone after he left.”
May considered the matter as the bus turned into Regent Street. “I’m sorry, Arthur, you’ve utterly lost me.”
“Do try to pay attention. The murderer left the flat at 6:15 this morning, not realizing that his victim was still alive. Mrs March struggled to the window to raise the alarm, but the effort of opening it was too much for her. She lost consciousness and fell out into the street, landing on a gentleman called Sir Ian Lowry-”
“The MOD bigwig?”
“The very same, who was apparently just leaving a call-girl’s flat, where he had presumably stayed the night. Mrs March broke her neck and his leg. And that’s why the HO called us in. Obviously, it’s a serious security breach, because Sir Ian is privy to all kinds of military secrets. The call-girl has already been brought in, and all that’s left is the apprehension of her killer.”
“So I’m here to help you identify him,” said May, still a little confused.
“Oh, I know who the murderer is.” Bryant cheerily flashed his oversized false teeth. “You were complaining about getting old the other day, so I thought this would be a chance for you to test your fading faculties.”