The Abominable Showman

by Robert Rankin

  To Mr Warrington’s right, Lady Agnes Rutherford the authoress and investigator (and unknown to Mr Warrington a veritable expert in ‘playing the pink clarinet’). Next to her Humphrey Gumshoe the New York private eye and next to him Mr Who the Chinese criminologist.

  ‘Welcome one and welcome all,’ said Mr Henry Warrington. ‘I hope your journeys up were hunky dory and your accommodation leaves nothing to be desired. As chairman and owner of the company which bears my name and sponsors this yearly congress, do let me say what a pleasure it is to see you all. Two notable absences of course, Rama Singh, the Psychic Sikh and Dame Molly Merkin, the Mistress of Mystery. Let us raise our glasses now to these dear departed.’

  Glasses were raised and drinks were drunk. As Sir Jonathan had not been offered a glass, he did neither.

  ‘Winner and loser at last year’s event,’ Henry Warrington went on. ‘Held at Tudor Manor in Hampshire, but we won’t be doing that again.’

  There were mumbles of agreement all around the table.

  Sir Jonathan shrugged. Mr Warrington continued.

  ‘Yes, a rather unfortunate business. Put a bit of a dampener on the weekend.’

  ‘Sorry pardon to that,’ said the man from Scotland Yard. ‘But the law is the law and murder is murder. I was only doing the job I am paid for.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Mr Warrington. ‘Which is why we are holding this year’s congress here. Many air miles above the law, as it were.’

  ‘Well beyond my jurisdiction,’ agreed the chief inspector. ‘Which does mean that I can play a more active role this year.’

  Sir Jonathan glanced from face to face of those who sat about him. He had absolutely no idea whatsoever as to the meaning of anything so far said. But perhaps all would soon become clear, so he nodded his head thoughtfully as if he did know what was going on and said nothing whatsoever at all.

  ‘Now, each of you were asked to bring something,’ said Mr Warrington. ‘Have you all done that?’

  Heads nodded, Sir Jonathan patted his portfolio.

  ‘Might we see what you have chosen?’

  Hands fumbled into pockets, a purse, a Gladstone bag and this thing and the next. An assortment of items were then laid out on the long black ebony table.

  A dagger, a revolver, a rope, a wrench, a piece of rope and a length of lead pipe.

  ‘Oh splendid,’ cried Mr Warrington. ‘Much better than last year, when you all brought ray guns.’

  Sir Jonathan Crawford did scratchings of the head and asked, ‘Would you now like to hear my paper?’

  ‘Oh very droll,’ said Mr Warrington. ‘You are really entering into the spirit of things. You’ll make a great player, I’m sure.’

  Sir Jonathan shook his well-scratched head.

  Mr Warrington had some more to say.

  ‘To make it more interesting,’ he said, ‘I have increased the number of rooms for play. If you would like to make notes, the rooms are as follows. The library, the kitchen, the ballroom, the conservatory, the dining room, the billiard room, the lounge, the hall and the study. Plenty of scope there, I should think.

  Lady Agnes raised her hand.

  ‘Dear lady?’ said Mr Warrington.

  ‘What is the game’s duration?’ asked her ladyship.

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ said Mr Warrington. ‘And now, Sir Jonathan, we would love you to read your paper.’

  ‘You would?’ asked Sir Jonathan Crawford.

  ‘We would, sir, yes indeed.’

  And so Sir Jonathan did.

  And when he had finished he was roundly cheered.

  ‘Excellent stuff,’ said Mr Warrington. ‘And food for thought for us all. Well, lady and gentlemen and indeed our simian guest –’ the chimp in the fez grinned toothily, ‘– good luck everybody and we will meet again this time tomorrow.’

  Sir Jonathan shrugged and returned his papers to his leather portfolio.

  ‘All except for you, Sir Jonathan,’ said Mr Warrington. ‘Because you, of course, will have been murdered.’

  19

  ‘And you really truly did not see that coming?’ Berty the beetroot asked Sir Jonathan Crawford.

  Sir Jonathan shook his head dismally. He sat on his bed in his suite of rooms. The door was firmly bolted shut, with a chest of drawers pressed against it

  ‘Outrageous,’ he muttered and once more shook his head.

  ‘But things do fall neatly into place,’ Berty went on. ‘It certainly explains why Lady Agnes permitted your sexual excesses. An act of selfless charity for a condemned man, you might say. What a very kindly woman.’

  Sir Jonathan Crawford did grumblings. ‘Quite outrageous,’ he said.

  ‘But sporting,’ said Berty. ‘After all they did have the decency to tell you that you would be the victim.’

  ‘Thoughtful of them,’ his lordship said.

  ‘And you might even survive if you stay locked in here for the twenty-four hours. I didn’t hear “bedroom” included on their list of locations for the murder.’

  ‘Good point,’ said Sir Jonathan.

  Berty did a passable impression of Chief Inspector Digby Barton.

  ‘Only doing my job, sir,’ he said.

  Sir Jonathan sought his portmanteau, an impressively brass-bound steamer trunk that had served his father before him. He turned it onto its side and tinkered at its rear. A false bottom fell away revealing an array of handguns and stilettos.

  ‘Well-prepared is best prepared,’ said Sir Jonathan Crawford.

  ‘You intend perhaps that the hunted become the hunter?’

  ‘I can see no other way for it. I do not intend to cower in here for twenty-four hours. There is a show on tonight in the ship’s Music Hall that I don’t want to miss. Sophia Poppette is topping the bill. Better that I just kill all the male contestants. Lady Agnes will win by default. I will gladly purchase the champagne so we can celebrate together.’

  ‘I am not sure that’s in the rules,’ said Berty.

  ‘Rules are made to be broken,’ said Sir Jonathan Crawford. ‘And in space, no one can hear you cheat.’

  Far away in space and getting further, The Pilgrim hurtled on towards the sun.

  ‘And so that is my plan,’ I said to Barry. We were back in the toilet once more. ‘What do you think, is it good, or very good?’

  ‘Positively inspired, chief. Let me just run through it to make sure I haven’t missed anything. Using your gifts of subtlety and persuasion you will inveigle your fellow crew members into mutiny. You will overpower the professor and push him out of the airlock into space –’

  ‘Well, he is keen to meet God,’ I said.

  ‘Quite so, chief. Then using your, it would seem to me, untried skills as a space pilot, you will turn the ship around and return to The Leviathan.’

  I nodded my head. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Then using the fiendishly ingenious excuse that The Pilgrim did reach the big lens, but found it to be impenetrable so bounced off it and ricocheted back to The Leviathan, you’ll ask to be promoted. Am I correct?’

  ‘Somehow you make it seem less than convincing,’ I said.

  ‘I wonder why that would be, chief.’

  ‘Well, that’s my plan,’ I said. ‘But if you have come up with a better one I would be pleased at least to hear it.’

  ‘Nothing to report on yet, chief, sorry,’ said the sprout.

  And bang bang bang on the bloody door went the fist of the bigger boy.

  Bang bang bang went a different fist upon a dressing room door. This door had six stars upon it and was located to the rear of the Music Hall stage on board The Leviathan.

  A voice called, ‘Five minutes to rehearsal, Miss Poppette.’

  But there was no one in the dressing room to hear it.

  The owner of the fist knew that the six star dressing room was deserted, was always deserted during rehearsals, but it was his job to knock, so he knocked.

  Sophia Poppette did not attend rehearsals, for truly she had nothing to
rehearse. She topped the bill and those who saw her came away in awe. But when asked by those who had not seen her as to what was precisely the nature of her act, those who had viewed it, or thought they had viewed it, were somewhat vague in reply.

  The theatre critic of The Times newspaper had not as yet managed to acquire a ticket to see the Poppette and his many requests for an interview with this enigmatic and elusive personage had all been denied. He had, however, spoken to a number of folk who had attended a particular performance. No two reports were the same. None were even similar.

  Sophia Poppette did something on stage. Something utterly wonderful. But to later describe what had been experienced was seemingly impossible. The memories fled like dreams at the hour of dawn.

  And so the rehearsal went ahead without the show’s star turn.

  The star turn knelt once more beneath the stars. Within the glass-covered jungle atop The Leviathan. Upon her knee she cradled the vegetable lamb. And as she fed it sips of milk from a baby’s bottle, she sang to it words of Latin.

  Words that had been introduced into the mass by Pope Sergius the First in the year six hundred and ninety.

  ‘Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.’

  And the birds ceased to sing and the monkeys to scamper. For it was as if these magical words, half whispered and half sung, soared upwards between the great trees’ spreading branches and left behind the work of man to enter the Kingdom of God.

  ‘You see,’ I explained, to a ginger-haired boy who I had coerced into joining me in the toilet with a promise of shared humbugs. ‘There isn’t a Kingdom of God. Well, there might be, of course, somewhere. But it’s not a place that you can fly to in a spaceship.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked the ginger boy, a-scratching his behind.

  ‘Because if it exists at all it is a spiritual realm.’

  ‘So how do you get there?’ asked this scratching ginger.

  ‘Only by dying,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, thanks for clearing that up,’ he said.

  ‘So you will join me in the mutiny?’

  ‘The what?’ asked the ginger boy.

  ‘The mutiny to overthrow Professor Mandlebrot and bring this doomed expedition to an end.’

  ‘Oh I can’t do that,’ said the ginger boy. ‘I am looking forward to meeting God.’

  ‘You are not going to meet God!’ I said and I shook the ginger boy. ‘You are going to die.’

  The ginger boy nodded his ginger head. ‘But you just said that the only way to meet God was to die. So whichever way, it’s a win-win situation.’

  ‘He’s got you there, chief,’ said Barry.

  ‘No he has not,’ I said. ‘And no one ever used the term “win-win situation” in the nineteen-twenties.’

  ‘Nor indeed flew in spaceships, chief. I wouldn’t go troubling yourself over details like that. Not at a moment like this.’

  ‘We are all going to die!’ I shouted.

  And a bang bang banging came at the toilet door.

  ‘Bang!’ went the gun of Sir Jonathan Crawford and Mr Who the Chinaman dropped dead.

  ‘Very nice shooting,’ said Berty the beetroot. ‘I didn’t even see him creeping up on you.’

  Sir Jonathan Crawford blew into the barrel of his gun. Diners in Orion’s Eatery gaped at him in horror.

  ‘Please carry on with your meals,’ said Sir Jonathan Crawford. ‘There’s nothing to see here.’

  ‘Except the corpse,’ said Berty. ‘That I didn’t see creeping up.’

  ‘Because he wasn’t creeping up.’ His lordship holstered his pistol. ‘He was just sitting there eating his lunch –’

  ‘With his family?’ said Berty.

  ‘With his – ah,’ said Sir Jonathan Crawford. ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘No worries,’ said Berty the beetroot. ‘These are the nineteen-twenties and we are in space, beyond the rule of law and most of the boundaries of good taste. So you are probably on reasonably safe ground doing something that implies you consider all Chinamen to look the same.’

  Sir Jonathan turned and shot down Humphrey Gumshoe.

  This time the diners made loud with their applause.

  For after all it was only a damned American.

  And all Americans were pretty much – well – American.

  ‘You see, we Russians,’ said Count Ilya Rostov, to his catspaw Gurt in the wheelhouse of The Leviathan, ‘we Russians know a thing or two about spaceships and all that kind of technical stuff. We are a race noted for such scientific achievements.’

  ‘This spaceship had its keel laid down in Liverpool, master,’ said Gurt. ‘You commissioned it from the White Star Line.’

  ‘With my Russian wealth and to my specifications.’

  ‘Master, you have a poorly disguised Etonian accent and your father founded the White Star Line. And apart from your assumed name, your costume and your use of the word “chumrades”, there is nothing even vaguely Russian about you.’

  ‘I have changed my mind,’ said Count Ilya Rostov.

  ‘About impersonating a Russian, good choice master.’

  ‘No,’ said the count. ‘About allowing you to air your feelings and say anything you like in my presence for two minutes every day.’

  ‘Ah, master,’ said Gurt.

  ‘Now go and fetch my big knobkerrie and I will beat you senseless for your impudence.’

  ‘Might I just add then, master –’

  ‘No!’ said Count Ilya Rostov.

  And he gazed out from the wheelhouse towards the stars beyond.

  ‘Soon,’ he said to none present but himself. ‘Soon The Pilgrim will reach her destination. And with that mission’s success nothing will stand in the way of the very very secret plans that I have thought up all by myself and nobody knows a thing about but me.’

  And with this said, the count laughed.

  In the manner that a super villain would.

  ‘Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha,’ he went. ‘Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha.’

  I wasn’t laughing at all. I now had two black eyes and a bloody nose.

  ‘I am going to have a good cry,’ I said to Barry. ‘And don’t try to stop me.’

  I was standing in the broom cupboard as I had been forbidden, upon pain of death, to use the toilet again.

  ‘And I’m going to burst from wee wee too,’ I said.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ said Barry.

  ‘There isn’t any bright side, you stupid little sprout.’

  ‘What time do you think it is, chief?’ asked Barry.

  ‘Why should I care?’ I replied.

  ‘Well, I’ve made certain mental calculations and if they are correct, and I have no reason to think they are not, I foresee a distinct improvement in your situation becoming an imminent probability.’

  ‘You do talk a lot of toot at times,’ I said.

  ‘Bear with me, chief. At any moment now. And if you would care to peep out of the porthole.’

  ‘What is this?’ I enquired.

  ‘Just hold on and there.’ Barry did not have a finger to point but I could see just what he meant.

  ‘It is a galleon,’ I said. ‘A ghostly galleon. We are about to be boarded by dead pirates.’

  ‘It is a Venusian aether ship,’ said Barry. ‘Come to bring a halt to the expedition.’

  ‘Bring a halt?’ I cried. ‘Deep joy.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barry. ‘According to my entirely correct calculations The Pilgrim has just made an unauthorised entry into Venusian space-space (which is like air-space, only made out of space). And will be allowed to proceed no further.’

  ‘Then we are saved!’ I shouted. ‘We don’t have to die in the heart of the sun.’

  ‘We don’t have to die there,’ said Barry.

  ‘Attention space ship Pilgrim,’ came a voice through an interspace loudhailer. ‘You have entered Venusian space-space without authority. You can proceed no further.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said I.

  ‘The penalty
for such unauthorised entry is death.’

  20

  ‘I wonder what Sir Jonathan Crawford is up to, chief,’ said Barry.

  ‘Oh no you jolly well don’t,’ I shook my head fiercely. ‘We’re not cutting to any scenes with other characters now. I hold you directly responsible for this.’

  ‘Oooh,’and ‘Ow,’ went Barry the sprout. ‘Let up with the fierce head-shaking already.’

  ‘Take me home and now,’ was my demand. And then I went ‘ooo-ooooh,’ as I was suddenly pitched backwards amongst the mops and brooms of the most uncomfortable cupboard. ‘What’s going on?’ I managed to say, as I fell down with severe utensil-entanglement.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Barry. ‘It would seem that the professor has put the ship into Unlikeliness Mode in order to accelerate away and escape the Venusians.

  ‘Unlikeliness Mode?’ I queried. ‘That sounds most improbable.’

  ‘I would call it the Improbability Drive,’ said Barry. ‘But that would be a breach of copyright.’

  ‘Lost on me,’ I shook my head less fiercely and tried to gain my feet. ‘But if we are escaping the Venusians, hoorah!’

  ‘Yes, hoorah, chief,’ Barry made small coughing sounds. ‘All the sooner to reach the heart of the sun.’

  ‘Do something Barry.’ I bawled at the sprout.

  ‘Out of that cupboard you,’ shouted a voice I knew well.

  But I would not come out of that cupboard and, I am pleased to say, that bigger boy could not winkle me out of that cupboard.

  Because several brooms and mops had tumbled in such a way as to prevent the door being opened.

  Which some of you might consider unlikely at best. As cupboard doors invariably open outwards. But hey, we have already established that this cupboard had its own porthole, which is pretty unlikely, considering. So whichever way the door opened is not going to make a very great deal of difference.

  Of course it could have been something to do with the professor putting the ship into the Unlikeliness Mode that did not infringe the copyright of the Improbability Drive. But who can say for sure.