***
The waiter at the Filthy Fowl brought a steaming plate of shepherd’s pie with peas and baby carrots to the cantankerous old fart’s table. There was no sign of the cantankerous old fart. Perhaps he’d gone to the Gents to do battle with his prostate. Whatever. The waiter took the meal back to the kitchen to be kept warm. If the old coot dared to breathe a word about being kept waiting...
But the old coot was not in the Gents; he was no longer in the pub. He was tapping his way along the brickwork pavements, heading for home, a man on a mission.
To think: Shakespeare’s muse right here in Stratford! The airy spirit that gave the playwright his insights into the supernatural and who brought him specialist knowledge about countless matters! Professor Cheese knew it was not only unfashionable but downright career suicide to make public these views but all along he had suspected it to be the truth. The Bard of Avon had assistance from another plane - perhaps another planet; it was just one of the myriad questions Cheese wanted to ask Ariel.
How did they meet, Will and the spirit? Was there some kind of arrangement between them, or was it, like Prospero and the Ariel in the play, a form of pressed service, of slavery?
And what was the great man like? This was the burning question that scorched the heart of every Shakespeare scholar. The works give conflicting glimpses of the man behind the lines. Contradictions and obfuscations and gaps in the records made the writer one of the most intriguing and ungraspable people in history.
But at last, and impossibly one would have thought, here was someone (something!) who had actually known the man.
Professor Cheese cackled to himself as he hurried through the old town district. This was the chance of a lifetime. He had little time to prepare - not just his questions but also... He didn’t want to call it a trap. That sounded cruel and barbaric. So not a ‘trap’ then but rather the means by which he could ‘persuade’ the spirit to stay...
Fumbling his keys with excited hands, Professor Cheese let himself into his ivy-covered cottage. He put his hat and cane on the hall table and shuffled into his study. Despite the protestations of his back, he pushed some furniture to the walls and bent double to roll up the oriental rug.
The chalk would stand out excellently well on the dark wood of the floorboards, he expected. He ransacked his own desk to find the box he had kept from his old teaching days - it was all marker pens on white boards or PowerPoints projected from computers now. Progress! Bah! You can keep it, he grumbled. What he was about to do was the opposite of progress.
His fingers seized eagerly on the battered box of chalk. He consulted his first edition of Doctor John Dee’s notebook and reminded himself of the arcane symbols he would have to describe on the floor.
He wondered how Sycorax had done it - how had the witch trapped Ariel in a pine tree? The play gave no clue. And all Cheese’s years of research and study had yielded nothing of her practices. It was possible she was an invention, a fiction. But with Ariel present in the here-and-now, if not exactly in the flesh, it was tantalising to think that other characters might also have some basis in Shakespeare’s real life...
A twinge along his backbone warned the professor not to scrabble around the floor to create the arcane design. The flash of pain put the light of an idea in his mind. He hurried to the kitchen for the broom. He fixed a stick of chalk to the end of the broomstick with parcel tape; he would be able to draw the symbols without having to bend over.
Like Lavinia writing in the sand, he chuckled - No; like Prospero with his staff!
Energised by this notion, Professor Auberon Cheese carefully turned around on the spot, sweeping the tip of the chalk across the floorboards.
He worked quickly and methodically, pausing only to consult Dr Dee’s book for reminders.
Time was running out - the boy would be here with the spirit - the divine spirit! - any moment now.
Ding-dong! As if on cue, the doorbell chimed.
Bugger, Cheese swore. He stashed the broom behind the desk and padded into the hall.
“Coming!” he called out and reached for the latch.
Fourteen.
There was no answer. Harry wondered whether he should knock again. The black lion knocker unnerved him but it was the idea of annoying the Prof that deterred him more.
Behind him, Ariel had his eyes closed. His nostrils flared as he drank in the scent of the professor’s celandine, wild roses, and the hanging baskets brimming with pink pansies.
“What are you doing?” Harry hissed.
“I don’t see why we should both go without lunch,” said Ariel.
“Well, behave yourself. Should I knock again, do you think?”
“The old man may be hard of hearing,” Ariel shrugged. “Or he may have had a fall and shattered his pelvis. Or -”
“Enough!” Harry grabbed the iron ring through the lion’s nose and rapped on the door as assertively as he dared.
They waited. Ariel inhaled the perfume of a cluster of foxgloves and almost swooned in ecstasy.
“Still no answer,” Harry observed, redundantly. “You couldn’t pop in and have a squint, could you?”
“I could.”
“Then will you?”
“Pretty please?”
“Pretty please with bells on! Honestly, I think I preferred it when you thought I was your master.”
Ariel chuckled. His body elongated and became transparent. He entered through the door knocker’s mouth, as if the lion was slurping milk through a straw.
“Show off,” Harry muttered.
He waited. He pressed his ear against the door but could hear nothing.
“Ariel?”
The latch clicked and the door opened, swinging inwards as if it had a mind of its own. Harry put a foot on the age-worn doorstep.
“Professor?”
Ariel, corporeal again, stepped grimly into the hall.
“Harry...” he began. Harry’s eyes widened and his heart began to gallop. He pushed his way through the spirit and entered the professor’s study.
The room was in great disarray. There were books and papers everywhere. Shelves had been pulled down and furniture overturned. The study looked as though a hurricane had passed through it to say hello.
Cheese was lying on the floor in the centre of a large chalk circle. Around the edge were sigils and symbols Harry didn’t recognise. Some were scuffed by partial footprints. Others were washed by a slowly flowing tide of blood coming from the professor’s bright blazer.
“Holy fuck!” Harry hurried to the old man.
“He lives,” said Ariel. “Although not for long, I warrant you.”
“Get an ambulance! The police!” Harry panicked. Ariel gave him a blank look. Harry pulled out his phone and tossed it to the spirit. He didn’t know whether to move the old man at all, to try to make him comfortable, to help in some way...
He dithered.
“Have you got through yet?”
“I got through the door knocker.”
“I mean on the phone.”
“Um...” Ariel held out the mystical oblong of wonders. “The spirits do not respond to my fingers no matter how I try to coax them out.”
Harry snatched the phone back with his solid, fleshy fingers. Before he could summon the emergency services, he was interrupted by a raspy exhalation from the floor. The professor stirred. He extended a finger and dragged it through the spreading pool of his own blood. The cuff of his blazer was wet and red from its absorptions.
With the last of his strength, Professor Auberon Cheese wrote letters on the floor. The blood glistened on the dark wood; Harry was transfixed as the moving finger wrote its message and then moved no more.
“Where...the...b...” Harry read. He repeated it over and over. “It makes no sense. ‘
Where the b’? What the fuck does that mean?”
Ariel nodded to the device in Harry’s fist.
“Oh, right; yes, of course,” Harry came to his senses. He dialled 999. “Hello, yes? Ambulance, please. And the police. There’s been an assault. An old man has been assaulted. No,” Harry exchanged a horrified look with a blank-faced Ariel, “he’s been murdered.”
***
Kelly Benn found the American twat in the Birthplace tearoom. She was in no mood for his bullshit. The old man had proved surprisingly resilient and had not given up his secret. His piece of the staff was not in the cottage - she was certain of that; trashing the place had been more of a scare tactic than a serious search. She would sense it when it was near. She was sure of that.
She had considered effecting a swap and becoming the old man, but had decided the risk was too great. The transfer of energy into his frail body might push all trace of him into oblivion, erase all trace of his memory and then the whereabouts of the piece would be unknown forever.
No; it was better to occupy a younger body. She found more of the original owner remained - not to mention the sharper reflexes and physical agility. The current host body suited her for the time being; it gave her access to the American who, although a twat, was also seeking the staff for some foolish reason of his own.
The twat didn’t know what he was dealing with, but if his famous face opened doors and loosened jaws, so much the better.
She could always kill him later. She might even give him the honour of being the first to be obliterated when the staff was once again complete.
“Cup of tea?” Brownlow brandished a dinky teapot.
Ms Benn sneered. “No time. We need to get you away from here.”
“What? Why?”
“Come on.”
Puzzled, Brownlow followed her to the exit. The sound of sirens tore through the air. “What’s going on?”
Ms Benn, surprisingly strong, shoved him into a doorway and out of the swarm of pedestrians.
“Someone else is after what you’re after.” Her eyes bored into him. He was rather startled. “And they’re prepared to kill for it.”
“What?” Brownlow’s mind raced.
“Think, man! The old don at the library in Birmingham. Your former p.a.”
“What? That old man jumped! He -”
“Was he driven to it? We don’t know. And Janet -”
“Janine!”
“Janine. We don’t know what happened to her - found like that in the don’s office.”
“What? How do you know about all of this? Have you been talking to the cops?”
“Um...” Kelly Benn chewed her lip. “Yes, that’s right; I have.”
“My God...”
“So we need to get you away from here.”
“Yes, yes, of course! Where are we going?”
“No time for questions. Keep your trap shut and follow me.”
She hurried away. More than a little dazed, Brownlow followed. Damn this backwards country where you couldn’t walk around with a gun, or hire big guys with guns to stand between you and the nut-jobs of this world.
***
Harry told the police what had happened, how he had come to find the professor.
“And how did you get into the property, sir?”
“The, ah, door was unlocked; the professor was expecting me.”
“Indeed, sir. And you came alone?”
“Ah, yes.”
Behind the detective’s back, Ariel, invisible to everyone except Harry, gave him a thumb’s up. The detective turned his head to see what the witness was looking at.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Call me Harry!”
“Are you all right, Mr, uh, Troman? You might be in a state of shock.”
“Um... it has all been rather distressing, yes.”
“Well, we’ll ask you not to leave town without informing us. In fact, we’d rather you didn’t leave town at all.”
Harry paled. “You don’t think I’m a whatsit, a suspect, do you?”
“There’s blood on your shoes, mate. Now, obviously that could be innocent - you wanted to help the old man, so you strode blithely across the crime scene.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say blithely.”
“Unheedingly then. Your clothes and effects will have to be tested for other signs - more of the old man’s blood, signs of a tussle... Just to rule you out of the inquiry, you understand. It’s routine.”
“Well, it’s inconvenient.”
“So’s being murdered. Now, once again: why were you visiting the professor this afternoon? Private lessons, was it?”
Harry closed his eyes. He went through his story again. The professor had invited him over to discuss ways in which Harry might improve his performance as a Shakespeare imitator.
The detective pulled the same face he had when he first heard what Harry did for a living. Why some people couldn’t get proper jobs, he didn’t know.
A scene-of-crime officer approached with a plastic all-in-one suit for Harry. Harry was shown to the back of a police van where, under supervision, he had to strip and hand over his clothes.
“Just routine,” the detective repeated. He looked away as Harry rustled his way into the plastic overalls.
They gave him a lift home - wasn’t that kind of them? Although Harry suspected it had less to do with kindness and more to do with finding out exactly where he lived. He stood on the doorstep and waved the patrol car away, smiling.
There was still the not-inconsequential matter of that cow Alicia changing the locks.
Harry didn’t want the police to see his embarrassing predicament. On the other hand, he regretted waving them away; they might have scared the cow into letting him in...
Too late. They were gone now.
Harry jiggled the ring of keys in the pocket of his plastic garment. They were useless now.
“I can open the door; it’s no trouble.”
The arrival of Ariel made Harry jump.
“I wish you wouldn’t sneak up like that,” Harry scolded him. “And, no, I better not go in. I don’t want to be done for trespass. Even though I’m still on the lease and the rent’s up-to-date and -”
Harry ran out of steam. His chin sank to his chest. Ariel was stricken. The spirit made his hand as solid as he could and reached out to Harry’s shoulder, but he withdrew it at the last second.
“I’ll get you some clothes,” Ariel offered. “From what I know of contemporary modes of dress, you can’t walk around looking like that without giving rise to commentary. Leave it to me.”
Harry shook his head but Ariel floated up to Harry’s bedroom window and melted his way through it.
Harry sat on the doorstep. The coldness of the stone steeped through the thin plastic fabric. Harry jumped to his feet again; he didn’t need haemorrhoids along with everything else.
Poor Prof! Who would want to do such a thing to that harmless old codger? What could they possibly hope to gain?
Questions boiled in Harry’s head. He tried to think of something else - like what he could do about the Alicia-shaped wedge that was driving itself between him and Olly. It was best to leave the questions about the Big Cheese’s demise to the police. Best to hope the police would find the answers.
And leave me alone, he couldn’t help thinking.
***
Brownlow regained consciousness. The back of his head was smarting but he discovered he couldn’t lift a finger to examine the damage. His hands were bound to the arms of a wooden chair and his mouth was gagged with silver electrical tape.
What the fuck?
Where the hell was he?
The last memory he could conjure was of following the icy Ms B
enn through the streets of Stratford. He had paid more attention to the wiggle of her ass as she walked, to the way the cheeks stretched the fabric of her skirt, than to where they were heading.
Someone had bashed him on the head. Who? Had they doled out the same treatment to Ms Benn? Was she tied up nearby or had some other fate befallen her?
He tried to look at his surroundings but the tape kept him pretty much immobilised on the chair. It was dark and there was a dank and musty odour. There was the sound of water lapping all around. He could make out shapes on the wall before him: the circle of a lifebelt, the long spears of oars...
A boathouse!
Shimmering light reflected on the ceiling confirmed his supposition to be true (unlike those he propounded on his TV shows).
There was a rush of water, the sound of someone (or something, he panicked!) getting out. Wet feet slapped the floor. A figure, drenched and dripping, stood in front of him.
“You’re awake,” was Ms Benn’s redundant observation. She took her long hair in her hand and squeezed water from it before winding it into a bun.
Brownlow tried to speak, to urge her to release him before the kidnapper or kidnappers returned and caught her. Ms Benn laughed like the last gurgle of an emptying bathtub. She pulled up a crate and sat in front of him.
“He was much braver than you,” she said. Brownlow frowned. His eyes tried to signal urgent messages and his wrists strained against their bonds but the stupid woman didn’t seem to be catching on.
“He didn’t resist. He didn’t struggle. I’m not saying he didn’t stand up to me. He tried to bargain. He told me he could help me. He told me that in return for his life, he would help me to find what I seek. He looked at me with such wonder, such appreciation in his eyes, he was like a child waking up to find Father Christmas climbing down the chimney. No one has ever been pleased to see me. Not even my mother -”
She stopped herself. She tilted her head from side to side, appraising Brownlow as though he were a museum exhibit of no particular value or merit.
“What am I going to do with you? I could do a swap - I had considered swapping with the old professor but I need youthful limbs, youthful muscles for the work I have to do.”
Where The Bee Sucks Page 13
