This was fashioned in brass in the likeness of a huge and fierce-visaged eagle. At first, neither noticed anything odd about it. Then Love spotted something suspended just beneath the bird’s neck.
It was a dead mouse and it had been hung from its tail with the aid of a piece of wire in such a way that the great brass bird appeared to be about to eat it.
“Well, I never,” Love said, hoping to please.
The vicar muttered something about satanic rites.
Harper took four more photographs after brushing the eagle’s neck with some fine grey powder and saying “Nix” to himself.
By now, several visitors to the church had begun to show interest in the proceedings.
An elderly couple, having discovered the sacrificial frog, were casting indignant glances in the direction of the vicar and his companions, whom they apparently assumed to be vivisectionists.
A woman holding two small girls by the hand pretended to read a ledger stone while awaiting her opportunity to see what had been done to the lectern.
The boldest approach was made by an American, who cordially invited Harper to advise what shutter speed and aperture would do justice to that wonderful old church. He was pretty old himself—a lean, brown, sinewy vine of a man, hung with cameras like a crop of leather-podded fruit.
Mr Grewyear coldly but courteously told him that he had—unintentionally, no doubt—interrupted a canonical investigation of the most serious kind. Was that so, exclaimed the onlooker, much gratified. Well, if the Reverend said so—and he withdrew to the North aisle.
The vicar proceeded to the revelation of the third and most startling piece of iniquity.
This was nothing less than a lifelike image in modelling clay of Mr Grewyear himself, dressed in miniature vestments and suspended in a string noose from the pulpit canopy.
Into the model had been pushed half a dozen long pins.
Chapter Four
The area promotion director of Dixon-Frome (Domestic Detergents Division) stared at the Deputy Chief Brand Visualizer of Thornton-Edwards, Arnold and Konstatin, Dixon-Frome’s consultancy in charge of the Lucillite account, and inquired: “Now what the bloody hell do we do?”
Both men were between thirty and thirty-five years old. Their suits looked soft yet impossible to crease. So did their faces. Black shoes, carefully cleaned to a degree just short of shine, encased restless yet always precisely poised feet. About the persons of these men hung, faint but unmistakable, the odour of deodorant.
The name of D-F’s APD (DDD) was Gordon. TEAK’s DCBV was called Richard. None of the friends and colleagues of either man ever used his second name or abbreviated his first.
“If he hasn’t turned up by this afternoon, Gordon, we shall have to go ahead without him.”
“Yes, but Richard, look at it this way. Persimmon has the how-pull when it comes to maximan venue participation.
“Right?”
“Right.”
“So he’s absolutely integral—but integral—so far as local product acceptance is concerned.”
“In an above-the-line situation, Gordon.”
“Above the line. Sure. I’m with you on that. But what is it we’re really aiming for, Richard? D-F is short on Folk-fond—and I mean short. So...”
“Folk-fond we can get, for God’s sake, Gordon. You are talking image now. Folk-fond—that’s an image situation. But first things first. Before product acceptance, product presentation, right?”
“If you want to co-ordinate visuals, Richard, by all means coordinate visuals, and we’re with you a hundred per cent, but this is Friday, May the second, and Persimmon has bloody well disappeared.”
“Hang on. We’ll just kick that one around a bit, shall we? One—have we really lost him, disappearancewise? Or is he just temporarily snarled up in a bottle situation?”
“No, no. Drinkwise, he’s absolutely neg. Eastern Super rate him clear on that.”
“Fine. O.K. So Persimmon might not be back in time for the campaign film. We need to reckon with that—but seriously. Right?”
“But seriously, Richard. Right. Now you’re in mesh.”
“Right. Now, we just kick this around a bit more, do we? Point number two. Reserve customer participation—that we have not got. No, I admit we should have thought about RCP.”
“Oh, but timewise...”
“Timewise nothing, Gordon. Forgetting to provide RCP was plain ad-bad. I beat my breast, I really do. However—next case. Persimmon had forty, fifty washwives handpicked and primed. But we don’t have his list. Therefore selected wash-wives are strictly non-viable material. Remedy?”
“D-F would probably sanction reasonable loading with pro-extras.”
“Flown in? Time’s short, Gordon. It would cost.”
“No more than to cancel filming.”
“Another thing, Gordon. Exposure factor. Washwife pro-extras are certified resistant to detergent dermatitis. You know as well as I do that’s why there aren’t many of them. So their faces are familiar screenwise. You’d be absolutely right to tell me D-F don’t want shadow image coming through in Lucillite promotion.”
The Deputy Chief Brand Visualizer of Thornton-Edwards, Arnold and Konstatin rose from the padded swing-and-spin think-chair in front of the great rear window of the forty-foot campaign cruiser and helped himself to another vodka and celery juice at the hospitality locker. He enlivened the drink with a short burst of soda from a receptacle labelled: ZING-POD by Dixon-Frome (Northern Nutritionals Division) and resumed his seat.
The Area Promotion Director of Dixon-Frome (Domestic Detergents Division) made two slow revolutions in his own think-chair while he tapped one knee with a pair of spectacles that had enormously thick, square, black frames. The first time round, he said: “I don’t want to angle this question to get an over-responseful reaction, Richard...” and the second time round, he said: “...so I’ll put it this way, right?
“Right. Now, Richard, you are the Product. Put yourself right there. The Product. I say this to you. Fifty consuming washwives recruited at the local supermarket want to use you, but they can’t because the supermarket manager is their identity key and no one knows where he is. O.K. Hold on to that. Now, then—fifty pro-extras could be slotted in, but film of them would look like a re-issue and very non-fresh, so they do not get slotted in. Hold on to that, too. Right. So who do you want to use you? A Product in a Dilemma is how I see this, Richard. Just by asking these questions, just by personalizing the Product, something starts to jel. No, wait a minute. Don’t say anything yet. There’s a sort of sex thing here. I’m almost certain there is. Now, what? Rejection fantasy? No, no—too linear. I know-call it Use-Wish. Use-Wish, Richard—how does that roll you as a bit of motivational structurizing?”
“Use-Wish...”