Anyway, Commissioner Ralston said mufti duds and mufti duds it was. But when the latest issue of The Scarlet Trumpet, the Mountie newsletter, announced that Sweden had awarded Ralston the Star of Saint Olaf, Second Class, for his work against international crime, Bullock bet himself Ralston would put on the dog and show up at the ball with the decoration around his neck. To the man’s credit, he arrived in an unadorned tuxedo so as not to distract from the teapot Mounties’ moment of glory.
Of course, Bullock’s sidekick Winnie the Peg was there in full dress uniform. He was a teapot favorite. The men liked to throw an arm over his shoulder and mock punch him in the stomach. The women loved teaching Winnie the latest dance steps.
Ball security was always tight. The underworld must not learn the identities of these secret Mounties. Tonight it was tighter still. Last year, an attaché at the Norwegian Embassy had tried to crash the event disguised as the piano tuner. But an alert constable spotted the cleated horseshoe on the man’s cuff links, the insignia of the Royal Norwegian Mounted Police. This cavalry unit, famous in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’s day for using cleated horseshoes to smite the sledded Polacks on the ice, had morphed into the Consolidated Scandinavian Intelligence Service known popularly as the Scandihoofs.
(Along with infiltrating the mob, the teapot Mounties worked to frustrate Canadian crime at every level, even loitering on street corners in plainclothes to arrest drug pushers, street hoodlums, and scofflaw jaywalkers. Word had it that gloom descended over the Scandinavian countries when they heard rumors Canada was about to pass them in the United Nations’ annual listing of nations with the highest quality of life. Baffled — they considered Canadians a frivolous southern people much like the Italians — they had ordered the Scandihoofs to investigate.)
When those less-than-standard-size Mounties swept into the dance hall ramrod proud in the uniforms they so seldom got to wear, everyone stood and applauded. Bullock got a lump in his throat. Yes, he’d been sceptical. But, by Godfrey, the teapots had proved themselves an invaluable arm of the Force.
The uniformed arrivals were followed by their spouses and well-vetted dates. Now Commissioner Ralston stepped forward to invite the wife of Corporal Tinker, the ranking male teapot, to take his arm for the opening dance while Tinker bowed and led the commissioner’s wife onto the floor. The band struck up the first foxtrot of the night.
The young Mountie working behind the counter with Bullock was Constable Preston Armstrong, an advanced weapons expert and recent transfer from Regina. Earnest in manner, he’d proved a tireless listener to Bullock’s locker-room stories of his early adventures with the Force.
Becoming a Mountie had been Armstrong’s boyhood dream. But somehow along the way he’d fallen under the spell of the Force’s predecessor, the North West Mounted Police. So Bullock felt obliged to take him in hand and tell him about the Retros. This small backward-looking Mountie faction had been long before Armstrong’s time. They despised the Stetson as a cowboy thing and yearned for the NWMp’s scarlet and gold pillbox hat and the rugged days of yore when one Mountie on horseback could stare down whole tribes of Indians, crews of drunken miners come to town to raise hell, or rival lumberjack gangs out for blood. The Retros scorned everything modern from the automobile to the Internet. Their bellyaching grew louder when women were admitted to the Force. A few years later, along came Constable Arthur McAdoo, who transformed these malcontents into the Retro Lodge, a disciplined fraternal organization with a secret handshake and initiation rites.
When the first women took part in the Musical Ride, McAdoo and the Retros were outraged. Perhaps they wouldn’t have minded as much if the women had ridden sidesaddle, but they rode astride. The Retros protested by detonating a bomb hidden in the buffalo head on the wall behind the commissioner’s desk. When the fur stopped flying, the commissioner, who only moments before had gone down the hall to the canteen for tea and a butter tart, ordered an internal investigation, including a Force-wide foot inspection. (Many Retros emulated NWMP Constable “Gimpy” Flanagan, who’d sworn never to pull his revolver without drawing blood, an oath that cost him several toes.) After the courts- martial of McAdoo and the ringleaders, most Retros resigned from the Force. But there were still some sympathizers around and they didn’t like the teapots. Recently Bullock found this written above a headquarters urinaclass="underline" “Constable Pillbox says: You can’t stare the bad guy down if you’re staring up at him.”
Clearly impressed when he heard Bullock was pop officer for the ball, Armstrong had asked if he needed any help. “The more the merrier,” Bullock replied. The young constable had come in his own car. Bullock was happy he’d found the place since he was new to the Ottawa area.
Now the O’Haras, a quartet from the Scarlet Ladies, the female Mountie chorus, came out on stage to sing some lively numbers from the forties and fifties while Winnie jitterbugged with the female teapots. Peg leg or not, Bullock had to admit the bear danced better than he did.
At intermission, there was a great crush at the pop counter. Then, soft drinks in hand, everyone took seats around the bandstand for the halftime entertainment. A table was brought out with ten thick candles on it. Later the commissioner would say a few words and light them to commemorate the Tenth Teapot Mountie Ball.
But first, Constable Riddles, the Force’s standup comic, slick show-business smile and all, came out, “hello-helloing” all the way, to tell from his store of humorous puzzlers like: “What do little Eskimo boys and girls shout when they go from igloo to igloo on Halloween? Answer: ‘Blubber or blubber!’ ” Most of his jokes went back to 1885 and the second Riel Rebellion. “Why’s a man like a three-pull telescope? Answer: Because a woman picks him up, draws him out, sees through him, and shuts him up.”
When Riddles got to “Why’s a woman like a hinge? Answer: Because she’s something to a door,” Bullock turned the counter over to Armstrong and stepped out through the fire doors for a smoke. He’d heard the man’s material many times over and knew the next one would be: “Why are women like telegraphs? Answer: Because they’re faster than the mails in intelligence.”
The large harvest moon now stood above the trees. Bullock lit his pipe, uncrossed his eyes, leaned back against the pavilion wall, and pondered women being like telegraphs. No, he just didn’t get it. He’d told the joke to good old Mavis and she’d laughed loudly but wouldn’t explain why.
Bats staggered across the night sky. Years before, stones from the nearby quarry were used to build the Rideau Canal, leaving a natural amphitheater in whose crevasses the bats lived.