He took my silence as agreement and patted me on the shoulder. Although I couldn’t be sure, I thought he’d just offered to broker his own daughter for some youknow with Bertie, a slack-hued cash machine he knew nothing about. I shook my head. He couldn’t have. He must have meant a meal or something. “Twenty-nine miles,” Fandango announced sadly as we pulled up outside the stockwall gates to smarten ourselves up and put our spots back on. “If we pile on the mileage at this rate, the Ford will be worn out in less than two centuries.”
Lucy, Violet and Daisy
5.1.02.12.023: It is a condition of custodianship that all paintings, sculptures and other works of art must be shown to any resident on demand.
The word that a Colorman had arrived swiftly got about, and by the time I escorted him to our house, a gaggle of inquisitive villagers had collected to stare. Not just at him, but the gears on his bicycle and his richly colorful coveralls. In the relative drabness of East Carmine, he shone like a beacon of hope—an example of how colorful the world could look, if only we could afford the pigment, and had time and opportunity to collect the scrap.
“You’re very popular,” I said, showing him upstairs to his room.
“It’s National Color they’re fascinated by,” he replied. “I’ve seen people commit unspeakable acts simply to secure a colored orchid. Do you have an interest in color, lad?”
“My shade of mustard won best runner-up at Jollity Fair last year,” I said, honored to be given the opportunity to boast. “I went for a darker shade than the others: 33-71-67.”
“Hmm,” said the Colorman, expertly visualizing the color in his head, “not bad. Tell me, what would we use to stain a primrose?”
“62-62-98, sir.”
“And a carrot?”
“31-87-97.”
He was impressed. “You know your colors.”
“My mentor was a retired mixer,” I explained. “Greg Scarlet.”
“I met him once or twice,” replied the Colorman thoughtfully. “Fine chap. Perhaps you and I should speak again. Undo my shoelaces and take off my boots, would you? Let me give you my laundry—and please, call me Matthew.”
I delivered the painting as soon as I had dealt with the Colorman’s laundry and changed into more appropriate day clothes. Red Prefect Yewberry seemed happier than anyone I’d ever seen before when I handed over the Caravaggio.
“We’ll lodge it with the Cochineals,” he announced, staring in admiration at the canvas. “They’ve already got a van Gogh and know how to look after these things. I may have it copied into a painting-by-numbers, and have it painted with synthetics so all may gaze upon its splendor.”
“Our Mrs. Alder has The Shipwreck of the Minotaur on her upstairs landing,” I said, eager not to be outdone, “and Ruth G-9 has a Renoir.”
“You should have a look at our Vermeer,” replied Yewberry. “It’s in the Greyzone, but you might persuade one of them to escort you in and out.”
At a few minutes to one I wandered across to the town hall. The Rules didn’t state which meal was mandatory, but it was always lunch. Lucy Ochre was one of the few faces I recognized among the many who were milling about outside, chatting cross-hue before we were confined to our tables. Luckily, the presence of the Colorman seemed to have eclipsed the news about my run-in with the yateveo.
“Hullo!” I said, but Lucy looked at me blankly.
“It’s Eddie Russett.”
“Sorry,” she said, “I was miles away. Thanks for your help with the Lincoln this morning. I might have to ask for it back, though. Mummy will notice it’s gone.”
“I destroyed it.” It was a lie, I know, but it was probably for the best.
“I’ll tell her that Tommo stole it—I need a good reason to keep him out of the house.”
I asked her in the most delicate way possible about her father, and she told me that he liked his Lincoln but never abused the Green Room.
“I don’t know what he was doing in there,” she said, “but he didn’t misdiagnose—and he certainly wasn’t Chasing the Frog.”
She fell into thoughtful silence, so I decided to change the subject. “I brought you this— as requested,” I remarked, handing her the spoon I had liberated from Rusty Hill. I’d wrapped it in an odd sock in case anyone saw. Given the value of spoons, an ugly custom had arisen whereby a spoon might be swapped for youknow, tarnishing the once romantic nature of spoon gifting. “Accepting a spoon” was now a pejorative term and an ugly slur on one’s integrity, which was why I had prefaced the gift with “as requested.”
“Oh!” she said. “Is that what I think it is?”
I nodded, and she told me I was a darling. “What can I do to repay you?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I assured her in case my intent was misconstrued. “It’s simply a gift.”
“What’s going on here?” asked Tommo, who had suddenly appeared, and seemed to be taking issue with our talking to each other.
“Eddie was giving me a spoon,” said Lucy in an innocent fashion.
“What?!”
“The utensil, Tommo.”
“Oh,” he said, calming down, “right.”
“Silly me,” said Lucy. “I must be more careful with my words.”
We sat at the same red-hued table we had used at breakfast, and Lucy fell into conversation with a girl at the other end. I couldn’t hear what they said, but they pointed at me and giggled.
“Listen here,” said Tommo, “you haven’t got a thing for Lucy, have you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Hmm,” he said, then: “Still got your eyes on Crazy Jane for a bit of slap and tickle?”
“No—I think it would be mostly slap and very little tickle.”
“In that I think you might be correct. How was Rusty Hill?”
“Exciting,” I told him, and gave him a rundown of everything that had happened in the twenty-eight minutes I had spent there. The legion of the dead, the rotting fabric of the village, the Caravaggio, the color hydrant and the Colorman. I left out the bit about Jane, Zane and the Pooka, but it didn’t matter, since none of it interested him anyway.
“Did you get me my size-nine boots?”
“Here,” I said, handing him a paper bag that contained the shoes I had pulled from the dead prefect’s feet. “Sorry—I didn’t realize at the time how stinky they were.”
“I see what you mean,” replied Tommo as he wrinkled his nose and plucked off a shriveled toe that was stuck to the insole. “Couldn’t you have swiped me a pair from his wardrobe?”
“That would be stealing.”
He leaned across and dropped the toe into the water jug. “You’re a bit odd, Eddie, did you know that?”
Other Reds soon started arriving at the table, and they nodded politely as I was introduced. I didn’t know any of them, but they knew me well enough. I would have liked my fame to be somehow related to the retrieval of the Caravaggio or being distantly related to the Colorman—or even to seeing the Last Rabbit. But it wasn’t. I was the one who not only had risked my hide to help a Yellow, but was also “so stupid he nearly got himself eaten by a yateveo.”
“Who’s that?” I asked Tommo as a severe-looking woman entered the room.
“Mrs. deMauve. If I said she was a Pooka in human form, I would be doing all Pookas a grave injustice.