‘All right. The one single person who had the most to gain from the Doveston’s death is standing in this room — and it isn’t me.’
‘You twat,’ I said to Norman. ‘I do have an alibi, you know. I was with you in the Flying Swan when it happened.’
‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Turn it in. I think we have a duty to bring the Doveston’s murderer to justice.’
‘Why? Just look at this room. It’s like Ed Gem’s kitchen. Or Jonathan Doe’s apartment in that movie Seven. All the evidence is here for the crimes he committed. He got his just desserts, why not leave it at that?’
It was a reasonable argument, but I wasn’t happy with it. All the evidence was here. The Doveston had left us the clue in the yo-yo, but he had also left all the evidence for us to find. He had also left me all his money, which did make me the prime suspect, if there was ever a murder investigation. And it also made me something else.
‘Oh shit!’ I said.
‘Excuse me?’ said Norman.
‘I’ve just had a terrible thought.’
‘No change there then.’
‘No, shut up and think about this. If the Doveston was murdered for the money, whoever murdered him didn’t get it, did they? Because I got it. Which means—’
‘Oh dear oh dear,’ said Norman. ‘Which means that they’ll probably kill you next.’
‘Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!
‘It’s not my fault.’
‘No, not you. The Doveston. He’s stitched me up again. Stitched me up from beyond the grave. I get all the money, but if I don’t get his murderer, his murderer gets me.
‘Still,’ said Norman. ‘He gave you a sporting chance. He did leave you the list of POTENTIAL ASSASSINS. That was very thoughtful of him.’
We returned to my office. I sat down in my chair and allowed Norman to park his bottom upon my desk. ‘The six names on the list,’ I said. ‘Have those six people been invited to the ball, do you think?’
‘Definitely.’
‘And how can you be so sure?’
‘Because it was my job to vet the list. I decided who got sent an invitation and who didn’t.’
I gave Norman a somewhat withering look.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Perhaps yours got lost in the post.’
‘Get your arse off my desk,’ I said.
Money being no object, I employed the services of a private detective. There was only one listed in the Brentford Yellow Pages. He went by the name of Lazlo Woodbine. I figured that anyone who had the gall to name himself after the world’s most famous fictional detective must be good for something.
Lazlo turned out to be a handsome-looking fellow. In fact he bore an uncanny resemblance to myself. He had just completed a case involving Billy Barnes. I remembered Billy from my school days at the Grange. Billy had been the boy who always knew more than was healthy for one of his age. Small wodd!
I explained to Lazlo that I needed all the information he could get me about the six POTENTIAL ASSASSINS. And I wanted it fast. The Great Millennial Ball was but two months away and I meant to be ready.
The final months of the twentieth century didn’t amount to much. I had expected some kind of buzz. Lots of razzmatazz. But it was all rather downbeat. It seemed to rain most of the time and the newspapers became obsessed with the Millennium Bug. We’d all known about it for years. How many computer clocks would not be able to cope with the year two thousand and how computers all over the world would shut themselves down, or go berserk, or whatever. But only a very few people had actually taken it seriously and the newspapers hadn’t been interested in it at all. Until now. Until it was too late to do anything about it.
Now it was news. Now it had the potential to spread panic.
But it didn’t spread panic. The man in the street didn’t seem to care. The man in the street just shrugged his shoulders. The man in the street said, ‘It will be all right.’
And why did the man in the street behave in this fashion? Why the complacency? ‘Why the couldn’t care less and the glazed look in the eyes?
And why almost every man on almost every street?
Why?
Well, I’ll tell you for why.
The man in the street was on something.
The man in the street was drugged up to his glazed eyeballs.
The man in the street took Doveston’s Snuff
Yes, that’s tight, Doveston’s Snuff ‘A pinch a day and the world’s no longer grey.’ It was all people talked about in those final months. All people did. Tried this blend, that blend and the other. This one brought you up, this one took you down and if you mixed these two together, you were off somewhere else. It was a national obsession. It was the latest craze.
Everyone was doing it. Every man on almost every street. And every woman too and every child. So what if the end of civilization was coming? Everyone seemed to agree that they could handle that — if not with a smile upon the face, then at least with a finger up the nose.
And so they wandered about like sleepwalkers. In and out of the tobacconist’s. Norman said that trade had never been so good —Although he wasn’t selling much in the way of sweeties.
Doveston’s Snuff, eh? Who’d have thought it? Who’d have thought that there could have been anything dubious about Doveston’s Snuff? That it might, perhaps, contain something more than just ground tobacco and flavourings? That it might, perhaps, contain some, how shall Iput this ... DRUGS?
And if someone had thought it, would that someone have been able to work out the reason why? Would that someone have been able to uncover the fact that here was a conspiracy on a global scale? That this was in fact the work of the Secret Govermnent of the World, covering its smelly bottom against the forthcoming downfall of civilization?
I very much doubt it.
I didn’t figure it out.
Which was a shame, really. Because if I had figured it out, I would have been able to have done something about it. Because, after all, like that silly bugger with the razor blades, I did own the company. I could have taken the snuff off the shop shelves. I might even have been able to expose the conspiracy. Bring down the Secret Government of the World. Save mankind from the horrors to come.
But I didn’t figure it out, so there you go.
I was far too busy to figure anything out. I was trying to hunt down a murderer and I was trying to organize a party: THE GREAT MILLENNIAL BALL.
The Doveston’s solicitor had issued me with an enormous portfolio, containing all the details of the ball. Everything had to be done exactly as the Doveston had planned it. If not, and the solicitor rubbed his hands together as he told me, I would lose everything.
Everything.
I did not intend to lose everything and so I followed the instructions to the very letter. Norman was a tower of strength throughout this period. He’d had a big hand in the original planning of the ball and he arranged to have his uncle run his shop while he assisted me at Castle Doveston.
There were times, however, when he and I almost fell out.
‘The dwarves are here,’ he said one Friday evening, breezing into my office and plonking his bum on my desk.
‘What dwarves?’
‘The ones who’ve been hired for the ball. Fourteen of them have turned up for the audition, but we only need seven.’
‘No-one ever needs more than seven dwarves,’ I said, taking a green cigar from the humidor and running it under my nose. ‘But what are these seven dwarves going to do?’
‘They’re going to have all their hair shaved off Then, at the ball, they have to move around amongst the guests with lines of cocaine on their heads.’