“Ask away.” Professor Slocombe refilled John’s glass, then his own.
“Mine too,” said Jim, as his was somehow empty again.
“The Brentford Scrolls,” said John. Jim groaned.
“The Brentford Scrolls?” Professor Slocombe laughed. “I have spent nearly two hundred years, ahem, I have spent a very long time searching for those. They are somewhere in the borough, I can sense it. But where, I do not know.”
“Told you, Jim,” said John.
“But what exactly is your interest in the scrolls?” Professor Slocombe raised his glass and tasted brandy.
“Purely historical,” said John.
“Aura,” said the Professor.
“John thinks he’s found a way of making millions of pounds from the Millennium Fund,” said Jim. “There’s more than eight hundred Days of God owing to Brentford, so Brentford is entitled to celebrate the millennium two years before the rest of the world. We could celebrate it this year, on New Year’s Eve.”
Professor Slocombe threw back his old head and laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed some more.
“Priceless,” he said, when he was able. “And you’re perfectly right. If the scrolls could be discovered and of course if the papal bull was never revoked.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“I can easily check that, John. Hand me,” the ancient pointed, “that large green volume, second shelf up at the end next to the shrunken head.”
Omally hastened to oblige. He tugged and wrestled with the book but could not draw it from the shelf.
“Oh, my apologies.” Professor Slocombe made a mystic pass with his right hand. Omally toppled backwards clutching the book. He crawled over to the desk and set it down upon the tooled-leather surface.
“Sorry about that,” said Professor Slocombe. “The books are, as always, protected.”
“No problem,” said John, crawling back to his pouffe.
The Professor flicked through the pages, his long thin fingers tracing lines. Presently he closed the book. “You would seem to be in luck,” said he.
“Yes!” said John, raising a fist.
“But of course you’d have to find the scrolls, and if I can’t, well…”
“Two heads are better than one,” said John.
“Not necessarily.”
“Three, counting Jim.”
“No, count me out.” Jim folded his arms painfully.
“He’s had a rough day. He’ll be all for it tomorrow.”
“Oh no I won’t.”
“Oh yes you will.”
“Won’t.”
“Will.”
“Gentlemen.” Professor Slocombe raised a calming hand. “Whether you will or whether you won’t, you have pressing business to attend to first.”
“We do?” asked John.
“The police.”
“Ah.”
“But I think I can sort that out for you. Chief Inspector Westlake of the Brentford Constabulary is a good friend of mine. We are both members of the same lodge. If I were to ask him a personal favour, he would not refuse it.”
“You’re a saint,” said John.
“Not yet. But I am also a good friend of the present Pope.”
“Say hello from me next time you see him.”
“I certainly will. But in order to smooth things over with the police, it will be necessary to give them Jim’s book. Do you have it about your person?”
“I do.” Omally fumbled at his trouser pocket. “Oh, no. I don’t.”
“He’s lost it.” Jim threw up his hands. “Ouch.”
“No, I haven’t lost it. I…” John’s thoughts returned to an hour before. To a terrible hour before. To the kitchen of Mrs Bryant. In all the horror and madness, he had left the book upon the reproduction olde worlde table. “Oh dear, oh dear,” said John Omally.
The newly widowed Mrs Bryant was not at her reproduction olde worlde table, but huddled on a chair at the Brentford Cottage Hospital. Outside the mortuary.
Within this cold and dismal room the duty physician was filling in Jack Bryant’s death certificate.
“The subject died through lack of blood caused by excessive straining on the toilet, leading to acute rectal prolapse and arterial rupture.”
At the bottom of the death certificate the duty physician signed his name: Dr Steven Malone.
And having signed, he turned and pointed in profile to a wrinkled naked thing which lay upon the mortuary block just off the page. “Bung that in a drawer,” he told a nurse.
10
A golden dawn came unto Brentford. The flowers in the Professor’s magical garden hid their faces as the borough’s denizens began to stir.
Omally hadn’t slept at all. While Pooley mumbled and snored in one of the Professor’s guest bedrooms, John paced the floor of another. Until the book was recovered from Mrs Bryant’s and handed over to the police, he and Jim could not return to their homes, nor set out upon their quest. But what of Jack Bryant? What had happened to him? Omally shuddered at the recollection of that hideously shrivelled body. It had looked as if all the blood had been drained from it. And what could do that to a man? A vampire? In Brentford? That was nonsense, surely. But was it? And what if it came back to feast upon Mrs Bryant?
And then there was Marchant. Poor, poor Marchant. The trusty iron steed that had served John for more years than he cared to remember. Marchant would have to be recovered from the canal and lovingly restored. And that would take money and John didn’t have any money, unless he could find those Brentford Scrolls.
Omally’s thoughts went round in a circle like an unholy mandala. Or perhaps more like some hideous black vortex that just kept sucking more dark thoughts into it. The death of Compton-Cummings now seemed more than suspect. Folk were dropping like flies hereabouts.
By the coming of the golden dawn John had resolved on a course of action. He would go as soon as possible to Mrs Bryant’s, offer what comfort he could and recover Jim’s book, which he would then deliver to Professor Slocombe. When matters were straightened with the police, he would sneak along to the canal and rescue Marchant.
And then with Jim’s help, or without it, he would seek the Brentford Scrolls.
Which should take him up to lunchtime and a pint or two of Large in the Flying Swan.
Omally left a note for the Professor, thanking him for sanctuary and promising to return by breakfast with the book, and set off across Brentford to catch a 65.
There were no police cars outside Mrs Bryant’s. But why should there have been? The chances were that the lady wouldn’t even be there. She would be staying with a relative for the night, or might possibly be under sedation in a hospital bed.
John went round to the back and knocked gently at the kitchen door. No answer. Should he force the lock? Omally, not by nature one to dither, dithered.
Come back later, was that the best? No, he was here now, do it.
John turned the handle and gave the door a shove.
It opened before him.
Magic.
John slipped inside, closed the door behind him and strode over to the reproduction olde worlde table. Jim’s book was not on it.
“Damn!” said John.
“Eeeeek!” screamed Mrs Bryant, who’d been coming down the hall.
“Oh, sorry.” John put out his hands to catch her as she swooned away. He helped her to a kitchen chair and poured a glass of water.
“I thought you were a burglar, John.”
“I’m so sorry. I wanted to see if I could do anything to help. Sip this.”
“Thank you. I’m all right. It was a terrible shock, though.”
“It was certainly that.”
“But one must look on the bright side.”
“Yes, I’m sure one must.”
“It was the way he would have wanted to go.”
“It was?”
“To die like the King.”
“The who?”
“Not The Who, the King.”
“I’m sorry,” said John. “You’ve lost me here.”
“The King,” said Mrs Bryant. “Elvis. Jack died like Elvis.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose he did. What did he die of, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“A massive haemorrhage. He was straining too hard and something burst.”