‘Not personally. I think she died in the mid-nineteenth century.’
My mother narrowed her eyes.
‘That old ruse.’
She steeled herself and managed a bright smile.
‘Will you stay for supper?’
I agreed, and she went to find a chicken that she could boil all the taste out of, her anger at Dad for the moment forgotten. Mycroft, the gameshow ended, shuffled into the kitchen wearing a grey zip-up cardigan and holding a copy of New Splicer magazine.
‘What’s for dinner?’ he asked, getting in the way. Aunt Polly looked at him as you might a spoilt child.
‘Mycroft, instead of wandering around wasting your time, why don’t you waste Thursday’s and show her what you’ve been up to in your workshop?’
Mycroft looked at us both with a vacant expression. He shrugged and beckoned me towards the back door, changing his slippers for a pair of gumboots and his cardigan for a truly dreadful plaid jacket.
‘C’mon then, m’girl,’ he muttered, shooing the dodos from around the back door where they had been mustering in hope of a snack, and strode towards his workshop.
‘You might repair that garden gate, Uncle—it’s worse than ever!’
‘Not at all,’ he replied with a wink. ‘Every time someone goes in or out they generate enough power to run the telly for an hour. I haven’t seen you about recently. Have you been away?’
‘Well, yes; ten years.’
He looked over his spectacles at me with some surprise.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Is Owens still with you?’
Owens was Mycroft’s assistant. He was an old boy who had been with Rutherford when he split the atom; Mycroft and he had been at school together.
‘A bit tragic, Thursday. We were developing a machine that used egg white, heat and sugar to synthesise methanol when a power surge caused an implosion. Owens was meringued. By the time we chipped him out the poor chap had expired. Polly helps me now.’
We had arrived at his workshop. A log with an axe stuck in it was all that was keeping the door shut. Mycroft fumbled for the switch and the striplights flickered on, filling the workshop with a harsh fluorescent glow. The laboratory looked similar to the last time I had seen it in terms of untidiness and the general bric-a-brac, but the contraptions were different. I had learned from my mother’s many letters that Mycroft had invented a method for sending pizzas by fax and a 2B pencil with a built-in spell-checker, but what he was currently working on, I had no idea.
‘Did the memory erasure device work, Uncle?’
‘The what?’
‘The memory erasure device. You were testing it when I last saw you.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, dear girl. What do you make of this?’
A large white Rolls-Royce was sitting in the centre of the room. I walked over to the vehicle as Mycroft tapped a fluorescent tube to stop it flickering.
‘New car, Uncle?’
‘No, no,’ said Mycroft hurriedly. ‘I don’t drive. A friend of mine who hires these out was lamenting about the cost of keeping two, one black for funerals and the other white for weddings—so I came up with this.’
He reached in and turned a large knob on the dashboard. There was a low hum and the car turned slowly off-white, grey, dark grey and then finally to black.
‘That’s very impressive, Uncle.’
‘Do you think so? It uses liquid crystal technology. But I took the idea one step farther. Watch.’
He turned the dial several more notches to the right and the car changed to blue, then mauve, and finally green with yellow dots.
‘One-colour cars a thing of the past! But that’s not all. If I switch on the car’s Pigmentiser like so, the car should… yes, yes, look at that!’
I watched with growing astonishment as the car started to fade in front of my eyes; the liquid crystal coating was emulating the background greys and browns of Mycroft’s workshop. Within a few seconds the car had blended itself perfectly into the background. I thought of the fun you could have with traffic wardens.
‘I call it the “ChameleoCar”; quite fun, don’t you think?’
‘Very.’
I put out my hand and touched the warm surface of the camouflaged Rolls-Royce. I was going to ask Mycroft if I could have the cloaking device fitted to my Speedster but I was too late; enthused by my interest he had trotted off to a large roll-top bureau and was beckoning me over excitedly.
‘Translating carbon paper,’ he announced breathlessly, pointing to several piles of brightly coloured metallic film. ‘I call it Rosettionery. Allow me to demonstrate. We’ll start with a plain piece of paper, then put in a Spanish carbon, a second slip of paper—must get them the right way up!—then a Polish carbon, more paper, German and another sheet and finally French and the last sheet… there.’
He shuffled the bundle and laid it on the desk as I pulled up a chair.
‘Write something on the first sheet. Anything you want.’
‘Anything?’
Mycroft nodded so I wrote: Have you seen my dodo?
‘Now what?’
Mycroft looked triumphant.
‘Have a look, dear girl.’
I lifted off the top carbon and there, written in my own handwriting, were the words: їHa visto mi dodo?
‘But that’s amazing!’
‘Thank you,’ replied my Uncle. ‘Have a look at the next!’
I did. Beneath the Polish carbon was written: Gdzie jest moje dodo?
‘I’m working on hieroglyphics and demotic,’ Mycroft explained as I peeled off the German translation to read: Haben sie meinen dodo gesehen?
‘The Mayan Codex version was trickier but I can’t manage Esperanto at all. Can’t think why.’
‘This will have dozens of applications!’ I exclaimed as I pulled off the last sheet to read, slightly disappointingly: Man aardvark n’a pas de nez.
‘Wait a moment, Uncle. My aardvark has no nose? ’
Mycroft looked over my shoulder and grunted.
‘You probably weren’t pressing hard enough. You’re police, aren’t you?’
‘SpecOps, really.’
‘Then this might interest you,’ he announced, leading me off past more wondrous gadgets, the use of which I could only guess at. ‘I’m demonstrating this particular machine to the police technical advancement committee on Wednesday.’
He stopped next to a device that had a huge horn on it like an old gramophone. He cleared his throat.
‘I call it my “Olfactograph”. It’s very simple. Since any bloodhound worth its salt will tell you that each person’s smell is unique like a thumbprint, then it follows that a machine that can recognise a felon’s individual smell must be of use where other forms of identification fail. A thief may wear gloves and a mask, but he can’t hide his scent.’
He pointed at the horn.
‘The odours are sucked up here and split into their individual parts using an “Olfactroscope” of my own invention. The component parts are then analysed to give a “pongprint” of the criminal. It can separate out ten different people’s odours in a single room and isolate the newest or the oldest. It can detect burned toast up to six months after the event and differentiate between thirty different brands of cigar.’
‘Could be handy,’ I said, slightly doubtfully. ‘What’s this over here?’
I was pointing to what looked like a trilby hat made from brass and covered in wires and lights.
‘Oh yes,’ said my uncle, ‘this I think you will like.’
He placed the brass hat on my head and flicked a large switch. There was a humming noise.
‘Is something meant to happen?’ I asked.
‘Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Try to empty your mind of any thoughts.’
I closed my eyes and waited patiently.