At which moment, the chandelier went out, and the distant hum of office machinery suddenly stopped.
¦
Hedgeclipper Clinton, Erasmus still gibbering on his shoulder, held the antique candlestick aloft as he led Mrs Pargeter down into the hotel’s cellar. He had been in favour of just calling one of his maintenance staff to investigate the power failure, but she had insisted that they do it themselves. She was wary of the processes of Fossilface O’Donahue’s ‘restitooshun’.
The cellar covered the entire floor area of the hotel, and was divided into sections by upright concrete pillars. Only the nearest of these could be seen, however, because the space in between had been filled high with what, in the uncertain flickering of the candle’s light, appeared to be metal blocks.
“What the hell are those?” Hedgeclipper Clinton murmured, moving closer to inspect them.
Mrs Pargeter had already got the answer from the smell rising from a spillage on the floor before Hedgeclipper’s candle illuminated the confirmatory sign on the side of one of the cans: PETROLEUM SPIRIT.
The cellar was full of cans of petrol. In front of the ranks of them were two gleaming new emergency generators. On one was stuck a note, headed by the same smiley-face logo that had been on the fax.
The message read: NOW YOU’LL NEVER BE POWERLESS AGAIN – AS THE BISHOP SAID TO THE ACTOR.
Incomprehensible as ever. Yes, there was no doubt they were once again up against Fossilface O’Donahue’s slowly developing sense of humour.
Hedgeclipper Clinton chuckled. “Well, going to be a long time before I have to queue up at the petrol pumps again. It looks as if I haven’t come out of this ‘restitooshun’ business so badly.”
“Don’t be too sure, Hedge –”
But Mrs Pargeter didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence. At that moment, Erasmus, bored by not being the centre of attention, had grabbed the lighted candle from his owner’s hand and leapt down on to the cellar floor.
He waved the candlestick around frenziedly. Its light was reflected in the rainbow spill of petrol as the flame swirled ever closer.
¦
“Come on, Erasmus…” Hedgeclipper Clinton cooed. “Come on…”
The hotel manager was down on his knees, inching closer to the marmoset. His pinstriped trousers were already sodden with petrol. The pool of fuel on the floor was spreading; one of the containers must have been holed.
Mrs Pargeter looked anxiously at the wall of petrol cans. Neither she nor Hedgeclipper had voiced it, but it didn’t take a lot of imagination to work out what would happen if the petrol ignited. Goodbye, Mrs Pargeter. Goodbye, Hedgeclipper Clinton.
And, come to that, goodbye Greene’s Hotel, along with any residents who had the misfortune to be inside at that particular moment.
Goodbye, Erasmus, too – though Mrs Pargeter reckoned that was one bereavement she could bear with equanimity, even enthusiasm. Not, of course, that she’d be in much of a position to enjoy the benefit of his departure.
The marmoset seemed fully aware of what was at stake, and was enjoying himself hugely. There was no longer any problem about who was the centre of attention. Erasmus waved the candle flame lower and lower as his owner drew closer.
Oh dear, thought Mrs Pargeter, as an unpleasant new recollection invaded her mind. She wasn’t very knowledgeable about science, but even she knew the basic principles of the internal combustion engine. It wasn’t the petrol itself that ignited; it was the vapour. And in an enclosed space that vapour would quickly build up to become extremely flammable. Oh dear.
What a way to go, Mrs Pargeter thought with deep resentment. Killed by the combined efforts of a monkey and a criminal idiot trying to teach himself how to have a sense of humour. No, any death but that. It would be just too humiliating.
As she had the thought, Hedgeclipper Clinton suddenly launched himself forward to make a grab for Erasmus. The marmoset, anticipating his move, leapt up into the air and grabbed the handle of one of the highest cans. Hedgeclipper skidded and fell face down in the oil slick. The candle flame flickered with the movement, but quickly re-established its steady glow.
Erasmus and Mrs Pargeter both were aware of the sound at the same moment. It was a steady dripping. The feeble candlelight caught the sheen of individual droplets as they fell free from the can next to the one from which Erasmus was swinging.
There must have been some kamikaze training in the marmoset’s background. Mrs Pargeter would have sworn she saw glee in his eye as the monkey slowly changed the angle of the candlestick to bring its flame closer to the leak.
It was time for desperate measures. Mrs Pargeter let out a sudden shriek, a high-pitched imitation of a monkey’s cry. Maybe she had captured the admonitory note of Erasmus’s mother when angry; maybe the marmoset was simply distracted by the sound. For whatever reason, he turned suddenly towards her.
Mrs Pargeter leapt forward and blew the candle out.
¦
“You know,” she said to Hedgeclipper, as they climbed wearily out of the cellar after he had restored the electrical supply, “I think we may have to go out and get Fossilface O’Donahue before he does anything else.”
“Yes,” the hotel manager agreed. “If we can find him.” He turned his head round to the marmoset by his ear. “You know, Erasmus,” he said in playful reproof, “sometimes you’re a rather naughty little monkey.”
Which, in Mrs Pargeter’s view, was something of an understatement.
? Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ?
Twenty
The photographic studio, in a discreet Mayfair town house, had a slightly dated feel to it. The artfully scattered chaos gave the impression that its owner had never really recovered from seeing
Nor was this idea dispelled by the appearance and manner of the studio’s presiding genius. Clickety Clark looked like a gnarled relic of the Summer of Love. He was in his late fifties, a fact accentuated rather than disguised by his youthful dress. The battered Levis, the denim shirt strained over prominent belly and the leather blouson had a perversely ageing effect, compounded by the ponytail into which his thinning grey hair was straggled back.
And Clickety Clark’s professional style suggested that he’d watched too many documentaries about the early David Bailey (which in fact he had). He moved continuously round the room in a gait midway between a dart and a lumber, constantly framing images in the little viewfinder he carried on a leather thong around his neck. And all the time, in a deliberately roughened street-credible voice, he kept mumbling instructions to his assistant, Abbie.
She was a pretty dark-haired girl in her early twenties. Clickety Clark’s manner to her suggested she was a necessary and appropriate accessory to his image as photographic genius. Her manner to him was tolerant and obedient, but the wry light in her eye made it clear she had no illusions at all about her employer. Abbie was the kind of girl who could recognize bullshit when she saw it, and on her first meeting with Clickety Clark had had no difficulty in identifying cartloads of the stuff.
The subject of the morning’s shoot, Mrs Pargeter – or to give the name by which she had introduced herself, Lady Entwistle – was seated on a manorial oaken throne against tastefully draped red velvet curtains. At a table by her side was a vase of bright peonies. Mrs Pargeter knew that the vivid fabrics she had so carefully selected that morning clashed hideously with this background, but she made no demur. It was in character for Lady Entwistle not to notice – or more probably to approve – such a wince-inducing concatenation of colours.
Clickety Clark crouched rather unsteadily on the floor and peered up through a camera lens at his subject. “Don’t worry, Lady Entwistle,” he said in his phoney laid-back accent. “I can really make you look wonderful.”
Lady Entwistle smiled graciously. “Oh. Very nice. Thank you so much, Mr Clark.”
He lifted a magnanimous hand towards her. “Please… call me Clix.”
