Albert huffed out a breath. ‘To see if the two things might actually be connected after all.’
Gary sighed. His father hadn’t talked about it for two days and he hoped it might be done with. Apparently not. ‘This is that conspiracy thing again, isn’t it, Dad.’
‘Yes,’ Albert replied as neutrally as he could manage because he couldn’t work out whether to sigh or snap.
Gary opened his mouth and then closed it again. He had been about to berate his father for his foolish thoughts but then remembered his incredible piece of detective work to figure out all that was happening at the Yorkshire pudding event.
‘When I get back to London, I’ll look into those things you asked me to,’ Albert turned his head to see if his son was teasing and about to make a joke. ‘The missing chefs and missing foods. I’ll let you know what I turn up. Okay?’
Albert patted his eldest son’s arm. ‘Thank you, Gary. That means a lot.’
They fell silent for a moment as they watched the London express train pull into the platform. Albert was to be alone for the next part of his trip, but he was fine with that. He wasn’t really alone after all because he had Rex for company. Rex was having some digestive issues this morning, due entirely, in Albert’s opinion, to the half-ton of Yorkshire pudding the dog ate the previous day. His own train was due in on a different platform in twelve minutes. He had already made his decision to go to Cumberland when he found the news article the previous evening.
Was there something to find there though? Was there really something going on? Or was he just a daft old man imagining a master criminal where none existed. Well, he thought, at the very least, he’d get to eat some really great sausages.
The End
(Except it isn’t. Not only are there more books coming, there’s more on the next few pages.)
Author’s Notes
I wonder how many people living in York will read this book. Those who do, will argue with my use of geography because there is no green stretch on which a marquee could fit in the area I chose to describe. The river is there, but it doesn’t sit as far above the water as I chose to suggest. I call it artistic license though I am not sure that is the right term.
Occasionally someone attempts to correct what I have written, forgetting that it is fiction. I could use fictitious places, which would eliminate the issue, but using regional dishes for this series, such as I am, I am happier tying them to real villages, towns, and cities.
York is, by the way, a fabulous place to visit. If, for example, I were talking to an American wanting to come to England, I would recommend York over London, purely for the sights one can see on a walking tour. York city wall is but one of the sights in this beautiful city.
I made the pudding museum up. Honestly, it may actually exist. Only now as I write this author’s note has it occurred to me to look it up, and now I won’t just because it’s too late to change the story.
In contrast to the invented museum, Syrup of Ipecac is real. Whether modern veterinary practices still use it I could not guess, but certainly, it had been employed in the past to make cats vomit and would have the same effect on humans.
It is full autumn in my garden and has rained a vast percentage of the time I have taken to write this novel. I spend a lot of my writing hours in an unheated log cabin at the bottom of my garden. I get to watch the rain beating down, and see the colours change from the lush green of summer, through the autumnal shades of yellow, orange, and brown. Soon the view from my window will be one with few leaves at all in it. To combat that, I planted lots of evergreens, but still the garden will look a little drab soon and for the next few months.
This book took longer than usual to write, interrupted constantly by DIY tasks as I converted our dining room into a playroom for our children. Little Hermione isn’t yet six months, so it is very much for Hunter at the moment. He can spread out and we get to reclaim our living room which was slowly being taken over by Brio trains and Hot Wheels cars. I fitted underfloor heating beneath anti-slip ceramic tiles and reworked the wiring and plumbing plus had to decorate the whole thing. Like the book, it took longer than I intended and ended up more complicated than might have been strictly necessary. I also put my back out sawing skirting boards of all things.
I don’t think it was the skirting boards that did it. Rather, a combination of spending my time in a sedentary lifestyle and a long history of sports and other injuries which include two prolapsed discs. Hopefully the book makes sense, but I wrote the last thirty percent while stoned on painkillers, so it could either be genius or tripe. At this point, still stoned, I cannot tell.
Albert and Rex, at the time of writing in October 2020, are my best-selling characters and ones I particularly love. My decision to have a near-octogenarian central character was controversial because no one does that.
Why did I? Because that’s where I am heading. Yes, I have several decades before I get there, but having met sprightly people in their eighties and nineties, I know how they can be and that’s a model I can follow. Albert is a bit cheeky, but still utterly determined to be who he is until time finally stops
