One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [33]
I then returned to my study and spent twenty minutes staring at Thursday’s shield. The only way it could have gotten into my pocket was via the red-haired gentleman sitting next to me on the tram. And if that was the case, he had been in contact with Thursday quite recently—or at least sometime in the past week. It didn’t prove she was missing in the BookWorld any more than it proved she was missing in the RealWorld. I had only a telephone note, a husband’s tears and the word of a murderer.
“Your tea and shortbread, ma’am,” said Sprockett, placing the tray upon my desk. “A very comfortable house you have. I must confess that in a weak moment, and quite against your advice, I lent that odd-looking bird twenty pounds for her kidney operation.”
“I warned you about Pickwick,” I said with a sigh. “She doesn’t need a kidney operation, and her mother isn’t in ‘dire straits,’ no matter what she says.”
“Ah,” replied Sprockett. “Do you think I might be able to get my money back?”
“Not without a lot of squawking. Is Mrs. Malaprop causing you any trouble, by the way?”
“No, ma’am. We agreed to arm-wrestle for seniority in the house, and even though she attempted to cheat, I believe that we are all square now.”
“I was given this by someone on a tram,” I said, passing the real Thursday’s shield across to Sprockett.
His eyebrow pointed to “Puzzled,” then “Thinking,” then “Worried.”
“That would explain the ease by which I escaped the stoning in Conspiracy.”
“And later, getting out of Poetry.”
“I don’t recall that.”
“You were dreaming about gramophones. Can you call the Jurisfiction front desk and ask for Thursday Next? Tell them it’s me and I need to speak to her.”
Sprockett stood in the corner to make the calls. A request like this would be better coming from my butler.
“They tell me that she is ‘on assignment’ at present,” replied Sprockett after talking quietly to himself for a few seconds.
“Tell them it’s the written Thursday and I’ll call again.”
I wondered quite how she could be on assignment without her shield and idly turned over the newspaper. I stopped. The banner headline read, FAMED JURISFICTION AGENT TO LEAD PEACE TALKS. Thursday was due to table the talks on Friday, less than a week away. All of a sudden, her “absent” status took on a more menacing angle. If she was missing now, things could get very bad indeed.
For the past three years, Racy Novel and its leader, Speedy Muffler, had been causing trouble far in excess of his size, readership or importance. Sandwiched precariously between Women’s Fiction and Outdated Religious Dogma, with Erotica to the far north and Comedy to the south, the large yet proudly anarchic genre had been troublesome ever since it was declared a member of the Axis of Unreadable along with Misery Memoirs and Celebrity Bio. Muffler, stung by the comparison to voyeuristic drivel or the meaningless nonadventures of celebrities, decided to expand his relevance within Fiction by attempting to push out his borders. The CofG responded to his aggression by transferring Lady Chatterley’s Lover out of Racy Novel and into Human Drama, then moving The History of Tom Jones to Erotica. Sanctions soon followed that prevented anyone from supplying Racy Novel with good dialogue, plot or characterization. This did nothing to appease Speedy Muffler, and he claimed that the sanctions were preventing him from developing as a genre—quite against BookWorld law and the Character’s Charter. The trouble was, Muffler and Racy Novel couldn’t be ignored, since they were amongst the major exporters of metaphor. When Muffler claimed to possess a dirty bomb capable of hurling scenes of a gratuitously sexual nature far into Women’s Fiction, the BookWorld finally took notice and the peace talks