One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [43]
“Blast,” I said, as a more personal note added itself to the mix. “It explains why I was asked to handle the investigation. No one expected me to find anything.”
Sprockett’s eyebrow pointed to “Bingo.”
“The thought had occurred to me, ma’am. In fact, the precise reason you were selected for this investigation, given your lack of adequacy, has been troubling me for some time.”
I thought about Acheron’s comments with regard to the fact that Carmine was an A-4.
“I so need that sort of comment right now.”
His eyebrow clicked from “Bingo” to “Apologetic.”
“Merely the facts as I see them, ma’am.”
I thought carefully. Part of me—the Thursday part—was outraged over the crime, but the rest of me was more realistic. There were some things that were simply not worth meddling with, and anyone willing to engineer the destruction of an entire book wouldn’t think twice about eliminating me. There were few—if any—characters who couldn’t be replaced.
“Have you told anyone about this?” I asked, and Sprockett shook his head.
“Keep it that way,” I murmured. “I think all we’ve found is what Red Herring wanted me to find: an unprecedented event that is unrepeatable.”
“If asked for an opinion, ma’am,” said Sprockett in an unusually forceful turn of phrase, “I should like to find out who asked Commander Herring to allocate you to this investigation.”
I stared at him. I should like to know, too, but I couldn’t think of a way to frame the question that wouldn’t have me in the trunk of a car heading towards the traditional place to dump bodies, the New Jersey area of Crime.
“This was never meant to be reported,” I said. “This was meant for looking the other way and carrying on with life as though nothing had happened. There was a good reason I was asked to do this, and I will not impugn my lack of competence by being irresponsibly accurate. I have a reputation to uphold.”
It was a hopelessly poor argument, and he and I both knew it. I sat down at my desk and drew a sheet of writing paper from my stationery drawer.
“Permission to speak openly?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to hear what you have to say, but I should.”
“It’s not what Thursday Next would have done.”
“No,” I replied, “but then Thursday could deal with this sort of stuff. She enjoyed it. A woman has to know her limitations. If Herring had wanted this accident to be investigated properly, he would have given it to someone else. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe there really are wheels within wheels. Maybe some stuff has to be left, for the good of all of us. We leave crime to the authorities, right?”
“That would certainly seem to be the safe and conventional option, ma’am.”
“Exactly,” I replied. “Safe. Conventional. Besides, I have a series to look after and dignity to be maintained for Thursday. If anything happened to me, as likely as not Carmine would take over, and I’m not convinced she’d uphold the standards quite as I do, what with the goblins and the hyphenating and such.”
I looked away as I said it and began to rearrange the objects on my desk. I suddenly felt hot and a bit peculiar and didn’t want to look Sprockett in the eye.
“As madam wishes.”
Sprockett bowed and withdrew, and I spent the next hour writing up a report for Herring. It wasn’t easy to write. Try as I might, I couldn’t make the report longer than forty words, and it deserved more than that. I managed at one point to write a hundred words, but after I’d taken out the bit about the epizeuxis worm and the scrubbed ISBN, it was down to only thirty-seven again. I decided to ask Whitby his hypothetical opinion and finish the report after lunch.
I called the Jurisfiction offices again