One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [51]
“We’re investigating a crashed book out in Conspiracy,” I said, tearing up the accident report behind my back, “and we need some background information on The Murders on the Hareng Rouge by Adrian Dorset.”
“Of course,” trumpeted the elephant. “Take a seat, Miss . . . ?”
“Next. Thursday Next. But I’m not—”
“It’s all right,” he said, “I know. I know everything. More even than the Cheshire Cat. And that’s saying something. I’m Captain Phantastic, by the way, but you can call me ‘the Captain.’ You and I haven’t met, but the real Thursday and I go back a ways—even partnered together during the whole sorry issue surrounding The Cat in the Hat III—Revenge of the Things. Did you hear about it?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t.”
“No matter.” And he sniffed at me delicately for a moment with his trunk.
“Do you have a chicken living in your house?”
“A dodo.”
“Would that be Lorina?”
“We call her Pickwick these days, but yes.”
“Tell her that Captain Phantastic is still waiting for that date she promised.”
I wasn’t aware that Pickwick dated elephants—or anyone, come to that.
“Did she promise you recently?”
“Eighty-six years, three months, and two days ago. Would you like me to relate the conversation? I can do it word for word.”
“No thanks. I’ll give her the message.”
The Captain leaned back on his chair and closed his eyes.
“Now, The Murders on the Hareng Rouge. I try to read most books, but for obvious reasons those in Vanity I delegate. So many books, so little time. Listen, you don’t have a bun on you, do you? Raisins or otherwise, I’m not fussy.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Shame. Okay, well, there’s not much to tell, really. The Murders on the Hareng Rouge was a junker on its way to be scrapped.”
I wasn’t expecting this. “I’m sorry?”
“It was a stinker. One of the very worst books ever written. Self-published by one Adrian H. Dorset, who as far as we know has not written anything else. He printed two copies and spiral bound them in his local print shop. Semiautobiographical, it was the story of a man coming to terms with the death of his wife and how he then immersed himself in work to try to take revenge on the person he thought responsible. Flat, trite and uninspiring. The author burned it as a form of catharsis. By rigid convention, the version here in the BookWorld has to be scrapped before sundown. Did it hurt anyone?”
“Only the people in it.”
“It should have been empty,” said the elephant. “Scrapped books always have the occupants reallocated before the book is torn apart.”
“We found the remains of someone.”
“How much?”
“A thumb.”
The elephant shrugged. “A hitchhiker, perhaps? Or reformed graphemes?”
“We thought the same.”
“In any event,” concluded Phantastic, “that’s all I have.”
“You’re sure it was a junker?” I asked, trying to figure out why anyone would risk almost certain erasure by deleting the ISBN and then using demolition-grade epizeuxis to destroy an unreadable book from Vanity that was destined to be scrapped anyway.
“Completely sure.”
I thanked Captain Phantastic for his time, promised to bring some buns next time and walked out of his office, deep in thought.
“You were in there a while,” said the frog-footman as he escorted me from the building.
“The Captain likes to talk,” I said. “‘Hannibal said this, me and Dumbo did that, Horton’s my best friend, I was Celeste’s first choice but she took Babar on the rebound’—you know what it’s like.”
“After Madame Bovary,” said the frog-footman, rolling his eyes, “the Captain is the worst name-dropper I’ve ever been ignored by.”
I went and found Sprockett in the local Stubbs. He had got chatting to a Mystical Meg Fortune-Telling Automaton and discovered that they were distantly related.
“I’ve got you a fortune card, ma’am,” said Sprockett. “Archie was a great-great-uncle to us both, and Meg’s father-in-law is Gort.”
“Nice chap?”
“So long as you don’t get him annoyed.”
I looked at the small card he had given me. It read, “Avoid eating oysters if there