The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [219]
The Red Queen ignored me and made a detour through Fantasy to avoid a scrum near the Agatha Christie counter. I knew the store a little better and nipped in between Haggard and Hergé, where I was just in time to see Miss Havisham make her first mistake. In her haste she had pushed past a little old lady sizing up a “buy two get one free” offer on contemporary fiction. The little old lady—no stranger to department store sales battle tactics—parried Havisham’s blow expertly and hooked her bamboo-handled umbrella around her ankle. Havisham came down with a heavy thud and lay still, the breath knocked out of her. I kneeled beside her as the Red Queen hopped past, laughing loudly and making “nyah, nyah” noises.
“Thursday!” panted Miss Havisham as several stockinged feet ran across her. “A complete set of Daphne Farquitt novels in a walnut display case—run!”
And run I did. Farquitt was so prolific and popular she had a bookshelf all to herself, and her recent boxed sets were fast becoming collector’s items—it was not surprising that there was a fight in progress. I entered the scrum behind the Red Queen and was instantly punched on the nose. I reeled with the shock and was pushed heavily from behind while someone else—an accomplice, I assumed—thrust a walking stick between my shins. I lost my footing and fell with a thud on the hard wooden floor. This was not a safe place to be. I crawled out of the battle and joined Miss Havisham where she had taken cover behind a display of generously discounted Du Maurier novels.
“Not so easy as it looks, eh, girl?” asked Havisham with a rare smile, holding a lacy white handkerchief to my bleeding nose. “How close is the Royal Harridan to the Farquitt shelves?”
“I last saw her fighting somewhere between Ervine and Euripides.”
“Blast!” replied Havisham with a grunt. “Listen, girl, I’m done for. My ankle’s twisted and I think I’ve had it. But you— you might be able to make it.”
I looked out at the squabbling masses as a pocket derringer fell to the ground not far from us.
“I thought this might happen,” she continued, “so I drew a map.”
She unfolded a piece of Satis House notepaper and pointed out where she thought we were.
“You won’t make it across the main floor alive. You’re going to have to climb over the Police Procedurals bookcase, make your way past the cash register and stock returns, crawl under the Chicklit and then fight the last six feet to the Farquitt boxed set. It’s a limited edition of one hundred—I will never get another chance like this!”
“This is lunacy, Miss Havisham!” I replied indignantly. “I will not fight over a set of Daphne Farquitt novels!”
Miss Havisham looked sharply at me as the muffled crack of a small-caliber firearm sounded and there was the thud of a body falling.
“I thought as much!” she sneered. “A streak of yellow a mile wide all the way down your back! How did you think you were going to handle the otherness at Jurisfiction if you can’t handle a few crazed fiction-fanciers hell bent on finding bargains? Your apprenticeship is at an end. Good day, Miss Next!”
“Wait! This is a test?”
“What did you think it was? Think someone like me with all the money I have enjoys spending my time fighting for books I can read for free in the library?”
I resisted the temptation to say “Well, yes” and answered instead: “Will you be okay here, ma’am?”
“I’ll be fine,” she replied, tripping up a man near us for no reason I could see. “Now go!”
I turned and crawled rapidly across the carpet, climbed over the Police Procedurals to just beyond the registers, where the sales assistants rang in the bargains with a fervor bordering on messianic. I crept past them, through the empty returns department, and dived under the Chicklit table to emerge a scant two yards from the Daphne Farquitt special editions display; by a miracle no one had yet grabbed the boxed set. And it was very discounted—down from £300 to only £50. I looked to my left and could see the Red Queen fighting her way through the crowd. She caught my eye and dared me to try