The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [402]
Macbeth for Yeast, translated by . .////. .///. .
AH!” SAID PLUM as I walked into his office. “Miss Next—good news and bad news.”
“Better give me the bad news first.”
Plum took off his spectacles and polished them.
“The Eject-O-Hat. I’ve pulled the records and traced the manufacturing process all the way back to the original milliner; it seems that over a hundred people have been involved in it’s manufacture, modification and overhaul schedules. Fifteen years is a long service life for an Eject-O-Hat. Add the people with the know-how and we’ve got a shortlist of about six hundred.”
“A broad net.”
“I’m afraid so.”
I went to the window and looked out. Two peacocks were strutting across the lawn.
“What was the good news?”
“You know Miss Scarlett at records?”
“Yes?”
“We’re getting married on Tuesday.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you. Was there anything else?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied, walking to the door. “Thanks for your help.”
“My pleasure!” he replied kindly. “Tell Miss Havisham she should get a new Eject-O-Hat—this one is quite beyond repair.”
“It wasn’t Havisham’s, it was mine.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You’re mistaken,” he said after a pause. “Look.”
He pulled the battered homburg from his desk and showed me Havisham’s name etched on the sweatband with a number, manufacturing details and size.
“But,” I said slowly, “I was wearing this hat in—”
The awful truth dawned. There must have been a mix-up with the hats. They hadn’t been trying to kill me that day—they had been after Miss Havisham!
“Problems?” said Plum.
“Of the worst sort,” I muttered. “Can I use your footnoterphone?”
I didn’t wait for a reply; I picked up the brass horn and asked for Miss Havisham. She wasn’t in the Well, nor Great Expectations. I replaced the speaking horn and jumped to the lobby of the Great Library, where the general stores were situated; if anyone knew what Havisham was up to, it would be Wemmick.
Mr. Wemmick wasn’t busy; he was reading a newspaper with his feet on the counter.
“Miss Next!” he said happily, getting up to shake my hand warmly. “What can I do for you?”
“Miss Havisham,” I blurted out, “do you know where she is?”
Wemmick squirmed inwardly. “I’m not sure she’d like me to tell—”
“Wemmick!” I cried. “Someone tried to kill Miss Havisham and they may try again!”
He looked shocked and bit his lip. “I don’t know where she is,” he said slowly, “but I know what she’s doing.”
My heart sank. “It’s another land speed attempt, isn’t it?”
He nodded miserably.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. She said the Higham wasn’t powerful enough. She signed out the Bluebird, a twin-engined, twenty-five-hundred horsepower brute of a car—it almost didn’t fit in the storeroom.”
“Do you have any idea where she’s going to drive it?”
“None at all.”
“Damn!” I yelled, slamming my hand against the counter. “Think, Thursday, think!”
I had an idea. I grasped the footnoterphone and asked to be put through to Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows. He wasn’t in but Ratty was; and after I had explained who I was and what I wanted, he gave me the information I needed. Havisham and Mr. Toad were racing on Pendine sands, in the Socialist Republic of Wales.
I ran up the stairs and to the works of Dylan Thomas, picked up a slim volume of poetry and concentrated on my exit point in the Outland. To my delight it worked and I was catapulted out of fiction and into an untidy heap in a small bookshop in Laugharne, Thomas’s old village in the south of Wales. Now a shrine for Welsh and non-Welsh visitors alike, the bookshop was one of eight in the village selling nothing but Welsh literature and Thomas memorabilia.
There was a scream from a startled book buyer as I appeared, and I stepped backwards in alarm only to fall over a pile of Welsh cookery books. I got up and ran from the shop as a car screeched to a halt in front of me. Pendine sands with its ten miles of flat beach was down the coast from Laugharne and I would need transport to get me there.
I showed