The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [553]
I read the card aloud. “ ‘At Long Last Lust. 1931. Limited-edition run of one hundred. Author: Daphne Farquitt.’ ”
I looked at the Cat. Daphne Farquitt. Writer of nearly five hundred romantic novels and darling of the romance genre.
“Before she got famous writing truly awful books, she used to write truly awful books that were self-published,” explained the Cat. “In At Long Last Lust, Yorrick plays a local politician eager for advancement. He isn’t a major part either. He’s only mentioned twice and doesn’t even warrant a description.”
“Can you get me into the vanity-publishing library?” I asked.
“There is no vanity library,” he said with a shrug. “We have figures and short reviews gleaned from vanity publishers’ manifests and Earnest Scribbler Monthly, but little else. Still, we need only to find one copy and he’s ours.”
He grinned again, but I didn’t join him.
“Not that easy, Cat. Take a look at this.”
I showed him the latest issue of The Toad. The Cat carefully put on his spectacles and read, “ ‘Danish book-burning frenzy reaches new heights, with Copenhagen-born Farquitt’s novels due to be consigned to flames.’
“I don’t get it,” said the Cat, placing a longing paw on a Moggilicious Cat Food advert. “What’s he up to, burning all her books?”
“Because,” I said, “he obviously can’t find all the original copies of At Long Last Lust and in desperation has whipped up anti-Danish feeling as a cover. With luck his book-burning idiots will do the job for him. I’m a fool not to have realized. After all, where would you hide a stick?”
There was a long pause.
“I give up,” said the Cat. “Where would you hide a stick?”
“In a forest.”
I stared out the window thoughtfully. At Long Last Lust. I didn’t know how many of the hundred copies still remained, but with Farquitt’s books still being consigned to the furnaces, I figured there had to be at least one. An unpublished Farquitt novel the key to destroying Kaine. I couldn’t make this stuff up.
“Why would you hide a stick in a forest?” asked the Cat, who had been pondering over this question for some moments in silence.
“It’s an analogy,” I explained. “Kaine needs to get rid of every copy of At Long Last Lust but doesn’t want us to get suspicious, so he targets the Danes—the forest, rather than Farquitt—the stick. Get it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
“Well, I’d better be off then,” announced the Cat and he vanished.
I was not much surprised at this for the Cat usually left in this manner. I poured the tea, added some milk, and then put some mugs on a tray. I was just pondering where I might find a copy of At Long Last Lust and, more important, calling Julie again to ask her how long her husband flicked on and off “like a lightbulb,” when the Cat reappeared balanced precariously on the Kenwood mixer.
“By the by,” he said, “the Gryphon tells me that the sentencing for your Fiction Infraction is due in two weeks’ time. Do you want to be present?”
This related to the time I changed the ending of Jane Eyre. They found me guilty at my trial but the law’s delay in the BookWorld just dragged things on and on.
“No,” I said after a pause. “No, tell him to come and find me and let me know what my sentence will be.”
“I’ll tell him. Well, toodle-oo,” said the Cat, and vanished, this time for good.
I pushed open the door of Mycroft’s workshop with my toe, held it open for Pickwick to follow me in, then closed it before Alan could join us and placed the tray on a worktop. Mycroft and Polly were staring intently at a small and oddly shaped geometric solid made of brass.
“Thank you, pet,” said Polly. “How are things with you?”
“Fair to not very good at all, Auntie.”
Polly was Mycroft’s wife of some forty-two years and, although seemingly in the background, was actually almost as brilliant as her husband. She was a bouncy seventy and managed Mycroft’s often irascible and forgetful nature with a patience that I found inspiring. “The trick,” she told me once, “is to regard him like a five-year-old with an IQ of two hundred sixty.” She picked up her tea and blew