The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [77]
“Not at all,” I replied, thinking of my own experiences with Rochester, “but are you absolutely sure he fell into Dombey and Son?”
“What do you mean?”
“He could have made the jump by choice. He might have preferred it—and stayed.”
Victor looked at me strangely. He hadn’t dared tell anyone about his theories for fear of being ostracized, but here was a respected London Litera Tec nearly half his age going farther than even he had imagined. A thought crossed his mind.
“You’ve done it, haven’t you?”
I looked him straight in the eye. For this we could both be pensioned off.
“Once,” I whispered. “When I was a very young girl. I don’t think I could do it again. For many years I thought even that was a hallucination.”
I was going to go farther and tell him about Rochester jumping back after the shooting at Styx’s apartment, but at that moment Bowden put his head into the corridor and asked us to come in.
Mr. Rumplunkett had finished his initial examination.
“One shot through the heart, very clean, very professional. Everything about the body otherwise normal except evidence of rickets in childhood. It’s quite rare these days so it shouldn’t be difficult to trace, unless of course he spent his youth in another country. Very poor dental work and lice. It’s probable he hasn’t had a bath for at least a month. There is not a lot I can tell you except his last meal was suet, mutton and ale. There’ll be more when the tissue samples come back from the lab.”
Victor and I exchanged looks. I was correct. The corpse had to be Mr. Quaverley’s. We all left hurriedly; I explained to Bowden who Quaverley was and where he came from.
“I don’t get it,” said Bowden as we walked toward the car. “How did Hades take Mr. Quaverley out of every copy of Chuzzlewit?”
“Because he went for the original manuscript,” I answered, “for the maximum disruption. All copies anywhere on the planet, in whatever form, originate from that first act of creation. When the original changes, all the others have to change too. If you could go back a hundred million years and change the genetic code of the first mammal, every one of us would be completely different. It amounts to the same thing.”
“Okay,” said Bowden slowly, “but why is Hades doing this? If it was extortion, why kill Quaverley?”
I shrugged.
“Perhaps it was a warning. Perhaps he has other plans. There are far bigger fish than Mr. Quaverley in Martin Chuzzlewit.”
“Then why isn’t he telling us?”
21.
Hades & Goliath
All my life I have felt destiny tugging at my sleeve. Few of us have any real idea what it is we are here to do and when it is that we are to do it. Every small act has a knock-on consequence that goes onto affect those about us in unseen ways. I was lucky that I had so clear a purpose.
THURSDAY NEXT
—A Life in SpecOps
BUT HE was. When we got back a letter was waiting for me at the station. I had hoped it was from Landen but it wasn’t. It bore no stamp and had been left on the desk that morning. No one had seen who delivered it.
I called Victor over as soon as I had read it, laying the sheet of paper on my desk to avoid touching it any more than I had to. Victor put his spectacles on and read the note aloud.
Dear Thursday,
When I heard you had joined the LiteraTec staff I almost believed in divine intervention. It seems that we will at last be able to sort out our differences. Mr. Quaverley was just for starters. Martin Chuzzlewit himself is next for the ax unless I get the following: £10 million in used notes, a Gainsborough, preferably the one with the boy in blue, an eight-week run of Macbeth for my friend Thomas Hobbes at the Old Vic, and I want you to rename a motorway services “LeighDelamare” after the mother of an associate. Signal your readiness by a small ad in the Wednesday edition of the Swindon Globe announcing Angora rabbits