. . . The finest criminal mind requires the finest accomplices to accompany him. Otherwise, what’s the point? I always found that I could never apply my most deranged plans without someone to share and appreciate them. I’m like that. Very generous . . .
ACHERON HADES
—Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit
SO WHO is this guy we’re going to see?”
“Fellow named Sturmey Archer,” replied Bowden as I pulled my car into the curb. We found ourselves opposite a small factory unit that had a gentle glow of light showing through the windows.
“A few years ago Crometty and myself had the extreme good fortune to arrest several members of a gang which had been attempting to peddle a rather poorly forged sequel to Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ It was entitled ‘Rime II—The Mariner Returneth’ but no one had been fooled. Sturmey avoided jail by turning state’s evidence. I’ve got some dirt on him about a Cardenio scam. I don’t want to use it, but I will if I have to.”
“What makes you think he has anything to do with Crometty’s death?”
“Nothing,” said Bowden simply. “He’s just next on the list.”
We walked across in the gathering dusk. The streetlights were flickering on and the stars were beginning to appear in the twilit sky. In another half hour it would be night.
Bowden thought about knocking but didn’t bother. He opened the door noiselessly and we crept in.
Sturmey Archer was a feeble-looking character who had spent too many years in institutions to be able to look after himself properly. Without designated bathtimes he didn’t wash and without fixed mealtimes he went hungry. He wore thick glasses and mismatched clothes and his face was a moonscape of healed acne. He made part of his living these days by casting busts of famous writers in plaster of paris, but he had too much bad history to be kept on the straight. Other criminals blackmailed him into helping them and Sturmey, already a weak man, could do little to resist. It wasn’t surprising that, out of his forty-six years, only twenty had been spent at liberty.
Inside the workshop we came across a large workbench on which were placed about five hundred foot-high busts of Will Shakespeare, all of them in various states of completion. A large vat of plaster of paris lay empty next to a rack containing twenty rubber casts; it seemed Sturmey had a big order on.
Archer himself was at the back of the shop indulging in his second profession, repairing Will-Speak machines. He had his hand up the back of an Othello as we crept up behind him.
The mannequin’s crude voice-box crackled as Sturmey made some trifling adjustments:
It is the cause, it is the cause, (click) yet I’ll not shed a drop of her blood, (click) nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow . . .
“Hello, Sturmey,” said Bowden.
Sturmey jumped and shorted out the Othello’s controls. The dummy opened its eyes wide and gave out a terrified cry of MONUMENTAL ALABASTER! before falling limp. Sturmey glared at Bowden.
“Creeping around at night, Mr. Cable? Hardly like a LiteraTec, is it?”
Bowden smiled.
“Let’s just say I’m rediscovering the joys of fieldwork. This is my new partner, Thursday Next.”
Archer nodded at me suspiciously. Bowden continued:
“You heard about Jim Crometty, Sturmey?”
“I heard,” replied Archer with feigned sadness.
“I wondered if you had any information you might want to impart?”
“Me?”
He pointed at the plaster busts of Will Shakespeare.
“Look at those. A fiver each wholesale to a Jap company that wants ten thou. The Japanese have built a seven-eighths-scale replica of Stratford-upon-Avon near Yokohama and love all this crap. Fifty grand, Cable, that’s literature I can relate to.”
“And the Chuzzlewit manuscript?” I asked. “How do you relate to that?”
He jumped visibly as I spoke.
“I don’t,” shrugged Sturmey in an unconvincing manner.