Something Rotten (Thursday Next 4)

I turned back to Zhark.

'So, what's the news?'

'Max de Winter from Rebecca,' said Zhark thoughtfully. 'The Book World Justice Department has rearrested him.'

'I thought Snell got him off the murder charge?'

'He did. The department are still gunning for him, though. They've arrested him for – get this – insurance fraud. Remember the boat he sank with his wife in it?'

I nodded.

'Well, apparently he claimed the insurance on the boat, so they think they might be able to get him on that.'

It was not an untypical turn of events in the BookWorld. Our mandate from the Council of Genres was to keep fictional narrative as stable as possible. As long as it was how the author intended, murderers walked free and tyrants stayed in power – that was what we did. Minor infringements that weren't obvious to the reading public we tended to overlook. However, in a master stroke of inspired bureaucracy, the Council of Genres also empowered a Justice Department to look into individual transgressions. The conviction of David Copperfield for murdering his first wife was their biggest cause célèbre – before my time, I hasten to add – and

Jurisfiction, unable to save him, could do little except tram another character to take Copperfield's place. They had tried to get Max de Winter before but we had always managed to outmanoeuvre them. Insurance fraud. I could scarcely believe it.

'Have you alerted the Gryphon?'

'He's working on Fagin's umpteenth appeal.'

'Get him on it. We can't leave this to amateurs. What about Hamlet? Can I send him back?'

'Not . . . as such,' replied Zhark hesitantly.

'He's becoming something of a nuisance,' I admitted, 'and Danes are liable to be arrested. I can't keep him amused watching Mel Gibson's films for ever.'

'I'd like Mel Gibson to play me,' said Zhark thoughtfully.

'I don't think Gibson does bad guys,' I told him. 'You'd probably be played by Geoffrey Rush or someone.'

'That wouldn't be so bad. Is that cake going begging?'

'Help yourself.'

Zhark cut a large slice of Battenberg, took a bite and continued:

'Okay, here's the deal: we managed to get the Polonius family to attend arbitration over their unauthorised rewriting of Hamlet.'

'How did you achieve that?'

'Promised Ophelia her own book. All back to normal – no problem.'

'So . . . I can send Hamlet back?'

'Not quite yet,' replied Zhark, trying to hide his unease by pretending to find a small piece of fluff on his cape. 'You see, Ophelia has now got her knickers in a twist about one of Hamlet's infidelities – someone she thinks is called Henna Appleton. Have you heard anything about this?'

'No. Nothing. Nothing at all. Not a thing. Don't even know anyone called Henna Appleton Why?'

'I was hoping you could tell me. Well, she went completely nuts and threatened to drown herself in the first act rather than the fourth. We think we've got her straightened out. But while we were doing this there was a hostile takeover.'

I cursed aloud and Zhark jumped. Nothing was ever straightforward in the BookWorld. Book mergers, where one book joined another to increase the collective narrative advantage of their own mundane plotlines, were thankfully rare but not unheard of. The most famous merger in Shakespeare was the conjoinment of the two plays Daughters of Lear and Sons of Gloucester into King Lear. Other potential mergers such as Much Ado about Verona and A Midsummer Night's Shrew were denied at the planning stage and hadn't taken place. It could take months to extricate the plots, if indeed it was possible at all. King Lear resisted unravelling so strongly we just let it stand.

'So what merged with Hamlet?'

'Well, it's now called The Merry Wives of Elsinore, and features Gertrude being chased around the castle by Falstaff while being outwitted by Mistress Page, Ford and Ophelia. Laertes is the king of the fames and Hamlet is relegated to a sixteen-line sub-plot where he is convinced Dr Caius and Fenton have conspired to kill his father for seven hundred pounds.'

I groaned.