One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

“Permission to speak openly?” he asked.

I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to hear what you have to say, but I should.”

“It’s not what Thursday Next would have done.”

“No,” I replied, “but then Thursday could deal with this sort of stuff. She enjoyed it. A woman has to know her limitations. If Herring had wanted this accident to be investigated properly, he would have given it to someone else. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe there really are wheels within wheels. Maybe some stuff has to be left, for the good of all of us. We leave crime to the authorities, right?”

“That would certainly seem to be the safe and conventional option, ma’am.”

“Exactly,” I replied. “Safe. Conventional. Besides, I have a series to look after and dignity to be maintained for Thursday. If anything happened to me, as likely as not Carmine would take over, and I’m not convinced she’d uphold the standards quite as I do, what with the goblins and the hyphenating and such.”

I looked away as I said it and began to rearrange the objects on my desk. I suddenly felt hot and a bit peculiar and didn’t want to look Sprockett in the eye.

“As madam wishes.”

Sprockett bowed and withdrew, and I spent the next hour writing up a report for Herring. It wasn’t easy to write. Try as I might, I couldn’t make the report longer than forty words, and it deserved more than that. I managed at one point to write a hundred words, but after I’d taken out the bit about the epizeuxis worm and the scrubbed ISBN, it was down to only thirty-seven again. I decided to ask Whitby his hypothetical opinion and finish the report after lunch.

I called the Jurisfiction offices again to see if Thursday was available to talk.

“She’s still unavailable,” I reported as I trotted into the kitchen. “I might try to speak to her when I go over to deliver the report to Commander Herring this afternoon. Do you think I’m dressed okay for Whitby or should I . . .”

My voice had trailed off because something was wrong. Sprockett and Mrs. Malaprop were looking at me in the sort of way I imagine disgruntled parents might.

“You tell her,” said Mrs. Malaprop.

“It’s Whitby,” said Sprockett.

I suddenly had a terrible thought. This being fiction, long-unrequited romances often end in tragedy just before they finally begin, inevitably leading to a lifetime’s conjecture of what might have happened and all manner of tedious and ultimately overwritten soul-searching. The scenario was almost as hideous as actually losing Whitby.

“He’s dead?”

“No, ma’am, he’s not dead. At least he was still alive two minutes ago.”

“He was here? Why isn’t he here now?”

Sprockett coughed politely. “I am sorry to say, ma’am, that I had to send Mr. Jett away.”

I stared at him, scarcely believing what I was hearing. “Why would you do something like that?”

“I feel, ma’am, that he is unsuitable.”

“What?”

He showed me a newspaper clipping that was about two years old. “I exhort you to read it, ma’am, no matter how painful.”

So I did.

“It is the painful duty of this journalist,” went the article, “to report an act of such base depravity that it causes the worst excesses of Horror to pale into insignificance. Last Tuesday an unnamed man, for reasons known only to himself, set fire to a busload of nuns who were taking their orphaned puppies to a ‘How cute is your puppy?’ competition. Unfortunately, the perpetrator of this vile and heartless act is still at liberty, and . . .”

I stopped reading as a sense of confusion and disappointment welled up inside me. There was a picture accompanying the article, and even though the piece did not mention Whitby by name, there was a photograph of a man whom “Jurisfiction wanted to question.” It was Jett, without a doubt—holding a two-gallon gasoline can and chuckling. I didn’t really know what was worse—Whitby killing the busload of nuns or me having finally plucked up the courage to have lunch at the Elbow Rooms, only for the rug to be pulled from under my feet.

“Is this true?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry, ma’am. Was I wrong to send him away?”

“No, you were right.”

I sighed and stared at the report I was carrying. “Better call a cab. I’m going to tell Herring what he wants to hear. At least that way someone gets to be happy today. You can come, too.”