Tuesday: Smalls
St. Zvlkx is the patron saint of Swindon, a choice that owes more to local saint availability than to any notable good deeds on his part. The thirteenth-century saint is known today mainly for his likeness on Zvlkx brand bathroom sealant and for his long list of Revealments, all of which came true—including his own second coming in 1988. Aside from reintroducing a rare skin ailment and murmuring that a “new cathedral might be nice,” St. Zvlkx did little of relevance on his return and was run over by a Number 23 bus two days later.
Extract from Swindon Great Lives (expanded edition)
Finisterre was unharmed, as was Daisy. The worst off was Sister Henrietta, who had fallen downstairs and was now nursing a burst kneecap and the embarrassment of its being found out that he was a man. Oddly—although given that a low profile would doubtless be beneficial to the gang—no one had been seriously hurt. The pinpoint accuracy the diversionary force had used ensured zero casualties, but they had been live rounds— just intended to miss by a narrow margin. The only hits were the result of ricochets. Few were serious, and none life-threatening. Even Goliath would have realized that killing nuns is bad PR.
I was investigating the plastic bag and what remained of the torn-out pages when Mother Daisy and Finisterre joined me. The vellum had been reduced to a sticky gloop that had eventually dissolved its way through the plastic bag and oozed onto the stone floor. I pushed a pencil into the smoldering muck, and the paint blistered.
“It’s Malevolex,” said Finisterre, sniffing the air, “an organic acid used in the pulping industry to prepare remaindered books for being turned into MDF. When they cracked the phial in the bag, the two parts mixed and the book was history.”
I’d been staring at the plastic bag for a while. It had been a slick operation.
“They came up here knowing they would destroy these pages,” I said, climbing to my feet. “They didn’t copy it or even have enough
time to read it all.”
“They’d have been seriously bored if they did,” said Daisy, handing me the rest of the book. It was titled Trawling around Tewkefbury after darke while piffed and the pleafuref to be found therein.
“A thirteenth-century racy novel that early members of the Sisterhood used to entertain themselves,” explained Daisy.
“It’s all a bit more proper these days, I take it?” asked James delicately.
“Goodness gracious no!” replied Daisy. “We’re more into Jilly Cooper and Daphne Farquitt. This particular racy codex is a bit . . . well, unimaginative—unless you like that sort of thing.”
“Who wrote it?” I asked.
“Stephen Shorts of Swine-dome,” said Finisterre. “You’d know him better as St. Zvlkx.”
“Ah!” I said, having come across Swindon’s very own saint before. Aside from his Revealments, which turned out to be a complex sporting fraud, St. Zvlkx wrote only banal books that revolved around drunkenness and womanizing. The purpose and reason for his sainthood are somewhat obscure but, knowing St. Zvlkx, probably had some basis in blackmail.
Daisy was flicking through the book, trying to find which page had gone.
“He pulled only one leaf out,” she said, studying the volume carefully, “which lay across the spine, so from two parts of the book. The first part was a report on which tavern in Tewkesbury offered the best opportunity to get totally plastered for a farthing, and the second section—if memory serves—was a lengthy digression on how best to handle the fallout from getting a town elder’s wife pregnant, an area in which Zvlkx was something of an expert.”
We stood in silence for a moment. Finisterre aired the thoughts we all shared.
“Why would someone attempt to break into a library guarded by dangerously violent nuns—sorry, no offense meant—”
“None taken.”
“—only to read the licentious ramblings of a despicable rogue from the thirteenth century?”
“Goliath is smart,” I said, “so there would have been a good reason. Perhaps that, too, was a diversionary measure—do something utterly random and incomprehensible, knowing full well we’d spend hours trying to figure it out. No, we take this as an attempted theft and vandalism. Was this the most valuable book?”
“It was possibly the least valuable,” said Daisy. “Almost every book in this room is worth more. Have a look at this.”
She drew out a volume almost at random and passed it to Finisterre, who stared at it, lower lip trembling.
“Pliny the Really Very Young’s account of being unable to see the eruption of Vesuvius due to being put to bed early for some bullshit excuse.”
“We have only fragments of this stuff,” I murmured as Finisterre reverentially placed it back on the shelf. “Worth ten million?”
“More. Much more.”
We looked around at the book-lined chamber.
“We’re surrounded by about half a billion pounds’ worth of books,” said Daisy. “Do you think we should consider insurance, and if so, what would be a reasonable excess?”