The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next 3)

'I didn't notice it straight away but Vernham, Nelly and Lucy all had the same surname: Deane. They weren't related. In the Outland this happens all the time but in fiction it is rare; the problem is aggressively attacked by the Echolocators (q.v.), who insist that no two people in the same book have the same name. I learned years later that Hemingway once wrote a book that was demolished because he insisted that every single one of the eight characters was named Geoff.'

THURSDAY NEXT – The Jurisfiction Chronicles

The minotaur had given Havisham the slip and was last seen heading towards the works of Zane Grey; the semi-bovine wasn't stupid – he knew we'd have trouble finding him amongst a cattle drive. Snell lasted another three hours. He was kept in an isolation tent made of fine plastic sheeting that had been over-printed with pages from the Oxford English Dictionary. We were in the sickbay of the Anti-mispeling Fast Response Group. At the first sign of any deviant mispeling, thousands of these volumes were shipped to the infected book and set up as barrages either side of the chapter. The barrage was then moved in, paragraph by paragraph, until the vyrus was forced into a single sentence, then a word, then smothered completely. Fire was not an option in a published work; they had tried it once in Samuel Pepys' Diary and burnt down half of London.

'Does he have any family?' I asked.

'Snell was a loner detective, Miss Next,' explained the doctor. 'Perkins was his only family.'

'Is it safe to go up to him?'

'Yes – but be prepared for some mispelings.'

I sat by his bed while Havisham stood and spoke quietly with the doctor. Snell lay on his back and was breathing with small shallow gasps, the pulse on his neck racing – it wouldn't be long before the vyrus took him away and he knew it. I leaned closer and held his hand through the sheeting. His complexion was pail, his breething laboured, his skein covered in painful and unsightly green pastilles. As I wotched, his dry slips tried to foam worlds but all he could torque was ninsense.

'Thirsty!' he squeeked. 'Wode – Cone, udder whirled – doughnut Trieste—!'

He grisped my arm with his fungers, made one last stringled cry before feeling bakwards, his life force deported from his pathotic misspelled boddy.

'He was a fine operative,' said Havisham as the doctor pulled the sheep over his head.

'What will happen to the Perkins & Snell series?'

'I'm not sure,' she replied softly. 'Demolished, saved with new Generics – I don't know.'

'What ho!' exclaimed Bradshaw, appearing from nowhere. 'Is he—?'

'I'm afraid so,' replied Havisham.

'Snell was one of the best,' murmured Bradshaw sadly. 'Did he say anything before he died?'

'Nothing coherent.'

'Hmm. The Bellman wanted a report on his death as soon as possible. What do you think?'

He handed Havisham a sheet of paper and she read:

'Minotaur escapes, finds captor, eats captor, captor dies. Horse mispeled in struggle. Colleague dies attempting rescue. Minotaur escapes.'

She turned over the piece of paper but it was blank on the other side.

'That's it?'

'I didn't want it to get boring,' replied Bradshaw, 'and the Bellman wanted it as simple as possible. I think he's got Libris breathing down his neck. The investigation of a Jurisfiction agent so close to the launch of UltraWord™ will make the Council of Genres jittery as hell.'

Miss Havisham handed the report back to Bradshaw.

'Perhaps, Commander, you should lose that report in the pending tray.'

'This sort of stuff happens in fiction all the time,' he replied. 'Do you have any evidence that it was not accidental?'

'The key to the padlock wasn't on its hook,' I murmured.

'Well spotted,' replied Miss Havisham.

'Skulduggery?' Bradshaw hissed excitedly.

'I fervently hope not,' she returned. 'Just delay the findings for a few days – we should see if Miss Next's observational skills hold up to scrutiny.'