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already taken pictures of him on my mobile phone
while he dozed sherry-drunk in one of my armchairs, with me posing beside him
like we were great mates; pinning those above the signed books would be
authentication enough, at least for your average mug amateur or lower-level
dealer.
        I
just wanted rid of him. But Alison, who knows a thing or two about eggs and how
to exploit them, sat him down at the table and scrambled the only two left in
the house. As he shovelled them in, I made faces at her across the table, but
she ignored me. When he had finished scoffing them down, he wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand. Standards were slipping everywhere.
        He
said, 'Thank you, Alison, that was lovely.' She smiled demurely. 'Now, what are
we going to do about my Arabella?'
        'Do?'
I said.
        'We're
going to find her, or find out what happened to her,' said Alison. I made a
kind of choking sound. 'In our spare time we do investigate certain cases.
We've had quite a lot of success. My partner here is a bit of a genius.'
        I
made another face. She would not win me over.
        'Well
that would be . . . fantastic . . . I've really nowhere else to turn ..
. but I'm afraid I've nothing to pay you with.'
        'That
won't be necessary. We don't do it for the money.'
        I grrrrrred .
        'It
would mean the world to me. And do you know something?' He was looking at me
now. 'Even though I was rather flustered yesterday, I was looking at your shop,
and it's really quite wonderful. You obviously have a great love of books and
writing. I was wondering if you've ever thought of publishing your own books,
you know, limited editions maybe?'
        'Done
that,' I said. 'There's bugger-all money in it.'
        'Really?
Because, as it happens, I have a little manuscript sitting around. Maybe we
could work something out, you know, in lieu of payment; you could publish
that?'
        The
first faint stirrings.
        'Yeah,
maybe.'
        I
didn't want to get too excited. Yes, he was critically acclaimed, but his only
known works were more than twenty years old. If he had written it recently, it
was probably as mad as he was.
        'And
you should know,' said Alison, at which point I realised that I'd said it out
loud.
        I
laughed and said, 'Sure we're all a bit mad. What's the book?'
        'Well,
you know this Barbed-Wire Love trilogy you're so enamoured of?'
        'Yes?'
        'There
were always actually four parts to it. Because it was self-published, and it
didn't sell at all, I didn't have enough money to put the fourth one out. So
it's been gathering dust all these years, which I've always thought was a great
pity, because it throws a whole new light on the rest of it.'
        He
nodded thoughtfully.
        Alison
gazed at me across the table, probably wondering why I appeared to be suffering
a stroke.
     
            
        I
wasn't convinced of the wisdom of leaving him in the house by himself, but it
was either that or bring him with me to No Alibis, and I could do without that.
He was just a stress to have around. And besides, I wanted to dive head first
into solving what would become the Case of the Pearl Necklace, because
in my head I was already formulating ambitious plans for the first publication
of Fire in the Sky, the fourth book in what was now no longer a trilogy
but a cycle of novels, and beyond that persuading Augustine to let me
reprint the other books as well. I would be acclaimed throughout the mysterious
world for not only discovering the unknown fourth book, but also rescuing the
original trilogy from obscurity. And if I kept them to limited editions, I
could charge an absolute fortune and secure No Alibis' future as well. I was on such a high, although part of that may have been down to my extensive list
of medication, which I seemed to have taken twice that morning by mistake.
        Even
Jeff noticed, and he's an idiot. When he