Embarrassment of Corpses, An Read Online Free PDF Page B

I might want ‘filing’ to be undertaken when there is that young scamp Finsbury to be evinced. And this, this is tamping your fecundity? Culpability! I name the guilty man, and it is Woodcock!”
    Oliver assured his distressed employer that he was not to blame for the lack of enthusiasm and told him about the events of the previous morning.
    â€œYes, I read Sir Harry’s obituary in this morning’s Times ,” Mr. Woodcock’s sherry-cherished voice confirmed. “Such a full life. But I had no idea you reposed in the Random bosom, as ’twere.”
    â€œHarry and I have known each other for several years, since I became romantically involved with his daughter, Lorina,” Oliver confided. “It was Harry who encouraged me to write The Railway Mice and recommended me to my publisher.”
    â€œRomantically involved,” the old man echoed awefully. “You make it sound both wonderful and clinical in the same breath—ah, the talents of the true wordsmith! But I trust you have commiserated with this sweetheart?”
    â€œ Former sweetheart. I was planning to go round after work today.”
    Mr. Woodcock flung his arms into the air, as if trying to capture a high-flying beach ball, and addressed the ceiling.
    â€œOh, Woodcock, Woodcock, you are once again keeping this fine young man from his manifest destiny,” he exclaimed to the chandelier. “No, no, my dear Mr. Swithin, Oliver, you must not put the affairs of this establishment before your desires—nay, your duty —as a friend. Eschew the trivial round, the common task! The maiden must be comforted! You must leave immediately!”
    â€œBut it’s only ten o’clock in the morning.”
    â€œAnd the sun is over the yard-arm in Mandalay. Leave these fripperies, I say.” Mr. Woodcock’s chubby hands fluttered over Oliver’s cubbyhole like pink bats. Oliver shrugged, thanked his employer, and flicked off the word processor without saving the morning’s work. Only as he left the building five minutes later and headed for the tube station did he remember that he still hadn’t heard from his uncle.
    ***
    Superintendent Mallard had remembered his promise to tell Oliver what time the Trafalgar Square fountains were turned on, but other events had intervened. When Oliver left the premises of Woodcock and Oakhampton, Mallard was only a quarter of a mile away, at Sloane Square Underground station, and he was not pleased, for two reasons. First, the previous evening’s rehearsal of Macbeth had not gone well. And second, he was staring at a dead body that had bled profusely on the westbound platform of the District and Circle Lines.
    There was an odd connection between the sources of Mallard’s irritation. The Theydon Bois Thespians were trying out a new director, who had clearly seen too many Hammer films in his youth. As Humfrey had revealed last night, his “concept” of “the Scottish Play” (he insisted on maintaining the precious superstition of not uttering the title) was to set it in Transylvania at the end of the nineteenth century, with the witches portrayed as sexy succubi, and Macbeth’s retreat into paranoia and solitude interpreted as the vampire’s fear of the daylight. The giggling Thespians were already referring to the production among themselves as “Drac-beth.”
    But what had driven the last tooth into Mallard’s jugular was the director’s insistence that every character who died should immediately become undead, wandering aimlessly through the production—and sometimes the audience—until the final curtain. This, and the amount of fake blood Humfrey had promised (‘Darlings, I want your teeth to bleed!’), suggested to Mallard that his dreams of an early escape to the pub stood as much chance of survival as Bela Lugosi on a tanning bed.
    Staring at real blood seldom affected him. If anything, he was