The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman Read Online Free PDF Page A

stomachache, he prescribed a cup of hot tea. If his head ached, the prescription was for cold tea; if he fell playing cricket and scraped his skin, a squirt of tea on some cotton wool was enough to clean the wound; if he got a fever, compresses soaked in Earl Grey would bring his temperature down. The treatment worked with astounding efficiency. Atticus grew thirty centimeters during the five years of his secondary education, didn’t fall ill once, was chosen as captain of the cricket team, and was top of the class in six subjects.
    Hamans wanted to study the case in depth at a medical school in London with a grant from Twinings, but Marlow refused to let his son be used as a lab rat. In the end, he allowed him to donate only a few blood and tissue samples, which, unfortunately, Hamans studied furiously for months without obtaining any conclusive results. Atticus, meanwhile, remained convinced that tea cured everything and developed an addiction to Earl Grey that was more psychological than physical. He decided to take his kettle everywhere, just as some women travel with their hair dryers.
    Alone in his room, he plugged in the appliance, filled it with water, waited until the light came on, and then cursed himself for having packed in such a rush, with four pints inside him and his head all over the place. He had forgotten the mug. His mug.
    He wasn’t an obsessive. Nor a fetishist. But he felt the same devotion to that mug that other people feel toward their pets. The mug was called Aloysius, in honor of Sebastian Flyte’s teddy bear in Brideshead Revisited , and Atticus had gotten an artist in Kensington to stamp the name in black letters on the white porcelain. He took a glass out of the small cupboard that housed the minibar. He poured boiling water over the tea bag. The glass steamed up. How irritating. He burned the tips of his fingers when he touched it.
    Then he unpacked the rest of his luggage: three business suits, six made-to-measure shirts, three pairs of wool socks, six pairs of Ralph Lauren boxer shorts, two belts, a Burberry overcoat that would be completely useless judging by the May sunshine, two pairs of Italian shoes, a scarf—how absurd—his cuff links in their box, six linen handkerchiefs, four ties (all striped), and his wash bag, which contained his cologne, shaving foam, mouthwash, and dental floss.
    At the bottom of his suitcase, folded in two, was his old pillow, his traveling companion since he was seven years old, patched, threadbare, its stuffing almost all gone. It was very clean, though, with a faint and pleasant scent of soap. He quite literally couldn’t live without it.
    The only time he was unfaithful and was forced to sleep on a disgusting pillow in the bed of one of his occasional lovers, he suffered the consequences in the form of severe muscle strain—which was relieved only by hot tea compresses and the loving care administered by the nice girl to whom the pillow belonged.
    He placed his pillow on top of the hotel’s. On the pillowcase, in large red letters, was embroidered PROPERTY OF ATTICUS CRAFTSMAN and the telephone number of his parents’ house,which, fortunately, hadn’t changed in the last twenty-three years. It wasn’t an eccentricity, as he explained to the surprised women who had shared it with him; the pillow was quite simply a question of health.
    He took a look around the luxurious room of his Madrid hotel. It was large and light, classic and airy. It had two windows that looked out over a wide avenue lined with chestnut trees. It was two in the afternoon on a sunny Sunday in late May. His stomach demanded a sandwich, preferably smoked salmon and cream cheese with herbs. He asked himself if it would be possible to find such a delicacy in Madrid, in addition to the shade of a tree in a green space resembling Hyde Park under which to eat said sandwich.
    With this hope visible in the form of a smile from ear to ear, he went out into