The Educated Ape & other Wonders of the Worlds (22 page)

Mr
Bell leaned back towards the helmsman and smote him smartly upon the head with
the business end of his sword—stick.

‘Enough
of your impertinence, my fine fellow,’ he said.

‘Well,
pardon me, guv’nor,’ said the helmsman in a tone that vaguely echoed
contrition, ‘but sometimes I cannot contain myself, what with the joyousness of
life on this here canal.’

Mr
Bell raised an eyebrow but spared the helmsman a further smiting. He glanced
the fellow up and down and drew deductions from here and there and also the
next place, too.

‘You
have served the princess for a very long time,’ said he to the man at the helm,
‘yet you have never been allowed to enter the floating palace.’

‘Man
and boy I have served the royal lady,’ said the helmsman, adjusting a stopcock
which put Mr Bell in mind of those within his bathroom at the hotel. He had
received a particularly violent scalding this morning but felt confident that
he was getting to grips with the theory of it all.

‘Perhaps
your eldest son will find a place in the Royal Household,’ said Mr Bell. ‘He
appears to be a bright enough lad.’

‘Ah,’
said the helmsman. ‘I see.’

‘You
do?’ asked Cameron Bell.

‘You
are a thaumaturge, one of them as can read the minds of men. Come for some
congress at the palace, I suppose it would be.’

Mr
Bell’s face expressed no emotion. ‘And what do
you
know of such
congresses?’ he asked.

‘No
more than I should, sir. No more than I should. But it is common knowledge that
the princess enjoys the company of magicians. The princess fears the
anarchists, just as everyone else does, and she has been known to employ
magicians to protect her. I boat them out to the palace all the time. Backwards
and forwards I go, backwards and forwards, year after year after year, but
never allowed inside that big pink palace.’

‘You
follow a noble calling,’ said Mr Bell. ‘When I speak with the princess, I shall
recommend that she raise your salary. And also that she employ your son, when
he is of a suitable age.

‘Why,
thank you, sir. Why, thank you very much.’ The helmsman tipped his cap to
Cameron Bell.

‘So
tell me,’ said the detective, ‘has the princess received many visitors and
guests of late? Anyone of singular interest you have ferried across?’

‘None
but the usual lords and ladies as comes for the season. But for that one woman,
and I did not take to her.’

‘Please
go on,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘Skinny
creature with mauve-coloured eyes. You could smell the magic upon her. I takes
her over and she’s all smiles, but on the way back she’s cursing fit to
fracture a rib and threatens to turn my face inside out if I don’t put more
speed to her passage.’

Mr
Bell smiled somewhat. Lavinia Dharkstorrm, he presumed with correctness.
Travelling happily to the palace with the intention of stealing the reliquary.
Then returning in fury when she discovered that someone else already had.

‘The
palace was originally the property of Martian nobility, I assume,’ said Mr
Bell.

‘You
assume correctly, sir. Once the Martians were all dead, the London toffs took
over the floating palaces. The princess had hers painted pink. Everything’s
pink with the princess, so I’ve heard.’

Mr
Bell chose not to comment upon that remark. ‘When will the palace be setting
sail, as it were?’ he asked.

‘In
two days’ time,’ said the helmsman. ‘And I’ll travel with it, moored to the
jetty, but not permitted to set a toe upon her.’

The
floating palace now loomed all-consumingly above and the helmsman drew the
little craft close to the jetty upon which he could never set a toe.

‘Do
you wish for me to await your return, Master Mage?’ asked the helmsman,
saluting as he did so.

Mr
Bell climbed with care from the royal tug to the royal jetty and turned to face
the helmsman. ‘What if other folk come to the shore, awaiting you to ferry them
across?’ he asked.

‘Then
they’ll just have to wait, sir, won’t they?’

‘Splendid,’
said Mr Bell. ‘Then settle yourself down for a nap and I will awaken you gently
upon my return.’

The
helmsman offered another salute and Mr Bell went on his way.

He
trudged up a gravel drive that led to an unprepossessing door. Knowing well
the societal niceties of court, Mr Bell was aware that only those of royal
blood could expect to use the grand main entrance. As his shoes crunched on the
gravel, he wondered at the wonder of it all. This palace was constructed of marble
and stone and had to weigh literally millions of tons and yet it floated as
would an ocean liner. There was much to understand upon this rose-red world and
there would be little room for error if he was to succeed in his enterprise.

Mr
Bell faced up to the unprepossessing door and rapped upon it with the pommel of
his sword-stick. The door swung instantly open and the detective gazed at the
being who stood within. Gazed
down
at this being. This rather wonderful
being.

For
she was a woman of oriental appearance, her hair teased into the style of the
geisha, her sylph-like body embraced by a gorgeous kimono. A perfectly
proportioned woman, this, but one standing less than three feet in height.

‘Mr
Bell,’ said this delicate creature, in an accent that was unknown to the great
detective. ‘Princess Pamela is expecting you. Do please follow me.’

Mr
Bell entered the palace and as he followed this enchanting little person up a
spiral staircase, which she climbed with practised ease, he recalled an article
he had read in
The Times
newspaper several years before. An article
which concerned certain alarming discoveries that had been made upon this
planet once it had been freed from its warlike inhabitants. Human beings were
found upon Mars. Human beings who had been altered in various ways and pressed
into the service of their loathsome masters. The evidence suggested that for a
considerable period of time prior to their abortive invasion of Earth, the
Martians had been surreptitiously visiting our world with the purpose of
kidnapping human children. Evil things had been done to these innocents,
ungodly experiments carried out upon them. Mr Bell had shuddered considerably
when he read this account. It was truly the stuff of nightmare.

The
tiny woman moving briskly before him was, however, anything
but
the
stuff of nightmare. She was as one of the elfin folk, wafted from the realms of
Fairyland.

At
length they gained a high hallway, the little lady button-bright but Cameron
Bell a-puffing like a steam tug. As he regathered his breath, the elfish being
indicated a door, bowed politely and departed from his sight.

‘So
be it,’ said Mr Bell, removing his straw boater, dragging from his pocket an
oversized red gingham handkerchief and drawing it over his brow. He
straightened his tie and, with shoulders back, knocked gently upon the door.

Which
was immediately drawn open by yet another tiny figure, this one even tinier
than the first. He looked to be a gentleman of considerable age, with a bright
bald head and a noble beard that reached from his chin to the floor. He wore a
loose red long-sleeved garment secured at the waist by a silken cord, and he
looked every bit the way a storybook wizard should look.

Only
smaller.

Mr
Bell gained knowledge from his fingernails and footwear. The little fellow
glared at him with ill-concealed contempt.

‘Bell,
is it?’ he said, in a voice all shrill and reedy. ‘Follow me and hurry, too —
the princess won’t be kept waiting.’

The
bald and bearded fairy-man set off at the scamper and Mr Bell marched behind,
swinging his sword-stick and taking in his surroundings.

These
were certainly pleasant enough, although colour-wise they did lean rather
heavily towards the pink. There was a medieval feel to it all, with hanging
tabards and crested shields smothering walls of unplastered stone. Unplastered
perhaps, but painted pink. Mr Bell marched onwards.

Ahead,
from on high, hung curtains of pink. ‘Go through between them,’ said the
bearded manikin.

Cameron
Bell pressed through the curtains and entered a wonderful room. A wonderfully
pink
room it was, all filled with wonderful things that were wonderfully pink.

The
furnishings were eccentrically eclectic, drawn from many ages and all
expressing an overwhelming opulence. Renaissance thrones rubbed gilded
shoulders with high-backed settees that must once have graced the drawing room
of the Sun King. There were paintings, too, by Constable and Turner, by
Gainsborough and Landseer and also Richard Dadd. Their frames were pink but the
oils remained untouched. Pinkly patterned kilims pelted the polished floor and
a chandelier so overwrought with crystals as to be some ice-capped mountain
flung light from a thousand modern bulbs in ten thousand directions.

Somewhere
in the distance arose a baroque table upon which was spread a banquet of heroic
proportions. Glazed hogs’ heads, roasted turkeys and local game that defied
easy description lay heaped in their steaming masses. And somewhere to the
rear of it all a lady lounged a-feasting on a jellied tentacle.

‘Bell,’
called
out this lounging lady. ‘Bell, do hasten here!’

Cameron
Bell, with head humbly bowed, hurried as best he could. As he reached the table
he peered between a haunch of something or other and a loin of something else.

‘Mr
Bell at your service, Your Royal Highness,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

The
lounging lady leaned forward. She was a vision in pink from crown to gown, from
lacy cuff to bulging blowsy bodice. Her fingers flashed with rare rose diamonds
and a pearl the size of a copper penny, though pink as a pony’s pizzle,
shimmered at her throat. The only note of sobriety in all this perfusion of
pink was the little black domino mask that hid the upper part of her face.

This,
however, did little to offer disguise, for the feasting female was in every way
but dress the very double of Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of both
India and Mars.

‘Hast
thou eaten, chuck?’ asked the princess in that accent known to most Londoners
as ‘Northern’, but to a few, Mr Bell included, as the accent of Jupiter, where
Princess Pamela had clearly spent most of her formative years. ‘If thou art
hungry, then roll up thy sleeves and get thyself stuck in.’

21

oos?’
asked Cameron Bell, in response to a question posed to him by Princess Pamela.
‘Do I like them? Well, yes, I suppose I do.’

‘So
dost I,’ said the regal lady, laying about a haunch of grilled galliguffin
[14]
with the carving knife. ‘I think they’re
champion. I’m having one installed on the forward promenade deck.’

‘A
fascinating novelty,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

‘Close
to kitchen,’ said the princess.

‘Ah,’
said Cameron Bell.

‘Art
thou enjoying thyself?’ Princess Pamela topped up Mr Bell’s glass from the
bottle of vintage Château Doveston that lazed in a bucket of pinkly tinted ice.

‘Very
much so.’ Mr Bell had his sleeves well rolled, no stranger he to an
old-fashioned trenchering-down.

‘Champion.
Champion. Champion,’ said the pinky princess. ‘I’ve read all about thee, Mr
Bell. And dear Lavinia says that nowt will stand in thy way when it comes to
retrieving my reliquary.’

‘Nowt,’
said Mr Bell, sipping champagne between great gulpings of grub. ‘You can rely
on me completely.’

‘Aye,
that I can, or it will be the worse for thee.’

‘Excuse
me?’ said Mr Bell, a leg of something hovering now before his open mouth.

‘Mars,’
replied the princess, loading her plate with grilled galliguffin and sweet
potatoes, too. ‘Mars, lad, Mars!’

‘I
fail to understand, fair lady,’ said the gallant Mr Bell.