‘What dwarves?’
‘The ones who’ve been hired for the ball. Fourteen of them have turned up for the audition, but we only need seven.’
‘No-one ever needs more than seven dwarves,’ I said, taking a green cigar from the humidor and running it under my nose. ‘But what are these seven dwarves going to do?’
‘They’re going to have all their hair shaved off. Then, at the ball, they have to move around amongst the guests with lines of cocaine on their heads.’
The green cigar went up my left nostril. ‘What?’ I went. ‘What? What? What?’
‘You really should read all the small print.’
‘It’s gross,’ I said. ‘That’s what it is.’
Norman helped himself to a cigar. ‘If you think that’s gross,’ he said ‘wait ‘til you meet the human ashtrays.’
I auditioned the dwarves. It was a painful experience. Even though they were all prepared to submit to the humiliation of having their heads shaved, it didn’t make me feel any better about it. In the end, I let their sex decide the matter for me. There were seven men and seven women.
In the spirit of the Nineties, PC and positive discrimination, I dismissed all the men and chose the women.
An interior decorator called Lawrence had been engaged to spruce up the great hall for the party. Lawrence was famous. He starred in a very popular BBC television series, where neighbours were invited to redecorate each other’s rooms in a manner calculated to create the maximum amount of annoyance and distress.
I loved the show and I really liked Lawrence. He was all long hair and leather trousers and he would strut about in cowboy boots, getting bad-tempered and shouting that this wasn’t right and that had to be moved and that thing over there must be torn down and thrown away.
Lawrence didn’t take to the Doveston’s fine art collection. He hated it. He said that the Canalettos were far too old-fashioned and so he drew in some speedboats with a felt-tipped pen. I don’t know much about art, but I know I liked his speedboats.
I didn’t like it, though, when he told me that the two pillars supporting the minstrels’ gallery would have to be demolished.
‘We can’t do that,’ I told him. ‘The minstrels’ gallery will collapse.’
Lawrence stamped his cowboy boots and grew quite red in the face. ‘They ruin the lines,’ he shouted. ‘I want to hang cascades of plastic fruit over the gallery. Either those pillars go, or I will.’
I knew that I couldn’t lose Lawrence, but I knew the pillars had to stay. Luckily Norman stepped in and saved the situation. He suggested to Lawrence that he give the pillars a coat of invisible paint.
Norman’s invisible paint really impressed the volatile Lawrence and he soon had the shopkeeper trailing after him, painting over Rembrandts and Caravaggios and suits of armour that couldn’t be moved. And making doorways look wider and steps look lower and generally improving the look of the place.
I have no idea where the Doveston found the chef.
He was famous too, apparently, but I’d never heard of him. The chef was short and stout and swarthy and sweaty and swore a great deal of the time. Like all chefs, he was barking mad and he hated everybody. He hated Lawrence and he hated me. I introduced him to Norman. He hated Norman too.
‘And this is my chauffeur, Rapscallion.’
‘I hate him,’ said the chef.
The chef, however, loved cooking. And he loved-loved-loved to cook for the rich and famous. And when I told him that he would be doing so for nearly four hundred of the swine, he kissed me on the mouth and promised that he would prepare dishes of such an exquisite nature as to rival and surpass any that had ever been prepared in the whole of mankind’s history.
And then he turned around and walked straight into an invisible pillar.
‘I hate this fecking house,’ said he.
Lazlo Woodbine kept in touch by telephone. He said that he and his associate, someone or something called Barry, were on the brink of solving the case and felt confident that they would be able to reveal the murderer’s identity on the night of the Great Millennial Ball. I really liked the sound of that.
It was just like an Agatha Christie.
Mary Clarissa Christie (1890-1976), English author of numerous detective novels. Too many featuring Hercule Poirot. And if you haven’t seen The Mousetrap, don’t bother, the detective did it.
And so the final weeks of the century ticked and tocked away. Lawrence had promised me that he’d have everything done in just two days. Which was all he ever took on the telly. But apparently these were special BBC days, each of which can last up to a month.
Norman marched about the place, taking care of business. He now wore upon his head a strange contraption built from Meccano. This, he told me, exercised his hair.
Norman had become convinced that the reason your hair falls out is because it’s unhealthy. So in order to keep it fit, you should give it plenty of exercise. He had invented a system that he called Hairobics. This consisted of a small gymnasium mounted on the head.
I did not expect Hairobics to rival the yo-yo’s success.
Then I awoke one morning to find it all but gone. The twentieth century.
It was December the thirty-first. It was eight o’clock in the morning. There were just twelve hours to go before the start of the Great Millennial Ball.
I began to panic.
21
Party on, dude.
Bill (and Ted)
‘Wakey wakey, rise and shine.’ Norman came blustering into my bedroom, tea on a tray and the big portfolio under his arm. I gaped up at Norman. My panic temporarily on hold. ‘What’s happened to your hair?’ I asked.
‘Ah.’ Norman placed the tray upon a gilded bedside table. ‘That.’
‘That! I’ve seen thin hair before, but never fat hair.’
‘A slight problem with the old Hairobics. I didn’t exercise the follicles for a couple of days and their new muscles have run to fat. I think I might sport a trilby tonight. Cocked at a rakish angle. Morning, Claudia; morning, Naomi.’
My female companions of the night before yawned out their good mornings. Naomi put her teeth back in and Claudia searched for her truss.
Norman sat down upon the bed. ‘Gerroff!’ cried a muffled voice.
‘Sorry, Kate, didn’t see you there.’ Norman shifted his bum. ‘I’ve brought you these,’ he said, handing me some tablets.
‘What are they?’
‘Drugs, of course. I thought you might be getting a bit panicky by now. These will help.’
‘Splendid.’ I bunged the tablets into my mouth and washed them down with some water. ‘Nothing I like better than drugs on an empty stomach.’
‘Naomi just took her teeth out of that glass,’ said Norman. ‘But never mind. I’ve brought you the guest list. It would be really nice if you’d have another go at trying to remember who’s who amongst the who’s whos. Oh and I’ve just spoken with Lazlo Woodbine on the telephone. He says that he will be unmasking the murderer tonight. And that you probably won’t recognize him, because he will be in disguise.’
‘Why will he be in disguise?’
‘To make it more exciting. So I don’t want you to worry about anything. Everything’s under control. The transportation for the celebs. The food, the drink, the drugs, the music, the decorations, the floor shows, the lot. All you have to do is be there. Everything is exactly how it should be.’
I sipped at my tea. No sugar. I spat out my tea. ‘But will anyone actually come? I mean, the Doveston is dead, will people still want to come to his party?’
‘Of course they will. And it was written on the invitations: “In the unlikely event of the host being blown into tiny pieces in a freak accident involving dynamite and catapult elastic, the party will definitely still go ahead. Bring bottle and bird. Be there or be square.
‘He certainly was a class act.’
‘He was a regular Rupert.’
‘Bear, or Brooke?’
/> ‘Bear,’ said Norman. ‘Definitely bear.’
Oh how we laughed. Well, it was a good ‘un.
‘Right then,’ said Norman. ‘That’s enough of that. I have to go and make a few final adjustments to my peacock suit. You have another run through the guest list. Ta ta for now.’
And with that said, he upped and left, slamming the door behind him.
I flung the portfolio onto the floor and myself on top of Naomi. I shagged and showered and shaved and shagged some more. And then I went down for my breakfast.
After breakfast, I inspected the great hall. Lawrence had finally completed his work and the vast Gothic room had been transformed into his personal vision of an oriental palace.
The ancient stone walls had been daubed a violent red, with Chinese characters crudely stencilled in yellow. Strings of plastic fruit, mandarin oranges and lychees, hung over the minstrels’ gallery. A few balloons lay scattered about and a sign saying ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR’ had fallen down from above the doorway. Dangling from the central chandelier was something that I at first took to be a dead dog. On closer inspection this proved to be a Chinese dragon, imaginatively formed from sticky-backed plastic and Fairy Liquid bottles with their names blacked out.
Lawrence had gone a little over the five-hundred-pound budget. About one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds over, according to his invoice.
I took up my mobile phone and tapped out a sequence of numbers. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Rapscallion. Edwin here. Find Lawrence and kill him. Goodbye.’
The sun came out from behind a cloud and up on high the angels sang.
I won’t bore the reader with the details of my day. You know what it’s like when you’re trying to organize a big party and you want everything to be ‘just so’. You fuss over the silliest things. Should the Château-Lafite 1822 be served in champagne flutes or half-pint mugs? Big spoons or small spoons for pâté de foie gras, or just dig in with the fingers? What if the donkey you’ve hired for the floor show can’t get a stiffy on? Will the monkeys’ heads fit through the little holes you’ve had cut in the dining table? Does everybody’s party bag have the same number of Smarties in it?
Throughout the afternoon, Norman maintained a vigilant position at the gates. I’d had him up the security at Castle Doveston. Inner fortifications had been built; pits dug and lined with bamboo spikes (painted over with invisible paint, so as not to spoil the look of the grounds). But I was still very worried. The Doveston’s obsession with security had not been ill-founded, but they’d got to him and they might well get to me.
Norman was seeing to it that absolutely nothing that wasn’t listed in the big portfolio got through the gates.
The Great Millennial Ball was no secret. News crews and crowds had once more formed about the perimeter fence, eager to view the arriving who’s whos. Norman kept a careful eye on them.
Whenever I wasn’t bothering the chef, the catering staff, the performers, the dwarves, my long-legged lady friends, the human ashtrays or the donkey, I found time to bother Norman.
‘Watcha doing now?’ I asked him.
‘Bugger off,’ said Norman. ‘I’m busy.’
‘What are those?’ I pointed towards a convoy of long black lorries that was heading our way. Impressive-looking lorries they were, with blacked-out windscreens and the Gaia logo on their fronts.
Norman scratched at his head and then disentangled his fingers from his fat hair. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘They’re a bit of a mystery, actually. They’re listed in the big portfolio and there are special parking places marked out for them in the grounds. But I’ve absolutely no idea what’s inside them.’
‘Perhaps it’s the bouncy castles,’ I suggested.
Norman made the face that says ‘you twat’. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said. ‘But now please bugger off.’
I buggered off.
‘And bugger off from here too,’ said the chef.
I buggered off to my bedroom.
I sat upon my bed and worried. I wasn’t panicking too much, the drugs had seen to that. But I was worried. I was déjà vuing all the time nowadays. And getting flashes of what was to come. I knew that something awful was going to occur, for, after all, I had glimpsed the future. But it was all so confused and I just couldn’t get a grip on how things were going to happen.
As I sat there, memories returned to me. Memories of another time, long long ago, when I had sat upon my bed before another party. The now legendary Puberty Party of 1963. That party had ended very badly for me and even more badly for my dear old dog, Biscuit. Biscuit had been blown to bits by the Doveston, now blown to bits himself. How would this party end? Any better? I had my doubts.
I togged up in one of the Doveston’s suits. During my few brief months of being very rich I’d managed to put on considerable weight. My own suits no longer fitted. The Doveston’s did.
I chose a white Armani number, Thai silk with a Gaia-logo-patterned lining. A Hawaian shirt and a pair of open-toed sandals completed the dashing ensemble. I grinned at myself in the wardrobe mirror. ‘You are one handsome son of a gun,’ I said.
At half past seven of the evening clock, there came a rapping at my chamber door.
‘Come,’ I called, striking a dignified pose.
The chamber door opened and in came Norman.
‘Holy Hell!’ I said.
Norman did a little twirl. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
I didn’t know quite what to think. Norman’s suit was simply stunning. It fitted in all the right places, but it did much more than this. It made Norman seem at least six inches taller, broader at the shoulders and a good deal slimmer at the waist. The suit was of blue, or it seemed to be blue; at certain angles it wasn’t. At certain angles it came and it went and sometimes parts of it weren’t there at all.
But stunning as it was (and it was), there was something about it I just didn’t like. Something about it that frankly upset me. Something about it I actively hated.
Norman must have seen the look upon my face. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I’ll turn it down a bit.’ He pulled something resembling a TV remote control from his pocket and pressed a button or two. ‘Like it a bit better now?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘I do.’
‘I don’t know how I’m going to get around that particular problem,’ said Norman. ‘The suit is designed to make me irresistible to women. But the trouble is that it has the reverse effect on men. It makes me seem utterly obnoxious.’
‘But it’s an incredible suit, though. It makes you look taller and slimmer and broader at the shoulders. How does it do that?’
‘Taller . . .’ Norman lifted a trouser bottom to expose a platform shoe. ‘Broader is the shoulder pads and as to slimmer, I just painted my belly and bum out with invisible paint.’
‘It’s all so simple when it’s explained. So how do I look?’
‘Well . . . um . . . er . . . we’d better be going downstairs now. The guests will soon be arriving.’
‘You look a prat in that trilby,’ I said.
The staff were already lined up in the great hall to greet the guests. I inspected the staff, saying things like, ‘You look very smart,’ and ‘Do up that button,’ and ‘Stand up straight,’ and things like that.
The staff responded with polite smiles and whispered words behind the hands. I’ve no idea what these words were, but I’m sure that they were all complimentary.
Now, one of the major problems with holding a big celebrity bash is how to get the celebrities inside. Allow me to explain. You see, no real celebrity wants to be the first to arrive. It’s not fitting to their status. It isn’t cool. It makes them seem over-eager. It’s just not done.
For many years this problem seemed insurmountable. At some really big celebrity bashes, no-one actually came inside the party at all. The celebs just sat about in the car park in their chauffeur-driven cars, patiently waiting for someone else to go in first. And eventually, when morning came, they went home.
This led, inevitably, to some ingenious host coming up with the idea of employing specially trained actors and actresses to play the parts of first guests. They would arrive right on time, climb from their limos, wave to the crowds and go in, thus encouraging the skulking celebs to do likewise.
It was a brilliant idea.
The trouble was that some of these specially trained actors and actresses began to become so famous for always being first at parties that they started getting all stuck up and saying that other actors and actresses should be employed to go in before them. And this was done and then the next bunch began demanding the same thing and so on and so forth and suchlike. The result being that at some celebrity bashes there were no real celebrities at all, just bogus celebrities employed to arrive first and others employed to arrive before them, et cetera.
And if you’ve ever watched any of those big awards ceremonies on the TV, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
To avoid any such problems arising at his bash, the Doveston had engaged the services of a certain Colin Delaney Hughes.
Colin was a famous criminal and, as everybody knows, celebrities just love criminals. They love to be in the company of criminals. They love to wine and dine and dance at their nightclubs. Holiday with them at their Spanish villas and island retreats. Get involved in scandals with them when they need publicity to promote their latest movie or album.
Celebrities love criminals. And criminals love celebrities. So it all works out rather well.
Colin was retired now, but had been a particularly violent and merciless criminal in his day. Sawing people’s faces off, gunning down the innocent, running drugs and generally getting up to mischief and being a bit of a scallywag As such, his autobiography had been eagerly snapped up by publishers and had become an international bestseller.
It had taken a big wodge of the folding stuff and two kilos of heroin to secure Colin’s services as first arriving guest. But being the professional he was, he turned up sharp on the dot of eight, an Essex babe on either arm and a great big smile on his face.