The Sackville Scavenger
'And what would you take this to be?' asked Hugo Rune, upon a bright and breezy August morning.
We were sitting taking breakfast, in our rooms at forty-nine Grand Parade, Brighton, and I looked up from the breakfast I was taking and cast an eye towards the Hokus Bloke.
He held upon the tines of his fork the blackened something that was causing his puzzlement.
I viewed it with suspicion. 'It might once have been a sausage,' I ventured. 'Or possibly a member of the mushroom family that has undergone a violent immolation.'
Mr Rune nodded thoughtfully and sniffed at the thing with disgust. 'It has much the look,' said he, 'of the mummified prepuce of Saint Michael, which is venerated in the church at Penge that bears his name. Which leaves me wondering what it might be doing upon my breakfasting plate.'
'I do not think it was doing anything much at all,' I said. 'Just lying there hoping to go unmolested would be my guess.' 'It just won't do,' said Hugo Rune.
And I agreed it would not. 'I think we will have to sack that Jeff the chef,' I said. And Mr Rune agreed that we would.
I had never taken much to Jeff the chef. Mr Rune had found him wandering the streets of Brighton one night in a pitiable condition. He was evidently homeless and kept asking which year this was and whether Cromwell still ruled England. I did not like the smell of him one bit.
Mind you, Mr Rune would never have had to employ the services of Jeff the chef had Jade the maid not left us. She had vanished away a week before, leaving a letter, penned in Taiwanese, which according to Mr Rune's interpretation cited 'drunkenness and cruelty' amongst her grievances and cause for departure. She had absconded with Mr Rune's ivory chess set – a gift, he informed me, from Shah Jahan for assisting him with the design of the Taj Mahal. And so we lately suffered at the hands of Jeff the chef.
'Perhaps if you were actually to pay for a cook,' I said, but did not trouble to follow that line of conversation further.
'The most important meal of the day, breakfast,' said Mr Rune, pushing his plate aside and rattling the coffee pot that Jeff had neglected to refill. 'No matter in which far-flung reach of civilisation I have cast my noble shadow, I have never failed to begin the day without a decent breakfast lodged beneath my belt. What chef skills do you possess, young Rizla?'
'Oh no,' I said. 'I am your amanuensis, your acolyte, if you will, your partner in the fight against crime and the forces of evil. I am not a cook.' 'Hm,' went Rune, and I heard his stomach growling.
'Oh, and another thing,' I said, 'I chanced to open the latest letter that arrived from Mister Hansord the landlord. He says that you have until Tuesday to cough up the last six months of back rent, or the bailiffs will be coming in.' A growl now issued from the mouth of Hugo Rune.
'I read in the Leader,'* I said, 'that the pirates of The Saucy Spaniel recently plundered a B amp;Q in Shoreham. As owner of the galleon, you will no doubt be receiving your share of the booty.'
'I would hate to part with it to a landlord,' said Mr Rune and he made a very grim face indeed.
'I would hate to be ejected from these rooms,' I said. 'No doubt matters will resolve themselves.' 'Where is that copy of the Leader?' Mr Rune asked. 'The cat has made a nest of it.' 'And since when have we possessed a cat?' 'No,' I said. 'You are right -1 have the Leader here.'
Mr Rune took it away to his favourite chair and sat with it, huffing and puffing.
I dabbed at my lips with an oversized green gingham napkin, pulled out reading matter of my own – The Corpse Wore Maltese Falsies (A Lazlo Woodbine Thriller) – and proceeded with the matter of reading it. And I had just got to a really exciting part involving Laz getting into a sticky situation in an alleyway with a dwarf who was taller than he looked when Mr Rune went 'Plah!' and Hung the morning's Leader in my direction. 'Just read that!' he shouted. * The Argus being no longer delivered due to an unpaid newsagent's bill, we now received our news courtesy of the Leader, which was a free newspaper.
I plucked the Leader up from the floor, uncreased it over my lap and read: