Beware The Peckish Dead! , livre ebook

Andrews UK - William Stafford

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

91 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Victorian hack Hector Mortlake and his trusty valet Cuthbert are at it again. This third outing takes them to the Scottish Highlands - but that's just the start. A mysterious portal and a ghostly gang of ghouls threaten to separate the pair for good. With a host of new characters and their craziest story yet, Hector and Cuthbert deliver high adventure and shameless innuendo in equal measure. Fans of William Stafford's inimitable style will not be disappointed.

Sujets

Humour

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	13 juin 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785386893
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Beware The Peckish Dead!
A Hector Mortlake Adventure
William Stafford

Beware The Peckish Dead!
Published in 2017
by AG Books
www.agbooks.co.uk
an imprint of
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2017 William Stafford
The right of William Stafford to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

For Oliver

Chapter One
There are times when I cannot help feeling like a fraud. Yes, I make my living from the purveyance of fictions, concocted in what Cuthbert would no doubt call my ‘nut’ or something equally charming - but not so much of a living that I might give up the whole writing business and do something else. Preferably nothing. In fact, the income from my books (yes, plural! i.e. two) had dropped off of late, like a suicide from a clifftop. My second novel, which is about the Aztec deity Xolotl, had flopped disastrously. It seems people aren’t interested in religion any longer. I blame that Darwin fellow. That was when the rot set in.
Luckily for me, but quite the contrary for my publisher, I was locked into a three-book deal. I had one last chance to match the roaring success of my debut before I would be cast out into the unforgiving snows of the unpublished author. Had my first, international bestseller been a fluke? I could not help thinking it and, when in my blackest fugues, it took all of Cuthbert’s perkiness and cheeky Cockney charm to rouse so much as a smile from me - let alone anything else. “It’s not you, it’s them,” was his constant refrain, meaning the book-buying public. “You’re ahead of your time.” Seeing I was unconvinced, he would peck my neck and blow in my ear until I was altogether distracted from my sulk.
Currently, it was not blowing my ears that I was concerned about. There was a decided draught wafting around my knees, threatening to leap up my thighs and billow out the heavy fabric of the kilt Cuthbert had obliged me to wear for our hike in the Highlands. I have read somewhere that for a Sassenach such as I to wear a tartan to which he was not entitled was a capital offence in these parts. I expected to be run through by someone’s caber or something at any moment. No, not caber; something else. What do they call those daggers they slip down their coarse, knee-high socks? I would have to consult an encyclopaedia. If I am to be summarily executed for crimes against cloth, I should like to know what the thing is that does the job.
Yes, we were in the Scottish Highlands, too far north and west of Edinburgh for my liking and my comfort, having tootled all the way up from London. Bessie had served us well, but she was now resting in the stable of an inn in some teensy-tiny village several miles away, down in the glen. They have no garages up here, of course. The motor car, still in its infancy, had not yet caught on. I have had to grow accustomed to the stares we get as we hurtle along the country lanes, sometimes at speeds in excess of eight miles per hour.
It had taken a long time to get here. I should have been glad of the opportunity to stretch my legs, exposed as they now were to the elements. But the old fug was upon me and Cuthbert, ever the attentive valet, was well aware of my foul mood.
“Sticks out a mile,” he returned, skipping over a string of stepping stones as though born to it, like some kind of mountain goat.
At once I clasped my hands over my borrowed sporran.
“Your face, I mean,” he said, kissing my cheek. I blushed and lifted my hands to ward him off. “Nobody won’t see,” he laughed. “Only the sheep and the squirrels.”
“Voyeurs, the lot of them,” I muttered, darkly. The hillsides around us were dotted with clumps of white. Those sheep would have to have the eyesight of an eagle to see anything.
“I brought you up here for a reason,” Cuthbert smirked. On this grey day - they have a lot of them up here, I believe - his handsome smile was like a ray of sunshine, a blast of warmth through the chilly dampness of the air. Would that he would direct that blast elsewhere! I was fearful of icicles forming beneath my kilt.
“You and your reasons,” I scoffed. “Dragging me up here.”
“How many more times? It ain’t drag. A kilt is a man’s garment.”
“ Bringing me up here, then,” I amended my complaint. “When we’ve a perfectly serviceable, perfectly private room down at the inn.”
He rolled those sapphire stones he uses for eyes. “I see your mood is up,” he laughed with the briefest glance at my sporran. “All that kind of thing will have to wait. We’re up here for a different reason. Here.”
He fished in the depths of his own sporran and withdrew a small, square box, the kind which might contain a purchase from a jeweller’s shop. I gasped and again glanced around to see if our ovine observers were still watching. My heart raced; the blood pumped in my ears like a galloping stag.
“My darling boy!” my voice caught in my throat. “I am honoured, but what you are proposing...”
Cuthbert’s adorable nose wrinkled adorably. “Me? I ain’t proposing nothing.”
My breathless grin faltered. “What?”
“This ain’t a proposal, squire. Two blokes, getting wed!” he laughed. “I can see that going down well with the archbishop.”
“Never mind going down with the archbishop,” I snapped, reaching for the box. “What is this nonsense?”
Cuthbert was too quick for me. His hand darted out of my reach and my forward momentum caused me to lose my balance. I slipped on the glistening grass and landed flat on my backside, my kilt flying up like chequered wings.
My giggling valet extended his hand to help me to my feet. “Perhaps I ought to pop the question, gov. Now that you’ve given me a glimpse of your wedding tackle.”
I scowled. “I’m pleased you’re amused.” I smoothed the kilt down, and rearranged my sporran, holding it firmly in place. At his insistence, I had ‘gone native’ and obeyed the unwritten rule (or perhaps it is written somewhere) that nothing should be worn under the kilt. I wouldn’t say worn, exactly, just - since taking Cuthbert into my employ - rather more well-used than previously.
My backside was cold and wet from its contact with the ground and I was beginning to shiver. “What is this all about, damn you!” I snarled.
“You!” Cuthbert looked hurt. “It’s all about you! It’s always all about you!”
He made it sound as though this was a bad thing.
“Go on,” I said, my tone softening despite myself.
“I brung you all the way up here for inspiration, didn’t I? You need to write a new book, don’t you? You need ideas for a story, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, I-”
“Well, then. That’s why I brung you and this little beauty to this picturesque spot.” He brandished the box again. He held it under my nose and lifted the lid on its little brass hinge.
The box contained no engagement ring, I can tell you that. My eyes were met with flashes of colour. Even on this dark day, the object caught what little light there was. Sparks danced before my eyes in a rainbow of hues.
“You remember it, don’t you?” Cuthbert urged me to make a response.
“Yes...” I said uncertainly. I was somewhat hypnotised by the object’s beauty - but I still saw him roll his eyes again. He does a lot of that when I’m around.
“You remember who it belonged to, don’t you?”
“Well, I...”
I had no clue.
Cuthbert expelled air in frustration. “I’ll give you a clue, shall I? Pith helmet, safari suit. Wife the same. No?”
“My God...” I took the box from his grasp so I might peer at the contents more closely. “Charles Bickers!”
The box contained a scarab beetle of indescribable beauty. Fabergé himself could not fashion a more beautiful, intricate object, and here was a specimen, forged by Nature herself, a creeping, crawling jewel - Oh, it wasn’t creeping and crawling just now; the thing was quite, quite dead. Death had not withered it. It was perfectly preserved, pinned to the inside of the box, hovering over the cushioned base.
Memory stirred.
“I remember this,” I nodded. “Old Charles and his wife - what was her name?”
“Mrs Bickers?” Cuthbert offered.
“Something like that. They found this creature in Scotland, they told me-” My jaw dropped and I took in our surroundings anew. Cuthbert nodded, encouraging the penny to drop. “And - and - they said they had no idea how it had come to be here. How it was a species native only to certain parts of Egypt and - and that it had become extinct centuries ago!”
“That’s it, sir! That’s it exactly. You solve the mystery of the beetle and bingo! You’ve got yourself a new book.”
The Mystery of the Beetle .
The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that is not the title of this book. But at that time, I thought it was going to be. Oh, I’d dress it up somehow, to give it more of a hook. The Scarab Affair , perhaps. Or The Great Egyptian Bug Caper ...
Like our displaced insect, Cuthbert and I were bumbling around in the back of the Scottish beyond. Cuthbert was looking to me in anticipation of a reply. A thank-you, perhaps.
“Well,” I conceded, “I owe it to old Charles, I suppose. Not that I’m blaming myself for what happened to him and his good lady - Esme! That was it! That was her name!”
Peculiar woma