19. AN UNEXPECTED PARTY

THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DENTURES 19

“No you darned well don’t!” shouted Royston, reacting with commendable alacrity as the ominous shadow tried to snatch his new found treasure, “That’s mine and you’re not going to have it!”

“No you’re not!” added Angelina with shriek that spread like a wave of deafening sound across the tip. It had been one hell of a bad day and she didn’t want to see the sole reason for it taken from them without so much as a screech.

It was, of course, the old broomstick-flying woman who had screamed her warning, thus giving Royston time to react and keep hold of the precious artefact that he’d just picked up and had no intention of letting go. Meanwhile, Angelina found her own broomstick, the one she’d dropped several hours earlier, fortunately close to where they were now standing, and she grabbed hold of it before lashing out with it at the attacker.

The bristle end caught Griselda Entwhistle off her guard and she rocked from side to side and her voluminous black skirts rose like an ominous cloud around her, and when they descended courtesy of gravity they wrapped themselves around her head, effectively blinding her.

“Get away!” she squawked at an unseemly acreage of cloth, but Royston grabbed hold of Angelina by one hand and pulled her through the mire back in the direction of his Land Rover while the witch-like woman continued to fight with her skirts, for she was wearing more than one huge garment and they were all getting in the way of her and each other. In the end and quite unintentionally she contrived an ungainly nose-dive and landed nose-first in the tip debris, and that was far from pleasant, thoroughly moistened as it had been by the rain squall.

“Just run and to hell with the muck,” gasped Royston, clinging to her hand and thinking how nice it would be to be curled up in a nice warm and dry bed with this woman, maybe still holding this hand.

While Griselda was fighting with her skirts the two and their precious diamond dentures clutched firmly in Royston’s hand raced as quickly as they could back to the car. Blinky saw them coming and had watched the moonlit battle with fascination, and he opened the door for them to climb in.

“Time to test the emergency batteries!” gasped Royston.

“You mean, you’ve got batteries that will get us away from here?” gasped Angelina, “and you made us curl up for the night and sleep in the least comfortable position imaginable?”

“I’m sorry, but the back up batteries are untested and even if they’re working at their peak they probably won’t see us all the way home,” explained Royston. “They’re what I said they were, emergency back-up, that’s all.”

“Still,” moaned Angelina, “you might have mentioned their existence. There was all that rain.”

“And we still had to find the dentures,” murmured Royston.

“Have you got them?” asked Blinky.

“I hope so,” was all Royston could reply as he reached for the dashboard and switched something on and turned something else off.

“Just get going! That witch has recovered her composure and is heading this way!” ordered Blinky. And he was right, With a demented howl the old woman was astride her broomstick once more, a great glob of filth glistening in the moonlight and hanging from her nose like toxic snot where that hooked appendage had penetrated the vileness of the corporation tip.

“I hope that’s the contents of a dog-poop bag hanging from her nose,” muttered Angelina.

Royston and Blinky tried to sit comfortably on the cold leather seats, their trousers, fragrant with muck, being left behind, draped over an old hedge to, hopefully, dry out. But in their present state neither man could even dream of pulling them on.

Royston wriggled in the driving seat and switched to emergency power.

“Here goes then,” he shouted, and the Land Rover jerked forwards under its own power whilst a demonic creature riding a besom broomstick hurtled along after it, and squawking for all she was worth. this had not been Griselda Entwhistle’s finest hour.

“She’s got quite a choice vocabulary,” murmured Angelina, “I wonder where she learned some of those words?”

“Who can tell what goes on in some of the darker corners of the world,” muttered Royston, “and what vile creatures inhabit them,” he added.

He urged his car to provide as much speed as the remarkably efficient emergency batteries could, and maybe a speed limit or two were broken as they retraced the route to The Ginger Nut, where they hoped to take advantage of the rooms Blinky had paid for in advance for the night.

The emergency batteries were doing well. The power indicator on the dashboard indicated they were far from exhausted when the Land Rover finally nosed towards The Ginger Nut and Blinky parked where he had last time they’d been there.

“So far so good,” murmured Blinky, “now let’s see what’s going on here.”

The place was in silence, which surprised them all, especially as there had been a very dead landlord with a red plastic nose on his face and sitting in a bath of beer slops, and most assuredly very, very dead. There wasn’t even a plastic tape warning the public not to intrude into a crime scene. No constable, bored to tears, standing on guard, nothing. There was no sign whatsoever to indicate that mere hours earlier something alarming had gone on.

“Well, we’re booked in for the night,” Angelina reminded them, “and I for one need a good bed for the night. I wonder if we have to knock them up?”

“Knock who up?” asked Blinky, “as far as I know there was only a landlord, who’s dead, and a barmaid, who flew away as if she was the queen of witches, in residence. So who might there be for us to knock up?”

“Come on,” muttered Royston, who could see little point in debating the imponderable.

They crossed the road to the pub and to their surprise the front door was on its latch, and open.

“This is odd,” muttered Blinky, “not what I expected at all. But all well and good, I’m sure.”

“Not really surprising if you remember that we don’t think there’s actually anyone here to lock doors or do anything sensible,” reminded Angelina.

“Sshhh!” whispered Royston, “can you hear that?”

They stood as still as statues and listened. There was certainly an unexpected amount of noise coming from somewhere, it being almost dawn of the day after they had arrived there for the first time. There were voices, whispered but audible, coming from the lounge bar.

“I’ve had enough of this!” grunted Blinky, and he pushed the door into that bar open and marched in.

As he did so the light flickered on and half a dozen people, headed by Inspector Gadgett in uniform and smiling from ear to ear, leapt out from odd corners where they’d been concealing themselves.

“Happy Birthday!” they shouted in joyous unison, and Royston passed out.

© Peter Rogerson, 30.01.20