31. BUT WHO OWNS THEM?

THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DENTURES 31

“By gum I know that voice even if I can’t see the wench!” gasped Blinky, “it’s the barmaid from that pub place we went to, what was her name? Janie Cobweb?”

“Let go of my mother or you’ll regret it!” snapped the erstwhile barmaid, her eyes alight with anger bordering on fury, “nobody manhandles her like that and those who do soon learn to regret it!”

“Nobody’s touching her,” lied the Prime Minister trying to look as if his leg was unhurt and he could, if necessary, run a marathon without pain if called to do so.

The one and a half gorillas looked at the newcomer and the intact one scowled whilst the one with his head buried in a medieval mattress as it slowly disintegrated wept and the custodian of all things ancient started pulling her own hair out. Janie Cobweb may have looked menacing to most, but it took too long for understanding of his real situation to percolate into the remaining gorilla’s awareness of danger. So instead of trying to reply sensibly along the lines of we’re just following instructions from the PM, ma’am, he leered.

“You wanna be next?” he growled, which was a mistake because it meant that he let his attention on the task in hand slip, and while it was slipped Mildred bit him. She bit him hard on the fleshy part of his hand adjacent to his thumb, and once her teeth were dug in she kept them that way.

He yowled. Many another man might have simply howled, but he yowled.

“Let’s have some order please?” begged the Prime Minister, but everyone present knew he was rarely a man of his word and ignored him.

“Leggo!” begged the guard with Mildred Kampinella-Plonker’s teeth creating a jagged incision in his hand.

“I’ll let go if you do,” promised Mildred.

“All right then!” he growled, and released his hold on her.

“That’s better,” said Janie Cobweb quite calmly, “come, mother, let’s get away from this house of sin before someone gets hurt.”

“I am hurt!” whimpered the Prime Minister, indicating his leg.

“I can’t see a damned thing,” put in Blinky.

“You really are a naughty lady,” grinned Royston to Mildred Kampinella-Plonker, “I’ve no idea how you got the Prime Minister in that position, especially when he was stark naked on a polished wooden table and the Chancellor of the exchequer, I think it was, was riding on his back as if he was a cowboy!”

“It’s my trade,” explained the good lady, “I’m not as young as I was, but anyone who can charm our town’s librarian in the bath can manage a wimpy prime minister. Now let me have those teeth!”

“Don’t you dared!” snapped the political leader of the land, and then he howled at the pain in his leg as he tried to lunge towards Royston.

“I’ve got a problem here,” said Royston boldly, “I’m a man of the law, I am. I’ve always believed in decency and being law abiding...”

“Not too much decency I hope,” whispered Angelina, winking at him.

“And I don’t believe in theft,” he concluded. “Now these teeth which seem to be mounted in gold...”

“Eighteen carat,” put in Igor, who had remained amusedly silent for many of the recent minutes, “Definitely eighteen carat.”

“...Which are mounted in gold, then,” continued Royston, “and which are crafted from the hardest mineral known to man, pure diamonds, must be worth a fortune.”

“It’s the one tooth that really matters,” said Mildred Kampinella-Plonker, “it’s got me performing one of my turns on it and that’s copyright. I gave no permission for them to turn it into a movie! If I’d known I’d have charged treble!”

“So whose idea was it?” asked Royston, “because in my book it’s a serious trespass into this good lady’s private life. I wouldn’t like it if someone sneaked into my bedroom and caught me inflagrante delicto with a lady! That would never do, at all.”

“It wasn’t a bedroom!” snapped the Prime Minister, “it was a little treat I arranged for cabinet ministers after a hard day’s work and Igor here was ordered to capture it on the teeth. They were his invention which he started work on years ago but which were financed by the public purse, and I thought they ought to be tested on a real situation.”

“They were meant to enhance our national security,” agreed Igor, “a recording method unlike any other and not requiring expensive equipment to play back what’s recorded. Just think of it: slipping a set in James Bond’s mouth and letting him into some dodgy International outfit’s headquarters, recording everything he saw!”

“But this good lady cavorting on a table doesn’t seem to me to have much to do with the security of the realm, and I don’t see her as a James Bond” murmured Royston, still holding the dentures firmly in one hand.

“Nor does a Prime Minister playing piggy back with one of his chief ministers,” added Angelina. “I missed that bit,” she added, regretfully.

“So who owns them?” asked Royston.

“I do!” snapped the Prime Minister, “they were paid for from the public purse, so they’re mine! Everything’s mine, since the last election and I can do whatsoever I please with things. I can have you three tortured in the special chamber equipped with all the best medieval apparatus designed to force confessions out of the innocent if it so pleases me, I can do whatever I like and there’s nobody with the power to stop me!”

“Except me,” smiled Igor.

“Not even you, you blasted hermit scientist!” snapped the PM, and he turned painfully to face Royston. “Now give me those teeth and we’ll say no more about it. Or will it be the torture chamber?”

“Don’t you dare!” snapped Mildred Kampinella-Plonker, they’re mine! I was tricked into providing the entertainment on the cheap anyway! And I value my artistry more highly than mere gemstones and gold!”

Igor climbed off the bed and stood up, lips clenched firmly shut.

“I never intended to be the cause of so much trouble, but as I have been I think I’ll go back to my cave and the love of my life, which sounds a much better idea than staying here,” he said quietly, and nobody tried to stop him as he made his way out of that boudoir.

“So they’re not his and they must be mine,” snapped the Prime Minister. “As I said, everything’s mine.”

“Except these,” shouted Janie Cobweb, and she held aloft the dentures that somehow, he never knew how, she had wrested from Royston’s hand in the confusion. “Bye bye, muppets!”

And in one rather skilful move she leapt onto the broomstick she was still holding by its shaft and leapt into the air.

Fortunately the ceilings in medieval boudoirs were high enough to allow her to loop the loop before she wove out of the door and out of sight.

© Peter Rogerson, 11.02.20