13. In at the Death

THE HIDDEN FOREST - THE END

The few miles back to Brumpton were covered as swiftly as speed limits allow, and within half an hour Davey, Paul and the Carry-on film nurse were sitting in Paul’s rather untidy flat with a pile of papers all around them and the strangest air of mystery surrounding them.

“And you say a solicitor brought these?” asked Davey, peering at the deeds to Blondeau Manor.

“Yes,” replied Paul.

“Then it’s that solicitor who needs to be consulted, whether he knows more than he said or not,” decided Davey. “And I’m going to see him within the hour, appointment or no appointment. Are you coming?”

“I can’t,” said Nurse Betty, “I dared say you’ve realised this by now, but I’m not real.”

“I thought there was something about you,” muttered Paul slowly, and he looked as if somewhere a light had been turned on inside his head. “Let me see: turn you into an old man, add loads of wrinkles, shave your head, and I dared say you’re the spitting image of old Cringleworth himself! Are you his granddaughter, or something?”

The nurse sighed and in mere moments morphed into the decrepit old solicitor who had started the ball rolling. “I’m sorry,” she/he said, “but it was all meant to be an honest transfer of your land into my hands...”

“And to think I fell head over heels for you,” put in Davey, “but an old man in a nurse’s outfit will never turn me on, not in a thousand years.”

“It might have been fun,” sighed Cringleworth, “I get lonely in my glass jar...”

“Blondeau is you too?” asked Paul, shaking his head in disbelief.

Cringleworth nodded. “I like my different facets,” he said

“So why all the masquerade?” demanded Paul, “why the nonsense of Blondeau Manor?”

“I need that forest,” said the multi-character solicitor. “It ought to have been mine by right! But no: that damned ancestor of mine made it over to the heirs of Saul Blondeau and someone would have stumbled on the truth some time soon. You are the last remaining heir of that crook! It wasn’t my fault that the old fool died in Australia at a time when great swathes of that continent were virtually unexplored. I wasn’t helped by the Great Fire of Wallamboola and the destruction of documents in 1902. But I tracked you down and have every intention of getting you to sign that forest over to me before too much damage can be done.”

“What damage?” demanded Davey.

“They plan to send a new railway line through it, the new high speed one that will obliterate the most exciting prospect on planet Earth,” sighed the old man, looking suddenly wretched.

“And how would that hurt you?” asked Paul frown lines spreading across his fat face.

“There’s a fungus in there,” said Cringleworth, “I might as well tell you the truth because there’s not much else I can do, and at the end of the day you might see sense and do the right thing for the planet. Or not. As you’ll see, it won’t matter either way.”

“All this over a mushroom?” expostulated Davey, “now I’ve heard everything!”

Cringleworth shook his head. “No, don’t misunderstand,” he said, “like most fungi it spends most of its life entirely underground and only sends its reproductive parts above ground once a year. But it’s the plant, if I may call it a plant, that is so important. It releases, moment by moment, a chemical compound in the form of a gas that can do almost anything to the human mind. It can, for instance, make an otherwise intelligent taxi driver believe he’s seen an ancient mansion with its half timbered walls and thatch roof dripping with rats, and even fool him into entering it and seeing what wonders there might be within. It can dull his senses so that he accepts the ridiculous, like believing in a great ruler living in a bell jar, or like passages and corridors with minds of their own, even like a good friend being hanged on a noose, like everything you saw and experienced when all you were really doing was lying comfortably on the Earth in the centre of a huge subterranean ring, the fungus itself.”

“You mean ,… none of that was real?” asked Davey, “not even the fleeters?

The old man nodded. “Silly, weren’t they?” he grinned.

“Hey, just a minute, how come we all saw the same thing, then?” demanded Paul, more astute than he normally appeared to be.

“I have ways and means of focussing it, and you must realise it’s the most powerful mind-altering compound anywhere on Earth” sighed Cringleworth, “over two generations of Cringleworths we have slowly but surely devised mechanisms to focus the effects of the fungus gases into very precise illusions that a whole army could be deceived by, and that is the whole crux of the matter. Sooner or later, mankind being the fool he is, there will be another major conflict, a war between nations, and that fungus will be our weapon in the event of us being attacked.”

“You mean, mass hallucinations will convince us that we’re winning the war?” asked Paul.

He grinned back at him. “Or, more likely, mass hallucinations will convince jonny foreigner that he’s in the centre of a nuclear conflagration,” he murmured, “and make him truly believe that the only possible thing for him to do is beg for peace. That’s why that weapon must not be destroyed by that silly railway and why it must be kept top secret.”

“And now you’ve told us?” sneered Paul, “we can tell the world!”

Cringleworth shook his head, and sighed. “But you won’t,” he said slowly.

“What would stop me?” Paul almost sounded belligerent, and that unnerved Davey.

“Watch it, mate,” he hissed.

“You ask what would stop you?” asked Cringleworth, “I’d best explain, then: dead men can’t tell tales...”

“Is that a threat?” demanded Davey, his policeman’s instincts coming to the fore.

“Not at all,” smiled Cringleworth, “but a statement of fact and just my way of pointing out one interesting little morsel. I’m afraid, and I don’t want you to take this personally, but you are, I’m afraid, dead already and lying on the soft turves in the hidden forest that you own. Any vestige of consciousness you may think you have is the last flickering remnants of the you that existed before you died, a nice ending to your story, a memory that you are d…

Silence. The nurse smiled to herself, flashed her knickers at Davey, and walked out.

THE END

© Peter Rogerson, 14.11.20