Snatched by Bill James Read Free Book Online

midnight?’
    â€˜From abroad. It wasn’t midnight everywhere, love. Consider Japan. We’re in important contact with Tokyo about a possible future exhibition.’
    â€˜How does their time zone relate to ours, then?’
    â€˜We have to be as tactful and positive as we can,’ Lepage replied. ‘The situation is quite sensitive. Frequent conversations. The very future of the Hulliborn is involved.’
    â€˜So why couldn’t you take the calls here?’ She read on, not waiting for an answer to this, thank God. Instead, she sing-song, sarcastically read: ‘“Lepage – his name derives from a proud line of fifteenth-century fighting men in the Auvergne region of France – although alone in the Central Wing of the Hulliborn, stalked the gang in his bare feet through the corridors, spurning broken glass, Security sources told the
Messenger
, but was unable to apprehend them. Police say he showed great courage and presence of mind. It is not known whether any of the robbers was armed. None of them had been arrested as we went to press.”’
    â€˜Armed? They’re crazy,’ Lepage said.
    â€˜There’s a dinky pen-portrait of you, part from cuttings, part from what you told the police last night. Presumably, the fighting men from the Auvergne must have come from the stuff you gave them when appointed. “A distinguished scholar in his own right, whose hobbies include cooking and real tennis, Dr Lepage is regarded as something of an eccentric and keeps a stuffed duck-billed platypus (a furry, egg-laying, Eastern Australian creature) on his desk to remind him of his predecessor in the post, Sir Eric Butler-Minton, and to maintain a kind of contact with him.”’
    Jesus. Lepage dug himself further into the bed and used the top of the sheet to wipe sweat from around his mouth.
    â€˜George, you actually told this rag that you communicated with the spirit of Flounce through a web-footed mammal? And that’s not what I heard got stuffed on his desk.’
    â€˜I’ve said nothing to them. We’re ex-directory, aren’t we, and they wouldn’t have had time to come out here for an interview. Police were in the room while I was on the phone. I might have mentioned the duck-billed platypus to Japan.’
    â€˜Why? Was it relevant to the exhibition that might come?’
    â€˜Not directly, no.’
    â€˜How, then?’
    â€˜It just came up.’
    â€˜In what way?’
    â€˜I suppose you’d call it a kind of aside,’ Lepage said.
    â€˜You just said to this caller from Tokyo, “Oh, incidentally, I’ve got a duck-billed platypus on my desk handed down by Flounce Butler-Minton and which is handy for getting in touch with him, although dead. This will be very useful in our dealings about the exhibition.”’
    â€˜I don’t know that I would have said anything as specific as that,’ Lepage replied. ‘I wouldn’t call him Flounce, not to Japan. They are a very undemonstrative people. Even good English speakers there might not know the word “flounce”.’
    â€˜What
un
specific comment did you make to them, then, about the platypus?’
    â€˜It would have been a sort of ambience thing.’
    â€˜
Which
sort?’
    Julia could be like this, disgustingly relentless. She reverted every now and then to her Hapsburg-jaw mode. ‘Incidental to the main subject of the conversation, yet helping to establish a friendly basis for talks.’
    â€˜Via dead Flounce, whose nickname must not be mentioned to the Far East, and a very dead animal?’
    â€˜This would be a museum talking to a museum,’ Lepage said.
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜We are people with a particular style. It’s true worldwide.’
    â€˜Has Tokyo heard about those behind-the-Wall rumours affecting Flounce – the whippet and Mrs Cray, etcetera? Is that how the matter of the platypus came