Jasper Fforde_Thursday Next_05 (24 page)

Thursday5 nodded enthusiastically, and Thursday1–4, for the first time that day, actually expressed a vague interest and asked a question: “Can’t someone just make some more pianos?”

“There is a mea sure of economy that runs throughout the BookWorld,” he replied. “We count ourselves lucky—pianos are positively
bountiful
compared to the number of real dusty gray and wrinkly elephants.”

“How many of those are there?”

“One. If anyone needs a herd, the Pachyderm Supply Division has to make do with cardboard cutouts and a lot of off-page trumpeting.”

The Thursdays mused upon this for a moment, as Charles and Roger donned their jackets and prepared to take a few hours off while I took over. I’d done it before, so it wasn’t a problem.

“Everything’s pretty much set on automatic,” explained Charles as they headed out the door, “but there are a few manual piano movements you’ll need to do—there’s a list on the console. We’ll be back in two hours to take care of the whole
Jude the Obscure
letter-in-the-piano plot-device nonsense and to somehow juggle the requirements of a usable piano in
Three Men in a Boat
with the destruction of a Beulhoff grand in
Decline and Fall.
”

“Sooner you than me,” I said. “Enjoy your break.”

They assured me that they would and departed with the man in overalls, whose name, we learned, was Ken.

“Right,” I said, sitting down and putting my feet up on the console. “Get the coffee on, Thursday.”

Neither of them budged an inch.

“She gave
you
an order,” said Thursday1–4. “And I take mine black and strong.”

“Humph!” muttered Thursday5, but she went off to put the kettle on nonetheless. Thursday1–4 took off her greatcoat, hung it on a peg and sat down in one of the other chairs.

“So…we just sit here and watch pianos move around the BookWorld?” she asked in a somewhat sneering tone of voice. Mind you, she usually spoke like that, so it was nothing unusual.

“That’s
exactly
what we do. Much of Jurisfiction’s work is like this. Boring but essential. Without an uninterrupted supply of pianos, much essential atmosphere would be lost. Can you imagine
The Woman
in White
without Laura’s playing?”

Thursday1–4 looked blank.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“The classics are too slow for me,” she replied, idly taking one of her automatics from its holster and removing the clip to stare at the shiny rounds. “Not enough action. I’m more into David Webb.”

“You’ve read Robert Ludlum?” I asked in surprise. Most bookpeople didn’t read. It was too much like a busman’s holiday.

“Nope. It’s Dave I like,
especially
when he’s Jason Bourne. Knows how to show a lady a good time and can pop a head shot from a thousand yards.”

“Is there anyone in fiction you
haven’t
slept with?”

“I love
The Woman in White,
” put in Thursday5, who had returned with a tray of coffees—but with a glass of water for herself, I noticed. “All that Mozart to express her love for Hartright—dreamy!”

I took my coffee, and we watched the lights flicker on the console as a nonfunctioning Bösendorfer was moved from
Our Mutual Friend
to
Persuasion,
where it jumped rapidly between the twelve different scenes in which it was mentioned before vanishing off into
Wives and Daughters.

“I think atmosphere in novels is overrated,” said Thursday1–4, taking a sip of coffee before she added patronizingly, “Good coffee, Thursday—jolly well done.”

“That’s put my mind at rest,” replied Thursday5 sarcastically, something that Thursday1–4 missed.

“Are there any cookies?” I asked.

“Yes,” echoed Thursday1–4, “are there any?”

Thursday5 huffed, got up, found some Jaffa cakes and placed them on the console in front of me, glaring at Thursday1–4 as she did so.

“Don’t underestimate atmosphere,” I said slowly, helping myself to a Jaffa cake. “The four opposing forces in any novel are atmosphere, plot, character and pace. But they don’t have to be in equilibrium. You can have a book without any plot or pace at all, but it has to make up for it in character and a bit of atmosphere—like
The Old Man and the Sea.
Most thrillers are plot and pace and nothing else, such as
Where Eagles Dare.
But it doesn’t matter; each to a reader’s own—”

I stopped talking, because a warning light was flashing on the console in front of us.

“Hmm,” I murmured as I leaned closer, “they’re overrunning in
The Dubliners,
and
Ulysses
needs an upright piano for Mr. Dedalus to comment upon at the Ormond Hotel in less than a minute’s time.”

“Isn’t there a spare piano at Norland Park?” asked Thursday5.

“No—Marianne took it with her to Devon, and it’s currently one of those being overhauled.”

I scanned the knobs and switches of the console, looking for a spare piano that could be redirected. I eventually found one in
Peter Pan.
It was only referred to in a line of dialogue, so I redirected it to
Ulysses
as quickly as I could. Too quickly, to be honest, and I fumbled the interchange.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I replied, knowing full well that no one would notice. I’d placed it in the wrong part of the Ormond Hotel. I didn’t have time to worry about this, however, as another warning light was flashing. This was to alert us that the first manual piano movement that Roger and Charles had left us with was approaching. I picked up the handwritten note and read it.

“We’ve got the Goetzmann grand returning from
Villette,
and it has to be sent with piano stool 87B into Agatha Christie’s
They Do It with Mirrors.
Who can see a piano stool anywhere?”

Neither of the Thursdays moved an inch. Thursday5 eventually tapped Thursday1–4 on the arm and said,

“Your turn. I did the coffee.”

“In that case,” replied Thursday1–4 with impeccable twisted logic, “it must have been
my
turn to do the Jaffa cakes.”

“I suppose.”

“Then, since you very kindly undertook that task on
my
be-half, it’s
your
turn to do something again—so find the sodding piano stool and stop bothering me with your bleating.”

I laid a hand on Thursday1–4’s arm and said, “Find the piano stool, Thursday.”

She tutted haughtily in a manner that Friday would have approved of but got up and had a look around the room, eventually finding it near a heap of sheet music, a few music stands and a dusty bassoon.

“Here,” she said in a bored tone, lifting the lid to look inside. Just at that moment, there was a buzzing noise, and the Goetzmann grand appeared in the brightly lit aperture in the wall.

“Right on time.”

I twiddled a few knobs to set its onward journey, told Thursday1–4 to put the piano stool with it, which she did, and then, with yet another buzz, I sent it on to the great hall of Stonygates inside Agatha Christie’s
They Do It with Mirrors.

“Good,” I muttered, crossing that first task off the list. “We’ve got nothing else for a half hour.”

But my troubles weren’t nearly over, as Thursday5 had sat in the chair recently vacated by Thursday1–4.

“You’re in my seat.”

“It’s not your seat.”

“I sat in it first, so it’s mine.”

“You can’t do dibs on seats, and besides, you don’t
own
it.”

“Listen,” growled Thursday1–4, “do you like doing crochet?”

“Yes, so…?”

“Then perhaps you can imagine how tricky that might be…
with broken fingers.
”

Thursday5’s lip trembled for a moment. “I’m…I’m…sure we can discuss this like rational adults before resorting to anything so crude as violence.”

“Perhaps we could,” returned Thursday1–4, “but it’s far easier with me telling you how it’s going to be. Now, get your tie-dyed butt out of my seat.”

“Thursday?” I said.

“I can deal with this,” snapped Thursday5 in a rare show of annoyance. “I don’t need to be rescued like a child every single time Miss Slagfest here opens her trap!”

“I’m not meddling,” I replied. “All I want to know is where Thursday1–4 got that pistol.”

“This?” she said, holding up the small black automatic that I’d suddenly noticed she was holding. “It’s really cool, isn’t it? A Browning twenty-six-caliber standard single-action automatic with slide and grip safety.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I found it,” she retorted defensively, “so I’m keeping it.”

I didn’t have time for this.

“Tell me where you found it, or you’ll be its next victim.”

She paused, then said, “It was…in that piano stool.”

“Idiot!” I yelled, getting up and demanding she hand it over, which she did. “That’s an essential plot point in
They Do It with Mirrors!
Why can’t you just leave things alone?”

“I thought—”

“That’s the problem. You don’t. Stay here while we sort this out, and don’t touch anything. I repeat: Touch
nothing.
Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, of course I understand—what do you think I am, a child?”

I didn’t have time to argue, so after telling Thursday5 to follow me closely, I jumped out of the Piano Squad to the Great Library, and from there we made our way into Agatha Christie’s
They Do It with
Mirrors.

We arrived at Stonygates in the short length of dimly lit corridor that connected the square lobby with the great hall. We pressed ourselves into the shadows, and I looked inside the hall. It was a large room that oozed Victorian Gothic gloominess, with dark wood and minimal lighting. There were a half dozen or so people chattering, but more important, directly ahead of us was the Goetzmann grand that we had dispatched not two minutes before. And in front of this, the piano stool to which the weapon had to be returned. I was about to chance my luck and sneak in but had not gotten two paces when a young man came and sat on the piano stool and began to play. I retreated into the shadows and felt Thursday5 grip my arm nervous ly as the lights flickered and went out, leaving the house in semidarkness. We backed farther into the shadows as a large man with a sulky expression came out of the door and vanished into the gloom, muttering about the fuses. A few minutes later, an elderly woman tottered to the dining room and back to retrieve something, and almost immediately the front door was pushed violently open and a young man strode into the hall in an overdramatic manner. This was followed by an argument, the sound of the study door opening and closing, more muffled shouting and eventually two shots. With the characters in the room thus distracted, I padded softly to the man seated at the piano and tapped him lightly on his shoulder. He looked up with some surprise, and I showed him my Jurisfiction badge. I raised my eyebrows, placed a finger to my lips and gestured him to join the people on the other side of the room. He did as I asked, and once his back was turned, I slipped the small automatic into the piano stool, between a copy of Handel’s Largo and Chopin’s Preludes. I quickly and noiselessly retraced my steps to where Thursday5 was waiting for me, and within a few minutes we had returned to the Piano Squad’s headquarters.

As we reentered, the squad room was in chaos. Warning lights were flashing, klaxons were going off, and the control console was a mass of flickering indicator lights. I was relieved to see—if such a word could be used in such uproar—that Roger and Charles had both returned and were trying to bring some sort of semblance of order back to the piano-distribution network.

“I need the Thürmer back from
Agnes Grey
!” yelled Roger. “And I’ll swap it for a nonworking Streicher—”

“What the hell’s going on, Thursday?”

It was Commander Bradshaw, and he didn’t look very happy.

“I don’t know. When I left everything was fine.”

“You
left
?” he echoed incredulously. “You left the piano room unattended?”

“I left—”

But I stopped myself. I was responsible for any cadet’s actions or inactions, irrespective of what they were and where they happened. I’d made a mistake. I should have called Bradshaw to cover for me or to get someone to go into
Mirrors.
I took a deep breath. “No excuses, sir—I screwed up. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”
repeated Bradshaw, “That’s it? You’re
sorry
? I’ve got a dead Holmes on my hands, one of the Outland’s most favorite series is about to unravel, and I really don’t need one of your idiot cadets suddenly thinking that she’s god of all the pianos.”

“What did she do?”

“If you’d been supervising properly, you’d know!”

“Okay, okay,” I retorted, seriously beginning to get pissed off, “this one’s down to me, and I’ll face the music, but I’d like to know what she’s done before I wipe the smirk off her face for good.”

“She decided,” he said slowly and with great restraint, “to do her own thing with piano supply in your absence. Every single piano reference has been deleted from Melville, Scott and Defoe.”

“What?”
I said, looking around the room and finally catching sight of Thursday1–4 on the other side of the room, where she was standing arms folded and apparently without a care in the world.

“As I said. And we don’t have the time or the pianos to replace them. But that’s not the worst bit.”

“It gets worse?”

“Certainly. For some reason known only to herself, she dropped an upright Broadwood straight into Miss Bates’s drawing room inside Austen’s
Emma.
”

“Have they noticed?”

“Pianos aren’t generally the sort of thing one can miss. As soon as it arrived, speculation began on where it might have come from. Miss Bates agrees with Mrs. Cole that it’s from Colonel Campbell, but Emma thinks it’s from Mrs. Dixon. Mrs. Weston is more inclined to think it was from Mr. Knightley, but Mr. Knightley believes it’s from Frank Churchill. Quite a mess, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Can we get it out?”

“It’s embedded itself now. I’m going to get Churchill to take the rap, and it shouldn’t inflict too much damage. But this is down to you, Thursday, and I’ve got no choice but to suspend you from Jurisfiction duties pending a disciplinary inquiry.”