They shuffled forward a few steps. “I get it,” said Jack, sliding his hand around her waist, “I’m your trophy husband and you’re showing me off.”
“In one,” replied Madeleine, pushing his hand lower so it met the smooth curve of her bottom, “and Crumpetty Tree looks on me favorably when I drag you along, as it makes the event seem vaguely important and not a collection of pseudointellectual farts patting one another on the back.”
“I always suspected that. Are you going to raffle me at the end of the evening?”
She laughed. “Only if I can buy all the tickets. Now, listen: Try not to be rude to the writers this year.”
“As if I would!”
The previous year’s event had not been without incident. Jack didn’t much care for what he called “the Modern Novel” and had told the previous year’s winner precisely that. It hadn’t gone down very well.
The Déjà Vu Hotel was a popular venue in Reading for awards ceremonies. It was big enough to service a good-size crowd, had excellent catering facilities and coupled a congenial atmosphere with a fine opportunity for a few daft jokes.
“Have you ever been to the Déjà Vu before?” asked Madeleine as they entered the main doors.
Jack looked around the entrance lobby. “I don’t think so,” he answered, “but it does look sort of familiar.”
They joined the line at the entrance to the ballroom. A liveried footman was reading the invitations and announcing the guests in a loud voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Lord Spooncurdle!” he boomed, giving an overobsequious bow to Reading’s most visible nobleman, who walked solemnly down the stairs, took a glass of champagne from a waiter and shook hands with someone he thought he knew but didn’t.
The line shuffled forward.
“James Wheat-Reed Esq. and his niece Roberta—he says.”
James and his “niece” smiled and descended the stairs. The footman continued, introducing the guests in a respectful tone of voice.
“Mr. and Mrs. Croft and their fat daughter, Erica.”
“The Dong—with his celebrated luminous nose.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Boore—by name, by nature.”
Finally it was Jack and Madeleine’s turn. The footman read their invitation, looked them up and down in a critical manner, sighed and said:
“Inspector and Mrs. Jack Spratt.”
They walked down the staircase to the ballroom as the band struck up a tune that they thought they should recognize but couldn’t quite place. A vaguely familiar waiter gave them a glass of champagne each, and Madeleine looked around for anyone she knew. Jack followed her closely. He didn’t really enjoy this sort of function, but anything that made people remember Madeleine, he thought, had to be good for her exhibitions. Besides, there weren’t many people he didn’t know in Reading society. He had interviewed most of them at one time or another and arrested at least a half dozen.
“Hello, Marcus!”
“Madeleine, dahling!”
“Jack, this is Marcus Sphincter. He’s one of the writers short-listed for the prize this year.”
“Congratulations,” said Jack, extending a hand.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you—most kind.”
“So what’s the title of this book you’ve written?”
“The terms ‘title,’ ‘book’ and ‘written’ are so passé and 2004,” announced Marcus airily, using his fingers in that annoying way that people do to signify quotation marks.
“It is 2004,” pointed out Jack.
“So early 2004,” said Marcus, hastily correcting himself.
“Anyone can ‘write’ a ‘book.’ To raise my chosen art form to a higher plane, I prefer to use the terms ‘designation,’ ‘codex’ and ‘composed.’"
“Okay,” said Jack, “what’s the appellative of the tome you’ve created?”
“The what?”
“Hadn’t you heard?” asked Jack, hiding a smile and using that annoying finger-quotes thing back at Marcus, “‘Codex,’ ‘composed’ and ‘designation’ are out already; they were just too, too early evening.”
“They were?” asked Marcus, genuinely concerned.
“Your book, Marcus,” interrupted Madeleine as she playfully pinched Jack on the bum. “What’s it called?”
“I call it… The Realms of the Leviathan.”
“Ah,” murmured Jack, “what’s it about, a herd of elephants?”
Marcus laughed loudly, Jack joined him, and so did Madeleine, who wasn’t going to be a bad sport.
“Elephants? Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus, adjusting his glasses. “The leviathan in my novel is the colossal and destructive force of human ambition and its ability to destroy those it loves in its futile quest for fulfillment. Seen through the eyes of a woman in London in the mid-eighties as her husband loses control of himself to own and want more, it asks the fundamental question ‘to be or to want’—something I consider to be the ‘materialistic’ Hamlet’s soliloquy. Ha-ha-ha.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” said Jack, but thinking, Clot. “Is it selling?”
“Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus in a shocked tone. “Selling more than even a few copies would render it… popular. And that would be a death knell for any serious auteur, n’est-ce pas? Ha-ha-ha.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” said Jack, but thinking, Even bigger clot.
“But it’s been short-listed for twenty-nine major awards,” continued Marcus. “I’ll send you a signed copy if you have a tenner on you.”
“If I gave you twenty, you could write me a sequel, too.”
Madeleine pulled Jack away and told him to behave himself, while at the same time trying to stop herself from having a fit of giggles.
“God, I love you,” she whispered in his ear, “but please stop messing around and behave yourself!”
“Spratt!” boomed Lord Spooncurdle, bored with talking to writers and agents and not recognizing anyone else.
“Hello, sir,” said Jack brightly. “You remember my wife, Madeleine?”
“Of course, of course,” he replied genially, offering his hand to Madeleine. “Your husband did a splendid job on that Humpty lark. Never did trust Spongg, y’know—eyes too close together. Reminded me of a governess who ran off with the handsome young silver and half the family’s boot boy.”
Madeleine excused herself with a whispered entreaty for Jack not to talk about his NCD work, as it usually had a confusing effect on people, and went off to mingle.
“Been here before, Spratt?” asked Spooncurdle, waving a hand at the inside of the Déjà Vu. “I’m sure I’ve seen that headwaiter, but I’m damned if I know where. I say, old stick, do us a favor and ask him if he has a lion tattooed on his left buttock.”
“He hasn’t,” replied Jack, humoring him. “I asked earlier.”
“Did you, by George? Must have been someone else. I must say, I never knew you were a member of the Most Worshipful Company of Cheese Makers.”
“I’m not, sir. This is the Armitage Shanks Literary Awards.”
“A literary award for cheese making? That doesn’t sound very likely.”
“There’s no cheese making here, sir—I think you’re confusing the event.”
“Nonsense, old boy,” said Spooncurdle amiably, having never knowingly been mistaken once in all of his sixty-seven years. “I say,” he added, changing the subject completely and leaning closer, “sorry to hear about that Riding-Hood debacle. Don’t let it get you down, eh? We all drop a serious clanger sooner or later.”
“You’re too kind,” replied Jack, wondering if this was a good time to point out that Spooncurdle had himself “dropped a clanger” on numerous occasions—and that shooting a grouse beater was illegal, despite the good Lord’s insistence that it wasn’t, or shouldn’t be.
Behind them the footman boomed out, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Admiral Robert Shaftoe. Never lost a ship, a man or in retreat, a second.”
“Bobby a cheese maker?” said Spooncurdle suddenly. “How extraordinary. I must go and speak to him. You will excuse me?”
“Of course.”
Spooncurdle left Jack standing on his own near the bar. He ordered a drink but was not alone for long.