I’ll swear Sandra had that macrowave oven up off the floor by a couple of inches, but then her strength failed her and she dropped it again. And then she stormed out of the kitchen. And I listened as she broke things in the sitting room, then went into the bedroom and threw her most precious belongings into my suitcase, then returned to the kitchen and called me names that were not mine, then marched up the hall and stormed out of the front door and was gone.

This meant that phase one of my three-phase plan had gone even better than I could have hoped it would.

Which just left the other two and then she would be putty in my hands.

Oh yes.

She would.

She really would.

18

I didn’t make it to bed that night. I’d meant to go down to the telephone exchange and take some dictation from Vlad the Impaler. But, frankly, I was sick of listening to him going on and on about the battles he’d won by superior strategies and how the world had him all wrong about being such a bad-bottomed blackguard and everything. And so much of what he was telling me didn’t tie up with my own researches into his life that I’d been doing at the Memorial Library.

Vlad wasn’t telling me all of the truth, and I could see some scholarly script editor going through my manuscript and rubbishing it as grossly inaccurate. I began to pray very hard at night that someone really famous and loved by everyone would die soon and then I could get straight onto them and come up with a big fresh biography that everybody would like to read. Marc Bolan, perhaps, or Groucho Marx, or even Elvis.

But I couldn’t see any of them dying in the nineteen seventies. And I began to worry that I might not make the millions I had been hoping for.

Barry’s hopes, however, were high. For in the fullness of time, which in his case filled to the brim within six months, I found myself attending the launch party for his “biography” of P.P. Penrose: P.P. Penrose: The Man Who Was Lazlo Woodbine.

The launch was to be held at Mr Penrose’s favourite London night club. Which he had written into many of his books as Fangio’s bar, Lazlo Woodbine’s favourite hangout. Where he ate hot pastrami on rye, drank bottles of Bud and talked toot with Fangio, the fat boy barman. The club had changed its name now, as it was under new management. But I was still thrilled at the prospect of treading in the footsteps of the legend. Maybe going up to the bar and ordering a hot pastrami on rye and a bottle of Bud, as Laz would have done. And talking a lot of old toot, as Laz did on so many memorable occasions.

I had been meaning to go to the night club for ages. Not just because of its associations with P.P. Penrose, but because the new management it was under was none other than that of Harry, my brother-in-law, who now answered to the name of Peter. And most successfully too.

Sandra took an age to get changed and made up. She still dressed in black. Even though it was nearly five months since Count Otto had met with his tragic demise. I felt it right that she should continue to wear black, black being the colour of mourning as well as the name of the one being mourned. It was a constant reminder. I felt it was fitting.

I waited patiently while Sandra did all the things that she had to do. I wanted her to look her best for the book launch. And I knew that getting her to look her best took a bit of time.

Sandra required considerable care and attention nowadays.

Considerable maintenance, in fact.

She was no longer the same fiery, feisty, sassy Sandra who had returned from that holiday in Camber Sands. This was a far more subdued Sandra. A well-behaved Sandra. A Sandra who didn’t answer back any more. A Sandra who did what she was told. A Sandra who never left the house without me and only then by the back door and at night. She had been severely traumatized by the sudden death of Count Otto, and although she was now in my care I knew that she would never again be the same person that she had once been.

I myself was bearing up well. It’s a tragic thing when someone you care deeply about dies. It can really mess you up. But you have to muddle through and get on with life, don’t you? Life being so full of surprises and everything.

Not that I missed Otto, you understand.

I didn’t grieve for Count Otto.

Oh no, Otto had got what was coming to him. He had messed about with what was mine and he had paid the price. According to the note he left behind, it was suicide. And the note was genuine. It was written in his own hand and handwriting experts attested to this. The long and rambling account he had written confirmed that a madness had come upon him during the final month of his life. He became a creature obsessed. He eschewed good food and dined on drink alone. He developed strange compulsions. He would spend hour upon end sniffing swatches of tweed in the gents’ outfitters. He became prone to outbursts of uncontrollable laughter. He bethought himself a Zulu king and dressed in robes befitting. He became obsessed with the idea that an invisible Chinaman called Frank was broadcasting lines of Milton directly into his brain.

And so Count Otto had taken out his father’s Luger and blown off the top of his head with it.

Tragic.

But more tragic was the fact that the count had not died alone. The voices in his head had apparently decreed that he should make a human sacrifice before he took his own life.

And this is where, in the previous chapter, I mentioned that things didn’t work out exactly as I had planned. The voice of Frank definitely ordered the count to sacrifice Eric, the landlord of the Golden Dawn. I know this for a fact, because I was the voice of Frank. As I had been to my daddy all those years before. And I know what, through voodoo magic, I said to Count Otto. But obviously in his confused state of mind he misheard what I said and sacrificed someone else entirely.

Which was why I had to do some grieving. Which is why I said that it’s a tragic thing when someone you care deeply about dies. Because the person that Count Otto sacrificed meant a lot to me.

After all, that someone was my wife, Sandra.

Which was why she required so much maintenance nowadays.

Because using the spell I had used upon P.P. Penrose I had raised Sandra from the dead. Being careful that I didn’t make the same mistake as I had with Mr Penrose. I’d dug Sandra out of her grave and brought her home before she’d returned to life.

Or at least to a state of reanimation.

Because, in all honesty, you could hardly say that Sandra was alive any more. She was “undead”, that’s about the best you could say. And, frankly, that was flattering her. When I say that she required a lot of maintenance, I’m not kidding you at all. Bits of Sandra kept falling off and she didn’t smell like a breath of spring. But she did what she was told, or commanded, because he who raises the zombie has total command of it, and there were no more problems with our sex life. Other than for the occasional maggot, but I kept her dusted down with Keating’s Powder.

I was happy with Sandra now. And I know that had she been able to form entire sentences, she would certainly have said that she was happy with me.

I’m sure.

“How are you doing, darling?” I called through the bedroom door. “Do you need any help with your legs?”

I heard grunting, and a dull and uninspired thump.

“Leg fall off again,” called Sandra, whose husky tones reminded me of the now legendary Tor Johnson. “Need glue.”

“Coming, dearest.” And I went to her assistance. “We really must hurry a little – a cab is picking us up.”

“Lion cub?” said Sandra, as I helped her with her leg.

“Cab, not cub,” I said. “Remind me to poke a pencil in your ears. I think they’re clogged up with pus again.”