“You don’t have a lot of truck with movies, do you, Johnny Boy?”

“They’ll never replace the music hall. Where exactly are we going?”

“To the barber’s shop,” said Icarus. “We’ll find our answers there.”

“Perhaps you should ask the Greek to give you a haircut. You’d look good with a Tony Curtis.”

Tony Curtis had nothing on me when it comes to pulling the womenfolk. I attract women like flies. But then who wants women like flies? The way I figure it, either you have or you haven’t got style. And I’m a have, every inch of the way, and quite a few inches that is.

I slipped on the snakeskin fedora and tipped it at the angle that will be for ever rakish. I discarded the old tweed jacket and took up the new trenchcoat. Now this was style.

Matching python-skin two-piece. I should have asked Fangio whether there was any chance of getting a pair of shoes made up from the off-cuts. I’d have really mullahed the mustard in a three-piece get up. Or would that be four, as shoes come in a pair? And I could have had a necktie too. And a pair of boxer shorts. I made a mental note to pop back to the Lion’s Mane as soon as I had the time, and butcher a couple more python. And perhaps a white rhino, if they had one. White rhino hide would look pretty good on the seats of the brand new Bentley I intended to buy with my payoff from the case.

Payoff? I hear you ask. Just what payoff might this be, Mr Woodbine? Well, my friends, I’ll tell you, it’ll be a big payoff.

Because I had solved the case. And if you were as smart as I am, then you’d have solved it too. You heard everything I heard when Captain Ian the angel was telling his tale. And if you’d been able to put two and two together the same way that I did, you’d be planning what kind of seat covers you’d be having on your Bentley.

But hey, you’re not me. And if you’ve been asking yourself just how come I’ve spent most of the day watching TV rather than getting out and about, then that’s another good reason why I’ll be the one in the Bentley, not you.

But I don’t want to give any more clues away here now. So you’ll just have to settle for the not inconsiderable joy of watching me ponce up and down my office in my new trenchcoat and fedora. Looking like a million bucks.

And I don’t mean green and wrinkled.

“Green and wrinkled,” said Johnny Boy. “That’s what I think of sprouts. Horrid green and wrinkly things and your brother, if indeed he is your brother, actually thinks he has one that lives in his head?”

“I told you he was mad.”

“Damn right,” said Johnny Boy. “I can understand an onion. But a sprout? No thank you. Where exactly are we now, by the way?”

“We’re here,” said Icarus. “Outside the door of the barber’s shop.”

“I don’t remember that bust being in that niche yesterday. Surely that’s Noel …”

Knock knock, went Icarus, knocking at the door.

“Er, just hold on a moment,” called the barber’s voice.

Icarus opened the door and walked right in.

The barber sat in the middle chair. He had the now legendary brown envelope open and had clearly been savouring its contents.

“How dare you bustle in here,” the barber complained. “Me being busy with myself. What game is yours and oh …”

“Oh?” said Icarus.

“Oh, it’s you, boy, back again. I thought they …”

“Murdered me?” said Icarus.

“Not murdered surely. Took you off to have a nice sleep.”

“No,” said Icarus, approaching the barber.

“I not like the look of you, boy. You kindly leave by the door where you came.”

Icarus grasped the chair’s back and swung the barber around. The barber gripped the arms of the chair and the steel bands swished and clamped his wrists.

“Now look what you make me do, boy. Press the button on the back and set me free at once.”

“I think not,” said Icarus Smith. “I have questions to ask and you have answers to supply.”

“I tell you nothing,” said the barber. “I sign the Official Secrets Act. Say nothing to you about nothing.”

Icarus patted the barber on the head.

“Help!” screamed the barber. “Help me!”

Icarus took the Velocette and rammed it into the barber’s mouth. “Now,” said he. “I am going to give your head a little massage. I think I can remember exactly where Ms O’Connor applied the pressure. Let’s hope I don’t get it wrong. It would really be a shame if you were to suffer some permanent damage.”

“Mmph!” went the barber, shaking his head violently from side to side. “Mmph!”

“What was that?” asked Icarus. “Did I hear you saying that you would answer all my questions, clearly and precisely, without any need for painful measures being taken?”

The barber’s head nodded up and down.

Icarus removed the Velocette.

“Please don’t think of calling out for help again,” he said. “Or I will put my thumbs in your eyes and twist them inside out.”

Johnny Boy turned his face away. “I don’t want to watch that,” he said.

“You’ve finished watching TV now, then, have you, chief?”

“That’s why I woke you, Barry, yes.”

“And so, are we off on our way?”

“We are, Barry, we are off on our way to Black Peter’s Tavern.”

“Black Peter’s Tavern, chief? Please don’t tell me we’re going to Black Peter’s Tavern. Oh no no. Not Black Peter’s Tavern.”

“You know it, then, Barry?”

“Never heard of it, chief.”

I’d always fancied a night at Black Peter’s Tavern. It was the kind of joint where all the big knobs hang out. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do. This joint was swanky. It had class. If you were here, you were someone.

The decor was stylish to a point where it transcended style and entered the realms of perspicuous harmony, shunning grandiloquent ornamentation in favour of a visual concinnity, garnered from aesthetic principles, which combined the austerity of Bauhaus and ebullience of Burges[14] into an eclectic mix before stripping them down to their fundamental essentials, to create an effect which was almost aphoristic, in that it could be experienced but never completely expressed.

So there is no need to bother with a description.

But trust me, it was sheer poetry.

I breezed in, like a breath of spring

And wafted my way to the bar

The hour was the hour known as happy

Which is happy, wherever you are.

I took in the decor, the dudes and dames

And all found favour with me

They had class written through them, like words in a rock

That you buy in Blackpool on sea.

In the time I’ve spent as a private dick

I’ve drunk in all manner of bars

From doss house dives with pools of sick

To the haunts of movie stars.

I’ve cast my fashionable shadow

In many a wayside inn

And raised my glass to beaus and belles

And sailors and Sanhedrin.

But you know you are home

When you’re in amongst your own

And this was home to me

So I leaned my elbow on the bar

And summoned the maitre d’.

“Set ’em up, fat boy,” said I. “A pint of pig’s ear and a packet of pork scratchings.”

The maitre d’ raised a manicured eyebrow and viewed me down a narrow length of nose. “Would sir care to rephrase that?” he asked.

“Certainly,” I said, with more savoir-faire than a Sophoclean sophist at a sadhus’ seminar. “A pig’s ear scratching packet and a pint of pork, please.”

“Sir has the wit of Oscar Wilde, which combined with the droll delivery of Noel Coward creates a veritable tour de force of rib-tickling ribaldry.”