Eight

The three sets of pirates all arrived back at the salon at the same time to find the Pirate Captain stretched out on a chaise longue in the middle of the room holding forth to Marx, Engels and an appreciative-looking audience of Parisian intellectuals. The pirates waited politely for him to finish, because he was clearly in the middle of some important philosophising.

‘. . . and that’s why, in a straight fight, I think a shark would most likely defeat Dracula,’ said the Pirate Captain thoughtfully.

All the Parisian intellectuals clapped their hands. The men nodded and stroked their pointy beards, whilst the ladies fanned themselves and jostled for the Captain’s attention.

The Pirate Captain noticed his crew and waved them over. ‘Hello, number two,’ he said. ‘I seem to have become a cause célèbre.’

‘Could we have a word, Captain?’ asked the pirate with a scarf.

‘Of course. Excuse me, gentlemen, ladies. I’ll just be a moment.’

‘Don’t leave us for too long,’ said a lady intellectual. ‘We are all so keen to hear your views on the nature of consciousness.’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said the Captain, with a wink. ‘It’s little people inside your brain. They’re the size of earwigs.’

He strolled over to his pirates, grinning.

‘I’m really enjoying this, number two. I’ve often felt it’s a shame my wit and wisdom have been confined to the likes of you lot, when they could be benefiting a much broader audience. Amazing that it took someone like Marx to realise it. So then, what have the rest of you been up to? Anything that might help lead to a proper adventure?’

The pirates all started talking at once.

‘We saw the most amazing thing at the Folies Bergère!’

‘Not as amazing as what happened at the waxworks!’

‘Wait till you hear about what happened at the Louvre!’

The Captain waved for them all to be quiet. Because the pirates often got up to pretty exciting stuff, they frequently had a problem with who wanted to tell their anecdote first. To avoid the situation escalating to bloodshed, a while back the Pirate Captain had drawn up a list of topics for potential anecdotes and, through a complex bit of maths, assigned them various scores. Thus it could quickly be decided which anecdote was best and so deserved to be told first.

The topics were:

• an anecdote featuring a ham. (10 points)

• an anecdote featuring nudity. (7 points)

• an anecdote featuring murder. (5 points)

• an anecdote featuring somebody being eaten by a creature. (4 points)

• an anecdote featuring problems with public transport. (1 point)

‘Right,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘My anecdote features ham. Do any of your anecdotes feature ham?’

The pirates shook their heads sadly.

‘Well then. In addition to spending most of the day impressing high society with my intriguing philosophical debates, I also tried some of that French ham today. It was OK, nothing special. Bit salty.’

‘That is a good anecdote, Captain,’ said the pirate in green.

All the pirates were glad they’d heard the Captain’s story first.

‘Our anecdote features murder,’ said Jennifer. ‘We went to the waxworks, and they were really good, especially the mechanical ones that jiggle about like they’re dancing. Anyhow, then we found a murdered body. And some mysterious statuesque blonde ladies with pigtails turned up and started stealing the crowned heads of Europe. We had to pretend to be waxworks ourselves, or who knows what they might have done to us.’

‘Jennifer was really brave,’ added the pirate in green. He wanted to get a bit of ‘will-they-won’t-they?’ speculation going amongst the rest of the crew.

‘Well, our anecdote should have featured nudity, because we decided to go to the Folies Bergère,’ said the pirate with a hook for a hand. ‘It was quite exciting, but also melancholy, because the dancing ladies all had that kind of particularly lovely face that just makes you want to cry into your pillow all night. Anyhow, when it came to the finale, which as you know is meant to leave nothing to the imagination, well, they were all wearing big serious-looking bucket pants! Made out of sacks! The crowd all starting booing, but the statuesque Nordic lady with pigtails stood up and told everybody that it was by order of the communists, because communists felt that not wearing any underwear was a bit much.’

‘Are we against a lack of pants now? I do lose track a bit,’ said Marx.

‘No,’ said Engels. ‘We said that it’s all about context. If it’s “artistic”, then that’s OK.’

‘The Folies Bergère are French, so they must be artistic,’ said the pirate in green.

‘Precisely. We’d have no problem with that,’ said Engels.

‘We went to the Louvre,’ said the pirate with a scarf, going next. ‘I think we probably drew the short straw, because although we feel culturally enriched, we didn’t get to see any murders or high-kicking legs. We got a bit of art theft, which isn’t bad, I suppose. Someone had tried to make it look like the communists had stolen the Mona Lisa! A hefty blonde was telling all the crowd how terrible it was and how if we had a strong government who weren’t afraid to act then we’d soon see the end of the “red reign of terror”.’

‘It’s just like in London!’ cried Marx. ‘Obviously, somebody is intent on blackening our name. But who could be carrying out such a thing? And for what possible motive?’

‘Aaarrrr,’ said the Pirate Captain, narrowing his eyes and tapping his chin.

‘Oh, good God. He’s going to start going on about his “detective skills” again,’ muttered the pirate in red, holding his head in his hands.

‘In the course of my many adventures,’ said the Pirate Captain, taking on an air of authority, ‘I’ve noticed that when sinister dealings are afoot, one is usually looking for a culprit. “Culprit” is a technical term for somebody who is up to no good. It’s usually the last person you suspect. Like a pillar of the community. Or a kindly spinster. Have you noticed any pillars of the community or kindly spinsters skulking about?’

‘Afraid not, Captain.’

‘Well, not to worry. As I may have mentioned before, I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to solving mysteries and criminal matters. For instance, did you know that nine times out of ten you can discover who the guilty party is simply by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the crime scene with the brand he smokes?’

‘Except we didn’t find any cigarette butts, Captain.’

‘Really? That’s unusual.’ The Pirate Captain clicked his tongue thoughtfully. ‘We’re clearly dealing with a professional. In which case, the identity of the criminal is usually given away by a dog failing to bark, thereby revealing the fact that the intruder was familiar to the victim. Case closed.’

‘Not sure that really helps either, Captain,’ said the pirate in green. ‘Because we didn’t see any dogs.’

‘Then it seems,’ said the Captain, holding up a finger dramatically, ‘that the villain was a jellyfish all along!’

‘Actually, Captain,’ said the pirate in red, with a world-weary sigh, ‘the keen observer will notice a common thread. Something all these stories have in common.’

‘All the stories are about pirates!’ shouted the albino pirate excitedly.

‘Besides that. All the stories feature these mysterious statuesque blonde women.’

The Pirate Captain frowned, and tried to remember something important. Unfortunately, the years of drinking grog mixed with gunpowder had left the ‘remembering things’ part of the Captain’s brain a bit shot, though the ‘knowing a lot about meat’ part of his brain had done its best to compensate for this. He screwed up his eyes in concentration. He did his best not to think about hams. He thought about the mysterious blonde ladies. Then he thought about how sad it was that ladies weren’t very good at growing luxuriant beards. He wondered if perhaps that could be a motive, because maybe they were jealous of Marx’s facial hair. Then he thought about how much better his own beard was compared to Marx’s, which led him on to thinking about how oak-like his broad neck was. That made him think about how fantastic he looked in his nice new coat. And then he sat bolt upright.

‘Eureka!’ he cried, and he pointed at his coat as if by way of explanation. Marx and the pirates looked at him blankly. ‘Valkyries! Viking mania! The opera! From what I’ve heard, operas nowadays are stuffed full of hefty statuesque blonde ladies.’

‘And the opera was in London when we were suffering mishaps there, and now it’s here, where our troubles have followed us, which is more than a little suspicious,’ exclaimed Engels.

‘That’s what operas do. They move about. They’re like tramps, you see,’ said the albino pirate knowledgeably.

Marx called over a waitress and asked for a copy of the day’s newspaper. They turned quickly to the ‘What’s On’ section.

The Pirate Captain looked up from the newspaper with a gleam in his eye. Gleams in the Pirate Captain’s eye could be mainly split into three groups: gleams caused by his eyeball reflecting some sort of treasure, gleams caused by the unhealthy amount of copper in his diet and gleams caused by his spying an opportunity to put on a disguise.

‘Well then,’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing for it. I shall have to disguise myself as a crowned head and use my natural charm to win the confidence of this Wagner chap. It won’t be easy. And obviously I’ll miss your company as I chomp on those little canapés made from wafer-thin beef. But you know me – I don’t think twice before putting myself in the path of danger by talking to sultry princesses about court gossip.’

The pirates all marvelled at the sacrifices that their Captain was willing to make. They made a collective mental note to describe him as ‘magnanimous’ in the future.

‘Pirate Captain,’ said Marx, ‘I feel responsible for putting you in this position. I’m coming with you.’

‘Yes, why not? You can be my butler. And Jennifer can be a lady-in-waiting. It’s important to show I’ve got a staff.’

‘Can’t I be another crowned head?’ said Marx, with a bit of a pout. ‘I’m not being a butler. Butlering goes against all my principles.’

‘Oh, this sort of thing happens on all our adventures,’ replied the Captain, grinning again. ‘You say something like “I’d rather die than wear that butler suit”, and before you know it, we’re being announced in the ballroom of this opera house with you in a butler suit.’

‘There’s no way you’re getting me in that butler suit,’ said Marx.