…a story for which the world is not yet prepared.
(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Late the night before, after he returned from the John Radcliffe Hospital, Webb cut off the left sleeve of his shirt at the shoulder with scissors, likewise of his jacket using a carpet knife, and he had slit both garments down under the armpit, otherwise when getting dressed in the morning he wouldn’t have been able to accommodate the dog’s head.
The result was bizarre: one bare white arm – with Skipper’s head protruding from Webb’s biceps – in contrast to the majority of the grey suit and striped dark blue shirt (and lighter blue tie). Looked as if he was raising money for charity, like somebody who shaves off one side of their beard. However, Webb could hardly arrive at the headquarters of Thames Valley Police dressed in a baggy short-sleeved T-shirt, even if he owned such an informal item of attire as a T-shirt.
Steering his bright yellow Triumph Stag from his flat in North Oxford out to Kidlington posed no problems other than the usual morning traffic congestion.
Supposing Skipper’s head had been on Webb’s forearm, rather than on his upper arm, gear changes could have proved perilous – the dog’s whiskery muzzle might have lunged at the steering wheel.
“Cave canem,” Webb said to himself in Latin. Beware of the dog.
Unused to being transported in such a fashion, Skipper barked noisily at other cars, so Webb kept the window up despite the considerable warmth of the “flaming” June morning. He also turned up the volume of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Most drivers probably thought that a complete animal was in the front of the Stag, which would mean that Webb was driving without due care and attention. But soon enough the Stag was entering the yard of the three-storey office block, radio mast on its roof, where the space marked Detective Chief Inspector awaited, empty.
Why should it have been otherwise than empty?
Because, as Webb realised just then, when he finally got off to sleep the night before he had dreamed of finding that space occupied by… a dog warden van, one of the D-Entity aliens sitting awkwardly at the wheel.
Which of course made perfect sense. The aliens had reacted to Webb investigating the death of one of their species by hampering him uniquely as well as doling out a mischievous, mocking punishment. However, Webb was used to influential persons and groups trying to throw their weight around.
“A murder is still a murder,” Webb had insisted to Chief Superintendent Turtle late the previous afternoon, “whether the victim is a Lord or a layabout or a visiting alien! And murder is against the law.”
“Ah,” the lugubrious though indulgent Turtle had said, “but does the law apply to an alien in the same way that it applies to a human being? I mean, you could hardly murder a chimpanzee, and chimps are supposed to be very like us – much more so than a freakish D-Entity.” And Turtle had dipped a chocolate biscuit into his tea.
“We have a corpse, sir!”
“Hmm,” said the Chief Superintendent, “that’s true.” By now the body should be at the mortuary in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology on South Parks Road.
“Habeo corpus, in a manner of speaking.”
“Isn’t the phrase habeas corpus?”
Webb had sighed exasperatedly. “Habeo is the first person singular of the verb. I have the body.”
Turtle eyed Webb. “We can’t all have the benefits of a classical education. That’s the trouble.”
“A classical education is a drawback, sir?”
“No, having the body is the trouble. If you hadn’t insisted, the aliens might have withdrawn the body – from our world and certainly from our jurisdiction. I wonder what the word for homicide of an alien is.”
“Obviously xenocide, from xenos, a stranger.”
“Ah, but is xenocide on the statute book?”
“Xenophobia should be. One across in yesterday’s Times crossword. Sir, a crime was committed on our patch.”
“So what was one down?”
“Xylophone.”
Just then, the phone had rung. Someone at the Home Office felt that MI5 rather than Thames Valley Police should be in charge of any investigation. The death of an alien might become a matter of national security.
“There are procedures,” Turtle informed the caller.
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
(Shakespeare)
“Drawbacks,” Turtle said today as he eyed the dog on Webb’s bare arm. “A very visible obstacle to you remaining in charge of this case.”
Skipper yapped a couple of time.
“Audible too.” After a moment’s thought Turtle held out a chocolate biscuit, then quickly he withdrew his offering.
“Can it eat? I mean, where does the food go? I wouldn’t want biscuit all over the carpet.”
Webb explained that it would seem that the bulk of Skipper’s body had been shifted into another dimension; otherwise there would be no lungs to bark with, nor any way to swallow dog food.
“His head isn’t grafted into my bloodstream – that isn’t how oxygen gets to his brain. The doc at the John Radcliffe proved that last night by an X-ray.”
And a surgeon at the JR had offered to perform an amputation. Even more doctors might have come flocking as word of Webb’s predicament spread round the hospital if it hadn’t been near to midnight by then. Obviously a decapitation would have killed Skipper, and Webb liked the dog.
Skipper was a miniature Schnautzer, fourteen inches high at the shoulder, if shoulders had been visible. Squarely built in the Terrier style, with a hard wiry coat of pepper and salt, although this also now largely eluded observation. The whiskery muzzle and bushy eyebrows conveyed an air of curmudgeonly disapproval suggestive of a bygone officer of Hussars, a demeanour that appealed to Webb.
Schnautzers of larger size had been used in the German-speaking countries as police-dogs and watch-dogs, but as companions too. Initially Webb had been appalled two Christmases previously when Sergeant Harris presented him with the half-grown miniature Schnautzer puppy – “from me and the missus and in case you can’t think of a name she reckons Skipper’s a nifty one” – along with a car sticker to the effect that a dog is for life. Of course Webb had promptly thrown the car sticker away. No such nonsense would deface his Triumph Stag, 175,000 miles old and still capable of a blood-curdling roar. He could hardly do likewise with the dog. Throw it away. Damn Harris’s banal, if well-meant, impertinence.
“What if the beast chews the legs of my nest of Chippendale tables or barks during Mozart?” Webb had remonstrated at the time.
“You train Skipper, sir. Gives you something to do.”
“Train him to do what? To skip? I have plenty to do! I have those new CDs of The Ring to listen to.”
Surprisingly soon, Skipper had endeared himself to Webb, although he would hardly admit it. The most he would allow was that at least a dog wasn’t a human being.
“Imagine having a human being share my flat!” Webb had expostulated a few months later.
“Not even a female human being, sir, just for a while?”
“What, and have underwear everywhere? That’s sort of thing’s best handled at a fine hotel.”
Live with a woman? How could he avoid her finding out his first name? Wellington Webb. Shortened at school long ago to Welly, as though he was a rubber boot. Drat his father’s devotion to the Duke of Wellington and all those accounts of the Peninsular Campaign and Waterloo, as though Webb senior had been there personally.
So your pet is fouling in that other dimension,” Turtle said fastidiously. “I really should take you off the case…”
“In case the aliens have no-fouling rules?”
“Because having a dog attached to you makes you a bit defective as a detective. Suppose you’re doing surveillance, and it barks?”
“Uniform can do surveillance. What I do is think.”
“But, I was going to say, since you’re so closely connected we’ll give it a couple more days – see how functional you are.”
“Morning, sir.” That eager, gormless smile. Perspiration gleamed on the Sergeant’s face.
“I know that it’s morning, Harris.”
“It’s good to see Skipper alive, sir. In a manner of speaking.”
“Is it? So what do we have, man? What facts?”
Harris consulted the file in his hands.
“Well, sir, while you were at the hospital uniform knocked on all the doors around you even though it was very late and Ah visited your neighbour upstairs.”
“Mrs Endlicott? She’s barmy.”
“Barking mad, Ah’d say. Except rightly that might apply to you at the moment.”
“I may be extremely peeved, Harris, but I am definitely not barking.”
When Skipper obliged with a yap, the Sergeant did his best to smother a grin.
“Tell me, Harris, is everyone laughing at me behind my back?”
“Of course not, sir. Everyone is very sympathetic. The missus was horrified.”
“Sympathy,” growled Webb. “Is there a feeling that Webb has bitten off more than he can chew?”
“It’s the first case we’ve had involving aliens, sir. Ah mean, apart from Iraqis and Bosnians. Anyhow, Mrs Endlicott – ”
“Harris, I am not mainly interested in the assault on my person, and on my dog, but in the murder. This” – Webb brandished his bare arm and Skipper – “is meant to distract me.”
“Just listen a mo, sir. Mrs Endlicott says that a monster drifted down from just under her ceiling to just above her floor then vanished. Obviously she means an alien. She had hysterics. Presumably they were looking for you but weren’t sure exactly where. Anyway, that tells us one thing: they can’t just pass through floors or walls. They have to phase out and phase in again.”
The night before, Webb had been nursing a glass of a good Rioja and listening to Così Fan Tuti when ferocious barks erupted, only to be cut short. Almost at once a D-Entity had appeared beside Webb, seized his left arm, torn his shirt sleeve open. Moments later Skipper’s head was jutting from his bare biceps, barking frantically again – and the D-Entity had vanished. Doubtless two intruders had been involved, one to seize Skipper, drag him elsewhere then reinsert him partially from the other side. Attempting to calm the frantic head, Webb had lurched disbelievingly to the phone, his wine spilled, Mozart ruined.
“Phase, Harris?”
“The kids watch Star Trek, sir.”
“So what were they relying on, to locate me? Can hardly have been the phone book. I’m listed as ground floor.”
“Maybe your smell, sir, or your vibrations.”
“Harris, I shower every morning. Look, I need a coffee.”
“Let me fetch you one, sir.”
“Not the swill they serve here, Harris! We’ll drive down to Little Clarendon Street. That’s near enough to the crime scene. Café Rouge do a decent espresso.”
“You and your coffees!”
“Afterwards we’ll stroll down St Giles to Balliol and get on investigating.”
“X marks the spot.”
“What are you talking about, Harris?”
“That metal cross in the middle of the road outside Balliol College – to show where the martyrs were burned at the stake. Martyrs Memorial round the corner isn’t actually where they were burned.”
“I know that, Harris. Where who were burned, exactly?”
“Them. The martyrs.”
“Names, Harris. Names.”
“Um,” said the Sergeant.
Webb consulted his watch, located on his wrist approximately eighteen inches below Skipper’s snout. Among other things Schnautzers were watch-dogs.
“How soon till we know the post-mortem results?” Webb demanded.
“The pathologist says she’ll be on to it just as soon as a vet gets to the School of Pathology from the Cotswold Wildlife Park at Burford. That’s in case the vet has any tips about alien life-forms. A vet has to operate on snakes and tortoises and all sorts of things. The organs might look different.”
“How do you operate on a tortoise, Harris? Saw it open, then superglue it afterwards?”
“Ah imagine you use keyhole surgery.”
It is quite a three-pipe problem.
(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The Dons of Balliol and the Master had taken the alien visitation in their stride, since everyone in Oxford, town and gown alike, knew that Oxford was the centre of the universe, and of all Oxford colleges – although this might be disputed – Balliol claimed effortless superiority, even if its present buildings mostly dated from the Nineteenth Century. Not for nothing had Benjamin Jowett (1817 - 1893) declared epigrammatically:
I am the Master of this College.
What I don’t know is not knowledge.
Besides, Balliol men (and women too now, reflected Webb) always infested any government, Tory or Labour alike, and the college’s economics and other Dons were advisors to Whitehall, consequently the alien manifestation in the Senior Common Room was almost akin to an official visit. What’s more, Balliol traditionally embraced chaps of every race. When Webb had been an undergraduate these many long years ago – although at St John’s College next door to Balliol – he well recalled visiting the Scala cinema in Headington in the company of a buxom nurse, whom he nursed hopes of fondling, to see a film wherein Tarzan swam mightily to escape from a canoeful of black heathen savages, and when the latter reached the shore a roar went up from the cinema audience: “Well rowed, Balliol!”
Webb reflected on this, and on the alien advent, as he and Harris sat in smart Café Rouge, while bicycles passed by along the narrow street of smart shops including Tumi which specialised in South American craftwork such as rugs and ocarinas and retablos and woolly hats and ethnic trinkets and stout, primitive furniture. A ceiling fan lazily churned the air. Harris sipped discontentedly at a tea which no one could stand a spoon upright in. The menu spurned decent egg and chips in favour of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon in a bagel. Webb’s pride and joy was parked further down on broad pavement. Since all the traffic wardens knew the Detective Chief Inspector’s yellow Triumph Stag and obviously he must be on duty he wouldn’t get a ticket.
The waiter had served Webb and Harris with a fair degree of aplomb; after all, this was Oxford. Besides which, many of the staff in Oxford’s coffee bars were familiar with Webb, although not to the point of familiarity due to his irascible tendency. The young chap had even asked if the dog would like a bowl of water, an offer which Webb declined since the waiter might place the bowl on the floor, requiring Webb to stoop over.
Webb said to Harris, “Remind me of the exact words that Physics chap reported.”
Harris consulted his notebook.
“One of the aliens said to the Jervis-Smith Fellow and Tutor in Physics, Hugh Dermot Kemp: ‘We phase from other-region, displaying.’ Unquote. In other words showing themselves to us.”
“A peacock displays, Harris. They might have been showing off to each other. Hence animosity, hence the murder. Convenient of them to speak English. After a fashion.”
“Aliens all do that on TV, sir. It’s something to do with our own broadcasts reaching the stars during the past fifty years.”
“Not to mention reaching another dimension.”
“Maybe the D-Entities have been peeping at us for yonks, sort of like pushing up a periscope from their, er, region into ours. They decided to put in a personal appearance at last.”
“So one of them takes advantage of being off their home patch by murdering another one.” Webb sighed. “I doubt it was Kemp who tipped off the press, or he’d have chosen a catchier name for the aliens. D-Entities is a bit of a jaw-breaker.”
Measured out my life with coffee spoons…
(T.S. Eliot)
What had happened the afternoon before around 3.30 was that Webb and Harris were sitting in the branch of Costa Coffee at the rear of the huge, two-storey Borders bookshop opposite St Mary Magdalen, nicknamed Mary Mags, when Webb’s mobile phone stridently commenced the overture to William Tell. Webb despised Rossini.
The caller was Chief Superintendent Turtle.
According to what Turtle had just heard from the Chief Constable of Oxfordshire, apparently a late lunch in the hall of Balliol College, to commemorate a retirement and election to an Emeritus Fellowship, had been followed by coffee and liqueurs served in the Senior Common Room, during which reportedly a quintet of very strange beings had popped into existence. These took it in turns to make cryptic remarks in stilted English and to caper about, sometimes seeming to float rather than to tread the carpet.
The Fellows had been enthralled. From the perspectives of their respective disciplines – Physics, Theology, International Relations, Physiological Sciences, or Modern Languages, to name but a few – each fellow attempted to communicate lucidly.
After half an hour – during which the Tutor in Politics phoned someone high-placed in government, and the Tutor in Computation phoned a contact in the Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence – one of the creatures was seen by the Tutor in Law to point something slim, whereupon across the room a fizzling flash engulfed one of the other creatures and it promptly collapsed upon the floor – which was when the Tutor in Law phoned the Chief Constable, a close acquaintance. No messing about with phoning the police station down St Aldate’s and being accused of a student prank.
Within minutes Chief Superintendent Turtle was talking to Webb, whom he presumed to be near to the aforesaid college because that afternoon Webb was investigating a dead body found inside an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb in the Ashmolean Museum.
“Even if this alien nonsense is true,” Turtle had said, “try not to be a prat. Movers and shakers there at Balliol. I’ll ask the city police to send a Sergeant and half a dozen uniform to assist.”
“That might not be necessary.”
“Appearances, Webb.”
Scarcely ten minutes after Webb and Harris left Borders, the Master of Balliol, Sir Anthony Wiseman – a craggy and leonine figure – was ushering them into the Senior Common Room overlooking a lawn where undergraduates played croquet, apparently unaware as yet of what had transpired within the SCR.
Four slim, weirdly angular creatures of middle height, pink in hue, bobbed about amidst the Fellows. Each creature had two thin legs, two thin arms. The fingers were rather long. The slanted eyes in their bald ovoid heads were dark. Prim little mouths, tiny ears. Hard to tell whether they were nude or whether a pink body sleeve enveloped them – probably the latter, because their groins were so smooth.
A fifth creature lay sprawled on the carpet.
Sir Anthony beckoned to a slim brown man, and introduced the Tutor in Law, Dr Patel.
“You actually witnessed the killing, sir?”
Dr Patel described what he had seen.
Webb glanced at the nearest creature.
“Could you have seen a long finger being pointed rather than a weapon resembling a wand? Where is this weapon now?”
“Within one of them,” Dr Patel said. “I have seen them delve their hands inside their bodies.”
“That’s perfectly true,” chipped in a burly young man, who proved to be the Tutor in Physics, Dr Kemp.
“As if they have pockets in their bodies or in whatever covers them,” added Patel.
“Or,” said Kemp, “as if the D-Entities are putting their hands into the region they come from.”
“D-Entities?” queried Webb, and that was when he was enlightened as to Kemp’s professional opinion of the origin of the creatures, and a suitable name for them. Dimensional-Entities.
“Which one of them pointed the wand, or the finger?” Webb asked Patel.
“I tried to keep track, but I was distracted for a moment.”
“How unfortunate. Harris, get statements. Ah, here comes uniform. Brief them.”
Led by a sergeant, half a dozen constables had entered the SCR.
Webb strode over to confront one of the D-Entities.
“Excuse me, sir, I must ask you a few questions.”
A strange, pink, dark-eyed face regarded him.
“Ask. Away.” Was this an encouragement or a discouragement?
“One of you is dead, correct?”
“Severed and disconnected from ex-istence.”
“And one of you caused this?”
“Cause. And effect.”
“I’ll take that for a yes. Do you people have names?”
But this was little help. What sort of names were One-Half, Two-Half, Three-Half, Four-Half, and Five-Half who lay dead? The questioning had proceeded frustratingly. The D-Entities did not seem overly troubled by the death of one of them, and had only became really agitated when Webb ordered the body to be removed to the morgue for a post-mortem.
“Not away from this-place! Away!”
“The corpse can hardly stay here on the floor,” Webb pointed out. “And the cause of death must be established.”
“Not away!”
“I’m sorry, One-Half, but it’s unavoidable.”
“Woe to you!”
Webb sighed. “I must warn you that threatening a police officer in the course of his duty is an offence.”
“Woe!” And One-Half vanished.
“Look, sir!” Now the creature was amongst the croquet players and undergraduates were calling out, pointing, running. One-Half vanished and reappeared further away in the big garden-quadrangle. Then it was standing, or floating, once again in front of Webb.
“Anywhere!” it said. “In city!”
“It’s trying to blackmail you, sir,” said Harris, “by threatening a breach of the peace.”
“Is it now?” Which firmed Webb’s resolve.
But damn, it was impossible to prevent the suspects from going wherever they wished!
As Webb and Harris now strolled down St Giles, the leafy plane trees of that wide, noble avenue casting blessèd shade, Webb held his left hand across his stomach, Napoleon-style, and he kept his right hand over Skipper’s head as though he might be cradling the Schautzer – perhaps to stop it from tearing off sleeves from passers-by.
After crossing at the traffic lights outside the Randolph Hotel, the two colleagues proceeded past Martyrs Memorial, modelled on an Eleanor Cross, to which Harris had alluded, then they went by the entry (facilis descensus Averno) to the subterranean men’s public lavatory abutting upon the northern part of the graveyard of St Mary Mags on its narrow island between two roads. Passing the southerly section of the same, home to the biggest plane tree in the city centre and a Judas tree for variety, they turned left into Broad Street, dubbed by some The Broad, a name which always made Webb think of an American gangster’s moll. A horde of news reporters and TV and radio people and sightseers almost blocked the street where it broadened. A hundred yards or so brought Webb and Harris to the Porter’s Lodge of Balliol, numerous constables on duty outside. Maybe that should be Porters’ Lodge – use and misuse of the apostrophe often preoccupied Webb.
As soon as a reporter from the Oxford Mail recognised Webb and shouted, “Chief Inspector, do you have a statement?” the rest of the crowd raised an outcry and surged, while the constables moved forward protectively. Palms outward, Webb appealed for some order and peace. As soon as people spotted Skipper’s head protruding from Webb’s bare arm the hubbub intensified.
“What’s happened to your arm, Chief Inspector?” “Did the aliens do that to you?” “Are they dangerous?” “Are the police armed?” “What can you tell us about the sightings in the High Street?”
With as much dignity as Webb could muster, he called out: “Sirs and madams, we will be making a statement in due course. All I can say for the moment is that a violent death is being investigated.”
“Have you made an arrest?” “Do you have a suspect?” “Who was the victim?”
Webb ignored all the questions apart from one:
“Is that dog a cyborg bloodhound?”
“No, it’s a miniature Schnautzer. Now, if you’ll excuse me – ”
Two of the D-Entities were in the SCR, engaged in ambiguous talk with a number of Fellows including Kemp and a crowd of other people whom Webb did not recognize. Scientists. Government persons, perhaps. Kemp, unshaven, looked as if he had been up all night. The other two entities might be anywhere, scaring the people of Oxford, causing public panic which would not please the Chief Constable one little bit.
Webb addressed the Tutor in Physics. “So, Dr Kemp, have you any further observations to make?”
Kemp gazed at Skipper’s head.
“I observe that the D-Entities have dimensionally interconnected you to a dog. This is a rather dangerous development, in my opinion.”
“I shan’t be intimidated.”
“How will you unknot the dog?”
“I shall worry about that in due course.” Edging his way through the crowd, Webb addressed the nearest D-Entity. “Which one are you?”
“Not one. Two-Half.”
Webb brandished a now growling Skipper.
“I could arrest you for assault.” But what police cell could hold a D-Entity? “You will remove the animal from my arm without harm to it, or to me. Is that clear?”
“Five-Half being back here.”
“I have told you, there must be a post-mortem. One of you is guilty of killing Five-Half. I intend to find out which. Why are you protecting one of you?”
“One not guilty,” said the entity. “Only half guilty.”
Whatever that meant. Mitigating circumstances?
Even if one of the entities was arrested for murder and tried and found guilty, what sentence could be enforced? Nevertheless, this was a matter of principle.
Signs of impatience and even hostility towards Webb were apparent in the Senior Common Room. This wasn’t a case where interrogation was going to help much further, but thinking might. Webb rejoined Harris.
“I think this might be a three-coffee case. How about Coffee Republic?” Harris groaned. “Ah don’t know as Ah have enough money after paying in Café Rouge.”
“We’ll pass a cash machine, man.”
“Why can’t you draw out some, sir?”
“My card’s in my wallet. You know I forgot my wallet.”
Before long, the two detectives were ensconsed in Coffee Republic at the corner of George Street and New Inn Hall Street just up from the Apollo Theatre, addressing in Webb’s case a Café Latte and in Harris’s a Smoothie composed of mango and banana and kiwi, which was the closest thing to your everyday orange juice. Not a sign of egg and chips on the menu board, only things like panini with mozzarella, tomato, and basil.
“I’m missing something very obvious,” Webb said.
Harris winced as he tasted the Smoothie. “Would that be your sleeve, sir?”
Skipper emitted a doleful yap, and Webb scratched the dog’s head to hush it. Hastily the Detective Sergeant continued, “If only we could look down
Skipper’s gob and see right through him to the other side, we’d know what sort of place the D-Entities come from…”
Webb sat for several moments, as if thunderstruck.
“By jove, you’re a genius, my old friend!”
“Maybe the docs at the John Radcliffe have a long tube with a mini-TV-camera, like they slide up your bottom to look at your intestines? But the other way round – it would go down Skipper’s throat and end up coming out of his rear end.”
“Don’t be disgusting, Harris. Be quiet and let me think.”
Webb sipped his Latte for a while, then slowly he nodded.
“Harris, I’ll wager you ten pounds I can tell you the result of the post-mortem.”
“That’s unfair, sir, you don’t have ten pounds.”
“No, but I will if you take my wager.” Webb pulled out his mobile phone. “Let’s see if that vet has arrived yet. If so, we’re going over to South Parks Road.”
Possible? Is anything impossible?
(The Duke of Wellington)
Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry: the massive science buildings along the northern side of South Parks Road were like a line of understated Art Deco cruise liners moored up against the broad grassland of the University Parks.
Soon Webb and Harris were deep within the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, meeting the vivacious red-headed pathologist Sandra Lomax in protective long apron and the vet from the Cotswold Wildlife Park, similarly attired.
The vet’s name was Lucy Fisher – she was blonde and muscular. On the dissecting table Five-Half lay slit open.
“Let me guess,” said Webb. “You’ve found no internal organs – certainly not as we understand them.”
“How did you know?” exclaimed Sandra Lomax.
As Webb approached the table, he admitted, “I don’t much care for corpses, but this isn’t one. Quite simply it isn’t a dead body.”
He couldn’t recognise any of the component parts exposed within the slim torso. Although they had a somewhat organic look to them they were nothing like human organs or the organs of any other animal, nor did any bodily fluids cause them to glisten.
“Will you stitch it up again?” said Webb. “Use sticky tape if you like. Then if someone can give Harris a hand I’m taking Five-Half back to Balliol.”
It was Lucy Fisher who helped Harris manoeuvre the defunct D-Entity into the front seat of the two-door Stag to the accompaniment of hostile barks.
“Shall Ah drive, sir?” Harris volunteered after seat-belting the body. “Skipper’s none too happy about that particular passenger.”
At that moment, William Tell commenced stridently.
“I appreciate the pressures upon you, sir,” Webb was saying presently to Turtle, “but in view of what I now know I’m going to release the body.” He made noises like static. “Bad reception here. I think we’ve breaking up.” He switched off the mobile. “Yes, Harris, you drive.”
Harris held the big door wide so that Webb could clamber into the rear seat, awkwardly.
Normally Webb tried to avoid contact with the gentlemen and madams of the media, but thanks to Skipper he could foresee headlines which might bring ridicule upon him, and besides he felt sorely temped to demonstrate that not all human knowledge (nor the ability to think) was the province of Balliol College, which the alien advent there, rather than elsewhere, might imply. Furthermore he was fairly sure of the only feasible way to separate himself from his dog without injury to either party.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 ensured that a wheelchair was at hand in the Porter’s Lodge. Or Porters’ Lodge. Harris wheeled that chair out into Broad Street, and into it the Sergeant and a Constable wrestled the taped-together Five-Half to the accompaniment of frantic questions from the crowd and much picturing and filming, during which Webb remained mute, although not Skipper. Then Webb smiled, and beckoned to all and sundry to follow him.
Never mind the COLLEGE CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC board, standing inside the gateway, which soon toppled over. Preceded by Harris pushing the wheelchair flanked by Webb, a horde poured diagonally across the small front quadrangle, home to the college chapel, then through the passage under the college library, and into the verdant paradise of trees and grass beyond – surrounded, from south to north and back again, by the Master’s lodgings, then by many staircases (or rather, the habitations to which these gave entry), then by the Hall, then the Senior Common Room, then the long herbaceous boundary with much-loathed Trinity College, and finally the Fellows’ Garden.
As Webb advanced, the many people already in the vicinity of the SCR who were marvelling at the appearance (and occasional disappearance) of the D-Entities, or trying to understand them, turned in his direction.
“Ah, and there’s the Master,” observed Webb. “Master, good day!”
“What are you doing?” demanded Sir Anthony Wiseman, aghast at beholding the body in the wheelchair.
“I’m going to explain what happened,” Webb announced, and a hush fell over the two convergent crowds.
Two D-Entities reappeared near Webb, and he regarded them coolly, unlike Skipper who barked madly for a while.
Webb raised his voice. “I was intrigued by their names.. One-Half, Two-Half… and here in this chair, Five-Half. They give themselves numbers, yet they call themselves half. This suggest that they aren’t whole, that part of each of them is missing, absent, elsewhere – we can’t see it. Also, the part that is present quite often floats a bit above the ground.
“One of them spoke of the apparent murder victim being severed and disconnected. Disconnected from what, I wondered. I say `apparent victim’ because no death actually took place.”
“Looks dead enough to me!” someone shouted.
“With a certain amount of cogitation I was able to predict the result of the post-mortem. Which is that this body,” and Webb patted the thin shoulder of Five-Half, “has no internal organs. It only has components. In effect, it is an ingeniously constructed puppet – which was operated by whatever a D-Entity, “and he nodded to Hugh Dermot Kemp, “actually is when it’s at home.
“I make no guesses about what the inhabitants of that other region really look like, but these are not they. These are something made approximately in our own human image, so that we should not be alarmed – and perhaps because the actual D-Entities cannot survive in our world. What happened in the Senior Common Room was a loss of control over one of the puppets. The link to its operator was severed, perhaps purely by accident. Maybe the operators got in each other’s way.”
Webb gazed around.
“You wouldn’t wish a piece of advanced technology to fall into the hands of a comparatively primitive people who still regularly murder one another. Hence,” and Webb flourished his arm and Skipper, “the negative reaction towards me due to the removal of this puppet in pursuance of proper procedure. Removal must have made the puppet difficult or impossible to retrieve. For some reason, no doubt to do with dimensions,” and he raised an eyebrow at Kemp, “they could interfere with me at my home but they couldn’t connect with the puppet in the morgue. Now that the body is back here in Balliol again, I sincerely hope that its controller is able to link up and remove it, if that is now possible.”
“No!” cried out Kemp. “Advanced technology! We can learn so much.”
Webb retorted, “I have no wish to carry a dog’s head on my arm for the rest of my days.” He eyed the nearest of the bobbing puppets. “Will whatever is behind this thing in the chair kindly take it away?”
For a few moments nothing happened, except for some outcry from several Fellows and a few other people who seemed to regard themselves as special. Then light coruscated around Five-Half – and the puppet jerked upright. Briefly it danced, then it vanished.
‘Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark…
(Lord Byron)
Gathering around Webb, the other puppets seemed to pluck at thin air.
He felt such a strange sensation – as Skipper began to emerge. It was as if Webb’s arm was giving birth to the dog. Its front legs came free. As the torso folloed, the extra weight dragged Webb’s arm down. When the hind legs and tail came loose, an intact Skipper fell no more than a couple of feet on to the lawn. Promptly the Schnautzer fled howling into the crowd, away from the vicinity of the three bobbing puppets.
One by one, the puppets popped out of existence.
Webb examined his bare arm. Where Skipper’s head had protruded, only a circular red line remained.
“Oh god, not ringworm!”
“You blundering fool!” expostulated the Tutor in Physics. “The D-Entities have all gone away!”
“And now the good citizens of Oxford shan’t be spooked, Mr Kemp.”
Pushing through the crowd, came Chief Superintendent Turtle accompanied by, oh, it was the Chief Constable of Oxfordshire, James Hoskins perspiring in full uniform.
Webb sat with Harris in an air-conditioned Italian restaurant in North Parade, Summertown, which served a very decent Mocha. The boost from the chocolate component seemed a vital addition to the caffeine boost. Harris nursed a glass of tap water which should cost nothing. They had left Skipper in the Stag, windows open a few inches to avert canine heat-stroke.
Indignantly, Webb repeated the comment which the Chief Constable had made to him on Balliol’s lawn.
“A shambles? Would you call this case a shambles, Harris?”
“Well, sir, you might say that there wasn’t ever any case to start with.”
“Anyone who does crosswords would know that the proper meaning of shambles is a slaughterhouse.”
“Ah think the Chief Constable meant a mess.”
“A confusion? What was confused about my conclusions?”
“Ah think the eggheads are angry about the D-Entities breaking off contact.”
“Huh! Who knows what the real D-Entities are like? They may be the size of whales, with lots of tentacles.”
“That’s giant squids, sir.”
“I probably did the world a service. Mrs Endlicott thought the puppet was a monster. What monsters are there in man, eh, Harris? We already have enough monsters.” Webb consulted his watch. “I suppose we’d better eat here. Be a lot better than the food at the canteen in Kidlington.”
“But sir –”
“Would you rather we stop at a greasy spoon?”
Harris stared at the menu. Calamari, Ossobuco, Funghi, Polenta. “Why yes, to tell the truth…The thing is, I don’t have enough cash left.”
“I saw a machine on the corner, Harris. You should always draw out enough. Never fear, I’ll buy our next meal. Even though I did win my wager.”