8. A Brief Lull As Plans Are Drawn

What Ho Proles!

I don’t mind admitting that the Honourable Frederick Finley turned out to be a bit of genius when matters turned strategic. I’ve never seen a mind quite like it: as bright as whatnot and twice as dark. There must be some example from history where a lesser general has had the beating of a master tactician. Caesar’s defeat at the Battle of Gergovia during the Gallic War springs to mind. Yet it saddens me to say: I’m no Vercingetorix. I’m not even fit to polish the chap’s sandals.

That’s why I could do nothing but listen with admiration as Frederick explained his stratagem. It was like sitting listening to a young Caesar of the North.

‘Are you listening to me, Murgatroid?’

‘So sorry, sir,’ I answered, coming out of my reverie and sitting up in my seat, which, more accurately, was actually part of the garden wall. ‘Carry on. Caught your every word. Good stuff too. Your’s is a mind going to waste on anarchic ways. Have you ever thought of turning Tory?’
‘Oh,’ he sniffed. ‘I was a Tory in my younger days but then I began to use my mind for more serious work. When I turned twelve, I reasoned myself out from a quite unreasonable Eurosceptic position and into one with a certain intellectual vigour, sceptical of the world in general. I like to think Anarchy is Christianity for the twenty first century.’

Of course, I smiled though I’ve never heard such sheep dip. ‘Spare me your thesis, young Finley,’ I said, ‘and tell me the rest of your plan. I have seminars to agonise through.’

He took out a notebook from the pocket inside his blazer and used a grubby stub of HB to start tapping out a timetable.

‘Father always leaves his study at four o’clock,’ he began. ‘He goes down to the farm where he talks to the stable girl for a good hour.’

‘Stable girl?’ I asked.

Frederick’s eyes rolled like glass beads in their sockets. ‘Since mother left us, Father’s always down there with Melinda. The silly old buffoon thinks he’s in love.’

‘And I take it you don’t believe in love?’

He gave me a withering look. ‘She is staff.’

I could see his point. ‘Press on,’ I said.

‘Well, Father will be gone long enough for a man to get into his study.’

‘A man?’ I asked.

‘Let’s say a desperate man,’ he replied.

‘Well, why not say a desperate man with a sore rump?’

‘I was trying to be delicate about the matter,’ he smiled indelicately. ‘So, you get in Father’s study, recover my air rifle, come out to the landing, and receive a hero’s welcome.’

A thought illuminated a dark corner of my mind and I realised there was an obvious question not yet asked. ‘And might I enquire how you came to lose possession of such a weapon?’

‘It was a mix-up,’ he said, flushing slightly around the gills.

‘It must be a funny sort of mix up to result in such a total decommissioning,’ I answered.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘Father gets so terribly confused... And he refuses to listen to my side of the story.’

We seemed to be getting to the crux of the matter, if not the actual nub and the gist. ‘And what is your side of the story?’ I asked.

‘That it was only the ruddy postman!’ he cried and set his hand to his brow as though the moment was too much for his delicate anarchic soul.

‘Am I to take it, Frederick, that you shot the postman?’

‘Only in his kneecap,’ he said.

I shuddered at the thought. ‘You kneecapped the postman and you consider your punishment excessive?’

‘Isn’t that how you see it?’

I thought a moment. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ said I. ‘What next?’

‘We have to synchronise out watches. We meet exactly at four outside my father’s study on the second floor.’ He clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re a good sort, Murgatroid. I’m sorry about sending your car into the mud and I’m just as sorry for shooting you down there.’

‘Give it no mind,’ I smiled. ‘Just delete that photograph from your phone and we’ll call it quits.’

He smiled darkly. ‘Of course I’ll delete it,’ he said. ‘Just as soon as you recover my air rifle.’