Beyond the Roundels

Hmm. You might as well have all there is, since it's been sitting on my pc for two years. This takes place later.

***


“Do you think it was somehow airlifted away?” suggested Charley.

He considered that. “It’s an interesting suggestion, but again, we come back to the fact that no one saw anything. Flying elephants are not common.”

“No-o,” she admitted. “But land-travelling ones leave footprints or tyre marks if they’ve been carted off.”

He said, “You know, I think I understand what this is about – at least in part.”

“Oh? You are clever, John.”

He frowned momentarily. “That’s Mr – or Inspector – or possible Sir John Ap – what was my name again?”

“Pearsby, I think.”

He nodded. “Well, it appears to me that we’ve been unfortunate enough to find ourselves in a Michael Innes parody. We’re only lucky that no one’s run off with a building yet.”

“I see,” said Charley. “I mean, I don’t, but it sounds about as likely as anything else, although I thought it was more like something out of a book by Joan Aiken.”

He looked at her. “Charley, this is the 1950s -.”

“1940s.”

“Whichever, it’s confusing enough without you bringing in books that were written in the 1960s and 1970s – and which, therefore, you couldn’t have read anyway.”

Charley paused. “I have. They were jolly good fun, too. I suspect it must have been in your library.”

“My library? What library?”

She said, “I think I’m beginning to get a headache. But there was a pink whale and nasty Hanoverians with a gun that could shoot across the Atlantic, although it wasn’t going to do Nantucket any good.”

“Well, unless any plucky, streetwise orphans turn up, I think we’ll stick with my theory. And it really is a shame. Given that I was supposed to be an academic, it could at least have been Edmund Crispin.”

Charley sighed. “But the elephant?”

“The elephant is, I believe, a red herring.”

“Now you’re just being silly!”

He directed a reproachful look at her out of blue, blue eyes. “Charley. Why would anyone want to steal an elephant? Aside from a small amount of ivory from the tusks, there’s little motive to be had. Pearl is only valuable if she can be exhibited. If she is exhibited, the perpetrator is immediately discovered. Therefore the theft of the elephant is in fact a distraction and what we need to discover is what else occurred that night that was overlooked in the light of that more obvious event.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice faltering. “I mean, that’s jolly clever and what have you, but I still don’t understand what someone did with the elephant.”

He faced her, with a stern light in his eyes. “We’re never going to get anywhere until we stop looking at the elephant. From now on, we are going to study everything else until we uncover an explanation.”

“Hmm.”

He smiled at her. “I see you’re dubious, Charley. I understand, but you must bear in mind that our elephant-thief is not necessarily sane.”

“Ah,” she said. “Well, that would explain a lot.”

***