Dialogues of the Dead

355 'That's better,' said the librarian. 'You think so? You must attend a lot of very quiet markets. They're not like Sainsbury's, you know, all muzac and the swish of plastic. They are very noisy places,' said Bird. 'Ah, your famous crowd expertise,' mocked Follows. 'Which must, I presume, have come from a previous incarnation as you can't have picked it up from your theatre audiences. But that language - isn't it supposed to be Latin and Anglo-Saxon these people are speaking? That doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard.' 'Why should it be when all you ever heard was some old fogey in a dusty gown declaiming Cicero or Beowulf? This, as far as the best palaeo-demoticists can assess, is how it must have sounded in its vernacular form.' Dalziel, observing Dee, thought he caught a flicker of selfapproval and said, 'That pally what'sit one of yours, then?' It was good pay-back for the Fusiliers' Ball. Dee's features registered surprise which he tried to cover not by concealment but by exaggerating it into comedy. 'Ooh, what a sharp old detective you are, Superintendent. Indeed, I did drop the neologism into a conversation I had with Mr Bird and it's pleasing to learn that, with his finely tuned actor's ear, he has added it to his word-hoard. I should add that it seems to me a perfectly logical compound and one I would not be sur prised to find already existent. What else, I wonder, has your own sharp ear extracted from these exchanges?' Dalziel said, 'Well, it's confirmed what I knew, that they're a right pair of mutton-tuggers. At a guess, I'd say that when poor old Phil took badly, Ambrose put himself in charge of sound effects and Percy took smells. Seems about right.' 'Spot on again,' said Dee. 'I like mutton-tuggers, by the way. An evolved usage, but much apter than the original. Do you want to watch the rest of the shall we call it performance? Or shall we make a small tour while we talk?' The internal interrogative was offered with a small smile which Dalziel stored up for future ingestion along with a lot of other stuff which was raising interesting questions. 'Talk about what?' he said. 'About whatever it is you've come to talk to me about,' said Dee. 'Though at a guess I'd say it was the sad death of Lord Pyke-Strengler, and its place in the wider context of your pursuit of the Wbrdman.' As he spoke he led the way around the market between the various stalls. Most were pure artefacts, as realistic as lighting and sound effects could make them, but with the goods on display and the traders selling them all ingeniously moulded out of plastic. There were, however, three or four stalls which were stocked with real articles and attended by real people. Dee paused before one of these which was selling small articles made of metal, weights, cups, ornaments and so on. The stallholder, a handsome darkhaired woman in a simple brown robe which complemented rather than concealed the sinuous body moving beneath it, smiled at him and said, ''Salve, domine. Scin' Latine?' Dee answered, 'Immo vero, domina,' then picked up a brass cat and rattled off a whole sentence in Latin to which the woman replied ruefully, 'Oh shit. We're not going to get a lot like you, are we?' 'No, I'm probably a one-off,' laughed Dee. 'What I said was, I liked the pretty little pussy-cat but I liked the one in the brown robe a lot better.' 'Did you now? I see I'd better learn the Latin and Old English for cheeky sod if I'm going to survive here.' Dalziel watched this little piece of by-play with interest, noting the ease with which the librarian joked along with the woman and her readiness to slip into flirt mode. No one had suggested to him that Dee might be a ladies' man, but maybe that was because he hadn't been questioned by a woman. As they moved away he said, 'So what were that all about?' 'In the interests of verisimilitude, some of the stalls are manned by real people. Ambrose Bird supplies them from his company, actors who aren't in the current production and who fancy making a bit of extra cash. They're taught enough Latin and AngloSaxon to say hello and ask any potential customer if they speak either language. When, as in most cases, they get a blank look, they relapse into a sort of broken Shakespearean English.' 'Except now and then they'll get some clever bugger who does speak the lingo.' 'What would the world be without clever buggers?' asked Dee.