David Dean - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

Jimbo picked up the Rover in the station car park and drove into the village, intending to call on Dr. Caldicot to ask him if he could do something to stop this bloody giggling, but found that the surgery was closed. He discovered why when he entered his drive and saw first of all an old grey Austin blocking half the garage, and second of all, Loopy at the end of the garden.

Loopy advanced towards him. He was in shirtsleeves and very sweaty. He was carrying the Spear & Jackson shovel.

“Well, look what the cat’s dragged in. I say, Jimbo,” he said testily, as Jimbo climbed out of the car, “you might tell a chap when you’re going to be late back to camp. I’ve had a hell of a time all by myself. You might think of other people a bit, you know. Bloody selfish, I call it.”

Jimbo was mortified. “Loopy,” he said, “I’m terribly sorry. I had no idea.”

“Well, now you’re here, you can come and help me finish off.” Loopy led Jimbo to the orchard, where Jimbo saw two new patches of freshly turned earth.

“Just have to put back the turf, that’s all. Not too much to ask, I hope?” said Loopy with heavy sarcasm.

Jimbo stared at the patches of earth.

“No, of course not. But Loopy, what on earth...?”

“You might well ask, ol’ man. Only somebody pretending to be the brother of Old Mother Whipple, accompanied by somebody making himself out to be a local doctor.”

“I didn’t know Mrs. Whipple had a brother.”

“Almost certainly doesn’t. This blighter had professional snooper written all over him. And the so-called doctor. No more a doctor than my left boot. Tried him with some simple questions about beriberi and yellow jack and he was floundering. Patent imposture. They gave me a lot of old toffee about the old Whipple not having turned up for a bit and not having taken her medicine. But I saw through them. The whole thing was laughable. Talk about your transparent tissue of lies. Make a cat laugh.”

“Good Lord,” said Jimbo, “so what happened?”

“When they started getting violent I had to calm them down slightly.”

“God, Loopy, you don’t mean—”

“Well, perhaps I overdid it a bit. But what the hell can you do when two bruisers force their way into your home unasked and start to beat you up?”

The idea of Dr. Caldicot, who was a frail seventy-two, paper-thin and myopic, as a bruiser interested Jimbo. There must have been more to the old boy than people made out.

“Good Lord,” he said, “what on earth can have possessed him?”

“Beats me,” said Loopy. “Now can we get this turf back down? I hate muddle and mess.”

When Jimbo put the Rover in the garage, he peered into the so-called doctor’s car, and saw that there was a so-called doctor’s bag on the passenger seat. Here’s a turn-up, he thought, it’s an ill wind. There was bound to be something here. He opened the bag. In it there were many containers of tablets of all sorts and sizes. There was no pill box marked specifically Just the Job for the Giggles, as he was hoping there might be, but that night he took what seemed to him to be a reasonable handful of different colours and persuasions with his last swig of brandy.

The next seventy-two hours was a strange and drifting twilight time during which he lay in bed, half sleeping, half not, dazed by the play of coloured lights in the air around his bed and with an incessant carillon in his ears. There were also hallucinations. He awoke several times to hear what seemed to be raised voices, and a repeated, metallic clanging. And at one point, with his mouth full of cotton, he rose, went down to the kitchen, and poured a glass of water. Through the kitchen window, he could see, reflecting redly either the sunrise or the sunset, a police car. He smiled knowingly, finished the water, curled up on the kitchen floor in his pyjamas, and went to sleep.

He was woken on the third day by bright daylight, the sun streaming through the windows. He climbed slowly and painfully to his feet and hobbled out of the kitchen door in bare feet. The police car must have been a hallucination, because it had gone. But Loopy was there, in the sunlit orchard, digging at the bottom of a new trench right next to the Mem. Well, no, not next to the Mem, was it, because the Mem was in Weston. Well, no, she was here, but — not really here. Jimbo’s mind tried to split in two as it did when he tried to tackle these thoughts.

Jimbo said, “Morning, Loopy. I say, what day is it?”

Loopy stopped digging, leaned on the spade, and squinted up at Jimbo. “Defaulters’ Parade,” he said. “Caps off, face front. Welcome back the Sleeping Beauty. I must say, Jimbo, you disappoint me a bit.” He was stripped to the waist but wearing the ever-present trilby. Jimbo wondered vaguely, given this baking heat and the trilby’s BacoFoil lining, what the temperature inside Loopy’s skull might be.

“Why’s that then, Loopy?” Jimbo looked about him. There seemed to be more patches of replaced turf scattered around between the Ribstones and the Cox’s Orange than he remembered. He counted eight, eventually, because he lost count twice and had to start all over again.

“I say, I thought I saw a police car last night. Or was it the night before?” said Jimbo.

“Oh yes,” said Loopy, “it’s been come one, come all here while you were snoring like a pig and while I was trying to handle everything alone. All alone without a friend to help me.” He looked around him in the hole he had dug. “I think that’ll do. Give me a hand out, will you?”

Jimbo helped him out of the hole.

“Who are all these?” he said, waving a hand at the fresh patches.

“Assorted sniffers and snoopers,” said Loopy.

“Speaking as a friend,” Jimbo said, picking his way carefully through the confused contents of his head, “I think you may have to slow down a bit, ol’ man.”

“Now look, Jimbo,” said Loopy, “I hope you’re not implying that I’m one of those whatchermacallits — serious killers. Just happened to have a bit of an imbroglio with intruders, is all. Could happen to anyone. Lucky I happened to be here. You’d have been murdered in yer bed, in yer regimental pyjamas.”

“But Loopy,” Jimbo began.

“See here, ol’ man, you’re starting to irritate me. It’s beginning to sound to me like you’re on their side.” Loopy appeared het-up. He stumped off through the trees, giving each of the fresh mounds a clout with the shovel. “Look at ’em and tell me if you ever saw the like. Spies and snoopers every one. And obviously all in cahoots.” Bang. “Person from the parish council, apparently. Saw through him straight off.” Bang. “Copper, or said he was a copper. Believe that, you’ll believe anything.”

Oh Lord. Sergeant Bosworth, Jimbo thought woozily.

Bang. “So-called friend of the so-called Whipple family.” Bang. “So-called secretary of soi-disant doctor. See what you’re up against, Jimbo? A gang of snoopers and spies out to get you no matter what. They’re everywhere, Jimbo. They eavesdrop through the fireplaces and they send secret messages through the electric, as you’d know if you listened carefully to your fridge at night. And then they come creeping around pretending to be people. The good news is that the used-car market’s picked up quite a bit recently.”

“Who’s this one for, Loopy?” asked Jimbo. He was standing on the edge of the hole.

“Ah,” said Loopy craftily, tapping the side of his nose, “that’s the question, isn’t it? In any case, it’s no use leaving things till the last minute. If there’s one thing I learned at staff college, it’s that.”

“I can see that,” said Jimbo mildly, “but really and truly, old chap, you might have to think about easing up a little.”