When Fetlock Graves, gentleman detective, awoke that morning, nothing seemed amiss. Bright sunlight streamed through the gap in his bedroom’s heavy, velvet curtains, and from the street outside came the usual din.
Graves’ head felt thick, as if he had over-indulged on opiates the night before, but he could recollect nothing of such excesses. As he racked his brains the bedroom door swung open to admit an ancient man staggering beneath an enormous trayload of kedgeree, kippers, omelette, oysters, Gentleman’s Relish and three poached eggs.
‘Ah, Mr Graves!’ wheezed the ancient, ‘you’re awake!’
‘Of course I’m awake!’ Graves snapped. ‘Who the…?’
‘George Spittle, sir – Mrs Spittle’s youngest.’
‘Mrs Spittle, my housekeeper?’ Spittle rested his load on Graves’ quilt and smiled sadly.
‘That’s right, sir. Don’t you remember me?’
‘I’ve never met you before in my life!’ snorted Graves.
‘Not strictly true, sir, though I was only two years old at the time.’ Graves looked intently at the man, unable – or unwilling – to untangle his riddle. ‘And now I’m 102.’
‘Are you saying I’ve been asleep for 100 years?’ Graves asked, incredulous.
The old man smiled and nodded. ‘You looked so peaceful, like, we didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘Didn’t want to disturb me! What, so you let me sleep for a hundred years? You mad old fool! And your mother before you!’
Old Spittle looked hurt by the lash of his master’s tongue. ‘Well, Ma did try to wake you with a cup o’ tea in ’14, and again in ’39, as she thought you’d like to know about the wars and such, but both times you let the tea get cold. Never mind, sir, I’ve brought a simple breakfast to get you going again! Now, if you’ll excuse me there’s a deal o’ chores to do, not least a mountain o’ post to sort, as you might expect!’ And with that he was gone.
‘A hundred years…’ Graves muttered. And then, noting the vigorous growling of his stomach, he proceeded to devour all items on his breakfast tray bar a single oyster, which he deemed ‘too creamy’. Thus fortified, he donned his embroidered silk dressing gown (a gift from the Chinese ambassador after the Case of the Venomous Carpet), filled a pipe with coarse shag tobacco, and moved to the window.
Drawing his heavy curtains, Graves started almost out of his skin at the maelstrom of modern life below. The neon signs of Piccadilly Circus, the grid-locked traffic, and the whole mass of gaudy and sleazy imagery combined with an intensity akin to a particularly fine hallucinatory experience such as he was wont to experience at Seaman Jack’s opium den on the Isle of Dogs. Then the bitter, century-old tobacco hit Graves’ throat, and he hoped fervently that this brave new world would still afford him some decent shag.
Fetlock Graves started almost out of his skin
at the maelstrom of modern life below
nice.get the jucies cranking