Read Online Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) by Michael Kurland - Free Book Online

asked.
    “’Ere,” the mummer interjected, “let me fetch another bottle of the ’38. This one seems to have depleted itself.” Bottle in hand, he trotted off.
    Esterman watched the mummer’s retreat with interest until the little man turned the corner. Then he ponderously moved his head and adjusted his vision to look at Barnett. “When I was with His Lordship,” Esterman said, “His Lordship had the library redone. All the bookshelves, what were oak, were ripped out and replaced with other bookshelves what were cut from the Widdersign Ash, a great squat tree which were over two hundred years old when it was removed to make way for the tennis courts. He had two Italian artisans come in to do the work. On the bookshelves, not the tennis courts.”
    “A great improvement, no doubt,” said Barnett.
    “Not so’s you’d notice,” Esterman said, “but what His Lordship wants is what His Lordship does. At any rate, I was responsible for these big stacks of books while they was out of the shelves. And so I started reading. Shakespeare and Kidd and Marlowe and Bacon and like that. They used the most mellyfloo … mellifluous words, and I grew into the habit of speaking them aloud when they wasn’t anybody who could hear me.”
    “Why did you pick the Renaissance playwrights?” Barnett asked.
    “They was on top of the stack.”
    “Good thinking,” Barnett agreed.
    The mummer reappeared with another bottle of the port and carefully decanted it into the wine jug. “We’re running low on bottles,” he said. “Best hurry and drink it up before it’s gone.”
    The logic appealed to Esterman, who happily refilled his glass. “A superior tipple, i’ faith,” he said. He held the glass to the side of his nose for a moment and then drained it. “Pardon,” he said, getting up and weaving toward the back. “I think I’d best go see about a dog.”
    “He can put it away, can’t he?” the mummer commented as Esterman disappeared out the back door.
    “He’d better get more talkative pretty soon,” Barnett said, “or we’ll run out of port.”
    “Oh,” the mummer said, “we ran out two bottles ago. I’ve been refilling the bottles from our landlord’s own stock.”
    “Ah!” said Barnett. “I thought I detected a difference.”
    “Blimey if you did!” Mummer Tolliver grinned a toothy grin. “After finishing the first two bottles I could have mixed gin with horse piss and colored it red, and you both would have drunk it happily and praised it fulsomely.”
    Barnett smiled. “You may be right,” he said. “I won’t ask what you would have colored it red with.”
    Esterman weaved back to his seat. “As oft as wine has played the peppermill,” he intoned, “and robbed me of my coat and jacket, well … I often ponder what the vintners buy … Could be as thirsty as this stuff so swell!” He sat down with a thump.
    “Indeed,” Barnett agreed.
    “If not in word,” the mummer suggested, “but close enough—close enough.”
    “I merely state,” Esterman said ponderously, “that this is good plonk. Good plonk indeed.”
    “Lord Thornton-Hoxbary doesn’t think so, I guess,” Barnett said. “Couldn’t interest his man in as much as half a case.”
    “I could of told you visiting Widdersign-on-Rip … er … Ribble would be a waste of you gentlemen’s time,” Esterman smugged. “His Lordship don’t lay out a farthing till he’s squeezed it bone dry, but you wouldn’t have listened to me nohow, now would you?”
    “Probably not,” Barnett admitted, “but we’re listening to you now.”
    “Parsimonious, is His Lordship?” the mummer asked.
    “If that means miserly, mean, tight-fisted, then you might say so. Ain’t no one around here what would argue with you.”
    “He seems to have been pretty generous with you,” Barnett said, looking around.
    “You mean this place?” Esterman asked. “The Fox and Hare? Well, it ain’t as if he gave me the deed outright, is it? I