Poppycock is Tested

“I shouldn’t worry too much,” said Mr. Periwinkle, cradling his snifter of brandy lovingly, “She’s always a little bit gloomy anyways.” “But that’s just the point, Mr. Periwinkle,” Professor De Busque shook her golden hair in frustration, “Professor P’ohlig may always be a little gloomy, but right now she is a lot gloomy!” Mr. Periwinkle and the Professor looked thoughtfully out the window of the Poppycock kitchens into the back garden, where Maude was attempting to take Molly for a turn among the petunias, with little success. “She does keep falling over,” Mr. Periwinkle murmured, aware that he himself often fell over, but that was generally from the teensiest bit too much gin. He seemed to be steadier on brandy, but Professor P’ohlig was drinking neither gin nor brandy, not even pink champagne for that matter. Both Emily and Mr. Periwinkle winced as Molly crashed headfirst into the trellis, with poor Maude helpless to stop her. “That’s it,” said Emily, putting her dainty foot down quite firmly. “No more nonsense, we’re calling Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan.” Mr. Periwinkle raised his eyebrows as Emily picked up the lovely old phone on which Thomas Edison used to make crank calls to Nikola Tesla. * It had all begun some time ago, you see. Professor P’ohlig, always renowned for having a deceptively hardy constitution for one who looked a bit consumptive, had begun to have rather queer fainting spells. At first she blamed them on too many late nights with Mr. Periwinkle, and then too many nights of enforced gaiety in attempts to move past her curious financial affair with the avuncular Mr. Denning. However, even after cutting out the late nights and gaiety (and even Mr. Denning seemed to be aiming to be reinstated in his old position) she seemed to be toppling over at an alarming rate, and Emily, Maude, and Mr. Periwinkle were increasingly alarmed at how often they found her on the floor in various rooms of the house. Once she had collided with a rather large bookcase that had belonged to W.H. Auden on her way down, and if the shelves hasn’t been largely empty at the time owing to Maude going through quite a poetry period, well, let’s just say it would have been Leonard Bast all over again. Emily had to launch a sneak attack by bringing Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan to the house without Molly’s knowledge; she was notoriously skittish around doctors, especially when they were handsome and had difficult-to-pronounce last names. * “Well, I think it’s perfectly ridiculous and I don’t mind saying so!” Molly shouted unhappily. Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan or no Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan, she was not going to submit quietly. “I absolutely cannot see how all of these wires are going to make me stop falling down.” “Well, you’re right, Professor P’ohlig, they’re not,” the doctor said gently, attaching another electrode to Molly’s head. “They’re just going to help us figure out why you’re falling down.” Molly grumbled quietly, but let the doctor keep putting electrodes on her head while Emily patted her hand, Maude rubbed her feet, and Mr. Periwinkle fed her spoonfuls of Greek yogurt and very expensive Swedish granola. She really was the most frightful patient. “So we’re to make sure she keeps them on for 72 hours?” Emily nibbled her lower lip prettily and Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan blushed a little bit. “Y-yes,” he stammered, wrapping what seemed like an overly cautious amount of gauze around Molly’s head. “Just see that she doesn’t excite herself too much and I’ll be back in three days.” Molly glowered in her chair and refused to shake hands, so the doctor picked up his doctor’s bag and headed for the door. “And oh,” he called over his shoulder from the foyer, “No showering or bathing.” Molly opened her mouth and prepared to scream, but Mr. Periwinkle was ready with an extra large spoonful of yogurt and granola. * The next two days around the Poppycock offices were trying. The office itself was closed, as an invalid Professor P’ohlig required all hands on deck. The media room alternated a steady stream of BBC miniseries mixed with Korean family dramas. Maude was in charge of finding online videos of small animals to distract Molly with when her hair began to itch, and Mr. Periwinkle was on sustenance and libation duty to keep her spirits up, and Emily was always at the ready to stamp her foot and admonish when Molly began to behave badly. And when it was evening and Maude had been sent to bed, Mr. Periwinkle and Emily took turns reading “Fifty Shades of Grey” aloud in funny voices for amusement. And thus Poppycock held it together for three days. * “He’s at the door,” Molly said, looking up from her morning coffee. She was allowed the treat of the special Isak Dinesen blend from the farm in Kenya. “What?” Maude reached for the laptop, just in case that meant she was getting ready to scratch her head again. Just then the doorbell rang. Everyone gave Molly a funny look as Emily ushered in Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan. “Good morning, Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan,” Molly said without her usual stumble over his name. Even he was surprised. “Good morning! You seem to be feeling much better.” As he bent down to retrieve a stethoscope from his bag, Molly bounced from her chair and executed a tidy cartwheel. “Much better, thanks! You’re the one who should see a doctor, that sore throat’s not getting any better,” she said, smoothing her suspiciously clean hair down over the electrodes. “H-how did you know about my sore throat?” the doctor croaked uncertainly. “You know, I’m not sure? I just seem to have quite the handle on things this morning,” Molly said airily, like there was nothing amiss. “Oh, Maude, did you answer that letter from your solicitor? And Mr. Periwinkle, if you’d like to go home and phone your mother, that’s quite alright.” “How do you know all of these things all of a sudden?” Emily put on her Agatha Christie spectacles, which meant she meant business. “And why are you so clean if you haven’t had a bath in three days?” Molly looked from one puzzled face to the next, about to burst. She was hopeless at keeping secrets. “Alright!” she shouted. “I had a bath! I couldn’t take it any more! I was like decrepit creature from a Zola novel. And I think the electrodes didn’t like it because there was a bit of smoke and I think I might have fainted for a moment, but when I opened my eyes I felt perfectly well. Absolutely well.” Everyone stood by sternly as Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan checked her over and looked at the results of the test. “Well,” he said finally, “I wouldn’t recommend it to any future patients, but it seems that the patient has cured herself.” Molly smiled triumphantly. “The mild electrocution she received seems to have shocked her brain back to normal, and there’s no traces of any abnormality. However,” Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan paused uncertainly, “There seems to be a peculiar side effect.” “What side effect?” Emily asked. “I think I’m psychic!” Molly shouted happily. “Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan, isn’t there something that you wanted to ask Professor De Busque? I mean, you can certainly arrange the dinner date for when your sore throat has improved. Mr. Periwinkle, do call your mother, she has some news about your sister. And Maude, answer the phone.” That was when the phone began to ring. Everyone stared at Molly open-mouthed. Hopefully this was to be a temporary side effect. After everyone recovered from their initial shock, Emily put a hot compress around Dr. Murthiyrakkaventharan’s sore throat, Mr. Periwinkle made everyone hot buttered rum, and they all settled down to watch “The Far Pavilions”. They’d all seen it before, so Molly wouldn’t spoil it for everyone by shouting out what was going to happen next.

Poppycock Moves On

Bright sunlight streamed in the front window of the Poppycock offices, and, after passing through the eyelet pattern of the delicate muslin curtains (Elfriede Jelinek had sent them in thanks for understanding that not everyone likes to go out of the house or use the telephone) made a quaint, fluttering field of flowers on the floor, which Maude was busy sweeping. Professor De Busque was doing a lot of writing and crossing things out in a rather frazzled manner, crumpling numerous papers into the wastebasket that Professor P’ohlig had recently snitched from the post office near Stefan Zwieg’s former house. Professor De Busque had recently suggested an Austrian theme for the office as sort of a last resort, but Professor P’ohlig had taken it a little too far, and had taped pictures of Egon Schiele portraits all over her desk, as inspiration for the new skeletal ideal she was currently aspiring to.

There was a delicate tap at the front door which could have been mistaken for the approach of a timid mouse. Emily and Maude held their collective breath as the door creaked open, but it was just dear Mr. Periwinkle peeking around the corner, struggling with a large number of packages. “Is she here?” he whispered.

“She’s gone out to post more letters,” Maude said, grabbing Mr. Periwinkle’s arm and hustling him in. “She got too impatient to wait for you about an hour ago.”

“Oh, heavens preserve us,” Mr. Periwinkle said, mopping his brow with a suspicious looking handkerchief he’d picked up from Molly’s cluttered desk.

“Mr. Periwinkle, what are those stains on your handkerchief?” Emily said sternly, looking over the rims of her glasses (she didn’t really need spectacles, but they looked so very fetching).

Mr. Periwinkle peered at the handkerchief, which indeed had a number of rusty red stains.

“Drop it!” shouted Maude, and Mr. Periwinkle was so startled that he did. “That came yesterday.”

Emily gasped. “Not from --”

“Yes,” Maude whispered with a shiver. “From the estate of the Moors Murderer Myra Hindley.”

Mr. Periwinkle shrieked and swooned, and was carried quickly off into house to be revived.

***

“Something simply must be done,” Emily declared, pounding her adorable fist on the kitchen table. Mr. Periwinkle put a protective hand over his strengthening glass of gin. “She cannot be allowed to be continue in this fashion.”

Maude and Mr. Periwinkle nodded solemnly. The ‘she’ in question, of course, was Professor P’ohlig. She was having a dreadful time of it. After a few anxious months with Poppycock’s financial advisor, Mr. Denning, they had a series of furious rows, and Mr. Denning had behaved quite badly. He swore that never more would he darken the threshold of Poppycock Enterprises and returned the large file holding all of their receipts. Molly, who was apt to turn into a bit of a Bertha Mason in Mr. Rochester’s attic, screamed at him most unprettily, and hurled at his feet the box containing treasured mementos of him which she had saved over the years. For several days she kept to her room, not seeing anyone and leaving the dinner trays they brought untouched outside of her room. For several days after that she haunted Mr. Periwinkle like Giselle haunted Albrecht, asking hourly in a pathetic voice if perchance there was any more post to be had. But it was the several days that had occurred since that were the trouble. Molly had taken to working feverishly from dawn until dusk, running errands all over the city until she fell into an exhausted sleep. She had been in contact with a most unsavory new author who was working on a grand compendium of female serial killers. Now, Professor P’ohlig had always nourished a taste for the macabre, but she had gone completely overboard. Sandwiched in between the sickly Egon Schiele figures were crime scene photos, and she had written to the estates of a multitude of murderous ladies, requesting any information or documents that they could spare. Her desk was now piled high with mementos of a more gruesome kind: Mary Ann Cotton’s bonnet, a tiny, moth-eaten sweater knitted by Amelia Dyer, Belle Gunness’ porcelain teeth, and some leather gloves that had belonged to Elizabeth Báthory. This last item was crusted with a substance that no one apart from Molly particularly wanted to think about.

Everyone was worried. Their cheerful Professor P’ohlig (alright, she was sarcastic and gloomy much of the time, but she was definitely cheerful sometimes) had entirely disappeared. Mr. Periwinkle poured gin for everyone (yes, even a tiny drop for Maude).

“Couldn’t we plead our case before Mr. Denning?” Maude said hopefully, sniffing the gin experimentally.

“Absolutely not,” said Mr. Periwinkle with uncustomary sternness. “If he can’t appreciate the Professor, well, then I pity him, but there must be something wrong with his character.”

“Indeed,” agreed Emily. “No doubt he is even now buried in a pile of newspapers, pretending that everything is perfectly fine. He is no longer our concern. It’s he who has ruined everything. It’s Professor P’ohlig that needs our help, and help her we shall. All of this murder business is only prolonging her misery.”

“And it’s beginning to give me nightmares,” said Maude. Mr. Periwinkle tried to pat Maude’s head, but missed. He had had a lot of gin before he’d even arrived, as he was having nightmares too.

“But what to do?” Emily sighed. At that moment, Molly’s storming footsteps were heard entering the house and pounding up the stairs.

“Don’t bother me the rest of the day,” she shouted. “I’ve got lots of research to do, in my room, by myself!”

No one spoke for a few minutes. Everyone had more gin, except for Maude, who thought it tasted like Christmas tree needles, which is quite nice in theory, but not so much in practice. Then Mr. Periwinkle cocked his head, listening, and a small smile appeared on his lips.

“She’s not working at all,” he said.

Everyone listened hard, and then everyone began to smile.

“She’s watching “Brideshead Revisited”,” Emily said. “She’s not as far gone as we thought!”

The kitchen turned into a whirl of activity. Maude made coffee and sandwiches to sober everyone up, and they began to formulate a plan.

***

“It certainly is odd that Mr. King has stopped responding to my letters,” Molly said, furrowing her brow under her sharply cut bangs.

“Mm, yes,” said Emily, trying not to smile. She was very good at writing cease and desist letters when the occasion called for it. “Have you any appointments today?”

Molly flipped through a tattered calendar book, which now rested on a desk devoid of skeletal Schieles or bloody photographs. “Ever so many, really. And curiously, they seem to be all with young, unmarried, male writers.”

“That is curious,” said Maude, sliding a little black address book under a sheaf of papers. Life had really been so much more pleasant the last several days.

“I think I’ll start looking for a new financial advisor,” Molly said suddenly. Everyone looked up, and Mr. Periwinkle dropped a book of stamps.

“Oh, it’s not that I wouldn’t prefer to have....He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named back,” Molly said with an unhappy sounding laugh. “Because I would. But he’s not here now. Sometimes things don’t happen like they do in your favorite books. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they did?”

Everyone nodded quietly, for everyone has at least one something in their life that they secretly long to be different, and Mr. Periwinkle, Emily, and Maude were no exceptions.

“But our finances need attention, dammit!” Molly said with a bit of her old sparkle. “So let’s see what can be done, shall we?”

Their old Professor P’ohlig wasn’t exactly back, she was a sadder, wiser Professor P’ohlig, but it was close enough for the moment. Everyone rushed over to give her a hug, and then they had a delightful cream tea with champagne while they watched “Cranford”, and then everyone had a very satisfying nap, with not a nightmare between them.