{"id":5862,"date":"2019-06-13T22:02:58","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T12:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=5862"},"modified":"2019-06-13T22:02:58","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T12:02:58","slug":"the-thuggery-affair-part-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/the-thuggery-affair-part-five\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Thuggery Affair\u2019, Part Five"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter Nine: Character Part<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Peter is racing around the countryside being shot at, Lawrie is on the train to Colebridge, dressed as a hot chick but being very Lawrie:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026she liked to have active adult males as her travelling companions, not because they were more entertaining but because if there were an accident they would naturally devote themselves to seeing that Lawrie, being women and children, was rescued first.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lawrie might soon need rescuing because Red Ted, one of The Thuggery, is in her carriage. But it seems he doesn\u2019t recognise her due to her dishy appearance. In fact, he\u2019s showing off for her benefit and she\u2019s flattered. Lawrie joins him in some minor rebellion against a couple of old folk and is pleased when the woman calls her a \u201cpainted little piece\u201d. <\/p>\n

Kate has noted<\/a> that I should pay attention to the songs, so I will report here that Red Ted\u2019s transistor radio is now playing Marching through Madrid<\/em> – so at this moment, Peter\u2019s bike is being steamrollered in the tar. Possibly it\u2019s also a nod towards the travelling Lawrie is currently doing (and that Peter is not<\/em> going to be doing on his bike). Then comes You\u2019ll Never Walk Alone<\/em> (be brave, Lawrie) and Another Spring<\/em> (Lawrie is no spring chicken, she says she\u2019s fifteen and a half! But she\u2019s only thirteen, right? If Ginty turned fifteen in January, no more than two months earlier, the twins must be thirteen and Peter is fourteen.) Then as the train stops, it\u2019s P.S. I Love You<\/em> and Red Ted makes his move with this very romantic line:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s new, slicklet chicklet? Do we rove to the caff and have ourselves a ball?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How could any girl resist? Lawrie, now using her future-professional-actress name Sophia Lawrence, accompanies Red Ted to a coffee bar where she gazes with contempt at the amateurish make-up of some of the other chicks and feels \u201cblissfully, shiveringly happy\u201d at being part of Red Ted\u2019s gang. Then she and Red Ted go off to the cinema. (Song: She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah<\/em> – well, yes, she does.) <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s that scary science fiction film, and Red Ted murmurs, \u201cYou chuffed I made Jukie make you my watch this noon \u2019n night?\u201d and Lawrie suddenly remembers he\u2019s a Thug and she\u2019s meant to be taking the pigeon to the police. It does seem completely in character for her to have got so caught up in playing a role that she forgets reality. And her acting skills do come in handy – she convinces him she\u2019s only going to the loo and (after a brief panic attack in the cubicle) escapes by breaking through a window and dropping into an alley. Where she\u2019s picked up by the police.<\/p>\n

Somehow, things always work out for Lawrie, no matter how ridiculously she behaves.<\/p>\n

Chapter Ten: Telling the Tale<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is just like the time Lawrie got caught without her bus fare in The Marlows and the Traitor<\/em><\/a>. The police see a \u201cscruffily dressed girl\u201d and refuse to believe she\u2019s Lawrence Marlow, the respectable daughter of a navy captain. She certainly doesn\u2019t help herself by giving her stage name and being smeared in make-up, but surely she sounds exactly like what she is<\/em>, an upper-middle class girl from a posh boarding school. Admittedly, the pigeon story is a bit far-fetched and she has lost the drug capsule, but she does have an actual pigeon with suspicious harness and a cigarette packet with a written threat. For a moment, it seems the Inspector will be able to verify her identity from the library books, but the librarian reports that the books were borrowed by \u201cD. Gates\u201d of Westbridge, not a Marlow of Trennels Old Farm. It\u2019s Doris the maid (why are her books at Trennels?), but Lawrie does her usual bursting-into-tears thing and can\u2019t explain properly.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Mrs Marlow happens to phone the police station right then, looking for her missing daughter, and she and Peter soon turn up to say exactly what Lawrie has said:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only difference was, [the Inspector] obviously believed Peter.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is sadly often the case, even now, that authority figures pay more attention to a male speaker than a female speaker. Even when the female speaker is a lot more coherent than Lawrie.<\/p>\n

The problem is that Patrick seems to have disappeared. The Inspector decides to send the Marlows home and get the Culverstone sergeant to investigate further, but just as the Marlows are leaving, there\u2019s another phone call. Miss Culver\u2019s housekeeper\u2019s daughter has found a boy\u2019s body in the storeroom under a rug! They\u2019re too frightened to look at his face and don\u2019t even know if he\u2019s dead, but he\u2019s clutching a rosary with the initials P.M.A.M.! And Peter identifies this as belonging to \u201cPatrick Michael Anthony Mary\u201d!<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what\u2019s more ridiculous, that the two women at the Culver place can\u2019t even look at the boy (what if he\u2019s bleeding to death and needs urgent first aid?) or that one of Patrick\u2019s names is Mary. (It can\u2019t<\/em> be, can it? Is the \u2018Mary\u2019 just a reminder on the rosary to pray to Mary Mother of God?)<\/p>\n

I don’t think the body is Patrick. I think it’s a Thug. I don’t know why he’s got Patrick’s rosary, though. Maybe he ripped it from Patrick while they were fighting.<\/p>\n

Then another significant song comes on the radio: There\u2019s a Hole in My Bucket<\/em>. Which prompts Peter to look in Lawrie\u2019s mackintosh pocket, which has a big hole in it, which means the drug capsule has fallen into the lining of her mackintosh (along with a lot of other things Lawrie has lost). Finally, the police have their evidence!<\/p>\n

Peter, by the way, calls Lawrie a \u201cprehistoric aborigine\u201d when he discovers this. Nice one, Peter, you\u2019ve managed to be sexist, classist and<\/em> racist<\/a> in one book.<\/p>\n

Next: The Dovecote at Monks\u2019 Culvery<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter Nine: Character Part While Peter is racing around the countryside being shot at, Lawrie is on the train to Colebridge, dressed as a hot chick but being very Lawrie: \u201c\u2026she liked to have active adult males as her travelling companions, not because they were more entertaining but because if there were an accident they … Continue reading \u2018The Thuggery Affair\u2019, Part Five<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,6,11],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-5862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1950s-and-1960s","category-books","category-young-adult","tag-antonia-forest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5862"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5867,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions\/5867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}