{"id":5869,"date":"2019-06-16T22:44:34","date_gmt":"2019-06-16T12:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=5869"},"modified":"2019-06-16T22:44:34","modified_gmt":"2019-06-16T12:44:34","slug":"the-thuggery-affair-part-six","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/the-thuggery-affair-part-six\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Thuggery Affair\u2019, Part Six"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter Eleven: The Dovecote at Monk\u2019s Culvery<\/strong><\/p>\n

Patrick is on his way to Monk\u2019s Culvery, via the secret priest tunnel. Presumably the Culver family were also Catholics in the \u201cpenal times\u201d, allied with the Merricks, hence the tunnel and the monk reference in the estate\u2019s name. And did you know that \u201cculver\u201d means dove<\/em> (\u201cMiddle English from Old English culufre<\/em> from Vulgar Latin columbra<\/em> from Latin columbula<\/em>, diminutive of columba<\/em>, dove<\/em>\u201d)? So Maudie Culver comes from a long line of pigeon people.<\/p>\n

Patrick feels \u201cbold and gay\u201d to be trespassing and possibly stealing pigeons, but \u201cthe cause was irreproachable\u201d. Still, he can\u2019t help hearing in his head Patrick Shaw-Stewart\u2019s poem about Gallipoli<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a man this morning
\nWho did not wish to die:
\nI ask, and cannot answer,
\nIf otherwise wish I.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just to make things even more dangerous, Patrick\u2019s brought with him a throwing knife owned by his dodgy eighteenth-century cousin. Hmm, and we already know that a corpse (or possibly just a badly-wounded person) is going to appear soon on the storeroom floor\u2026<\/p>\n

Patrick very courageously climbs the high Dovecote wall (it\u2019s a good thing Peter didn\u2019t take on this task) and manages to break in through a tiny door. He climbs down to the floor and unfortunately falls asleep, which is not surprising given he was up before dawn. Also unfortunately, his watch has stopped working (\u201cas it invariably did when he forgot to wind it\u201d) so who knows how long he stays asleep. When he wakes, he doesn\u2019t find any drugs, but does find a number of Scandaroons, who are most unhappy about a stranger messing around in their house.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the storeroom attached to the pigeon lofts, Jukie is talking with Espresso, the Thug\u2019s \u201cpremier flutter propagator\u201d, who is feeding a chick half-cooked egg from his own mouth, ugh. Espresso has \u201cskin the colour of milky coffee\u201d because his father, a pigeon expert, is from the Persian Gulf. Jukie mentions he\u2019s grateful that Espresso\u2019s Da put the Thuggery in contact with the Boss Man, allowing them all to make money from drug smuggling, but Espresso says that no, Jukie and the pigeons at Monk\u2019s Culvery were the way his Da \u201ceased in with the Boss Man\u201d and the \u201cbig loot\u201d. This is a disquieting surprise to Jukie. I should mention that Espresso appears to be hiding something from Jukie, but he does seem like a nice kid, as far as the Thugs go.<\/p>\n

Then Skidskid arrives. He was supposed to be watching Patrick\u2019s house but got spooked by mysteriously moving trees, \u201cwoody weirdies \u2019n they don\u2019t shift while you\u2019re watchin\u201d. Jukie tells him to stay off the drugs. (Clearly none of them is familiar with Macbeth<\/em>. Jukie, your reign is almost over.) Jukie also explains to the others how the Boss Man put two of his addicted thugs in the \u201cboneyard\u201d \u2013 just in case the threat of violence isn\u2019t menacing enough in this chapter. <\/p>\n

The Thuggery realise, via a nifty electronic landing-board indicator, that someone or something is disturbing the pigeons in the Dovecote. And as they go to investigate, they\u2019re met by Kinky and friends with their own tale of woe. The Thuggery, thoroughly alarmed, run on towards the Dovecote. Watch out, Patrick!<\/p>\n

Chapter Twelve: \u201cWho Do Not Wish To Die\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ominous chapter titling here. Jukie enters the Dovecote alone and Patrick does pretty well in hand-to-hand combat with him, even managing to grab the harness and drug capsule Jukie had just taken from a pigeon. Patrick bolts out the door and only gets caught because he trips and The Thuggery catch up. Jukie stops them stomping Patrick to death (\u201cWe need him conscious cause we need to quiz him\u201d) and they march him back to the storeroom. Patrick does manage to conceal the drugs in his waistband and lie about this convincingly and the Thuggery waste some time trying to find the drug capsule in the dusk.<\/p>\n

They also take Patrick\u2019s knife off him and \u201cPatrick thought it had probably not found itself in such congenial company since Cousin Ambrose was turned off at Tyburn\u201d. (I only know the significance of Tyburn due to The Hanging Tree<\/em><\/a>. Thanks, Peter!) Jukie starts to offer his captive a cigarette, but then decides Patrick is too square to smoke:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t, do you, noddy-boy?\u201d
\n\u201cNo,\u201d agreed Patrick. In fact, he did, occasionally, depending on whom he was with. But this time he wasn\u2019t sure he might not be being offered reefers.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ooh, Patrick, you\u2019re so<\/em> cool! \u201cDepending on whom he was with\u201d! Does he even have<\/em> any friends, let alone smoking friends? He does know what a reefer is, maybe from eavesdropping at the coffee shop. Although I just looked it up and Reefer Madness<\/em> came out in 1936, so I suppose the term had been around quite a while by the mid-sixties:<\/p>\n