The murders outside J. Sheekey’s were blamed on Michael Smith, who had supposedly shot three people in the head with an illegal firearm before killing himself with the same gun. The media might have taken more of an interest had not a soap star been caught cottaging with an equally famous footballer in the loos of a club in Mayfair. The resulting media white-out blotted out any real news for two weeks and was, according to Lesley, far too convenient to be a coincidence.

I spent April practising my forma, my Latin and experimenting with new ways to blow up microchips. Every afternoon I’d take Toby out for a walk in the area around Covent Garden and Cambridge Circus to see if either of us picked up a sniff, but there was nothing. I called Beverley Brook a couple of times, but she said that her mother had told her not to have anything to do with me until I’d done something about Father Thames.

May started in typical Bank Holiday fashion, with two days of rain and three of drizzle, until the next Sunday dawned bright and fair. It’s on a day like this that a young man’s mind turns to romance, ice cream and Punch and Judy shows.

It was the day of the Covent Garden May Fayre, which celebrates the first ever recorded performance of Punch and Judy with a brass-band parade, a special puppet mass at the Actors’ Church and as many Punch and Judy shows as can be crammed into the church grounds. While I’d been a probationary constable at Charing Cross, I’d always been on crowd control that day, so I called up Lesley and asked if she wanted to try the fayre from the civilian point of view. We got ice cream and Cokes from the Tesco Metro and dodged around the tourists until we reached the front portico of the church. A single ‘professor’s’ booth had been set up not half a metre from where poor old William Skirmish had had his head knocked off.

‘Four months ago,’ I said out loud.

‘It hasn’t been boring,’ said Lesley.

‘You’re not the one who’s had to learn Latin,’ I said.

Mats had been put down for the kids to sit on while we adults stood at the back. A man in jester’s motley stepped forward and warmed up the audience. He explained that over the centuries there had been many versions of the Punch and Judy show but today, for our education and our entertainment, the renowned Professor Phillip Pointer would perform The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy, of Punch and Judy as told to John Payne Collier by Giovanni Piccini in 1827.

The story started with Punch being bitten on the nose by Toby the dog.

8 The Jackanory Version

The Jackanory Version