17. Until he moved on to the letter B, when the reply became “Aardvarks amble awkwardly but briskly . . .”

VI

In Which We Are Reunited with Some Old Friends, and Keep a Close Watch on Our Wallets

THE CITIZENS OF BIDDLECOMBE woke one morning to find the windows of Wreckit & Sons blacked out. From inside the store came sounds of drilling and hammering, but nobody knew what construction company was in charge, and no one was seen either entering or leaving the building. But the work went on, day and night, and from somewhere in the depths of the store orders were placed for dolls, and games, and model trains.

The rumor was that Wreckit & Sons was about to reopen as a toy shop.

• • •

Sometimes, Dan wondered if he was right to be so upbeat all of the time. He had always had a sunny disposition. If life gave him bruised fruit, he made jam. The glass was always half full, even when it wasn’t, because Dan would get down on his knees and squint at it from a funny angle until it appeared fuller than it was. Even if there was no glass at all, Dan assumed this was only because someone had taken it away to fill it up again. If he had been told that the world was ending tomorrow, Dan would have shrugged his shoulders and waited patiently for something to turn up to prevent it from happening. The asteroid that was about to destroy the Earth could have been visible as a flaming ball in the sky and Dan would have had a scone ready on the end of a fork so he could toast it without switching on the toaster.

Lately, though, it had been hard for Dan to keep a smile on his face. He had been a happy undertaker for many years¹⁸ but had grown tired of having nobody to talk to. (Well, he did have people to talk to, but they didn’t answer back, and even Dan might have been a bit concerned if they had started to.) He had then bought an ice-cream van on the grounds that he had always liked ice cream, and lots of other folk liked ice cream, too, and therefore he was likely to spread good cheer by selling it to them while his chimes played “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” over and over. At the very least, it was likely that people would buy his ice cream just so that he would move on and they wouldn’t have to listen to “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” any longer.

Unfortunately for Dan, he and his ice-cream van had been dragged to Hell and, although both had returned, the van had been considerably the worse for wear when it got back, and Dan’s insurance didn’t cover unexpected trips to Hell. But, as always, something had turned up. Actually, four of them had turned up: Jolly, Dozy, Angry, and Mumbles, known collectively as Mr. Merryweather’s Elves, or Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs, or by whatever name the police were NOT looking for them at any particular moment in time. Currently, they were known as Dan’s Dwarfs, which had seemed like a good idea, Mr. Merryweather having abandoned the dwarfs for a number of reasons, but mostly because he hated them.