The rights to Rex Milligan belong to the late Anthony Buckeridge. Those to Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling. Other rights belong to Marvel Comics, DC Comics/Warner Brothers/Hanna-Barbera, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, the BBC, Jim Butcher, Mike Mignola, Chelsea Cain, Joss Whedon, Terrance Dicks, the estates of the late Enid Blyton, the late Charles Addams, the late Malcolm Saville, the late Ian Fleming, the late Peter O'Donnell, the late H.P. Lovecraft and more. I own nothing and make claim to the same nothing.
This is Rex Milligan reporting. Well, not exactly reporting per se in this case. Luna thought that while we are in exile over the pond, thanks to those odious oiks who escaped from Azkaban and took over the wizard world, it would be good to publish some first-hand experiences that I have recorded in my infamous battered exercise books at various times over the years. As usual, Mrs Scamander got her way! Between you and me, I don't know how she does it. Probably those eyes!
In any event, Quibbler readers, here are selections from my wealth of experience in journalism from an inky-fingered junior to a rather less inky-fingered veteran… Before we begin, however, I generally recorded my narratives in note-form (later shorthand) and wrote them up fully shortly afterwards. I have endeavoured to maintain the original reports, but have added some Author's Notes where I felt that clarification of muggle terminology or nods to more recent history were required.
London, January 1965
"Good to see you, Milligan!" That great foghorn of a voice was unmistakeable. I turned to see my old modern languages master from my days at Sheldrake Grammar, the Frizzer, or Mr Frisby to give his actual name.
Mr Frisby hadn't changed much in the three-and-a-half years since I had finished at Sheldrake. A giant of a chap still, with an outsized moustache from his days in the RAF. You can't help liking the man.
"Good evening, sir. Doing some shopping after school?!"
"Yes, I'm taking these groceries to Old Faithful and then back home."
Old Faithful is Mr Frisby's vintage car, a ye olde relic from the days of the horseless carriage, when cars were made with character and little discernible suspension. She rumbles along at about fifteen mph, until she daintily decides that she has had quite enough exercise for the time being. The Frizzer was forever offering his students lifts home, which usually meant pushing the prefabricated death-trap most of the way. Good practice for the rugby scrum, if nothing else.
"What are you doing with yourself now, young Milligan?"
"I graduated from Cambridge last year, sir, with an Upper Second in English. The local paper has just taken me on as a trainee journalist. I'm on my way to my digs."
"Really? Splendid, Milligan, splendid! Mr Birkinshaw and I both thought you had it in you to make a good reporter.
"Where are your digs?" I told him. "That's on my way. Fancy a lift?"
Old Faithful was very good, only stopping three times on the five-minute journey to my digs. When we arrived, I was surprised to see Jigger waiting there, alongside two other people I didn't recognise.
Jigger, or J.I.G. Johnson, has been my best friend since we were both eleven. He's shorter than me, but rather stockier in build, with red hair to my black.
"Hello, Rex, sir. Old Faithful still running, I see." That last statement wasn't entirely true. Old Faithful was more of a walker than a runner – and generally couldn't even do that unaided.
"Good to see you, Johnson. Are you a journalist like Milligan now?"
"No, sir. I'm a biologist." No surprise there. Jigger attracts animals. The fiercest of canine delinquents wag their tails happily at him. Birds break out into melodious song the second he appears. He loves them all and they love him in return. The chap even has a pet monkey. Seriously, he is called Ranji. The monkey, I mean, not Jigger. Very few Londoners can say that!
"Good to see you, Jig," I remarked, after the Frizzer had driven off on his not-so-trusty steed. "Who are these people?"
"Well, Rex, this is Jonathan Warrender," a lanky man of our age with spectacles and a mop of untidy blonde hair, "and this is Georgina Kirrin, but call her George if you want to live." George is a dark-haired lady, again of our age, with a decidedly tomboyish manner.
"You do run with some exalted people, Jig! A Lone Piner and a member of the Famous Five, no less.
"What brings you to my humble abode? I'm not a no-longer juvenile sleuth…"
"We caught a thief and that dodgy car dealer," Jigger reminded me.
"More by luck than judgement! Our main speciality was causing chaos, however much we tried not to."
"Mr Milligan," Jon Warrender began, trying and failing to straighten his hair.
"Rex, please."
"Rex, it is then. I'm Jon. What do you know about modern science?"
"There's a load of Yanks and a gang of Soviets trying to reach the moon. The atom has been split.
"Please don't tell me the Staggers has invented something that actually works!" J.O. Stagg was an old classmate of mine and Jigger's. Moon-faced and bespectacled, with a rich and plummy voice deployed in a manner that suggested he was speaking entirely in capital letters, the Staggers had a penchant for attempting to solve problems no-one had with inventions that never worked. I still have nightmares about the land yacht that sank on her maiden voyage, nearly drowning Staggers, Jigger and me. All because he forgot to replace the plug in the old bathtub he was using as a chassis…
"No, Rex, that would be miraculous!" laughed Jigger.
"Psychic research!" blurted out George.
"Come again?! Petrified Paintpots! Jigger, I thought you were studying biology to look after sheep, not examine their entrails! It is not like you to give an ear to such preposterous poppycock. Honestly, I ask you…?"
"It's not like that," George continued. "Look, most supposed haunted houses or flying saucers turn out to have normal explanations. Others are used to conceal criminal activity. We know that.
"But, Rex, if I can call you that, there are other instances. We were contacted by an organisation called the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence. At their headquarters in the US, we saw things that defy all rational explanation.
"With that in mind, the three of us decided to start the Paranormal Investigations Bureau. If there is a rational explanation, then Jon as a physicist, Jigger a biologist and myself a chemist should find it, particularly given Jon and I having experience in trailing suspicious characters. We also, believe, however, we can identify a genuine ghost, witch, demon or alien.
"What we need, however, is someone to apply a journalist's eye to events, who can record our findings in a readable way. Jon and Jigger suggested using you and, once he's old enough, Richard Morton to use your journalistic skills to drip-feed to the public the idea that science might be evolving to allow the unearthly to be properly researched."
"I don't know, err, Miss…"
"George would be fine."
"George, you can indeed call me Rex.
"Are you asking me to join your intrepid band of mad scientists? As an Arts student…"
"No, Rex," Jigger assured me, "just to keep in touch about areas of mutual interest."
"Fair enough.
"Now where are my manners?! Come into my humble lodgings, one and all!"
I wonder what I've agreed to? One things for sure. If it involves Jigger and me, insanity will ensue! If nothing else, I seem to have gained a couple of new friends.
10 Downing Street, May 1966
"I suppose that you all wonder why I've called you all here?"
Well, yes, I had not previously met Harold Wilson, so being invited for tea at the official residence of the Prime Minister was rather unexpected. Jigger was also present, as were the Famous Five, Secret Seven, Lone Pine Club, the crews of the Swallow and the Amazon and more.
"Do you know Nancy Drew?" A woman with red-gold hair who looked about twenty came over. She certainly matched the classic description, apart from one obvious detail…
"Nancy Drew must be at least fifty by now," George protested. "Her career began a few years after the War. The First One!"
"She must be our age at the youngest," Nancy Walker nee Blackett agreed. The captain of the Amazon had married her counterpart from the Swallow some years before and they now have a four-child crew of their own.
"I helped with that," a tall hawk-nosed man said, emerging from the shadows. "A supply of the Royal Jelly honey can work wonders.
"My name is Sherlock Holmes…"
Well, that caused a right hoo-hah, as you can imagine. The man didn't look thirty, let alone in his twelfth decade!
To be fair to Mr Holmes, he did provide an explanation. The Holmes siblings (at least three brothers and a sister, although some accounts suggest more of both genders) had discovered that by exposing bees to radiated meteoric rocks from near the family estate up in Yorkshire and the pollen of a very specialised flower, the Royal Jelly honey could be cultivated. This works as a veritable Fountain of Youth, making old Sherlock look more like 28 than 112. I give you the gist of what he said anyway. If anyone wants to know the ins and outs, Jon, George and Jigger would be better placed to provide the exact details which were rather more than my poor brain can cope with.
Well, the proof of the pudding, as they say, was in the eating. Timothy (or Timmy), George's dog, and MacBeth (or Mackie), the Lone Piners' venerable Scottie, are both very elderly by canine standards. Mr Holmes gave both dogs a canine variant of the jelly. The effect was miraculous! Both dogs looked much younger instantly and both started acting with an energy that I had never seen before. Brock, the Lone Piners' younger black dachshund, was given a lesser dose and he and Mackie were quickly playing like a couple of puppies, with Timmy soon joining in. Before long, with the Secret Seven's dog Scamper and the Five Find-Outers' canine Buster, plus Jigger's monkey Ranji and Jack Trent's parrot Kiki all rejuvenated, the place was starting to resemble the children's section of London Zoo!
John and Nancy Walker quickly volunteered to try the human version. Both were quickly looking only a few years older than their elder children. They seemed delighted, although their decidedly non-verbal celebration went on rather too long. The Lone Piners started shouting "From Loyalty to Love!" As the Lone Piners tend to live up to their "Always be true to each other whatever happens" motto by falling in love with a fellow member, I guess they would know. We didn't at Sheldrake. It is an all-boys school, mind you, which may explain it. That sort of thing being illegal and all. [AN: In Muggle England and Wales, male homosexual acts were decriminalised in July 1967, in Scotland in February 1981 and in Northern Ireland in December 1982. We've come a long way since I made this entry, with England, Wales and Scotland having legally-recognised same-sex marriages now. RM.]
"Mr Holmes," I asked politely, "this indeed is most generous of you. I must ask a couple of questions, though.
"Why us? Where does Nancy Drew come into this?"
"Gee, what do you know of me?"
"Well, Miss Drew, or is it Mrs Nickerson now?!"
"Well, Ned and I are married, but I use my maiden name professionally. Just call me Nancy!"
"Thank you. Well, Nancy, you are the only daughter of the distinguished lawyer Carson Drew. When you were three, your mother died. Given both that and your father's work commitments, Hannah Gruen, your father's housekeeper, basically raised you. In your teens, you gained a reputation for solving crimes alongside your best friends, the cousins Bess Marvin and George Frayne, and your long-term boyfriend, now spouse, Ned Nickerson.
"More recently, you regularly meet up with your fellow former teen sleuths, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy from Bayport…"
"Ned and I do rather more than meet up with Frank Hardy! We're on much more intimate terms than that!"
"Come again?! Fossilised Fishhooks! Actually, I don't want to know!" [AN: I am very happy to report that Frank, Ned and Nancy are still very happy together, but I prefer not to know the, err, mechanics of their relationship. That is why so many of the accounts of them teaming up hint that Nancy and Frank have a flirtatious relationship and omit Ned entirely. Apparently, "classic American jocks" aren't bisexual, or weren't then anyway. Nancy coming across as playing the field is deemed acceptable by the publishers, who, regardless of whether they are also jocks, clearly aren't gentlemen. RM]
"Mr Milligan," Sherlock Holmes said, "after the Bobbseys, Miss Drew and the Hardy brothers, have there been other such young sleuths, scientists and the like in America?"
"Hasn't there just?! Penny Parker, the Swifts, the Dana girls, Kay Tracey, Cherry Ames, Encyclopaedia Brown, Trixie Belden and now those three in Rocky Beach, California. Even that is just the tip of the iceberg! But my question remains…"
"The government of the United States often like to recruit us of the magnifying glass community. Are you a magnifying glass man, Mr Milligan?"
"Call me Rex. Actually, I'm a notebook and pen man."
"A Doctor Watson?"
"Let's just say I'm in Penny Parker's other line of work."
"A journalist! Began as a teen?"
"Not professionally, but I started recording the madness of school life in my Fourth Form at Sheldrake Grammar." And it was mad! Jigger and I never tried to find chaos, but it always found us!
"Neat!
"Well, during the War, it was found that we former teen sleuths had developed a number of skills that were useful in the realms of espionage, counter-espionage, special forces work and the rest. I mean we all had experience of finding clues, trailing suspects, self-defence and escapology already."
"I see," David Morton, the Lone Piners' long-term leader, agreed. "Those skills would come in handy. I take it that you were provided with the Royal Jelly honey in return for government service from time to time."
"You got it, sweetie!" David didn't seem too bothered, but Petronella "Peter" Morton nee Sterling, his wife and fellow Lone Piner, did glare at Nancy. You couldn't blame her, given Nancy's bombshell a few moments before. Having said that, they are a God-fearing lot, the Lone Piners. Very much into "moral rearmament" and that sort of thing. Even if he hadn't been in love with Peter pretty much ever since they met as teenagers, David was as likely to commit adultery as I would be to cheat at rugby or cricket. To be fair to Nancy, she and her husband were hardly – well, cheating on each other per se. I suspect that this will be under at least the fifty-year rule, so at least I shouldn't have to worry about publishing this and ruining the reputation of Nancy and her beaus. [AN: The fifty-year rule basically stated that government records not otherwise in the public domain should not be "available for public inspection" (i.e. reading for anyone not some hush-hush type high up in Whitehall) for a minimum of fifty years, hence rather obviously the name. It was reduced to thirty years (with some exceptions) in 1967. Now, thanks to the 2000 Freedom of Information Act and the 2010 Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, much more information is freely available unless it is particularly sensitive, with most government information being available after twenty years. Harry Potter tells me that Kingsley Shacklebolt has tried to get similar laws passed in Wizard Britain, but neither the Ministry nor the Wizengamot seem quite as keen. Now there's a surprise! RM]
"So," David continued, "presumably the British government want to offer us the same deal. Eternal youth for services rendered?"
"That is the idea, Mr Morton," Mr Holmes agreed. "What do you say?"
This was a trickier decision than you might imagine. As most of us are twenty-somethings, being de-aged to twenty-somethings isn't all that enticing. Many of us (mainly the Lone Piners) have moral or spiritual objections to immortality as well. On the other hand, the thought of never being apart from your spouse or children would be enticing to anyone. At least, that's what I'm told. The right woman has yet to show up, so I lack practical experience. [AN: She still hasn't. RM]
We all accepted in the end. Our Queen and country need us! What else could we do?!