A/N: I have no explanation for this.

Mary Poppins: A Tragedy

The cherry bomb under his easy chair was a notable last straw. Picking himself up off the floor, he sent an eagle-eyed glare across the room and into the dining room, where Mrs. Banks was finishing off the last of the port from the decanter. A plump, cheerful woman, the port was doing her good more than opiates, and doing more for her colouring than a liberal application of rouge. She'd cast him a glance at the unexpected explosion, and made a cheery trilling sound, like an inquisitive bird— "Hmm?"

"I think," said Mr. Banks definitely, his florid face flushed with fire, "it is time to take those children in hand!" Mr. Banks was fond of simple declarative sentences, deployed where best used; in other words he meant what he said, and he said what he meant. There was little point, he took a dignified joy in chiding others, in beating around the bush when it came to properly worded verbal exchanges. Even now, the definitiveness of his deftly-expressed view had brought his wife scurrying from the decanter, worry making its way past the feeling of general well-being brought on by the literal dosages of port to make itself plain on her face.

"But Mr. Banks," she said, wringing her hands, "to properly and continuously— that is, to be proper it would need to be continuous— discipline the children, would take so much time. And you know how busy I've been these last few years. A flapper mentality doesn't institute itself, you know."

"It did in America," pointed out Mr. Banks. Like all self-respecting, genteel, middle-aged British bankers, he had a healthy disdain for "the States." His wife's subsequent fascination with the culture and, unfortunately, the accents of the infernal place went a long way towards ruffling his feathers. Were it not for his peaceful and democratic disposition, in fact—

"I said nothing of your doing it, Mrs. Banks. I fully realize the demands of your schedule. I said only that it must be done— and done it will be." Mr. Banks pounded one balled-up fist into the open palm of his other hand, for emphasis. "I shall advertise immediately on the morrow for a governess."

"A governess!" repeated Mrs. Banks, wide-eyed with wonder. "How ever shall we afford it, my dear?"

Mr. Banks waved a carefully careless hand. "When it comes to necessities, such as the children's education, we will always find a way." He had not, as yet, confided the details of his off-shore accounts to his wife. Mrs. Banks, in her turn, was considerably more concerned with her clothes-shopping allowance and, as long as she had credit, wasn't all that concerned. If her husband told it would be alright, then that was good enough for her. On the other hand—

"Would it not be, in the long run, considerably less expense if we were to send the children to boarding school?"

Mr. Banks did not believe in hesitation, or compromise. "Of course not," he said firmly. "We need not pay an exorbitant amount to a governess— room and board count for much of the salary."

"But—"

"We need not feed her much, either," went on Mr. Banks, correctly anticipating his wife's next objection. "Governesses are invariably a small and easily sustained breed— in the event that she is otherwise, she will only benefit from a slight case of meal deprivation." He tugged his sooty sleeves down straight, unrumpled his cravat, smoothed both hands over his hair, wincing at the memory of the most recent set of events perpetrated upon him by his waywardly willful offspring. Before the cherry bomb had been the paste in the hat. Very strong paste. "No doubt about it, something must, and will be done," he stressed, more to himself than to his wife, and in the spirit of immediacy, sat down at his desk (checking carefully under the chair first) and drew up an advertisement which, once properly communicated to the newspaper, appeared the next morning in the Times with only a few notable typesetting mistakes.

GOVERNEST VAUNTED: Intiligint, hrd-wrkng, willngnss to wrk fr peanuts a MUST. Pls apply Grosvenor Sq. #260, "THE FINCHES"

The sorts of women inhabiting the lower classes of London at that point were occasionally intelligent, reasonably hard-working, and sometimes desperate enough that peanuts sounded like a just reward; it was, however, rare to find this combination embedded in the psyche of an acceptable governess. Mr. Banks was forced to turn away quite a number who were moonlighting from their more usual jobs as flower-sellers, house-maids, seamstresses, cooks, bakers, and lion-tamers. It wasn't till the seventh day that she showed up, so perfectly poised, so masterfully confident that she quite caught his eye and attention and reminded him of his wholesome youth. She was conservatively dressed in a tweed skirt that brushed her boots, a smart jacket to match, neat white gloves buttoned at the wrists, and a perfectly bored expression that was the latest from Paris and by far the most daring thing she had on. She took a seat promptly when Mr. Banks began to motion her to it, and looked about as though he was the one being interviewed, the house the thing under scrutiny. Something in the deep heart of Mr. Banks told him he should nip this in the bud, but he was delighted to find someone who actually looked like a governess, someone who could and, indutably, would take charge of the children, and so he let it go. Besides which. She could probably hurt him with that wickedly-pointed umbrella of hers.

He cleared his throat and sat down across from her, settling himself on the sofa cushions, folding his arms, crossing his legs. Directly as he opened his mouth, she said, pleasantly if sternly, "You take the most uncommonly long time to speak. I gather you are the father? Well, I suppose nothing can be done about it at this late date. Undoubtedly your children are running rampant and wild, desperately in need of supervision, intervention, and promptly-administered discipline?" Mr. Banks, somewhat in shock, nodded dumbly. "I thought as much. And your household staff woefully mismanaged of course?" Mr. Banks had always thought this, but had never bothered to say anything, deeming it to be his wife's arena. Hearing his innermost thoughts from this commanding stranger made him wonder why— after all, was it not certainly within his rights as home-owner, as lord and master, to feel at ease with the state of his slaves, whether waged or no? The governess sensed his vehement, though unspoken, agreement, and nodded thoughtfully to herself. "Of course. After all, who has the energy to deal with everyone underneath them? Therein lies the key— delegation. Delegation, Mr. Banks," she said, pointing a finger at him so he went rigid with the force of her regard, "is the key."

She glanced about herself once more, nodded more decisively this time.

"Now, as your governess I expect certain things from you. The children must not be confused about authority— they need to know that it is I they look to as their general. In the unlikely event that they ask you your opinion or permission, on any issue whatsoever, you are to direct them to me with the words, 'I don't know— go and ask Mary Poppins.'"

"And, er, that is your name, is it?" broke in Mr. Banks, finally daring to interrupt. "Mary Poppins, I mean."

She gave him a gaze as full of cold steel as a buccaneer's sword. "It is," she said levelly. "And you shall call me that, and only that. Mary Poppins— no 'Mary,' no 'Miss Poppins,' no 'Nanny,' no 'Miss Governess ma'am'— Mary Poppins I am and Mary Poppins I must be called. Is that clear?"

"Yes," said Mr. Banks meekly. "Is there any particular reason why—"

"It's my religion," said Mary Poppins coldly.

"Ah," said Mr. Banks, who didn't understand this at all. As far as he knew, the entire world was Church of England, which famously required nothing from its congregations at all. However, nothing in the governess' expression permitted further question or comment. She was evidently one of those "devout"— something Mr. Banks had heard of but never encountered. He felt it best to back off the subject, and did.

"Have you any baggage?"

For the first time, a guarded look came to the governess' eyes. "Emotional or physical?" she asked.

Mr. Banks had never been confronted with these kinds of options. Neither one sounded like something he wanted to get into with the hired help. "Luggage," he clarified. "I meant, have you any luggage you need carried to your rooms?"

Mary Poppins put a possessive hand on her carpet bag. "I have everything I need in here."

"Are you quite sure?" Mr. Banks pressed. "Only, the room in question is not furnished, you see—"

"Everything I need," said Mary Poppins, softly stressing each syllable, "is in here."

Mr. Banks allowed a pause. "Very well," he said finally, and began to lever himself up out of the depths of the sofa. Far before he managed, she was standing before him, nearly as tall as he was himself, bag clutched firmly in one hand and umbrella in the other/ She waited with obvious impatient patience for him to achieve an upright position, then preceded him up the stairs. She seemed to know unerringly where she was expected to sleep, and after depositing her carpetbag and looking around the empty room with a contemplative sniff, she emerged again and announced her intention to embark on her journey of discovery with the children.

"And," she said further, "I'll remind you once more, Mr. Banks, that mine is the sole figure of authority from now on. The development of the children is dependent upon it. I will whip them into shape— I will mould them into proper little people— I will grind the rough from their diamonds— but I must be allowed to pursue those goals on my own terms. There cannot be any interference. Is that clear?"

Mr. Banks nodded dumbly once more and left her at the door to the nursery. He could feel her gimlet eyes on his back as he beat a hasty retreat down the stairs.

Mary Poppins waited till he was out of sight, then entered the children's nursery which, five years after Michael's birth, had been retroactively wall-papered in a pattern made up of chiefly of adorable ducks. It was starkly inappropriate for their present ages of eleven and thirteen. They turned from the model of a ship they were actively deconstructing to gaze at her with boredom-dulled eyes.

Mary Poppins clapped her hands and rubbed them together briskly. "Let's play a game," she said.

Mr. Banks returned from work exhausted— as usual, as he told himself strictly. His feet hurt, and this he took as a sign that he was working far too hard, rather than a sign of tight shoes, which is what it actually was. But working far too hard was all he could do, he reflected, in this day and age. A man with his responsibilities and duties— a wife, a home, children—

The house was ominously silent, the help presumably cowering in their den of a kitchen. There was in fact a generally suspicious air to the whole place, as though everyone had been unexpectedly transported, or killed. Mr. Banks breathed in deep, and even the oxygen seemed different, without his children shouting and using it all up.

"Ahhh," he said aloud, reveling in the fact that there was no one to hear him, no one to respond with a careless, "Mmmmwhat was that, dear?" no one to throw mustard sandwiches at him and laugh in cool, cool derision at his bowler hat, which after all had been in the family for generations and would, one day, be passed down to Michael. Or to Jane. Whichever proved to be the most masculine; Mr. Banks had to admit to himself that, at this point, the issue was in some doubt. But that was hardly what he wanted to contemplate, just now. Just now, he was enthralled by the silence, practically in love with it. Just now, he wanted a nice relaxing sit-down with a paper full of someone else's worries and a nice quiet pipe to hasten up the blackening of his lungs and yellowing of his teeth which, he was convinced, only added to his debonair and professional air. No one had white teeth anymore— it simply wasn't done. He took a step into the living room, a self-satisfied smile already on his face. The living room suddenly erupted in bodies, noise, flashing lights, horns and confetti. Mr. Banks shouted and staggered backwards as he was engulfed by a tide of youths, most of them screaming a series of distorted syllables that, on review, proved to be an enthusiastic withing of Mr. Bank's health and happiness on this, his fiftieth birthday.

Mr. Banks frowned in bewilderment, buffeted back and forth by the tide. "I'm forty-seven," he offered plaintively. "I turned forty-seven in March."

The surging crowd of humanity paid him no heed, apart from a few shoutings of, "Tell it to the Marines!" and "Pull the other one, it's got bells on!" Mr. Banks was mortified to discover the presence in amongst the crowd o fa few of his colleagues, looking harried as foxes will do when pursued by hounds, but trying to rise above their discomfort at the proximity of so much youth to give some good-natured ribbings to their startled and bicentennial workmate. "Good try, old man, but we're not convinced! Only way a bloke earns those wrinkles is by living a certain amount of time!"

Mr. Banks backed, aghast, away from them and ran up against his wife quite by accident. She turned to him with a delighted grin and shrieked, "Herbert!" Mr. Banks ascertained at once that she'd been drinking. If her breath hadn't been enough, the unguarded, public use of a Christian name was certainly telling. Come to think of it, that wasn't even his Christian name. Just who did she think he was?

He found himself helpless in the grip of the tide, now lustily roaring, "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow," in a tone-deaf amalgamation of voices that was piercing in intensity. Mr. Banks staggered backwards and ran up quite suddenly against a pocket of emptiness, which he fell into. This proved to be the open doorway leading into the kitchen; he landed heavily on the well-laid tiles. Spots burst dizzily in his brain. It was quieter here, just inside the kitchen; the noise of the ill-advised un-birthday celebration seemed very far away, all of a sudden. Mr. Banks did not normally venture into the kitchen, except for the occasional surprise inspection of the mousetraps. He was startled to find it a welcome and a comfort at this late date, and took his time getting to his feet. Then, once achieved, he turned to see Mary Poppins staring gravely at him.

She inclined her head to him.

"My felicitations," she said, smoothly, and put the final candle on his overloaded cake.

This was the first indication he had that something was seriously wrong.

Parties, especially ill-regulated ones, Mr. Banks was distressed to find, were notorious for causing a fuss, and making a mess. The staff were still busy clearing it up the next morning, and he headed to work with the chronic headache that always surfaced from a late night or disorderly surroundings. At his place of employment he was greeted with baleful stares by most of his colleagues, who likewise suffered from pounding heads, although for a different reason. It took only a few such revelers telling him that his booze was compromised and his poison poisoned for Mr. Banks to realize that in all probability there had been something untoward slipped into the liquor bottles, which he himself had consumed none of. He fell to pondering who could have been the cause of such a dastardly plan, and so the day passed quickly by, as busy days are wont to do. When he arrived at home (which was by now thankfully cleaned, cleared, and repaired to its original state), he was mildly disturbed to find that he could not locate his wife.

Having ascertained that she was not in any of her habitual places in the house, he returned, puzzled to his armchair and sank into it. There, pondering, he remained for some hours, as the shadows lengthened and disappeared into twilight, then darkness, and dinner was announced. Jane and Michael were young enough still to eat in their rooms, and so Mr. Banks dined alone, in company only of a singularly depressing newspaper, the chief headline of which dealt with the sensational occasion of a gambling raid. Mr. Banks read absently around it, not being given to much interest in such sordid tales, until his eye quite by accident happened to light on a name which looked very much like "Mrs. George Banks" followed by his address. In some alarm he leapt from his chair, flinging the paper on the table. So this was why his wife had not returned home! She was being detained at a local police station pending further inquiries or, at least, until her bail was posted—

"Bail indeed!" Mr. Banks shouted, as genteely as was possible under the circumstances, and fell to considering furiously how he was going to get his wife out of there with a minimum of fuss. Bail seemed like not much more than blackmail money— how on earth had the woman gotten herself in such a predicament in the first place? Gambling! And why couldn't she post her own bail? She certainly was given plenty of spending money— Mr. Banks froze at the wash of cold realization about both the likely whereabouts of Mrs. Banks' allowance, and the steepness of her bail. When he arrived at Precinct 39 some minutes later, he was decidedly unhappy to find both premonitions solidly founded in actual fact. The ride home in Mr. Banks' jalopy behind a sullen horse drawing a slow and creaking wagon, was not a particularly pleasant one, although Mrs. Banks, still quite drunk, pronounced effusively that it was a most lovely day, despite the fact that it was by now quite dark.

Mr. Banks wisely held his own counsel, recognizing that given Mrs. Banks' current state, any remonstrances he flung at her, however carefully worded, would only bounce off. And so he sat silent all the slow, grim way home, contemplating how he was going to fix this, to put things back into their proper place.

But when he got home, he discovered something else needing his attention. This other matter presented itself in the form of a hastily written note, done in schoolgirl scrawl and signed "Michael." Mr. Banks read it through once, automatically got out his little red pencil and corrected the spelling, read it through a second time, and yelped for his wife.

"Not now, John dear," said Mrs. Banks, in the process of passing out halfway up the stairs.

"But Mrs. Banks! The children! They've gone!"

"What's that, Henry?" asked Mrs. Banks, face down on the carpeted staircase and sliding slowly but inexorably downwards.

"Jane and Michael! They've left us an improperly spelled note and— and—" Mr. Banks' hand trembled. "—buggered off!"

Mrs. Banks, with some effort, rolled over and addressed the stuffed moose-head on the wall opposite the stairs. "There's no need to be rude, Abernathy," she said sternly.

"My son and heir," murmured Mr. Banks, brokenly. "My daughter and hope. They've left us to seek a normal life— they're going to join a circus. Mrs. Banks! O, Mrs. Banks! What can have possessed them to do such a thing? When we've just gone to the trouble and expense of securing them a governess?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Joseph," said Mrs. Banks, "but there was definitely something odd about that yoghurt."

Mr. Banks wrung his hands and, incidentally, the note, which he still held gripped in his vise-like fingers. It ripped with the force of his wringing, and he gazed down at it, seeing in the torn edges his own life, which had similarly come apart and fallen to pieces. A resented and scorned laughingstock at work, his wife a drunken gambler who'd gotten him into unfathomable debt, his children gone, and everyone thought he was fifty. When had all this happened, and how had it occurred without his notice? Surely it had been an inexorable slide; surely this could not all have happened in the past forty eight hours—

Mr. Banks frowned thoughtfully. On the other hand, that's exactly how it had happened: suddenly and without warning. Perhaps all had not been right in his domestic paradise, but certainly the situation could not have exploded in this way without a little extra push. And who would have administered such a push? Someone with an ulterior motive— someone who wished to destroy him—

He turned suspicious eyes in the direction of the kitchen. Surely not—

"Cook!" he bellowed.

"No, no, no, you stupid man," said a voice from the top of the stairs. "You're pulling the wrong bird. You're barking up the wrong tree. You've entirely got 'old of the wrong Christmas cracker."

Mr. Banks swung his bedazzled gaze up towards her. "You—" he gasped.

"Surprise!" said Mary Poppins.

Mr. Banks was, for lack of a better word, absolutely gobsmacked. "But—" he said. "But— but— where's your accent gone?"

"Come on up 'ere," said Mary Poppins with a gentle smile. "An' try not to step on yer wife."

He had little choice but to obey. Mrs. Banks revived enough to grab onto his ankle and, once attached, would not let go, and so he was forced to pull her along with him for a step or two before she passed out once more. He looked up at Mary Poppins in something approaching awe by way of horror and desperate fear.

"Where are we going?"

"Onto the roof," said Mary Poppins. "The sweeps are singing."

Onto the roof they went, Mary Poppins leading the way and Mr. Banks stumbling after, still dazed, still confused. What had Mary Poppins to do with him? Why would she seek to destroy him this way? How had she succeeded so quickly? When they arrived on the rooftop at last, he stood struggling to regain his breath and managed to gasp out, "Look, if this is about your wages—"

"Wages?" repeated Mary Poppins, arching her eyebrows delicately. "Wages? The only wages I'm interested in are those wot sin pays."

He stood and blinked at her.

"The wages of sin—"

"Death," said Mary Poppins with a most unnerving grin.

"I'm afraid I don't understand. You've brought me up here onto the roof to watch you kill yourself?"

"No!" she exploded, losing a bit of her composure at his consistent stupidity, and pulled a gun from her capacious handbag. "Your death, that's what I'm speaking of! Yours, Mr. Banks. Or should I say— Georgie-Porgie?"

Mr. Banks went very still, and not simply from the proximity of the firearm, as in his experience women were more likely to fire but less likely to aim correctly. He had not been called by the embarrassingly diminutive nickname since— since—

"By the saints," he breathed. "Marion—"

"'Ang on there," interjected Mary Poppins.

"Marion Pirotovich!"

She settled her shoulders determinedly. "Aye, well, it's Mary Poppins now, innit?"

"Is it?" He would have been delighted if he weren't so aghast. Perhaps he was delighted, somewhere deep within. The flame of his love for Marion Pirotovich had not been extinguished over the twenty years since he'd last seen her, although the fact that she'd infiltrated his home, ruined his life, and was now threatening him with a gun was causing it to flicker a bit.

"Blimey," muttered Mary Poppins. "It's downright astounding that an umbrella works as a disguise against some people. You'd think we 'adn't been nothing to each other."

"We weren't!" said Mr. Banks, taking a step forward and then, more quickly, taking several backwards as she shoved the muzzle of the gun at him.

"That's wot I said!"

"Indeed, we were something," said Mr. Banks, a bit misty-eyed with reminiscence. "All those years ago— whatever happened to us, Marion Pirotovich?"

"You left me," said Mary Poppins deliberately, "because I kept droppin' my aitches." She cocked the pistol.

"Right," said Mr. Banks, going very still. "Well, I can see where you're upset, Marion, but surely all this is unnecessary. Why not go to court and attempt to sue me for breach of promise or something? Or I could just— give you a one-time payment and— send you on your way—" He was backing away from the gun, both hands out in a beseeching, propitiatory gesture; he ran up against something rather hard, which picked him up and shook him. Once his vision returned, he saw that the something rather hard was a buff, burly Cockney beefcake against whom he had not a chance, despite his intention to show willing and get harmlessly knocked out for his troubles, if that would appease Mary Poppins. Then, he fervently hoped, things would sort themselves out while he had a nice peaceful sleep.

"Meet Bert," said Mary Poppins. "'E 'andles things for me."

"You've got to understand why that could be annoying," Mr. Banks pointed out; he was referring to her elocutory habits, but she thought he meant the shaking.

"Well, it's no more than you deserve," she said spitefully, gesturing with the gun. "A grown man like you ought to be able to take his punishment, and like it."

"No one in their right mind likes punishment," contested Mr. Banks, but was distracted from pursuing his argument by the fact that his wife had finally crawled up the last few steps and collapsed onto the roof.

"I made it, Angelo!" she crowed in triumph.

"You left me for that," said Mary Poppins pointedly. "That. I almost feel sorry for you. I may 'ave pushed things a little, but to tell the truth I worked with wot I found when I got 'ere. An' now look. Your wife a drunken gambler, your kids gone, and everyone thinks yer fifty—"

Mr. Banks decided against confiding that he'd just been pondering the same set of circumstances, and opted instead for a show of despair.

"What do you want me to do?" he begged, chin quivering, jaw quaking in distress at the nearness of his Creator.

"Apologize," she said.

"Very well! I am sorry! I am abjectly sorry! There are not words to adequately convey how abjectly sorry I am, Marion Pirotovich!"

"Marion who?" Mrs. Banks asked the rooftop.

"—and die," Mary Poppins finished sweetly, taking a more sure aim. Mr. Banks squeezed his eyes shut, but there was a wild shriek from Mrs. Banks— "No!" — and he opened them again to view, in some amazement, his wife grappling with Mary Poppins for the gun.

There were several ways that this could turn out. Not all of them were exactly desirable. Mr. Banks did not wish his wife to die, because it would be embarrassing and probably costly. Nor, he was surprised to discover, did he want Mary Poppins' life to end, when he had just found her again. Most of all, of course, he didn't want to die himself, because then he would never find out what happened, and Jenkins would get his position at the bank, the imbecile. Mr. Banks glanced sideways and upwards at Bert, who held him fast and who was watching the fight with avid eyes. Yes, Mr. Banks decided, Bert could die. Out of all of them, he was the one who deserved it the least, which gave Mr. Banks hope: because life often worked out that way. Survival of the fittest and extinction of the innocent.

Yes, that should work.

Mr. Banks began shuffling around to get behind the enormous man, noticing in the process that he was soot-blackened and well-muscled, probably a chimney-sweep by trade, or some such common laborer. Yes, the world could only benefit by the loss of one such as him—

The women, tangled together and short of breath as the struggle favored first the one, and then the other, began to turn the gun to the side, towards the men who watched in interest. Mr. Banks succeeded in waltzing Bert around just a split second, a hair's-breadth of time, before one of them— and it was impossible to know for sure which one— squeezed the trigger.

Bert gave a grunt, and staggered.

"Ha!" said Mr. Banks triumphantly, as though he'd just completed a rather long and arduous fox-chase that had turned out badly for the fox.

"No!" shouted Mary Poppins, and dropped the gun to rush to Bert's side. He was breathing shallowly, but looked more confused than in pain.

"I think," he said with difficulty, "something bit me."

Mary Poppins looked hopeful; but in fact it was nothing more than Bert's innate stupidity that led to the misconception. The bullet had indeed struck home, and he breathed deeply twice before breathing no more. Mary Poppins knelt beside him and shuddered with sobs.

"Now see here," said Mr. Banks severely, "we cannot allow this sort of behavior—"

"I need a drink," said Mrs. Banks, and stumbled towards the stairs, gun in hand.

At last Mary Poppins arose, and faced her erstwhile employer with a brave expression, a square set to her shoulders, her discarded carpetbag once more in hand.

"I ain't sayin' I'm sorry," she began. Mr. Banks winced.

"My—" He stopped just short of saying My dear, realizing that was not the right tone to take with a woman who had recently been threatening him with a firearm. "Mary Poppins. Marion. If only you talked like Mary Poppins all the time, we would never been in this position."

"I am wot I am," she said, lifting her chin proudly. "And don't you think you've seen the last of me."

Mr. Banks rather hoped he hadn't.

She strode to the edge of the roof and stood looking down at the street far below for a moment; the house was four storeys high, plus the attic, and it was a considerable ways down. At long last she sighed, removed her umbrella from its casing, and shook it free and into full form. She turned one last time to the still form of Bert, sadness in her eyes; and turned to Mr. Banks, her face hardening.

"I'll be back," she said darkly.

Then a gust of wind caught the umbrella, lifting Mary Poppins and the carpetbag away into the air, to float across the roofs and out of his life, for the present. She drifted off into the moonlight, shining and ghostly, and he could just barely make out various invectives being cast back at him, H's improbably missing from some words and improbably included in others. The oddness of the sequence of events became clear to him, and he gave a quick shudder.

"Well," Mr. Banks said to himself, "that's quite enough of that."

On some level he was quite aware that his children were missing, he was in debt, his wife was in a drunken stupor somewhere below, his governess had just flew away and was out to get him, and there was a dead man on his roof, but for the present he was able to settle his peace of mind with a deep breath and a good think about something else. A restorative, he felt, was appropriate in this case.

"A good cup of tea," he said decisively, "will work absolute wonders," and headed down the stairs. As he went, he reflected that there was nothing quite like a nice quiet night at home.