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“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen! Well, lady and gentleman. Officers. My name is Arthur, and it’s my pleasure to be welcoming yourselves here immediately after take-off as we start the commencement of your journey to Inverness via MJN Air. As your steward, myself will be responsible for yourself’s comfort and satisfaction during the embarkation, duration and termination of yourself’s flight, including but not limited to serving yourself’s drinks, preparing and serving yourself’s meals—well, if we were on a flight long enough to require meals, which we’re not, so myself won’t be serving yourself meals after all, though I think we have a few bags of mixed nuts in the galley if yourself finds yourself getting peckish! Furthermore, I’d like to take the opportunity while I have yourself’s attention to remind yourself that the service buttons to call for the service of myself are conveniently located on the bulkhead above yourselves’ heads—oh! Sorry, those are for the lights, and even if you push it on and off so that it blinks I probably won’t notice, so you’ll want to push the button on the armrests. That button will turn on your service light and alert myself to the fact that yourself requires a steward—that’s me!—to serve you! Additionally, for your convenience we currently do not allow telephone use during the flight at this time…”
“Bloody hell; we’ll have landed before he’s finished his welcoming speech,” Sally Donavon muttered under her breath. Lestrade shot her a brief glare but privately agreed.
Arthur "Shappey, but you can please call myself Arthur unless yourself would really rather call myself Arthur Shappey because yourself can if it makes yourself happier because myself’s job is, after all, to make yourself happy by whatever means necessary excepting if it involves anyone losing their trousers, Mum says, which isn't really fair because Mr Johnson had a moth all the way up in his pants, but what Mum says goes, so myself can't make yourself happy if it involves dropping trousers, but myself can do most anything else; speaking of which, can myself do anything to make yourself’s wait more pleasant while ourselves wait for the pilots to finish the walk around?" Shappey was cut off mid-sentence by a bong from the speakers.
“This is Captain Crieff with a message for the cabin crew: Arthur, could you come up to the flight deck for a moment?”
“Right-o! Just give me a moment to finish my address,” Arthur replied into the intercom. Sally quietly groaned beside Lestrade as Arthur turned to face them again. “Sorry to cut this short, chaps! I was so looking forward to this because it’s the first time they’ve let myself give the address since—well, yourselves don’t need to know about that. So! In short, the loo is here, the emergency equipment is there, I’m here except for when I’m not, and don’t use your mobiles or other electronics during the flight. Also, don’t set anything on fire. That’s a bad idea in an aeroplane. Must go now, ta!”
Lestrade shook his head and pulled out the file on Mrs. William’s death, the latest in a string of murders. He and Sally bowed their heads together in the blessed silence and brainstormed until the aeroplane suddenly shuddered alarmingly. As they watched, the ‘Fasten Seatbelts’ sign fell out of its bracing and dangled by a few cords and wires. Sally and Lestrade stared at it.
Bong. “This is Captain Crieff speaking. Sorry about that bout of turbulence; we’re experiencing some unexpected technical difficulties.” In the background, Lestrade could hear a deeper voice in a muttered argument with the steward. “We expect to have that cleared up in just a tic, so if you’ll just hang tight—literally—and give us a few moments to work it out—Douglas, no!”
The intercom clicked off, and Sally and Lestrade looked at each other.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Sally asked flatly.
“It’s looking that way,” Lestrade agreed. “We should have gone with the easyJet option. Do you suppose threatening to arrest them for safety violations would make them more or less likely to get us to Inverness alive?”
“Less. Definitely less. Did you see the pilots, earlier? The captain’s clearly a lazy sod who makes the co-pilot do all the work and probably has no idea what he’s doing, and the co-pilot looked so tense that I thought for a moment that he was going to vibrate that ridiculous hat right off. If you threaten to arrest them, they’ll probably get so flustered that they’ll drop us right out of the sky.”
“I think the captain was the smaller one, actually,” Lestrade pointed out, ignoring a high-pitched beeping just audible from the flight deck. “His body matches the voice from ‘Captain Crieff.’”
Sally hummed in agreement, and she sighed and leaned back into the cushion. “True. It could be worse, I suppose: We could be dying with the Freak complaining in our ears all the way down.”
Lestrade nodded as the plane shuddered again. “Either way, this is the last time I let Anderson book the tickets.”