‘He did not have a moustache,’ said Andy. ‘He had a mullet and no moustache. Little blokes like him can’t wear moustaches. It makes them look like Hitler.’

‘Little blokes?’ I said. ‘He was tall, that Pongo. He was easily as tall as me.’

‘Get away,’ and Andy laughed. ‘He was positively dwarf-like. But in a nice way. I really took to him.’

‘Tall, short, moustache, no moustache?’

And I looked at Andy and he in turn looked at me.

And then Lola returned with a tray-load of coffee, and this tray-load included biscuits, too.

She set down her tray-load upon the permanent table and then looked at Andy and me, who were still looking at each other.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked of me.

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all. If I were to ask you to describe the fellow upstairs, who you claim is not your brother, but according to you looks identical to your brother, how would you describe him?’

Lola shrugged, prettily. ‘Medium height?’ she said.

‘Anything else?’

And Lola shrugged again. ‘Apart from his huge red beard I can’t think of anything particularly striking about him,’ she said.

‘So what do you make of all that?’ I asked Andy.

We were home now, having travelled back from the Perbright residence upon a number 65 bus, and we were now sitting down in our sitting room. Andy sat in the visitors’ chair and I upon the Persian pouffe. And I poked at the fire with a poker that I had removed from the brass companion set that was topped by a fine brass galleon in full sail.

‘I think we’re dealing with an alien here,’ said Andy. ‘A shape-changing alien.’

I shook my head at such stuff and nonsense. ‘Your answer to everything is always, “it’s an alien”. You said that last time and it wasn’t really aliens, was it?’

‘No,’ said Andy. ‘It was zombies last time. But your point is?’

‘That it’s unlikely to be an alien.’

‘We don’t have too many other options. He could be one of the fairy-folk, I suppose. They can disguise their true forms. They cast the Glamour upon you.’

‘It’s a possibility,’ I said.

‘You think so?’ Andy asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I do not! But it’s an odd one, isn’t it? He appeared differently to each of us. I wonder if you got a hundred people to look at him whether they’d all see someone different.’

‘Perhaps there’s nothing strange about it at all,’ said Andy. Perhaps it’s perfectly natural and we’re all like that. People see each other differently. All people. Which is why the unlikeliest people fall in love with each other. Where you might see a big fat munter of a woman, the man in love sees a Raquel Welch lookalike.’

‘Heaven forbid,’ I said. ‘You don’t think that can be true, do you?’

‘Probably not. But we could try it out. Check passers-by, see if our descriptions of them tally.’

‘What about Mum?’ I said. ‘We could start with her.’

Mother entered the room to top up the coal scuttle. And as she emptied coal from the pockets of her apron into it, Andy and I sized her up and committed her description to memory.

Which, upon her departure, we shared. And it tallied.

‘I think it’s just him,’ I said. ‘I think he has a special gift.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t even know that he has it.’

‘Or perhaps he has just acquired it, through his alchemical experiments or something. Which would explain why his sister doesn’t think that he’s the real him. A family member would have an instinctive intuition thing going, wouldn’t they?’

‘That’s very good,’ said Andy. ‘I like that. By the by, I don’t recall you discussing money with this Lola Perbright. Money, to whit, our fee.’

‘We haven’t earned it yet,’ I said.

‘So how do you propose that we do?’

‘Well,’ I said to Andy, ‘I have been thinking about that. And I have come up with a bit of a plan. I think you will like it because it will involve you putting on a disguise. And you do like doing that, don’t you?’

And Andy nodded.

‘So you and this Pongo character, whoever or whatever he might prove to be, have something in common. Lean over here and I’ll whisper my plan.’

‘You will whisper?’

‘I will.’

And I did.

Now, as this was before I had perfected the Tyler Technique, I was still going in for the proactive, hands-on school of private detection. And if you are hands-on, you are quite likely to find yourself getting your hands dirty.

And this I soon found out, to my cost.

We returned to the Perbright residence. At midnight. I wore my trench coat and fedora, but in order to disguise myself (as I did not have a tweed jacket) I also wore a pair of sunglasses.

Andy, in his turn, had taken a great deal of trouble to get his disguise ‘just so’. And ‘just so’ it most certainly was, and I congratulated him upon it.

There were no Number 65s at midnight, so we had to walk. And I recall commenting that it was a very great shame that the Bedford van that was The Sumerian Kynges’ gig bus had not been discovered along with all the music gear. And that, as detectives, we really needed a car.

And Andy said that he would take care of the car business. And that he had not forgotten that he was to be the new lead singer of The Sumerian Kynges (although I remain unsure as to how he got this idea in his head) and how I should call Mr Ishmael and ask when rehearsals would recommence.

And we trudged on through the night. Although the snow was beginning to melt. Which made the way now slushy.

We trudged and tromped and slopped and when we arrived at the Perbright residence we searched its façade for lights.

But lights were there none. Which we hoped meant that all within had gone to bed. In separate beds, of course.

We entered the front garden with stealth and crept towards the house. Once there, we flattened ourselves against the front door and I instructed my brother as to what should happen next.

‘You swarm up the wall and enter by an attic window,’ I whispered to him. Then creep down through the house, open this door and let me in.’

‘Swarm?’ my brother whispered back.

‘Swarm,’ I agreed and mimed, with my fingers, swarming motions.

‘No.’ And Andy shook his head. ‘We’ll both go in by the front door.’ And with no further words spoken, he took out a roll of tools and applied himself to the front door’s lock. And presently we were inside.

I offered no comment on this. And my brother tucked away his tools and offered, in return, no explanation.

Now, houses look all different in the darkness, don’t they? They lose all their colour, of course, and the everyday becomes untoward and the mundane outré and suchlike. I had to take off my sunglasses because I couldn’t really see very much.

I had brought a torch (or flashlight, as our colonial cousins like to call it) and I now switched this on and flashed its beam all about. ‘Weren’t there portraits on these walls?’ I whispered to Andy.

‘All down the hall,’ he replied. ‘We are in the right house, aren’t we?’

I tippy-toed along the tiled floor. I felt certain that it had been carpeted earlier.

I flashed the torch up stairs.

‘Those stairs look different, too,’ said Andy. ‘We are in the wrong house.’

‘We’re not. It’s the same. But it’s changed, somehow, that’s all.’

‘Changed its staircase?’

I shrugged and followed Andy, who was now heading upstairs.

The stairs didn’t creak, which surprised me, and no lights flashed on to reveal some fellow in a nightshirt with a blunderbuss in his hands. But then, perhaps the nightshirt-wearing blunderbuss-toter was now a thing of the past.

I followed Andy along a pleasantly furnished hallway and up another flight of steps. And so we eventually found ourselves on the top floor in a corridor of fair-to-middling widthness, before a door marked Pongo’s Lab. Keep Out.