Reding Rock Festival 1979 is deliriously thrilled and delighted to welcome
The Holy Trinity of Edwin Drood.
On electric pill -- the legendary Roy Pilgrim!
- Are you sure you know where you're going? - I'll be fine!
HELP!
You're listening to Classic FM. Coming next, Vivaldi.
Good morning. Is there a problem? What's happening?
Do you know this Mr. Roy Pilgrim? We're not getting any reply.
I'm his fiancee. He should be in. He's expecting me at nine.
What's this all about?
Roy?
In here!
What the hell's happened to you?
Crack in the back of the head. Thought they're gone, and... One had caught me from behind.
They rifled the safe, and then cuffed me to this thing
So I couln't raise the alarm.
Think you're gonna need a hacksaw.
Before we get on to this, there's another matter I have to ask you about
...concerning a young lady... - Sergeant...
-- What kind of sick game have you been playing here?!
-- How many of you saw this girl?
-- We all, sir.
-- And where is she now? Her mother is out of her mind with worry!
-- Where who?
-- The pretty little thing you invited round for tea and crumpets!
-- Don't put on that innocent routine! Why do you think the police are here?
-- Francine, I don't have the faintest clue...
-- Mr. Pilgrim, can you tell us where you were at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon?
-- Is this a joke?
I couldn't leave from this spot for twenty hours!
I'm not Harry Houdini! Someone trying to be funny?
There's nothing funny about a missing person, Mr. Pilgrim.
We know she left home yesterday morning for this address.
It appears she were seen by six eyewitnesses entering your house through this door
at four o'clock, as the school bus was arriving.
-- Mr. Pilgrim, a straight answer to the question, please!
Did you let a sixteen-year old girl named Tracy Cook into this house yesterday afternoon?
Look, I don't know what you guys plan at, but let's lay this to rest now.
I've been sacked here, staring at these four walls, since midday yesterday
till the moment you just arrived.
And on my granny's grave, noone was coming through those French doors.
-- Okay, so if your friend in the back would just stick an old sock in it this time,
perhaps we try and break this little one just to give you illusion that we have a brain between us!
Ok... go?
"Up postbox. Look fore and aft, To see the sea. What year does it appear to be?"
- Fore and aft... - So in front of us and behind us.
- To see the sea... - Tough one.
To see the sea. What year does it appear to be? Fore and aft...
-- There's a sea on this pub sign!
"What year does it appear to be?"
Something Jacobian. When was that? Early 17th century?
Too vague. Anyway, it's sideways on, so this doesn't work.
Well. Um. What seas are there then?
- Um. Red Sea, Black Sea... - Black Sea...
- Black Sea... Dead Sea - Irish Sea...
- "What year does it appear to be?"
-- All right, what's the answer?
1983.
-- But why?!
-- See that old Vauxhall back there?
-- And how do you look forwards and backwards at the same time?
TH3 S3A
Ohh!
RH 1983.
How can they expect absolutely anybody in the whole wide world to get that?!
-- Another miracle! And you see -- it's all done with mirrors!
Greg, if you're planning to open your legs any wider, will you let me know? I'll just get out of the car.
Hello?
Yes, just done 24.
Yes, I know, it's desperately boring.
Thanks to Abracadabra in the back, we finished at half-past.
All right, see you in the pub. Bye bye!
I've been bottomed by ... Pull back, you bi---!
Stupid pig-headed!
If she calls me Abracadabra once more, I may go berserk with that emery board.
File down her face until it was a hard boiled egg.
That would be right into Sheena's way. She quite likes you, actually.
I can't share how much I enjoyed sharing the backseat with Mr. Biceps,
who expands like a gas to fill any available space.
I could feel the pulse in his thigh right through my trousers!
... and make the effort! She's my best friend!
So basically that's what you do? Sit at home all day and think up conjuring tricks?
-- Amazingly pointless! -- Thank you.
What's the deal between you and Madeline?
I mean, is it like, serious passion down here?
How far into your world does she allowed to go?
I mean, have you showed her your magic wand yet? Or...
-- Wedding?!
-- You got some nerve, Roy! You're just not real! This whole thing is not real!
What that, lovers' tiff?
-- Thanks.
-- That's the little cow that carved me up on the bend!
-- Got other things on her mind, obviously.
-- Ok, you want me to believe you've changed?
You'll never change, Roy!
-- I don't get a chance?! I'm condemned before I start?!
-- Six eyewitnesses watched her walk into your house!
-- It's a conspiracy! I don't know... They all were bought off!
Six schoolboys, Roy?!
-- Francine, I've nothing to do with that! I never touched her! I never saw her!
-- Could you just leave! Don't contaminate my life!
-- Oops-a-daisy!
-- Go on, take it down the drain, show what you think of her!
-- He still loves her, see?
-- Perhaps just wants to get the money back.
-- Are you all blind? -- What's your problem?
-- Can't you see who is that guy?
-- Who?
-- Who? Great Roy Pilgrim!
-- You are kidding me!
- No. -- Who's Roy Pilgrim?
-- Roy Pilgrim?
-- Edwin Drood?
-- You probably know them, don't you?
-- They were in the vanguard of progressive rock right through the 70s and the 80s!
-- They did do some seminal stuff! -- That's polite way of describing them.
-- I suppose you were into Percy Sledge.
- Ah, yes! Now you're talking -- Yes, Percy!
-- We loved Percy! -- We loved Percy!
We loved him not quite as much as we loved Otis!
-- I know, I've just seen it.
-- Kids will tell you anything to be a part of the story. Maybe they saw... I don't know what they saw.
-- Appearances can be deceptive.
-- Right enough, Mr. Pilgrim. Despite the appearance of something in those trousers, you have no leg to stay on.
-- And you haven't got a case. I can't help noticing you've taken my house to find big fat zero.
-- Mr. Pilgrim, you...
-- ...?
-- You say that you never left the room from about midday onwards ?
-- Sure, when I'm plumbed into the central heating system!
-- Don't think you could have passed out for a minute?
-- Fall asleep?
-- Thanks.
-- I didn't pass out. I was wide awake for the next eight-nine hours.
I knew I was stuck there till Francine arrived in the morning. So I used the time.
I wrote three songs just to get my mind off my bladder.
And four o'clock?
From three to four I listened to Classic FM, so that definitely fixes the time.
Four o'clock they went into Vivaldi, so I switched it off, went back to the words.
I mean, what'd you do? I'm staring right at the window where she's supposed to have come in.
Did you write a letter to this girl inviting her to come and meet you on Monday afternoon?
-- Why were I gonna do that? -- She was young, attractive.
She sent you photoes in the fanmail.
-- You're sick. And what you're suggesting is sick.
Oh, and what am I suggesting, Mr. Pilgrim?
That Tracy Cook came to meet a lifelong hero and found him wanting to give her more than an autograph?
And it all got very nasty
in ways I don't like to think about.
And then afterwards to give yourself an alibi, you cooked up all this stuff about burglars and radiators!
-- For God's sake, like I told your colleague before you arrived
the only thing that came in through those French windows was a frog.
-- Now if I noticed that, I could hardly have-- -- What do you mean?
-- Little green frog with a red belly.
What do you mean, "told our colleague before we arrived"?
I...
...never said I was the police.
-- I just said I'd like some help with my enquiries.
-- You're not this gentleman's legal advisor?
-- Legal advisor?
-- Hi?
-- In here. Cooking.
-- How are you?
-- I'm just reminded that quote by Robert Oppenheimer:
"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
-- Overdid croutons slightly, not that funny.
-- Overdid croutons slightly?! It's like Ghandi's funeral pyre in here!
-- Yes! Now you've put the gas out, thank you very much.
I'd get along fine till you arrived!
-- This lightness of touch you have in the kitchen is a joy to behold!
-- So, tell me about Pilgrim. Is he capable of murder?
... obviously.
-- I don't get it. Got six witnesses, all saw her going in at four o'clock.
Now if that's right, he hasn't got a ....
And he swears plight he was in the room all afternoon fully conscious -- and saw noone!
It's either very stupid or very devious.
-- Or neither. -- What do you mean?
Well maybe there is no sticking to his story because it's true.
Is it supposed to be doing that?
-- Two more minutes. What do you mean 'true'?
-- A girl can't vanish into thin air while walking through a pair of French...
Do you know -- I never know when you're winding me up, that's the trouble
Now, gonna pick us out a bottle of something
Any particular one?
What's this?
-- Oh, petrol.
-- Petrol?!
-- I can't leave it in the car overnight! Things get nicked!
-- I'm gonna put it out in the hall, shouldn't I?
Near the canisters of napalm.
So this is the guy, you reckon, Jacob Flowers, who stuck a note under my wiper.
What's his connection with Pilgrim?
-- Have you heard of American cult "The Creed of Eden"?
-- ....
-- Well, don't ask me what they're into -- some kind of eco-religious thing.
-- The word is God's garden, all life is sacred.
It's easier for a rich man to enter a camel if he stands on a box.
Well this character is their Grand Prophet and founding father.
-- And if you know the history of rock music... -- Intimately.
You know that it was during Edwin Drood's tour of the States, in July '87,
that Roy Pilgrim became disciple of the Order
leading effectively to the breakup of the group
and some fairly ... solo albums about rainforests and dolphins.
So Flowers is gonna stick out with Pilgrim 'cause they're buddies.
or maybe he knows something else about Order that we don't--
Don't scrape that off! It's meant to be that colour -- it's cajun, blackened catfish.
Looks more like halibut to me.
Well, blackened halibut. I had to improvise.
Less of the pedanticism and just eat?
The word is 'pedantry'.
-- No, Mr. Danziger, a 'trifle baffling' won't do.
A 'trifle baffling' doesn't get near it!
My bride-to-be has flushed me down the toilet! I'm looking at charges of abduction and possibly murder
all because I'm not smart enough to lie my way out of this thing when it really matters!
They can put the entire cast of 'Goodbye Mr. Chips' in the witness stand
but it doesn't change what I saw!
If you're any kind of lawyer, you'd better start getting your--
Look, I'll call you back.
-- That's the one, then. Can hardly miss it from here.
So, when she pressed this bell,
someone
must've let her in.
-- What are you doing? -- At least check it out.
-- I can't go in there! -- Why not?
-- Roy Pilgrim!
I can't meet Roy Pilg...
You're talking about mythology!
You reduce someone like this to flesh and blood, the whole thing's destroyed! The whole... icon.
-- Jonathan, you're beginning to sound like a prat.
-- Sorry.
What does it take to make you go away?
Look, I'm sorry about yesterday, but I'm really quite inclined to help you actually.
If you'd just take a minute to let us in.
-- What are you?
Right now, Mr. Pilgrim, we're the only hope you've got.
The White Room. I am standing in the White Room!
The White Room!
Well, it's... certainly white all right, no question.
-- The White Room's like... chamber of contemplation
-- It's where I transcend to myself creatively.
And the actual Bandawi Bush Cats!
Utterly amazing!
-- Hand-carved speaker cabinets presented by Gambian percussionist John Bandawi in...
-- What year were you going there? -- 1973.
-- I think you'll find it was '76.
Because "Tribal Jam" didn't hit the charts till early '77.
-- We were in Zaire in '76.
-- No. You were deported from Zaire in May '75.
After Martin Crowe rode into the president's jacuzzi on a wilderbeest.
-- Mad as a lark.
Yeah. Um... I don't suppose you see much of the others now, do you?
Since your friends split up?
-- The band was always riven by petty factionism.
I lived with those guys for fifteen years.
That's fifteen years too long.
-- And then came "The Creed of Eden". That was like a crusade for you?
-- Try to follow my conscience.
-- Jacob Flowers seems to be on your side.
He left a little note on my windscreen.
-- Well, they have a commune about twenty minutes away. Hog's Belly farm.
I've been... a kind of a patron for them.
I guess he's as riled about all this as I am. Hey, is it one o'clock?
I've gotta record "The Waltons".
"The Waltons"?
It'll be two seconds.
Say...
What've you found? Something clever?
The gateway to a parallel dimension?
"The Waltons"?
Jonathan!
-- The French windows. -- What?
What do you want me to say -- they're French windows the people walk in and out of!
The blinds are venetian blinds, and the floor is just a...
-- What?
-- No, it's just how these figures are slightly faded.
You see, down here.
And down here.
They're faded on the wrong side, surely?
-- This pair of speakers, Mr. Pilgrim, they get moved about very often? -- Never.
-- They been positioned like that for perfect balance fifteen years ago. Why do you ask?
-- I could be wrong,
but looks to me is that someone recently swapped them round.
-- Well, I don't know.
I mean, it's just too incredible for words.
Roy Pilgrim watches "The Waltons".
-- Does that make him a murderer?
Here, you can navigate.
-- Where?
--I thought we pay a visit to the Hog's Belly farm.
-- Good day.
-- Hi, my name's... -- Madelin, right? We've been expecting you.
Toby Flowers.
Guess you got the note from my uncle, huh?
-- Well, it did intrigue me.
Oh, this is my friend Jonathan.
-- Oh, Jonathan, hi. Are you a journalist, too?
-- More in the way of a technical advisor, aren't you?
On this business with the missing girl.
-- The weirdest thing, isn't it?
She could've walked in through that window and then somehow never arrived at the other side.
Spooky kind of, wouldn't you say?
Now, you wanna come with me?
I think my uncle Jacob and aunt Polly are keen to see you.
They're just up ahead, bonding with the trees.
-- And up...
...and down.
Circling and carressing the trunk with your trunk.
And if you feel you want to lick or nibble the bark, don't be afraid to do that.
Let the love flow from your body
rhythmically into the tree.
Down through the roots,
into the earth.
Remember, the tree will get as much pleasure from this as you.
Are you in this often?
-- Since I met Jacob eighteen years ago now. It's a really liberating experience.
-- Especially for Polly, who grew up in East London.
-- Really? Which part? Barking or... -- Mile End, Quite next.
-- I never seen anyone that friendly with a knothole before. It's almost grounds for divorce.
-- You ever been up in the oak tree, Jonathan?
It's true. We all owe a tremendous debt to Roy Pilgrim.
This whole estate, everything you see here, is down to his support
and generosity.
He was the greatest benefactor you could ask for.
-- What do you mean 'was'?
-- I won't pretend this new fiancee of his was devoted to our cause.
Francine Faraday.
She runs a small investment consultancy somewhere,
so she's probably in need of spiritual enlightenment.
-- So what're you saying, she was leading him off the straight and narrow?
-- It's for Roy to choose his own destiny.
We were just glad that he found a relationship that works for him, but now, with all these rumours lying around...
-- If you can shed any light on all this, Madeline, to clear Roy's name,
believe me, your efforts won't go unrewarded. And we're not talking about money here.
Come with me. I wanna show you something.
There're four more on the way back home.
In Utah, Wyoming, Maine and New Mexico.
Because the day will come, make no mistake about that.
And I'll make you a promice.
Help Roy, and there'll be two seats waiting for you
on the journey to the New World.
-- No way!
What, like an Ark as in Noah?
-- Sorry, I don't believe you. -- I don't believe me, and I was there!
I mean, seriously potty people, can't tell you!
-- So what do the police think? ... And he's just gonna bluff it out before they found the body.
If they found the body.
I think it's all down to Marvo the Mystic here.
What happened? Your special powers deserted you all of a sudden?
-- He did find something actually, didn't he? These two funny speaker cabinets just inside the door
have been switched round, he reckon.
-- Because that's where he'd hidden her! After he sawed her in half.
No?
Alright then, why would you swap round the hi-fi speakers?
-- That's the question. -- That's not the question.
-- What d'you mean?
-- Well fairly obviously you woudn't. -- So? What's the point?
-- None whatsoever, I shouild think.
-- Alright, you've lost me.
-- I think, what he's saying is it could be accidental.
Consider this variant. Someone comes into Pilgrim's house
and for whatever reasons moves a pair of identical-looking speakers from the White Room.
Later on they return them and because they're very much the same as one another they put them up the wrong way around.
-- But who would steal a pair of speakers just to put them back again?
-- A very honest burglar?
Better split, I think. Adam said he might call later from Vegas.
-- I thought I'd check out other band members tomorrow.
If I get anything, I'll ring you.
-- See you around, Sheena.
Glen, I'd ... if you got a minute to talk to this journalist about Roy Pilgrim?
-- From... which magazine did you say? -- I didn't, I'm freelance -- Madeline Magellan.
Mr. McArthur! Can't believe I just shook the hand that played rhythm guitar on 'Hoodoo Woman'!
Now I can die happy! And no, I was just after a bit of background actually on your ex-colleague.
-- Now what do you want me to say? That I loathe the money-grabbing son of a bitch with a vengeance?
-- It's starting point.
-- We were young! We just wanted to play the best rock-n-roll in the world! We weren't businessmen!
'Edwin Drood' became a fundraising charity for our management and record companies!
Roy, because he wrote all the songs, got on a sponsorship!
And he was the one who ...
Don't ask me how he did it. I spent last eight years trying to forget.
... double anchovies? 'Cause I couldn't remember. Max said he did but I could have sworn he's just asked for...
What's this? What's going on?
-- Look, Tex, I'm really sorry, but... -- Jerry?
Who are these chaps? What's up, man?
-- Listen, there comes a time for the greater good of the band when...
-- 'You've been replaced' is what he's trying to say, guys!
-- These things happen. -- Replaced?! But we've been gone for twenty minutes!
-- Blimey, life moves on, you know. Can't we all stay cool about this?
-- Stay cool?! You put together another line-up while we were out for the pizza?!
This is unreal!
-- Jerry, can you handle it for me?
-- It was a tough decision! We needed fresh blood!
-- Yeah, and you're gonna get it, right on these walls!
-- So, do you know about this fiancee of his?
-- Francine Faraday? -- I'd say she struck me as Roy's type at all!
More like a future mother-in-law.
-- What do you mean by that?
-- Who do you say you work for?
-- I'm putting a book together about major cases that the police got horribly wrong!
-- Well, if you want my opinion, you're wasting your time with this one.
-- Thanks for your help.
-- And give her one of these a day. Quite soon she'll be up and running.
-- Anywhere I could wash my hands? -- Sure, right inside, in the kitchen.
-- Toby? Oh my God, what's happened?
-- He appears to have been suffocated or choked or something...
You'd better call the police.
-- There's something in there.
The hell's it?
...damage. Reason for such vandalism is still a mystery.
The detectives are investigating a bizarre "Silence of the Lambs"-style murder
on Hog's Belly farm, near Wittlingford,
after the victim was found with a dead frog inside of his windpipe.
38-year old Toby Flowers was a member of an American religious sect "The Creed of Eden",
whose members include the rock star Roy Pilgrim,
himself in the news this week in connection with a disappearance of teenager Tracy Cook.
-- Hi.
It's a bit of a night out there.
Before I became a puppet, I was a gynecologist!
I wanted to be a brain surgeon, but I wasn't tall enough!
Here's another one.
What's long and thin and sticky?
A stick!
-- Behold the impecunious rock legend.
As you can see, performing is still my major source of income.
I've got this reputation for instability which I could never get my head around.
No Marty Crow, no way!
Don't want a drummer, who urinates on the audience. Why not?
Personal contact with the public -- very important.
-- Roy Pilgrim. What type of women did he go for, would you say?
-- Let's just say he wouldn't look at you if he'd thought you had too many...
-- Drinks? -- Birthdays.
Closer they were to the legal limit, better he liked them. Good old Roy.
And those days there was plenty around to like, believe me!
But that was then.
His tastes could've changed.
-- Right.
"Hocus Pocus Junior"!
-- I saw it in some bookshop. I thought "What the hell,
I'll pop it round."
-- You thought "pop it round" and drove thirty five miles from London to bring it here?
-- Well, you weren't exactly hard to find.
-- I mean, if it's no good to you...
-- It's one of a classic texts on medieval magic.
What do I owe you?
-- What you can give me?
-- Where's your other half tonight?
-- I shudder to think.
Whoever she is, she's got my sympathy.
Sex for Greg is someone to talk to while he's doing pushups.
If they could invent the exercise bike that says "God, that was wonderful!", I think he'll propose! I really do!
Yes, I've never met a man before whose IQ is the same as his prow size.
It's an nteresting combina...
-- Help yourself to a sherry, by the way. -- Thanks.
I've got a theory.
About those speakers. Why would someone take them out of the room.
-- Go on.
-- He was hypnotized, right?
Someone took the speakers away, rigged them up to play some recording,
that made him forget he'd seen the girl coming through the window.
-- Right.
Involuntary hypnosis?
-- Uh-huh.
-- Not quite sure Roy Pilgrim is the man to go under without a fight.
And why would anyone do all that if they supposed to just dangle the watch chain before his nose?
-- Because...
they...
...didn't do that at all.
-- So what did they do? -- Why have you come here?
-- 'Cause I like you.
Can't resist the puzzle.
-- Let me into your mind. -- Sorry?
-- Lecture me.
-- Right.
Let's recap.
Last Monday, sixteen-year old girl,
...Tracy Cook...
goes round to visit her hero, rock star Roy Pilgrim.
Half a dozen schoolboys see her walking through the French windows in the back of the house
into the White Room.
That's proven fact. Beyond dispute.
Exact same time, four o'clock,
Pilgrim swears he was in the room, fully conscious, handcuffed to the radiator
and saw noone come in.
-- His watch was wrong.
-- He knew the time 'cause he was listening to the radio. That's not the point.
He says he was awake all afternoon.
The only time he grabbed any sleep is during the night.
-- So he has to be lying. Nothing else makes sense.
-- But what he says makes even less sense.
Why would he go to all that trouble making up a story like that?
He could easily have said he wasn't in the house at all, or he was in the room, but he was still unconscious.
Noone could prove otherwise.
No, instead of that, he says the one thing that no jury in the world is gonna believe,
that noone came in through the door. Why? Because it's true.
-- Both stories can't be true.
It's impossible.
-- Is it? -- Yes, it is!
You've been there. You've inspected it. The police have inspected it.
How can she just've vanished into... into the ether?!
Like some... some phantom, or...
-- What's the matter, you got a frog in your throat?
-- I'll get it.
-- Jonathan Creek.
-- Sorry, I know it's early.
-- Did I wake you? -- Uh... No, that's fine.
You well?
Wanted to bring you up today on yesterday.
I got my reaction now.
He did it.
And this thing about young girls seems to check out.
And both his erstwhile buddies had said the same thing.
So... I know it looked promising, but...
I've got a feeling we should ditch it, probably. We're barking up the wrong tree.
Funnily enough, I've just come to the exact opposite conclusion.
I draw you attention at page 197 of the "Observer's Book of Frogs".
...?!
-- He's done nothing wrong! -- You've got no evidence! Nothing!
-- Roy, trust the Lord! -- Vindictive bastards!
-- He's done nothing wrong! -- You go straight to Hell!
-- And you go straight down the nick ... this! Sergeant, get those bloody lunatics down from there!
-- What's happening?
Has he been charged?
-- Well, he's not there to keep the seat warm! You wanna speak to him?
-- No, I just came to collect one or two things. Would that still be possible?
-- The house is all yours.
-- They've taken him! As we knew they would.
-- God Help him! -- Without a shred of proof, of course!
-- Where do we go from here? -- I think, the back gate is the place he's in.
-- Yes, Ms. Faraday? -- I was... looking for my hairbrush.
I used to keep...
-- What's this? I thought you've... -- Not quite, Ms. Faraday.
But fear not, the arrest will be made very shortly.
Though it sticks in the craw to admit the Press had any hand in this,
I'm afraid it's down to our friend here that I started seeing this business in a new light.
-- Go on, you're dying to tell them. -- Is she?
Well, you can all stay to listen, I'm off!
-- Yes, you don't have to hang about, do you, Francine?
Same as when your husband ... suspected of murder. You were off like a bullet!
So wonderful to have faith in the one you love!
-- Oh please. You think any woman and I ... take his word for it?
-- But course they wouldn't, and that's exactly what you were banking on...
Mr. and Mrs. Flowers, when you engineered this whole affair.
-- I beg your pardon?!
-- Not mine to grant, unfortunately.
I don't imagine the judge will be too lenient either after what you've done.
-- We've stood full square behind Rou from the word go.
-- Yes, I don't think believing in someone's innocence
when you were the one who framed him, quite counts as loyalty, does it?
-- Why on Earth would we frame Roy?
-- To get rid of the one person who was a threat to your income.
The logic of shelling out millions of pounds every year to people who have sex with trees,
was a bit lost on you, wasn't it?
Roy's interest in Creed was on the wane.
'Course, if you would've married... Oh dear!
Serious cash flow problems.
So, she'd to be scared off.
Sharpish.
-- You're saying it was like a trick? To set me up?
-- Like all the best tricks, it was blindingly simple in theory
and fantasticly elaborated in practice.
But then, to a bunch of people building an Ark in their back garden, all things were possible.
Staging the breaking and putting him out were the easy bit.
An hour later, he comes round
to find he's trapped inside the White Room.
-- HEEEEEEELP!
He remains fully conscious for the rest of the day.
During which the only thing that comes through the door is a small red-bellied frog.
-- At the same time a teenage girl, not noted for a froglike appearance,
is seen entering the door from the outside by a bunch of boys at the back gate.
There's no ... answer.
Until you realise the whole thing was a classic piece of misdirection.
which relied on us all making one very false assumption.
That in both versions of events, we were talking about the same door.
A shame you couldn't have followed that frog, Roy,
as it hopped back outside
I think you would've been impressed by the handiwork of the drones down the Hog's Belly farm.
God knows how long it took them to carpent the exact replica of the room down to every last detail
But I think we can assume months of planning and careful preparation when you weren't around,
sifting through the fanmail for a suitable candidate
and forging a letter that would bring her here.
Tracy Cook is instructed to call at the back gate at four o'clock,
because you knew there'd be plenty of witnesses then to watch her going in.
Inside, I don't know, she's told of some change of plan.
Roy's gonna meet her at the farm.
Whatever, she's whisked about the front to be hidden away somewhere.
All this time, Roy's been sitting in what he thinks is his own back room, jotting down songs.
Of course, the one thing you couldn't replicate was the hand-carved speakers from Africa.
But that's not problem -- you just took them with you.
Finally it gets dark, Roy nods off.
And that's when you pull a second switch,
making sure he won't wake up on the way.
And back he goes into his own room.
Along with the speaker cabinets which we know ended up the wrong way around.
-- As compromising setups go, it was a gem!
The man's convicted by his own honesty.
While you lot leap about in his defense to keep the handouts coming.
-- Well, you got a colourful imagination.
-- And you've got a colourful frog.
Lots of them, you reckon?
Where's your little book?
-- Look familiar?
The Anasazi river toad.
Much prized by the indians of New Mexico and many others,
for its narcotic secretions.
Quickest way to get a fix, basically,
is you put it in your mouth and suck.
-- Being careful not to overdo it, or you'll end up like poor old Toby.
-- That's what joined it all up, I have to say.
If these frogs are being bred on a commune at Hog's Belly farm,
how the hell did one of them appeared at these French windows nearly fifteen miles away?
Unless it'd gone for a really long walk or hitched a lift,
there was only one explanation -- that it never left the farm in the first place.
And as ludicrous as it sounds, the window and the room
and Roy Pilgrim...
had to be there as well.
I'm sorry, I think my head ... I can't take this in.
-- The lads are turning your place over even as we speak.
You could save them time by telling where she is.
What the hell, let them have fun.
-- Cor, look at this!
-- Down the steps.
-- Can we turn this down a bit?
So what they were going to do, what you think? Just keep her locked up there indefinitely?
-- Or work on her mind. Couple of years of brainwashing, and she'd be one of them.
Wouldn't be the first time.
Anyway, thanks.
Again. I'll talk to Barry about cutting you in on this book, when it's done.
-- What for? -- I don't ... nothing.
-- Fair enough, then.
-- You'd take it as well, wouldn't you, penny-pinching bastard!
Do you know how much I make in the end of the day from all this? Not very much,
compared to some people, that to say, a prostitute or something!
But I'd rather have something I believe in, actually. And if you want my opinion, I think
casual sex is a sign of a very shallow personality, but there we are!
-- Have you've been sucking a frog?
-- I beg your pardon?!
You'd better hurry, and you won't miss a train.
"I'd better hurry or I won't miss my train"! What sort of gibberish is that?
-- Oh Jonathan, stop being clever! For once!
And just go!
-- Ah, I get it. That phone call you made to Sheena just before we got in the car.
She told you that she spent last night in my place and now you've got the hump.
-- Who's got the hump?! -- Because you think we slept together!
-- Whether or not you and Sheena slept together,
is your business and her business.
It's certainly none of my business.
Quite frankly, I have no desire to even discuss the matter.
-- So if I say: "I'd rather poke red-hot needles down my fingernails than poke Sheena---"
-- It would be a matter of no consequence to me whatsoever.
In fact, I find it extremely offensive and highly insulting to my best friend!
-- Right.
I'll see you around, then.
-- Yes!
YES!!