Clearly, in the battle against sobriety, Mr Murray believed quantity triumphed over quality.
He grabbed a bottle from the ranks, staggering slightly as he held it up to the thin grey light. Empty. So was the next one. And the one after that.
Tufty put on his best helpful voice: ‘I really think you’d be better off having a nice lie down, Mr Murray.’
‘Got to...got to havesomething...somewhere...’ He inspected the troops again.
A mound of letters was heaped up by the toaster. And though it was alittlenosey to look, they all seemed to be stamped ‘FINALDEMAND!’
Tufty peered out through a slightly less dirty bit of the window at a back garden smothered in weeds and bushes and things.
Three doors led off the kitchen – one back into the hall, one out into the jungle, while the third lay slightly ajar.
And as the Horror-Haired Queen of Grumbling Doom was always telling them: ‘It’s no’snoopingif you’re a police officer, it’sinvestigating.’
So he left Mr Murray clinking his way through the soldiers, and slipped through the beckoning doorway. Having an investigate.
It might’ve been a drawing room back in the Long-ago, but now it was a storage place for spiderhouses and mouse droppings, slowly suffocating under a blanket of fuzzy grey. Shadows on the wall remembered paintings and maybe a large flatscreen TV? Bet there’d been heaps of fancy furniture in here: bookcases and writing desks and chesterfield couches. Now though, there was just a saggy brown corduroy couch and a coffee table made from old milk crates, with a teeny portable CRT telly on top. Indoor aerial. Not even a DVD player.
A bouquet oflong-dead flowers wilted in a vase on the mantelpiece, all papery grey-and-brown, next to a photo frame – lying facedown in the dust.
In this haunted house, even the ghosts were sad...
Tufty stepped back into the kitchen, where Mr Murray was still hunting for a non-empty warrior to ride into battle with him.
‘Hey, come on. Why don’t we get you upstairs, OK?’ Tufty plucked a hollow general from Mr Murray’s hand, took his arm, and steered him towards the door. ‘There we go. You’ll feel much better after a snooze.’
Or hungover as a Klingon’s bumhole.
But it was the thought that counted.
The main bedroom was every bit as miserable-and-fusty as the rest of the house: shadowed walls; discarded clothes in the corner; and a bed cobbled together from pallets and old panel doors, with a droopy mattress on top.
Breathing hard, after half-carrying him all the way up the stairs, Tufty flopped Mr Murray onto the bed. Setting the pallets creaking.
Lying there, flat on his back, he stared up at the ceiling. Which had to be rotatingprettyfast, given how blootered he was.
Then Mr Murray popped out a wet burp, that sounded like it contained lumps. He smacked his lips and grimaced.
Hmmm...
Maybe not the best of ideas?
Luckily though, the room had an en suite, and when Tufty pushed the door open it was totes fancy and stuff, with a claw-foot bath, and a swanky shower cabinet, and a bidet for washing your bum. Ooh-la-la! Très swish.
Shame it was all so grubby.
But it would do.
He hauled Mr Murray up again and waddle-walked him into the echoing room.
Another lumpy burp. ‘Sleeeeeeeeep.’
‘Why don’t we putyouin the recovery position in here instead? That’ll be fun, won’t it?’ Helping him down onto the cool tiles. ‘This way, if you vom, it’ll be easier for you to clean up in the morning. And you probably won’t choke on any chunks.’
Probably.
It took a bit of pulling and shoving to get all of Mr Murray’s limbs and body in the right place so his airways would be clear – cos people-origami was tougher than it looked – but finally Tufty wrangled him into place, then stood back to admire the results.