'Oh! It's bound to be the murderer. They always return to the scene of the crime. And what if they're not done murdering?'

'Quick, we'll pretend to be a piratical diorama.'

'What should we do?' said the albino pirate in a panic. 'What goes on in a piratical diorama?'

'Pirate stuff. You two, pretend to be having a duel,' said Jennifer.

'What about me?' said the pirate in green.

'Pretend to be in the middle of ravishing me.'

'I don't really know what that means,' said the pirate in green, turning crimson. 'We tend to stick to the pillage and plundering part of piracy.'

'Here, grab my dress like this.'

The pirates had just frozen into an exciting diorama when two gigantic statuesque blonde ladies with long blonde pigtails marched into the room.

'Jennifer,' whispered the pirate in green.

'Sssh,' hissed Jennifer.

'What if one of the bees comes and lands on my nose?'

'What are you talking about?'

'The bees that make the wax.'

'Please be quiet.'

'It's just I'm allergic to bees.'

'Shut. Up.'

'Did those pirates in that piratical diorama say something?' said one of the statuesque blonde ladies, peering at Jennifer suspiciously.

The other statuesque blonde lady came across and looked the albino pirate up and down.

'Don't be stupid, Helga,' she said. 'They are wax. Look, this one isn't even particularly realistic.'

The first statuesque blonde lady shrugged, and grabbed a couple of the remaining crowned heads under each arm.

'Oh, this one's heavy.'

'I think that's Poland. It's all the meat in their diet.'

'Is this the last of them?'

'Yes. Let's get them loaded up and be on our way.'

The third group of pirates were sat in the audience of the Folies Bergere. Whilst they weren't having as good a time as the pirates at Madame Tussauds, they were having a better time than the pirates at the Louvre, although they were having to sit through a lot of boring acts that the programme a.s.sured them contained biting satire whilst they waited for the dancing girls.

'I heard that when they dance they blow kisses at the men in the audience,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand.

'I heard that they don't wear any knickers when they do the cancan!' said the pirate with rickets.

'I heard that you can see their bare tummies.'

'I heard that they don't wear any knickers when they do the cancan!' said the pirate with rickets.

In the row in front of them sat a small group of Parisian gents, knocking back absinthe and smoking cigars. They were talking about how the Folies Bergere wasn't as popular as it usually was.

'Excuse me,' said the pirate in red, leaning forward, 'I hope you don't mind me asking, but why do you think that is?'

'Peuh!' said one of the Parisians with a Gallic shrug. 'Who can say? Perhaps it is the Ring Cycle opera of Monsieur Wagner? It's the talk of the town.'

'But that's on in London,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand.

'Oh, no,' said the Parisian, 'it's on a tour of Europe. It doesn't stay in one place for very long.'

'Like a tramp!' said the pirate with long legs.

'Do tramps sing?'

'Do you remember that adventure when the Pirate Captain decided that he should do something about the homeless and he adopted that tramp? He sang quite a lot if I recall.'

'Especially when he drank all the Captain's grog.'

'Yes. Poor Trampy. I wonder how he's getting on in Antarctica. He looked quite cold when we left him.'

'I heard that they don't wear any knickers when they do the cancan!' said the pirate with rickets.

The pirates waited while yet another comedian went through a routine about relationships. While they had always wondered about what was up with women stealing the duvet, they were getting very impatient. Fortunately, the comedian was followed by the cancan dancers, who high-kicked their way on to the stage. The music speeded up. The dancers kicked higher and higher. The pirates craned forward for a better look, in the antic.i.p.ation of having absolutely nothing left to their imagination.25 'Oh,' said the pirate with rickets.

'Oh dear,' said the pirate with long legs.

'That's not what I was expecting at all.'

21 The Soviet s.p.a.ce flight Voskhod 1 took a fragment of a banner from the Paris Commune into s.p.a.ce. A fragment of the Jolly Roger has yet to go into s.p.a.ce, presumably because the pirate s.p.a.ce programme is not very advanced.

22 Thomas More coined the term 'Utopia' in his book Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivas, de optimo reipublicae statu deque nova insula Utopia of 1516. Though of course his version is flawed, because it was written over four hundred years before the young Julie Christie and tubs of Haagen-Dazs even existed.

23 A recent a.n.a.lysis of the Mona Lisa using emotionalrecognition software showed her to be eighty-three per cent happy, six per cent fearful, two per cent angry and nine per cent disgusted.

24 There is a waxwork museum in Prague that has possibly the least convincing Michael Jackson you could ever hope to see. But it makes up for this with several quite scary golems. Recently, Madame Tussauds in London had to cover up Kylie with a longer skirt because so many visitors were patting her b.u.m it was starting to wear away.

25 The 'cancan' literally translates as 'scandal' or 't.i.ttle-tattle' and fi rst appeared in Paris in 1830.

Eight.

AMBUSHED BY KILL-CRAZY LOBSTERS.

The three sets of pirates all arrived back at the salon at the same time to find the Pirate Captain stretched out on a chaise longue in the middle of the room holding forth to Marx, Engels and an appreciative-looking audience of Parisian intellectuals. The pirates waited politely for him to finish, because he was clearly in the middle of some important philosophising.

'. . . and that's why, in a straight fight, I think a shark would most likely defeat Dracula,' said the Pirate Captain thoughtfully.

All the Parisian intellectuals clapped their hands. The men nodded and stroked their pointy beards, whilst the ladies fanned themselves and jostled for the Captain's attention.

The Pirate Captain noticed his crew and waved them over. 'h.e.l.lo, number two,' he said. 'I seem to have become a cause celebre.'

'Could we have a word, Captain?' asked the pirate with a scarf.

'Of course. Excuse me, gentlemen, ladies. I'll just be a moment.'

'Don't leave us for too long,' said a lady intellectual. 'We are all so keen to hear your views on the nature of consciousness.'

'Oh, that's easy,' said the Captain, with a wink. 'It's little people inside your brain. They're the size of earwigs.'

He strolled over to his pirates, grinning.

'I'm really enjoying this, number two. I've often felt it's a shame my wit and wisdom have been confined to the likes of you lot, when they could be benefiting a much broader audience. Amazing that it took someone like Marx to realise it. So then, what have the rest of you been up to? Anything that might help lead to a proper adventure?'

The pirates all started talking at once.

'We saw the most amazing thing at the Folies Bergere!'

'Not as amazing as what happened at the waxworks!'

'Wait till you hear about what happened at the Louvre!'

The Captain waved for them all to be quiet. Because the pirates often got up to pretty exciting stuff, they frequently had a problem with who wanted to tell their anecdote first. To avoid the situation escalating to bloodshed, a while back the Pirate Captain had drawn up a list of topics for potential anecdotes and, through a complex bit of maths, a.s.signed them various scores. Thus it could quickly be decided which anecdote was best and so deserved to be told first.

The topics were: * an anecdote featuring a ham. (10 points) * an anecdote featuring nudity. (7 points) * an anecdote featuring murder. (5 points) * an anecdote featuring somebody being eaten by a creature. (4 points) * an anecdote featuring problems with public transport. (1 point) 'Right,' said the Pirate Captain. 'My anecdote features ham. Do any of your anecdotes feature ham?'

The pirates shook their heads sadly.

'Well then. In addition to spending most of the day impressing high society with my intriguing philosophical debates, I also tried some of that French ham today. It was OK, nothing special. Bit salty.'

'That is a good anecdote, Captain,' said the pirate in green.

All the pirates were glad they'd heard the Captain's story first.

'Our anecdote features murder,' said Jennifer. 'We went to the waxworks, and they were really good, especially the mechanical ones that jiggle about like they're dancing. Anyhow, then we found a murdered body. And some mysterious statuesque blonde ladies with pigtails turned up and started stealing the crowned heads of Europe. We had to pretend to be waxworks ourselves, or who knows what they might have done to us.'

'Jennifer was really brave,' added the pirate in green. He wanted to get a bit of 'will-they-won't-they?' speculation going amongst the rest of the crew.

'Well, our anecdote should have featured nudity, because we decided to go to the Folies Bergere,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand. 'It was quite exciting, but also melancholy, because the dancing ladies all had that kind of particularly lovely face that just makes you want to cry into your pillow all night. Anyhow, when it came to the finale, which as you know is meant to leave nothing to the imagination, well, they were all wearing big serious-looking bucket pants! Made out of sacks! The crowd all starting booing, but the statuesque Nordic lady with pigtails stood up and told everybody that it was by order of the communists, because communists felt that not wearing any underwear was a bit much.'

'Are we against a lack of pants now? I do lose track a bit,' said Marx.

'No,' said Engels. 'We said that it's all about context. If it's "artistic", then that's OK.'

'The Folies Bergere are French, so they must be artistic,' said the pirate in green.

'Precisely. We'd have no problem with that,' said Engels.

'We went to the Louvre,' said the pirate with a scarf, going next. 'I think we probably drew the short straw, because although we feel culturally enriched, we didn't get to see any murders or high-kicking legs. We got a bit of art theft, which isn't bad, I suppose. Someone had tried to make it look like the communists had stolen the Mona Lisa! A hefty blonde was telling all the crowd how terrible it was and how if we had a strong government who weren't afraid to act then we'd soon see the end of the "red reign of terror".'

'It's just like in London!' cried Marx. 'Obviously, somebody is intent on blackening our name. But who could be carrying out such a thing? And for what possible motive?'

'Aaarrrr,' said the Pirate Captain, narrowing his eyes and tapping his chin.

'Oh, good G.o.d. He's going to start going on about his "detective skills" again,' muttered the pirate in red, holding his head in his hands.

'In the course of my many adventures,' said the Pirate Captain, taking on an air of authority, 'I've noticed that when sinister dealings are afoot, one is usually looking for a culprit. "Culprit" is a technical term for somebody who is up to no good. It's usually the last person you suspect. Like a pillar of the community. Or a kindly spinster. Have you noticed any pillars of the community or kindly spinsters skulking about?'

'Afraid not, Captain.'

'Well, not to worry. As I may have mentioned before, I'm a bit of an expert when it comes to solving mysteries and criminal matters. For instance, did you know that nine times out of ten you can discover who the guilty party is simply by comparing the b.u.t.t of a cigarette left at the crime scene with the brand he smokes?'

'Except we didn't find any cigarette b.u.t.ts, Captain.'

'Really? That's unusual.' The Pirate Captain clicked his tongue thoughtfully. 'We're clearly dealing with a professional. In which case, the ident.i.ty of the criminal is usually given away by a dog failing to bark, thereby revealing the fact that the intruder was familiar to the victim. Case closed.'

'Not sure that really helps either, Captain,' said the pirate in green. 'Because we didn't see any dogs.'

'Then it seems,' said the Captain, holding up a finger dramatically, 'that the villain was a jellyfish all along!'

'Actually, Captain,' said the pirate in red, with a world-weary sigh, 'the keen observer will notice a common thread. Something all these stories have in common.'

'All the stories are about pirates!' shouted the albino pirate excitedly.

'Besides that. All the stories feature these mysterious statuesque blonde women.'

The Pirate Captain frowned, and tried to remember something important. Unfortunately, the years of drinking grog mixed with gunpowder had left the 'remembering things' part of the Captain's brain a bit shot, though the 'knowing a lot about meat' part of his brain had done its best to compensate for this. He screwed up his eyes in concentration. He did his best not to think about hams. He thought about the mysterious blonde ladies. Then he thought about how sad it was that ladies weren't very good at growing luxuriant beards. He wondered if perhaps that could be a motive, because maybe they were jealous of Marx's facial hair. Then he thought about how much better his own beard was compared to Marx's, which led him on to thinking about how oak-like his broad neck was. That made him think about how fantastic he looked in his nice new coat. And then he sat bolt upright.

'Eureka!' he cried, and he pointed at his coat as if by way of explanation. Marx and the pirates looked at him blankly. 'Valkyries! Viking mania! The opera! From what I've heard, operas nowadays are stuffed full of hefty statuesque blonde ladies.'

'And the opera was in London when we were suffering mishaps there, and now it's here, where our troubles have followed us, which is more than a little suspicious,' exclaimed Engels.

'That's what operas do. They move about. They're like tramps, you see,' said the albino pirate knowledgeably.